Vertigo

Go inside
Going somewhere
Hopeless tag time
And no one's for me
Open wide
You're like new year

Stay and fight

You'll just get used to it, the doctor says. Your brain will adapt.

He doesn't say what it is if it doesn't. What if I am doomed to become one of those people with a small suffering? You read about them, people who have tinnitus for twenty years, people with an unscratchable itch, people whose life is blighted in a way that is almost unnoticeable, yet comes to define them.

People who are marooned a million miles from home, with no way to ever return.

Before I went to England, my life was almost hopeless. Now it is hopeless. I knew it would be a mistake to have gone; I didn't know how big.

I saw myself in the mirror this morning. I am old. I look friendly, but I am worn. Why would anyone want someone who is so run down?

***

Something has been bothering me. I've spent a lot of time trolling people on the interwebnet. Some have become quite angry, and I'm sure that given the chance, they'd indulge in a fistfight (which they'd lose, I have to say: I'm a big guy and I tolerate pain a lot better than most).

But to wish someone dead? How can a person be that hurt by words on a screen?

Well, I understand anger out of proportion to the hurt done. Mrs Zen is ruled by anger. Me, I'm not angry at all. I'm mostly unmoved. It's not admirable--it's entirely a product of self-absorption and the belief that what ails me is entirely my fault.

But I pity deeply a person who loves me so much they want me dead because I don't love them back. And if he doesn't love me, why does he so much want to change me? When you hate someone, you want them to stay the same, and besides that, to remain two-dimensional. Once you start to understand a person, you can no longer feel hate for them.

***

M said a nice thing when we were at the British meetup last weekend. Or I take it that way, at least.

He said he would live in the UK if I had a commune that he could be part of. Of course that sounded weird. But two weeks ago, it wouldn't have, because back home, I quickly felt my old self. I felt I was again someone you might want to know.

I will not have a commune in the UK. I would have no problem going home, but I have no work there, and the recession makes it impossible to gamble, so I am nailed to Australia.

You'll just get used to it, the doctor says.

Or die. Whatever.

posted by Dr Zen @ 11:25 am