existentialdeliberation - Tumblr blog

[existentialdeliberation]

Self-love and Boundaries

Self-love feels like putting your heart on the line and letting people cherish it or break it into pieces. I set boundaries with the ones who break it and let the others closer. It's only sensible. What's fascinating is when the same person can break it in one way but cherish it in another.

[existentialdeliberation]

Loving yourself feels like getting your heart broken over and over and over and allowing it to happen

Cause at the end of the day none of those individuals even know how to really love you

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[existentialdeliberation]

Human nature is such that inspiration for our actions is born from nature first and second each other. Know yourself and you will be known for what you’re really about by everyone around you. Everything you seek, it’s all right there, in your soul.

[existentialdeliberation]

Going after what you want feels like everything is going wrong. It feels like someone showing you all the ways you suck. But that’s just the universe giving you everything you need to achieve your goals. Look at it again with a deeper, compassionate understanding.

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1950's psychiatrists - that thing in his head (that no one can see) Right! That thing! It's all the brain's fault!

[existentialdeliberation]

Something Else, Different

It was my second or third night in the PICU - psychiatric intensive care unit. Bewitched, the one with Will Ferrell and Nicole Kidman, was playing on the TV lobby… if we can consider it a lobby, it was more like a “watch desk” for the nurses and techs with a miniature table and miniature plastic chairs for inpatients to eat meals towards the back wall.

It was night. Just one nurse in the PICU.

Where was my mother? She was with me before… it had been a while… in fact the last time I saw her I was tied ankles and wrists to a hospital bed! Where was she??

So there I am in my cement room when I hear friendly but urgent voices debating over something, trying to make some sort of a mutual decision. I was stuck here in a silly gown and silly socks. Why was I here? Who was in charge? Where were my parents?

The voices from the TV were saying, “I’m moving here.”

“Why on Earth would you do that?”

“Because it’s normal.”

“You’re normal. You’re just…”

“I know. But I’m not gonna be one anymore.”

“You have no choice in the matter. It’s what you are.”

Where was my dad? He definitely felt close. Surely someone had notified him by now. What did he think of all this?

A male voice from the TV, “And who is this?”

“This is my father.”

“How witchy is that? We talk about your father and he turns up.”

I leaped up and made my way to stand in front of the TV, mantled just a foot or two directly above the night nurse’s head.

“You’ve turned your back on your own kind.”

“And now you live down the street from a Denny’s.” I looked to where he might have been talking about.

“Don’t make fun of my life.” I took a few sudden steps, charging forward a bit, towards the TV. “I could make fun of your life.”

Nicole Kidman and her movie dad left the screen. I went back into my room and sat on the thin mattress atop an aluminum frame. I had to get out of here. But I couldn’t! Someone else had to get me out of here.

The PICU had two doors, and they both needed key cards to open. The lobby had no windows, and get this, the entire back wall of my room was a window, but it was heavy duty with a 6 foot wall of dirt on the other side of it! with about 2 inches of sunlight sneaking in from the top, where the ground was.

And what about Whitney, my roommate. Where was she?

The movie actor’s voices floated in from the watch desk TV…

“I didn’t expect you guys to be here.”

“Okay, as you know, we’re here for Bewtiched. But not the old one. It’s being retooled.”

“But is there going to be a Samantha?”

“Of course. Isabell, could you come out here?”

I presented myself to the watch desk TV.

“Be brave. You look beautiful.”

I stood, unsure of what would happen, but ready. Ready for anything.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press I’d like you to meet the talented and delightful Ms. Isabel Bigelow.”

“Say hello to the people, Isabel.”

I waved.

The night nurse looked at me.

“Hello.”

“No, no, into the microphone. Here, here.”

I calmly repositioned myself to try again.

“Hello.”

She dropped her pen onto the watchdesk.

“Now do that thing that you do.”

I disappeared into her mind, turned that radio station volume up and reappeared in a flash. “Isn’t that great?”

The nurse, staring, started to move slowly towards the door. The door!

I locked onto her and snapped into action.

“Bob?” She said my nickname drawn out a bit and with a question at the end. “Boob?”

I sped walked towards her.

“No! No, Bob!”

I was practically hugging her as she stumbled toward the door. She held me back as she swiped her key card, “Bob! No!” and she slid out of the PICU, door thudding and clicked shut.

I peered out of the thick, narrow window. It was too narrow. I couldn’t see two inches down the hallway.

“And of course she hates me, don’t you?”

“Anything you say, Jerry.”

About five minutes later when I was standing near the miniature table for meals, oh and coloring, how could I forget the coloring, a male nurse in his early 30’s with big arms and mounds of muscle on top of his shoulders made his entrance into the PICU. He placed his hands palms down on the watchdesk, looked at me and said, “Hello, Bob.”

I didn’t bother, rolled my eyes a bit as I turned and walked back into my cement room.

- ExistentialDeLiberation

[existentialdeliberation]

Discovering who you really are feels like someone leading, inspiring, giving clues, and at times dragging you to do things you love. Kinda weird, but cool. Really cool.

[existentialdeliberation]

Dancing in the Bottom of the Deep, Dark Well

My skin was cold, wet dirt with worms, beetles, and ants festering, fighting over territory. I was up to a bottle of whisky per day, and I won't name the other nasty addiction.

20 to 30 swigs off the mouth of my merciful bottle would get me maybe 4 hours of gentle but unmistakable, throbbing but pleasurable ripples of deep sound waves bursting like a bass beat from sub speakers or cascading like a reverberation of a close, warm underwater heartbeat. Mindless, numb, nuisance-less, unfettered bliss, nothing else existed there, save for the sensation of slowly floating downward into layer after layer of infinitely steady, seductive relief.

I didn't want it to end. But I'd always float back up, and the microcosm of writhing and biting bugs would crawl back into focus, and another 20 to 30 swigs would beg me to make them still again.

It didn't matter where. Home, out, at a friend's house, at family's house. Work. Then one night while dancing in the bottom of the deep, dark well my dad appeared, then my best friend, then my next romantic partner - I wouldn't meet him for another several months. They yelled and screamed my name. "What are you doing?? You have to stop! Stop this!" The distinct sense that the same circumstance was happening again and again like a circular whirling pool of souls. Their voices, "Again? Again Aubrielle??" I dropped to my knees and grabbed my chest. I bent over and touched my forehead to the brown apartment carpet. I closed my eyes shut. More people, I couldn't name them, but they were familiar, flocked around. Their eyes burrowed. Their tones disbelieving and dispelling. How could I? I had to change.

[existentialdeliberation]

When They Come for You

When it comes for you, remember that who you believe yourself to be -- your strengths, your ambitions, your anxieties etc. -- is just irrelevant, and its death is joyous.