There aren’t many days left of this, are there?  The loss will subside sooner rather than later?  Because I think I’ve been through enough.  I think the molestation, and the rapes, and the abortion, and the years of emotional abuse, and the frequent panic attacks, and the palpitations, and the social ineptitude, and the  last half decade of trying, trying as hard as I can to keep it together and going, to improve myself has been enough.

How much longer can I endure?

Sam and I cleaned the house yesterday in hopes the grief would fleck off like the dust.  Maybe it worked for him; I still feel a fist reaching into my abdomen, up my chest cavity, grasping my bloody heart.  Nothing is stopping the crying these past two weeks.  I think of the day, if this keeps up, when I’ll become as adept at hiding my tears as I am at hiding my twitches.

It started around the same time I stayed home with the flu, two weeks ago.  Maybe it was the rare time to myself to think or one of my delirious fever dreams, but it occurred to me, just as Sam will never again be the person he was around Sang, I will never again be the person I was around Sang.

Even now, I’m crying uncontrollably, nervous I’ll be caught falling apart.  Two months later, the loss, formerly a seeming leech at my back, has begun to resemble an autoimmune disease cannibalizing me.  My palpitations are its gnashing at my heart between meals.

Sam is the only person with the patience to deal with me in this state.  It may be my ravaged self-esteem, but I haven’t felt I can trust anyone else for some time now, and no one’s pushed hard enough for me to feel they really want me to budge.  So, here I am, alone with my cat and Sam, and I’m comfortable, if nothing else.  I don’t think I have the strength to make it another day, but I don’t seem to have a choice.  That seems to be a theme in my life: I have no choice.  No one does, actually.

What’s all my crying worth in the end if I recognize everyone is suffering?  The agreement of existence is to keep enduring the suffering for the chance of reward, right?  It’s a blatantly Judeo-Christian approach to life, but what else do I have to focus on as I go forward?  Why else take this shit if I’m not going to stop hurting so goddam much one day?  Why do others?

Fuck fuck fuck.  I want to scream it, but I won’t.  I can’t.  Mom said that if I scream too loud, I’ll burst the little box inside my throat that holds my voice, and then I won’t be able to speak at all.  I’ll have to make noise with the stuff around me to call her attention, but there won’t always be things around, especially if I fall and can’t get up.  So, there will be times when I’ll need her, but she won’t know and I won’t be able to tell her, because I screamed, so I’ll die.  And then she’ll die from the grief.  So, I don’t scream. If I scream, I’ll cry, and then she’ll give me something to cry about.

There’s never enough to cry about.  The random circumstances that comprise existence demand more tears than the daily flashbacks, and the constant nausea, and the shaky hands, and the medication that never quite works, and the insomnia, and the sexual dysfunctions, and the self-loathing produce.  With every new strike, I become increasingly convinced, Life won’t stop until I’m dead.

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3. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
4. Torture and Time
5. Another Night.

Lately, she makes me feel very weak.  Even Sam has commented it to me in front of her.  “She always acts strange when you’re over.  It’s a thing she has,” Sam lightly tells Clara.

I swallow the flash of anger toward Sam—and toward myself—and I isolate.  I’m frozen, thinking of what Clara will think of me now that she knows she makes me nervous.  Male sex symbols don’t get nervous.  I’m certain she’ll any minute realize I’m still madly in love with her.  Then, in a shoddily-executed plan, she’ll instantly cut off physical and virtual contact, thereby extracting herself from my life, all because she doesn’t want to “keep hurting” me with her continued presence.  At least, that’s what I’ve done to guys.

The Buddhist and the writer in me tell me it’d only be karma, poetry.

This is only one nightmare scenario flashing through my head as I hold my breath waiting for her reaction.

I’m still waiting for her response.  She sometimes surprises me.

Just not tonight.  My heart broke as we all three talked past Sam’s comment.  I noted she didn’t insist on talking about my feelings.

I know it wasn’t her responsibility to insist.  Nor should I have hoped so much from her.  They’re my feelings and my responsibility to defend.

I just hoped.

That hope represents a level of neediness I’m not comfortable feeling.

Actually, I retract that.  Feelings are never wrong; and while we’re wrong when we ignore them, we’re sometimes wrong to express them.  Instead, I’d better say, it’s a level of neediness I shouldn’t ever express, though I can’t go on without addressing it.

It’s why it wouldn’t work out.  It wouldn’t work.

And I don’t want her.  We’re too different.  I’m not like her.

I want to kiss you. “How are you?”

She smiles and says pretty things about her life.

I want to say pretty things, too.

I can’t think of any.

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4. Freewriting: Obsessive Thoughts
5. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares

Birthing blame twisted

sick uprooted
upended over
done and terrified
of conscience

don’t kill me
but I don’t want
to live
you get

me you know
you feel it
too it’s obvious
we’re all

twisted lies hurting us
all eating our foundation
we’re collapsing in sick

and twisted bound in tundras
of existence no life
but microscopic
moss

and water in my mind
pushing revolution out
like Athena
from Zeus I’m

heretic.

I don’t believe in this poem, but I’m forcing myself to post everything I write, liked I used to, from now on.

Officially welcoming myself back to the world,

Luz

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No, nothing to stay for.

I’m not even a good writer.  It’s the one thing I want to be good at doing, and I can’t seem to get it right.  I simply want to die—effortlessly, like life should be.  I don’t deserve this breathing I feel compelled to do.  I can’t endure this anxiety.  I’m exhausted with the meds.  I want to close my eyes, then not wake up.  A forever sleep sounds heavenly.

Instead, this nothingness is a vice, an addiction, a warden.  There’s nothing left outside of me that matters, so I withdraw from the world in every way, at every opportunity I can.  I wonder if there’s a name for the emotional equivalent of the fetal position, and where can I find that information out.

That’s what I wonder only seconds before I realize I use learning as a sedative, the way others use food or sex.  I can’t yet fathom what I’m so afraid will happen if I rejoin the world.

As usual, I don’t know the answer.  Simply, my little voice says, Little Lucy is always afraid; she needs no evident reason to be. After all, I’m crazy and strange.  Can’t I see it in the eyes of coworkers and acquaintances?  I’m a freak.

Or so the paranoia I’ve been fighting these past two decades momentarily led me to conclude.

At once, my focus and retention rate cause me shame.  There’s nothing cohesive enough about my thoughts to create something cohesive to read or to speak.  Among my million other fears, I’m afraid depression is robbing me of my ability to express myself effectively.  I feel dumber and crazier.  I fear I’m slipping.

I think, who will tolerate me then?

And if I write it all down so I can see how insane my thoughts can be, will I be protected from their effects?

I’m being ridiculous.

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4. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
5. Freewriting: Madness

No, nothing to stay for.

I’m not even a good writer.  It’s the one thing I want to be good at doing, and I can’t seem to get it right.  I simply want to die—effortlessly, like life should be.  I don’t deserve this breathing I feel compelled to do.  I can’t endure this anxiety.  I’m exhausted with the meds.  I want to close my eyes, then not wake up.  A forever sleep sounds heavenly.

Instead, this nothingness is a vice, an addiction, a warden.  There’s nothing left outside of me that matters, so I withdraw from the world in every way, at every opportunity I can.  I wonder if there’s a name for the emotional equivalent of the fetal position, and where can I find that information out.

That’s what I wonder only seconds before I realize I use learning as a sedative, the way others use food or sex.  I can’t yet fathom what I’m so afraid will happen if I rejoin the world.

As usual, I don’t know the answer.  Simply, my little voice says, Little Lucy is always afraid; she needs no evident reason to be. After all, I’m crazy and strange.  Can’t I see it in the eyes of coworkers and acquaintances?  I’m a freak.

Or so the paranoia I’ve been fighting these past two decades momentarily led me to conclude.

At once, my focus and retention rate cause me shame.  There’s nothing cohesive enough about my thoughts to create something cohesive to read or to speak.  Among my million other fears, I’m afraid depression is robbing me of my ability to express myself effectively.  I feel dumber and crazier.  I fear I’m slipping.

I think, who will tolerate me then?

And if I write it all down so I can see how insane my thoughts can be, will I be protected from their effects?

I’m being ridiculous.

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2. Freewriting Panic Attack: There’s Never Enough to Cry About
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4. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
5. Freewriting: Madness

That is, in the face of the deaths seemingly piling up around me lately, I’m okay.

In fact, my major stressor has become the fear that my late sense of peace will end.  Because if this ends, then I didn’t learn anything new.  And I’ll struggle to control myself—again.  Then, I’ll know the peace was really shock from Sang’s death.  Then, this is just another turn of the chemical tides.  It’s always—

I’m catastrophizing.  Realistically, it’s more likely the peace I feel is due to the overall peaceful environment I’ve constructed around me.  I have several inspiring relationships in my life.  I have a steady income and health insurance.  I have an able body and a highly capable mind.  True, I recently lost one of my best friends to what boils down to the limitations of science.  Just today I held back tears as I told a Sang story.  Yet, that I was able to exercise that much control surprises me.  My voice only broke a few times, and I had the foresight to lower my gaze to hide the rising tide hazing my vision.  It was a small step but a step forward nonetheless.

Publishing this post tonight is the biggest step of all, actually.  The worst thing a depressive can do is isolate.  So, I’m doing what anybody who’s had effective therapy treatment does: communicating.  Every word hurts, and every sentence feels like a small miracle I alone labored to create.  Even as I write these words, I’m wondering if I’ll have the courage to press the “Publish” button to my right.  If I do, it’ll be a big step out of grief and depression.  If I publish again tomorrow, I’ll have started myself on the long journey back to full mental and physical health.  Writing, my shameless monster, washes me of the guilt and self-disgust that’s too long kept my skin from breathing.  Publishing adds meaning to an otherwise masturbatory skill.

So, in a sense, I give myself meaning by publishing.

I’m sorry.  I’m either extremely focused or disturbingly absent-minded.  This post seems to drift between the two states.  I irresponsibly allowed the Clonazepam to run out in between psychiatric visits.  Though I did have the job of finding a new psychiatrist during that interim, I should have made the matter a higher priority than I did.  I—I’m whipping myself.

Not a new problem.  I know.

I’m trying to scream on paper, but I’m not talented enough to know how to do it.  So too simply put, nothing feels urgent anymore.  Yet, I’m full of all this quiet, distant tension.  Not quite dissociation, I’m compelled to enjoy it.  But I just don’t trust it to be good.  There’s an anxiety whispering from there.  It’s creeping up my throat, and I want to let it out.  If I let it out, maybe I’ll be able to take a deep enough breath.  I can stop this yawning.  I’m always so exhausted, lately.

I just have to press “Publish.”

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5. Freewriting Panic Attack: The Building. Shaken. Up.

I need help, but no one can help me but me—or so they say.  I argue, it’s hard enough for me to just ask for help; why can’t it be easy to receive that help?  You don’t tell a paraplegic he has to crawl before he can get into rehab.  Yet, there on the border of Normality, stands this army of Manifest Destiny indoctrinates puppeted by Bootstrap Bill Americano, high on justice for us.

I’m scared of what people who interact with me daily at work must think of me.  I’m sure they know I’m weird and maybe dumb.

Dumb isn’t the right word.  I’m awkward because I’m always fighting through a fog to say what I’m thinking.  Very often, midway through my first sentence, I’ve forgotten my intended topic.  I’m sick.  There’s something that makes focusing way too difficult to do.  I almost wish it were a tumor.  At least then, there’d be visible proof, something people can understand, wrong with me.  Instead, I’m traumatized and anxious and affective and it involves chemicals that you’ve never before heard of and will not bother remembering.  As the cliché goes, they’re scared of what they don’t understand.  All they know is Sling Blade and I Am Sam, neither of which was absent depictions of dangerous lunacy, nor are they even about the mentally ill, but the mentally handicapped.  Distinctions are not often clearly drawn in the media, so distinctions are sometimes seen as ignorable…

I’m going off on a rant.  The point is, I’m in pain.  I never know where my mind is going to take me.  After I’m done here, I need to meditate.  It’s getting harder to pretend everything is alright.

Fuck, I’m wallowing!  I want to hit something.  I want to cry.  I want, I want, I want.  I’m like a child.  I’m disgusted with myself.  I’ve been childish.  What’s wrong with me?  That isn’t me.  I’m responsible.  I’m punctual.  I’m diligent.  But right now, lately, even before Sang, I’ve been feeling absurd for dedicating myself to anything.  Everything has felt ethereal for months.  Sang’s death was merely the exclamation mark at the end of a long-thought-out statement: nothing lasts!

I feel clubbed by that exclamation mark.  My twitches have returned with violence.  My nausea has reduced my calorie-intake to somewhere around 1,000 calories.  My memory is non-existent, and my social anxiety is strangling.

If this is grief, it feels a lot like a continuous string of panic attacks.

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5. Another Night.

Bodies long with

fear

on them. standing

room

◊

only. I

can’t breathe

in this

home of

grieving.

◊

the darkness in

me choking

me—sobbing

−

Surrounded now by the ultimate vocalization of the language that threatened him all his life, Korean—that gave him his first words, that he could never fully comprehend or use, another reason for him to feel less than he was—I’m screaming tears.  The strange sounds are a burden on me.  He was never so strange to me as he is now.  In his life, I understood all his words.

Now I’m reminded I hadn’t heard them all.  All the singing and chanting is pretty.  I recognize the intonations of an Our Father.  But it all makes me very aware of new dimensions to my loss.  There are parts of him and words of his I never heard—and never will.

Time, logic tells me, is what I’m mourning, not Sang.  My self-deprecatory side informs me I’m self-indulgent for groaning so much, as there’s no reason to cry for the dead; it’s all for myself.  Yet, all of me wants him back.  My every fragment acknowledges it.  I feel I’ve lost a life partner.  As much as I would like to always control my emotionality, this is one situation where logic shatters against reality.

As a little relief, I don’t cry as much since the wake on Thursday night.  I knew Sang was gone when I saw his face, peach with make-up, and a wooden cross in his folded hands.  I finished scribbling notes about the service, then collapsed into my grief for the rest of the night.  When I woke Friday, it was near noon.  I had suffered nightmares, and my head ached the whole day from the prior night’s abandoned crying, but I was finally able to hold back crying—usually, anyway.

Only, my leg has started shaking again.  With my wonderful psychiatrist on permanent medical leave, there isn’t much I can do until her replacement can fit me in.

No, I’m being defenseless.  I could have called other psychiatrists.  I even wrote down the contact info to a few in-network doctors.  I didn’t call because I don’t want to talk about my dead sex drive nor, now, Sang.

Life is tiring me out.  What else is there to say?  What will the doctors tell me but to breathe?  I’m screaming wrenching throbbing inside my head.  I can’t tell the difference between grief and depression.  It’s all painful.  I can feel a fear on me.  I want to tear it out by its roots, but its origins are opaque, like a claw reaching through a wormhole.  What else do you want me to say?

I don’t picture him standing up anymore.  Instead, I remember the caked on make-up covering his skin.  The only place the clay mask didn’t cover was the inside of his ear.  The purple-red spot near the ear canal was the only part of him they didn’t touch.  It was a spot they hadn’t bothered with.

I need to know where that spot is in me.

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5. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares

I can’t help it.  I don’t trust these people that say you’re dead.  I keep imagining you lying face down on your bathroom floor.  What did you look like?  I wish I had a picture of how you lay, the expression on your face.  Were your eyes open or closed?

No, that wouldn’t convince me.  I can too easily imagine you getting up from that floor.  I can see the long vein running from elbow to wrist, the definition of your whole arm revealing itself, as your muscles took on the weight of your body.  You lay on my living room floor so often, I have videos in my head of you standing up—exactly what I want you to do right now.

Stand up, Sang.  I just need you to stand up.  You’re fine.  I know you are.  Sure, you died.  But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to see you anymore, right?  You’re still going to come over on the weekends?  You’re still going to have love and advice for me.  It isn’t a question in my mind.  I can still call you to check up on you.

You simply won’t have much to say back.  Like a book, you’ve said everything you’re going to say.  Sure, there’s an end.  But that doesn’t mean I can’t go back to all the pages you gave me to read.  Right?  … Talk to me, Sang.  You always have something to say, something brilliant and funny and endearing.  Stand up, Sang.

Sang.  Sang lost weight last year.  Sang reconnected with himself last year.  He revealed things to himself and to Charles and to me that he said he hadn’t ever wanted to think about.  He loved a woman last year.  He didn’t want to go out on New Years Eve because the roads were dangerous with drunk drivers—last year.  I don’t know what he experienced this year.  I haven’t seen him.  He’s dead.  It’s what everyone keeps saying.  Sang’s dead.  They keep telling me.  I keep saying it.  I can’t help but say everything I can about him.  It seems others can’t stop themselves either as they offer their words.  I love the words, warm and soothing like a long, hot shower.  Words haven’t made me feel this good in months.

Lend meaning to a meaningless situation.  Death for humans is the same as it is for stars.  Our matter and meaning flows from us into our universe.  Happily, we live in an era where the matter and meaning of Sang’s life can exchange phone numbers and email addresses.  We’re forced to accept our collective being can never be reconstituted, but we can exchange words that allow us to feel whole again.  Lend meaning to a meaningless situation.

∞

The Sang-Yoon Lee Tribute Page

Sang’s own words

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Otherwise, I need to close my eyes, remember there are walls and doors and locks and panes to keep the bad men out.

As I lay petrified, shaking in his arms last night, I heard him say words I can’t believe. “You’re safe.”  I repeated them like a Catholic prayer, under my breath.

I’m safe. I’m safe. I’m safe.

As I keep drafting resolutions here and in my journals, I can’t help asking myself, as I have so many times throughout my short years, what is it about this act, those moments while you’re struggling against them, and after, when you can’t anymore, that has put my safety and self-worth into so much doubt?  What did it take away, and what can I get back?  What can I reclaim?  And what do I need to learn to live with?  What do I still cry after so many years?  Why does it feel like it just happened?  What is this?  Why is that?

And a big question:

HOW DO I MAKE IT ALL STOP?

I know better than to think there’s an old me they destroyed and a new me that’s not as good as the old me.  I know better than to think the rapes were something I did to myself or that there’s something about me that made them do those things to me.  I know better—now.

But what happens after you realize all those things, but you’re still not okay?  Do you just work harder, faster, more efficiently?  Do you try to control more elements of your life to make sure you feel safe, protected, certain at all times?  To make sure no one ever victimizes you again?

Or do you let loose?  Do you accept your lack of control in this life and embrace yourself with understanding and kindness?  But this time, you don’t force it upon yourself.  You keep encouraging reminders all around you in the form of friends, family, and maybe not a few notes-to-self.  It’s what Buddhism suggests I do.  It’s what Sam and everyone I know tells me to do: be kind to yourself.  Be compassionate to yourself, above all others.  It seems so simple, so easy to put into action.

But I can only try.  Like I always do, I try the new thing.  I try the simple yet overwhelming suggestions I just don’t know if I’ll be able to accomplish, but I’ll try if it means stopping this pain and keeping back the hysteria.

Then again, maybe that’s the point of mettā, the loving kindness we show ourselves and others.  Maybe that’s the point everyone’s been trying to make to me, but I haven’t gotten it: stop trying, and just do.  Just live.  Just breathe.  Just love myself with the same kindness and patience I show others.

Right.  Okay.  I can do that.  I can do anything if I just—

And there it is, the problem: how do I go about this?  Is it a day by day thing?  Is it a minute by minute effort, the kind that’s usually more exhausting than effective?  My cultures are really good at extremism like commercialism, drinking, and arguing.  But loving?  Patience for my limitations?  How does one go about that?

Here’s the best question of all: how do you go about that?  Or don’t you?

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