August is always a strange month for me.
Exactly a year ago today, I was in Birmingham, Alabama, on my summer vacation. I was there for reasons that feel shameful to write about now, the consequence of mistaken judgments and poor decisions I’m still trying to understand. If I think too much about it, I get upset with myself.
And August 24th is approaching rapidly. My mother’s birthday. The anniversary of her death. My original sobriety date, before I relapsed and threw it away. The day is loaded and approaches like a bomb I can only hope to defuse. I don’t look forward to that date coming, but I look forward to it going. The relapse was not unrelated to that trip to Alabama. August has a way of accumulating meanings for me. My birthday is in September. The calendar tells me that the year changes in January. But August. August is always the month in my head that demarcates one year from the next.
This year I took two consecutive weeks off work and didn’t go anywhere. I can’t remember the last summer I didn’t go back to California. But my grandma died in October, and with her death what had been an obligatory trip became an optional one. And this year I skipped it.
I could have booked a trip somewhere far away and exotic. (“‘Exotic?’ Is that Orientalist?” Said whispers to me.) I considered it. But the timing didn’t feel right. Something in me wanted to stay put. I feel like things are changing or settling or something, and I thought staying in NYC without the obligation of work would be wise.
Then, during the first week of my vacation, I got Covid. It wasn’t particularly bad. A mild cold, two unpleasant days, and then I was basically fine. I feel a little like Macbeth, as if it had been prophesied that I would get Covid and, by writing and constantly talking about it, I’d conspired to bring it about. I had finally given myself two weeks with nowhere I was required to be, and my body immediately found a way to make sure I stayed there. It’s only my second time getting Covid. I’m kind of against the idea of even testing for it. I don’t really understand why people care about what exact mechanism is making them sick. If you’re sick, you’re sick. Drink water, rest, recover. But for whatever reason, I went to the doctor and laughed when my positive Covid test came back. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I thought. Part of me feels as though I somehow brought it upon myself, that I somehow cosmically attracted it.
I also have a long, researched essay sitting unpublished. I spent a lot of time writing it but, on the advice of a friend, decided not to put it out into the world. It might feed a fire that’s best left to burn itself out. There is something strange about spending so much time making a thing and then deciding that the wisest thing to do with it is nothing. Maybe that’s a sign of maturity?
So I’ve mostly laid low.
I feel myself entering a period of withdrawal, though that word isn’t quite right. It isn’t isolation. I’m happy with the people in my life right now, and I love them, and I’ve remained relatively social. But there’s an internal change or recalibration happening. It feels more like a retreat inward, a need to regroup mentally, to become a little quieter so I can hear what is actually going on inside me. I’ve been reading a lot of dense books and also watching reality television. When my eyes strain from reading Shelley, I turn to Bravo. I guess this is better than bed-rotting and watching TikToks. (Kill me now, please.)
I’ve been going to my Lacanian analyst twice a week. I speak a lot in analysis and he says very little. A lot of nodding. A lot of silence. A lot of stopping me at a particular word and asking me what, exactly, I mean by it.
I like it. I feel like I’m uncovering my desires, figuring out what I actually want for the first time in my life. Being intentional with my choices. Being intentional with who I allow access to me. I’ve cut people off and the people that I’m now allowing in are the people that I want to allow in.
I sometimes think of the line attributed to Lenin about the capitalists selling us the rope with which they will be hanged. Analysis feels a little like that. My words are my rope, and I will eventually indict myself with my own subconscious. Sometimes I hear myself say things and I hardly recognize my own voice or can’t believe I just admitted something I wished to keep quiet. But when you’re sitting across from a guy who barely talks and just encourages you to keep free-associating, how do you not hang yourself? I talk for 45 minutes (or whenever bro decides to end the session after some unarticulated breakthrough), and somehow I always leave feeling like I know myself a bit better. It’s clarifying.
In addition to the analyst, I see an addiction psychiatrist. I saw both of them today. It is a lot of work, this trying to become mentally healthy. I’m on vacation from my job, but I wish I could take a vacation from my own thoughts. Since I was a kid, I’ve been described as pensive. I remember my aunt compiling a book of pictures around a pool one summer when I was a kid, and in every single shot I was alone, staring out into the distance as if stuck in my thoughts. All the other kids looked like they were having fun. Why am I like this? Thoughts are like the cartoon quicksand I used to fear as a kid: As soon as you start letting yourself think, there’s no hope at salvation.
The new Phoebe Bridgers album came out today. I’ve already listened to it dozens of times, beginning to end.
When I love a piece of art, listening to it or looking at it or reading it never feels like enough. I want to absorb it. I want it inside me. I want to carry it around until I can no longer distinguish between the thing itself and whatever it awakened in me. I want it stored somewhere I can reach when I need it. It’s the same impulse that had me memorizing Shakespeare as a kid in my free time. If I can absorb the syntactic structure of something beautiful and profound, perhaps that will become an innate part of who I am too. Is that how art works?
This post feels like free association, but it’s August and I’m off work and it’s after 11:00 PM, and who has time for structured thinking under such circumstances?