Light In August

I pulled down a copy of William Faulkner's 1932 novel while recently in a bookstore. That copy had been well-loved and was consequently missing its cover, but the title stuck with me, and once I got home I found the novel's first-edition cover on Wikipedia. It's design is simple and rather blocky, with bold lines and muted colors. On it, paper light streamed down from the paper sky.

I missed the transition from July to August. Take a messed up medication schedule and severe overstimulation, kick obsessive ordering into overdrive, add a dash of dehydration, and you get a sour cocktail of an unfocused stretch of time that empties out into the day and night without anything to hold on to. You shut down and 'grow too tired to tolerate sound, much less plan a productive day. I've been beginning projects and immediately leaving them, feeling restlessly that I should do something but too tired to focus on them or think about them. I haven't been keeping my journal or reading because my brain has lost its glasses and can only percieve the world in blurrs.

My mom knocked on my door, came into my room and insisted that she set up a fan: I wanted to scream at her to leave and then crawl into bed and sleep until 3 PM the next day. Having people around stabs into my ears and puts pressure on my skull and chest. I didn't scream. I did go immediately to bed and sleep well past 3 PM the next day, though. I've been writing this article in increments because I just can't focus on it.

I can't believe I ever tried to do five classes a semester while this all was at its worst.

And I can't believe I was angry with myself for not being able to do five classes a semester while this all was at its worst.

Some days I just pour myself coffee, find a book, pick up a comic, watch Scooby-Doo, or play with a guinea pig. Wander around the reservoir or the bookstore. Listen to Lana Del Rey twenty times in a row. I feel like I am making it up to myself for all my harshness. It's my privilege to have a dedicated if distant family that not only puts up with my weird face, but puts up with my weird face locked away writing in my room, and I keenly appreciate that as much as I am able to. My parents have created a stable place for me despite the fact that I haven't gotten straight As since high school. For someone who took to the belief that catastrophic consequences would strike if I proved unworthy of an exemplary grade in all I did, that's a big deal.

The straight As thing is really unhealthy, I think. None of us are going to be perfect at everything we undertake. And as Captain Picard said, it is possible to do everything right and still fail, and have that not be failure but simply life.

It's three days since I began writing this article and things have improved considerably -- I switched from two doses of 100 mg tablets of IC Bupropion HCL to one dose of 300 mg tablets of HCL XL, and now the lights are back on in my room and, well, I'm back to writing this article. I've been writing all day, actually, and since I've been awake on and off since 3 AM that's something I'm going to be proud of. And now I am finishing this article.

Future tense -- present tense -- past tense -- ladies and gentlemen, we have lift-off.

#mentalillness #overstimulation