2005-03-15 - 12:45 a.m.
Sometimes I look for melodrama or just want to feel more comfortable recording my own inner processes, to recognize these as valid (though not relevant for the entire world to read, obviously) and not just something to shrug off because I don’t want to be “dramatic.”
I woke up at 3:30 am last night with my heart pounding, unable to breathe. However, I don’t remember ever falling asleep, but whatever caused me to wake with a start would not let my heart slow down. I lay trembling in bed, having to make a conscious effort to bring air into my lunges. I took rescue remedy and gulped down water, tried to find comfort in the gurgling of my humidifier, but my heart kept pounding and my breath was too short. Finally I fell asleep, my head propped up by an extra pillow, because lying down brought back whatever fear it was full force.
I woke up with my heart still racing, but was able to sleep better in the full sunlight. Somehow giving into my subconscious and going to sleep brought out all my fears about inadequacy, about the imperfection of my emotions and actions, the ways I have (and/or fear I have) hurt and disappointed people recently, the ways stability is never really possible in our lives because everything keeps changing and while rationally I can embrace change, emotionally this is a much longer, slower, messier process.
I know that in my life I will hurt people I love and be hurt by them again. That is the nature of life and love, but it does not make living through those times easier. I have to remember too that having trust and faith and being kind means applying those ideals to my feelings about myself as well.
When I couldn’t sleep last night I started reading Lucy Lippard’s book on activist art, which she published in the early 1980’s, a few years before ACT UP took NYC by storm. It’s called Get The Message and her articles on artists books and the way she grapples with the relationship between art and political action and insists that art does have an important political and social role to play in society and artists cannot shirk that is just amazing. I have such a brain crush on her right now. I had read some of her book The Lure of the Local this past summer (which is much more recent and even more nuanced), but this book, despite some of its overly second wave feminist musings, is totally kicking my critical theory loving ass. Lucy Lippard, where have you been all my life?!
