I don’t know how to grieve.
There aren’t many days left of this, are there? The loss will subside sooner rather than later? Because I think I’ve been through enough. I think the molestation, and the rapes, and the abortion, and the years of emotional abuse, and the frequent panic attacks, and the palpitations, and the social ineptitude, and the last half decade of trying, trying as hard as I can to keep it together and going, to improve myself has been enough.
How much longer can I endure?
Sam and I cleaned the house yesterday in hopes the grief would fleck off like the dust. Maybe it worked for him; I still feel a fist reaching into my abdomen, up my chest cavity, grasping my bloody heart. Nothing is stopping the crying these past two weeks. I think of the day, if this keeps up, when I’ll become as adept at hiding my tears as I am at hiding my twitches.
It started around the same time I stayed home with the flu, two weeks ago. Maybe it was the rare time to myself to think or one of my delirious fever dreams, but it occurred to me, just as Sam will never again be the person he was around Sang, I will never again be the person I was around Sang.
Even now, I’m crying uncontrollably, nervous I’ll be caught falling apart. Two months later, the loss, formerly a seeming leech at my back, has begun to resemble an autoimmune disease cannibalizing me. My palpitations are its gnashing at my heart between meals.
Sam is the only person with the patience to deal with me in this state. It may be my ravaged self-esteem, but I haven’t felt I can trust anyone else for some time now, and no one’s pushed hard enough for me to feel they really want me to budge. So, here I am, alone with my cat and Sam, and I’m comfortable, if nothing else. I don’t think I have the strength to make it another day, but I don’t seem to have a choice. That seems to be a theme in my life: I have no choice. No one does, actually.
What’s all my crying worth in the end if I recognize everyone is suffering? The agreement of existence is to keep enduring the suffering for the chance of reward, right? It’s a blatantly Judeo-Christian approach to life, but what else do I have to focus on as I go forward? Why else take this shit if I’m not going to stop hurting so goddam much one day? Why do others?
Fuck fuck fuck. I want to scream it, but I won’t. I can’t. Mom said that if I scream too loud, I’ll burst the little box inside my throat that holds my voice, and then I won’t be able to speak at all. I’ll have to make noise with the stuff around me to call her attention, but there won’t always be things around, especially if I fall and can’t get up. So, there will be times when I’ll need her, but she won’t know and I won’t be able to tell her, because I screamed, so I’ll die. And then she’ll die from the grief. So, I don’t scream. If I scream, I’ll cry, and then she’ll give me something to cry about.
There’s never enough to cry about. The random circumstances that comprise existence demand more tears than the daily flashbacks, and the constant nausea, and the shaky hands, and the medication that never quite works, and the insomnia, and the sexual dysfunctions, and the self-loathing produce. With every new strike, I become increasingly convinced, Life won’t stop until I’m dead.
I’ve been thinking about this, a suggestion a commenter made a few days ago.
When I read it, I couldn’t decide how to answer. I was grateful for the comment and the food for thought. I still am. It has helped me arrive to one important conclusion:
I try to never dismiss others or their suggestions, so I’ve been wondering for days, is Negrita, the commenter’s suggestion a valid solution for me, as it appears to have been for her? Soon after, I started questioning if I was a survivor at all. And if not, how do I become a survivor, instead of a victim? I thought I was. I never considered the two ideas might be polar opposites. The therapists say, remember. The books say, remember. The people around me insist otherwise, citing the seeming adage, “leave the past in the past.”
But where is the evidence such a thing is possible? I consider myself a Buddhist, albeit a struggling one. If the idea of living in the present, an idea that reverberates throughout this entire religion, were such an easy one to implement, then what need has there ever been to form a religion that aspires toward this very accomplishment? Buddhist monks and nuns in the Himalayas spend their entire lives striving to live in the now. If I ever achieve that level of enlightenment, I think then there would be no reason to look back on my life. But I doubt I’ll achieve that in Jersey.
—which only brings up the lack of good instruction on the matter. Negrita suggests I do something more kinesthetic. Well, it’s always good to be moderately active, but choosing activity over words has never served me well. I only have time to do so much, and words serve me better. For instance, I used to workout at the gym several times a week. I would run on the treadmill, staring at the mirrored wall watching me, remembering the mirrored wall in the room Andy raped me in, remembering who watched me then. I knew I was working out to make sure I was strong enough to fight the next man off. The heart palpitations from high anxiety levels were the only thing that ever made me slow down. Finally, I stopped using exercise as a form of self-punishment. I stopped running toward—and away—from my past, and I started going to therapy. My therapists taught me I needed to have expectations, other than my then low expectations toward men.
After years of therapy and psychopharmaceutical aids, I’ve replaced the voices telling me to stop indulging in these thoughts and memories. Now, I struggle to replace others’ expectations with my own. At once, I’ve learned to demand certain expectations of others—like respect. I’ve learned to listen to my own voice, even when I’m screaming.
So I tell myself the things you read here. Some of them are good. Most of them aren’t. At the end of the day, however, writing about all these terrifying thoughts and feelings makes me feel a little more normal, a little less terrified.
Perhaps all this writing is a bit indulgent, as Negrita suggested, but I can’t believe victims shouldn’t be proud of themselves for managing to respect their thoughts enough to seriously consider them, as many of us do by writing about our lives. Nor can I believe that living in the now is something that can be done without first learning the lessons of the past. At the risk of sounding overly-philosophical, I argue, there is no now to live in without the past that created it.
Then again, maybe all Negrita meant was that I think too much. If so, there’s an irony to this post, to the amount of thought I’ve given her words.
It’s because she’s brought to light a fear I have. I’m circling forward, but am I progressing too slowly? How much time is enough time to recover? What defines a survivor? Who?
I’ve asked these questions before. My thoughts feel like a widening gyre. I’m writing toward my very center, hoping in doing so, I’m strengthening it. Perhaps I’m bias, but the evidence seems to be in my favor. Even direct criticisms don’t cause the damage to my self-esteem they once did.