thermonuclearlighthouse

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

29.05.18, 14.16

i was really hoping that at least this part would be fun, this little week that's supposed to be for hanging out on campus with friends. i am absolutely miserable.

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

18.05.18, 01.11

have given up on therapy. i don’t want to get better, at least not on their terms. peace of mind and the god of the silence and self-soothing techniques and making a home are not for me. all we were doing were safety checks and debates of dead-end-for-now medical snarls and questions for her curiosity.

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

29.04.18, 01.47

over the last couple of months i have written Reams of images but it’s only that there’s no fucking structure what the Hell am i trying to say i have nothing to say i just open my mouth and let pretty steam come out i am so fucking sick of the bullshit i try to pass off as ‘writing’ or ‘speech’ god when will i just shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

27.04.18, 03.18

i don’t want to think about anything everything’s filthy я такой же мерзавец как все только слегка нерядовой. а тому ли радоваться?

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

27.04.18, 02.45

update: have been more than usually suicidal for most of this month. 20th heard a rather nasty tenor voice speaking full, hostile sentences which i no longer remember in my right ear for several minutes while i chilled out in bed. i was oblivious на показ to his (felt like a dude, i named him kostya, after treplev) hostility and when he realized i wouldn’t rise to his snarling, said snarling became more outwardly directed (not at me in particular, just venting extreme despair) and i was able to suggest new lines (lines from a play, then just my thoughts) for him to say, the way i do with some of my musical hallucinations. i was sick at the time (bad head cold) and had taken some otc meds which previously had no such effect. yesterday (26th) saw a patch of sparkling light gold/silvery rain indoors for a very memorable split second.

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

10.4.18, 02.50

i know everyone — well, not everyone. I know people say 'don't limit yourself based on diagnoses [usually they say 'a diagnosis' actually, which, well], you can still achieve your dreams!' and i recognize the encouraging, respiriting intent and potential of that, i really do, but the thing is

I haven't got any dreams?

like 'don't let your illness stop you from living your life!' is an impossible formulation, it would be my life either way. what they mean is probably something akin to 'you shouldn't let your illness stop you from living your ideal life or something that reflects your ideal enough to satisfy you' but my nihilist ambitionless ass has no ideals

I have lived 22 years, more than 8000 days. that's a lot, as I reckon it. a lot of thunderstorms, a lot of handshakes, a lot of poems, a lot of nosebleeds, a lot of tea. california migraines and russian snowfalls and musical hallucinations and puppies on leashes borrowed cookware and suicidal obsessions everywhere I go. it's been pretty dynamic. but it doesn't feel like I've been 'chasing my dreams' as people admiringly say

It all feels random. It's not so much that god is laughing at me as that I am god's laughter. a single trill of it, in so much as such a thing can be isolated, as i can be isolated. a bass giggle conceived in simultaneous divine observation of a Visigoth warlord's pronunciation of his two-word name and a dimly lit interrogation room where Boris Pasternak is noting the color of his tormentor's eyes to make art later and the invention of glitter and the gas stove all by itself and the catastrophic rising of the future sea. après moi le déluge. I always liked the name Isaac

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

4.4.18, 15.07

officially prof diagnosed with OCD, bipolar workup to follow

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

26.03.18, 04.33

hmmm i would say that my current relation to my relation to m is uh

proud and nervous and proud to be nervous and nervous about being proud

i am realizing that i have the potential to be like him in a lot of ways, that i fall short in some places (literally, in one), that i’d like to be like him. uncompromising. really uncompromising. loving. gentleness despite the abundance of violence, as siken has it. dead? i’ll get there. but first, life. don’t knock it ‘til you try it?

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

23.03.18, 03.15

to be clear, i sit up nights translating. all night a week ago, similar last night. physically sick from lack of sleep. who gives a shit though. my friends are increasingly impatient with my physical difficulties. i get up too slowly from a chair when they want to eat, i take too long eating, i complain too much. i don’t really know what to do about that. these are people who are genuinely very kind, compassionate, and thoughtful, and it would probably stress them out (perhaps helpfully?) to have the selflessness/generosity which they semi-secretly consider their best foundational trait called into question. they just forget. or they don’t care, when other things in their lives/the moment (hunger, paper deadlines, sleep) are more pressing. and this has always been so in our relationships. i demand too much of them, i know, i am, should be, no one’s first priority but my own (?). oxygen mask principle, they have to look after themselves first (and those who can’t? am i one of those? sometimes, maybe). but it puts me in a strange position: there’s too much of me to be broadcast uncensored, too much to ask for support, i complain too much about the same things over and over, themes and collapsing variations, not so much broken record as fucked-up cassette tape, nobody wants to hear that sad eldritch shit, it’s harmful to other people to play it. but if i don’t complain, they forget that i also have to look after myself, if i don’t ask for support which no one wants to and maybe no one can give anyway (imagine pasternak in 58 calling lilya yurievna up on the public pay phone, quietly greeting, then a feral keening) exactly the right way, i am at fault for whatever happens to me... i’m at fault anyway! it’s My Fault, glory to god (славьте меня! я великим не чета), my body my mind my will be done. i should, what, self-advocate more aggressively and in more and more sanitized, meaningless, preposterous, humiliating language, pretending surprise has no communication value? i don’t care much for this idea. damned if i do, damned if i don’t. might as well give myself a show. а как же массы? seriously, how can i help? write? and in the mean time? the rest of it?

i really am going to lose weight over the break, i suspect. i want to. in a way i am doing a lot of this to myself. which really is stupid. how am i supposed to think, starving, unslept. then again i like the edge. perhaps related, i’ve stopped seeing the counselor at the campus mental health center because i’m tired of feeling like an entertainment item. she never even learned my name properly. i don’t get more benefit out of our sessions than i do out of writing here, i think. talking to other professors, on the other hand...

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

23.3.18, 03.07

haven’t slept properly in i’m not sure how long. two weeks? i don’t care about anything but poetry. translation. music. i’m behind in all my other work, but i feel good, improbably good, as if i were a little drunk at all times. more cleanliness and hand touch/abrade compulsions recently, mostly mayak’s fault. it’s alright i love him anyway. spring break, i’m more or less alone on campus, one of my friends demands that i email every day or she’ll call people. i’m cat-sitting, which gives me access to хоть какая-то guitar. and, uh, a cat. stress is mostly overpowered by obsession. ah, if only it could be like this always. 

except then i’d run all my friends away, lose a ton of weight (i’m eating less, moving more), lose my job, and and default on my bills. is there a ‘golden medium’? i’m not sure that ‘you need to find a happy medium’ and ‘you need to allow yourself to feel all of your emotions as they happen, without intellectualizing’ are terribly compatible instructions. like if i really let everything hit me naturally like the surf, i’d probably be throwing up all day or passed out facedown in the dirt behind the observatory from hyperventilating over some thought that possessed me apropos of nothing.

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

what........... Is it

about suicide

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

2.3.18, 02.11

i don’t think there’s anything clinically wrong with me. auditory hallucinations. obsessions. compulsions. restriction. self-harm. wild mood swings lasting about a week on either end. contemplating suicide. who gives a shit. it’s frontal lobe epilepsy, maybe, on a longer scan, but on the short ones, all’s clean. it’s ‘extreme sensitivity to supernatural energies,’ maybe, if we’re willing to just fucking give up (i don’t rightly know what that psychiatrist was thinking. clearly she couldn’t read my mind either). maybe i’m just an angsty extremist artiste, maybe i just need to ‘let myself experience little joys’ (видали вы лист?) and give up all control i might have over my emotions. i’m not sure how safe that is in the short run. but maybe that’s an obsessional thought. i can’t always tell the difference. what *is* the difference? clinically, distress. but how does that square with the levelled paradigm of ‘patient insight’? ultimately i’m fucking miserable but i’m not sure how anyone with a conscience and a brain isn’t. всё по чеховски. так это наверно надолго. поколениями несчастными длится. не хочу я ждать. не знаю, что делать собой, что из себя лучше делать. мб завтра сделаю brainstorm в сотрудничестве внешней бури.

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

16.2.18, 22.29

i am not going to kill myself tonight. dramamine is terrible shit and i don’t remember how to tie the right kind of knots. i’d have to use antibacterial dial soap my mom accidentally bought in a giant case. it’s cold out there. my friends would be upset. and i really would like to be 22.

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

12.2.18, 01.25

ash wednesday is in two days. i am in the midst of an ocd flare up but trying to convince myself it’s not that bad because i’m afraid of going on meds. i have a meeting with a psychiatrist at the end of the month and i’m not sure i’m willing to play the покаявшийся грешник. odd, perhaps, that i should think of it in those terms. or maybe not. the idea that ‘ocd rumination’ on existential questions is Symptomatic(tm), maladaptive behavior rubs my feathers the wrong way in both personal and moral registers. i would like to mention this to the therapist (social worker doing her practicum) i’m seeing, but i’m not sure she knows enough about ocd for that conversation? although now i suspect that her earlier question about my ‘philosophical’ nature may have been more pointed than i thought. she’s quite canny, not above slight deceptions in the service of truth. i admire that. good thing i don’t have significant trust issues.

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

01.02.18, 12.36

i’m not sure which is funnier from a doctor: handing me a scrip for anti-nausea generics and tossing a “ни пуха, ни пера” down the hallway after my retreating figure or looking me dead in the eyes and apologizing, “i have no idea what’s wrong with you”

the latter (neurologist) also took my blood pressure (good) and pulse (fast) and checked my eyes (tracking) and hands (shaking) and asked if i was nervous, noting that i seemed too collected and calm for the pulse. i am always terrified.

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

23.01.18, 23.57

i am exhausted

physical weakness, shaking, nausea, dizziness days on end, sleeping three hours through my alarm, can't think, can't focus, can barely string my thoughts together enough to write this. hallucinations every other day.

can't wait to start the semester

[thermonuclearlighthouse]

19.01.18, 14.54

i see people posting those goals for the semester type lists. here's mine:

1. don't die

2. don't get expelled (find money)

3. graduate on time (pass classes, meet recs)

4. write a grad paper

5. present at harvard

6. get a job

7. get housing

8. get rec letters

9. take gre

that's it