The First (new) Rule of Tessadom

1. No crying in the bedroom.

I’d decided on this before I moved into this place, although by then it was already far too late to try implement such a thing in the city apartment. When I wrote this post way back when (which at the time I thought was overly melodramatic, and in hindsight think it’s sadly lacking in exaggeration), all that had been the daily routine for a couple of weeks already, and it never really changed. It wasn’t quiet soulful little tears and a sniff either. It was violent, frighteningly so, it was screaming without sound, and no matter how much I gave in and let it out, there was always more, more, more. Whole nights were devoured by crying, until the sun rose or I took drugs, and then the alarm would go off, and before I’d even rolled over I’d be crying again, as if the intervening hours of unconsciousness had never happened.

After some six months of that, you have to start questioning the whole deal.

I started to worry about the long-term effects of prolonged and regular tearstorms, because that can’t be good for your eyes. Would the constant pressure damage them? Would, if the crying stopped, they be unable to cope without all the extra tears and dry out and die? Were my tear ducts going to wear out? Was my face going to fall off? No one notices when you turn up to work with a puffy face and shadowed eyes if you do it every single day.

Then I started to wonder why it never stopped. What caused it was damn freaking obvious, but the intensity and frequency went above and beyond what was warranted. Maybe it wasn’t just coming from me. Maybe it was the apartment, and it had some messed up super freak-out amplifying feng shui going on. In which case, it wouldn’t matter whether or not I had a reason to cry, I was fucked anyway.

Or maybe, since I’d been so careless about where I was doing my crying – this bit of carpet, that bit of carpet, those steps, that corner, this chair, the bed, the tiles, the other tiles, by the window, against the cupboard, etc etc etc – I’d inadvertently contaminated the whole apartment with emotional pollution and mental detritus, and with nowhere to go it just built up and concentrated until stepping through the front door was like stepping into a nuclear reactor of psychic horror. It’s a wonder anyone could visit at all.

Whatever the cause (if there was one), it panned out as these things do, and I came to associate the apartment with being nigh hysterical with misery. It reached the point where I didn’t want to go home after work, because that just meant starting another round of tearstorms.

I’m not keen on living in a space like that again, hence this new rule. No contamination of sleeping space, and given the desk is in the bedroom, hopefully no blogging while crazy. Which won’t stop me, I can always take my laptop into the lounge room.

It’ll be a challenge, as there’s nothing better to do in that space between turning on the light and falling to sleep than brood and dwell and mope. But it’s winter, and damned if I’m getting out of bed to go cry in the kitchen in winter. The first week it was pretty easy, as I was exhausted and busy and everything was shiny and new. It isn’t hard to be distracted by the excitement of new things.

But the dust has settled and the shine has worn off, and I’ve rediscovered that nothing has changed. At the end of the day I’m still a bitter, lonely, frightened fuckup with a broken heart and a sick mother and apocalyptic dreams.

And this fuckup won’t be crying in the bedroom. This fuckup won’t be sleeping in emotional pollution again. This fuckup won’t hate her bed, or fear stepping through the front door, or loose control of her space.

Because this fuckup really doesn’t want her face to fall off.