No, not a suicide note

No, that last post was not a suicide note.

But reading it again I can see why a couple of you could have reached that conclusion. Did you imagine that I drowned in the black torrential rain inside my head? Or was it that you overestimated the extent of my courage? If it was the former, be assured, albeit unconvincingly, that I have splashed it all onto a canvas. It now hangs on the wall above a dining table that is never used, though I suppose I could invite you over to let you spew onto a silver platter your theories in poetics. If it was the latter, then you certainly gave me too much credit. I am still scared-witless chicken shit.

I was also impressed that the imaginative and perhaps slightly dramatic amongst you thought my withdrawal of words from here was akin to my withdrawal from the world. It takes skill to achieve that level of paranoia that even I have not mastered, so I must firstly congratulate you. Then I will say that one of these days I may restore all my words. In the meantime, please stop spamming the Missed Calls log on my mobile phone and I will try harder to place you on my Dialled Numbers List more regularly, okay?

The therapist said medication was not the answer to my getting up a number of times in the middle of the night to check that the stove is off. I don't know whether to be relieved or alarmed. Did she mean that medication was unnecessary, or that I was beyond help? Either way, I did not ask her to elaborate, because she looked as if she was about to divulge to me her secrets, again, and I think I have had enough.

Yes, so it is true that I have been described, helpful as ever, as absorbent. A friend enthusiastically explained, "You are very good at that, a good listener is like a sponge." So, fine, I am a generous soul, but please tell me I should not have to psycho-verbal those whose job it is to listen. Especially if I am the one paying for the time. I really do not think it helpful when she quietly mutters under her breath "Yeah, we both need to work on that." I also find it very disarming when she nods vigorously as if in deep agreement with my detailed description of anxiety attacks, as much as it inflates my self-deprecating narcissistic ego for her to do so.

In any case if I am a sponge then I should make more of an effort to remember to squeeze it all out at the end of the day. Right now I only seem capable of dragging along my sorry waterlogged soul behind me, and letting it bump into and bounce over each and every sleeper in the railway track all the way home.

All I can say is that the twine that held together the pages of my thoughts is hopelessly frayed, weak from overuse, and as burnt-out as I am. It has been falling apart between my fingers, bit by bit. It used to be long enough to wind around the middle of the notebook three times over. Now it does not even reach the opposite end of the page. I had not thought that the jittery words within these pages had stretched on between heaven and earth. In any case, I have to stop dreaming in words and writing backwards, so I will flip the notebook upside down and back to front instead and write from this end, until I am ready and brave enough to meet up with the past, somewhere, halfway.

I suppose this is my long-winded stream-of-consciousness unstructured way of telling you: thank you for your kinds words, and, I am not dead. But I can't yet promise to do much better than that.

Or: I am back, in a word. In a way, in another place. On a whim, and in protest.

This is the way it starts again
This is the way it starts again
This is the way it starts again
Not with a bang but a whimper