Meaningless Symbols

Posted on 31 December 2011

When it seems the downward spiral has no bottom, when I am calming myself by wearing gun-range ear protection and chewing on anti-anxiety meds for breakfast, suddenly the noise changes timbre. The yelling and violence become laughter and the boys are swinging from the ceiling in the therapy swing (therapy for whom? theoretically, I could get in it, but should I?). I dare to smile for a second, before I remember it’s been months since there was peace in this house and not to get my hopes up.

I am split, now. Split between a future I can taste and the reality of here and now, split between hunger for new information and the hunger of the people around me always in need. I began reading Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid a few days ago, and I see the ideas solidifying before me, explaining the unexplainable, or at least shifting the perspective. And then I dream of my childhood home, now also split, a local running shoe store on the main level, apartments upstairs. I dream of the basement where my brother and I spent hours playing in the damp, musty air; the canning room is still there, Ball jars lining grey wooden shelves. The playrooms, which would have been maids’ quarters when the home was built, are still there just as we’d left them, the painting my mother allowed on the walls still intact, boxes of our possessions lining the edge of the room. I go through them, making piles of things to keep – my baby clothes, christening gown, photographs I don’t even remember. Each thing is a spark, a neural connection of recognition, as I rummage through the past in my dream world and in my real world, looking for the key to why I am this.

It was nice, looking back and seeing familiar sweaters, drawings, things of childhood when it was something good, still, and not something corrupt. I don’t know when the shift happened, but the evidence is clear. My computer got a virus, and no matter how aesthetically pleasing something is, when it doesn’t function properly, people get frustrated. Angry.

Is there a Geek Squad for people? Someone take me apart and rebuild me, make my strange loops not so strange.