Can’t think straight today. Did a lot of walking, walking to nowhere. It’s nice to be able to feakin’ do that again, now that the sidewalks are mostly passable. Thinking about yesterday’s meetup with old friend. It’s interesting to open these windows into my past. I sometimes wonder if I was even there in that past. I have honestly articulated this question to myself: Do people think I am real? Do people really think I exist? Where does anybody get the idea that I am real, or that I exist?
interesting chat today with the barista. I went to the coffee shop to pay for the coffee I neglected to pay for last time. It was an honest brainfart. He actually brought the coffee to my table, which he has not done since I’ve been going there. Until this I had always paid at the counter. He did not seem to remember me not paying, though I somewhat clearly recall him exhibiting slight unease as I left that night.
Somehow conversation steered toward depression. Somehow? Hah. It’s half of what we talk about that I am depressed and lonely, and that he is not. What I learned today was that he is one of the fraction of 1% of the population that cannot take antidepressants because it causes Seratonin Syndrome in him. i’d never heard of SS but his account of spiraling into paranoia and delusionality was pretty damn compelling. within a half hour of takng a pill that was basically equivalent to zoloft he decided that there were not enough lightbulbs in his apartment, and that was why he was depressed. so he went out and bought a bunch of corkscrew lightbulbs (new thing at the time) and lit up the place. he concluded this was better, then went out to get food. having not had an appetite for 2 weeks he thought this was a good thing, and that the antidepressents must be working. that’s when shits got real. not a garrulous person by nature he was talking to absolutely everybody at the restaurant. people in line, workers behind the counter, the Mexicans in the kitchen (he specifically mentioned these “Mexicans” a number of times at this particular point in telling this tale). he does not remember getting any food. he could tell something was off. his brain was moving at a mile a minute but his heartbeat was slowing, or so he thought. he left the restaurant to go back home. he got lost. he had lived at the same address for 15 years but this day he could not find it. he thinks he may have walked around the upper east side for 3 hours but is open to the possibility that his memory is wildly exaggerated. he finally got home and called a pharmacologist. this is where i start to think his account of utterly losing it is over the top. he had the poise find a phone number for a pharmacologist who was not involved with prescribing the anti depressant? maybe he was referred to this pharmacologist by the prescriber? i don’t know. whatever the case the pharmo told him to flush the pills down the toilet and lie down on the floor, flat. he did that and that’s when he really felt the brain moving like a freight train and his heartbeat slowing. after a while he went outside to hail a cab to Bellevue. he perfectly described this part: “I saw a woman using a payphone. We used to have these on every street corner.” I chuckled with a knowing grin (there is actually a payphone right outside this coffee shop but I did not volunteer that information) and said nothing of my payphonista heritage. He said that he saw this woman talking on the payphone and that she was only pretending to talk on the phone. She was actually reporting him to the authorities, and everyone around him was speaking into lapel microphones and forming a dragnet posse to close in on him and shut him down. His escpae was to get into a cab and go to Bellevue, where he was denied admission because it was a Saturday.
…
at a bar. happy to be around people. my apartment feels more and more … silenter. i remember a friend describing a certain mutual friend as someone who would grow progressively “singler” as she aged. it was almost profound. my life feels like it has grown progressively silenter.
