As if to prove the psychiatric skeptics, including the one in me, I’ve been feeling increasingly drowsy over the past few days. What was manageable on Monday and ignorable on Tuesday became difficult to deal with yesterday and intolerable today. I spent the day at work just trying to stay steady on my feet. I was lively, but I had Eminem blasting in my ears to keep me going. The dizziness was alarming, nauseating. What felt exactly like waves in time and space shook the world around me.
I get home, smoke a cigarette out of desperation for a bit of peace. An hour later, the blood ran from my face and hands as I poured myself a glass of water. I stumbled toward the couch, and I buried myself beneath the blanket there. I was shaking, freezing, and ready to collapse. What’s happening? What’s happening? Oh, God, what’s happening? Please stop. Please.
The shaking—the shaking didn’t let me think. I couldn’t—couldn’t hold it together. I tried. I wanted to so badly. Sam was calling me. I can hear you. But I couldn’t answer him. I was too in it. It was happening all too quickly. Make it stop. It’s okay. Just stop. It’s okay. You’ll be okay, if you just breathe. Just breathe.
But it wasn’t just breathing right then. I couldn’t get out of my head. Three hours later, I wake from a sleep I don’t recall falling into. Sang is smoking and laughing with Sam. They were two feet from me, but it was another half hour of unsteady semi-consciousness before I sat up.
I’ve been awake two hours, and I’m ready to fall back to sleep.
Now, do I dismiss these feelings as the symptoms of an oncoming cold? Or do I apply what I know to be true: among Clonazepam’s common side effects are dizziness and drowsiness? Shall I say nothing of suicidal tendencies [link leads to article in The Washington Post]?
These feelings are no longer “manageable.” Can you agree, given some of my recent posts? What I’ve been living the last two days isn’t what any doctor would call functional. But I want this one to work. I don’t want to try more drugs. I’m tired in too many different ways to sustain another withdrawal. Maybe it is just a cold. Maybe I’m just under way too much stress these past few weeks. Maybe it is the drug, but this won’t remain. Maybe I just need to exercise more and resume my healthy eating habits. I’ll do it all. I’ll try it all. I just don’t want to change drugs again.
…I feel the creeping insecurity that nothing I do is right. Perhaps it is my depression. If it is, the uncertainty and insecurity that inevitably accompanies putting my life—literally—into a doctor’s hands is exacerbating my condition. In short, as usual, I’m afraid.
Bradamant comments on yesterday’s post,
I don’t know, but it’s another form of victimization our society makes us undergo. These people rape us, we become “sick,” and they keep on living their lives—able to forget us, able to enjoy the things we only hope we’ll one day be able to endure. How dare they, I scream. How can they do this to us, as human beings?
Our lives are not just full of sadness. They’re sad. We’re sad. And instead of receiving support, instead of our communities gathering around us, we get drugs and therapy. We see people’s eyes shift, hear the timber of their voice rise. They don’t want to know. They don’t want to know us. Our experiences define us. Rapists’ actions seem to be something they once did, a sad reality we just have to deal with. If we can’t cope—can’t suppress, rather—we’re wallowing, “bitter, angry, psycho etc. etc.,” or we can’t “leave the past where it belongs, get on with life.”
So society encourages “treatment.” They tell us again and again that we’re sick and out of control. We feel out of control, so we believe them. We take their pills. We undergo their therapy. We drain our bank accounts, and we drain our energy, because the world doesn’t accommodate “broken” people. We—we accommodate the rapists.
The rape never stops for us.
The rapists? They’re free, the lot of them. So many Andys, so many more victims. Do you know of one who only hurt one of us, saw the error of his ways, and then stopped? And yet the wise woman judge told me, “he sounded apologetic in the voicemail.” All the restraining order asked was that he stay away from me and that he be forced to undergo a psychological evaluation. Instead, I was denied the restraining order and told, “I hope you get some help.”
Why don’t our societies tell them the same? Because our social structure is built by the same people who are committing these heinous acts? Because people don’t like to think about the sick things people do? Because people are afraid to face their own experiences as victims? Because of ignorance or just plain stupidity? All of the above, and so much more.
I want to make it stop—as badly as I wanted Andy to stop.
But the therapist and the drugs and so many, too many people tell us to stop thinking about these things and these reasons. They scream, Stop it! Shut up! It’s too ugly! Why would you want people to know this about you?
So, again, why? What do all the collective reasons reduce to?
Society is more scared of the rape victim than it is of the rapist.