Doom’s Blank Door

Ennui

Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.

The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,
compelling hero’s dull career to crisis;
and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,
while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger.

–Sylvia Plath

It was time for her thrice-yearly visit with the psych.  At her last visit, she had managed to convince him she was getting better on a smaller dose of long-acting venlafaxine and wanted to go even lower, so he rx’d a dosage that was half as strong and not long-acting.  What she’s noticed since then, after a few episodes of vertigo, is that she’s back to biting her fingernails bloody.  For a long while on the antidepressants, she bit them but not down to the quick.  Now, it’s the quick and the blood.

She thinks her biggest problem is apathy, but she doesn’t know if it’s worse than before or if she’s just focusing on it more.  Her sense of humor is still intact, she still loves a good comic, good acting, good book, good food.  If you call her on the phone, she’ll have an interesting conversation with you, laugh, argue politics, talk about the last weird movie she saw on cable.

But every morning she awakens and lies in bed not really wanting to get up.  (What for?)  She’s forced herself into the habit of having a cup of coffee on the back patio while she sits in the sun and watches the Pacific (they say sunlight helps depression).  She will usually eat something because otherwise her stomach will begin to growl and/or she’ll get lightheaded (and they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day).  For the rest of the day, she sits on the couch and watches reruns of Bones or plays solitaire on her new smart phone.  She can do that for hours.  The bed remains unmade, the kitchen haphazardly cleaned.

She thinks a lot about why she doesn’t believe in God yet does believe in “something.”  She thinks about all the famous people whom she’s grown up knowing who are now dying and how in a few years no one will remember them, and even if they do, so what?  They’re gone.  She thinks about what she’s contributed to the world and realizes it’s next to nothing, but so what? She knows things weren’t so bad when she worked full- or even part-time, but there’s nothing to work on any more.  She certainly can’t get herself to do any of the arts or crafts she used to be at least slightly interested in.

She managed to believe she was an alcoholic and didn’t drink for 25 years and didn’t miss it.  She never went through withdrawal or even thought much about drinking.  She started again in 2009 but has only ever had a few drinks a week, if that much, since then.  She doesn’t care if she has a drink or not.  Sometimes a beer with pizza or spaghetti or Mexican food is nice, but not necessary.  She finally came to realize that the only reason she joined AA was to get her then-husband to stop drinking by showing him how easy it was, and the only reason she stayed was for the hugs.  How pathetic is that?

Most days, she gets up late and stays up late.  She has to make sure she’s really tired so she doesn’t stay awake thinking too much, too long.  When she awakens in the morning, she doesn’t want to get up, but she doesn’t want to lie in bed either, because all she does is think about all of the above.

Lately, she’s been wondering if Dexedrine or Desoxyn would help because of the way she felt snorting meth–not crazy agitated, just able to move, to act “normal.”  But the possible bad side effects scare her, which is why she gave it up.  She doesn’t want to be on antidepressants or antipsychotics anymore because she doesn’t like their side effects and doesn’t want to need them, but she doesn’t like the way she feels–or doesn’t feel–without anything.  She doesn’t think about suicide, except to cross it off her list because, hey, tomorrow may be better.

She thinks “hopeless” might a good descriptive for how she feels, but that seems to be too fraught with meaning.  “Apathy” would be a better word, she thinks.  Or “ennui.”  Sylvia Plath’s poem sort of says it all, except that she doesn’t want anyone to compare her with Plath and think she wants to stuff her head in an oven.  She doesn’t.  Because, as Little Orphan Annie once sang, “The sun’ll come out tomorrow.”  Right?