Every Day is Happy Halloween!

I’m living in a house full with people I don’t know.
They are upstairs banging around. I am not used to this.
Battling, as I am, anxiety, it is difficult with them up there.

I am quitting my anxiety medication. I conveniently did not call the doctor to talk about what is next, how I have not fallen asleep unmedicated in months –

UPSTAIRS PEOPLE: “do you have a snake/steak/stake in your room”

This includes three varieties of prescribed benzodiazepines, every conceivable over-the-counter painkiller, sleeping pill and even gravol. Sometimes in silly dizzying combinations. It reminds me of when I was a kid and was afraid of being killed by my asthma so I drank adult-size packets of

UPSTAIRS PEOPLE: bang thump thump clang “what did he want?”


neo-citron. These are the only drug-things I’ve ever taken. I’ve never tasted alcohol, cigarettes, or anything else. So that is my evidence that I am fine.

And is panic really panic when it is familiar? Sudden overwhelming unfounded fear. Manifests in me physiologically

UPSTAIRS PEOPLE: draaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggging chairs

as inability to breath, tightness of chest, pounding heart, numb hands and arms, stabbing pain just at the inside tip of my right shoulder blade. Mostly when I wake up or lie down in bed, whenever I am about to prepare or eat food this happens. It is unfounded. But not sudden when I know it so deeply? Not overwhelming when I embrace it and channel it into rituals?

What is overwhelming is the thought that I didn’t have to always be this way, that

UPSTAIRS PEOPLE: “I started thinking about the way…..mixtures/fixtures.” bang bang bang

I might be able to stop it. Of course, in trying to stop everything has gotten worse. ..or maybe I am getting better and just noticing it all. You see?

So, I am turning to the most soothing thing. Horror movies. Many many of them. The Entity to Grudge 2 and all the Texas Chainsaw Masacres. Especially 2. Running running in underground caverns. As Roky Erikson has explained, horror isn’t scary to everyone. The way you feel when you sit on the edge of your seat, short of breath, and jumping at shadows is how I live my everyday. Horror is

UPSTAIRS PEOPLE: “hahahahah haha”

a way of life.

Tricking

Today is my assigned rest day. The first day where my job was to do nothing stressful all day. I came close – but I had a few small tasks. (not perfect!)

Overall it was successful in that my anxiety was fairly low. I wish I could say there was none. But not yet.

Right now, having moved and living in such an utterly different and temporary way feels ….odd. So I feel that. Which is normal?

There are so many things I have to get used to.

Many of my new roles, places are things I am not sure about. And I feel urgently that I need to do them all perfectly.

There is not even the possibility for me to misstep slightly. Except of course I do and have and will and thus…anxiety. I want to be the perfect landlord, teacher, student, money-maker, organizer, size, energy level, partner……

And I can’t ever be. Never ever. Like letting go of a dream…a brutal punishing one but a dream nonetheless.

Balancing out this letting go with a feeling of acceptable, adequate and normal instead of being an utter disappointment is the trick.

I’m good at tricks.

EMAILS FROM HOME

Email #1 Today:

Hey ____

I just wanted to check in and say hi.....maybe we could meet sometime and have a chat? Anyway have a good weekend...are you helping Jane move into her apartment?? love, mom


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Email #2 Today Excerpt:

Anyway please grab what you want from the Toyota or arrange a time to p.u. Or I could drop them somewhere depending on wether or not you want the books blah blah blah.It's just a little to much to leave with __ .I will leave everything in the Toyota for a week but we should try to keep it clean.Hope all is well at your new place.

Sincerely, x



These emails combined, with what I think might be withdrawal from the anxiety medication I am stopping, have me regressing.

I think it is mostly the one from my mother, which, when I read it, I sob. For no reason. For reason. For no good reason. See, there she is, so casually loving. I haven’t seen her in almost seven years. I have spoken to her (I foolishly called) once in nearly as many. But there it is….she wants to “chat.” She wants me to “have a good weekend.” So easy going. What’s wrong with me that I am not that way back!!

The real problem is the last words: love, mom. See, no. I think the thing here is, biologically she is half the donor of my genetic material. Sure.
Sociologically I did grow up mostly in the company of her society. Where I learned to hate myself, fear hypervigilantly the violence and mental smallness of all men, feel ashamed for being abused by my father, feel guilty for having a father and overall, learn to live in a measured way where, year after year, my feelings and emotions became irrational and wrong side-effects of my cloying reminding-everyone-of-my-alcoholic-abuser-father existence.

In context then, what her email says to me is DIE DIE DIE.
Her intent was not that. Has never been. She is sick. And I should have empathy for it. Unfortunately I am not able to yet. I want to be able to but I know when I read her casual words and my throat constricts and my three hundred pounds slams into my chest - I am not there. And then when I read the casual words of my x and the feeling is echoed on a smaller scale I slide backwards.

I feel certain, in the shadow of these emails, that love is not for me. These two massive failures are my evidence. I have cast an apparent pall on both of these peoples lives. They are so casual and easy and my reaction is an eclipse of there message with a swath of clear wide pain and grief. I shudder at how little I understood about what was happening to me. And then I just don’t want to think about any of it or anything anymore.

Remembering Warm

I often think of your hands on your cock. Your hands. So carefully manicured and cleansed yet, escaping all that is a vulgar strength …an intense masculinity? Something clichéd like that seems apt. And performing their familiar pleasure ritual, allowing me into something terribly intimate softens everything in me.
Then you come on my lips, my tongue, my chin – it is not just the taste I think about but even more the warmth. The exact evidence of you.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Nipples

A room full of women gathered specifically because we all have experienced some sort of trauma in our childhoods. A trauma significant enough to us that is stands as the central organizing principal in our lives twenty, thirty, forty years later.

After being introduced to the therapy that is being offered we are asked to speak our minds. To ask questions.

Immediately one woman, who is the shape of a dollop of whipped cream pipes up.

“Yeah. I resent how these forms you have us fill out all basically ask if we have a support network. ‘Cuz see, my problem here is that I am anti-social. I don’t like people. I don’t have some fucking long list of people I can cry to all day long.”

Psychiatrist: “I can understand that totally. Is there maybe just one-“

“Look. No one wants to hear my problems. And I can’t lay it on them. Everyone has problems. I been in therapy since I was eight, nothing changes.”

(Another, horse-faced older women): “She’s right. No one cares.”

At this point I am nearly nodding off. Not so much out of boredom honestly, but in protection. The beginning of the meeting, when they outline the stages of working through a trauma and I start to think about my father and my time with him and then my mother I almost cry. That is the shitface stage I am at. Plus I am ashamed to be here. Full of shame so deep and broad it takes all my energy to look up from the table at people. But I do.

But these hopeless women make me think. I look across the table at a woman who looks more like me. She is young, tall – taller than me. Pretty with long red hair and pale skin and eyes. She has a terrible wounded look about her. I wonder is this how I look? Is it so terribly obvious? If I don’t fix myself will I end up like these other women whom nobody can tolerate. Because now people will listen to me. But is it because I am presentable and know how to dish it out in appetizing ways?

Then I imagine kissing the red head in the elevator. Rubbing her large breasts with my small ones.

I look at the psychiatrists – two older women themselves – and feel caught between them and the women they are trying to convince they are wrong whilst also being supportive. What a terrible task.

Government cuts is why we are here. The waiting lists are so long for people needing this kind of help. I still don’t think this is good. Asking people who look at other humans as predators because of experience to gather in a group and be comfortable and honest is odd.

I am first to leave. I hand in my paperwork and I am asked if I have any questions. I say no, it is exactly what I expected and then I run, run to the elevators and hold my finger over the down button for longer than necessary.

oops!

ICU Resort and Spa

Yesterday I had an exchange with someone that I did not want to have. That should not exist and I left my body again and I thought about a trip I might like to take.

I enjoy travel but I have never stayed at an all inclusive resort and have no desire to do so.

Or didn’t think I did.

Then I found ICU Resort and Spa in Burritacca Colombia. What they offer is necessarily inclusive. You can’t opt out of anything. And even so, I have made a reservation and can’t wait to go.

Upon arrival you are escorted immediately to a room that looks like what you would find in a typical Western intensive care unit. Before you can drop your hat or your purse they inject you with enough sedative to loosen your knees and they catch you and guide you to your gurney.

They ask you how long you are staying and to count down the days backwards. Hopefully I won’t get past 10. Then, according to your pre-arranged wishes, they hook you up to a certain number of calories a day IV drip and intubate you so you do not even have to breathe on your own. And there, unconscious you remain for the duration of your vacation.

Three times each day a very attractive and scantily clad hotel “orderly” arrives and moves all the joints in your body and gives you a deep tissue massage.

I might never leave.

Homefree

I think maybe it would be best if I never lived anywhere.
If I never had a home it would resolve most of my compulsions and concerns.
It is a strange idea, since I just bought a house. Luckily I don’t live there and maybe I never should. Because thinking about living there is to let loose all-consuming thoughts that I am on the run from.

So, what I can do is move into a car or some fucking thing. And then, not having any of the things that give me anxiety, I will be free.

The other problem I have is being torn. Right now I am stuck in the between of how I was for so long thinking about my house/family and filled with fury and unleashed anxiety and how I am going to be without constant anger and dismantled compulsions. The funny thing was, at no time was I ever depressed. I was happy with my fury and busy with my perfectionism. Only fleetingly sad….so brief as to not exist at all. And my anxiety was the fuel that moved me. I acknowledge that if I did not work and live in such a pain-filled and anxious reality I could probably accomplished much much more emotionally and who knows what else.

Now that I have to feel things I can hardly imagine what I was thinking.
I still do things old ways though and when I do it really hurts.
Secrets and protective versions of reality that I try not to hold to. Doing what is best for me. That is what my psychiatrist calmly told me: I need to just do what is best for me. She made it sound so very clean and airy. But I am repeatedly failing at doing it anyways.

House full of Goodbye

Moving Day

Today I am moving most of my belongings out of here.
Here. This place was my home. Home. It was my dead father, vacant mother, secret confidant. It was my whole world, the only place I felt safe. The only thing on earth that loved me.

My house loved me because I kept it uncontaminated in the areas it needed. And because I promised it forever. I promised, forever I would be here taking care of it.

Now I’m leaving.

First, I got a dog. A teeny tiny dog that I loved enough to see that the person I was living with in my loving house was not someone I cared for at all.

So I got rid of him. Then it was me and my house and my dog. Then, because of chance encounter, I started going to therapy. And slowly, that coupled with this chance relationship that has made me feel safe, supported and loved by a person for the first time in my life and opening up to my two best friends….I can leave.

The house is absolutely alive to me. All houses are. I feel them hurt. It whispers quietly to me not to go, not to leave it. It is getting angry at me and has been keeping me awake. It hates to love me.

When I leave I will be severing some vestigial limb so there will be bleeding. It will take some time for that wound to heal. And I will always carry the scar, the scar of my love lost.

I am sitting, writing this in my house, pulled around me. It is now a shroud of shrieking needles. Each of the thousands of sharp points singing out a threat in shape and sound: DON’T DARE LEAVE ME YOU CUNT. I can feel all the energetic anger concentrate just above my right shoulder blade and dart into me, pinning me down.

But I will got through the motions because now I have an clearer understanding and now way back. I have felt feeling good and compared it to what I thought was good and learned that what I was feeling was only relief. Relief from running, hiding, shame and threats of destitution. Taking a step up from mere relief and instead reaching towards trying to be happy is big. Seems very big right now. So maybe I will falter. Still, I can’t go back. And don't want to at all. I'm greedy for this new thing.

And still I listen to the house shriek and chatter and try to formulate the feeling of goodbye.

Flying Over It.

Wake up at 22:30. I had fallen asleep sitting up (to lesson the pounding heart) after taking my medication plus a couple extra things. Now my heart is pounding so much, I’m hot and I can’t breathe. I have never, ever had anything as bad as this. I feel like, since I tried to figure out why I got these heart pounding problems in the morning it has spread and worsened and, even though I am making progress, I don’t care because I just want it to STOP.

Why. Why is my body doing this to me. Moving is hard. All this change is harder. So my body is rebelling. Everything is going to work out. Help is at hand, you are coming. But still my heart and chest shake and now it hurts.

Watching One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest. There is nothing wrong. There is nothing wrong. Lobotomy.

Reading about other people with anxiety who have heart pounding and take sleeping pills to fall asleep with it and then they wake up because the sleeping pill effect has worn off.
They live like this for years.

I can’t. I absolutely can’t live like this for very much longer.

Remington Steel Home

I love television, right.

So, I loved this detective show Remington Steele. It was impossible to hide. All day Tuesday I would be anxious about it…like I had a meeting or a date with someone. I was ten so I did not know what a date was.

It was like this: every night of the week that was not Tuesday I would sit alone in my room and shut my eyes and imagine myself into that world. I would be one or the other of the main characters. Slowly, over time, this world became my life, more real to me than the small town, the trailer, the family I lived in. I knitted it all together so that, when I was alone in my room I brought Remington Steele alive in there with me. But also, when I watched the show, I brought myself into the show.



Here is how.

First everyone had to be asleep. That was fine. My stepfather and mother would be in bed by 7:30 pm. They would turn off the heat. I would listen to them in the kitchen and then moving off down the hall. Always on Tuesdays my stepfather would make jokes about Remington Steele. If he was in a good mood he would say maybe there will be a news pre-emption. If he was in a bad mood he would threaten to rip the aerial off the house or kick the tv in. These threats, small and large, would feed the embers of my panic. I could not ever show anything though, of course. I knew that I had to see the show because I was the show, it was part of me and as crucial to my survival as my organs and daily fruit loops. Not seeing it was not possible anyways.

To ensure that my stepfather would never stop me (Remington Steele) I had more than just a first step. Also, I had to be sitting with straight legs on the couch with one square couch pillow behind my back. I had to have the ugly orange and purple itchy crocheted blanket over my legs and hips. I had to breathe very shallowly throughout the show so I could hear it as it had to be turned down very low so as not to disturb my stepfather. And finally, most importantly, I had to have absolutely no hair on my face at all. This meant very carefully and repeatedly wetting my hands and pushing all the hair around my face behind my ears.



This protected me (Remington Steele). After the show I would go to bed and re-enact in my head the entire episode changing things (but not really) to fit with my life and integrate that episode with my week.

Summer reruns nothing changed, it was just an opportunity to fix anything I might have done wrong.

ONE WEEK COUNTDOWN TO THE END

I tell everyone how stressful things have been, how tired I am. TRUE.

But, of course, no one has time to hear about the silly details.

First there are four things.

You are not allowed to drink coffee so you eat chocolate covered coffee beans instead.

You are not allowed to grocery shop so you eat what is left and create meals that make your stomach heave.

You are not allowed to pack or to stay so you throw everything out.

You are not allowed to have help because you don’t deserve it – the entire mess is your fault and if you get help you will still be making mess instead of FIXING THINGS PERFECTLY.

Next, you split yourself into two. One of you deals with the routine work things, organizing things, outside things and politeness. The other one listens to the commands and then tallies up the anxiety from patently ignoring the commands.

Clean the floor.
NO.

Put the peanut butter on the second shelf.
NO.

Take off your boots.
NO.

Wash the sheets.
NO.

Wash the curtains.
NO.

Clean the computer.
NO.

Put the vegetables in special vegetable bags.
NO.

Turn off the lights.
NO.

Turn on the TV.
NO.

Turn off the TV.
No.

Dust the entire house, there are cobwebs.
NO.

Take of your indoor shoes before entering bedroom.
NO.

Take a decontaminating bath before retiring to sleeplessness in bed.
NO.
YES.
NO.
Okay.

Don’t eat.
No.
Yes. NO. A little.

Run every day.
YES.

Throw everything away or use it.
YES.

Answer the phone (it is X AGAIN).
NO.
Yes.

Move.
No.

Stay.
No.

Fix yourself because you talk in ways that make people confused.
Yes,
HOW.

Constant losing/winning battle.

And I of course I can handle it. Because I am split in two.