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how is it that I find myself once again dealing with an Absolutely Abysmal Christmas? I fear I've gotten into a bad habit of setting myself up for late-December agony and have nothing else to do but stay the course and see it through to the other side. oddly, the things I've been writing about the past few months have had a strange prescience in relation to that - weather the storm, see it through, keep it moving. I like to think up little mantras for myself and the little characters in my brain and most recently I've come up with "there is no direction but forward." reductive, but sometimes necessary when trying to wrangle an avoidant brain in to doing necessary tasks. if I allow myself even a bit of wiggle room I'll somehow manage to squirm my way out of important things and screw myself over for it, just for an ounce of relief. so, I'm doing just that. staying the course.
eventually the hardships of today will be gone. eventually I'll have all new hardships, but different ones, and I'll also have all new joys and delights and a million other things to look forward to. I just need to weather the storm. a few more days of agony and the weight will be lifted.
sometimes I hate how the corny things my parents would tell me as a child circle back around to being incredibly helpful as an adult. when I would complain about things being hard they'd often shoot back with "you can do hard things -" an incredibly frustrating thing to hear as a child, where my whining wasn't about incapability to do the task but rather a desire to worm my way out of it (hello again, avoidant tendencies) - but now I find myself chanting it like a mantra at work when feeling overwhelmed. I can do hard things. I can bear the brunt of these difficulties for just a little bit longer, just to see what's on the other side. I can survive another day.
...
anyway, in light of all these agonies I'm putting Jones Hall in a cup and shaking him up really hard. in my mind this would ideally be a three chapter thing, the first being Hall's first grasp of being a fictional character, the second being his deterioration as he gets lost in memories and can't tell the past from present anymore (as they're both fictional anyway, so what's the difference, really?), and the third being his inevitable complete disengagement with the fiction as a whole and seeing beyond into Real Reality - wherein he has a conversation with Me, The Fanfic Writer and I get to apologize to him for putting him in a cup and shaking him really hard. have the first-ish chapter, not yet finished:
Host: Jones Hall - gifted actor, veritable everyman, deeply afflicted by generalized anxiety. Despite being consistently described as magnetic, confident, and charming, in his personal life he finds himself regularly seized with bouts of acute panic and disorientation, sometimes to the point of disassociation from reality. Here we find him teetering on the edge of one such attack, and in the worst place for it, no less: on stage.
Jones….
Earth to Jones…
"Hall! Hello… can ya hear me?"
Two quick snaps of a finger in front of his face is just enough to break him out of his reverie. He cuts a quick glance up at the frowning figure above him, then back down to the object of his fascination. His right hand. He had been staring at the wrinkle of his middle knuckle for minutes now, eyes focusing and unfocusing, losing track of it and then catching it again, feeling distinctly that each time his eyes lost focus his hand went with it into someplace else, somewhere blurry and ephemeral and not-all-there. With slow, deliberate motions he turns his wrist to glance at his palm, then turns it back again, flexing his fingers, watching the skin pull and stretch as the bones and muscles underneath shift. He sets his hand on his thigh and finally acknowledges the man before him.
"…huh?"
Schubert Green straightens up and casts a doubting look down his nose. The stage lights behind him, shining through the window of a false wall meant to portray Augie's mini-house, halo his curls immaculately. The God of the Stage.
"We've got rehearsals going right now and I find you sitting behind the props staring at nothing. What's up with you?"
"…I dunno."
"You dunno? Whaddya mean you dunno?"
He shakes his head, unsure how to even think of how to respond. His head feels stuffed with cotton and achingly hollow at the same time. The world drifts around him in a watery, half-there way that isn't entirely unpleasant, but certainly not what he wants to be feeling when he's trying to focus on getting in character and running lines and *acting,* y'know, like an actor's supposed to do. He swallows before speaking and feels the lump in his throat all the way down.
"Have you ever felt… not real?"
He doesn't even need to turn back to face Schubert to know the face he makes. The same one he pulls when Mercedes flubs a line or takes a scene in a new direction without asking first. The face that you feel more than you see, like a swift punch to the gut… or a particularly embarrassing fall in a public area. His stomach turns on instinct.
"Nothing's real, Hall, that's why we act."
He hates how he says it so glibly, and hates even more that it actually brings him some level of comfort. Of course, nothing's real, that's why he feels this way. Nothing's ever been real. He frowns against the swimming in his mind to try and straighten some thoughts into a neat enough row to speak.
"I'm trying to be Augie."
"Uh-huh"
"I think I'm doing a pretty good job-"
"Eh…"
"-but it feels… wrong. I'm becoming too Augie. Why doesn't the world around me feel as real as it used to?"
Schubert gives him a face even worse than the first. Pity. He hesitates for a minute before walking to the other side of the stage, the brisk swish of his pants and click of his shoes a musical number all their own, and grabs the cushion off a nearby chair. Drops it with a thud just before Jones' feet. Kneels down on it.
There's a beat of silence between them as Green collects his thoughts. Jones uses this time to produce a single flailing, spasming jolt of a thought that flops down onto his lap like a dead fish.
Schubert Green sure kneels between his legs a lot.
He's relieved when the thought doesn't stir much of anything in him. There was a time, years ago, when that would've set off fireworks in his brain, but they were both younger then, and a hell of a lot more prone to rash and reckless decisions. Both of them are, still, of course - just not in the same way.
"You're looking at this thing from too close. Have you ever stood real close to a painting in a museum, close enough to touch it almost, watching the picture dissolve into individual brush strokes?"
"Sure."
"It's like that."
"So you're saying I have to back up?"
"Maybe. Or you gotta go clean through to the other side, look from there."
"Clean through…"
He tries to picture what it would even mean to go 'clean through' Augie and out the other side. The image comes to him plainly, and sticks in his vision like the afterimage from catching the sun's reflection in a window - two of him, distinct, separate entities, stepping first towards and then through each other, standing where the other once stood but facing the opposite direction. The image haunts his mind the rest of the afternoon and in to the night, distracting him from his lines, making him forget his cues, only succeeding in getting him even closer to whatever this is without passing through it at all. The painting separates into even more lines. The image splinters.
Host: Creativity and instability go hand in hand, unfortunate as it is. Hall is certainly not the first to find himself lost in his creative pursuits. Yet, unbeknownst to him, he is about to find himself in a very new, very strange situation… one that the DSM-V doesn't have much sway over.
He leaves the theatre feeling distinctly unhappy. Unease seeps into his mind like poison and no matter how much he tries to remember what Schubert said and shake it off, it clings ever tighter. The night air has a sharp chill to it, but the walk to his car isn't far, and the thought of Conrad's home waiting for him like a sentinel brings him some reprieve, at the very least. His bastion of peace.
It isn't til he's got his keys in his hands and is halfway to unlocking the car that he spots it.
Down the street, unassuming and barely-there and looking for all the world like any other blurry thing in the periphery, the gently buzzing light-up sign of a shop. It's tucked between a handful of others in a way that feels distinctly engineered to be looked over. He isn't sure he's ever even looked in that direction before, really - never had any reason to, at least. The light gutters and pops the same way any other one does, worn from age and use. Yet… something about it is wrong. He squints out into the darkness, trying to will it to come in to focus.
…
Why isn’t it coming in to focus?
Anxiety, like a small, tight pinch, blooms in his chest.
He sees in his mind's eye the wrinkle of his middle knuckle, the way it would run and smear in his vision like trying to focus through a rain-soaked window. Wonders for a brief, panic-inducing moment if he willed this strange anachronism into existence by thinking too hard.
With a forced deep breath, he tears his eyes away. Blinks once, twice - hard, pressing his eyelids against each other with force enough to wrinkle the bridge of his nose. Rubs them with the back of a hand for good measure. The pressure leaves bursts of pure-white stars dancing behind his eyelids as he blinks them open once more, waiting for the briefest of moments for the world to come back into focus before he once again looks over at the dreaded sign.
Still it stands. Still it refuses to correct itself.
It's hard to even pinpoint what exactly is wrong with it, what exactly is distressing him to the point of near-tears. That vinegar-sharp feeling stabs at the back of his throat as the water begins building in his eyes. What *is* it that's so wrong? The whole thing feels as if it's positioned at the wrong angle in space. An amateur's perspective drawing, not quite lining up. It feels like a newspaper prop in a movie, shown only for a moment before panning away, lines still riddled with Lorem Ipsum - only this time it's lingering long enough for him to read the Latin and realize he can't understand it.
Nausea rises in him like a flooding basement. The world lists dangerously to one side with a sharp strike of vertigo. He doesn't know how long he's been staring at this damn sign, but surely he's been staring at it for a while, as the sting of the cold night air is thoroughly settled into his skin now and even the embrace of his many layers does nothing against the shiver in his bones. With a willpower he wasn't sure he had just moments ago, he tears his eyes away, blinking and shaking and teetering on the edge of throwing up. Tries to take a deep breath to calm himself. Finds his lungs can't expand enough to let it all in. It's only with practiced habit that he successfully navigates the keys in his hand into the car door and opens it, sliding into the seat and doing up his seatbelt while staring straight ahead and down, laser-focusing on the bottom of the steering wheel and absolutely nowhere else. The key rattles against the ignition for a moment as his shaky hands try to find purchase before the motor roars to life and, with a bit less road safety than is ideal, he takes off, feeling nothing but the animal fear of being pursued by some unknowable beast.
Minutes go by in silence until, like peeling off of stifling layers of clothes, the insatiable panic that gnawed at him begins to slough off his shoulders. He loosens his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel just a bit, sits a little further back in his seat, feels the knot in his stomach unclench. Distance always helps, his mother would say - mostly that was about acting, but he thinks it's pretty applicable here, too. Distance always helps.
He glances in the rearview mirror, though, of course, he's driven far enough now that the sign is long gone from his view. He revisits it now in the darkness of his memory. Turns it over in his mind.
Finish this chapter already you're making it drag on too long
eventually the hardships of today will be gone. eventually I'll have all new hardships, but different ones, and I'll also have all new joys and delights and a million other things to look forward to. I just need to weather the storm. a few more days of agony and the weight will be lifted.
sometimes I hate how the corny things my parents would tell me as a child circle back around to being incredibly helpful as an adult. when I would complain about things being hard they'd often shoot back with "you can do hard things -" an incredibly frustrating thing to hear as a child, where my whining wasn't about incapability to do the task but rather a desire to worm my way out of it (hello again, avoidant tendencies) - but now I find myself chanting it like a mantra at work when feeling overwhelmed. I can do hard things. I can bear the brunt of these difficulties for just a little bit longer, just to see what's on the other side. I can survive another day.
...
anyway, in light of all these agonies I'm putting Jones Hall in a cup and shaking him up really hard. in my mind this would ideally be a three chapter thing, the first being Hall's first grasp of being a fictional character, the second being his deterioration as he gets lost in memories and can't tell the past from present anymore (as they're both fictional anyway, so what's the difference, really?), and the third being his inevitable complete disengagement with the fiction as a whole and seeing beyond into Real Reality - wherein he has a conversation with Me, The Fanfic Writer and I get to apologize to him for putting him in a cup and shaking him really hard. have the first-ish chapter, not yet finished:
Host: Jones Hall - gifted actor, veritable everyman, deeply afflicted by generalized anxiety. Despite being consistently described as magnetic, confident, and charming, in his personal life he finds himself regularly seized with bouts of acute panic and disorientation, sometimes to the point of disassociation from reality. Here we find him teetering on the edge of one such attack, and in the worst place for it, no less: on stage.
Jones….
Earth to Jones…
"Hall! Hello… can ya hear me?"
Two quick snaps of a finger in front of his face is just enough to break him out of his reverie. He cuts a quick glance up at the frowning figure above him, then back down to the object of his fascination. His right hand. He had been staring at the wrinkle of his middle knuckle for minutes now, eyes focusing and unfocusing, losing track of it and then catching it again, feeling distinctly that each time his eyes lost focus his hand went with it into someplace else, somewhere blurry and ephemeral and not-all-there. With slow, deliberate motions he turns his wrist to glance at his palm, then turns it back again, flexing his fingers, watching the skin pull and stretch as the bones and muscles underneath shift. He sets his hand on his thigh and finally acknowledges the man before him.
"…huh?"
Schubert Green straightens up and casts a doubting look down his nose. The stage lights behind him, shining through the window of a false wall meant to portray Augie's mini-house, halo his curls immaculately. The God of the Stage.
"We've got rehearsals going right now and I find you sitting behind the props staring at nothing. What's up with you?"
"…I dunno."
"You dunno? Whaddya mean you dunno?"
He shakes his head, unsure how to even think of how to respond. His head feels stuffed with cotton and achingly hollow at the same time. The world drifts around him in a watery, half-there way that isn't entirely unpleasant, but certainly not what he wants to be feeling when he's trying to focus on getting in character and running lines and *acting,* y'know, like an actor's supposed to do. He swallows before speaking and feels the lump in his throat all the way down.
"Have you ever felt… not real?"
He doesn't even need to turn back to face Schubert to know the face he makes. The same one he pulls when Mercedes flubs a line or takes a scene in a new direction without asking first. The face that you feel more than you see, like a swift punch to the gut… or a particularly embarrassing fall in a public area. His stomach turns on instinct.
"Nothing's real, Hall, that's why we act."
He hates how he says it so glibly, and hates even more that it actually brings him some level of comfort. Of course, nothing's real, that's why he feels this way. Nothing's ever been real. He frowns against the swimming in his mind to try and straighten some thoughts into a neat enough row to speak.
"I'm trying to be Augie."
"Uh-huh"
"I think I'm doing a pretty good job-"
"Eh…"
"-but it feels… wrong. I'm becoming too Augie. Why doesn't the world around me feel as real as it used to?"
Schubert gives him a face even worse than the first. Pity. He hesitates for a minute before walking to the other side of the stage, the brisk swish of his pants and click of his shoes a musical number all their own, and grabs the cushion off a nearby chair. Drops it with a thud just before Jones' feet. Kneels down on it.
There's a beat of silence between them as Green collects his thoughts. Jones uses this time to produce a single flailing, spasming jolt of a thought that flops down onto his lap like a dead fish.
Schubert Green sure kneels between his legs a lot.
He's relieved when the thought doesn't stir much of anything in him. There was a time, years ago, when that would've set off fireworks in his brain, but they were both younger then, and a hell of a lot more prone to rash and reckless decisions. Both of them are, still, of course - just not in the same way.
"You're looking at this thing from too close. Have you ever stood real close to a painting in a museum, close enough to touch it almost, watching the picture dissolve into individual brush strokes?"
"Sure."
"It's like that."
"So you're saying I have to back up?"
"Maybe. Or you gotta go clean through to the other side, look from there."
"Clean through…"
He tries to picture what it would even mean to go 'clean through' Augie and out the other side. The image comes to him plainly, and sticks in his vision like the afterimage from catching the sun's reflection in a window - two of him, distinct, separate entities, stepping first towards and then through each other, standing where the other once stood but facing the opposite direction. The image haunts his mind the rest of the afternoon and in to the night, distracting him from his lines, making him forget his cues, only succeeding in getting him even closer to whatever this is without passing through it at all. The painting separates into even more lines. The image splinters.
Host: Creativity and instability go hand in hand, unfortunate as it is. Hall is certainly not the first to find himself lost in his creative pursuits. Yet, unbeknownst to him, he is about to find himself in a very new, very strange situation… one that the DSM-V doesn't have much sway over.
He leaves the theatre feeling distinctly unhappy. Unease seeps into his mind like poison and no matter how much he tries to remember what Schubert said and shake it off, it clings ever tighter. The night air has a sharp chill to it, but the walk to his car isn't far, and the thought of Conrad's home waiting for him like a sentinel brings him some reprieve, at the very least. His bastion of peace.
It isn't til he's got his keys in his hands and is halfway to unlocking the car that he spots it.
Down the street, unassuming and barely-there and looking for all the world like any other blurry thing in the periphery, the gently buzzing light-up sign of a shop. It's tucked between a handful of others in a way that feels distinctly engineered to be looked over. He isn't sure he's ever even looked in that direction before, really - never had any reason to, at least. The light gutters and pops the same way any other one does, worn from age and use. Yet… something about it is wrong. He squints out into the darkness, trying to will it to come in to focus.
…
Why isn’t it coming in to focus?
Anxiety, like a small, tight pinch, blooms in his chest.
He sees in his mind's eye the wrinkle of his middle knuckle, the way it would run and smear in his vision like trying to focus through a rain-soaked window. Wonders for a brief, panic-inducing moment if he willed this strange anachronism into existence by thinking too hard.
With a forced deep breath, he tears his eyes away. Blinks once, twice - hard, pressing his eyelids against each other with force enough to wrinkle the bridge of his nose. Rubs them with the back of a hand for good measure. The pressure leaves bursts of pure-white stars dancing behind his eyelids as he blinks them open once more, waiting for the briefest of moments for the world to come back into focus before he once again looks over at the dreaded sign.
Still it stands. Still it refuses to correct itself.
It's hard to even pinpoint what exactly is wrong with it, what exactly is distressing him to the point of near-tears. That vinegar-sharp feeling stabs at the back of his throat as the water begins building in his eyes. What *is* it that's so wrong? The whole thing feels as if it's positioned at the wrong angle in space. An amateur's perspective drawing, not quite lining up. It feels like a newspaper prop in a movie, shown only for a moment before panning away, lines still riddled with Lorem Ipsum - only this time it's lingering long enough for him to read the Latin and realize he can't understand it.
Nausea rises in him like a flooding basement. The world lists dangerously to one side with a sharp strike of vertigo. He doesn't know how long he's been staring at this damn sign, but surely he's been staring at it for a while, as the sting of the cold night air is thoroughly settled into his skin now and even the embrace of his many layers does nothing against the shiver in his bones. With a willpower he wasn't sure he had just moments ago, he tears his eyes away, blinking and shaking and teetering on the edge of throwing up. Tries to take a deep breath to calm himself. Finds his lungs can't expand enough to let it all in. It's only with practiced habit that he successfully navigates the keys in his hand into the car door and opens it, sliding into the seat and doing up his seatbelt while staring straight ahead and down, laser-focusing on the bottom of the steering wheel and absolutely nowhere else. The key rattles against the ignition for a moment as his shaky hands try to find purchase before the motor roars to life and, with a bit less road safety than is ideal, he takes off, feeling nothing but the animal fear of being pursued by some unknowable beast.
Minutes go by in silence until, like peeling off of stifling layers of clothes, the insatiable panic that gnawed at him begins to slough off his shoulders. He loosens his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel just a bit, sits a little further back in his seat, feels the knot in his stomach unclench. Distance always helps, his mother would say - mostly that was about acting, but he thinks it's pretty applicable here, too. Distance always helps.
He glances in the rearview mirror, though, of course, he's driven far enough now that the sign is long gone from his view. He revisits it now in the darkness of his memory. Turns it over in his mind.
Finish this chapter already you're making it drag on too long
