Blankness Unto Death

Posted on May 16, 2003 in Book of Days Depression Hope and Joy Silicon Valley

Note: This is twenty-eighth 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: Ten years ago….

Frenzied and crumbled. Those words describe the state of mind I found myself in ten years ago. A exhausted blankness unto death, worse, it seemed, than anything Kierkegaard had ever imagined.

One morning I woke up and I said to Lynn, “I’m sick.” It was a healthy thing for me to say.

Too much was happening: the lectures and the politicking over former Yugoslavia. I arrived at one date in Berkeley, at the Friends Church, and looked out over the half-empty room. I felt my mind was sitting in all those half-empty chairs.

So I stopped making speaking dates, stopped politicking. I talked to a psychiatrist, got on Prozac, attended group therapy, bought a kitten (Ambrose), and cut my mind free. I lived like algae in a creek, clinging to my sanity and letting myself be gently combed by the whorling waters.

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Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: You are in a hotel lobby.