Here I Am

I'm dying to sculpt in marble. Dying. Positively actively deceasing.

So, I asked my parents if I could get a christmas present consisting of these tools and these classes at the Art Students League.


Isn't that exciting? And I'll probably be taking some good art history classes at SVA, since I'll be a FINE ARTS MAJOR! Can't wait for that.


God I'm so moody. I get depressed so easily, trapped in a gradually derailing train of thought which often ends in, "Well, I'll just kill myself" or sometimes, "Well, I'll just cut off contact entirely." Sometimes those are the easy answers. It's extreme black and white thinking, something we talk about often in therapy and DBT.

I hate being like this. I hate being not sane. Radical acceptance. It's okay to have a pity party for a few minutes and then move on. The whole concept of sanity is incredible to think about, as always. Einstein said, to paraphrase, "Insanity is doing the same things over again and expecting a different outcome," so sanity must be learning from your mistakes, by his logic. I do learn, but I still keep making the same mistakes. I'm trying to learn as much as I can through indirect methods like DBT and therapy, but I can't learn from my mistakes directly since I don't understand fully why I make them, or even recognize that they're happening.

Pity party finito.

Jessica's performance yesterday was just so gorgeous. There will be a webcast of it up some time, maybe a couple days from now. I'll post when it's up. But seriously, it was absolutely astonishingly beautiful, the program was perfect, enthralling. I didn't want it to end, and I teared up six times.

I also took a ton of pictures, and while we were at the zoo and such I got a bunch of pictures taken of me. I'll post them here when I get them.

Where am I?

I went to Pittsburgh for the weekend to see my sister's masters concert - she's getting her masters degree in flute performance. I have a serious case of Akasthisia, an obnoxious psychotropic drug symptom that manifests itself as a sort of inner restlessness which causes me to require constant change in stimulation and gives me anxiety if I have to sit still.

There's a lot of potential for some severe issues during Jess' concert, but I'm just so proud of her for doing such an amazing job with school and improving her performance ability so much. She's really got her game together, something I envy. My life has completely fallen apart. I'm comparing myself to her as I sit in her tidy, organized apartment with abundant decorations and I can't help but feel left behind. I'm so tired of having so many issues. I want to feel normal, with normalized anxiety and alleviated depression and none of the symptoms of complex post traumatic stress disorder affecting me. It's overwhelming to be a mental patient, to be legally certifiably insane. I'm going to be certifiable soon, actually, so it's not official yet. I'm not sure how it works but it will help me with getting more medical care and potentially help me get food stamps.

I desperately want a normal life. How did I get to this point? I showed so much promise a year ago, but I was miserable. Yet I was accomplishing so much, and now what am I doing? I don't even know where I'll be tomorrow, much less a few years down the road. Hell, where will I be in an hour, emotionally? Will I make more life changing, mind altering epiphanies?

I need to rest. This is too much.

Chelmsford

Going home is such a challenge for me. Every Friday I try to convince myself it's worthwhile and I fail. It's paralyzing, the idea of it. I'm honestly terrified of Chelmsford, my old home town. Before I had that life-changing hospitalization I would go back mostly to work, and the occasional family function. I'd drink, distract myself with work, friends and drugs, and try my best to connect with my family.

But without those distractions there's a palpable wave of anxiety constantly washing through me that brings an absolute certainty that at any moment something monumentally awful is going to happen. Every corner of every room is a trap. Every moment I'm forgetting something vitally important and trying to figure out what it could be. Every word I say, every opinion I have and every action I take is under close scrutiny and assumed to be wrong. When I'm there, I know this like I know my hand is my own: there is no possible way to doubt it, and the longer something bad doesn't happen the more the anticipation builds. I think that's among the reasons why my nightmares are always so much worse there.

I can't handle those feelings, they're too much for me, way too much. It feels absurd, looking at what I wrote in that last paragraph. I recognize how crazy it is. Generally the only way I can handle it is if I dissociate or derealize. The last time I went home I lost my ability to remember anything over a couple years past. I couldn't remember my grandpa's name, I couldn't remember my teachers when Lauren talked about them, I couldn't remember the names of the sidestreets next to where I lived for 20 years. Everything seemed new and surreal, like it wasn't my life, like people had confused me for someone else. There was a funny little fear in the back of my head that there had been some sort of weird mix up a couple years ago and I had usurped someone else's life and never realized it.

It wasn't so bad originally, even when I was fresh out of the hospital and staying sober. It was when I had my major dissociative episode and people tried to convince me to go back to Chelmsford. They made me feel guilty for being in New York because they were so worried for me, and they would feel so much better if I went back to safe old suburbia, where they could keep closer tabs on me. It was one friend in particular who brought this out, but I got it from a number of people back there. I didn't want them to worry, and I felt sick, that people were afraid to let me live on my own. It made me feel claustrophobic. I had images of them digging into me with their claws, grasping at me, dragging me toward them and swaddling me in their secure nest in the suburbs. It was for my own safety, they were trying to take care of me, because they believed I couldn't take care of myself. I felt like I deserved more respect than that, that I deserved more trust.

After coming to grips with the idea that I might be forced to live in Chelmsford, I haven't felt at all safe there. It will take a while before any sense of security there comes back.

The next thing I need to talk about is my relationship with my family.

All Apologies

Apologies can be really important to me. I'm currently ruining a great friendship because the guy hasn't apologized for his actions, when all it would take is for him to say he's sorry. To accept having been wrong takes a lot of strength of character, and it's so hard for so many people. My father has apologized to me maybe twice in my life, but he has never truly been genuinely apologetic to me. It's always been turned around on me to make me feel guilty and make me apologize for his bad actions. When I was in a hospital, bedridden, he made fun of my catheter. I was hurt, and plainly asked for him to please not mention it because it's really embarrassing to me. He steamed for a good fifteen minutes, and then he snapped and unplugged my tv, which was among my only sources of entertainment in the room since I wasn't supposed to stand up, and then he marched off to a far corner of the other room in the suite so I couldn't talk to him about it. I walked over to him in excruciating pain against the doctor's orders, and was sobbing and apologizing to him and begging for his forgiveness. I apologized to him over and over and felt very guilty, and what had I done? I was embarrassed by his teasing me and called him out on it, and he saw it as disrespectful to him, and unappreciative because he had taken his time out to be there with me in the hospital.

He never has and likely never will apologize for that, which is always going to bother me. One thing he has apologized for is cutting down that mulberry tree, though my mom had to push him into it, and it was an, "I'm sorry, although there's no way I could have known you would be so irrationally attached to a tree, so of course I have nothing to apologize for, just stop crying" type of apology.

I remember the first time I noticed him apologizing, it was a shock to me - he was carrying something and it was heavy and he put more weight on my end than I could handle so he said, "Sorry, sorry! Let's put it down."

I was floored by it, and then I was stunned that it would be such a shock. I had accepted the fact that he was never, ever wrong, never made mistakes, and took it for granted - he never had a reason to apologize, if he did something wrong it wasn't his fault. It was probably mine. I'm sure he apologizes much more to mom or other people he considers his equals, but he just doesn't to his kids, or at least not without cutting it by saying things like, "Sooo sorry charlie!", quoting some old tv show. It saves him face by making it insincere, as if it's silly to be upset over whatever it is he's apologizing for.

He just has too firm a belief that he's always right to ever ask for forgiveness.

That's all probably not so far out of the ordinary. Or is it? And does it matter? I mean, why do I accept such clearly unhealthy behavior just because it might be somewhat normal? His never apologizing and constant blame gaming has left me with some severe complexes.

Ugh. Those movie and tv jokes about incidences of bad parenting that say things like, "That'll make for good conversation with her therapist twenty years from now," used to be funny to me, but they so aren't anymore.

Dishonesty

I went to the NA meeting, and was the only person there that didn't speak. It wasn't that I had nothing to say, I just was afraid to say it. That doesn't really happen often for me. I generally am able to speak up and say what's on my mind. But somehow I just clam up at NA and AA, I guess because I never shot heroin or did crack or coke or most of those other narcotics, I never sold my mom's jewelry for a fix. But I do get a lot from hearing them talk, and I'm going through so much of the same stuff. It's just difficult to open up there, despite how open and nice the people are. After the meeting I hung out with a few of them for a while, but I got super anxious and left.

Tomorrow morning I get to go to group again. Because I skipped it today it feels a little awkward, but at least it's just the morning group. Or wait, no it isn't, it's also the substance abuse group. That's going to be a trigger for sure, both for anxiety and for wanting to drink or get high.

I'm so upset by the required urinalysis. I don't want to have to do that, and I may have to twice a week. It's very telling that it upsets me, though. I'm trying to be sober, it should be a good thing, they're keeping me honest. But that's just it, on the half full side I guess what bothers me about it is that I don't like being thought of as untrustworthy. If there's anything that causes me to rage, and I've thought about that a lot, it's when I'm treated as the things I've always been called.

Airhead
Irresponsible
Untrustworthy
Unappreciative

Even (or especially) when it's true, those labels make me so blindingly upset I can't handle myself rationally. I have to show my student ID every time I enter my own home, and that really bothers me because it makes me feel untrustworthy. I've been called those things so many times, I can't even write about it without feeling the need to go smoke.

The less pretty side of why I'm so bothered by requisite urinalysis is that it feels safe to be able to lie, to not have forced honesty. What's the big deal with a little drug use? What's the big deal if I slip and drink a little? Sometimes I just need it, and I don't need to be judged for it! That's the little voice in my head, the one that says I'm special, that they won't understand, that I don't have a problem and I can handle mild usage and it won't hurt, that it will just loosen me up and actually help me.

I have to face the truth. I am untrustworthy, and they need absolute honesty on whether I'm using, which they can only get through drug screening. The fact that I've built up such explosively negative emotions around being thought of as untrustworthy or irresponsible makes it much harder to accept. I've spent so much of my life trying so hard to prove my dad wrong about me, especially when he calls me an airhead, which was one of his favorites. That one bothers me the most because it's the most blatantly disrespectful of me and plainly wrong. I'm the opposite of an airhead, if there is one. I always have way too much going on in there - I'm only ever absent minded when I'm high, and that's a fantastic relief for me.

I'm not able to commit to staying clean for the duration of my time at columbia, much less the rest of my life. I can't imagine always being sober, forever. I think of all of my treatment as just a temporary roadblock in my ultimate goal of being able to use responsibly. I don't know if roadblock is the right word, because I do acknowledge treatment as being necessary to that goal. That's all so unrealistic anyway. Using is inherently irresponsible, I'm an addict, I can't use in moderation. If I use at all, if I allow drugs to be my crutch, then I'm cutting off my own legs. And I don't want to be on crutches for the rest of my life, I want to walk on my own.

It's just so much easier to disappear into drug use, and I can accomplish so much when I'm using, I really did do so much work. But I was so unhappy, it so wasn't worth the cost, and I don't think I have it in me anymore. I don't have the same panic-driven burning engine that pushes me through the night to prove myself to everyone. That was a horrible time of my life and it sickens me to remember that feeling, that need to perform.

Change, change change. Too much of it, all the time. Seven years ago I was 15. Six years ago I was 16. Four years ago I was 18. Two years ago I was 20. Last year I was 21. This year I'm 22. I've lived so many lives in seven years! My brain hurts.

Abuse

Here's a passage from this book I've been reading, "Trauma and Recovery" by Judith Herman:

This malignant sense of inner badness is often camouflaged by the abused child's persistent attempts to be good. In the effort to placate her abusers, the child victim often becomes a superb performer. She attempts to do whatever is required of her. She may become an empathic caretaker for her parents, an efficient housekeeper, an academic achiever, a model of social conformity. She brings to all these tasks a perfectionist zeal, driven by the desperate need to find favor in her parents' eyes. In adult life, this prematurely forced competence may lead to considerable occupational success. None of her achievements in the world redound o her credit, however, for she usually perceives her performing self as inauthentic and false. Rather, the appreciation of others simply confirms her conviction that no one can truly know her and that, if her secret and true self were recognized, she would be shunned and reviled.

This is almost verbatim something I've talked to my therapist about and now, because it's in this book and is so precisely accurate to one of my biggest issues, I've spent a lot of time thinking about its roots. This is in the context of child abuse. What other roots can cause this intense a complex? When I was a kid, were my parents' behaviors abusive?

I know they love me, and I love them. They've been there for me, at least financially and in terms of bringing me to therapy and such. But they rarely show affection or pride for me, and often seem very emotionally distant. Because they treat affection toward me like it's something awkward, limited or even shameful, I have a hard time reciprocating anything. Both of them remind me now of another few passages in the book:

The abused child is isolated from other family members as well as from the wider social world. She perceives daily, not only that the most powerful adult in her intimate world is dangerous to her, but also that the other adults who are responsible for her care do not protect her. The reasons for his protective failure are in some sense immaterial to the child victim, who experiences it at best as a sign of indifference and at worst as a complicit betrayal. From the child's point of view, the parent disarmed by secrecy should have known; if she cared enough, she would have found out. The parent disarmed by intimidation should have intervened; if she cared enough, she would have fought. The child feels that she has been abandoned to her fate, and this abandonment is often resented more keenly than the abuse itself.

... In her desperate attempts to preserve her faith in her parents, the child victim develops highly idealized images of at least one parent. Sometimes the child attempts to preserve a bond with the nonoffending parent. She excuses or rationalizes the failure of protection by attributing it to her own unworthiness. More commonly, the child idealizes the abusive parent and displaces all her rage onto the nonoffending parent. She may in fact feel more strongly attached to the abuser, who demonstrates a perverse interest in her, than in the nonoffending parent, whom she perceives as indifferent.

... In the course of normal development a child achieves a secure sense of autonomy by forming inner representations of trustworthy and dependable caretakers, representations that can be evoked mentally in moments of distress. ... In a climate of chronic childhood abuse, these inner representations cannot form in the first place; they are repeatedly, violently, shattered by traumatic experience. Unable to develop an inner sense of safety, the abused child remains more dependent than other children on external sources of comfort and solace. Unable to develop a secure sense of independence, the abused child continues to seek desperately and indiscriminately for someone to depend upon.

...Thus, under conditions of chronic childhood abuse, fragmentation becomes the central principle of personality organization. Fragmentation in consciousness prevents the ordinary integration of knowledge, memory, emotional states, and bodily experience. Fragmentation in the inner representations of the self prevents the integration of identity. Fragmentation in the inner representations of others prevents the development of a reliabe sense of independence within connection.

... The sociologist Patricia Rieker and the psychiatrist Elaine Carmen describe the central pathology in victimized children as a "disordered and fragmented identity deriving from accomodations to the judgments of others."

I think that in a way, I thought of both of my parents as how this book describes the 'nonoffending' parent, though I certainly spent my entire 20 years of living with them in constant fear of offending my dad, who was prone to flying into fits of rage over the tiniest things, and when his anger was even remotely justifiable he really lost it. One time I recycled a box of something, and the bag of recyclables was next to the stove, which had a burner on boiling water. It was maybe a foot away from the flames. My dad screamed, "Everybody, wake up!" at the bottom of the stairs, stomped up them two at a time, and I remember being so scared to admit it was me, but I did and he was absolutely furious. We went downstairs and found that the bags had been ripped apart and tossed all over the kitchen. At first I thought the dog had done it and found it a little awkwardly funny, but I was horrified to find out that my dad had done it in a rage, and that the mess was my fault because I had been so irresponsible. He made me clean it up. My mom helped, I think. Anyway, that's one of my clearer memories. I also remember him wrenching the keys from my hand after I tried to get in the back door once, and locking the door on me, locking me out of the house. I walked several miles in the rain without a coat or my purse, to a friend's house, who wasn't there, so I spent the afternoon crying in a sub shop, Kastore's. They gave me tea and a jacket while I was there, free. He was mad at me because he and I got into an argument, I think over how he had been drowning squirrels in the back yard, and I was too upset to handle it so I said I needed to take a walk to collect myself. He saw it as disrepectful. I can remember a lot of times that he would be screaming at me over this or that and he'd hold my shoulders and force me to look him in the eyes, which I often couldn't do. He was rarely physically violent, but that one bothered him enough to throw me into a door once.

Reflecting on this, I'm reminded of how much I admired the trees in my back yard. I used to talk to them, and saw them as living beings, as friends. I guess they were the idealized people in my life. They just constantly grew and were so strong, and I was the only one who could climb them all the way to the top, a hundred feet above everything. I'd climb up in them and read, or just relax and appreciate how it felt to be rocked back and forth by the wind in the summer. I knew, deep down, that they would always be there - they had been there before I was born and would be there long after I died.

One of them, the biggest and strongest, died because the neighbors put a salt pile next to it, so we had to cut it down. Another died after a big gust of wind blew it over and it crushed half the back yard - I can remember the sound, I was bolted awake by it and instantly found myself in the doorway of my room by the time it hit the ground. Several others were cut down with it because they had been damaged by the fall, or because .. my dad wanted to? I'm not sure. They must have been damaged by the fall, or were otherwise dangerous, or he wouldn't want to waste the effort and money cutting them. Although I remember we had to fight to convince him not to cut down the last beloved maple tree, one which Kim had particularly liked and which I had spent a considerable amount of my childhood sitting in. It was damaged, but not severely.

Our cherry trees died of fungi or rot, two more trees died probably because they were too close to the street and our town salts too much and cuts away indescriminately branches that go near the phone lines or over the street.

The latest tree to go was the Mulberry tree. It was like my last childhood friend. The other maple tree has always been more Kim's friend than mine, though I like it too. My dad decided one day that it had been bothering him for too long - the birds that ate the berries pooped purple on his car, and the berries fell in his swimming pool which he never uses and never cleans but takes care of the chemicals and the equipment. So he tried to force me into helping him girdle it. I didn't realize what he was doing until I was outside, and I freaked out. I was sobbing pathetically about it to him and of course he couldn't understand what made me so upset. I didn't even really understand. This was just a few months ago, and it still hasn't been cut down. He just girdled it so it would die a slow death. Earlier that day I had been thinking happily about how the berries were just starting to come in, and I was so excited for when they were all ripe. Most of them were green, but a few were purple and I had eaten a couple. I guess what excited me brought dread to my dad.

Sometimes I think I'm just too sensitive, too emotional, too this or that, but that's just putting the blame on me. I shouldn't try to take responsibility for what bothers me. That's a whole other post, though.