Active Listening
Dec. 9th, 2025 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_camera
And it's a bracing 5° F out there this morning. The cold air seems to sharpen the resolution: Suddenly, I can see the tiniest features across long distances in the greatest detail.
###
For about a week after the Wellbutrin OD episode, my hands shook.
I have a pretty noticeable idiopathic hand tremor anyway. I inherited it from my mother. It's one of the reasons why I've never been able to do any public speaking even though I'm a compelling speaker and quite articulate in extemporaneous comments I make in front of just about any audience. But when I stand up before a crowd with prepared remarks, my hands don't just shake, they actually flutter up & down. That's what happens when I get even a little nervous.
The way the various roving bands of docs explained it—and I was an exotic zoo animal at Cayuga Medical Center, visited by teams from practically every service, because apparently very few people are stupid enough to do what I did—the Wellbutrin had had a synergistic effect on my nervous system: It potentiated every innate physical inclination.
For a couple of days after I was discharged, I wondered whether I would ever be able to drive again! I was freaked! My hands were fluttering so hard, I didn't think I would be able to hold a steering wheel straight! I spent the first few days strategizing: How are you going to get yourself and your car back to the Hudson Valley? How are you even gonna be able to live in the Hudson Valley if you can't use a car?
Eventually, though, that side effect did resolve.
###
The second Wellbutrin side effect was that the words inside my head suddenly muted.
I mostly "hear" the words I write.
Or rather, what I write is a synesthesic byproduct of a process that fuses seeing and hearing in a way that's impossible to describe. It's like living in a word cave where what I write are the stalagmites and stalactites that project from the hot springs.
I had absolutely no desire to write!
And this was alarming—because so much of my self-identity is bound up in the idea of myself as a writer. But also not alarming because I no longer gave a shit about my self-identity, it was totally clear to me that I was not exceptional in any way, and that I really deserved no more than to plod to the end of every day, go to sleep, wake up, & plod on to the next one.
Not sure whether this side effect was neurological—in the same way the shaking hands were—or whether it was brought on by shame.
But fortunately, that, too, seems to be resolving.
Though the words aren't pouring out of me yet.
Chapter 4 of the Work in Progress has that artificially compressed sense to it you get when you're trying to cram a whole lot of figurative subtext into as few words as possible. This was one of F. Scott Fitzgerald's big problems, why he sat at his desk for eight hours a day chain-smoking, quaffing scotch, rearranging pencils, and pounding out a mere 200 words a day. It's why I find The Great Gatsby—for all the beauty of its individual sentences—practically unreadable.
First draft, I remind myself.
The words are there. They only grow louder if you actively listen for them.
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