Beginning the Book

Of all the pieces I've written, this is the one I have been the most leery about posting. I've been dreaming about writing a book for years, but in my state, I can't go about it the proper way.

It scares the hell out of me to think about how my mood, dreams, and emotions can change in a mere 12 hours. But since I'm not in that state anymore, I feel a bit disconnected from what I wrote. So here it is:

INTRODUCTION/ CHAPTER 1

In the spirit of the way I feel and have been acting, I am going to write this book in the most fucked up way imaginable. My method goes against everything I’ve ever learned as a student of Literature and Philosophy. There will be no outlines. I’m not going to research important topics before portraying myself as an expert. Hell, there is a good chance that I won’t even edit the finished product. I’m taking the whole “unreliable narrator” thing to the edge and over.

I am going to write my story as it plays itself out. At this moment, I have no true diagnosis for whatever it is that is causing me to go crazy. I am off all the meds that I had been taking to help me sit still, shut up, and stop crying. We are starting at square one. No drugs in my system, no professional help being received, no clue what the future holds.

Actually, if this thing actually does make it to publication, you will probably know more about the ending than I do as I am sitting here writing it. The jacket may say something like, “One girl’s harrowing story of the journey into the dark descent of “going bat-shit crazy” (insert medical term here).” Or in a more Sylvia Plath-like style: “Mary receives immortality through her death, all captured in this eerily compelling diary of a novel.”

But more than likely, this book will sit here on my Google Drive, another relic in the collection of projects I’ve abandoned, failures I’ve achieved, and goals I couldn’t reach.

Let me set the stage. Nothing about the future. I don’t know what that will bring or if it exists. Nothing about the past. Given there is a future, we will have time to talk about that later. Here is what’s going on with me, body and mind, as I sit here at my computer at 9:46 in the morning on January 23, 2013.

My wrist itches. There are 18 healing cuts going every which direction neatly placed between two disgusting, parallel scars. I want desperately to scratch the hell out of them, half because I hope it will open up the scab and I can enjoy the blood again, half because it just really itches.

I’ve been awake for less than an hour. My mind is dazed from all the sleeping pills I took last night but not so dazed that I’m prevented from thinking about the option of killing myself. I have gone back and forth half a dozen times. What should I have for breakfast? Whatever. The calories I eat today won’t matter if I off myself tomorrow. No, if I act normal maybe I’ll be normal and they won’t put me in the mental hospital again. What should I make Boyfriend dinner? Will I be here for dinner? I hope not. I hope so. I hope not. Fuck.

Chance are, I am not going to kill myself. I have lethal doses of drugs about 4 feet away from me. Up the stairs and to the right, I have a bottle of razors. If I really wanted to die, I would be dead. What I really want is to not live. I know they sound like the same thing, but they are not. Living is too painful. It is physically and emotionally taxing to be present in my head at all times. A minute doesn’t pass without me thinking about how I am ruining everything for everyone little by little every second I am here. But I know that if Boyfriend comes home to find me dead on the ground, or if a hotel cleaning lady finds me in the bathtub, all hell will break loose, at least for a moment. I don’t want to do that to anyone either. Instead, I want to fade into the background until I can disappear unnoticed. Not death by suicide. Just a mystery of science that people will shrug at before they change the channel my medical mystery is being sold on, disregarding it more quickly than it happened.

So there’s my pipe dream. Until I can figure out the logistics behind making it reality, I am forced to continue on this path, grasping at fleeting moments of hope and hiding under my sanctuary of blankets.

It may be weeks before I add more words to this document. But it could also be as soon as this afternoon. I may be under the influence of doctor-prescribed meds that help. Or ones that don’t. I may be able to wear short sleeves in public again. I may be writing with a bleeding wrist.

Recording the events of my journey is less for what the reading public will think about the completed, and more about giving my monsters somewhere to reside. Maybe if I keep putting the abstract mental monsters into words, giving them definition and taking away their illusionary power, I will be able to lock them inside the pages of this book forever, freeing myself from their hold and allowing myself to make the decision about whether to live or die on my own.