I stank

Posted on April 24, 2003 in Book of Days Depression

Note: This is ninth in a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: Write about a year ago….

A year ago, I stank. I stank because I wore my pants for weeks without washing them. I lived in the sickness that was life without effective medication. Prozac had stopped working for me. No more magic in the lemon and lime capsules. Perpetually bad moods. I had no desire to come out of the house to meet other human beings. I didn’t meet other human beings unless I ran into Tim while he was in his garage fixing a mountain bike, sanding snow boards for the next season, or drinking up his personal cellar of light lagers.

A year ago I sneezed as the bloom spread its semen in the air.

A year ago, I concluded after taking a class on research that the time had come to stop writing nonfiction. My imagination wanted to ring and the burdens of that other genre kept drowning out the rhythm of the dance that I wanted to dance with the clanks of reservations that were the size of ships’ chains.

A year ago I was too tired to be angry and spending too much time haranguing the Stone Mountain bas relief minds who dropped into the Dalnet #politics channels. One of my friends called herself “a terrible beauty” in jest and I wondered seriously if I’d made too long a sacrifice.

Two months from that then which is a now in this article, I wrote my first blog.

I reentered the world after having been in it in a totally different way. Where I’d been ice, I became flowing water or steam. Except, I must tell the truth: I have absolutely no idea in which hole I should stick which metaphor. Was I ice or steam a year ago? Did my free river harden or evaporate — psssst — into the sky? I’m still here, still me, still alive, and I feel so much better than I did a year ago. I don’t stink. People can come near me.

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Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: You hear music in the background.