I’m playing with the sentence,

Five years of therapy, cramped rooms filled with symptoms and talk of a trigger-happy memory machine; if I’m lucky, it’ll only be five more years at forty dollars a week to overcome my money anxiety.

Related posts:

1. Freewriting Panic Attack: A Masturbatory Act, A Big Step
2. Freewriting: Madness
3. Another Night.
4. Deep Breaths: Sex and Trauma
5. Will Work for Rest

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5. A Few Thoughts: Innocence, Sexuality, Feminism, Non-Rapists, Writing, and Comfort

That is, in the face of the deaths seemingly piling up around me lately, I’m okay.

In fact, my major stressor has become the fear that my late sense of peace will end.  Because if this ends, then I didn’t learn anything new.  And I’ll struggle to control myself—again.  Then, I’ll know the peace was really shock from Sang’s death.  Then, this is just another turn of the chemical tides.  It’s always—

I’m catastrophizing.  Realistically, it’s more likely the peace I feel is due to the overall peaceful environment I’ve constructed around me.  I have several inspiring relationships in my life.  I have a steady income and health insurance.  I have an able body and a highly capable mind.  True, I recently lost one of my best friends to what boils down to the limitations of science.  Just today I held back tears as I told a Sang story.  Yet, that I was able to exercise that much control surprises me.  My voice only broke a few times, and I had the foresight to lower my gaze to hide the rising tide hazing my vision.  It was a small step but a step forward nonetheless.

Publishing this post tonight is the biggest step of all, actually.  The worst thing a depressive can do is isolate.  So, I’m doing what anybody who’s had effective therapy treatment does: communicating.  Every word hurts, and every sentence feels like a small miracle I alone labored to create.  Even as I write these words, I’m wondering if I’ll have the courage to press the “Publish” button to my right.  If I do, it’ll be a big step out of grief and depression.  If I publish again tomorrow, I’ll have started myself on the long journey back to full mental and physical health.  Writing, my shameless monster, washes me of the guilt and self-disgust that’s too long kept my skin from breathing.  Publishing adds meaning to an otherwise masturbatory skill.

So, in a sense, I give myself meaning by publishing.

I’m sorry.  I’m either extremely focused or disturbingly absent-minded.  This post seems to drift between the two states.  I irresponsibly allowed the Clonazepam to run out in between psychiatric visits.  Though I did have the job of finding a new psychiatrist during that interim, I should have made the matter a higher priority than I did.  I—I’m whipping myself.

Not a new problem.  I know.

I’m trying to scream on paper, but I’m not talented enough to know how to do it.  So too simply put, nothing feels urgent anymore.  Yet, I’m full of all this quiet, distant tension.  Not quite dissociation, I’m compelled to enjoy it.  But I just don’t trust it to be good.  There’s an anxiety whispering from there.  It’s creeping up my throat, and I want to let it out.  If I let it out, maybe I’ll be able to take a deep enough breath.  I can stop this yawning.  I’m always so exhausted, lately.

I just have to press “Publish.”

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1. Freewriting Panic Attack: Holding Myself Up Normal
2. Freewriting Panic Attack: Waking Nightmares
3. Freewriting Panic Attack: There’s Never Enough to Cry About
4. Freewriting Panic Attack: This Is As Close to Being Inside My Head As I Could Have Gotten You Through Words
5. Freewriting Panic Attack: The Building. Shaken. Up.

Doctors would never need to get involved—in my ideal world.  I wouldn’t have to take this medication.  I’d be normal.  Instead, a freak is what I feel like most days.

Most days, I can’t believe I have a job, a boyfriend, a cat, friends.  It all seems miraculous, like it has nothing to do with me.  In fact, it feels like all this has happened in spite of me.

I mean, think about everything this site talks about: the depression, the medication and self-medication, the emotional phenomena.  Who would keep that person employed?  And yet, I work for the biggest company in the industry.  Every day, I arrive at my job, open up Outlook, and think, as I wait for the server to download the emails, Oh, God, I’m going to get yelled out. The fear has made me religious about updating and answering my work email.  I’m always waiting for it: the revelation.

They’ll email me into the office one day and finally say it: “this is unacceptable.”  I’ll hear, “you’re unacceptable,” thank them for the opportunity to work with them, and quietly leave the company forever.  At that point, I’ll probably go into a deep depression before being carted off to a mental hospital.

Every morning, between the click of a little, orange desktop icon and the message that all emails have been downloaded from the server, I see this future.

On the meds, all of that still happens; the difference is how I feel about that vision.  Instead of assuming I’ll thereafter be carted off to a mental institution, I tell myself, “if that happens, and I get fired, I’ll figure something out.  I’m not alone in this world.  I have Sam and my family and my friends to support me emotionally while I look for a job.  And there’s always a job to do, right?”

In better economic times, that last statement wouldn’t be a question, but I’m not afraid anymore.  There’s always money to be made, somewhere, somehow, if I’m not too proud.  And in the US, what with Section 8, things would have to get abject for me not to be able to earn enough for Section 8 housing.

Sadly, that’s how my brain thinks.  I cover every eventuality; I think of every possible outcome.  I’m constantly searching for logic.  Before the meds, my fears seemed logical, too.  Reason looked suspicious.  ”But what if…?  What if…?” was my refrain.  It still is.  Only, I don’t doubt the logic of the reasonable answers, anymore.

So, I’m cured, right?  I’m calm.  I’m listening to logic.  I’m reasonable, for all intents and purposes, and I’m technically, arguably functioning, to say I have a job and a relationship.

Yet, it’s not all right.  I know better.  I don’t trust any of this.  Even as the pills alleviate my anxiety, they don’t cancel out the thoughts, only the feelings attached to them.  While this is nevertheless an arsenal against negativity—while I can see reality that much clearer while on these drugs—I still think awful things.

But I don’t think it gets easier than this.  This is the point doctors always tell me meds can take me to.  The rest is therapy, they say.

I didn’t think they were right about meds, and I didn’t think they were right about therapy, but with my cultural perceptions of medication thrown into doubt, their promises suddenly become that much more probable.

Then again, I’ve also been known to be too trusting.

Round and round I go.  How do I stop?

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2. I Want to Stop Writing About What Happened to Me.
3. The Sated Life
4. Am I Really In That Much Pain?
5. Freewriting: Obsessive Thoughts

So Hollywood gives us this action-packed film full of familiar things like salvation, duty to society; the empowerment of the poor, and watered-down lipstick feminism in the form of a hot young girl who took some kickboxing lessons.  It’s about everything the first decade of the twenty-first century has been about.

This movie is a reflective product of this culture, but I still don’t know whether Hollywood is trying to promote a revolution or if they’re giving me a controlling substance, a Media pill to render me passive by satisfying my impulse to rebel against the dominant party to the right of me.  Somehow, it’s hard to believe commercialists have my best interests at heart.

Then again, movies like The Women make me feel like a more assertive model for women is represented in mainstream media: we can have it all, but do we want it?  Is it even healthy?  And do we really want to reach our goals if it means betraying other women, and therefore ourselves?  The movie says “no” to all three questions.  Instead, it argues women need women friends to help them do what they cannot possibly do on their own: survive this life in one emotional piece.

I knew what kind of woman I wanted to be by watching my sister Maggie’s successes and failures, my mother’s philosophies at work, and my girl friends’ misconceptions revealed for what they are.  And all of them had one thing in common: they weren’t hot, young girls who had taken kickboxing lessons nor knew how to hotwire a car.  They were stupid when they were young, ignorant through most of their 20s, and sometime after they turn 30, they’re trying to fix the mess they’d made the last few years.  I want to see more movies about women going through all that, and being okay with it, even as they try to prevent it.  I want a heroine as barely in control as I am.  Except, this woman, unlike me at my worst, is trying to be okay with it all–the fuck-ups, the wrinkles, and the betrayal.  I want movies to be made about that kind of woman.  I want movies to be made about that kind of woman, because I don’t have any real life examples.

What I mean to say is, there’s also a crisis of womanhood.  Most of our mothers didn’t survive the war.  They’re victims of the patriarchy with Stockholm Syndrome.  Isn’t it worth considering whether it’s healthy to even engage with these women we call Mom , if only for those times when we are most vulnerable to judgment?  Maybe rather than fight an obstacle, we should sometimes focus on avoiding it, at least until we’re ready to confront it?

Of course, the risk is becoming addicted to avoiding.

I spend at least some time every day writing for self-improvement.  But last week, during therapy, I realized I’ve been avoiding  people.  I realized I’ve been avoiding interacting them because it’s painful, because I fear them looking at me and judging me.  I realized I’ve been avoiding my social anxiety.

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4. My Boyfriend Hates Women
5. Fractured

All part of my ups and downs, I suppose, but as far as downs go, this one really hasn’t gone too deep.

That idea almost gave me hope, but re-reading that last sentence has made me realize, I’m counting my happiness by degrees of misery.  I’ve still got a ways to go to reach the standard of living a “normal” person is supposed to have.

I use normal like it’s a good thing to be.  How about this instead: I’ve still got a ways to go to reach the standard of living I personally idealize?  Not that my perfect life is that far away from what this society defines as normal—I think.

Come to think of it, my expectations aren’t that high.  Of course, I can hear the sage wisdom screaming back at me: that’s exactly your problem.  But I only know what I’ve known.  It’s all any of us know, what experience has taught us.  My experience has taught me that people are mostly sad creatures who hurt have hurt each other blind.  I’m not egotistical enough to think I’m an exception, but I try to be.  I try desperately to work out my problems.

I know, I said yesterday that I try too hard.  That stands, but I can’t just do nothing, and I’m trying to find moderation.  I just—

***

I can’t continue.  My skull is crawling.  My mind is screaming, and nothing soothes it.  My words seem loud and obnoxious in my own ears.  I’m tortured with thoughts of what they sound like in yours.

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Every day, I struggle to see men as fellow victims. Intellectually, I know they are. I know the patriarchy has claimed them as it’s claimed us.

But then the two men I respect most in the world tease me for the aches and pains my constant anxiety have caused. “It was all harmless kidding,” I tell myself, “and it is kind of comical. I’m always whining.”

A long list of self-deprecations are proven true by their laughter.

I—I hate to admit it, but I feel very much like you do. I still sometimes think, “aw, look at that guy with his kid.” That, however, is quickly subsumed by images of him molesting her.

I’m probably naive, but I just can’t embrace that image, yet. I can’t think of all men that way. I feel that, for me, and I only speak for myself, I would be giving into the trauma and condemning myself to this fractured reality.

I know. I’m a fool for hoping. They keep beating me, and I keep licking their hand. But, as I see it, if I give up on men, I give up on women, too. It’s the nature of a binary. To that point, I’ve dated women. Their good intentions are equally worthless. Even the ones you don’t so much as kiss will caress your soul as they lead you toward their parapet.

No. Forget what I said. My argument is flawed. None of those women damaged me for years: stole into my mind, ripped apart my anatomy, and irrevocably harmed my sexuality.

You caught me, bradamant. I’m having some difficulty accepting my feelings against men. I know it doesn’t end. I want to say there are exceptions, but every man I’ve thought was an exception has proven to actually be damaging in a way so subtle, his damage is more perverse than the last one’s.

But I’m afraid to hate men, bradamant. I’m afraid to leave them forever. I fear I would be letting the Andys win.

Not letting them win is the only thing that drives me.

Oh, God! That’s an ugly realization! They’re at the essence of my every motivation. They define me.

Have they already won?

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5. I Want to Stop Writing About What Happened to Me.

So, why do I keep making lousy choices: getting into that stranger’s car, avoiding clear patterns of bad behavior?  I would tell any girl I saw acting like me that she was obviously suffering from some self-loathing, as well as self-destructive behavior that may or may not signify burgeoning suicidal tendencies.

I can’t deny, these are the actions of someone who is not happy.  But here, I have to make a note: I don’t think there’s something in my life making me unhappy.  I think it’s just my depression.

Of course, that could easily be avoidance of an issue in my life.

Gosh, I’m a fool.  My mind contradicts itself at every turn, doubts its every thought.  I can’t stop wondering, is it like this for everyone?

I told Sang and Sam that I thought my twitches are my strong physical reaction to my thoughts, that I often cringe away from my everyday occurrences.  They said, “That’s understandable—considering.”

I didn’t like that: “considering.”  I had wanted them to say, they too cringed away from their thoughts several times an hour.  I want to be normal and okay.

I’m a child.  I feel like nothing more than a silly child faking my way through the world.  Any day, someone will be irreversibly angry with me, and I won’t be able to do anything I’ve dreamed of doing.  Any day now, I’ll mess it all up for good.

I’m so frightened by the things going on inside my head, I sometimes don’t have the leftover feeling to fear the dangers outside myself.  That’s definitely not the whole answer to why I’ve been making such bad choices, but it’s undoubtedly a related truth worth reveling in.  I don’t recall having felt fear—having felt anything, really—when I accepted the stranger’s ride or when I consistently avoided thinking about the potential repercussions of my actions.

It leads me back to why am I making these choices?  Do I want to feel young again?  Is that what it is?  Do I need to feel alive and act as if these crazy things I do are okay because I’m afraid I’m missing my youth?  Is this the parentified child rebelling during the first days of her independence?

Are these the tame precursors of a condition or the rantings of a narcissist?  I’m struggling to figure out which possibility I can live with?

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I know.  It’s fucked up, as a rape victim, to want that.  Your potential judgments against me pale in comparison to the judgments I make against myself because of this desire.

Most days, I still blame myself for my sexual assaults—even for the one that happened when I was about eleven.  I remember their hands on me, and I remember their manipulations and my hesitations and screams, but I still can’t forgive myself.

I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be in such vulnerable situations.  I should have known what those men were.

Logic says, I was trained to be a victim and I was manipulated by those purring lions.

Logic has nothing to do with trauma.

I’m a sick woman.  I know that, and I fight it every day by being constantly self-aware.  Yet, I let a stranger give me a ride the other day, and I don’t know why.  I was stuck at a train station.  Sam was at work, I don’t have a car, and the taxi company wanted to charge me $35.  Then, a man I had been talking to for ten minutes, a friend of a man I had been talking to for fifteen minutes, offered me a ride for $10.  I liked the price and accepted.  It wasn’t smart.  It wasn’t me.  I don’t know what got into me.  Those men could have done to me horrible things I have yet to experience, and I thought of that before I accepted the ride.  But I was numb to the possibility of danger.

It had been so many years since I had done something so reckless, I didn’t think I was capable of it anymore.  But something in me felt no fear.  I was completely trusting, when I shouldn’t have been.

Is that part of the mania or some other aspect of my mental illness?  It seems probable, but I refuse to let the label of mental illness excuse my behavior.  Why did I get into that car?

Why am I horny all the time lately?  Why do I continue to have sex after it starts to hurt?  Why do I hurt myself with sex when it doesn’t turn me on?  Why was I excited when my boyfriend asked me if I wanted to role play rape?  What about forced objectification appeals to me?

It makes absolute sense.  My first sexual experience was violent, and my father is a violent man, too.  And this culture prizes the violent man, adores him, tells women, “he’s just sick.”  The result is what I call the Lost Puppy Syndrome.  Women pick up these sad or broken men.  We try to repair them, love them, give them the attention no one has ever given them, the attention and love that will fix them.  We think, I’m the only one who can help him.

Except it doesn’t work that way.  The slew of psychological explanations for this behavior ranges from projection to masochism.

I’m afraid to think the latter might be right about me.  What if the answer to all this is an intense self-loathing that leads to self-imposed punishments?  Do I hate myself that much?  Am I that repulsed by myself?

I want answers.  I’m smart enough to know I’m the only one who has them, but I think, amidst the other ironies of my mental illness, they’re trapped in my head.  Ugly memories too sick to fully fathom guard the way to them.

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I bet she’s a small girl, a brunette with a cute face—perhaps a Peruana or some other Latina with a native look.  The other ex-girlfriends, the ones that have approached me with their own stories about him, fit this description.  I suppose I do, too.

He isn’t even attractive.  He’s actually really pitiful looking.  He never stood up straight, so his shoulders were constantly raised near his ears and rolled in, as if he was trying to take up the least amount of space possible.  He had the most unassuming pose I’ve ever seen a man take.

Thinking of this is making me anxious, but I’m not having a panic attack.  Sadly, that’s an improvement.  The drugs are still working.  They don’t quite solve any of my problems, but they seem to be making room in my mind for the thoughts that want to come out, that need to.  My mind always freezes into a panic attack at the mere suggestion of a situation where a man used his will against a woman, but that’s becoming less and less true.  My body still gets cold and my muscles still tense, but it’s not the shaking, shivering, choking spasms of a relentless panic attack.  I still bounce my knee for hours with few breaks, but at least I can keep my focus on my work now.

I despise the standard of living I aspire toward.  I don’t feel human.  I don’t feel, for fuck’s sake!  Goddam it!  I want to scream at the top of my lungs, I’m so angry.  This shouldn’t be happening to me or to anyone.  This isn’t what life should be like.  This is hell.  How can anyone in this fucking country, where you can think and say almost anything without penalty, stand the silence being imposed on victims?  How can our social system be so blatantly, cruelly patriarchal?  I feel like I’m being ripped from the inside, like my mind is dissecting itself with rusty tools.

If I tell anyone my thoughts, they’ll look at me like I’m crazy.

Then, it won’t matter whether I’m crazy or not.  Everyone will think I am.  As a result, my depression will deepen.  I’ll kill myself—like Sylvia Plath.  Unlike her, my writing will disappear along with me.  Ashes to ashes.

Nothing will feel good until—

Until I’m done remembering and telling.  I need to break the silence.  I need to say it all out loud for people to hear.  It just feels right.  This site has been instrumental to my healing.  It makes me feel safe with the possibility that I may never stop remembering, never stop writing: that’s a comfort.

My mind continues to whisper:

I can’t imagine what happens when you’ve told your entire story.  That’s a kind of death, isn’t it—a paralysis of the plot?

I wonder what other things may die in me.

Oh, jeez!  Ignore me, please.  I’m such a drama queen.  Don’t listen to me.

No.  That’s really self-deprecating.

But true.

Fuck.  My mind is talking too fast.  One symptom disappears, so my mind immediately conceives a new one to take its place.  What a clever fortune teller I have!

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2. Freewriting Panic Attack: Holding Myself Up Normal
3. Torture and Time
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5. Freewriting Panic Attack: The Building. Shaken. Up.