Part of My Plan

Everyone has a standard operating procedure when it comes to making plans and decisions, and this is mine.

1. Chew on the issue until I have gnawed it into the shape of a well-defined question that will support a concrete answer.

2. Decide the best course of action, with several options, redundancies, switchbacks and emergency hatches all built into the plan.

3. Enact plan, allowing for setbacks and changes of mind.

4. TELL NO ONE.

5. Content to remain unfathomable, conquer life one step at a time. Stop for breath often.

It's that step #4 that's really precious to me. I hate to make commitments. I hate to make promises. There's so little wiggle room in a promise. My favorite word might be "might."

So to make a long story short I promised the father of my children I would Do Something with this story I wrote. This ridiculous 100,000 words of lurid space flashiness. It felt like a safe promise to make because "do something" is so vague and open ended. I mean, I could just decide to edit and revise it. Again. That would be doing something, technically.

In a rare fit of growth as a human being, I decided to honor the spirit of the promise and not try to squirm out of what we all know I was really agreeing to do. But I've still taken two months to work out a careful plan with concrete answers. What is Something and what are acceptable methods of Doing it? Honestly, my plans are like choose-your-own-adventure books. The kind where there's a chickenshit option and you can choose to run away from the haunted house and never confront the ghosts within.

So anyway, I'm working up my courage to write down my plan here. I'm trying to be less hung up about my worthiness issues and just have fun with what I do.

Post-Failure Self-Castigation

Disclaimer: I will regret publishing this post, because I'm going to be honest. To make sure I really do publish it, I'm not going to indulge in my usual squeamish hours of editing and second-guessing. I don't really want to talk about it in a "dialogue" sense, though you're welcome to ask questions. I'm saving them in a file with the nebulous plan to answer them all at some point.)

I want to share some things with you.

But I probably won't.

Being "open" about having mental illness(es) turns out to be exponentially more painful for me than I thought it would. I think part of that is the specific dysfunctions I have and part of it is my underlying personality, what there is of it.

I am clinically thin-skinned. "Emotional burn victim." No matter how casual your touch is or what you mean by it, I can come away wounded, infected, re-injured, blah blah blah. You're smart people, you can extrapolate a metaphor. No one that has read one of these posts and responded, either in comment or in person, has been anything less than kind and supportive. That doesn't stop me from wincing and tensing and anticipating the pain.

I am also shy and insecure. I don't know if that's who I am or who my symptoms make me. I am uncomfortable with your concern. You can't help anyway, so I'm going to tell you it's fine.

It's really not fine. I'm increasingly frustrated as I crawl closer to 40 and nothing seems to improve. I'm waiting to outgrow this. It says there on the Wikipedia that people do, you know. Symptoms lessen over time, it says. Could I just wait it out?

I think that one of the hardest parts of being "open" for me is that people who know me "in real life," the people that have known me for so long like my remaining parent or my in-laws or my aunts and cousins, can all read this. I feel constrained by that. These are the people from whom I have been hiding "how bad it really is" the longest. I'm afraid of their concern.

Last and far from least is the humiliation factor. I hate being this way. I am embarrassed and disgusted by myself. I still cannot accept that I can't always control myself. A few days ago I broke down and I'm still mentally engaged in the post-failure self-castigation that will go on for weeks. I am dismayed and ashamed at some of the things that I did and most of the things I said. I can't bear my own company and I can't escape it.

I don't even remember it all correctly.

I remember being on the floor. I do not remember throwing myself there. I remember running down the street. I do not remember leaving the house. I remember the throb of bruises rising and I do not remember hitting myself. I remember being desperate for the end and I don't remember the beginning.

This is why I can't meet your eyes.



(Because I mentioned it previously, I feel obligated to mention I did actually complete NaNoWriMo. I wrote something like 50,150 words in a story during the month of November. I'm counting it as a partial success because I didn't actually completely the story. More specifically, I haven't written a single word since about the 29th. Nothing. It died. It was a desperate rush at the end to at least meet the word count, even though I knew finishing the whole draft would be beyond me. I can feel these shut-downs coming.

There are a couple things I can do to jump start it again but none of them are available to me. Sadly, these are also the things that would ease my desperately symptomatic behavior of late. So I wait and maybe it'll come back. Maybe it won't, this time.)

It's more fun if you put your arms up.

It's nothing like a roller coaster. Part of the thrill of the roller coaster is knowing that drop is coming. You're carried slowly up and swept cleanly down. It's all exhilaration and that giddy not-fear, that happy sort of terror. A thrill ride.

It's more like being shoved off a rocky cliff in the dark. There's more tearing and scraping and screaming and breaking than with the average roller coaster ride.

The worst part, sometimes, is that moment when I think I'm at the bottom. Is this it? Has it stopped? Can I start to climb?

Not yet. More falling, failing, crashing.

There's one horrified thought all the way down. This is my fault. I did this. This is all my fault. They need me up there and I don't know how to get back out.

I'm scared sometimes a lot all the fucking time.

Reluctantly crouched at the starting line...

I feel like my brain is crunching to an inexorable stop, revisiting all the intermittent issues of worthlessness and despair. As many times as I've done this, been here, felt this way, I'm never sure. Should I fight? Should I relax and let it happen? We have always started up again, rusty and reluctant but somehow functional. I wonder if I could save myself some trouble if I just accept that, for a little while, I'll be loathsome and useless. We're just at that place in the road again where we have to coast through the dark.

The hardest part right now is my crisis of confidence. It's impossibly inconvenient for me to have no faith in my abilities. I'm forcibly reminding myself that I must go forward with my projects regardless of how I feel about them now*. I have spent hours a day for the past couple of days trying to pick apart my self-esteem and attain some objective idea of how skilled or not I really am, with no luck. I'm sure everyone will be treated to a hideously masturbatory navel-gazing blog post sometime in the next couple days.

*Case in point, I'm still updating this damned blog quasi-regularly. :P

Memo

TO: Amygdala -- Putting you in a sack and hammering on you is better than you deserve, you bitch, but that's all I have.

Summary

You have a disease for which there is no cure.
There is no truly effective treatment for your disease.
There will be constant pain for which there is no salve.
No one will see your pain; it will be in your head and your heart.
Emptiness will swallow you every day.
Rage will tear at you every day.
Grief will cripple you every day.
Fear will stalk you every day.
Loneliness will erase you every day.
You will not learn who you are; you will be someone different every day. Sometimes every hour.
You will not know what you want for the same reason.
Nothing satisfies for very long. Nothing stops the pain for very long.
You will hurt the people that try to love you. You will drive them away.
You cannot trust anyone, least of all yourself. Least of all, yourself.
You will hate, intensely and passionately, the source of your pain: again, your own twisted self.
It will never stop.

Believe in me. I have good reason to go on living.


(Disclaimer: I've been writing more entries "for later," so please don't take anything you read here as a reflection of current mood or circumstances. Please don't call me, all freaked out that I'm going to swallow a bottle of pills. You should know better; I can't even take a vitamin without barfing.)

A Little Tilted

I just snorted and giggled my way through a funny tale of my childhood, sharing a happy little anecdote with my love. And at the end of it, I realized it wasn't funny. I remember it as being funny, but the truth is I just told him a story of being helpless and terrified as a child in blatantly dangerous and unsettling circumstances.

I didn't realize it until he failed to laugh.

Toxicity

I have "anger issues."

I think a lot of people do, and the only thing that makes mine stand out is that they're writ somewhere on official papers. Oh, and they're "deep-seated."

Nu-cu-lar

Maybe it's the same way the Earth just rolls through every day, able to ignore the roiling magma coursing through the deepest layers. I've found one of the best ways to "deal" with my emotional regulatory issues has been to just disconnect. I am, for the most part, an observer of my own mental state, staring into the crater. I catalog my emotions rather than feeling them.

But the anger is trickier. It's hard to ignore, sometimes. I've reformed a little, I guess. I don't enact violence on other people. I don't manipulate and ruin. I don't smash my belongings or put holes in the walls. I do not harm myself anymore. I've come to terms with those impulses and I do my damnedest not to indulge in my symptoms.

I'm pissed off all the time. Last night it choked me. My arms wanted to swing. My vision was clouded. My jaw is sore from clenching. My muscles ache from the tension. Last night I felt dangerous again, precarious. My crust was too thin last night.

It doesn't matter what triggers it. What matters is this morning. I've got to deal now with the unease and anxiety that results from peering into the chasm of my own rage and seeing everything that ever hurt or angered me. Seeing everything that tried to shape me. Seeing all those scars as new ones grow over this breach.

No one was hurt last night, but I'm reminded that I live on shaky ground. I'm reminded it could topple and burn.

A sigh.

Today my desire to be kind is overwhelmed by my desire to alert the mouth-breathing masses to their shallow ignorance and to cast aspersions on their parentage.

Out of Tune

So yesterday, I went to see my primary care physician. She used to be my "doctor," but bureaucracies will be have their insidious, verbose way. Let it be made clear that for the first time in my life, I like my doctor. I like the whole practice, even (perhaps especially) the office ladies. My children both see doctors in this practice. We're happy there and blessed with insurance through the life partner's work and sacrifice.

Annual exam time. Joy. I was saved somewhat since the Doctors Who Decide These Things have decreed that annual pap smears are no longer strictly necessary. So next year will be soon enough for that, thanks. I have to get some blood tested to confirm my usual insane vitamin deficiencies and then receive my lecture and some shots, but otherwise I'm apparently in pretty decent health.

Except for the things she can't see. For those, she suggested I perhaps should consider returning to therapy. I presented this kind and good-humored woman with a list I had headed "Paranoia." She reassured me about a couple of the items. For example, it is not completely abnormal for your skull to change shape, I learned, and it doesn't necessarily mean some rare form of skull cancer or a bad sinus infection.

I haven't seen a therapist in about a year and a half. I think my most recent excuse for quitting was that I had no sitter for a baby who was no longer interested in gurgling in his carrier for an hour while I tried to think of things to say. She was a very nice lady, that one, but more passive than I'm comfortable with. If I have to lead the therapy, I assure you it isn't going anywhere. I try to tell the therapists right up front: "I don't want to be here. I just know I need to."

(I should confess that half the time I hold the opposite opinion. I think of Pa Ingalls -- he looks like that hunky Michael Landon! -- and imagine him talking to a therapist. You know that guy went through some shit out there on the prairie. But did he ever whine to a shrink? No! He sucked it up, plowed those locusts under and reseeded!)

In the interests of being reasonably functional, I am going to look for a therapist. When the big kid was much smaller she called it "the talking doctor." I have had to acknowledge that some of my fears are starting to get the better of me. I don't want to end up dependent on anti-anxiety medications, which shut my brain off like a switch anyway.

I hate discovering new issues when I haven't resolved all my old ones yet, but I suddenly find my occasional bout of hypochondria has grown into a full-time hobby. It's not something I discuss, because I feel like talking about it gives it credence. Like Sarah Palin. But I'm aware of the issue and will take means to combat it.

My hypochondria, I mean. I haven't figured out what the hell to do about Sarah Palin.

Extant for 36

As the life partner left our so very humble abode this morning, I whispered sweetly, "Remember. I hate cake."

It's my birthday. I have never really cared to celebrate it, and in some cases I have gotten, let's say, heated in my attempts to avoid festivity. I still sometimes feel like I should apologize to the witnesses to my 18th, for example, but that's a scab better left unpicked.

Last year, my birthday fell on Easter, the only holiday I might hate more than Christmas even though it requires far less effort from me. (For example, this year I threw $10 at my older child for candy. Finis.)

Last year, I wrote this weepy drivel, which I have kindly abridged.

I got up this morning and made about five meals. One was a large ham and some mashed potatoes and a cheesecake, which Husband and Daughter bought yesterday. Took all this food up to see my mother and stepfather.

I didn't want to be there and she wasn't having a good day, very tired and weak. Not as good as last time I was there, moved from spending time on the couch to spending time on the hospital bed set up in the living room. That's where she ate. I cleaned up, I left all the food in their fridge. I didn't really eat.

I did drink the massive White Russian my stepdad made for me. He tried to make some noise about owing me a present but you know what I want? I want more time with my mother.

On the way up there I was doing make-up in the car and noticed that my first gray hair, which I lovingly plucked and mounted on colored paper to showcase it, had been replaced by many of its friends.

I don't care about my birthday, I don't care about presents. I don't like the attention and it remains a struggle to be gracious through the well-wishes and back-slaps. And to hear my mother apologizing for not getting me anything. To see her face when she was wrong about how old I was, how that bothered her...

I'm just so sad. I'm so fucking sad and I don't know how to deal with it.

I'm not in the same place this year, but I am remembering what it felt like to be there.

I haven't named it yet.

So I have this laptop now.

It is both shiny and also warm. In fact, it has the delicious potential to scald the unwary, and I prefer to nestle it a pillow rather than on parts of me that are roast-able (most of me is).

We have more than one excellent computer in this house, but I have manage to convince myself that a laptop is going to make a real difference for my writing habits. For one thing, I am certainly more comfy and relaxed out here on the couch. I hope, sincerely, to start posting to this blog regularly, and to Drive's. It isn't any need I have to be heard or examined, it's my need to think out loud, to overprocess my every thought.

I don't have any momentous "first post on the laptop" planned.

I'm only curled up with it on the couch for one particularly odd reason, killing time until I have to start giving baths and putting small people into diapers and feetie pajamas. See, my husband is in the other room making a CD, and I cannot accidentally hear it.

It's my mother's voice.

Since she died, my dearest most painful wish has been to talk to her again. I have so much I need to ask her. Just stupid things. Maybe I would skip all the questions and beg for some reassurance. The point is, I have longed to hear her voice again.

I never thought to call her phone.

My stepdad has been paying her phone bill, so that people could call and hear her greeting. I never thought of that, and when he asked if I had I almost went fetal. How wrong that seemed, how empty it would be to me. "Hi, this is Lynne, I can't get to the phone. Leave a message and I'll get back to you." I don't need to listen to it, I heard it a million times.

The associate at the phone place helped my stepfather save those sound files, and I transferred them onto my computer. My husband has a talent for decoding and reformatting files like that, so now I have a CD with these brief little messages on them. And I have not listened to them.

I can't. It's not the same.

In other news, I am very deeply unstable at this time and I keep leaking angst and rage everywhere.

Dreaming on Darvocet

"Most children grow out of nightmares."

I still remember the disinterested doctor that shrugged at me when he said that, and I've researched the subject since then; he wasn't lying. I just failed to be "most children."

I have always had nightmares. I can still remember horrors visited on me when I was in elementary school: adult-sized Sesame Street muppets invading my home with hands saws to take my head off. The Great Owl from The Secret of NIMH ate me like a field mouse more than once. People I trusted shoved me off cliffs. Landslides, stairs and crushing falls were so prevalent I still get anxious around steep hills. Stars fell and burned the world.

You get the picture, and they've never really gone away. Not as frequent, at least. Maybe only once a week or so do I wake up afraid.

At the moment, I'm on pretty stiff drugs for a back injury. Steroids, muscle relaxants, painkillers. It's impossible to tell which is stirring my neuroses but every time I've closed my eyes for a week it's like drowning.

I woke up sobbing two days ago. I had dreamed of loved ones standing by while a former friend choked me to death. (I had asked him to get out of my bed.)

An hour ago, I woke Paragon by crying in my sleep again.

I don't usually know how to measure the significance of these dreams. My subconscious is never subtle and it's easy to point at the real-life event that triggered the nightmare.

Yesterday, December 7th, marked six months since my mother died.

The dream wasn't entirely about her, though. My Grammie was there; she died in October. My Grampy, who passed in August. My Grampy Foster, who died when I was still a child. My beautiful Nana, who left us when I was 16. My Uncle Scott, gone for a few years now.

Oh, of course there's more. Every "friend" that ever broke a knife off in my heart. The kids that beat me up when I was a kid, too. Every teacher that ridiculed me. Every adult that hurt me when I was defenseless. Every eye that looked at me coldly. Every goddamned shrink that shrugged and just tried another pill, throwing darts in the dark.

My ex-husband. Yep, by the time I was 25 I had an ex-husband. Easily the worst mistake I have ever made, a self-inflicted wound that would have killed me if I hadn't had a child to care for and no time to let my heart bleed out. I can't recall seeing him in dreams before, but he was there last night. Another mistake, another loss.

Every hurt, every loss, every horror, every betrayal, every grief, every mistake -- all there in this one nightmare, and it was worth it because I heard Mummy tell me again that she loved me.

Pulling the Trigger

Someone I "know" -- something like the husband of a cousin of a husband, let's say -- posted a video online. His child is only a bit younger than my son, who has achieved a whole year and a half of life.

It's the story of a child who was tortured - and I know the strength of that word - to death. An infant. A beautiful blond boy. He's lost.

It's triggered my OCD. It's mild on most days. Check a few locks, set a few clocks, make sure all the carpets are at right angles, sort the laundry by fabric weight.

Now my thoughts are obsessive. Now my mind is a hell of children screaming. Of my children suffering. Torture.

I watched about 15 seconds of this video tribute, this indictment of a failed system and a truly horrific reminder of man's inhumanity, and I'm broken wide open. I want to snatch my beautiful blond son from his crib and take him to the school, to steal my daughter away from her classes and hide them both safe in my arms.

I lost my mother, I've lost my grampy, I'm losing my grammie, I've lost and given up most of my self, whoever that might have been. And I promise you that if I ever lost my children, I would take the world with me as I left it.

Because my OCD is "mild" it's never been treated or even really talked about. So I don't have any fucking idea how to make this stop. My brain is like an out-of-focus showing of A Clockwork Orange right now.

I have 54 minutes before my baby girl walks in the door.

I have 54 minutes to stop these sobs.