My Brain is Broken

A short tale…

I got paid on the 1st, it is now the 4th and I have no money. I want to not think about money, but I am so hungry sometimes, and I can only thing about food. Oftentimes the only way to get food is with money, but if it’s between fruit and a beer or ramen, I guess I’ll take the former. The latter gives me wicked hypertension, and I get empty calories and a stomach ache either way. I’ll at least take the carbs and vitamins before the salty soup for whatever reason.

I borrowed some money last month, because I spent money for work. I am waiting for that money to be reimbursed, so now I am hungry and not even a little drunk. If I go outside, there is nothing but darkness, drunk people, junk food, and the open air to fill with cigarette smoke. I can hardly even enjoy the night without filling with FOMO, and I don’t want to smoke again.

It’s too early to go to sleep, but I am restless without the booze. I don’t enjoy a single thing, reading, TV, a movie, lying face down and staring at the ceiling.

The hot water is off, I wish I could take nice shower, but it’s been nothing but icy winds and bone chilling rain in our lovely Berkeley Spring.

I wish I could not think about it, I wish I could just do work, but I am so tired after working so much, and I don’t work so hard so I can lose ground to my worst impulses by binging down to my last dollars. So I spend it on clothes or food, and run out anyway. I should save it… or make it a goal to make enough to have extra for how I spend now. I could make a budget sheet…

Oh god I wish I could not think about money, it is such a torment. Coping with not having, not having it from coping. Coping because I am without a bed, without a meal, losing my basic needs because I had used this or that to cope… that I was upset at the wrong person at the wrong time… that a series of tough days landed me at rock bottoms I fear to process and keep drinking in hopes that no one would notice how bad it is because of how bad it’s been. That I can keep going, that things are on the mend because it’s better than it was.

All or nothing, splitting, holding harsh judgements against myself that I lack for others, that comes out at others when I least expect it. The shame, guilt, inability to be with myself, sucking me deeper into an ocean of despair. I can learn to breath water, but who on land will respect my gills?

I want to heal to badly, and I can only think the thing to take away the pain lies behind the cashier’s covid guard in dark brown bottles. Maybe it is weed, maybe it is sobriety, maybe I can just meditate. Perhaps I can return to regular exercise.

Perhaps the drugs are the issue, perhaps it is the war on drugs, and stigma. Perhaps I am the issue. Maybe if people were less racist, less invested in white supremacy and turning the air into a profitable commodity, less ignorant, I could live. I could have food, shelter, healing. Am I holding myself back from my own healing under the delusions that such a thing could happen? That I could be surrounded by people that love me? “They must be out there” I tell myself. Just another day, I can forgot how long it’s been in neglect by the end of this bottle, and tomorrow I will awaken in a space full of my loved ones.

How am I supposed to do it? Just say no? It didn’t work, Michael, it never worked. I am glad you got to have the life you wanted, but not everyone does. I get my moments, here and there, and I know I am free, or under my own delusions. The fear escapes me, no green in sight, just the insight of my insides, and some kind of reverie that I have thoughts at all.

I can remember some things, some memories flash, I cringe or smile, I laugh out loud for seemingly no reason, and people look my way. I am lost in an endless expanse of my own thoughts, traversing a world I am forsaken go no further than to touch. What do these other lives think, how do they feel? I can guess, I can think back to all the people that shared with me in confidence, secrets lost to my grave in time. Laughing in the wild expanses of night and pretending no such depth was shared in the presence of the sun.

It’s all lost to the things that turn my engine over, food and drink and laughs with good people. It all comes and goes with the seasons, and I dare not speak ill of the blessings that reside in my memory, but have questions for the suffering I cannot see the grace in. I cannot any longer meditate until the worldly suffering becomes perfect, the wu wei of my constant battle does not allow much rest. That I simply deteriorate when I should be sharpening the blade that is so worn by war. Some kind of self care that lets me produce more, to kill better and make more money for it. How revolting.

I have hobbies, I don’t want to get rich, I just want a good meal. I don’t want to sleep with an empty stomach, I don’t want to wake up hung over. I don’t want to cough from smoking, I don’t want the lethargy that follows like a cloud. I want to be social, but am so anti social. I want to be alone without feeling lonely. I want to focus because I care, I want to care because it would be fun, instead of the misery that so often leaves me bed locked.

This did not end up so short, woops.