#Scurf147: Un petit chaos
I write about a July week of restlessness, anxiety and sickness that ruined my life
There has been a wilding sort of increase in my writing. Four posts in a span of less than a week. That’s got to count for something. But it has a kind of regression behind it.
The drudgery of a Monday morning never hits more than after a weekend, at once dreaded and monotonous. As I tried to get out of bed on this particular Monday, a cascading batch of realizations took over me.
i had not read a word of the new book at my bedside table in the last week
there were far too many work things that were spiraling out of control
i was behind on two deadlines by a week and 1.5 years, respectively (kind editors, I Love You!)
i had not slept for just a little over a week - resulting in a zombie-like state in which i also attended and office retreat, watched a movie, and met with friends
I don’t remember the reason behind numerous other knots in my chest, but the last worry was the goliath of the lot. Last night a friend had stayed over, so as soon as I woke up I rushed to the kitchen to make coffee for us. There was a sense of urgency and anxiety with which I performed this little chore. It shouldn’t have to be this way. There was no need. But my anxiety was spiraling. And it was only 9 in the morning. I made a mental note to get back to my workout and meditation practice sooner than later before I am entirely consumed by this regression.
As my friend settled on their choice of room and desk, I whipped the lather into the Nescafe and added some brown sugar. Maybe coffee shouldn’t be had on an anxious mind, or maybe just coffee is the solution. My head rang in my ears as I moved from the kitchen to the balcony with my cup in hand. Soon, a wave of unnecessary trepidation took over as I remembered the biscuits. I hadn’t given them the biscuits. Why would such a small, seemingly inconsequential thing, niggle my anxiety so much?
I scolded myself internally. I worried a little more.
After the biscuits, I proceeded to pull my work laptop to start the day working from home. It was a weekday after a weekend of debauchery on an office retreat in a neighboring hilly little country. I had maybe had poor liquor there, perhaps the food was not that great, or maybe it was just my post-antibiotic low immunity, foul tongue-d, fever addled body that was acting up.
By this morning, sleep had evaded me for more than 10 days. I just slept two nights since last Friday after having my SOS anxiety pills. On all the other nights, as I’d curl into myself in one corner of my giant double bed, the sound of my own heartbeats would haunt me. It was too pointed, noisy, and cacophonous in a way that peak traffic can be. I wasn’t able to place a finger on why exactly this was happening. I still don’t know if I will get any sleep tonight.
But it is close to 6pm now, and I feel a wave of sleep wash over my senses. I know right now is not the right time, so I’ll keep myself engaged in other trivial pursuits. Like folding laundry, turning on and then off the water motor, reading emails to make lists of things to do, and so on.
What kind of a chaos the night will bring, no one knows!
I worry too much, I overthink to the hilt, my brain is always ripe with worst cases for any and everything. This morning at around daybreak when my body finally too exhausted with sleeplessness, receded into some semblance of sleep or tiredness before sleep, a thought occurred to me — what about that particular transaction I had tried to make over the counter yesterday? Did it go through once or twice? This non-worry took over my about-to-doze off mind and I underwent what felt like mild sleep apnea in a state of complete wakefulness.
But this kind of jumpy, nervy, primal energy also results in a kind of overactivity and attentivity to detail that leads me to write (more of these newsletters in a bid to get out of my head), read (if only just online) more, and maybe watch TV with a lot more attention than I otherwise would.
A kind of attempt to come out of my own way and feel something, really just feel something positive. And whenever I read something or write anything or watch a particular kind of movie (mostly on Mubi) it feels as if language extends itself before me. Like a little dimly lit corner of the heart is ignited, however briefly. The same happens while hanging out with friends. Not all of them, but some. A couple, actually. They can calm my nerves like really nothing else.
Saturday morning at the office retreat as I struggled to sit straight at an informal session, my body pined for a hug. Tears welled up in my eyes, as I looked around in this new office, searching with desperate eyes for a familiar face with kind eyes for someone who could just really hug me. In that moment, when a colleague just came and sat next to me, I felt the tension dissolve into ether. It was real - the resolution of those knots in my chest within a few minutes of his sitting next to me. We didn’t even need to say a word to each other. His presence alone was witness enough to my being. I was not alone. I was not crashing. This was all real. And above all else: I WAS FINE.
I’ve never felt anything this visceral, a need for connection this dire, a need for solace this octane. As I moseyed about the rest of the morning with this colleague, making jokes at him, listening to him about his friend’s suicide, really just connecting with him — all the anxiety around me ceased to exist.
This is the part of falling sick and being by myself that so often takes its toll on me. I don’t usually like thinking about it, but a good friend suggested writing about it to get it out of myself and into the world. There have to be ways of teaching people to care for themselves that are not so exhaustive. That are more caring, gentler and kinder to the self rather than to the rest of the world. I surmise what I need to learn is not how to care for myself better, but rather how to let myself be.
There’s a difference, and slowly I am reaching to understand it better.
Some recent reading I did and enjoyed thoroughly:
Doing The Work is an essay about persevering at the writing even at the end of a long day, long week, long life. Curran navigates the arduous journey from nonwriting to the writing side using the crutches of building a shed and finding time and solace there. The Stinging Fly is one of my favorite literary magazines that routinely puts out works by some excellent Irish and other writers into the world.
Friendship by Devon Geyelin is one of those essays about the Chinese wall that exists in some friendships, stopping them just barely from turning into a romance.
On liberal economics misleading the bunch of us Nesrine Malik is astute! But the bits where she writes about her parents’ generation, their gilded cages, and compares them with ours, that’s the stuff of novels.
This rather deep dive on the power of translated fiction in the new generation of readers in The Guardian was a refreshing read on reading trends in current times.