Swiss Haze

It is too humid for me to be happy. The smoke from the Canadian wildfires has made its way to Switzerland and settled in between valley of the mountains. The usual picturesque Swiss skyline of peaks and Mont Blanc is obscured by haze that traversed the Atlantic. Everyone keeps reassuring me that you can see Mont Blanc, usually, it’s right there, its magnificent crest on the horizon.

I keep having nightmares about war. I go to the beach often. You cannot even see across the lake, to the French villages, it is more reminiscent of the sea, no coastline, unending water, it even smells like the sea, and there are seashells in the sand, which I do not understand. I floated in the cold water yesterday after three hours of French class in a building with no AC, it cooled my sunburn. That class melted my mind, it was so hot I could not focus and felt my brain shrivel up. The teacher is silly Swiss man who gets inches away from your face to answer a question, but he is not a good teacher. The language school is owned by a huge grocery store conglomeration, and in the same building as a gym owned by the same corporation. I was ignorant enough to think that only America had corporate monopolies.

Stepping over slimy memories, carefully avoiding the ones that make me ache, the ones that are only reminders of days gone by, that can live only in the past, as solid as concrete, untouchable. Those are the decisions I made and they live here and there is no going back. I haven’t made any wrong ones, so far that I ca tell. But have I made any right ones?

I went to a museum that featured art made by social outsiders. Art made in psychiatric hospitals, art made by people arrested at age 12 for public indecency, by people whose delusions were so great they formed their own reality, a reality separate from ours, based on ours, interacting with ours, but not touching it. I did find it inspiring, that their madness was so great it could create a world of its own, these people who were unable to live in this world, unable to understand it, unable to find themselves in it, they had to create a life of their own through their art. You can see it through the art, it is not the art of a sane person, it is desperate. It is insanely intricate. It is the art of a person who only has art, who uses art as a prayer, a hail mary. Most artists have more, they have life, friends and family, and even if not, they have a holding on reality. They understand what it is, and even if they do not have conventional life, they understand that they do not, they understand why they do not, but real crazy people, they do not.

I don’t feel like an American until I am in Europe. I miss America in the way you miss home when you move away for the first time, although you were dying to leave, although it felt insular and suffocating and like it killed your spirit, it was still your home, you had a place there, you belonged and saw yourself there. You had roots, you were reflected in places, things, familiarity.

I kept taking the pills that made me want to die because they stopped the crushing in my head. I hadn’t felt suicidal ideation in a long time – not for at least a year and a half, but it came back, insidiously, slowly. It felt natural and normal, like seeing an old friend, a friend you hated, but was familiar nonetheless. It started innocently, the words “kill yourself” just reintroduced themselves into my mental dialogue, randomly, at moments of minor inconveniences. Then the anxiety, the insecurity over every aspect of myself became overwhelming, so I titrated down from three pills to two, and I thought that was okay. The two pills kept the pain away and I wasn’t thinking of suicide, I could live. But unfortunately, even just the two pills are still bad. It makes me feel only stress, even when I should be happy and feel excited for the future, I do not. Everything is a source of stress and anxiety, it tells me things will be hard forever. The medication has been discontinued due to its psychiatric effects, but I still can’t help like feeling I’m a failure for going off of it. I could stick with it, stop being so dramatic, journal more, I don’t know, its pain-relieving effects are amazing. I hadn’t been pain free like that in years, probably before I was 15. But now as I teeter off, the pain is returning, in my neck, the base of my skull, my temples, but I hope to be happier soon.

You know how you read about kids using ChatGPT to get through college? You’d think students who actively chose to study abroad, to study diplomacy, would be different. But no, they talk about how they use ChatGPT to summarize the lectures to prepare for their presentations, and many just play games in class. The worst of it all – they see nothing wrong with it. They talk about it as casually as what they did over the weekend. Most people I meet my age just disappoint me. Most people I meet disappoint me. But that’s an issue with myself, I should not expect them to be any one way, love them for what they are, flawed, pleasure-seeking, shallow. I am the same way, but I run from it. Maybe that’s why it irritates me so.