Want-Induced Psychosis (pt. 3)

"What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story, And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream." - Calderon de la Barca

Last night, miles from home, trying to fall asleep in an overheated unfamiliar bedroom, tossing and turning, listening to the rain hit the window, thinking, thinking, thinking—mulling mostly my own anxious sadness, and the phrase (the fact) that keeps coming back to me: "No matter what is next, the Golden Age is over."

That would be the "Golden Age" that I've had with C., the woman I love.¹

I've written lately about "want-induced psychosis"—how, if you want to love someone badly enough, then a little contrary reality won't be enough to stop you: it's easy enough to construct a cozy fantasy world in your mind, and then move in.

Last night, though, trying to break out of my own mental loop of anxiety², I play the reverse game: I construct, in my mind, a new fantasy, in which C. doesn't exist, never existed, was always a figment of my imagination. I imagine that I've spent the last few years of my life in a state of psychosis, happily building memories with someone who, it turns out, was a vivid hallucination. I imagine that I am only now coming out of this hallucination, and wrestling with the idea that many of my happiest memories never really happened.

In effect, I'm trying to negate one fantasy (my Happily Ever After life with C.) by employing another, new fantasy: the love that I thought I felt was an illusion.³

It is shocking—cold and empty—to sit in bed, in the middle of the night, and realize how much this strips out of my life. It feels as though a whole dimension has been flattened out of my world, or like color has faded into grayscale. At the same time, my life is suddenly, starkly simplified—the sudden absence of so much imagined future joy leaves me, for a rare moment, in the elusive "present": there is nothing more to me in this moment than me, in this moment. The thought is somehow quieting though not comforting.⁴

Now, many hours later: my self-induced psychosis has faded, and been replaced by the original (habitual) psychoses of missing her, imagining the life I might have had, imagining other possible future golden ages. But these familiar imaginings are finally tempered a bit by my experience sitting in bed in the middle of the night (a dreamer examining his pillow), feeling cold, empty, alone, and present. Quieted, if not comforted.⁵

The Golden Age is over. I wonder what's next?

1. Who will, in all likelihood, read this—read this, and be, if not upset, then certainly affected by it—thus altering the course of our future together: Schrödinger's Lover?

2. I'm losing her, so I want her more, so I'm more afraid of losing her. Etc.

3. Maybe, to most people, this seems backwards: why not simply live in reality? But I'm a dreamer, and I know this about myself, and I'm trying to live in reality—but first I have to make a course correction, and I'm hoping to use the fact that I am a dreamer to my advantage, for a change, instead of the liability it tends to be.

4. Sobs are tension leaving the body. Etc.

5. "Better never to have met you in my dream than to wake and reach for hands that are not there." (Otomo No Yakamochi)