She-Wolf and the rapid decline of my mental health
From the very end of 2021 to the very beginning and all the way to the end of early 2022, a pretty interesting arc could be noticed in my writing, especially in the I AM MY NIGHTMARE MIRROR blog. What kicked it off was this encounter with — what I'd say back then, and still stand by today, is — "the most beautiful woman in the whole wide world". And it wasn't just a "wow, look at that girl" kind of thing, it was more of a "two people finding true love at first glance completely out of nowhere in a nice and hazy afternoon" kind of thing. Being an artist and always looking for inspiration, of course I made a bunch of stuff coming from that, as writings I will talk about here, and drawings I have lost already. But the most important thing is the woman, nicknamed "She-Wolf", and how she came into my life right as I began to trip and roll down the slope of my mental health.
These slippery slopes don't come out of nowhere, of course, and in no realistic and direct way did she, or our encounter, influence in what happened. I was changing meds back then, and constantly lying about what really was happening inside my head, and things got out of hand; like they should, giving me a lesson to learn on lying to those that actually care for me. And it's a good thing I'm able to record these times and later on, like I'm doing now, ponder and even write about it in a meta/director's-commentary-type perspective.
I'll try to keep stuff in a chronologically-accurate format, but it doesn't really matter how you go about it, the idea will be there anyway. Another thing to know is how THE LOST TAPES work. If you've never tried the NIGHTMARE MIRROR blog, or never dipped your toes into the absurd calamity that is THE LOST TAPES, then I recommend you do so, it's quite a trip. Some readers say they like it because it feels like a "biblically-accurate journal", others say they like it because "it's like a text scrapbook that represents you perfectly", and me, I just see it as a way to digitally archive my notes so they can outlive the paper they were written on. The best and the worst of writing all day everyday is how you have to eventually select what's good and what isn't, and THE LOST TAPES make it fun for me, and it became a generally enjoyable experience for my readers too, so I'm all for that.
What started it all
Hazel eyes like grossular garnets to garnish the fraise.
Black jacket over flowery summer dress,
Walking her dog under the warm summer haze.
We exchange glances and get lost in each other’s eyes for a moment or two,
Touch shoulders, go our separate ways.
I’ll eventually forget that face
But her memory will forever be present in the flower of same beauty I picked two blocks away.
***
Not a model for a statue,
A goddess, abstract object,
Metaphysical world, a muse.
god could not create beauty so concrete,
Atoms could not form something so perfect,
A once in a lifetime sight,
Reality eclipse, breaks the plan,
Cuts the mantle in disruption.
The simple touch of our shoulders,
Smell of an overwhelming desire inside my nose,
Sitting at the empty bus stop trying to breath again
But my body can’t afford to work outside that brief moment, now passed, of pure and genuine love at first glance.
These two are part of THE LOST TAPES Vol.9, written when I was still processing that first experience. As always, writing helps me understand the world and how it affects me; gives a path for my thoughts to follow, and "straightens" my psyche. My head is a constant overflow of memories and emotions, and the easiest method to find reason and organize all of that is by having pencil and paper with me at all times. The idea of "She-Wolf" wasn't fully formed by that time, but I knew there was something too much there, in the aspect of that "most beautiful woman in the world", in the icy-blue of her eyes, connecting to mine, and in how she looked like the human-version of the dog she was walking, and how that dog was also big and beautiful like a snow wolf.
When we touched shoulders, lost in each other's eyes; when we kept walking, knowingly treasuring a terrific secret; I knew something big was going to happen. Of course, later on, that once overwhelming feeling got put aside and gave space to whatever else captured my attention, and that's why these first thoughts ended up in something so general as a LOST TAPES.
She-Wolf
Passing through that special corner where I first saw her
— When I first saw her, when her blue eyes, now light gray in my memory
Directly gazed into mine, and we both felt, I’m sure
That metaphysical heat of when two different paths cross
Where love at first glance takes place and
A new root sinks into both hearts
Of the two newfound lovers
And when our shoulders touched
As the clash of two mountains in which we hiked alone
To produce an earthquake that instead of bringing us down
Took us up to the top, I saw, clearly
The most beautiful view in which she was the most important element —
An overwhelming feeling of nostalgia made me dizzy
[...]
"She-Wolf", as you can read in full through the link, comes a little (whole month) after She-Wolf's first appearance, and serves as the report of my first hallucination in years. In a nice poetic way, sure, but also as terrible sign of a situation much worse to come, to which I should've paid more attention at the time. Panic disorder is something I had learned to live with back in around 2014, with frequent panic attacks that would come out of nowhere and mess me up for days, that was slowly reduced by medication, and later on vanished completely to the point the pills weren't needed anymore. Its ressurgence, in this January of 2022, came as complete surprise when I was changing depression meds and had that crazy experience with the giant wolf and everything. The pills weren't working, and they were numbing the effects of the others I took. Despite noticing the differences in my everyday mood and routine, I never said anything to anyone, worried that they were going to change my medication again and I would have to go through that whole miserable process once more.
If you're a person that uses this kind of medication, you know what I'm talking about. It's awful.
So I kept going, "suffering by the ounce", and what came from that is well-reflected on the content from MY NIGHTMARE MIRROR at the time.
Untitled 04: a performative traumatic experience
"I remember that afternoon. That strange afternoon when you told me to shut up, to not be a bitch, and I was too overwhelmed by my own feelings to see that you were crying too. To be fair, you were doing the dishes, I could only see your back every time I opened my eyes, through the blurry haze of painful tears. [...]Double-pain, mourn on the necrotic-narcotic, you knew my friend had died just last night. I know you know that ‘cause he was your friend too. [...] You know how to cheer me up, how to make me smile through my pain, and I feel like I lost the ability to do the same for you once I first fell into the well. Once I let myself fall into the well. You know that also, don’t you? That I fell into the well. Now you know me better than myself. Whatever happened to the egotistic whore who set that White X6 on fire? How come you matured —, you’re doing your chores, — and I regressed to this teenage-ish state I had never lived before — sat at the table, weeping. Tell me, — I know you can hear my thoughts, — why did I let myself lay my head on your lap? Tell me, why did I let myself keep warm under your wings?
[...]I was afraid without you. I was worse than a calf, my teeth wouldn’t stop chattering, my body wouldn’t stop shivering. I was having a panic attack and you weren’t there like you said you would in that morning when. I remember it was morning, yes, a morning just like this one, only difference being you were there for me, then, when you said you would always be there for me. I pissed myself, covered in my own saliva, and you weren’t there for me, like you said you would always in that morning when. When you said you would be always. I’m not the only swindler, you know, you were my brightest pupil; beautiful teacher’s pet. You’re as bad as I and you know it very well, unlike when you said you knew me when you didn’t. You know your guilt, you know your flaws, you know you’re always pretending.
I am afraid to die today I am afraid of death today please don’t die.
On the writing of Untitled 04 I seeked to relive one of the worst experiences I'd ever been through. The fear for my life, the submissive idea of belittlement before the weakness the traumatizing experience of losing a dear friend brings; how different people deal differently with the mourning of someone close, and when mental issues come into the equation, making things so many times worse.
That piece deserves a whole post solely about it, but know one day I'll have a two-person performance piece using the text.
It was also written in a night I had ran off, running from I don't know what with a backpack full of grains and books. I recovered control over myself in a park, and there spent the whole night reliving those memories and describing them to the best of my ability. Maybe one or two nights after "She-Wolf" happened.
And then I disappeared. Later on came back.
"[...]I did not want to watch movies, I did not want do anything else but work, but feel like I could be of importance and aid my colleagues, but it wasn’t the time for that. Prospect of pity for the near future, I finally understood and accepted the position I was in, of wallowing in misery and letting go of my time; of letting myself be cared for, of tasting the senility I’ve always feared to see on me — having seen it on so many I cared for. My time had come early and I couldn’t do anything about it."
"home at last" was the first post after this hiatus I took from the NIGHTMARE MIRROR blog. It served as a way to explain my absence, but also to save, in written form, memories I would be soon to forget because of the medication. Memories that I couldn't help but hold dear, despite the misery, despite the miserable solace, as to paint a picture of a — I could feel it even then — soon to be recurring scenario. There's a post over here, that explains very well the feeling at the time: face so beat.
I was giving myself up to depression, caged in a slow-moving prison of time, and days would pass like years in crescendum towards terrible panic attacks. I wouldn't eat, I wouldn't sleep, I could barely move around the room. My friend found me amidst one of the attacks, and I was taken to the hospital. What happened there I can't tell, groggy the whole time, but she was always by my side and wrote a lot while there, most of it my dizzy ramblings.
When I knew She-Wolf was divinity
"When I opened my eyes she was the first element my consciousness wrapped around. I saw myself in her eyes, in her tired and preoccupied countenance, and this way realized what had happened. But none of that mattered because I had a dream.
'Get pencil and paper now', I struggled to exclaim, having just woken up, and noticed she was already writing.
'Yes?' She asked, putting herself ready, and I started to tell the story.
'I had a dream, and now I feel like wolf-woman was much more than a mere occasion, an accident. I need the flower I imbued with her memory, for now it is worth more than memory. It is an epitaph. She died. She died last night.'"
[...]
THE LOST TAPES Vol.26 has only the best of the stories I supposedly told when I was at the hospital. There were pages and pages of nonsensical narrative, probably of me having dreams when waking up and dozing off repeatedly, but I don't remember any of it. As far as I know she could just be lying to me but, coming from how I know my dreams go, those experiences were probably true, at one point, inside my head.
The one from the excerpt, though, comes as very special for the presence of She-Wolf and the deconstruction of her character into an absolute divine being, of purity and animalistic innocence. It is a good example of what happens when I speak instead of write, when I can't make my thoughts physically true and they turn abstract in constant expansion, ethereal even, people turn divine. When I was home and she showed it to me, first thing I did was hide the flower. Not for me, not from god, but for the duty I couldn't run from.
Therapy session with asshole
— No problem, let's move on. Can you tell me, please, when was the last time you cried?
— Last night, probably. Maybe the day before that, when I was at the hospital.
— Can you tell the meaning of those tears?
— That's hard to say, really. When I cry, the reason for it varies a lot. Sometimes someone dies, sometimes I hurt myself, sometimes it just happens with no rhyme or reason... I don't think my tears carry much meaning. They're not consistent.
— Consistent?
— Consistent. Consistent in turning physical the feelings behind them. I can feel dread and not cry, I can live in sorrow and not cry, I can mutilate an arm and not shed a single tear, and after all that, cry a river when reading a love scene on a cheap novel. It's hard for me to cry for myself, I usually cry for others.
— And why do you think is that?
— I can't care for me. I don't believe I deserve any kind of feelings from anyone, even less from my own self. I hate when they feel bad, when I make them feel bad. I don't deserve any pity, you know? I'm less than most. Not littler, though. Less. You know what I'm talking about.
[...]
The writing approach is something I've done with every therapist I've ever met. Since it's easier for me to talk about real feelings in writing rather than speaking form, they always let me transcribe the whole thing. Friend connected me with a friend of hers, doctor, wanting to try new, experimental approaches. We did some work together before the start of the decline, and now after, I decided to publish the act, make it a special LOST TAPES.
Metaphor is a good way to go about talking feelings with a professional. To say:
"I saw a feather lying on the ground
Did not pick it up
Today I regret not picking it up"
Feels much better than saying "I regret not going after the greatest opportunity to ever present itself to me, and just let it ran through my fingers and lost it forever". And I'm thankful for how he handled my situation, and regret being such an asshole to him. He died this last year and I feel like we could've made much progress had he not given up on me and then on life as a whole. R.I.P.
Things were ok, but then I shaved my head
Looking at my reflection in the elevator mirror
Bald like a punished whore
I begin to question my sanity
The few hours I’ve been left alone
Were enough to take me to hell and back
Done myself like god to lucifer
And now, on my way to fresh air
There’s nothing on my mind
I feel like absolute nothing
[...]
Ok, maybe things weren't so "ok", but I was fine enough. The new medication didn't take such a toll on me this time, and the panic attacks had stopped for a while. My friend's constant company also helped things go swell, but then she left for a half-an-hour to get groceries and "it" came back. I couldn't run away from my hair so I cut it. I took the scissors and cut my hair. My beautiful, beautiful hair. It was so long it reached my hips, I loved my hair so much. It will take years for it to grow back to that state, and everytime I take a hand up to my scalp and feel the short curly mess it still is right now I just want to barf, my guts turn upside down and I feel disgusting for doing what I had done. But it was good. I never felt pleasure stronger than in that moment, when I got rid of my newfound worst enemy. It was freedom before absolute regret, like jumping off a cliff and hitting the rocks on the side before reaching the ground and actually dying.
After that, things were actually ok, though. The meds worked beautifully and I didn't need constant attention to keep myself on track, so much so that I was allowed to stop the medication again on the last-half of the year, and now here I am, "very ok", writing about those awful experiences like it was a past life. Here's Untitled 06, where the excerpt came from.
I found out these days that writing about NIGHTMARE MIRROR and its ridiculously huge amount of content (120 posts), as the person behind it, can be a pretty cool thing to do on this blog. A couple ideas are already in the barrel and will be coming out soon. And if you're asking where the pictures are at, with the daily updates (not sunday) and all, there's some pretty large albums to come out in this coming week, so stay tuned!