Our creative writing instructor is currently re-reading it and mentioned that it’s a good study in narrative structure/story arc.
A 2-part post. Part 2 is private. See above.
(click thumbnail to read) and it made me even more depressed because I’m no longer capable of writing in the different styles that I taught students, let alone teaching. And based on this professor’s letter, I was a pretty damn good teacher myself. Now I feel as though I wasted time in grad school, not just because I can no longer use what I’ve learned, but especially because I no longer keep in touch with the friends I made for various reasons — mainly envy, though that is where I met Brian.Of course I’d still like to write a novel, but ECT has really messed up my memory, particularly things like vocabulary, some cognitive abilities, and teaching different writing styles. Know that feeling of having a word on the tip of your tongue, but you can’t think what it is? Well, that’s how it is for me all the fucking time. And if I can’t fucking teach writing, let alone remember words, how the hell am I supposed to write? I don’t mean blogging, but like, specific writing genres like personal essays, research writing, poetry, and so on.
At least the ECT procedure is much more humane and refined in this century, and unlike Hemingway, I had ECT voluntarily (well, there wasn’t much left for me try in terms of meds). In fact, I’ve had more treatments than he did, but he ended up committing suicide because of them. I know I’ve quoted this here before, but I feel that it needs to be mentioned again.
According to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights:
Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway was tricked into admitting himself to a psychiatric institution. He was given more than 20 electroshock treatments. The result devastated him. Shortly afterwards, he told a friend, “Well, what is the sense of ruining my head and erasing my memory, which is my capital, and putting me out of business? It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient….” In July 1961, days after being released from the Mayo psychiatric clinic, Hemingway committed suicide.
By the way, according to Neil A. Grauer, in the article “Remembering Papa” published in the July/August 1999 issue of Cigar Aficionado, Hemingway supposedly bought the gun he used to off himself from Abercrombie. I shop there sometimes. How fucked up is that? At least they don’t sell weapons anymore.
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WARNING: this is a really long post. things have been bad the past few days, but before i go into that, and because this has something to do with it, i’ll preface it with this:
another part of this is my reading level, which like my memory, was impacted by the ECTs. both are much poorer than before the treatments. i’m sure you’ve noticed i’ve been reading and sometimes reviewing mainly Star Wars comics and books lately. now you know why. granted, i’ve always read these, even the juvenile novel series, but lately, it’s what i’m most comfortable reading because i’m already familiar with most of the characters, settings, and situations. plus, i absolutely love them. (y)
The Black Dahlia,
about a month ago we were going to join a literary book club, the selection for which was Love in the Time of Cholera
along with my diminished reading level and atrophied writing skills, i’ve lost a great portion of my vocabulary. a great portion. fortunately, some of it is returning, but nowhere near to the level it was when i was studying for the GRE. heh.
one other thing i can think of is that, although i haven’t lost my informal writing voice, i no longer have as much control over a formal/academic or even semi-formal voice. and that’s a big part of why i’ve been writing these damn book reviews. they double as a writing exercise within a casual forum. plus they’re super-informative, right? 
so now you know–the source of my frustration and parts of my anxiety, anger, and bitterness. here’s the rest of the entry:
i was too distraught to see my therapist on Saturday, and Brian canceled the appointment because i didn’t want to call her. i still haven’t called her. i’m thinking that Saturday appointments don’t work for me, but her schedule has really changed.
Brian did call our couples counselor and had me talk to her. unfortunately, i don’t remember any of the conversation except that i agreed to page her the next evening. i didn’t.
i fell asleep at 9 last night but still had a hard time getting up this morning. so did Brian, so we agreed to go to the gym after he got off work. besides, i had my metals class later in the morning. i made it to that because working on jewelry always makes me feel good. i even finished my first project (for this term), and it’s called “Dancing Star.” i’d attempt to post a picture, except the camera fucking died.
oh, but we just sold our Ohio State-Penn State game tickets on eBay and made enough to cover the face value with enough left over so we could maybe buy a new digital camera. not like we can afford to actually go to the game. we’ve seen this match-up before, but not while the Bucks were ranked #1! (u)
as the rest of this afternoon wore on, i grew more and more agitated and ended up taking an Ativan and working on this entry, longhand. we didn’t go work out.
on the bright side, i went to my first hockey practice last Thursday. even though i haven’t tended goal since 2001, i did well enough to impress some of my teammates when they saw me going one-on-one against the White team.
we’re planning to work out tomorrow morning, but now it seems that Brian is really sick with either the cold from which i just recovered or a different one. either way, i’m planning to go to noon skate.
although i have a lot on my mind, i haven’t posted any of it because, just like a few weeks ago, i’m having trouble articulating my thoughts into any sort of coherent order. just writing the review preceding this post took a lot of effort.
anyway, things seem to have gotten worse. i stopped showering again, quit hockey (until the fall), and missed my jewelry class. i agree that i tried to do way too much too quickly. but it just felt so good to want to do things! this past week i haven’t wanted to (and didn’t) do a damn thing.
so, the pdoc is consulting with the shock doc and i may be going in for more treatments tomorrow or later this week.
the other day, when i said that i don’t feel hopeless…i think i was wrong. i think that i do feel hopeless about shaking this depressive episode i’ve had for thre frickin’ years now!!! i had a pdoc appointment today and i didn’t feel like going because i didn’t care. if Brian were home and could have taken me, then fine, i would have gone. otherwise, i just didn’t care.
the rational part of me cares, of course, but the irrational, depressive-thinking part was saying, “Why bother?” nothing has helped, or at least not enough to put it in remission. this or that medication will work for a while, and then it wears off. partial hospitalization programs only help so much. i like having somewhere to go every day, meeting people, and doing the activities part, but i don’t need any more psychoeducation!
i was on the computer from 9:30am ’til noon today playing Neopets and IMing with friends. Brian called so i got off the PC (i was bored with it anyway) and told him how i felt about going to the pdoc. after we hung up, there was nothing i felt like doing so i went back to bed.
i meant to blog more last week, but my therapist really gave me a lot to think about when i saw her on Wednesday. i’m still trying to process it and will probably blog about it in the future. i asked her what i can do to not feel insignificant when i’m with my family, which came up because we had Christmas at my mom’s a couple of weeks ago, and i haven’t written about that, either. it was the first time in a few years that we spent time with my mom at all.
anyway, here it is:
the end.
it’s all true. i also can’t believe that he didn’t stop me, but he didn’t. though i was high, i know and remember that i definitely hit him. i had run my car into other things, also at about 5mph or less: a sapling in a friend’s front yard; various poles, because i once had difficulty backing out of parking spaces adjacent to poles.
i still remember how it felt against those hard, solid objects, but not as clearly as i remember hitting a human being. it’s something that i can’t forget because it impact felt different.
and didn’t i say that most people have a similar story? it’s not that uncommon, and it’s not that unbelievable. the only embellishment is the very end, where i passed Wendy the pipe when she got in the car. in actuality, maybe i did, maybe i didn’t. i don’t remember, but it sounds like something i would have done–be stupid enough to not only drive around stoned, but have the dope on me as well. i don’t think Frey had to “cinematize” (which is how The Smoking Gun describes it) his own drunk/high-hitting-someone/something-with-your-car story and still make it believable.
in the summer of 1989, i lived in Texas and had just completed my first (and what turned out to be my last) 2 semesters at the University of Houston. because i lived in an apartment instead of the dorms, i had difficulty making friends, especially since i was shy. at the end of spring semester, i found a job as an admin at a small telemarketing company. i also moved in with a high school friend who was originally from Houston and had just moved back from Chicago. between these two events, i finally had a circle of friends, and although we were different in very many ways, we had one thing in common: we were big-time stoners.
as a favor for my friend Jim, i agreed to pick up his girlfriend one afternoon in downtown Houston, where she worked at the Enron Building on 1400 Smith. i was nervous because i didn’t know my way around the downtown area, it was rush hour, and i was completely baked. the sunshine reflected from the many glass buildings towering over me only added to my confusion.
i crept around the block of one-way streets looking for Wendy, who was waiting for me in front of the building. a policeman stood on the street, just outside the entrance to a parking garage on my left. as i approached him, he gestured for me to continue forward. or so i thought. well, i did exactly that–kept on going and ended up running into him.
my dad once told me that he didn’t care what i did as long as i didn’t get caught. however, if i ended up in jail, he wasn’t going to bail me out. this was going to be the first time, i was sure. not only was i stoned out of my mind, i hit a cop with my car! and not a cop sitting in a squad car–it was a cop standing on his own two feet on the street!
i was only 19 years old. my life would be ruined. my parents would be disgraced, not only within their Filipino-American community, but within the entire Natividad clan as well. i had been the family black sheep since my pre-teenage years, and now, i had cemented my destiny as the Natividads’ least wanted.
to my relief, the policeman didn’t crumple to the ground. i wasn’t driving fast, maybe 5 miles an hour, probably less. he merely lost his balance. once he regained it, he gestured for me to continue forward, and this time he exaggerated his arm motions, so there was no mistaking what he wanted me to do. he didn’t ask to see my drivers license. he didn’t order me out of the car. he didn’t even say anything to me through my wide-open window as i drove past him.
seconds later, Wendy was sitting beside me. as soon as she shut the door, we rolled away. and i passed her my pipe.
this episode, as Frey describes in his memoir, ensues into an altercation involving himself, the patrolman, back-up officers, and 30 people who witnessed the police beating him with billy clubs for refusing arrest. (i’m not going to discuss how or why this event is crucial within the memoir’s structure because that isn’t my point here.) according to the police report TSG located, what actually happened was that Frey drove onto a sidewalk on which there was indeed, a policeman, but nearly hit a pole, not the officer. that incident, the factual or the fictitious version–it doesn’t matter–provided me with the spark to write my own hitting-a-cop-on-foot-with-my-car-while-fucked-up story. i mean, every former substance abuser has one. right?
ironically, i was going to name the “Back in the Day” category “True Stories.”
so, do you really believe i hit a cop with my car while i was fucked up?
i should really stop giving these entries titles like “Day X,” especially because Dawn suggested to “Treat the deadline as an arbitrary one.” and she’s right.
it was a great reminder of what my personal goal is with this NaNoWriMo/novel writing undertaking. though i may not end up being a winner by NaNoWrimo’s standards, it doesn’t matter because i’ve already won. the whole point was for me to get back into writing, and i’ve done that. my next challenge is to find a way to incorporate it into my daily routine, to make time to write a little bit each day.
in undergrad i became interested in the writing process while taking a course called Writing Center Theory and Pedagogy. when i was teaching, this was something that continued to interest me, so it’s time i examined my own writing process. maybe it’ll help me get to the root of why i’ve had such a tough time of it since defending my thesis; why the words don’t come out as easily as they used to and is more like squeezing water from a stone.
anyway, i’m still working on character sketches. i’m a sucker for backstories. right now i’m figuring out how Marie got her cat Marmaduke. maybe it sounds silly, but i think it’s important.
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