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2003-10-16
11:09 a.m.
Wow. Things are crazy in the city of Boston these days. The Red Sox are one game away from winning against the Yankees and going to the World Series. Those two things combined make for a city full of absolutely crazy people who will tear apart anything in their path without even realizing what it is they’re tearing apart. The city is positively nuts.
I love it.
I love the energy in the air at times like this. It’s like the last day of school: your body’s in school but your mind is elsewhere in anticipation of the freedom of summer. Every nerve in the city is pinched tight and ready to burst. If the Red Sox win the game tonight, I believe there will be rioting. If the Red Sox win the World Series, I think the whole city will blow up.
You can’t take two steps without hearing someone talking about the Red Sox. Even people who hate baseball are swept up in the moment of glorious anticipation. I recently read something by David Mamet where he said that sports exist for the simple reason that humanity needs drama. This, my friend, is high drama. Moments of despair followed by moments of joy, moments of desperation and moments of frenetic elation. . . . It all leads to one end, and, despite the fact that everyone knows it can’t last forever, they’re caught up in it because life would be boring without drama. We need to live and die with these sports heroes because we need drama in our lives.
This has rarely been more evident to me than in these recent days.
I keep thinking back to 1999 when the Red Sox and the Yankees were at it in the playoffs. I went to a bar right outside Fenway Park and had a few beers with an ex-roommate who was a Yankees fan and an ex-friend who used to try and tell me that he overcame depression by thinking optimistically. Go ahead: you can roll your eyes here. He obviously wasn’t clinically depressed to begin with because depression inherently means that you CAN’T think optimistically no matter how hard you try. You can’t simply wish it away or think it away. I always thought he was a total dope for that reason.
But that particular day was amazing.
This was before I was on medication. The area outside of Fenway was crawling with excitement. The energy in the air was so high that I could literally feel it pulsing through my veins. The excitement entered with every breath, and I had the distinct feeling that I was too excited to know what to do with the excess amount of anxious energy. I felt like jumping up and down and screaming, dancing on tables or running as fast as I could around and around Fenway Park. But instead, I went into the bar, had a few drinks, and watched and listened as the rest of the crowd in the bar cheered fanatically for their team.
If it were possible to see excitement in the air, I saw it that day. My arms kept losing all feeling because my heart was pumping so fast and all the blood was going straight to my over-stimulated brain. It was one of the best feelings I’ve ever experienced.
I don’t feel things like that anymore.
That day, I was convinced that my problem was not anxiety and depression. I thought for sure I was experiencing the manic side of bipolar disorder. I still think it’s possible that I’m bipolar, but I’m not going to mention it to a doctor just because the meds I’m on seem to help a lot and I don’t want to go on a medication that will force me to quit drinking, as most bipolar disorder medications do. Even though my meds say not to drink, the doctor says it’s okay sometimes. With those bipolar medications, though, they have to do bloodwork every so often to ensure that the levels are right in your system, and if you drink alcohol, you could make things very, very bad for yourself.
I guess the point here is that I miss feeling like I did that day in the bar near Fenway Park. I miss feeling so overwhelmed by energy that I thought my heart was going to explode. Excitement like that doesn’t exist for me anymore. The feeling with the Red Sox in the playoffs this year is nice, but it’s nothing compared to the overly emotional, manic reaction of a totally fucked brain as it tried to deal with a complete overabundance of enthusiastic fervor.
God, I miss it.
