Como luceros fríos

2008-10-11T20:42:00.002-05:00

We ate all the mango popsicles at like 2am in the middle of a hurricane, because the power was out and they'd just have melted anyway. And every time I think about that, my throat gets tight.

2008-10-07T19:48:00.002-05:00

I have a place to live. I'm moved in. My life is in shambles and it's just another fucking horrible fall that is going to be followed by another awful winter. Just when I think my life has reached the pinnacle of ridiculous, something even worse happens.

2008-09-28T22:01:00.002-05:00

I lost my apartment in a hurricane. I've been a step or two from homeless ever since. I think I've found a new place to live, but until I sign the papers my anxiety levels are going to stay cranked up to eleven. I'm more or less financially devastated. My former landlord is refusing to return my deposit on a technicality. If this new place falls through, I don't know what I'm going to do.

2008-07-22T10:52:00.002-05:00

Last spring, an old friend of mine said he and his partner would be visiting me here in July. Only, doesn't seem like it now, as it's the end of the month and they aren't talking to me. Also, my first husband, the rapist, is moving to their town to be around them. I guess it's time to write him off. Again. Only, this is the last time.

2008-06-20T20:40:00.002-05:00

I just got a call from someone I used to be very close to in cult-land. One of the folks we joined up with died of cancer (I'm not clear on what type, just that it was reproductive). She never got out. She had two sons who are grade school age now. She died poor and without healthcare. I remember her as having chronic illness issues back when I lived on the farm. And now she's gone.

I've never met a sicker bunch of people than the hare krishnas. Everyone who has been in it long seems to have some kind of chronic illness. Including me. And it seems like a disproportionate number of devotees die of cancer. I think it was Alice Miller who talked about trauma leading to the body completely turning on itself that way. The cultists call it "Krishna's mercy," when they suffer, that Krishna is helping them remember him and lose their attachment to the body and the material world.

Advice from an ex-cultist: Run far, far, far away from any group that glorifies suffering. They will do you violence and then stand back to admire their handiwork.

Good-bye, Gopi-Lila. Lisa.

2008-06-15T15:24:00.001-05:00

You ruined my life and I still love you. Happy Father's Day.

2008-06-09T22:38:00.001-05:00

Summers and holidays were the worst. My mother would be at work during the day and, if I couldn't find a friend's house to stay at, I'd be with my father all day. There was a library. It was far, but still within walking distance. It was almost like school. But sometimes (often) I'd get grounded for looking at my mother wrong or something equally ridiculous and then I'd be stuck at home. With him.

I loved school so much. It was a refuge. It was the only one I had. They couldn't ground me from school.

He would follow me all over the house, from room to room, on some flimsy pretense. I had to keep moving. Pretend to be too absorbed in a tv show to see him. I could see what he was doing, but I could never acknowledge it. I couldn't really read while he was looming. I needed volume, noise. I'd pick up the phone and call a friend. But that was a risky one. Sometimes, after he'd gone too far even for my blurry boundaries, he'd think I was calling to tell on him. He'd start to get defensive. He always hated me being on the phone for any reason. You don't need to be calling anyone, he'd always say. Oh, yes, yes I did. I needed it. Because for those minutes while I was on the phone, he was too scared to do anything. But he'd order me off it quickly, tying up the phone lines all the time, he'd say. He refused to get call waiting.

So he'd follow me.

The bathroom door had a lock. It was a flimsy one. There was a metal key we kept in the hall cabinet. It wasn't a regular key. It was more like a tool to disengage the lock mechanism. You'd stick it in a slot on the doorknob and the lock would pop open. I learned very quickly to take the key with me into the bathroom. He'd yell at me. What if you fell in the shower? I couldn't get in to help you. If I fell in the shower, I'd be dead and not have to deal with your shit anymore, I wanted to say. But I never answered. I never acknowledged the question. Just like I never acknowledged what he was trying to do. Was doing. I never acknowledged that anything was going on at all. Well, almost never. I forgot the key once. Only once. He came in while I was in the shower. He said things that I won't repeat, but I remember every word of it. Get OUT, I told him, NO. Amazingly, he retreated. After I got out of the shower I retrieved the key from the cabinet, went to my room, and locked the door. And trembled.

I never had a moment's peace in that house.

When I first moved to the city where I live now, my ex-husband and I were staying with a couple I'd been romantically involved with, but no longer was. The man, T, would follow me from room to room, looming over me. He would walk into the bathroom when he knew I was showering. He invade my privacy and he would corner me and make comments about my body. Just like my father. I lived those few months in constant pain in my back, my shoulders, my neck, my jaw-- all from the tension of feeling like prey.

I'm in my 30s now and I'm painfully uneasy sitting with my back to a door. I can't stand to have anyone near the bathroom when I'm in it. I hate for people to surprise me, startle me, come up behind me, to watch me when I don't know they're watching, or to touch my back. He calls me up and he wants to talk to me. And there are so many things I can hear his voice saying. This is why nowhere is ever home for me. Nowhere is ever safe or restful. I'm never, ever quite at ease. This is why I overreact, why I forget things, lose things. Because, somewhere, sometime, someone will always be stalking me. He's old and sober and far, far away. But I've carried him here, with me.

2008-05-29T17:15:00.001-05:00

Protip: If you're going to browse my blog using a proxy, don't use the same one every time.

2008-05-27T17:49:00.000-05:00

There's really nothing happy about it.

2008-05-14T19:44:00.003-05:00

My therapist isn't dropping my insurance right now, it seems. But she's getting calls from the company about me. They're "reviewing" my case. They are questioning her diagnosis. They're asking her why I have PTSD.

"So when do you think she'll get better? How long is this going to take?"

Yeah. They said that. They are also insinuating that since I'm so highly functional (meaning I can hold down a professional job), that I'm not bad off enough to continue with therapy, especially since I'm not desperately suicidal. I have no idea what is going to come of this.

I think I should tell them that their probing makes me want to off myself.

2008-05-11T16:16:00.000-05:00

My mother won't stop calling and emailing and I'm starting to feel cornered.

2008-05-08T21:59:00.002-05:00

Even though my asthma has subsided, I still can't breathe. I never noticed before, how I start to hold my breath when I get all emotional. My chest hitches and I go still. Sometimes I quit breathing entirely and don't start again until things begin to go grey. Now I'm aware of it. And I still can't breathe.

2008-05-05T15:59:00.007-05:00

He said a lot of things when he was drunk. And he was drunk a lot. When he was sober, he would make these terrible jokes about how if so-and-so gave his relationship with me the veto, that would be it. Comments like that always made the pit of my stomach kind of turn. On one hand, he'd tell me I could lean on him, I could trust him. But on the other, he made an awful lot of comments that seemed like they were intended to keep me off-balance. So, yeah, he said a lot of shit when he was drunk. He said that none of his friends liked me when we met. Guess they must've given it the veto, then. And the only reason I can think of as to why they read this blog on an almost daily basis is because they find it entertaining. Refer to the image on 5 April.

He also said that I wasn't even worthy of my name, that I was just a fucked up, broken, shitty version of myself and that the real me had been killed off a long time ago. He said that he'd fallen in love with those flashes of potential, of what could have been. I think that may be the second worst thing anyone has ever said to me. It's in the top five, at the very least. Truth hurts, and all that. I think about it a lot. I wonder what I would have been like, all the things I could have done. I wonder how my life would be different. And I hope that alternate universes exist so that somewhere, there's this awesome girl who is really smart and really happy and can do just anything. It's why I tell my students so many of the things I wish someone had told me when I was ten.

I have a cold heart, he said. A heart of iron and that I had no mercy. I wish that one were true. I wish it so bad.

He told me that he thought I had manipulated my father into abusing me because I wanted power. Now that is the worst thing anyone has ever said to me.

He told me that I didn't know him, that I didn't know anything about him. He said he'd been all over the world and he'd seen so many things that I couldn't begin to understand, that only a handful of people had ever seen. He said that I thought he was easily fooled, but that he'd done too much and he knew too much, and, besides, I didn't know him. Yeah. I didn't. I didn't know why he had gotten so distant, after months of being so happy that he was coming to be with me. I had to ask him. He never talked to me about anything. When I asked him what was going on, when I asked him if things were okay, when I tried so hard to give him an opening to just fucking talk to me, he lied. Everything's fine-- everything's great, he'd say between drinks. He lost his patience with me and insulted me a lot. I was watching everything unraveling and he just wouldn't talk to me. He wasn't looking for work and he quit talking about the things he wanted to do with me. I had to ask him if he was leaving me because he wouldn't tell me. And one of the reasons he gave was because I didn't trust him, because he felt like he had to prove himself to me. Only, he was doing all kinds of things that gave me reason to feel uncertain. He was doing none of the things that people do when they're planning to stay somewhere. He didn't love me enough to tell me what was going on.

I had to ask.

And then he wouldn't tell me when he was leaving. He lingered six weeks. I guess he thought he was keeping me from harming myself, or something, whatever could assuage his conscience. And he just kept on drinking. And saying all those things he said. And when I'd ask him about them, he'd apologize and say it wasn't true, none of it was true, he didn't really feel that way or think those things. And then he'd get drunk and say even worse things. He was moving his things around, putting them in boxes and packing up. Every weekend I'd think, "He's going to leave this weekend." But he didn't. I'd ask him when, and he wouldn't tell me. He'd snap at me or walk away. I didn't know when he was going until the day before he left.

He made me want. He made me think I'd be okay and have a good life. He made me think I could have things I'd scarcely been able to look at sidelong, I thought they were so, so far out of my reach. He made me hope. For the first time ever, I thought things might really turn out well for me, that I could be safe and happy and wanted and loved. He made plans with me. But all the sudden it was gone. And I still don't know exactly why. He won't tell me. Just like he wouldn't tell me he was unhappy. Or that he was planning to leave me. There was never any working things out. There was never any trying to make things better. There was just this six foot, implacable stone wall that still shared my bed at night and held me in silence when I cried.

He said that I could be angry with him, that I could hate him if I needed to. But I don't. I mostly just miss my friend. And wonder why. I think about how the only person I've ever let in, the only person who has ever really known me, thinks I'm broken and fucked up. And how he's right. Everything I was so scared of is all true.

Just after he left he said that he'd always love me and that everything I had to say to him mattered. He said he missed me and that, with time, we could be healthy towards one another. I don't know what he meant by that. He wrote me a long letter about some of the things that were going on with him and told me nothing was my fault. His communication with me turned into mild, disinterested, polite one-liners, if he responded at all. There were years of being able to tell him anything, of having him want to know everything, of seeing or reading things and thinking how much he'd like it and then showing him and he would light up. I blew up on him a couple months ago and it's been silence ever since.

He couldn't have done a better job in hurting me if he'd planned it, years ago. If he'd set out and done everything deliberately, it wouldn't have been as masterfully executed as all this.

Now, some of his friends who-- how did he phrase it? who were "definitely unimpressed" by me, they read this blog every day. I wonder if he stonewalls all of them, too. Probably. He told me once he thought they read my blog to get a window into his life. I guess that means he doesn't really talk to them either.

2008-04-23T19:23:00.002-05:00

My life is defined by all the things I didn't say.

2008-04-16T23:51:00.002-05:00

My life consists of me doing one agonizingly hard thing after another and it never lets up. And, in the end, there's just no pay-off. I mean, fuck, it took me how long to finally try and give therapy a real chance? And the punchline is that I'm having to quit after three months because of insurance problems. Are you reading this and facepalming? I would be. I am so fucking stupid to even hope that things might become better for me. There is no use trying when all I ever do is just spin my wheels and not ever get anywhere worthwhile.

2008-04-08T17:03:00.001-05:00

My therapist no longer accepts my insurance.

2008-04-05T16:30:00.000-05:00

What other appeal does this blog have, really?

2008-04-02T23:41:00.002-05:00

Therapist is out of the office this week and feel like tearing my skin off. More than usual, I mean.

I wish I weren't so paralyzed all the fucking time. I wish I could have said and done the things I wanted. But sometimes (most of the time) I can't move and I can't speak, I just go on autopilot. My eyes are burning and I don't know what the fuck I'm trying to say. Sunday has come early this week, it seems.

2008-03-31T22:50:00.004-05:00

I had a dream last night that we were on the roof. It was kind of like my old house in Mount Pleasant in DC, there was a trapdoor you could climb up and get out onto the roof and it was nice. Our shoes were crunching the gravel up there, and it was night time. Just a little cool out, so I was shivering and you were saying how it would be perfect if the temperature dropped like fifteen degrees, so that you could wear a sweater. We talked and we talked and you held my hand and, like always, I marveled over how your hand could just engulf mine.

I have the stupidest dreams.

I found my guru on youtube. He looks so old now. And I can't believe how much I miss him.

I don't know how many fucking times I can lose everything.

2008-03-31T19:13:00.002-05:00

The meds work. I can speak now. Hooray for talking.

In other news, I keep trying to write something about mind-control, brainwashing, and how victims perpetuate those practices. But for some reason, it's really getting to me more than usual. Maybe another time.

2008-03-25T18:57:00.002-05:00

I went to the doctor today and got a lovely scope shoved through my nose and down my throat. CRINGE CRINGE. Anyway, I am on more meds and if this does not work then I am giving the fuck up. Because I am broke from all this medication. Fucking broke. And I am tired and in pain. I have been ill non-stop since November. This has to stop, because I can't do it anymore.

2008-03-22T09:17:00.003-05:00

Two weeks, still no voice. Monday I am calling an ears/nose/throat specialist to make an appointment for them to shove a scope down my throat. This is causing me some completely irrational freakiness, but fortunately for me I like talking more than I am afraid of someone messing with my mouth and throat.

2008-03-20T16:20:00.003-05:00

This is an absolute must-read. It's a run-down on the Assemblies of God churches and what it's like to grow up in all that. It's absolutely 100% resonating with me.

I had another acute fucking asthma attack. Goddammit.

2008-03-19T11:52:00.002-05:00

Theron,

You do realize I shut down my old livejournal because of you, right?

Please, let me be.

2008-03-18T15:25:00.001-05:00

Those Cymbalta commercials make me want to off myself.

2008-03-18T13:58:00.003-05:00

I go to the dr. tomorrow. I haven't been able to speak really for a week. My voice is cracked and hoarse. For a few days there I couldn't talk at all. Couldn't even answer my damn phone.

Yeah, Spring break '08 is rockin.

I haven't been using my steroid inhaler because if it's not causing this throat shit, then it's aggravating it horribly. Only, without it my chest is a-tremble every time I inhale, trying immediately to expel the air in my lungs. I'm out of breath. This is unbearable and it's fucking freaking me out. A PTSD discussion site polled its members and an overwhelming amount of them have asthma. Knowing this does not help, though. Not at all.

I am rapidly losing weight. In the past six weeks, I have lost half the weight I gained on medication four years ago. Pants I could not come close to wearing in January are now falling off my ass. This is both good and bad. I am afraid that people will start thinking I have an eating disorder, like they did before when I was thin. But, then, women's bodies are always under scrutiny and people think they can comment on them because we're public property, I guess. So whatever. Eh. We'll see, I guess.

I just can't breathe.

There is no satisfaction in telling off someone you love. None at all. There's only hurt on top of hurt on top of hurt. And the only person it is hurting is me. And that makes it hurt even more. I can't sleep. There just isn't enough melatonin in the world to make me rest easy. I can't even drink myself to sleep.

2008-03-16T15:09:00.002-05:00

All right, let's shut the fuck up about all that "survivor" shit, now, why don't we? It's stupid. It doesn't empower me. What's so special about not having died? Do I deserve a cookie for not having killed myself? I mean, what the fuck did I survive for? This? It can't be this. There's nothing here. I fought and I tried and the end result a ridiculous, empty life and a lot of crying to this dramajournal. It never gets any easier and it never gets any better. Congratulations. Go me.

2008-03-16T13:15:00.003-05:00

My father called today and left a message. Checking up on me, he said. This is on the heels of intermittent emails from my mother asking me to contact them. I think this is the fourth or fifth time my father has called me on the phone. In my entire life, I mean. Anyway, even if I wanted to answer, I couldn't. I've had acute laryngitis for days and I can't speak. So I emailed them and told them that, no, my city has not been bombed and to chill out.

I am such a coward.

2008-03-14T23:17:00.002-05:00

In PTSD, victims' brains are awash with heightened levels of cortisol. High, sustained doses of cortisol destroy neuroreceptors in the hippocampus, the area of the brain that controls the fight/flight (and freeze) mechanism, which becomes heightened and uncontrollable. The hippocampus, in many PTSD victims, is significantly smaller than normal. This part of the brain is also controls spatial navigation and spatial memory.

Suddenly, a lot of shit makes sense. Especially my almost comic lack of spatial intelligence and direction sense.

2008-03-12T21:54:00.002-05:00

My right arm aches and goes stiff with a memory. My little brother was a toddler, still in diapers. My father was in front of the tv playing Space Invaders on the Intellivision and there were Falls City beer cans everywhere. It was always Falls City, with the red logo on the front. My brother wanders between my father and the tv screen. The time between my father shouting at him to move and my brother freezing in place from being yelled at was probably only a second or two, and then he stood up and grabbed the baby by his right arm and flung him. Hard. Who would have known that a drunk could move so quickly? He sat back down to his beer and his video game, scowling, while my mother called out, horrified. I remember exactly how she said his name. I sat there and I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. I stayed very, very still for a long time. I think I was six, seven at the most. I wanted to go to my brother and hold him, but I couldn't. I was too scared.

I still freeze when I think about it.

I think it was three years later. My father was drunk. Again. The basement needed new panels to cover the overhead lights in the ceiling. My father was standing on a chair, trying to fit them in. Only, he was fumbling because he was too drunk to do it. He stepped down from the chair and beat the panels against the wall and the floor, smashing them while he hollered I can't remember what, just a lot of swearing. In front of all of us. I ran upstairs. My brother ran upstairs. I heard him crying in his room. I went to him that time and held him. We didn't say a single word. He cried and cried. This was the only time I ever went to comfort my brother.

I could hear my mother and father fighting when they came back upstairs. She was shrill and he was thundering. It's all confused now, but there were rifles in the closet. And a handgun I didn't know we even had. She was going to leave him and take us with her. Probably to Grandma's. I wanted to go to Grandma's. He pointed the gun at his head and I knew what he would do if she took us to Grandma's. I had to take my brother out of the room, I think she told me to. The front door slammed and he was gone. Drunk driving again. To the bar. We crept out of my brother's room to see. She wasn't crying, but she had a stricken look on her face. She raised the gun. It wasn't pointed at us, but it wasn't pointed in the opposite direction either. I wondered if she was just going to start shooting everything. I wondered if he had made her crazy. She pulled the trigger over and over, finally aiming at the wall and down. She wanted to check if it was loaded, she told us. It wasn't. I wondered what would have happened if it had been. We would have had holes in our house, shot by my mother, and for some reason that was very, very scary. But I was dry-eyed and mute. So was my brother. I can't remember anything that happened next, for the rest of that day. I don't think he came back that night. This was also scary.

She was always packing suitcases, for her and for us, but she never left. Not once. Not for a single night. She never took us out of there. She wonders, today, why my brother is always so short-tempered with her. So angry and resentful. Why he takes things out on her. Does she really wonder, though? Does she really not know?

She emailed me last night. Spring is coming to West Virginia and she is sprouting little plants for her garden. And I can't possibly be too busy to write. She wants to hear from me. She's worried about me.

Yeah. Me too.

2008-03-10T17:40:00.003-05:00

Well, that was... interesting.

I just had my first acute asthma attack. As far as I could tell, there was no trigger. At least, none that I comprehend. I wasn't feeling particularly emotional. There wasn't anything new in the air. Nothing. I had to use the rescue inhaler and now I'm okay. But I was afraid I'd have to go get help, it was that bad.

2008-03-08T15:08:00.003-06:00

I was trying to clean my upstairs. Get my clothes organized. Throw out things I haven't worn since I was a crazed cultist. And I just stopped right in the middle of it and now my upstairs is a fucking wreck. He left so many things behind. Some of them are too heavy for me to lift or move. He's been gone like two months and I still haven't thrown out the random things he left. Why was it so fucking easy to leave me? Why didn't I merit a "hey, let's talk about some stuff?" Why can't I find a way to deal with all the things that have me poisoned and unable to physically function like a normal person? Are there people who are happy and like living? Or is it that everyone is pretending and I'm just not good at that anymore?

This is all there is. There's nothing else for me. There are just days and days and nothing worth filling all those hours where I'm not working.

2008-03-08T15:04:00.001-06:00

I have a wedding to attend in two hours. Also I am having another fucking meltdown. The two are entirely unrelated, except I have to figure out how to put on a nice face to be out in public instead of behaving like a badly played opera lead.

2008-02-28T21:31:00.003-06:00

I have spent most of today feeling kind of quietly hysterical. You know, calm, soft-spoken, but gibbering on the inside. It makes me laugh at myself.

When I was a kid, I really loved dollhouses. Not so much the precious, twee girlie ones. I thought Barbie's Dream House was lame. I liked the cunning ones that had real craftsmanship behind them. My father had some appreciation for this passion, as he was really into model trains. We liked the miniatures, he and I.

So when I was about nine or so, my big Christmas gift was a dollhouse. It hadn't been put together yet, it was the frame and cut out wood bits and base and whatnot. The plan was that my father would build it and I would help do things like the shingles on the roof and shutters and stuff. I was really excited about it. See, my father is brilliant. I guess that is part of what makes everything so fucking sad. There were times when he was sober and kept his hands to himself, he was brilliant and fascinating and he taught me so much about history, politics, art. It's all the could-have-beens that kill me. But I was really excited that my father and I had a Project and he would be Spending Time With Me and it would be fun.

Only, it didn't happen. He got as far as staining the wood and trimming down some pieces and then he stopped. I would ask him and ask him if we could do stuff with it, put it together, and there was always a reason he couldn't. A lot of times the reason was, "Not today," or "I don't feel like it right now." Or he would just be too plastered to do anything but drink some more. When we went to the miniatures store I bought little tiny pieces of furniture and stuff to play with and I hoped it would go in the house when it was finally done. One of the things I bought was a little bunkbed with yellow pillows.

I graduated high school at 16. That tiny bunkbed was still sitting on my bookshelves when I went away to college. I asked my mother once if I could have the dollhouse. I thought that maybe I could try and put it together, even though I suck at that kind of thing. She laughed and said no, that someday her grandchildren would want to have things to play with when they went to visit grandma. I thought it then, and I think it now: If I ever manage to have children, they aren't going to ever meet their grandparents. Ever. My parents won't even know my children's names.

Everyone I have ever loved has broken their promises to me. I wish that they wouldn't make those promises in the first place. Hope is the cruelest thing there is.

2008-02-26T18:34:00.003-06:00

It really sucks to have friends who never, ever contact me. I always have to seek them out. It's humiliating and I don't need any more embarrassment in my life. It makes me wonder what the fuck is wrong with me, and we all know I could spend several days listing all of that.

I am pretty sure that no one who reads this falls into that category so don't go getting upset.

2008-02-26T17:43:00.004-06:00

Okay. Last post edited due to bad behavior on my part.

I don't know how any of you folks can put up with me, because I think I'm pretty intolerable.

2008-02-25T21:34:00.002-06:00

Today is my father's birthday. Sixty-one years old. My father is an old man. It seems wrong, somehow. That he's old, I mean.

I spent so many years trying to split my father into two people. It makes perfect sense. I dissociate, so why don't I try and do the same thing to him, right? I tried to tell myself I had two fathers. One was the drunk, the other was my real daddy, the one I loved. The one who loved me. Only, it isn't real. They're the same person. And I want to stop feeling so sickhearted at the thought of hurting his feelings. I want to stop loving him. To never talk to him again.

I sent him a birthday card. My neck and back are so tight I can hardly move them. I wish I could stop. The pain is pretty bad.

I went to the doctor today. Now I have a steroid inhaler. I am very, very uneasy about it. But I am more uneasy about fainting from lack of air.

2008-02-24T11:41:00.002-06:00

I used to believe in stuff. A lot of stuff. It was all very important to me. And now I'm half-hearted about everything. Quarter-hearted. No-hearted. Nothing feels good anymore. Nothing is interesting. I have a whole stack of books I wanted to read, ever since December. They'll probably be in the same stack a year from now. Two years from now. I have a lot of time ahead of me and I can't find anything to fill it but work. There are no goals because there is nothing I want to do. There's just no end in sight.

I've kept my apartment pretty clean though, much to my amazement. Since my antihistimines were upped, I can wash dishes and floors and counters and my hands don't break out in hives unless I really, really over-do it. It's something I can do that has a distinct beginning and end and gives immediate visible results. That never soothed me before, but what the hell. It does now. I can't vacuum though, without breaking out in hives. Fucking hell.

All these nights are really long.

He told me that I was worth loving. I wouldn't love me, though. What is so lovable about someone who is sad all the time, hour after hour, day after day? That shit is tedious.

My cats really enjoy it when I change the bedsheets. I leave the blankets off for awhile and they both hop up on the bed and luxuriate. It's bizarre, but I'll do all sorts of crazy shit to make my cats happy.

I don't care about anything election-related. This is no change, however, from previous years. At least something stays the same.

I go to the doctor tomorrow for a physical and to try and deal with these fucking asthma meds. I predict tears.

My therapist is out of her office this week, traveling.

2008-02-20T22:28:00.003-06:00

I still feel super strung out. My hands are shaking nonstop and I have a constant flutter in my chest.

I'm frustrated with myself. Just when I think I'm going to feel something, I immediately start to cut it off. It's that thing where I can feel it all shutting down in the back of my neck, my jaw, my shoulders. It's a reflex and I can't seem to stop it. And now I don't know if I'm maybe doing a little better or if I'm just more able to suppress everything.

A time when I was happy: I was with some older guy friends who actually never fucked with me. They were all good people. I was sixteen. We climbed a bridge over the Ohio River. There were catwalks just below it and we ran all over them. Then we found the a spot to sit and look down at the river. Two of them climbed out onto some of the beams. I could have stayed on that bridge forever. When I was too short to reach the handholds to get back up, they lifted me until I could grasp them.

2008-02-19T21:01:00.003-06:00

I think the anti-depressants are working. I am still horribly depressed, but it's not at the level it was for the past couple of months. I feel a little more functional. Who knows? I may be eating these words in a couple of days. Sunday and I are mutual enemies. And I wish that small tasks didn't seem so overwhelming. It's really hard to take that first step to start doing something.

So I went off my asthma meds for a few days because I felt like I was strung out on meth or something. Then I couldn't breathe, and that wasn't really acceptable either. I was starting to feel faint pretty much all the time. I wasn't blacking out, but kind of greying out. So now I'm taking them again and I feel strung out. I can't win. But I go to the dr. next week and I can deal with a few more days of feeling cracked out. Exhausted and hyper-alert at the same time.

2008-02-17T19:09:00.003-06:00

Now this inhaler for my asthma is fucking me up, too. My resting heart rate is about 110-120 and I am shaking like a leaf. I have that horrible dry cough that hasn't gone away since November, only it's worse now. Eight days until I see the doctor. My body is telling me that I'm terrified, only I'm not. I can't catch my breath. I want to crawl out of my skin. My brain is vibrating inside my skull. My heart is pounding so hard that I lurch forward a little with each beat. This fucking sucks so much. I'm so frustrated. I'm trying to be calm and to ask myself what my body is trying to tell me, but right now all I can think my body is saying is "FUCK THIS INHALER SHIT IN THE NOSE."

Sunday night is always bleak and full of want. I want to hit my head against the wall just to have a different kind of hurt. I won't, so don't comment telling me not to. But Jesus fuck, it feels like every nerve in my body is jangling. You know that sound phones used to make when you left them off the hook? That's what I sound like to me, in my head, right here and now. I need it to stop. Eight days until I can see the doctor. But I am afraid they will say they don't know what to do for me. That they'll just prescribe inhaler after inhaler until there aren't any more left to prescribe and I can't afford any more fucking meds anyway. This is the nature of psychosomatic illnesses. Nothing works. I can't stop tormenting myself, I just can't stop.

Spring break is coming up soon and I don't know what the fuck I am going to do when I have eleven days of emptiness. It's like eleven Sundays in a row. I wish I could sleep through it all.

2008-02-16T21:54:00.003-06:00

There is really nothing to say tonight. I've started and deleted like five times now. It's cold and it's been storming all day. My bed is really empty and I am full of want. I feel starved and it makes my hands ache with grasping.

2008-02-16T09:07:00.002-06:00

I woke up this morning at 7am (yeah, on a Saturday) and immediately started crying. I have no idea what that was all about. I don't remember any dreams.

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a person whose world view is defined by stark, extreme dichotomies. I just don't know if they realize how painfully aware of that fact I am. I hate it. Thinking about it sends me into wanting to make some rather extreme statements about myself. But I don't know how else to be. I was programmed this way.

But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, not hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth. Rev. 3:16

That's the verse I was raised on. There was no room for ambiguity. God was an old man who swung between sort of jolly (if still distant) and extremely fucking pissed off while wielding magical powers. That was pretty much how I saw my grandfather, too. He was a Pentecostal minister who founded the church my mother, brother, and I attended while my father lived in the basement and drank Falls City beer. My Sunday school teacher used to reduce me to tears, making pointed comments about unbelievers and their eventual fate. Everyone knew my father was an unbeliever. Only, when I got just a little bit older, I knew without any doubt in my heart that when the Rapture came (and it would be soon, it's always soon with them), I would be left behind, alone with my father. I didn't care about the plagues of locusts and rivers of blood so much as I was afraid of what would happen if Jesus took away what little bit of resistance that stood between me and my father's free reign.

They told us that demon-possessed people were everywhere. They found some element of Satanism in just about everything. Hippie peace symbols were Satanic because, obviously, they were broken crosses turned upside down! Certain movies and bands were off-limits because they had a "cult following." I'm not kidding, they were incapable of comprehending the whole "figure of speech" thing. They were incapable of any kind of subtlety.

I was part of that church until I was 14.

2008-02-13T18:24:00.002-06:00

I am so blank right now. I feel like there is a disconnect between thought and feeling, and it's jarring. Usually this means I'll be having another meltdown soon. So I'm bracing myself.

2008-02-11T21:43:00.000-06:00

I can't deal with any of this tonight. It's burying me and I can't breathe.

2008-02-11T21:29:00.001-06:00

The scariest thing is that I don't remember everything. All the things I have replaying in my head over and over, and there's still more. It surfaces sometimes in moments that feel like an earthquake. Why does there have to be more?

I didn't tell anyone in the cult much of anything about it, no matter how close I was to them. The philosophy said, ultimately, that karma ruled all, that I had experienced what I did because in a previous life I had inflicted all of those things on someone else. That breaks down to "I deserved it." I always thought I deserved it. I didn't need the cult to give it a philosophical backbone.

There is no god. If there were, he'd be a fucking asshole who didn't merit any further consideration. Once upon a time I was a Pentecostal child who believed with all my heart and prayed and suffered and cried night after night for help and all I ever got was silence. There was no lack of faith. There was a lack of a god. There is nothing in the sky but more sky. And there is nothing in my heart but blood and hurt. There is no great loving, mighty Father and there is no blue-skinned, lotus-eyed boy who plays a flute and dances. I wasted so much time. I should have just prayed to the wall, because at least you can lay your palm on that and feel it solid under your skin.

2008-02-11T19:15:00.001-06:00

I didn't use my inhaler today. PRO: I am not trembling and I don't feel like self-injuring. CON: I am constantly out of breath and coughing, to the point where it's making teaching harder. And it makes me feel tired.

My mother sent me a Valentine's Day card, which makes me feel pathetic and angry. Inside, she wrote "[my name], I really miss you! What is going on in your world?" I wonder if she has any idea how much I wanted to hear those words when I was 10. 13. 16. 19. I was begging for her to ask me what was going on. I needed it so much.

Dear Mom,

When your daughter suddenly stops smiling, something is wrong. I have seen our family photo album with its pictures of me. Once I hit 9, I didn't smile anymore. I didn't stand near any of you anymore, or touch you. When your child elects to go clothes shopping rather than stay home alone with one parent, something is wrong. When your outgoing child is suddenly fearful and inhibited, something is wrong. Also, I should not have to be telling you that when your husband pulls out a gun from the closet and threatens to shoot himself with it, the correct course of action is not to wait until he wanders off to drink some more and then aim it at the wall and attempt to fire several times it to see if it's loaded. You especially should not do this in front of your two children. They might not understand what you are doing and could quite possibly think you are going to shoot everyone in the house. Your daughter is never old enough to be your confidant about her father's alcoholism. Your daughter should not have to witness you packing a suitcase, especially if you don't fucking intend to actually use it to get her out of there. I don't care if you were afraid or hurting or any of those things. When it was over you could have gotten us help and you didn't. You never did. At your mother's funeral, you turned to me and cried and said, "I had the best mother." Do you know why I cried then? It wasn't because I was sad about her. It was because I knew that when you die, I will never be able to turn to anyone and say that about you. You should have had an abortion, finished college, and moved the fuck away from West Virginia and my father.

2008-02-10T18:21:00.001-06:00

I feel like hell.

2008-02-09T21:38:00.000-06:00

I can't stop trembling. My fingertips are vibrating over the keys as I type. The medication also makes me want to rock back and forth, which is how I tend to react to stimulant type drugs. I go to the doctor again in two weeks. I don't think I have ever wanted to go to the fucking doctor so badly as I do now.

I feel blank. Really blank. But there is a tremor right above my diaphragm. And my body is tense. My neck is full of concrete. My jaw is tight as all hell and my TMJ bullshit is bad. I feel like there is something waiting to be released and I'm afraid of it.

2008-02-08T23:17:00.000-06:00

If someone says, "I don't love my parents because they constantly humiliated me," she will immediately hear the same advice from all sides: She must change her attitude if she wants to become truly adult, she must not live with hatred bottled up inside herself if she wants to stay healthy, she can free herself of that hatred only if she forgives her parents, there is no such thing as ideal parents-- all parents sometimes make mistakes, and this is something we have to put up with, and we can learn to do so once we are truly adult.

[...] It is not true that forgiveness will free us from hatred. It merely helps to cover it up and hence to reinforce it (in our unconscious minds). It is not true that tolerance grows with age, On the contrary. Children will tolerate their parents' absurdities because they think they normal and have no way of defending themselves against them. Not until adulthood do we actively suffer from this lack of freedom and these constraints. [...] As adults, we will hate only if we remain trapped in a situation in which we cannot give free expression to our feelings. It is this dependency that makes us start to hate. - Alice Miller

2008-02-05T21:37:00.000-06:00

I talked to the dr.'s office today. They told me to stop one of the meds for a couple of days, but to stay with the others. I'm randomly bursting into tears, but who knows what the fuck is up with that.

I need more reasons than I have right now. In every sense. I'm trying to find them, but I can't see anything. I just can't.

I woke up every two hours or so last night. Please don't let tonight be like last night. I don't know what I am going to do if I keep having those nights. This is why people drink themselves into oblivion and I can't even do that right now. And I can't find any alternative. So I do nothing. I write here and imagine the people who read this rolling their eyes and I wonder if that's just another symptom or something. I can't separate me from the symptoms.

2008-02-04T21:00:00.000-06:00

I had the school nurse take my pulse rate today. 106 beats per minute. My inhaler is making me feel like a rubber band stretched extra taut. I keep having to remind myself that I'm not afraid, because stimulants give me all those fear-like symptoms. And, clearly, this is exactly what I needed. But the nurse said I should adjust to the meds soon. Until then, frankly, I feel extra crazy. She told me not to stop them, though, because she listened to my lungs and it doesn't sound good. All day, my hands have been shaking and I'm having trouble with those fine motor skills. That, my friends, was a poorly written English sentence.

My mother emailed me today, after exactly one month of me being silent. She said hello, remember me, I'm your mother and sometimes I like hearing from my daughter! I didn't write back what I wanted. So I'll do it here: Hello, remember the time you told me I used to be so confident and self-assured and then all the sudden I really, really wasn't? Do you remember those words? Think about them long and hard. And when you're ready to listen (which you won't ever be), I'll tell you why I don't want to talk to you. You have exactly one chance to acknowledge everything and if you don't, then I will never respond to you again. I don't even believe in ultimatums, but this is all you get.

Except, I didn't write anything like that. I stayed with safe things. Work. Health. I should have thrown in something about the weather.

I have hardly ever been so exhausted and so painfully keyed up, all at the same time. I feel like my dial is cranked up to eleven and all I'm producing is static. My head is pounding. I took ibuprofen. Or something like that. There is no rest, but I'll try to find it anyway.

2008-02-03T21:05:00.000-06:00

It's Sunday night again and I've tried to do the things I should do this weekend. I saw people. I did stuff. But it isn't enough. It never is. Why does a hug from a friend make me feel like I'm about to start crying? The easy answer is everything else makes me cry, so why not this, too? The real answer is that it gives me permission to feel. And then, just as quickly, I deny myself that permission. Seeing a pair of hands outstretched, reaching out to me, it makes me seize up and I can feel it in my neck again at the base of my skull.

Why am I so ruthless with myself? How many more ways can I practice self-injury without actually picking up a blade?

I have defended my parents so many times. One emotion towards them that is so staggeringly not present is anger. I have a huge blank space there. I try to look for it and all I can find is sadness and defensiveness. And that leads to another round of disgust with myself. It's not that I can't feel any anger towards my abusers. The sadist I dated in high school, my first husband-- I have a whole world of hate for both of them. They both richly deserve every bit of hatred and contempt that I can muster. The attachments I had to them lingered, then fell away suddenly and I could admit what they'd done to me, I could be outraged and indignant and angry. But the anger with my parents comes in the shortest bursts, stomped out almost immediately. Especially when it's directed at my father.

When I think about all the effort I put into reestablishing my relationship with my parents after I left the cult, I feel kind of sick. But maybe I wasn't quite such a moron. I didn't try to move near them or anything like that. But I listened to them like they've never listened to me. I called them almost every week to talk to them. Since I left their house, my parents have called me maybe four times. In fourteen years. Would it have been so hard to pick up the phone and say I missed you, I was thinking of you, tell me about your life? So why am I still defending them? Why am I still protecting them from my own accusations? Why can't I pick up the phone myself and say Hey, you need to help me pay for my approximately a gazillion medications and therapy because IT IS ALL YOUR FAULT?

My father has acknowledged his abuse of me exactly once. I think I was fourteen or so, and he was not long out of in-patient treatment for his alcoholism. I guess he was doing that twelve step thing where you go around and apologize to everyone you ever looked at funny or whatever. He was very vague in referring to it all, but he said that none of it was my fault. I remember exactly what his voice sounded like. Strangled. I couldn't look at him while he spoke. Or respond. So he left. I was playing a game on our Commodore 64 computer, and I just kept on with it. Nothing was ever said again. He could have told on himself. He could have got help for me. Instead, he said he was sorry and I felt like I was supposed to forgive him. I mean, that's what you do, right? Wasn't he so brave for acknowledging what he did and telling me it wasn't my fault? When you are a kid and someone offends you, the adults make them say they are sorry and then you have to say okay and move on. If you don't, then you're the one who is bad. I imagined that he felt tortured by what he'd done. Did he? Does he? Or has he magnanimously decided that what's in the past is done and that he should just move on? And I want to know who hurt him when he was small. I want to excuse it all. I want him to be a victim, too. I want to stand in solidarity with him against the really bad people and I refuse to see his face amongst their numbers. Because I know where all of this is leading. It's leading to the place where I can't love him anymore. It's all leading to the place where I would rather kill him than lay eyes on him again.

Until then, I'll keep sending him birthday presents that consist of books about Appalachian music or language or any of those things. I'll keep remembering the time I got really sick on Christmas and had to go to the hospital and he carried me to the car. I'll keep seeing him in my nose, the color of my eyes, the shape of my face. I'll keep longing for him to tell me his stories, to talk to me, to notice me, to spend time with me. But I won't pick up the phone. I won't.

2008-02-03T09:29:00.000-06:00

We wait to be rescued, but for whatever reason, no one comes. We figure that if no one protects us, we must not be worth protecting so we become prey and are easily picked off. Our wounded, kicked-puppy gaze attracts sly predators and we sell ourselves for clearance sale prices, mistaking screwing for caring.

We binge, purge, sleep around. We drink too much and get too high, anything to blot out the past. We accept and endure beatings and humiliations because our fathers, our uncles, and our mothers' twisted boyfriends said they loved us, too, right before they broke our bones and tore our flesh, right before they made us receive them. - Laura Weiss, Such a Pretty Girl

2008-02-02T21:13:00.000-06:00

The ache starts in my chest and spreads through my veins. The abuse I can handle; it's the happiness that cripples me. - Laura Wiess, Such a Pretty Girl

. I was preschool aged and wearing footy pyjamas. It was almost Christmas and the tree was in our tiny house. It was the yellow house then. The tree was resting in a red base and I got to help change the water. When we decorated the tree I had the important job of hanging the star. It was plastic and yellow, with a blond angel on top. The wings were more like fairy wings and had blue netting covering them. I dearly loved that star. I loved stars. Daddy put me up on his shoulders so I could reach the treetop and Mommy took a picture for the big, blue album.

. During the summer, when school let out, Friday was mall day, which meant Friday was book day. Daddy went to the bank to deposit his paycheck and I got to go to Waldenbooks and pick one book for me. He would go to the hobby store and look at trains while I got to browse the books as I pleased. I was allowed to buy any book, from any section. Sometimes we would go and eat at Eli's, a real sit-down restaurant with dark, heavy wooden chairs and tables. They had spaghetti and I loved it. After we ate, they had a bowl of Dumdum suckers by the door and I got to pick one. Always red for me. I liked watermelon.

. He played math games with me, taught me how to figure it all out in my head, taught me the short-cuts and patterns. It caused me trouble in school because I usually couldn't "show my work," but I was proud of having such a smart Daddy.

. She took me to see David Lynch's Dune in the theater. He gave me all the books.

. He took me to see The Empire Strikes Back. Twice. And the Muppet movies. He was just as excited as I was.

. Since he worked midnights, she let me sleep in her bed a lot when I was small. We would make a tent with the pink and yellow quilt by lifting our knees up under it. Every night I was in there with her, she would sing songs to me and I can still remember how they go. Way down yonder in the paw-paw patch...

. Every Easter she hid my basket somewhere in the house. She made the most elaborate baskets with bizarrely cool stuff in them. I think he helped. Every Easter morning when I woke up I would tear around the house, looking for my basket. And my little brother sometimes would cry because he couldn't find his, so I would help him.

. Every Christmas he bought her a Lifesavers Storybook. It was a package that had different kinds of Lifesavers candies and the box looked like a storybook. He put them in her stocking. Every year she would pull them out and laugh and I would be happy because it was Christmas.

. I watched a Star Trek marathon with him. The Trouble With Tribbles was our all-time favorite.

See? I would tell myself. They were good to me. They loved me. I was lovable. There are no memories I have of my childhood that hurt more than these ones. They are what send my body into self-comfort mode, rocking back and forth and folding forward to ease the pain in my chest. I was their biggest fan. Every good thing they did was infinitely precious, every memory cupped in my hands and hoarded, replayed over and over. They kept me a prisoner with all those things. They gave me just enough to keep from telling on them, because I didn't want to lose those little things I had. All these things that made them human and made me have compassion for them. These memories that, even now, make me crave their love like I've wanted nothing else.

There was no mercy in that house. And now I am thirty years old and I have tattoos on my arms of two incarnations of mercy. But I have no mercy in my heart for me. All this remembering. I just want to call my mother and ask her to tell me about her garden. Sing me a song, Mommy. Sing the one about Valentine's Day.

2008-02-01T20:47:00.000-06:00

Today I bought a box of tea at Whole Foods. I did it because it was tulsi tea (Rama tulsi AND Krishna tulsi varieties) and the sheer blasphemy of it felt good. And then I realized that there is no one left that I could tell this to who would have the faintest idea as to what I was talking about, even if I explained it. If my ex-husband weren't such a prick I'd call him just to laugh about it. Hell, I'd serve him a cup. But there's just no one who will get it. There won't ever be. Not even the, what, two or three people who bother reading this thing.

2008-02-01T16:10:00.000-06:00

I went to the doctor today. I was engaged in doctorliness from approx. 9am until exactly 1:44 fucking PEE EM. I wish I could charge medical people by the hour. That would be excellent. Then I could pay for my SEVEN DAILY FUCKING MEDICATIONS I HAVE TO TAKE NOW.

I like lists:

1. I have developed asthma. someone give me a goddamn refund on this body because it's obviously defective. You know those soppy christians who should be killed because they love cooing "god doesn't make mistakes"? They should be killed twice. Because Something Is Clearly Wrong With Me.

1a. In my moments of better humor, I keep telling myself, "I am made of FAIL," and snickering.

1b. Is asthma psychosomatic too? Wait, don't tell me.

2. They doubled my anti-depressant dosage because I am extra crazy.

3. I had a panel of blood tests. everyone who has laid eyes upon me knows that I am not afeared of the needle. I have noserings and my arms are covered in tattoos. Also, I am not afraid of blood. ALSO, I tend to be a masochist, so I am not afraid of pain. However, I am very afraid of blood tests. This is because I have no veins. I found this out the hard, vomit-y way. Also, once they find what somewhat passes for a vein, it quickly collapses and ceases to bleed. This results in DIGGING IN MY ARM WITH THE NEEDLE which of course results in pukery. So I try to weasel my way out of bloodwork. When that fails, I inform the lab technician that I have no veins, and that they are to use child blood-drawing equipment, and will most likely have to do the blood draw from my hand. Furthermore, they must place a trashcan nearby for future instances of pukery. They always laugh until they realize that these are indeed truths and then they mope about having to stick my hand. Then they call for ice chips for me to suck on and tell me not to move.

3a. The phlebotomist and I had a very loud, giggly discussion about how sad it was that I could never take up a heroin habit, all this spoken as he was slapping my arms to find a vein. SMACK SMACK SMACK NO HEROIN FOR YOOOOOOU, LITTLE GIRL!

4. I had to have a chest x-ray to check if there are still pneumonias hiding in my accursed lungs. They also wished to investigate for TB. Oh, how ironic it would be if I were to have TB, considering that I managed to avoid getting it on the compound in hare krishna land when there were new Russian immigrants present who were actually infected.

4a. Having TB could mean serious shit about my job. I mean, health, too. But having TB means NO TEACHIE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.

5. Zyrtec is over the counter and available in generic now. There is some small ray of non-suckery. It would suck less, though, if I didn't have to take double the recommended dosage (by dr. order) every fucking day.

5a. I feel chronically dehydrated from the sheer amount of antihistimines in my system at all times. And I do not like drinking. I am like a feline in that i prefer wet foods to drinking liquids. I hate drinking water.

5b. One of my students knocked my SIGG bottle off my desk and broke the shit out of the cap.

5c. I hate everything.

6. Going to the dr. makes me cry. It just does. I know what you're thinking, if you've been reading this thing for awhile. Everything makes me cry. Which is absolutely true and you deserve a cookie. But going to the dr. makes me cry EXTRA. My entire adult life I have had chronic, largely untreatable health conditions. You knew that, too. Visiting the dr. is an episode of sheer, abject helplessness for me. When I left school and ran away to brainwashed zombie-land, I no longer had health coverage. Not that my parents especially supplied me with much medical care anyway, aside from my mother proclaiming she'd take me to the gynecologist so that he could check me "DOWN THERE" and tell her what wicked shenanigans I'd been up to. Anyway. I went without any kind of health coverage for an entire decade. When you don't have insurance, doctors and their cohorts are not very nice to you. When you go to a doctor in Town while you are a crazed cultist, they are super-extra-ultra not nice to you. They sneer and tell you that whatever you have is caused by the cult. They're probably right, but not in the way that they think. I went to the in Town dr. once at age 18 (I had to borrow money) with a massive allergic reaction to I have no idea what (perhaps I was allergic to arrogant swamis giving advice to miserable married couples). My mouth was swollen and covered in blisters. My hard and soft palate were blistered. He told me it was caused by a B12 deficiency because hare krishnas are vegetarian and then he threw (note: not figure of speech) a scrip at me for a steroid. He didn't tell me what it was or what the side effects were. Then he left the room. I'm sure it's no surprise that I have super-crazy reactions to oral steroids. They make me suicidal and kind of homicidal as well. Then there was the dr. that prescribed me a completely old-fashioned, notorious-for-bad-side-effects antihistimine that others have told me is utterly inappropriate as a first attempt at treatment for my Crazy-Induced Allergic Condition. Then there was the next doctor who prescribed me TWO antihistimines with tons of side effects. Then there was the dr. who did a stabbity, I mean biopsy of a mass in my breast to see if it was cancerous and completely missed the mass and took a biopsy of the wrong tissue and I had to go back for a second (even more expensive) biopsy and had a bizarre shaking and falling down reaction to the anesthetic. AND THEN there was the seemingly endless stream of doctors I have seen about everything else that is wrong with me and the end result is that all that can be done is to "make me comfortable" and feed me medication I am really starting to not be able to afford. And it's all in my head anyway. At least the doctors got nicer when I got insurance and give me samples. Why wouldn't they give me pharm samples when I was making a grand total of four figures annually? Did they think I would sell my Clarinex on the streets? Not that that shit works, anyway.

6a. On second thought, maybe the cost balances out. Some of my meds have an appetite-suppressing side effect. So I'll pay for my meds with the money I'm not spending on food. Top Serious Great Idea!

7. Speaking of steroids, one of my shiny new asthma meds has a steroid component too and I am wondering if the level of panic I feel about it is anywhere in the ballpark of semi-appropriate. The dr. told me that there were no side effects and it was really the best treatment for me. Only, that's what other doctors have told me about other meds that have had Significant Motherfucking Side Effects. Things like: "Oh, the only side effect this horrible antihistimine has is that it might make you a little sleepy, so take it at night." That one made me gain in excess of 40 lbs. in six weeks and had me sleeping more than twelve hours a day and feeling massively stoned 24/7. Jesus, people, my fear of doctors isn't entirely crazy. When I am extremely fucking reluctant to go to one for something, I don't think it's part of The Crazy. It's me weighing the risks (and hating to miss work, because who can go to the dr. with a teacher's schedule?) and what seem like dubious benefits.

7a. As I type, the shiny new asthma med is making my heart beat really fast, like caffeine does. If this shit gives me panic attacks, I am going to seriously lose it. But then, I've already seriously lost it, so what's the difference, at this point?

I think this list has run out of steam.

2008-01-30T19:44:00.000-06:00

I had walking pneumonia. It started in November and I didn't know what it was. So a month ago I went to the doctor and got azithromycin. And I am still fucking coughing and short of breath. And since yesterday I am coming down with what seems to be a shitty cold on top of all that. So I go again Friday. I wonder if all this is psychosomatic, like every other sickness I have seems to be. Who the hell knows? I sure as fuck don't. Maybe I just caught the creeping crud from one of my students. Anyway, I am seeing the doctor in two days and I will cooperate with her instructions, even if they are more antibiotics. Dammit. I'm also submitting to a full blood panel, despite the fact that they can never, ever find my veins or get me to bleed enough. Last time I had a blood panel, they had to dig and dig to get enough blood to flow and I came very close to puking everywhere. The thought of going there by myself and doing all this makes me want to cry. But I cry every day anyway, so it will be okay.

One day she was able to feel this shame deeply in the session and said: "I feel so ridiculous, as if I've been talking to a wall and expecting it to answer, like a silly child." I asked: "Would you think it so ridiculous if you saw a child who had to tell his troubles to a wall because there was no one else available?" - Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child

My student, Maya. I talked about her on my teacher type blog. Her mother indicated to me that there has been recent trauma, perhaps abuse, in the home. Maya has been coming to school every day saying that she is sick, that her stomach hurts, that she's nauseated and just doesn't feel well. She has not said a word to anyone about what is happening at home.

Would I think it so ridiculous if I saw a child who had to tell her troubles through the illness of her body because there weren't any words available?

No, I don't. And I think I'd have the urge to physically attack anyone who suggested such a thing.

So maybe I can cut myself some slack.

...

Today my therapist called my attention to a spot on the back of my neck that was hurting very badly. If she weren't the person that she is, I'd be alarmed at how well she can read my body, just from a glance. Anyway, there is a place at the base of my skull that seizes up hard, like a cramp. Locked hard and shuddery. It happens when I try to talk to people about things that are particularly painful or meaningful to me. And when that happens, I can't speak. She told me that in infancy, when a child is deprived of their basic human needs, this is the centralized place of shutdown. It's the place on the body they use to still their own crying when they learn that the crying will either be ignored or that it will receive a negative response. Ever since I can remember, this place has choked me quiet. I never thought of it as a physiological reaction before.

2008-01-29T17:16:00.000-06:00

My therapist told me that when it gets really bad, I should try to stay in the moment and experience it, feel whatever it is that's coming. And I'm trying to do that. But it's crippling. I only have two modes: hurting-intensely and distracted-and-vaguely-hurting. Every other emotion I have is muted. I didn't know how tightly wound I was until everything fell apart. Did everyone else see it? I think maybe they did.

... throughout their lives they will continue to look for what their own parents could not give them at the appropriate time-- the presence of a person who is completely aware of them and takes them seriously. - Alice Miller

2008-01-26T20:46:00.000-06:00

Weekend again. I have so many things to do and I just can't seem to start any of it. Small steps. I'll take small steps.

When it gets really bad, I sit here in my apartment and the thought flits through my head that I really want to go home. Only, I can't figure out where that is. I couldn't wait to get the fuck out of Appalachia. I spent my entire first twenty years longing to get away. After the farm, I lived in DC for four years and it was huge and so expensive and heartless and did I mention HUGE? I never felt at ease there, especially after the plane hit the Pentagon. So my ex and I moved back to Appalachia. Roanoke. I told myself that since it wasn't West Virginia, it would be okay. And it wasn't. It was West Virginia and poverty and I was desperate to get the fuck out of there, too. So I moved to another big city and I hoped and hoped it would be home. Only, it's not. I don't feel safe or at ease or like I can let my guard down. I'm glad my apartment is small. As it is, I rattle around in it like a marble in a jar. It's empty and overwhelming.

A long time ago, I had a close-knit group of friends, including someone I had known since I was twelve. His name is J. I felt safer with them than I'd ever felt before. When I met my first husband, I introduced him to my friends and he proceeded to systematically isolate me from them all. When we lived on the compound, he started refusing to take me with him when he went to visit them. He told me that they were all sick of me, angry with me, enraged over how badly I treated him. It never occurred to me that he was making anything up. I guess he was telling them I didn't want to see them, or something like that. I don't know. He drove the wedge deep, though. We split up for many reasons, but the breaking point was when he assaulted me. He moved off the farm and into J's house. When he told my friends I was accusing him of rape, that was it. They said I was at best crazy from having been subjected to childhood abuse, at worst I was a vengeful liar. I lost them all. I needed them so badly to believe me. I needed J to listen to me. They all closed ranks around him, instead.

I have some really good friends. I do. But it's never been the same. I don't get so close. The Hare Krishnas teach you to use people. Everyone is a potential convert or a demon. And even amongst the cultists, relationships are tenuous. People up and leave in the middle of the night, sometimes. Or they say they are going to visit their family and you never, ever see them again. And I've never forgotten what being abandoned felt like. There has only been one person who has ever really known me, and he's gone now. But J was the one person before that who I felt had tried.

Over the years since, I've contacted J here and there. Sometimes in anger, sometimes pleading. Always with the same result: "I believe you are in distress, but I don't believe he did what you said." And then, a couple of years ago, he contacted me. This time he believed me. I think I cried for a week. Relief that he finally believed me. Regret that it was just too fucking late. They sheltered my abuser for a decade.

It got really bad a couple of nights ago and I called J. He's in Seattle now, living with people who were my friends, once. I sat with the phone in my hand for an hour and a half before I finally made the call. He said I could come live there, be with all of them and that they cared about me.

Why couldn't he have said that ten years ago? I can't leave where I am now for a lot of reasons, but all of that aside, I don't trust him anymore. So why did I call him and cry to him? Can this be repaired, eleven years later? What the fuck am I doing? I have no idea. Is it good to reach out or am I just grasping for anything I can try to hold onto? I'm this ball of need and want and everything is so raw. The only goal I have at this point is to reach a point where everything doesn't hurt quite so much.

I think I need my anti-depressant dosage upped.

2008-01-23T18:24:00.001-06:00

From when I was about eleven years old until I hit around fourteen or so, my mother had these intermittent freak-outs. I would say something she didn't care to hear, or disagree with her too strenuously. Or something like that. And then she would declare herself "on strike," and all the sudden I didn't have a mother anymore. She wouldn't speak to me, or be in the same room with me unless it were out of the necessity to be doing something there. If a friend of mine would call on the phone, she'd hang up, or if I were right next to her, she'd throw the phone on the floor. Or hang up in front of me. If I wanted to eat, I had to ask for lunch money from my father. At dinner time, I'd scrape together what I could get from what she had cooked or just what I could find. She wouldn't drive me anywhere or do anything for me or look at me. I never can remember how any of these "strikes" ended. I don't remember if I groveled or apologized or if she just quit. But I do remember that, in 7th grade, one of them lasted from one report card to another, and we got report cards ever six weeks. I always dreamt of outrageous shit I could do to make her respond to me. And I fantasized about getting hit by a car or falling down and breaking a bone and kind of hoped something would happen, anything, anything to make her take care of me. I wonder why she did that. My adult mind now can make so many excuses for her. Her husband was a raging alcoholic. She had a shitty retail job she hated and giving birth to me put an end to so many of her dreams. Sometimes I want to pity her. But if there were a parent of one of my students who I found out did that kind of thing to them, I'd be on the Child Protective Services website in a fucking flash to report them for neglect and emotional abuse.

I started taking high school classes in 7th grade and I rode the high school bus to school, as a 12 year old. There was a junior or senior boy on the bus named Russell who was constantly groping me and saying all sorts of shitty, inappropriate things. The bus driver was a retired prick of a Baptist minister who thought the whole thing was hilarious. I never told my mother, because she wouldn't even look at me. There were all sorts of criminally inappropriate things going on in my life during those years, and there was no telling her. She didn't have the ears to hear it. And sometimes I wonder if she knew, and if her silence was so she wouldn't have to acknowledge any of it.

2008-01-21T11:09:00.001-06:00

I got myself a planner to write things down in, because if I can't make a list to check it all off it's too overwhelming. I think I need to just add to every Sunday evening "schedule time for meltdown." At least I'm consistent about something. Only we have today off from school so of course there's time to continue losing my shit, right?

This is what's on my mind lately. I wish I'd read about it sooner. I've definitely got those stress-related breakdowns of bodily health. So it's all in my head, right? Except it's not. But it is. Why am I so embarrassed about having psychosomatic illnesses? It feels really humiliating and I can't wrap my head around why that's my first, overwhelming reaction. I'm a collection of symptoms that seem to constitute what passes for a personality. Sometimes I feel like I've lived my life in the middle of some kind of bizarre science experiment where they just keep cranking up the voltage, just to see how much I can take. I guess that's what they mean when they say trauma causes altered perceptions of perpetrators. I know I see everything in a stark dichotomy and that's embarrassing, too. It's so facile. It's just the only way I had to make sense of things. But they don't make sense anymore, because that kind of thing just can't last. My therapist talks a lot of hippie shit about storing anger in the body and the places she indicates on my back are where I can't remember not hurting. And when I'm aware of just how much it's hurting, I want to tear my skin off. All of my anger ends with me doing something that hurts myself in some way and that just makes me angrier. So I do it again. And again. And there's no comfort or quiet or anything. There's just me, in my apartment with thin walls, and a job that I'm terrified of losing but don't always feel so adequate to fulfill.

I had a student last year whose dad got shot to death on the city bus, right in the middle of the school year. The year before, I had a Katrina refugee who watched his mother and infant sister almost drown while his older brothers shot people to get on a raft. There are kids being trafficked all over the world and kids in the Congo conscripted into death squads. And I'm here dealing with my contemptible first world problems of daddy having been inappropriate and I'm barely able to function. I am a cartoon and I just wish someone would drop an anvil. And I know this is just the self-critical thing going on, but it is just so fucking stupid that I'm too sad to go about the world like a normal person. I'm sorry, I can't possibly grade papers today, or do my laundry, or eat-- I'm too sad. Not having those things done makes me fucking sad too, so I need to just get over it.

2008-01-17T20:29:00.000-06:00

I have a student who struggles in school. No matter how hard he works, he is always behind. Even worse, he has two cousins in his grade who are both very gifted, high performers. Then we had him tested for learning disabilities. It turns out, his intellect is perfectly normal. In fact, it's on the high end of normal. He has a legitimate learning disability. I told him the results of his testing and the things that we were going to do to help him with his academics. He let out that sigh, you know, the one like he'd just put down a really, really heavy backpack. The sheer relief of it all was palpable. And ever since that diagnosis, he's been doing better. Even before the special services started in for him, he was doing better. The diagnosis freed him.

And here I am, diagnosed with a "major depressive disorder" and PTSD. It makes me laugh that someone telling me I have clinical depression makes me feel kind of better. I've wondered for a very long time why I have so much trouble just fucking doing things, even things that I like very much. I've wondered why I feel constantly overwhelmed by really small things. I wondered why I have so much trouble concentrating on things I really need to do. So now instead of feeling guilty and helpless (okay, I guess I'll still probably feel that way, but at least intellectually I can understand it), I can try and do stuff. I know there are things I can do. They're hard, but at least they exist.

2008-01-11T21:23:00.000-06:00

One of the things that has made it so hard to seek out any kind of help is that I feel like my life is so ridiculously improbable. When I sit down and think about it, and when I try to talk about it, it sounds like an awful Lifetime movie special to me. And that's embarrassing. Also, I guess it's even doubly embarrassing to admit all the stupid choices I've made. I mean, really, the Hare Krishnas. What the fuck was I thinking?