1992 or thereabouts

In 1991, I moved to a small town in New York state, right on the northern New Jersey border, about an hour's drive west of Manhattan. It was a quirky town, really small, and I loved it. For a while. About a year after I moved there, I slid into one of the three deepest depressions of my life. Every time I thought I was about to snap out of it, I became irritable, and I displayed disproportionate emotional responses to trivial matters, often knowing--but unable to stop--the torrent of bad feelings shooting out of me. It reminded me of the big climax in the first Indiana Jones movie where the Nazis and the French archaeologist all have the white-hot rays of an angry god lancing their bodies and slicing through the people around them. It was harsh.

I couldn't afford therapy and I had no idea what was really going wrong in my head, so I started keeping a journal. Every day, I typed long essays about my life and myself and everything that I believed had gone wrong and would continue to unravel if I couldn't intervene on my own behalf.
In the course of six months, I wrote enough to fill a one-and-half-inch three-ring binder. And then, just as suddenly as I started writing, I stopped. I was half-way through a journal entry when I was overcome with a sense of...self-absorption. It seemed to me that I was so far inside of my head that if I didn't make a break for it right then, I might never get out. I wanted to think about other things, less painful things, far more interesting things. My heart and soul hadn't really healed, but my mood had lifted somewhat and that made it possible for me to stop beating the crap out of myself mentally, at least for a while.

I still have that notebook. It is buried in a box of files and books somewhere in my basement. It would be easy to find were I to look for it, and yet, for all of the emotional bloodletting I did for a year or more, I have never been brave enough to go back and look at what I wrote. I know it's sad. I know it will sound pathetic to me now. I am reasonably sure that my core feelings about myself haven't changed in 16 years, and that may be what I am most afraid to see.

The late Spalding Gray wrote a performance piece called, Monster in a Box. Somewhere in the essay he talks about how, after assembling his thoughts, he put all of his papers and writing into a box and refused to acknowledge or work with it for years. It loomed large and held too many painful reminders of his emotional struggles.

My three-ring binder is like that. I don't remember what I wrote, exactly, but I have a sharp clarity in remembering how I felt at the time. That kind of sadness and despair are internalized someplace so deep inside of me, it will never be eased completely.

When I have times like what I'm experiencing now, I am reminded of that notebook. I know that I am too self-absorbed to see truths beyond my own interpretation. It's not self-indulgent so much as self-centric, a necessary state that gives me insight into what I need to do next. The last time I did this, it kept me alive.

I'm not sure what the purpose of my self-absorption is right now. I might need to stare at myself a little harder and a little longer. Then I'll know. Sometimes, though, I just get sick of listening to myself.