I guess I should have added some footnotes

I'm sure I must have read something by David Foster Wallace at some point, but I really can't remember. I haven't read either of the novels or the short story collections, although of course I've meant to for years. Did he have something in Shiny Adidas Track Suits and the Death of Camp? If so then I read it, whatever it was. Anyway, that's not the point.

What I was making my way slowly around to saying is that even though this isn't someone who was a cherished author of mine, I was still shocked and saddened to learn he'd killed himself. And that was mostly from a personal, self-centered point of view. Because here was someone who was very respected in their chosen field (a field I have occasional aspirations toward being a part of), who was married, who had a steady job...but it wasn't enough. It got to him until he couldn't take it anymore, and he hanged himself.

I delude myself sometimes into thinking that if I was more successful in some indefinable way then it would go away. Well, maybe I'd still get depressed, but it would be less frequent, and I'd certainly never think about killing myself again. That's silly and illogical and magical-ish thinking, but it's just one of those things I tell myself sometimes. Maybe because it gives me a goal--achieve this in life, and it'll go away. I guess it helps me believe that there's a way to cure it (recurring theme), when really mental illness is like an addiction--you can be recovering, but you're never recovered. That's the truth I'm having to face again after hearing about Wallace's suicide: it will never, ever, ever completely go away, and even the most seemingly successful people can be pulled under all the way. And if they can, so could I.

Maybe not "funny ha-ha"

What's funny is now that I have people's attention I kind of want to just slink away and disappear. And also, how after all this time I still try to figure out why I feel like this, as though there's a logical explanation.

Would saying "this is not for attention" make it seem more or less like this is for attention?

This post brought to you by Nighthawks and Pittsfield's lack of a Denny's

There is a part of me that wants to live in a big city not in spite of the fact that I'd be surrounded by people who are strangers to me, but because of it. Something about that specific alienation is appealing to me, in some sort of bizarrely romanticized way. I guess logically I know it would be horrible but part of me likes the idea of being a tiny cog in a huge machine, of being a small fish. Maybe because it would depersonalize me, maybe part of me thinks that would take me away from my problems. Obviously it wouldn't--how is being dehumanized the answer? But I like the idea of being a small part of something much bigger than myself.

I guess I don't so much want to be in a city as I want to be in a specific mythology of The City.

Clearly I'm not taking a vacation from crazy

I'm on vacation this week and I spent a couple of days at my grandparents'. At one point when I was trying to fall asleep I experienced a strange feeling I've had before, best described as "dissociative homesickness." A brief but intense feeling of loneliness that comes out of nowhere, and happens when I'm away from home. Dissociative because I feel outside of myself when it happens--I'm always analyzing it as I'm experiencing it. I feel so profoundly alone, and as though there's someone I deeply miss. And then I run through all the people I might possibly miss, and it's none of them. But it's such a specific feeling, missing someone, and that's definitely what this feeling is. It's almost like deja vu, it has that sort of eeriness about it. I don't know if it's connected in any way to being bipolar or if it's unrelated; it happens rarely but I can remember it happening back into my childhood. It's just very strange, like an extremely condensed depressive episode or something. I mean it's over in a minute, but it leaves me struggling to figure out for a long time afterwards.