Well Alone

I’m not well — in company. 

Normality is a standard pitch. A resonant frequency of thought and behaviour, of mental functioning and sociability, that we create and reinforce in the relational place we exist in. It’s not a fixed calibration. Over time and space it changes, transforms, responding to the ebb and flow of ideas and innovations like a sheer rock face degraded, sculpted, and carved, revealing shapes and treasures that become fixtures for a time, until drastically hewn by the force of a tide or gradually reformed by the ordinary breeze.

Normality is a standard pitch and each of us, a resonant entity. While we contribute to the shaping of normality, we are also set in motion by it. 

Some find themselves calibrated in tune with normality, vibrating in synchronicity with contemporary ways of being and knowing. Their every move and utterance, their habits and ambitions, produce a gentle harmonic hum. Others, weighed down by the torment of disadvantage or disfigured by chance mutations find themselves discordant with the standard pitch. Their deviance interferes with normality creating a perceptible sonic tension, the loud throbbing beat of wind buffeting against the ears. 

I’m not well.

In this place in time, as I’m situated now, my being is set to a discordant pitch. I’m simply not resonating with the world – not in the sense of teenage crisis, uncertainty around identity, a tumultuous desire to fit in with the popular fancies of friends. No, I’m feeling out of accord with the immediate world I’m situated in, now, in this place and time. I’ve long had the habit of dissociating from the world before me, my attention dipping in-and-out of conversation, shockeling like a Jew in prayer before the steadfast wall of social expectation. 

Now this habit has become my habitat, dissociation my default form of association. I’m dipping out, but not in. An inverted attention, ever-introspective, a fragmented mind fixating on the meaning of every mention. Every word becomes my obsession, while I try to make sense of the metaphysical picture, to bring this disjointed pixelation into full resolution. 

It’s not the most agreeable way of being when you’re, well, in my company. 

When we don’t resonate with the average pitch of aggregate association, there’s a good chance that our oddity will be confused with illness. Anxiety prompted by the anticipation of poor interactions, a low self-appraisal feeding a general malaise; these are conditions that create interference with “normal day-to-day functioning”. In isolation there’s never deviation. A solo string with no symphony to sympathize with. A single voice not hounded to harmonize. 

No doubt there is beauty in harmony, in the confluence of diverse sounds producing a single song. I spectate often from balcony seats in envy of the natural proclivities and learned skills of the ensemble. I admire their mental wellness, i.e., how they internalize the normality that conducts their contributions. They are individual, but coherent both within and together.

I am well when I’m alone. I’m coherent by myself. I’m healthy without the rest of you.

In the company of others I’m not feeling well. I exhibit illness. For short sprints I can keep up with the race by contorting my face into the fit of the feeling, by glaring at your words and tethering my attention. I can be with you in the moment, for the moment, but then a thought and I’m gone. I’m suddenly enraged. My face betrays my will, my words stumble and meander, I ramble, provoke, leer and blink like something broken.

Is this illness? When a mind finds itself out of alignment with the collective Will; when it wishes for solitude and silence; longs to grieve, to rage, or even destroy — is this illness? 

“When it interferes with every-day functioning”, is how they put it.

I wish more would interfere with every-day functioning. What about our every day is functioning? Things work, but what’s working? My standard of living is grotesquely well-endowed. Inequality and inhumanity are tributaries feeding fresh water to my garden hose, so that I can enjoy the scent of fresh-cut flowers. I’m not ill, but illness is endemic to this place I reside in.

Illness has become a mechanistic flow, the normalization of harm, hedonism, and hubris. The machine functions as it was intended to, overproducing widgets to supply a manufactured demand. When a cog rattles, squeaks, or stops, we subject it to “treatment” for the sake of the machine. When one of our members lapses in production, offends our expectations, disrupts the peace, disappoints the romance, becomes altogether unsociable — poorly adjusted — is that now an indication of mental retardation?

I get it. I lack clinical nuance, except that I don’t. I know exactly how it works. So either you lack clinical nuance or you’ve been duped into sanctifying “professional” experience, and fear undermining your value in this capitalist system of harm creation, dependency, harm reduction, and “treatment.”

“I know that most people, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

Leo Tolstoy

I’m not ill. I’m in company.

When social standards are such that a person is expected to compartmentalize their convictions, subdue their soul to be an impartial, apolitical, dispassionate citizen in a partisan, market-driven polity that boasts secular neutrality, but shamelessly promotes a homogenizing hegemony, how can that person remain well? When the essential elements of our humanity are relegated to private spaces to safeguard that pleasant general hum of “unity” in the public sphere – to minimize discordant sounds because they make us cringe and wretch, they offend the well-functioning of our perfected machine – how can we avoid disintegrating?

I’m a disintegrated man in the Company, but I’m well alone.