I can only say it so many ways. I’m losing the battle here in Tucson. I’m losing touch with anything good inside me. And any strength I possess. With no way of recharging.
I’m getting through the days listening to podcasts on brain science and staying mildly sedated. It’s not enough. I’ve reached out. But I’m not high enough on anyone’s priority list. So what I do get doesn’t help.
I don’t think I’m weak. I am a force of nature, both creative and destructive. But being here, alone, has depleted me. Having been verbally assaulted, physically menaced and robbed here has depleted me. My father’s gaslighting has depleted me. Being close to the place where so much trauma and indifference happened has depleted me. And I don’t have any way of recharging.
All my coping mechanisms are gone. And I don’t really feel like I’ve got much more to give to anyone or any thing. Not even enough to talk it out with anyone. This is what being in Tucson does to me. And there is no cavalry coming to my aid. No Mounties. No Green Angels.
I’ve come back from worse in the past, but never in circumstances like this. Usually it takes one foothold to push myself up and out to get to a place where I can be human again. But I can’t even listen to music right now. I feel abandoned in a way that Internet hugs and song lyrics don’t seem to cure.
I promised you I’d be honest with the good and the bad. This is the very bad. Every day it gets a little worse and I don’t see anything that I do makes a difference. Not to anyone out there. And not to me.
If I appear happy, it’s a mask—a coping mechanism that got me through decades when I was barely hanging on inside. It’s a farce. A last ditch attempt to bolster myself because it makes other people less uncomfortable. But it does nothing to change the situation.
All this is is a last ditch prayer that something will change. Because I can’t go back to NYC like this. Another month in Tucson might as well be a year. If I go back weak, I’m handicapped from the onset. Without the drive to continue on, I couldn’t even pack a suitcase or pull myself together to fly home. How am I supposed to fend for myself out there when I have no inner drive to do anything for my own benefit?
And what am I going back to? NYC to me was the place to be bold, be spontaneous, be free. Feel the agency to find my way out of unhappiness. Connecting to art and to human beings. Feeling wanted, desire, admired. Feeling like I added value to the people I encountered and the situations I was in. Feeling a part of something bigger than myself. And in it with others. I could solve problems. Reach goals. Surprise myself. Feel ambitious. Trust myself.
But none of that might be there. Everyone is in need. What I offer is solace to other people and I don’t have it in me to give even that. And as rundown as I am, I might die from the shock, like a pneumonia patient whose system breaks down. It isn’t the sickness that kills. It’s the absence of strength to pull through. It could be years before NYC picks up. I don’t think I have a month left in me to get me through to my flight.
And maybe I deserve this aloneness. I’m not sure. I’m not sure of anything lately. Not even who reads FB or my blog or watched anything I do on Instagram. I don’t feel any human connection with a single other person on this planet. All the tethers have snapped.
Veneranda Jade 