DIGNIFIED REFUGE

I’ve become depressed again, but the clarity hasn’t left me, which means it’s not simply an absence of depression—it’s a visionary state, which until now has made me happy but persists even when my spirits have plunged. I find myself with a Sunday afternoon on my hands and feel I can wring nothing out of it but distress. I’m alone, and it’s raining outside, and because tomorrow is a holiday, I feel no urgency to plan for school.

This much, however, is clear to me—that somehow I’ve got to make good with the limited choices I have—I can’t simply collapse and mildew in a heap because they’re so poor or because I have so few. I was happy this morning when I was writing, but now I feel all written out. Writing is a kind of massage that eases out the painful psychic cramps. But I doubt it’s good for me to spend so much time at it—it only aggravates my already acute case of introversion. Still, it seems the only dignified refuge.

This higher state of consciousness lasted only a matter of weeks, but it gave me the impetus to move out of my mother’s house—though, working only part-time, I would be a pauper.