Correspondence

We are almost 30, Peter. How did that happen? Perhaps this is why our fire cools, our inspiration goes lacking. Or is that merely a poor excuse? I don't know any more. I who used to have so many answers.

I carry a headache with me everywhere I go, lately. I never had headaches before. I cannot sleep at night, and toss between watching tragic television shows on my computer and journalling endless pages of regret and confusion, until I pass out. Morning comes too quickly, I am perpetually a step behind. I cannot wait for January and America, even as it terrifies me, how quickly time passes, and how come January 1, I no longer have an apartment, nor an office. I start all over. It might mean I am free to go anywhere again, do anything. But I don't know where to go, anyways, so it hardly helps me. Am I living in Stockholm, now?

Every day is such a mad roller coaster. The highs convince me I can do anything, take on the world, have come such a long way and will make it through this bit, too. The lows drag me through strange streets I never loved and remind me only of my worthlessness and the futility of my actions. Better then, to give up and move on. Get a job, get a life.

I know it would be good for my mental health to get a job and a stable life. I know that. I have therapy bills to prove it. No matter, Peter, it is not what I want. I know I will push myself into the ground, I will look back on a life lived in such sorrow, but God, is it not better to be sad and free, to be overwhelmed with emotion, rather than complacent and restrained, underwhelmed and numb? Surely, I knew all along this was my life. I spent years after my grad school degree unraveling all the stability I'd created. I wanted none of it. I feared therapy had softened my madness, had taken my inspiration from me. I am not, without these demons, and I missed them. I have no choice but to bring them along.