What I did on my two weeks' vacation in Jamaica

I ate so much food over the past two weeks I’m sure I’ve actually gained weight. But the food was a necessity. The food was a necessity because every time I ate, I ate with somebody else. I was not alone. I had sushi and learned that depression is not unique. I ate kebabs and lentil soup, and realised that all roads are rocky. I ate Chinese and jerk chicken, and discovered that loneliness will drive a man to do strange and unusual things. I ate Indian and Thai, and found out that past loves will always inform present loves. I ate good, Jamaican food and lost myself in the fact that everyone is broken, everyone is buried under something, everyone is trying – with various levels of success – to heal themselves from the inside out. I cried only once, when standing in the middle of an exhibition of intensely personal art created by one of the many parts of my soul, who lives and breathes with me even if we are out of touch for months on end.

I feel like I am in the process of shoving my bony right arm deep into myself, through my small mouth, down my tight gullet and into a chest and belly that is so knotted up, that is so much in turmoil, that the only release is to grab everything swirling around down in there and yank it out as forcefully and painfully as it needs to be yanked out.

And after more than six months of not knowing why I have not been myself, I finally realised that no man can hope to be emotionally functional if he tries to hide behind false realities of contentment. I heard people read words that either overwhelmed me or lost me completely. I met a poet and wanted to open myself up, but lacked the courage and (perhaps) strength to do so. I almost met a friend of a friend who (you never know) may have been the one. I have spent so many years hiding behind good friends, supportive family and the uncomplicated, sincere love of my godchildren that I forgot (or ignored the glaring fact) that I need something more.

I made the realisation that every love of mine has ultimately failed because the first love was for someone unattainable; the first love could never have happened and yet I have spent fourteen years waiting for it to happen. In the interim, the only loves I have sought out are loves that never stood a chance because I carefully chose circumstances that were doomed. As a result, I have caused as much pain as I have felt. I have put that first love behind me, now, in the rediscovery of a good friend. I thank the Blue Mountain mist for that. With that coming-to-terms also came the more immediate coming-to-terms with the fact that other people have their own journeys to make, and these journeys do not include me because my journey does not include anyone else, except as very welcome mileposts along the twisted path to a place that I cannot yet see, have never been able to see apart from in my waking dreams; and my waking dreams are too utopic to be taken seriously.

I have released blame for every failure. I know that the only person you can ever blame is yourself. And blame may not even be the correct word. We cannot help or hide who we are. I cannot help or hide who I am. I will always put myself on the purist of golden platters and present me to you – and you are a single person, and a group of people, and the memory of people, and the whole world. You are both specific and general. And no, this is not about you, this is about me. I will always give too much information. I was not built to hide my feelings, my thoughts, or even my experiences. They are part of what make me who I am and they inform every human interaction I have ever had in my life. I will forever tell you things that you wish I wouldn’t. I will continue to make you uncomfortable with my raw exposure of thought and feeling. You will either push me away or you will embrace me; either way I cannot control how you experience me or choose to experience me. I can only control me.

Yet, deep inside there is something uncontrollable. I cannot control me and I know I have just contradicted myself and I grip that contradiction because that, too, is me. My bony right arm is still rooting around my insides, overturning and displacing the shit that has been building up in there for the past gods-know-how-many years. Tiny pills that create serotonin bridges in my brain can only restore balance for the briefest period of time. What I need to do is pull my arm back out of my stomach and bring with it the toxins and poisons and abortions that I have allowed to fester inside me since I first fainted away while serving on the altar of the Christian god who disappointed me.

I wrote this (and realised that it is a poorly crafted piece of self-indulgence):

I see galaxies in your eyes

Entire worlds

Of fancy and science

Fiction

Ecosystems both familiar

And alien

I see what I think

Possible

Yet which you think

Improbable

I see the family

I would choose

If I could choose

My family

I see a Utopia

Of fantastical proportions

In my eyes

What you see

(unfortunately)

is a flat reflection.

And I wrote this (ditto parenthetical information):

I gave you a flower.

I put it in a little pot,

Watered the fertile soil

And gave it to you,

Though you told me

You are no gardener.

Daily I watch for you,

Hoping you will water your flower

With more than just the blocks of ice

That you keep frozen in your chest.

Instead all I see

Is the lone flower, dying.

And finally, I wrote this (ditto again):

In a little box

On my desk

I keep the world

And when I open

My box

The first thing I do

Is wade through the

Dross

Until I find you

When I have found you

In my box

I want to hold you

And each of these is unedited and should never have seen the light of day, just like this blog post, which I am about to publish. And each of these is a representation of a feeling that comes from somewhere bigger. And the “you” in each poem is one person who had the misfortune to meet me at a time when my delightful crazy is at its zenith, and who stayed despite my crazy, but may have finally succumbed to my crazy and decided I am just too much hard work. This too is sad because my crazy is so much bigger than one person, and my crazy is not even crazy, it is simply me, years after telling myself the lie that I could be a loner and be happy that way. So the “you” in these poems is also every poor, selfish decision I have made in the past fourteen years.

This post was supposed to be cathartic, but has not been. I am glad I have written it though, because it has solidified and given shape to what has been going on inside me for two weeks. And so, my own healing from being broken and buried begins. This is what I did on my two weeks’ vacation in Jamaica.

Dedicated to Analisa and Kashka and Tanya and Pam and Anna-Lisa and Christina and Wayne and Saffrey and Kai and Livingston and Brian and Victor and Kei and Ryan and Tracey and Lisa and the people I didn’t get to see or meet or spend as much time with as I would’ve liked to. And of course, to