On Illness

Assumption: I am ill.

Jacqueline Winter Thomas: "Many live their entire lives without this shadow."

Psychoanalysis made me question my condition as mentally-ill. I learned how to find concrete causes for my emotional distress. I learned to recognize patterns in my behavior: I am self-destructive and, thus, I push others away.

I did not have a happy childhood. I was not a cheerful kid. My first memory is the taste of sadness.

Freud, when he quit smoking: "I feel better, not happier".

It took me a while to learn that significant others are not meant to mend the gaps within my narrative.

Perhaps life is about learning how to narrate oneself. It is unlikely.

Modernism, broadly put, wanted truth and beauty—capitalized: Truth, Beauty—through struggle. These are not to be found naked in nature—capitalized. They are to be attained through the systematic cleansing of the spirit—capitalized and so on. χαλεπὰ τὰ καλά.

To be a modern self means to be a thing that is somehow aware of its condition; its thingness. It means being this dust in the shape of flesh and bones and history. Dust attempting to describe itself, attempting to convey meaning and sense.

Postmodernism sees truth and beauty—uncapitalized—in everything. Everything is beautiful and everything holds truth within itself. Truth and beauty, therefore, are not at the core of things nor beyond appearances: they are stuff.

A postmodern self wishes not to be a thing; needs not self-consciousness; needs not itself. A postmodern self demands to be narrated, not described; a tale, rather than a modernist dissection.

What am I? Where/when did I go wrong?

I trust some of my dreams. This borders on neurotic behavior.

T. S. Elliot: "And in short, I was afraid".

Fear was the bridge from my childhood to the outside world. I felt safe inside. I do not remember how security feels like.

My eyes are violently silent; yet they speak.

I used to write poems. Now I am terrified of words, imprecision, vagueness.

Poetry, (Gr. ποίησις, creation): to make something; an attempt to create. Invocation.

I do not know if I am ill. I do not know how to think of myself as no-longer-ill.

I have failed. I want to go home.