Tag: depression

Nightmare Bathroom

Robin Schiff

Even though the bathroom can be a refuge and a private place, I have always been afraid there.  It is not a rational fear.

It may stem from the fear I had in childhood of being sucked down the drain with the water, the ritual of confronting my nakedness, staring at my face in the mirror, the fear of being intruded upon.  I wanted to convey the idea of vulnerability.  The woman in the tub is made completely of loose sand.  Sand is able to take a shape and retain its vulnerability at the same time.  By the end of the show she was eroded by fingerprints.

-Robin Schiff

Source: womanhouse.net

Prozac 43

unknowmenclature:

i have this dream where i’m standing in the cold.
just kidding.
i’m doing that now, watching as propellers leave
the trees.
i can noiselessly melt into this environment, like the seasons.
see me
behind your fence, or directly behind you, trying to sidestep your sidestep?
i didn’t
think so. i’ve been good at booming my voice lately, but words bounce,
come back
as a sandwich—sliced and rephrased. why won’t they just stick

to skin

like tobacco? chemical bonds that need to be cleansed, dried, cleansed again.
my sensory stains
should require effort to remove, but at this point everyone is well-equipped
against everyone else.
let’s go back to that cold dream, i mean cold backyard—i mean cold reality.

No Rain

And then
I heard
the sound
of rain
that’s the
air-conditioning
but what
makes
me
want
the rain
in here.
That’s you
says
Chris
being con-
nected
but no
I hoped
the darkness
meant
something.
I put
the heat
on before
I left
so I
could
come
in to
something
warm
not cold
bereft.
But it
wasn’t that.
Just
grey cold
drunken
grey
a day
full of
sticks and
plans and
flowers
for you.
I want
to wrap
them
in bamboo
or clay
I want
to hang
them on your
door
opening
the marvelous
concrete
truths
of what
you’re doing
now with
your hands
and ideas
I have
a secret
for you
the rain
is falling
through
a screen
I see
many of
us
I hear
a roar
what’s that
I asked
Chris.
That’s the
future
he said.
It’s
true

—Eileen Myles

Please post more of your own art. When you’re famous I’ll be able to think to myself “I wrote her when she was just starting”.

Oh man. What a lovely comment. I don’t generally post the text of my writing, because I am shopping my work to publishers right now and any prior publishing is frowned upon, but here is a link to an audio recording of the first section of my collection, The Orchard, with some weird sound effects. 

Again; thanks so much. I have scant ambitions toward fame, but I do have aspirations to achieving some sort of emotional and intellectual cogency, so this note made my night. 

I won the Lambda Literary Award this year, and it was one of the best feelings of my life. And three days later, for no damn reason and every damn reason, I left therapy and felt my mood crashing. I tried to drive to a friend’s birthday party, but the directions were complicated and I circled five times before giving up and driving home. I crawled into bed at 3 PM and found myself staring at the pillbox on my dresser, thinking, I’ve got 5 Ativan and a bottle of good bourbon, is that enough?

And I thought, whoa. And I thought, I am 37 and I just won the Lambda Award. I can’t tell people I want to kill myself. On my Facebook status update.

I slept. I texted a lover I’d had the sweetest access intimacy with to ask about Wellbutrin. I called friends. I called my witch naturopath in Toronto, who saw me, on Skype, for $20, and asked me, ‘What does the depression feel like?“ I told her it felt like a slow soft river, that it was good I had a lot of great things in my life, but even when I was in them right then, I couldn’t really feel them. And when things did get bad, the direct line to Ishouldjustkillmyself was well marked out. 

suicidal ideation 2.0, queer community leadership, and staying alive anyway: part one of a work in progress.  Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha