meleagering
part one of two
Housekeeping: Evangelion is knocked back a week because of various stuff discussed in the post. We approach the end like two parallel lines doomed to meet only at infinity.…1
You may know the story of Atalanta,2 the fleet-footed girl who would only marry a man who could beat her in a race, and who was, eventually, beaten by Hippomenes, who distracted her by tossing golden apples in her path. A classic story for girls about how you can have love or greatness but not both (and you aren’t the one who chooses between them for yourself, most of the time). Atalanta doesn’t even really get love as she is subsequently and regrettably turned into a lion.
But, as with all myths, Atalanta shows up in different stories doing different things. For instance, in another, she goes on a boar hunt in Calydon with a man named Meleager, who is wooing her. The boar in question is rampaging because the king of Calydon disrespected Artemis, a goddess who figures prominently in the story of Atalanta in all variations. Meleager offers Atalanta the hide of the boar. His uncles (also on the hunt) absolutely refuse to allow this prize to go to a woman, so Meleager kills them. (People seem to kill each other on very little provocation in myths.)
Unbeknownst to Meleager (though it probably wouldn’t have mattered), when he was born his mother overheard the Fates saying that he would live as long as a specific log in the fire remained unburnt. She took the log out of the fire at the time but, heartbroken to discover that her son has killed her brothers, retrieves it and puts it right back on. He dies.
I went back to the hospital recently for a “state of the pancreas” sort of check in, then back again this week for an MRI. Lying down in the MRI machine with my eyes closed, doing various scans where I held my breath, I wondered if anybody does this with their eyes opened. Every time I tried opening mine it was like—yep, that’s still plastic. Still an inch or two from my face. Yep. Still there. I like MRIs, actually, they’re a much better experience than CT scans, which I said to the guy running my scan. He agreed—though we also both thought that we might not feel this way about “closed” MRI machines. (The machines I’ve been in at the hospital are “open.”)
Anyway. My doctor is a very kind person and obviously a conscientious one, but the whole time I met with him I was conscious the whole time of feeling increasingly on edge. It wasn’t until the appointment was over and my mother pointed out the hospital gift shop as we were walking back through it and said “that’s where I bought thus-and-such when you were admitted here” that I put it together.
That is, my sense of “on edgeness” was more of a monologue conducted so quietly I couldn’t hear it. Once I could, I discovered it went like this:
I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it
I’m not even really exaggerating that much. When I figured it out I actually started visualizing the words “I hate it” written over and over and over on a sheet of paper. Hate the building, hate the drive, hate it all. When you are actually in crisis you often don’t have the space to hate things because you’re just getting through them, but I was not in crisis anymore and I felt years of delayed hatred all at once. Figuring it out didn’t help, telling people didn’t help, getting out and back home didn’t help, sleeping didn’t help. I cried about it on the phone and that didn’t help. I have begun to fear that I am about to start having feelings about my situation rather than having only thoughts. I hate feelings! I love thoughts!
The MRI was easier, maybe just because I had something to do: change into a hospital gown, get an IV, do my breathing scans or whatever they are.…3
In some ways, though, this hatred was comforting. In my personal “maybe you’re malingering” monologue, which despite my best efforts I never really ever manage to shut off, I often accuse myself of a secret desire to get admitted to the hospital again. My takeaway from this trip was that if I do have such a secret desire it has hidden itself extraordinarily well. But mostly, it was not comforting, it was just unpleasant and stressful. It felt like a worse version of those dreams where somebody tells you that due to a clerical error, you never graduated college and now you have to go back and repeat your senior year.4
When I’m upset like this, I try to sense the place I don’t want to go and force myself to go there—that is, whatever my personal third rail is, I try to go touch it. When it comes to this specific reaction however, I can’t actually go there, I cannot in some physical sense sit around at the hospital until I feel I’ve crushed this hatred somehow. That would be weird and they’d probably ask me to leave. Also, it is in fact pretty rational to hate being in the hospital.
So instead I find my mind drifting off to books I haven’t read and movies I haven’t watched that I have a vague idea involve being trapped in labyrinthine structures: Piranesi, House of Leaves, the horror movie Cube that’s about being in a big cube.… These are all things to think about or read or watch, but none are quite third rails. But there was, I realized, one thing I could do.
I could Meleager myself.
You see: back in June 2022, the night I went to the hospital for the first time, I was trying, and failing, to watch a movie. I got about halfway through before I couldn’t continue because I was in too much pain and throwing up.
And I have often told people I’ll never finish this movie because it reminded me of Meleager’s half burnt log. That is, if I finished it, I would die somehow. It was a good joke! Except I actually kind of believed it. So there it was, my third rail. I could go back, mentally, to the place I didn’t want to go.
And touching it didn’t require me to do anything but pay $7 to buy a movie. Which is… John Carpenter’s In the Mouths of Madness.
So I’m gonna go watch it and—presumably—live. And then I will write a post about that. But I’m letting you know now in case I die. Then you will learn from my mistake, and never finish that movie you keep meaning to get to.
A question I was asking myself in doing the Evangelion recaps was “am I at a point where I can commit to a weekly thing without flaking a third of the time,” and I think this has been answered pretty flatly with “no.”
I have asked people “do you know the story of Atalanta” what feels like an improbable number of times the last month (twice).
The specific feeling of a saline flush of one’s IV is interesting and I found myself wondering how I’d describe it.
I sort of wrote about this before I guess.
atalanta is my fav greek myth. i hope you'll be kind to your feelings... i think the idea of rational thoughts vs. irrational feelings isn't correct, i think feelings are about as 'rational' as thoughts in that, although they sometimes conflict with each other and are sometimes wrong, they do protect us and guide us through the world, by helping us gather information about our experiences. it makes sense for your feelings to tell you very loudly not to return to the place where something traumatic happened; otoh, if you did have some desire to return to the hospital, maybe that's a rational suggestion from the part of you that chafes against aimlessness and uncertainty, and wants to anchor you in a place of purpose, where you know what to do and you can do it and your environment is geared toward that end. anyway, i hope you can embrace whatever they are trying to tell you, and then succeed in coming up with ways to trick them when you need to, e.g. meleagering. it's really hard, but you are great. i know you can do it!
If you do Meleager it’s been an honor 🫡