Strip me ugly naked (revised)

I wish you were here
If only to twist the knife
You left when you went
And be the devil I know
My soul is yours, anyway

But it’s all forgiven now
I’d give and give away again
If only you could be here.
I’d light your cigarettes
And keep the drinks coming

Life with you was no live
Paradise, in other words
So if only you were there,
To drag me out of here.

Galatea in reverse

You come around a corner, away from the noise of the opening.

There is only one exhibit.  She stands in the spotlight, with her back to you: a sweep of pale hair on paler skin, a column of emerald silk that ends in a pool at her feet.  She might be the model in a perfume ad; the trophy wife at a formal gathering; one of the guests at this very opening, standing on an empty pedestal in some ironic act of artistic deconstruction –

You hesitate, about to turn away.  Her hand balls into a fist.

"They told me you were coming."

Courtesy of Emily Short©

 

At night, the city is the loneliest of places. It’s the lights…they’re but a mirage, teasing the traveler dying of thirst.

And when his legs give in, hallucinating in his death throes, he prays to ghosts of the past:

“Let me turn to stone! Have I not struggled enough? I tried… but love and live and meaning… they won’t stop draining from this mold. So pour the bronze already! And burn away this insatiable longing! Oh, please!”

Four things about me

I love the English language. It often feels more intimate and familiar than German. I wasn’t raised bilingually, but my mother’s best friend is from America, and she used to hang around at our place pretty much all the time when I was a kid. I tried to pick up as much as I could from their conversations at the kitchen table.

My favorite book is “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath. Back in those days when mental illness ravaged unfettered in my head, there were times when I couldn’t direct my attention to anything I was reading. But I found that things pertaining to mental illness would still stick in my mind. And so The Bell Jar was a real revelation. It became something like a bible for me.

I hate being alone, but I guess you know that. I used to roam the city during nights of insomnia, because I couldn’t stand the loneliness of my room. One night, when all the places I usually frequented were closed and it was way too late to call anybody, I wound up at a gay bar. A man tried to hook up with me, and I played along for a while. Later he suggested going back to his place, but I ran away while he was in the restroom. That made me feel very bad.

My biological father was addicted to amphetamine in the time I was born. He also worked as a dealer. He had absolutely no school qualifications. My mother taught him to read and write. I have no memory of him, and I think I’ll never try to find him. Having a father is totally overrated.

Soundtrack to my life

Call me mawkish to quote lyrics, I don’t care.

I’m told that every man wants to be like Robbie Williams and every woman digs him – why?

Oh it seemed forever stopped today
All the lonely hearts in London
Caught a plane and flew away
And all the best women are married
All the handsome men are gay
You feel deprived

Yeah are you questioning your size?
Is there a tumour in your humour,
Are there bags under your eyes?
Do you leave dents where you sit,
Are you getting on a bit?
Will you survive
You must survive

When there’s no love in town
This new century keeps bringing you down
All the places you have been
Trying to find a love supreme
A love supreme

Oh what are you really looking for?
Another partner in your life to
abuse and to adore?
Is it lovey dovey stuff,
Do you need a bit of rough?
Get on your knees

Yeah turn down the love songs that you hear
‘Cause you can’t avoid the sentiment
That echoes in your ear
Saying love will stop the pain
Saying love will kill the fear
Do you believe
You must believe
When there’s no love in town
This new century keeps bringing you down
All the places you have been
Trying to find a love supreme
A love supreme

I spy with my little eye
Something beginning with (ah)
Got my back up
And now she’s screaming
So I’ve got to turn the track up
Sit back and watch the royalties stack up
I know this girl she likes to switch teams
And I’m a fiend but I’m living for a love supreme

When there’s no love in town
This new century keeps bringing you down
All the places you have been
Trying to find a love supreme
A love supreme

Come and live a love supreme
Don’t let it get you down
Everybody lives for love

Come and live a love supreme
Don’t let it get you down
Everybody lives for love

Everybody lives for love – I hold this to be true. But why then, tell me why in the hell is this world such a bitter and lonely place?

Going on living

Life is going ok at the moment. What’s getting to me the most is my day time sleepiness, which is a side effect of medication. Sometimes my forehead sinks down onto the table during work and I have to be careful not to drift off and fall off the chair. My psych doesn’t really acknowledge of its severity. But I guess I’ve bugged her long enough and so she’s switched me from Citalopram to Escitalopram. We’re going for the maximum dosage of 20 mg/d right away. So far, the only thing that’s changed is my constipation, which’s got a lot worse. I’m taking Lactulose syrup now almost on a daily basis.

I remember that I used to be a much more active person. The longing for energy I have now is exaggerating the memories of those days, but compared to now, I really used to be a little ball of fire. Now I sit in my room at night, watching the headlights of cars go by that bring revelers from one party to another, and I wish I were one of them.

Medication works, it works better for me than anybody could ever wish to expect. I live on the fifteenth floor and have no desire of defenestrating myself. It was only months ago that I made plans about how to gain access to the roof of such an apartment building in order to throw myself off it. But medication has also stripped my life off most of its glamour. Where I used to be all consumed in the highest highs and the lowest lows, I’m more grounded now. But it’s all about staying alive, no matter what, right?

But the sleepiness sucks on end. I’m sleepy when I wake up, I doze off in front of the TV. In the past, I could never understand how people could take naps during the day. What a thing to do! But now I’m one of them. I know that most people think I’m just a lazy fuckwit, thinking of himself as an oh so talented, charmingly bohemian, tragically tortured artist. But I try. I really do. My head feels like it were stuffed with cotton right now. I just looked out the window and noticed that the plant on my windowsill is dying.

There are so many things I want to say that I can’t find the words for.

Therapist killer

I’ve been a shit patient again, recently. My last appointments with my various caretakers and babysitters were months ago. I don’t feel like seeing my psychiatrist, because all that she can do is prescribe pills and I’ve got enough of them already. I often keep empty tablet blister packs in my drawer out of pure laziness. When I clean it out then, even the transparent trash bags for plastic waste give away that this is the household of a mentally ill person.

Same goes for my therapist, or behavioral therapy in general. On and off, I’ve been in therapy since I was 15. Back then nobody had the idea that I might suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder.  BPD patients are often seen as “therapist killers”. Considering that I’m 19 and have worn out three counselors already, this might well be the case with me.

And even though my current therapist knows of my diagnosis, were heading for another discontinuation here. It’s just that I can’t get rid of the feeling that she never understood a word I said. I’m not even sure she remembers who I am on every new appointment. Hell, I probably could go see her and say that I’d become a practicing catholic who is happily married to the love of his live and has two children. All she’d have said would have been “Well done. I think were on the right path here.”

Damn it. Everybody keeps telling me that my illness is treatable. But It just doesn’t feel that way for me. Word is in medical literature that the symptoms of BPD start improving on their own once you’re in your 30s or 40s. Maybe I just have to do my best to hang on and try to last that long.

A day in the life

I always thought that reality was what you feel.

But my feelings are so varied and so inconsistent, that I seem to have lost a sense for what is true and false. And therefore a profound distrust has built up against myself and my world – the world as I see it.

When I look into the mirror now, I’m not sure what to think. The impression that I get is that I’m not much more than a set of clichéd phrases and actions, robotic responses that have proven by trial and error testing going on since kindergarten to elicit certain reactions with a certain likeliness.

And I don’t even hold these simple mechanisms by which my mind works to be pathological. I don’t think that my personality can be separated into that vicious set of borderline symptoms and my real self underneath, which is perfectly agreeable. At least I cannot make out a dividing line anymore. Subtract my illness from myself and there will be nothing left – that’s how I’m beginning to feel about it. And if my feelings don’t deceive me, than I wonder how there will ever be any chance of improvement. But then again, when have my feelings ever been trustworthy? On the other hand, if reality is what you feel, what’s the point in doubting one’s feelings at all?

What I do know is where all my striving is aimed at. Love is the one feeling that lets one forget one’s world-weariness, leads one to believe, infuses a sense of absoluteness and lets one cut the veil of dreariness. That doesn’t mean that love makes sense, but without it, nothing makes sense. It’s also as elusive as a dream and hard to find. That makes it all the more precious. Love is the only thing that has kept me going all these years. But then again love is a feeling, and s I’m growing afraid of my own feelings. So I wonder, what is the point In going on at all?

Is there really a meaning to those moments I have sheared with one or another special someone? As feelings – my feelings at least – don’t stay with me, love will always turn into heartache, no matter how grounded it may seem. And therefore it’s never really going to set me free or take me any further.

I really don’t see a point in anything anymore.

Pull the pin

For the last few days I’ve been dead tired which bothers me a lot because I’m normally a very outgoing person. Last week I was quite hyper and wound up… but now I’m lying in bed watching the days go by. What’s weird is that most of the time, the mind won’t let me fall asleep although the body craves for it. And it’s the same way at night. It doesn’t really matter when I go to bed, my eyes just won’t stay shut before midnight or later – and on the next morning they will fling open again at five o’clock.

Back in the days when I still had something like a creative drive, I wrote this song for a band that never came into existence… I guess it would have needed a lot of refinement or our band wouldn’t have lasted long. Anyway, here is one of the stanzas that I think fits what’s been going on lately.

When I lay down my head starts taking of
Spinnin’ round till I want to take it off
Vesicles they leak inside my brain
Pull the pin, if you can’t pin in my brain