Sick

Broken babies everywhere.  Fraught with shredded suffering, nothing soothes or makes them calm.  I am so afraid that I have a very sick mind. 

They scream.  They hurt.  My head throbs with psychic suffering and torment.  I am so very tired of having this twisted space of devastation within me.  Normal is relative but with simple confidence I can say that normal people do not have these images of pain.

Most memories are ones that I can endure but bleeding babies push me towards capacity.  Common people smile at me while daily acquaintances are kind and complimentary. 

If they only knew... 

If they only knew the poison that has washed over my mind.  If only they knew the images that I can never shake.  The oily suds of sin that froth and foam, they will never wash completely clean. 

I wrestle and I twist with these faces until I am overcome with the fear.  My bitter stomach churns as I reach for a familiar metal.  My hands shake with forward reaching regret until the warmth of release stings when mixed with salty tears.

My mind lurches forward as the flashbacks of the past find me unsuspecting.  The mental whiplash leaves me lost as the jarring shock brings me to my knees.  I am begging for an end; a present firmly rooted that is able to withstand the forces of his latent life. 

I am begging for relief before I am sick like him.

Hurt

Miserable.  I don't deserve to be miserable.  This has been my mantra over the past several weeks.

I was stopped dead in my tracks shortly after my last post.  I went to therapy, minding my own business like I always do, and my therapist told me he had a possible solution for handling my vices.  Or addictions as they should be more accurately described.

REHAB

Are you fucking kidding me?  Turns out he wasn't.  And that was a sobering moment.  To come to the point in my life where I'm told that I am essentially out of control and I need to be locked up to gain control is probably enough to get most anyone's attention. 

I am all about control so coming to the reality that control is not something in my arsenal; well, that one is a tough one for me.  I came here and had nothing to say.  Perhaps out of embarrassment.  Perhaps out of fear.  Perhaps I was wordless.  And so I was quiet.

Back to the rehab thing; I used my daughter as a reason... excuse... and asked for a month to get my shit together.  I then went home, armed with a list written by my therapist for my husband.  And I actually gave the list to him and did a lot of explaining.

I've left my husband in the dark about a lot.  Especially when it comes to the food and cutting problems.  When I told him that I still cut his response was, "but that's what fucked up people do". 

I met his remark with a smile and a raised eyebrow and said, "yeah".

So I'm doing what fucked up people do.  I'm talking; not in my head but with audible words for real humans to hear.  I'm trying to express my feelings better.  I'm being honest about my habits.  And I'm letting people help me.  All novel concepts. 

To keep busy, I'm also quilting and sewing everything in my path.  I made two quilts in a week.  My husband is worried that he is going to wake up and find himself quilted to the bed.  I told him that if it keeps me sober then perhaps he should pick out some fabrics that he likes.

I'm doing better.  I am thinking before I eat, drink, or hurt myself. 

And politely speaking, really all of this has just been one form or another of hurting myself.  Impolitely, I have been self-destructing or fucking myself up.  Whatever it is, I don't deserve it. 

I've been hurt enough.

Vices

I started this blog with the need to be honest.  Good or bad.  I write a lot about my past, my secrets, my hurts, and a little about my feelings. 

I have a present tense life as well.  However, my present has always been wrapped up in my past.  And my future, well I honestly could not imagine one.  I have never been one to even dream of a day down the road.  I grew up living day to day.  Even moment by moment.

My father's death has changed a lot.  I held my breath with every phone call, knock at the door, even a familiar cologne or voice.  I don't have to do this anymore and it is the strangest feeling.  I have a present life.  And possibly even a future.

So now as I look at my present I see that it is a tangled mess of feelings, numbness, bad habits and addictions.  I have never cared about these things before.  Because I had no future.

Here is the ugly truth.  My husband told me that I am an alcoholic the other night.  I told him that he was full of shit.  After discussing my drinking habits in therapy last night I asked my therapist if I was one and without a taking a breath or even a pause his answer was "yes". 

Nice.

And another ugly truth.  I eat too much.  I guess that's called binging.  And then I throw up.  Purging.  And then I won't eat at all.  And after that I will binge again.  I have done this for years.  My food issues run very deep.  Food is one of the earliest ways that I remember my parents abusing me.

And yet another.  I cut.  That one is pretty straightforward. 

I know that all these things need to stop.  They hurt me.  Some worse than others.  And worse, these things hurt the people who love me.  But I would be lying if I said that replacing these habits doesn't scare me shitless. 

Food.  Alcohol.  A blade.  These things have been constants in my life.  My friends.  What I run to when I'm sad, hurting, numb, lonely.  Even happy.  So I am looking for some new constants.  Healthy ones.

I don't really know what I want by writing this.  I suppose I just want to be honest about where I am and where I need to be headed.

Friend

What's that line... hello, darkness, my old friend...? 

My friend is making a raging comeback.  Yippee.

I do not know exactly what has brought this on but I am knocked down, sideways and can't get up depressed.  Those irritating Cymbalta commercials showing depressed people sucking at living?  That's me minus roaming around aimlessly in sweatpants because I don't wear sweatpants.

I just stay in my pajamas.

I don't have the luxury of sleeping the day away or even lying in bed with my eyes open praying that a spontaneous lobotomy will occur.  I have a kid, I have a job, I have judo, gymnastics, and swim team to attend, and I have a rather important (to me) husband who occasionally would like to see me out of pajamas and showered with a smile on my face.  It's a rough life these days.

The thing is, I do shower, smile and dress nicely.  It's my mind that is still wearing pajamas and perhaps that is where the conflict begins.  I am fucking exhausted and I honestly believe that there is not a soul on earth that understands where I am coming from.  Try as he may, my husband doesn't get it and he substitutes his confusion with anger.  I don't do anger so I just shut up and stay quiet.  I certainly am not talking to my daughter about this and I don't have any girlfriends to call up and bitch about my fucked up life.

So here I am.

I told my husband this morning that I am a really fucked up person and it is really hard to live.  His response was to yell at me that I'm not fucked up.  Right.  Everyone he meets hears voices, sees people who aren't there, and wishes they could carve the feeling part of their brain right out of their skull.  Right.  I'm definitely not fucked up.

Love him.

But seriously, I'm tired.  I walk a mental high wire, balancing with hate in one hand and sorrow in the other.  And then I crash with only my pretend friends to catch me.  The reality of my horrors catches up with me on occasion and now is one of those times.  I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can barely think.  The Shelter is screaming and I can't help those babies enough.  I am getting that familiar feeling that I am not the one made for this job.

What this boils down to is that I hate my parents.  I hate what they did and I hate what they allowed.  That hate is consuming me and I feel myself getting angry so I turn the hatred on myself.  It is easier to hate me.  It is safer.

Until I run out of room for cutting.

And I'm there; I have no more hidden skin available.  This is usually where I retreat deep inside but I'm not OK accepting that this time.  Problem is, I don't know where to go.

Hate

I hate myself. That's the short of it. I have struggled with this as long as I can remember. In talking with my therapist this week, he reminded me of some of the reasons that I am a good person. I hear it, my brain processes the words, my heart wants to believe it, but then the familiar words of "if he only knew" creep in and consume any hopes of believing it is true. Sad thing is, he does know. He knows more about me than any other person... he knows the nitty gritty details, the good, the bad and the dark & ugly. So if someone who does "know" can still find the good in me, then why the hell can't I believe it?

It's frustrating. I don't enjoy walking around feeling like this. Shame is my cloak and hatred follows me wherever I go. I envy the people who have good self-esteem because I am not one of those people. My husband is one of those who just looks comfortable in his own skin. My skin is too tight. So I cut.

I was taught to cut. By someone close to me who was hurting me. It is almost as if it was their calculated attempt to hide my feelings from the world and show me how to turn them inward. The sad thing is, cutting as I was taught did ease my feelings of guilt, shame, anger, etc. It was my release and my best means of controlling my feelings. A simple cut was a distraction to the larger pain. I believe this is where my self-destructive behavior took root.

Over the years my self-destruction has taken many forms. Alcohol, prescription drugs, more cutting, binge eating, purging, not eating, and pushing everyone away who even attempted to love or care for me. "I will make them leave before they can decide on their own to leave me", that was my constant thought. I've always thought it to be better anyways because anyone who got to know me surely would be repulsed by my secrets. I work hard to ruin my own success because I'm terrified of the good happening in my life. Good means that it can turn to bad. However, it sure is a lot of work to live my life like this and from the outside looking in, it must look strange to watch me ruin the good things going for me. I know my husband sees it as strange; a frequent argument between us is my resistance to let him love me. He knows me, maybe not all the dark and sordid details but he still knows me. And even then, I still resist the good that is him in my life.

All this leads me back to the silent treatment. I ignore my own feelings, thoughts, emotions, and dreams. In a sense, I give myself the silent treatment. And in return, that pain created by the silence, leaks out as self-destruction and hatred. When the good comes in my life I embrace it for a time and actually attempt to feel. But then, like clockwork, I shut down and the silence begins. An internal temper-tantrum eventually ensues, screaming to get my attention only to be met with more silence until I can no longer ignore it. By then I am so out of control that I resort to self-destruction which temporarily cures the larger pain in my life.

In writing this, I can see that I'm actually quite predictable. No wonder people close to me are maddened to watch this process happen time and time again. So here goes, I'm going to start listening to myself and hearing them out instead of screaming back to shut up. Hearing myself has to be easier in the long term than continuing to make a mess out of my life through self-destruction because now, for the first time, my own destruction is hurting those around me who love me and that is something I cannot continue to do.