Thursday, December 3, 2009

The Infinite Abyss


Liz life update.
Everything is nothing. I have all the time in the world and nothing to do in it. I have turned doing nothing into a full time job. I can literally force myself back to sleep for two or three more hours just so I have less time during the day to be faced with my own reality. I have walked out to my studio numerous times and just stared at it. Stared at the paints and the ink, the pencils and paper, the paintings half finished and the projects half started. I want so much to create. To be able to use this time to my advantage. But my heart tugs me deeper and deeper and I can't do it. I cant pick up the brush, I cant. Or I won't. More likely won't. I started meditating again and can work at that day by day. hour by hour. While sitting there I find images floating into my mind that I linger on although I know I shouldn't. Mostly places I slept while I was traveling alone. There is the one room in Dharmsala. My perfect space. The place I close my eyes and go to when I want to remember being most happy. I remember shitholes near bus stations with monstrously large bathrooms and bags of noodles. Creepy lofts in North Thailand where lots of reading was done. Hostels in Athens with their loud streets and bad internet.
Where I am now, these all feel like make believe.
But in my reality. In my head. In that meditation time, I sit with myself and know they were real. I know I was there, me and my head. Me and my meditating. I remember every place I ever sat for an hour in silence. But I can't remember what my dreams are.
I can't remember what I am passionate about, what I want to do with my life. What I want my life to be. So I drown myself in television and sleep until the long day is finally over and I can sleep again.
I believe they call this depression. It feels like depression. I feel like that little circle who bops around too sad all the time. Or the robot from Hitchiker's Guide to the Universe. My mom gave me a psychologist to talk to. I might have to do it. I'm out of ideas and I'm losing days faster and faster.
I fell hard in Roller Derby the other day, knocking the wind out of me and seriously smashing up my shoulder. I do a great job of kicking my own ass.
I found out today that another friend died.
And its spooky and surreal and of course what the fuck.
Jared, Jen's first and I'm pretty sure only love. The first boyfriend that mattered. Jared was in a head on collision in October, one month after Jen died and was in a coma for three weeks before passing away. Jared was in his twenties.
I sat there on the phone when i found out just fuckin shell shocked. First of all that another young, kind, loving person has died far too early. And two that it's Jared, so soon after Jen.
I talked about Jared with Jen when I saw her last in India. Their love was a fated one. They met and connected like magnets only a few months before she was supposed to leave on her Bonderman fellowship. I remember thinking then how fucked up it was that an awesome girl like Jen and an awesome guy like Jared had to meet then. And that they only had a short time to be together before she left. Turns out they each just had a short time to live and be awesome before the fates wiped them out.
But I'm a firm believer in loving what you have when you have it. None of this, 'I don't want to miss you or I don't want to get hurt when you leave' bullshit. They took what they could get. They spent their time together and they loved each other for as long as they could. And Jared even visited Jen in Honduras in the first year of her travels. But as it was things couldn't hold up to such time and continental divides, and they had to go their separate ways.
But when Jen and I talked she talked of him fondly, she did love him and always would, if she ever came back to America they would maybe figure it out. But she was living her life in South Africa and Jared was living his in Seattle. I know a lot of men fell in love with Jen while she was gone, but I'm pretty sure Jen loved Jared more than any of those hot Brazilians or charming Brits.
Jared was a vegan, a carpenter, an avid bike rider (even up all those Capitol Hill bitch ass hills) a musician and a good man. With a really good beard. He loved Jen very much. As I know she did him. I remember one time when Jen and I rode bikes to meet Jared at a bar in Ballard. Jen and I were early and turns out at the wrong bar, buut it was a bar, so we started drinking a pitcher anyways. After the pitcher was gone Jared kindly told me that Stella, actually was NOT a vegan beer, as they filter it through fish bladders. But that he didn't want to tell me until after cause he hated when people did that to him.
That was the last Stella I ever had. But it was damn good. Ignorance is bliss. Thanks Jared.
Also the amazing Halloween night out Jared had some insane WWF costume on that I had no idea about. Cause I don't know shit about wrestling. But he looked incredible. And crazy. Fit in well with a crazy afro hippy lady, a unicorn, Larry David, and John Waters.
I am saddened to learn of his death but in a weird way it seems too close to be a coincidence. If I were religious I would picture them up in Heaven drinking union and vegan beer (aka Budweiser)and eating vegan cupcakes that Jen made. And being happy. Being as I do not lean religious I'll just think of them as together again, in some alternate universe where the young get to live their lives and where people who love each other get to be near each other.