realization

I just had an epiphany. I had it in the shower, which is where I get many of my ideas. I realized that the events of the last few months, and the last few days in particular, have eroded my nerves to the point where I am on the verge of psychological chaos. And now I know why.

I have been reading DRY by Augusten Burroughs. While not a great book, there are things that are very compelling in it. When he tells the story of the death of Pighead, it struck home with me on so many levels. At one point he had been deeply in love with Pighead, and Pighead was not deeply in love with him. Their relationship changed into one of true friendship. But then Pighead dies. And the narrator falls back into alcoholism and drug addiction (the latter just like me, only I couldn't admit it to myself ever; I would just rehabilitate myself when I was at the edge of breaking).

Last night I had dinner with Y. It was excruciating for me, but not bad. Just excruciating.

And the confusion of the other evening--a long twisting story--had sent me into a state of near panic.

But then this morning I realized, in the shower, that at no point in my life have I allowed myself to sink into the emotional response to traumas. For example, after my parents split up, telling us on a rainy Sunday in what I think was March--the sky the same dull grey as it is today--I went to school the next day, and while inside I was a total mess, I functioned with my usual diligence.

In college, away from home, I led a double life; I studied hard and took my classes seriously, loving the challenge. But my life was a cushioned mess. I used drugs to great excess. By the end of each semester I was a pale mess. But when summer came I would return to Pennsylvania and, without giving myself any time to rest, would begin working fifteen hour days, six or seven days a week sometimes, and swimming thousands of meters a day, exercising like a freak, so that when I would return to school in the fall no one could recognize me with my muscles and wholesomeness. Really I should have been in rehab. I needed it, but I didn't and couldn't do it then.

During my third year of graduate school, when my mother was dying, I flew back and forth from Chicago, only taking a full month off when things became very serious. I stayed by my mother's side through December into January. In January everyone urged me to get back to my life. After all, while we all knew she would die, and she knew also, it might be a month, or it might be three. So I went back to school and worked feverishly as I always did then, monk-like, only allowing myself the occasional wild drunk night for release.

Then in February I went back home because she took a turn for the worse. I don't remember now how long it was; in my memory it feels timeless, although most details are very vivid to me. After my mother died, only a few days after the memorial service, I went back to Chicago. I did not take a week or a month or a quarter off. I plunged back into grad school. What else was I goinng to do? I was like a walking ghost then, so pale and so thin that I looked like I myself was seriously ill. But I plunged back into school, emotionally numb, and finished my PhD fifteen months later.

I guess I have always felt too great a sense of responsiblity, and I think it is because I am truly afraid of what would happen if I just gave in to my emotions completely--not through the vehicle of my work--and let them run their course. But the thing is, if someone had just told me "you need to take a rest/go to rehab/take time off from school/heal yourself" I know I would have done so, in a heartbeat.