Renovations

I just got back from Hammer's place... or, I guess I should say "Hammer and the Alaskan's" place. They hosted an awesome little dinner party. Some of Hammer's usual crew were there-- Maximus, Angel, Smiley (a few hours late), etc. And the Alaskan had some cool friends there too. I brought StarGazer with me.

I don't know what I want to write tonight... only that I wanted to say something before going to bed. Did I tell you all that I'm not in love with the Narc anymore? Even so, he is in "ignore" mode right now and it is causing me an underlying sort of nauseous anxiety that is difficult to bear.

I remember May, 2004. In May, 2004 I had just lost a lot of weight, I had just completed my first major research paper as part of the PhD program. I was excited about school. I hadn't met the Narc. I hadn't yet started those last two years of insane binge drinking that spiraled me downwards into my bottom. I hadn't really touched cocaine for four years. I was in a pretty good place in May 2004... unless you look at where I was emotionally.

I feel like so much of what I have been working on lately is just to get me back to that point... not to get ahead... just to get back to the point before I began that last massive bout of self-destruction. I got sober. I am losing weight right now. I am attacking my incompletes with a vengeance. But I looked in the mirror this morning and I felt older... not old, but older. I can't really turn back time. I can't really undo the damage I've done. I can't un-age myself. The skin around my eyes just looks a little different than it did when I was 19. And that bothers me. It's been bothering me all day. Because I need to go back... not to 19, but to 25.

In any case, I managed to have a decent day in spite of my Narc-anxiety and in spite of my fears about the passage of time. I went up to "Book Culture" today (apparently the awful new name for "Labyrinth Books" ) and afterwards walked around the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. That cathedral was my spot when I was in college. I knew it inside and out and would sit there for hours, madly writing in my journals. Tragically, there was a huge fire in 2001 and most of the cathedral is still shut down while they're repairing it.

It was strange to be in that sacred space, lopped off, bisected, cut up, mutilated by huge, solid, gray, temporary, wooden walls. I used to sit in one of the chapels in front of a blazing orange-red sky, painted into motion, with a huge wooden cross hanging on top of the painting. The painting moved but the cross was so solid... so present... so impossibly incongruous with the sky in which it was suspended. I went there today and the painting was gone-- only another mousy gray wooden board in its place. It didn't make me feel sad, per say, but rather, I felt just slightly panicked. I can't go back. I can't go back.

I lived in that church when I lived in the dark places in my mind and I couldn't go back to visit them today. I saw a stained glass Mary, though, with a halo of stars and she was fully restored. I want to be fully restored.

In any case, Hammer and the Alaskan have a beautiful roof deck-- full of flowers. And they have done so much work in fixing up the apartment-- new couches, parallel work-desks, all of the books shelved, cleaned up and rearranged.

New, new, new, huh?

So, why do I feel so old?

love,
h