xtcian

8/31/02 I think I'll dispense

8/31/02

I think I'll dispense with today's events (I sat in traffic most of the day, Jiffer and I went to the farm, and then played CatchPhrase! with Lindsay in Millerton) and go straight to...

The Celextant, August 30, 2002

For those of you just getting here, The Celextant is my little way of making myself write about the Celexa I take daily which is obviously a self-involved navel-gazing subject if there ever was one, but since this is my blog, I get to do whatever I want. Like Woody Allen said, "what's wrong with masturbation? it's sex with someone I love!"

Anyway, I'm still on 30mg a day, and lately I've found myself slipping back into the "lost afternoons" of anxiety where a particular topic (usually the same old shit) can catch me in a chokehold and refuse to relent. I'm back to functioning semi-normally at Asset, but a jaunt into the heart of Times Square last night left me looking around, wondering how long it will all last.

I could go a dose higher, up to 40mg of the Celexa a day (which is normal) but I just got over the fatigue and sexual silliness that the smaller dose brought on. Besides, I think I may have a problem that drugs just simply aren't going to fix. I need to find inner serenity in a way that is self-propelling, a genuine warmth of heart and mind that comes from the release of control. But 35 years of private obsessive-compulsion has left me pretty wrecked: I was even obsessive about hiding my obsessiveness. Sometimes I look at pictures of us at Carolina, and wish I could find that mindset again. I wasn't particularly happy towards the end, but I thought my biggest problems were trying to have sex with some chick on Pritchard Street.

In the end, you find comfort in the strangest of places. I was looking at pictures of the human brain tonight, and something about the stark, wet, physical reality of our thoughts, fears and desires gave my troubles a nice perspective. I mean, look at the bulges, blood vessels and folded lobes of matter. It seems pretty easy to insert happiness into that glob, just as easy as anxiety, right?