"The human body is not a thing or a substance, given, but a continuous creation. The human body is an energy system which is never a complete structure; never static; it is in perpetual inner self-construction and self-destruction; we destroy in order to make it new."
--Norman O. Brown
In his famous Nobel prize acceptance speech, the American novelist William Faulkner said that all great writing is concerned with "...the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself."
I haven't written anything here in almost two weeks because I take this blog seriously, I feel I would be doing myself dis-service to write anything inauthentic and every time I consider the notion of an honest accounting of my own heart's conflicts lately I can't quite face up to the challenge, I can't quite bring myself to take a breath and try and shape something into coherency, I can't stand apart from the thick of the battle and gain perspective. I am, in other words, going a little crazy, and I don't want to scare anybody by putting that on display. As Bob Dylan once sang: "If my mind's thoughts could be seen, they'd probably put me on the guillotine."
Which is not to say I'm having a breakdown or wandering around sobbing and cryptically quoting Bob Dylan and Faulkner to strangers at the supermarket, despite my occasional urges to do so. I'm going to work and laughing and watching Top Chef and playing with my kids and being normal old Tom for all the world to see. I'm keeping it together, and the only one who really knows how crazy I am right now is my poor wife, who is occasionally forced to bear the brunt of an outburst.
My battles are all interior and deep-seated and arising unexpectedly to take me by surprise. This is not the existential panic that is so often the background of my head, the who am I? latenight musings on mortality...it's both smaller and more pervasive than that, somehow. I feel discombobulated and vulnerable, unable to control any situation. I have what is to all appearances a minor staph infection on my leg that is responding well to medication, and I freak the hell out, sure that I'm going to die from antibiotic-resistant superbug, refuse to touch my children so as not to infect them, sleep in an air mattress in the computer room so I don't infect my wife, wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, call my wife five times a day to make sure the kids are okay. I've written about this before so I won't go into it too much again, but basically I'm in a state of intermittent panic and anxiety--what if this happens, what if that happens, assuming the worst, focusing on the direst possible outcomes, my mind racing with potential calamity around every corner. Like a scared little kid.
And as usual I am comforting myself with food. I am also laughing harder than usual, making more jokes, shaking more hands, in inverse proportion to my internal discombobulation, like the Wilco song: "How to fight loneliness...you laugh at every joke, drag your blanket blindly, and fill your heart with smoke" Ok, enough with the quotes.
Writing that down it sounds far worse than it is. I'm having beautiful moments of pure joy and happiness, too. I'm bored, too. I'm taking care of business, too. It's just that I'm also going a little crazy, too, and I'm not sure what to do about it. Stay tuned.
When I was in high school, I contracted an anti-biotic resistant chronic staff infection that lasted for about 1.5 years. My legs constantly had boils caused by the staph and I made regular visits to the hospital to have them drained. The doctor told me one day I would develop immunity, and I did.
ReplyDeleteNo one in my family ever got the staph infection, and at that point in time, there were 6 kids and 2 adults living in a 3 bedroom house with one bathroom. We were in very close quarters and constantly in contact with each other.
While it sucked at the time, I survived just fine, the only lasting effects are scars on my legs from the various surgeries. I know there are rare cases where people have staph worse than I did, but mine was almost as bad as it gets and it really wasn't that bad.
By the way, that post was from Christi Grab. You're software rejected my name, so I had to do it as annonymous.
ReplyDeleteThank you, no longer anonymous Christi Grab, that actually does make me feel much better. I know my panic is all out of proportion to reality, and my leg seems to be healing and responding to medication so far. Sorry you had to go through that as a kid, sounds pretty unpleasant.
ReplyDelete