Loud skin

Apparently I'm on drugs. This came as a bit of a surprise to me. Though perhaps it shouldn't have. It kind of exploded then crept up on me, now it's creeping all over me.

The story.

I had headaches in October, they grew and got worse, so in December the doctor gave me some pills to take before bed to help me relax. Those pills were also anti-depressants, apparently. They also made me sick. Slightly vertiginous and nauseous. For two full weeks, then lessening. Other than that, they seemed to work. Now I've been weaning myself off them the last couple weeks. Skipping a few nights, etc. Then the other night I noticed that something else has been creeping into my life. My skin. Or at least my over-awareness of it. I itch. All over. Now all the time. It just kind of happened. More than that, my body feels wrong, like everything is in slightly the wrong location. My hands annoy me the most. When I hold one hand straight where my fingers touch all the way along their length, it annoys me greatly. Just the feeling of it feels wrong. Even my hands typing, my fingers, all the edges that touch things give me the sensory equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.

This is a wondrously new and fantastically irritating experience. My skin does not cause me pain, but in the same way, it feels as though someone is pulling it from the rest of me. Not pulling my skin off, there's no pain like that, but like they are separating the layers, and each layer has its own unique version of annoyance. I am too too aware of my skin. I'm not wishing it would melt, but it is everywhere, and feeling everything. I try to read a book, but my hands scream at me a silent protest to the prolonged touch of the paper. As does my skin for being on my body. This is not a happy feeling. I felt it in small ways the last few days, but tonight it exploded into something fierce, with a head and teethe, ready to eat me whole.

I just took off my shirt, but I'm still itchy everywhere it used to be. This I do not want. Now I can feel what it's like to come off drugs. I'm glad mine were just prescription, but this single experience has been, and is be a great big one. I will avoid drugs like this as long as I can. I do not want my body needing something so bad it cannot function like a body should without it. Why do doctors prescribe tiny pills that have such a huge impact both in their beginning and end of treatment? I do wonder if the headaches were better. As it stands I've not had them, but I will risk revisiting them as long as I can fully estrange myself from the varied sensations this medication has brought me.

I'm conjuring a solution with an over the counter antihistamine as a temporary source of relief. I can't imagine being so desperate as to choose this for a lifestyle. I can say no, some people are addicted to things the cannot say no to by themselves. Now there's a place I would rather not find myself. In that perspective, I'm all right, because I know my skin will eventually shut up.

Apparently specific

Crap, I forgot I committed myself to doing this every day. I think that was only one or two blogs ago. Life happens. I just need to deal with that fact...no, I just need to accept that as fact. The two might look the same from the outside but make all the difference inside. The point is, I'm here saying things when I have nothing to say, but so much I want to say.

I want to talk about my first improv show at the Brody (level 3 class), and compare the art form to Hopi sand painting. Etherial, temporal. You have to be there to see them, because they are not built to last, they are built as a brief experience alone, like life itself. I want to talk about how I am happy to have gotten an email from the Brody people saying I am invited into level 4 performance lab, which means more chances to to this in front of people, but also means new people, which is what it is.

I want to talk about how I'll miss some of the people I've worked with, knowing that even if we all move on to 4, it will be about 16 people strong vs the 5 people intimacy of level 3. I want to talk about the past classes, how through all of them people have come and gone, with only, what, 3 or 4 of us that went through levels 1, 2a, 2b and 3 together? I want to talk about how my life has had wonderful moments with people flitting in and out of it, and that the moment is really all you have...or maybe that's just the song from the recent 30 Rock episode fumbling through my thoughts.

What I really want to talk about is life itself; the mystery. Though I guess I did, looking up at what I wrote. The more specific I am, the more people can relate to it. That's one of my favorite paradoxes in writing, or creating. The sheer volumetric power of specificity.

A life by any other name

Last night I was having pizza with a friend who asked me about my experience dating a specific person (let's call her Lady Jesus). This was kind of a surprise as I had not realized I dated Lady Jesus. I thought about it for a bit. When I first met this girl we talked for quite a few hours about all sorts of things. It was nice. Then the next few weeks we saw a couple plays together and generally hung out a bit. Then we didn't. It did follow the general form of what's known as "dating" but it was never really named.

Did I date Lady Jesus? Can something be some thing without being named that thing? Apparently it can, at least to someone else. If you believe that yes, a rose would smell as sweet if it were called a Snordgutzel, then must also think a thing can be whatever you do or do not name it.

Apparently, unbeknownst to me I had lived unintentionally. Life happened on its own accord without me forcing my overthinking on it or invoking any word-prisons on it. I guess I'll take it as it is; a series of semi-intentional dates, a natural story arc that never really ended, but rather faded. Though I should stop trying to name it now, because those life moments without names exist just the same.

Just like Lady Jesus.