Sunday. Again. Bells peel. And I am slightly a’kilter. The Vyvanse or HBP or weaning of Effexor still has my head … acting like a faulty gyroscope. This was a reference made by my daughter’s girlfriend as we watched the roller derby bout and conspiratorially talked ADHD meds and general head fuckedupedness.
And on the drive in to derby I stopped for gas, and alcohol is now sold everywhere. And I notice each and every LCBO (liquor store) sign as if it were a red car speeding. But I do not jones, I do not have that urge that claws at your stomach wanting to be fed. It just a wee intrusive thought that I see and bat away like a horsefly that wishes to bite but I will not allow.
No. It isn’t meds or urges, I don’t think. It is the itch.
Where does the itch come from? I suspect loneliness teased by boredom into actions it would not normally take.
Who am I when the itch arrives? Depravity? Or depravity the lesser? Depravity the encumbered bound by shackles of shame? Or just the very lonely firefly pretending to engage?
When the itch arrives, it arrives. It probably sneaks in and settles before a polite cough announces its presence. And it won’t be satisfied with one scratch, no. Well, yes, it might, but the scratch has to be real, not the normal mamby pamby methodology I seem to employ. It needs more boldness, and through the boldness the appropriate volume of shame.
Why ? Well, isn’t that an interesting question. Imagine a tug of war. On one side are proper people, with proper desires and proper skills and achievements and proper success that fits in where all the proper be congregate. And on the other side? The other side is oppositional defiant disorder, it is freaks and weirdos, lust, and deviance, and comfort, and danger and personality and righteous indignation. Why? Why when the red ribbon is pulled closer to the other side. And only shame will bring the ribbon back to the state of equilibrium that is the static fight.
How? Well they took away my alcohol. Sorry, we, I, put that option away. Chocolate is barely a breeze to the itch. Porn is functional and dysfunctional. Curiously reinforcing longstanding issues of self-worth and esteem and generating shame commensurate with the forbidden. The itch always brings with it a note, a sliver of paper that may have fallen from a crescent clam cookie. The note is always printed with that particular colour of blue, containing wistfulness, embarrassment, discomfiture that makes you feel you have found a perfect fit but it is in the lowest of thrift shops on the seediest corner where the good do not go. Wait. Does that make sense? A real solution to the itch would be the bold action. Paying for comfort and joy, a hug and touch. But it isn’t about sex. God no. Enough shame associated with that word. It is the wrongness. It could just as well be the trying of heroin or meth. Those scratches would fulfill the itch. And shower the shame upon us like a God who forgot to mention the appropriate time for building of a boat.
I don’t know.
The itch. Sleep sometimes helps, but I have discouraged myself from napping, citing a year of being comfortable curled beneath a cover. How do the propers kill the freaks? That is a worthy question. An outcome that many would support.
I read a poem once. A poem read me, scalded and scarred and branded me as theirs.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
And all that promised time was stirred away.
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And finally has it all come to pass? Have I lived the unlived life of a prognosticating poem ?
I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
And have I now become a stable boy mucking out the stalls and piling shit out upon the internet?
Interesting read. For whatever it's worth, I have found that if I leave an itch alone, long enough without scratching it, he gets better on its own. Not the fastest way, definitely not the easiest, but it does seem to work most of the time.