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You see, there were two definitive kinds of crazy I have discovered within myself. There is the kind that you are born with. It is constantly triggered by environment, by emotion, by stress and love and finances. Fear. Hunger. Excitement. Then there is this strange version of insanity that society feeds you, by the mouth. A crazy that gives you ulcers in your sleep when no one is touching you, or seeing you, or making demands. A madness triggered by a pill or two or three that helps you wake up and walk out of the door. A crazy that helps pay the bills and walk the dog and remember to grocery shop more than once every eight weeks.
On one hand I have this beautiful insanity that lacks self control or the ability to grasp reality— interacting with these beautiful concepts and philosophies, toying with physics and spirituality, the way the light bends through glass and the colors of my skin beneath various shades of light. There I am, sleepless and starving, but having clearly mistaken music, literature, the sciences, and Truth for nourishment. Dysfunctional and a disappointment, but the only Self I have ever learned to indulge in and accept.
On the other hand— the one firmly grasping these large, dry pills— lingers this strange overwhelming subconscious anxiety that I am numbed out and robotic; poetry reads dry, I do not hunger for sex or books or knowledge; I shower, I eat, I sleep, I work, I talk, I understand— but there is this anguish that tells me I’m missing the ghosts I should be seeing, and that my eyes aren’t catching the light in the way that they must. I feel the waves of everything I once was, the lingering phantom I should be— seeing what I see in between blinks, in between breaths and words and songs.
With the pills, I showered— went in, washed my hair with shampoo, rinsed. Washed my hair with conditioner, rinsed. Brushed. Shaved. got out. toweled dry. went to bed.
Without the pills, I showered— went in. Pressed my forehead against the wall and said “God, something is missing. Where is it? What am I looking for? Where have I been? What have I done to myself? Why am I doing this to myself— those fucking pills, God.”
That was a shower.
That is a gentle graze upon the most mediocre of my internal conflictions.
I am awake and I feel like I’m catching on fire.
