Another Day, Another Dollar Before Taxes

Image Copyright: Victoryachasegoestotherapy.blogspot.com

Ugh. Times are so stressful right now that I'm avoiding talking about them and thinking of ways to avoid talking to my therapist about them - a wonderful sign. Avoidance, it's what I do best. It's one of the symptoms - the dream to run away, to just get out, to be safe with yourself alone.

Of course, the main thing I want to run away from is my impending surgery. I don't like being trapped or feeling broken. I feel broken enough as it is at times. I think 'differently,' 'act differently,' if people become inconsistent in their behaviours I think they are up to something rather than things may be happening in their lives that they are having trouble with. Now, for a while, I'll be holed up in my apartment with naught but ze internet to keep me company.

I'm also having a hard time switching 'brains' lately. I decided, since I'd be stuck all Rear Window in my house, to take an online writing course which I'm enjoying. However, I'm taking a real life finance course. This weekend, when I had homework due for both, it took a lot for me to switch from story mode to Financial Statement Analysis Mode. If nothing else, it proves the mode I should be in, that my brain wants to be in. Why must I suffer the slings and arrows of ballance sheets and vertical analysis?

Because I want to pay the rent.

Anyone out there want to be a generous sponsor like in the good ol' days? Heck, I'll dedicate my first published item to you. Artists should be free of the confines and shackles of finance so they may spend their time creating art. Art is the proof of existence of life.

*sigh*

Well, since I don't have the time to write as much as I'd like, I'm trying to 'write with my photos' as it were. I used to do this when I painted more often, take pictures and then use them to influence current work, much as Chewy has described her process (only she's a way better painter than I ever was). Now I'm doing that to try and keep ideas for future writing assignments.

So, what kind of story does the above look like to you?

Depression Inventory

(Click on image for larger view)

The above is the depression inventory worksheet I must fill out every few months or so. It's interesting to note the overlap with anxiety (change in sleeping patterns, irritability, changes in concentration). I think a lot of these illnesses do have overlap, or one can be a symptom of another, so it's tough to pin down.

Depression is a big word in the states it seems. Every day I hear that damn commercial on television, "Depression hurts, Cymbalta can help." To some degree I think the popularity of depression has made it harder to deal with. Mainly because people have a right to get sad, yet when you are the word 'depression' immediately springs to mind whether warranted or not. Clinical depression and situational depression are different beasts with similar characteristics. The main thing that saddens me about this is the increase in the number of children taking medications for depression. While some may be warranted, the increasing numbers are frightening, especially when you look at the side effects (suicide being one of them).

It was hard for me to admit that I have periods of depression. But I do, I get irritable (around a 2), I feel guilty (2 at its highest, thankfully), my appetite can fluctuate from eating nothing to eating an entire pizza (plus dessert). However, happily, no matter how depressed I have gotten I haven't lost hope in the future, nor do I feel like a failure. I may have the fleeting thought of how easy it would be to step in front of a train, but I won't do it.

It is interesting to monitor my mood though. When I first started I had to keep an 'anxiety journal' and fill out the anxiety sheet once a week along with a daily monitoring (what was the highest point of anxiety today, what triggered it, etc.) In the end, it's about becoming aware of your feelings and recognizing that there is nothing wrong with them, really. Just figuring out what the triggers are to certain exaggerated responses (my tailspins). And just realizing that these little events affect me helps to put me back in control.

Dealing With the Holes

One of the first things I had to deal with in my current therapy is dealing with the holes in my memory. Or, really, just accepting that I’m not going to remember everything and that it’s probably for the best. I don’t want to drown in my own past as I’m moving toward a positive future now, do I?

For the most part that’s fine. I don’t remember everything. I want to write things down just to gain ownership over them, to accept that they are part of me, my past, and to realize that damn it, I was a kid and shouldn’t feel guilt over things from childhood.

Then something happens, like yesterday, and the holes come back and I’m staring in the shadows and wondering just what the hell happened.

My foot has been hurting me for sometime and I have had x-rays and such and going to physical therapy for it. Then the other foot started to hurt so I went to my doctor. Well, he was running late so the head of the practice was there and figured, why make her wait for my partner? And took me in. He wasn’t happy.

See, after two x-rays, it turns out I have a fracture in one foot and a break in the other. These have apparently been there since childhood. He asked if I had some accident when I was younger.

These are the questions that spiral me, so I had a hard time asking or answering other questions after that. With people without my past, I wonder if they’d shrug and think something happened in their rambunctious years. But with me, I wonder if my parents did something and then never took me to the doctors. That was the first thought, “What the F*ck happened?” Because I didn’t go to the doctor’s much when younger, not that I remember. There were a few ER visits, but those are a long story and I was away at camp when that adventure started.

Then I begin to think, “Well, maybe they did take me to a doctor but it was one of those free clinics,” because really, that’s what we could afford. I’ve been dealing with so many dental issues caused from these free clinics when I was younger. I have one more tooth left to fix, one that was given half a root canal then covered with a temporary and never finished. I don’t even remember the work every being done, but now I have to have it fixed.

It’s tough, and will be even tougher as I have to have surgery and be laid up for two weeks. It reminds me how physically alone I am here without a family to help out a bit. Who’ll catch me if I fall? I get tired of setting up nets myself to catch me, you know? A nice hand someday. Of course, that’s what I’m working toward, breaking down enough of the walls that I’ll be open to another’s hands one day. And, of course, accepting that I’ll never know how those bones broke.

*sigh*

Image taken from www.picturingpeace.org

What's Your Favorite Color?

When I was younger, my favorite color was yellow. Everything had to be yellow. My mother called me her ‘sunshine girl’ and painted my room a brilliant shade, and I loved it. My mother’s favorite color was always blue when I was younger.

I was never really a pink girl. I wore no bows, had no sweet pink lace plaited in my hair. In fact, I loudly voiced my distaste of those prissy pink people all dressed up in, well, dresses and ribbons and other such ‘nonsense.’

Of course, a lot of that had to do with envy I’m sure. I couldn’t be a pink girl, as I wore my brother’s hand me downs so often. In fact, I didn’t like pink for the longest time, until college. Then I bought a pair of pink sneakers. I wore them across the stage at graduation. I guess someone commented that it didn’t seem dignified, me wearing pink sneakers at the commencement ceremony. But it signified that I finally accepted my femininity (point 1) and the day before, Xiamora and I had gone to the zoo. While there, I tripped and fell and got a nice ride in a golf cart by the security personnel to the nurse’s station. There, I spoke with the nurse as she talked about being profiled in some trade magazine and how they have a venom repository and anti-venom is air-lifted from them to all over the world when people are bit by snakes. She bandaged up my ankle (which had been badly twisted) and told me to stay off of it and to stay in sneakers for a while with it bandaged. She then wrapped it in an Ace bandage with some ice and sent me of on my way (point 2). So there was no way I was going to wear heals, and it was lucky I had the pink sneakers.

I do like pink now, but it’s not my favorite color. I went through the black phase. Everything had to be black, and I wanted my room painted black. Not that that happened. Black, the color of darkness, the color of despair, the color that isn’t even a color, just like I wasn’t a person, wasn’t a girl. Black absorbs all other colors but has none of their own, just like I absorbed all that was going around but did nothing myself, was nothing myself. I was just there to be the sponge to the hatred around me.

Blackness. I still appreciate it, but for different reasons. I like the dark, I was never afraid of it, I actually felt safer there where I couldn’t be found, where other’s would stumble I could move with sure movements. Blackness was very inviting, even the inhabitants of the darkness – those hiding from a world they either want to destroy or that wants to destroy them. I acknowledged it, embraced it, and when given the chance moved on.

Red is my favorite color now. At first, my mother said it was anger. She hated red, said it was all my ire, my hatred for the world. But she was wrong. It is a vibrant color, and that of fire, of the phoenix. From the ashes of fire rises the phoenix, new and reborn, in brilliance and splendor. Fire is a cleanser, and has been throughout history.

I find it interesting that as my favorite color changed to red (as it still is) my mother’s changed from blue to purple. Sure, she tried to say why my color was wrong, and yet she adopted it, blending it with her own once favorite, to become purple.

Fire is life, it is brilliant, and has no anger, it just is. And that’s what I’m going for – life, as is, no questions asked. To just be.

I do so love red. What’s your favorite color?

What Is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Per the National Center for PTSD:

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can occur after you have been through a traumatic event. A traumatic event is something horrible and scary that you see or that happens to you. During this type of event, you think that your life or others' lives are in danger. You may feel afraid or feel that you have no control over what is happening.

They go on to say that:

Many people who go through a traumatic event don't get PTSD. It isn't clear why some people develop PTSD and others don't. How likely you are to get PTSD depends on many things. These include:

• How intense the trauma was
  
• If you lost a loved one or were hurt
  
• How close you were to the event
  
• How strong your reaction was
  
• How much you felt in control of events
  
• How much help and support you got after the event

PTSD symptoms usually start soon after the traumatic event, but they may not happen until months or years later. They also may come and go over many years.

What I think it leaves out in the bullets above is the duration of time spent in a situation. Would I have PTSD if say, I was taken away from my mother before I ended it myself in my twenties? If someone, any one had helped me, how would I be today? I had no control over my life, thoughts, or actions for so many years. In fact, for most of my life the only thing I could do was react, never act. I reacted to her moods, to her actions. It was pure torture for those 18 years I lived directly with her, and to think I didn’t cut ties until I was twenty-something!

No one knows for sure why some people get PTSD and others don’t. Is it brain chemistry? A hormone, a release of some chemical when trauma happens? There is a lot of controversy still about an experimental PTSD drug. I think it’s still in clinical trials. What it does is deaden the emotions during a traumatic event. Thus, if say something explodes like happened Wednesday, and you take the pill it won’t attach the fear to the memory so the theory is later in life if something like that happens again you won’t experience PTSD symptoms.

So what are PTSD symptoms? They vary a lot. The DSM-IV lists three different groups of symptoms, the first are intrusive:

• Distressing memories of the event
  
• Distressing dreams of the event
  
• Acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring
  
• Intense psychological distress when reminded of the event
  
• Physiological reactivity (sweating, heart racing, etc.) when reminded of the event.

But leaves out the symptoms associated with each of these. For instance, when memories starting coming back that cause ‘distress’ or ‘anxiety’ one can feel dizzy, faint, light-headed, confused, start to shake, get chills, have stomach cramps or nausea, etc. I suppose some of this is listed under Physiological reactivity. I always thought the dizziness was from something else, but had a clean bill of health. Yet when I start to remember or something happens my mind swims. Like all things, symptoms differ with people.

Others are listed as ‘numbing’ symptoms:

• Efforts to avoid thoughts, feelings, or conversations associated with the trauma
  
• Efforts to avoid activities, places, or people which arouse recollections of the trauma
  
• Inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma
  
• Markedly diminished interest or participation in significant activities
  
• Feelings of detachment from others
  
• Restricted range of affect and emotional responsiveness
  
• Sense of a foreshortened future

Which really blew me out of the water. I thought my personality was gloom and doom, even though I remembered fighting against my mother to not watch COPS and other such programs about the worst in society all the time. My favorite color was yellow for a long time and then suddenly I wanted the world in black. I felt every one of those above so strongly, especially the last. I never thought I’d live past age 21 and when I did, didn’t know what the hell was going on. I still have problems with feelings of detachment, like I don’t belong anywhere and can’t connect with people. And of course the third on the list – inability to recall an aspect of the trauma – there are a lot of black holes in my memory. But considering what I do recall, it’s probably best they stay that way.

Lastly are the ‘hyperarousal’ symptoms:

• Difficulty falling or staying asleep
  
• Irritability or outbursts of anger
  
• Difficulty concentrating
  
• Hypervigilance for signs of danger
  
• Exaggerated startle response

I always know something is up when my sleep patterns change, because damn, I love to sleep.

There are many theories on treatment and I am doing what is called Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT. Per Wikipedia, “The particular therapeutic techniques vary according to the particular kind of client or issue, but commonly include keeping a diary of significant events and associated feelings, thoughts and behaviors; questioning and testing assumptions or habits of thoughts that might be unhelpful and unrealistic; gradually facing activities which may have been avoided; and trying out new ways of behaving and reacting. Relaxation and distraction techniques are also commonly included. CBT is widely accepted as an evidence-based, cost-effective psychotherapy for many disorders.”

So I have a checklist of symptoms that once a month we check. When a traumatic event happens, I go through and see my reactions. I do feel like a computer doing a system check, but since neither my body nor thoughts were ever really mine growing up, I’m just beginning to learn how I work. She goes through relaxation exercises with me and we talk about situations and how I feel during them. It may sound simplistic to some, but it is so hard for me to understand how I’m feeling at times and with everything, once it has a name, you can begin to control the beast.

I hope to post more information and get more links up soon. I’m new at this and still feeling my way around.

That great painting above is from http://www.refuter.com painted by Dmitriy Kedren

Stories of Friendship

Freshman year of college was hard, but I made some friends during that time. There were a few of us that came from hardship and, at least for that first year, banded together. We were a rag-tag group for sure. But none of us kept in touch much after that first year.

My college required everyone to take a year of physical education (on top of a load of other requirements). Everyone fought for the ‘easiest’ and that found me in Badminton class. The first couple days the teacher put us through individual drills then, on the third class, we were to pick partners (after she gave us each a little drill and we passed it). I looked around the room to see who could be compatible. Everyone was so friendly and smiling and slim- I hated them all. I was surly, couldn’t take people who were always happy. “They never knew hardship,” I griped to myself, “They’ll never understand me. Spoiled brats all of them.”

Then, in the back of the room, I saw this other overweight person giving everyone the same evil eye. So I walked up to her and asked her to my badminton partner. We’ve been best friends ever since, always there for each other through thick and thin. She is the only person I talk to now who has even met my mother and knows some of the things I’ve gone through.

We were great together. We’d have our “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” nights in college where we would order Chinese food and sit up doing arts and crafts or other non-academic things. We were roommates our senior year in college and joked around a lot about how my grades just steadily climbed since I met her, and hers went down from a perfect 4.0 to maybe a 3.5.

Like I said, we have been through a hell of a lot and now, at 30, have known each other for a third of our lives. Here’s the thing- I don’t want to be the angry person like I was in college who hates the happy people. I understand happiness is a good thing. When we talk now, I have begun to realize she still feels the way I did. So I opened up a dialogue about it and for the first time we had a serious conversation.

She feels helpless
She feels like no one cares
She feels doomed, like nothing she does matters anyway
She berates herself for everything she perceives she does wrong
She has lost hope and is scared every day

I was happy she talked to me about such things, we were both crying on the phone. I recognized everything, as I’ve been through such a long period of that and I’m still fighting against it. She recognizes she’s depressed and has been for years but doesn’t know what she can do. Then she felt she didn’t have a right to feel that way since I’ve been through so much worse. Everyone has a right to feel how they do! That was one of my main reasons for not talking, how could I complain when my best friend in highschool was forced to bear her father’s child? We talked about options and she was very open to everything. She found the number to call for a mental health professional, covered by her health care.

“But I won’t call.” She told me at the end of our conversation. “I never do. I’m not as brave as you- I can’t just call. That first step is too hard.”

“But you already made the first step,” I told her, “you didn’t hang up on me when I brought this up, you listened and responded positively. I’m just sick of seeing you hurting yourself plus, in all honesty, had you said something similar to me a few years ago I would have hung up on you.”

“You stepped away from your mother,” she replied, “you’re stronger than me. Even if I do call, I’ll cancel the appointment. It’s what I do.”

“But it isn’t what you have to do,” I told her. “Therapy isn’t always the answer. You can try yoga, meditation, or just a week without McDonald’s since you are there everyday.”

“Not McDonald’s, just fried food,” she told me.

The other issue is this – It’s so easy to fall back into that habit of thinking. The idea of hopelessness is kind of attractive. It’s like an ex-junkie walking into a crack den. And I did tell her that – that I worry about her but also about me. When we go out she is always self-deprecating and it is something I’m fighting so hard against. It’s been ten years of our lives, and she’s always helped me, and I want to help her, but not hurt myself in the process or ruin our friendship. For the past few years we have been talking less and less and I know it is her depressive state that leaves her cocooned alone.

I did talk to my therapist about this as well, and she stated what I already was going to do, just keep the dialogue going and keep being friends. It can test me and might show her an alternative even if she thinks I’m ‘stronger’ than her. On the other hand, if it gets to be too much, I have to face the reality that for a while, we might have to part. That is the last thing I want to happen.

I had gotten her to agree to go to a social event with me and then, an hour before we were to leave, she canceled (after already paying a non-refundable fee). It’s hard for me, but goes to what I talked about the other day – she has to save herself. Which is what we talked about. I will not tell her what to do, especially since there isn’t just one way. She has to decide when it’s time and go forward. My friend fears she won’t be ready until someone in her family dies and she’s forced to deal with a change. I really hope she gets some help before then. As I told her, I’m not there to judge her or threaten her, I’m here to help if she needs it and still be her friend and listen to anything she has to say without judgment.

It does get hard for me when there are these long lapses between communications. For my first birthday since I’ve known her she didn’t call me. When I finally called her up at work, the day before leaving for Chicago, she told me she had e-mailed me at midnight and wondered why I never responded – I had never gotten the e-mail. We each thought the other was mad over some perceived slight when that wasn’t the case. There are so many long roads to walk down.

picture from http://www.nwf.org via google image search

Learning to Accept Praise (and Other Good Things in Life)

I was in a meeting the other day with my boss, her boss, and the VP of finance (my dept.). She mentioned out loud how proud she was of all that I’ve learned so far. My first thought was, “If she only knew.” I immediately felt like a fraud, like I’ve deceived her into thinking I’m something I’m not.

Then, later, I ruminated. I have come a long way. She knew when she hired me I had no experience. She knows I’m learning; that’s why the company is paying for my accounting classes. My boss knows I don’t understand everything I’m doing yet, it hasn’t even been more than a couple months that I’ve worked on the project I was in the meeting about.

I want to ask ‘why.’ Why was that my first thought. My therapist mentioned I ask why a lot, not that there’s anything wrong with it, but that there might not always be an answer. She also mentioned in asking ‘why’ I look to the past, and the goal is to look to the future and define myself outside the pain while still accepting it, or something like that.

When I was hired for my current job, this is how I was approached:

“I know that you have no experience. I know you have no idea what you want to do with your life. But you’re intelligent and we can use you. You never considered finance- I understand that. But why not give it a shot? One year, we’ll give you full benefits and the chance to explore us. If after one year you don’t like it, you can move on and I’ll write you a recommendation. If you want to stay, we can talk about where to go from there.”

My boss created my job specifically for me. She saw something in me that I couldn’t. This job, now going on two years, is the longest I’ve ever stayed anywhere. I was always afraid people would find out that I’m a fake, that I didn’t have the knowledge, any other number of excuses to sabotage myself.

She’s been wonderful. I get to leave early to go to sessions. When I approached her about it her first words were, “How can I help” and then she shared her own stories and troubles.

That entire first year I thought something was going to happen. I thought it was a set-up, that I’d be fired, that there was a nefarious scheme behind the whole thing. I couldn’t accept that this chance was offered. Every time I was praised my stomach sunk, I figured they were saying nice things to gear up for something bad. So when the year ended, I almost cried thinking I was going to leave, that it was over. Okay, I did cry. In her office. I told her I didn’t want to give it up, to give her up. She conferred with her boss and they told me I’m with them for as long as I want. I even ended up getting a promotion (6 months later and I asked for it. I shook when I asked, but I asked), a raise, and an extra week of vacation. Then I thought they were doing that because they pitied me, because I am scared.

I’m calming down a bit, but there are times when I think that I don’t deserve this at all, to be happy in my job, to have an understanding boss, to be thought highly of. And I know the ‘whys’.

I was 18 when I went to college, and I still went home during summer breaks. When I was 21 I moved to New York City but still wanted my mother to be able to comfort me, I held out some hope. But that never happened. I’d call her crying because of something that happened and she’d hang up on me because Cops was on, or tell me all I did was whine, or any myriad of things that only made me feel worse about myself. It wasn’t until I was about 25 that I finally made the physical cut from her and stop calling, stopped writing, stopped sending her gifts hoping to make her happy. I changed my phone number. Later, I changed my last name to have one to begin to define myself outside of the abuse. Then, maybe around age 27 is when I wanted to start on the mental split and was inducted into a research study for PTSD and received free treatment. I’ve been seeing my current therapist for about 6 months.

So, for 25 years I was physically in the proximity of people who deemed me as worthless, as ‘undeserving’ of anything in life. Today, I turn 30. I have only been physically free five years and just recently started the full mental realization that I am a woman of worth. The point being – 25 years is a long time to be so brainwashed, and I need to give myself time to heal. But that’s part of the frustration – that knowing that I want the scars to heal - it seems like it’s going to take so long for that to happen.

“I’m tired of the dichotomy!” I cried during my session. “It’s a constant dialogue, I feel like Gollum.”

My first thought when good things happen tends toward the negative, toward the ‘why.’ And then the dialogue with myself starts. “Stop being so doubtful,” I say, “just accept it. Acknowledge that you, like everyone else on the planet, deserves it.” The day my boss complimented me when I went home I literally had to write up my accomplishments so I could see that yes, the praise was warranted. Yes, I am working hard. Yes, I may only understand 50% of what I’m doing buy she doesn’t expect me to know 100% after a few months on a new project. I just wish there was more of a unity. But at least I recognize it, I have the dialogue going, I have a goal for myself. I have a sense of self-worth, even if it’s not immediate.

I just wish I could see more readily what my boss sees in me. One day I want to be able to graciously accept praise without doubt or fear. I want to be able to say “Thank you” and not have that voice say, “I wonder what they want from you.” I want to be able to walk into her office with my head held high.

There is so much more swimming in my mind on this, I think it will be revisited.

Fear

This one is going to be hard to write. Even before the blog I’ve been afraid to talk about the root of my PTSD, about my family life. The more I write, the more I ruminate about it, and the more scared I become that something bad will come out of this, that I’ll end back with my mother for some reason, that’ll she’ll take away the security I’ve created for myself.

I think it’s really hard for me to focus on the ‘whys’ of this. I started this to force myself to be open, to give me a place to face my demons and accountability to do so. Also, to make it real to myself. I can go back to my words and see that I was honest, I was brave, I was strong enough to put out there what happened. And hopefully, I’ve grown.

There were two things my mother said and reinforced in my life. Well, there were more than two, but these are the ones that stick out most often:

1. “I made you.”

By high school I was known in my community. I was in the Key Club, vice president of the honor society, Latin club, anything that kept me away from her. I was a math scholar, in the technical section at school; top some odd percent of the class, singer, band member, etc. I got into a good college. I was a success. People would comment to me about what a great mom I had (which would make my stomach drop) and compliment her on my achievements.

So, my mother realized that I had strength, that despite her efforts I had survived. My therapist says my mother realized my strength when I was young and was jealous, hence her trying to constantly cut me down. But, my mother then decided to take ownership of it all.

“I did this on purpose,” she told me. “If I had coddled you, if I had hugged you and told you everything was good then you wouldn’t be the woman you are today. If I had acted any differently you wouldn’t be strong, you wouldn’t be independent. I did this all for you honey.”

I was aghast- to say that all the abuse for so long was planned? That it was beneficial? That all this praise heaped on her for MY achievements was justified?

But, a part of me still wants to believe it. A part still wants to think that my mother had a plan, that she wasn’t evil, that she loves me.

Yet, she also told me so many times that she didn’t love me because I didn’t need her like my brother. So many times she told me she was jealous, that it wasn’t fair that I had a chance for a future and she never did, that I didn’t deserve it. Which is of course why in the end she took credit for what I created, to own me till the end.

Not that I’ll let her, I’m fighting it with every core of my being and that voice, her voice, emotionless and just dripping with darkness saying “I made you” doesn’t ring as true anymore. There may be times of relapse, but I recognize it as just that – relapse, not the truth. She need not make me. I succeeded in spite of her, not because of.

(Side note, Christina Aguilera’s “Fighter” came on just as I was about to move on to #2, I don’t know how I feel about that. I will never thank my mother for ‘making me stronger’ although I love screaming, “You won’t stop me!” along with Xtina)

2. “If you ever tell anyone about the family, if you ever talk about us, I will deny everything. I will tell them you are mentally ill, that you fantasize, that you can’t recognize reality. If you ever try and write about us I will destroy you. I will sue you for libel.”

That is the reason for my fear. The last two sentences were when I started focusing on writing in high school and getting noted for my abilities to ‘see the world and literature with a great sensitivity and expression.’ But the last thing I want is to have my security threatened, which spirals me down as I’m beginning to realize. At the same time, I have to overcome this mentality. “Just let her try!” I say in my defiant moods. “Let her try and stop the truth from coming out.”

There are instances where she acted on that. I remember one when, I think I was in fourth grade. We lived in a four-unit apartment building with gray siding on a corner lot. At the time I still cried, I still screamed when things happened, I hadn’t fully retreated into myself yet.

After a particularly bad night I was outside with my mother when a neighbor came up to us.

“Is everything all right?” she asked. My mother pushed my gangly body behind her. “I heard a lot of screaming from your place last night.

I tried to peak around my mom’s body, I saw my neighbor arching her head to try and look at me.

“I almost called the police,” the neighbor mentioned casually.

“Don’t mind her,” my mother responded, even-toned. “She’s just dramatic, likes attention. It was nothing.”

I wanted to scream, “Why! Why didn’t you call the police, why was it an almost, why can’t you see?” but said nothing.

“Oh, okay.” The neighbor replied and walked away.

I often wonder, did my neighbor truly believe I was just dramatic? Just wanted attention? Or is it just easier to not care and accept the easy answer, was she really just looking for an out to stop worrying?

That was my mother’s answer- I was dramatic. I was a brat. I was spoiled. She did everything for me, and I was just ungrateful. And people seemed to accept it. The bruises were from ‘kids being kids,’ the fear from watching too many cop shows.

There is more to this I think. My brother and my mother have much in common, and I really don’t know how to approach him in my mind or writing, not quite yet. But he told me many times that it was his mission in life to make sure I have no friends. He’s a couple years older than me, and thus we overlapped in high school. However, I had already attended some classes in high school a year or two before I was officially enrolled. I was the youngest in some of my classes.

When I was bussed just for specific classes, I learned some things. One of the first students that befriended me was surprised to find out who my brother was, as she couldn’t stand him. My brother tried to tell me that she was a liar, a ‘vicious dyke.’ I liked her- she was artistic. We often spent study time doing our homework together and worked in groups. One day I brought butterscotch chips in to class for us to nibble on and she stuck them on her fingernails and pretended she was a cat answering calculus questions. I loved it.

I met some of her friends and was exposed to poets and painters, angsty individuals who spoke out. Of course, this meant I was banned by my mother and brother from speaking to them. He complained that I was spreading rumors about him. Actually, I still defended him, still wanted him to be my hero.

My first official year in high school I was in a biology class in teacher-chosen group projects with students my own age when one of them said something that completely shocked me.

“Geesh, you’re not a bitch,” he said.

I asked what he meant. Apparently my brother had spoken with the brothers and sisters of his peers, thus with my peers, and warned them about me. Told them I was a bitch, a liar. Before I even got there this had spread around people in my peer group.

Why are people so quick to believe the easy answer? The bad opinions of others?

And this leads to my fear. People believed my mother and brother before I even gained my voice. Before I even appeared on the scene I was made out as a liar. There were a lot of lies they told about me before I even walked into a room for the first time.

So as I struggle to find my voice I also struggle with the authority, with the strength. I am afraid that the stronger I become the more my ‘family’ will rear up against me. But the fear isn’t really that they’ll attack, it’s that I’ll fall. I fear that I will go back into my cocoon and that all I think I accomplished is an illusion.

But the more I withdraw into that fear the more it also awakens the fire to fight against it. How dare they even try to deny what happened. THEY are the ones that slandered, not me. THEY are the ones who did wrong, so why do I put the burden of guilt on myself?

Goodness, with every step I feel the fear. But honestly, I think, I hope, it’s morphing into the fear of failing myself more than anything else, of letting them still win. I’m going to be the winner here. Hell, maybe I already am. Wait- let me change that. I am the winner here. Now if only I can gain the strength to not doubt that. I am winning. Indulge me one more time- I need the practice. I’m winning.

Lying To Fit In

I lied on my college application. That has bothered me for so long, it’s time to get it off my chest.

See, the college application essays are stupid. They want to know an important moment in your life, about your future plans, about your hero. The most pivotal moment I can think of now is when I realized I could no longer please or even try to understand my mother. Future plans? I thought I’d be dead by twenty. Hero? I had none. I was dead.

I often wonder why I even applied to begin with. I think it was peer pressure. Being in the honors program, everyone else was applying. Thus, I did too. There was no research involved, I applied only to schools that sent applications to me and asked me to apply. I think I even got application waivers because of my economic status. All I had to do was fill in the paperwork and then write those damn essays.

It wasn’t easy. I understood some things. Colleges wanted happy. Colleges with money could give me money. Looking at the tuition costs, I applied to those that were the highest. My mother was aghast, didn’t support me in it, didn’t help me fill out applications. She wanted me to go to a State school, but she didn’t really even want that. She wanted me to go to community college, like my brother, stay at home and work to ‘save money for a state school.’ There was no way in hell I was staying with her.

So I had to write the essay and I realized that they didn’t want to know the ‘real’ me, they wanted a shiny happy person, and the poorer I was the happier they’d be because all colleges crave ‘diversity.’ Thus, I lied, and still hate myself for it. I wrote an essay praising my mother, saying how strong she was. I talked of how she brought us from a life in poverty in Arizona to a stable house in New York giving up her husband for her children. All hail the mighty mother, I bowed to convention. Playing up the poverty, I turned her into a f*cking saint.

And, I not only got into colleges such as Vanderbilt and Barnard, Columbia, I got scholarships.

But the worst thing was that my mother loved the essay, cried. “It’s so true,” she sobbed, “I never thought you realized how much I did for you.” I swallowed my vomit and asked her to please, for the hundredth time, sign the financial aid forms. She finally did.

Then, to add insult to injury, when admissions came in they called my mother. At work. This pissed me off. I went to school for all these years, I excelled, I wrote this essay that made me ill denying everything I felt, and they call her first to tell her that her little daughter is in. Always the public martyr my mom would cry, then tell them that this was her dream school for me but I wouldn’t listen and if only they could help. . .

In the end I went with the school that gave me the most money, because it was the one that my mother decided would make her look best at work. She told me she wouldn’t help me pay for any other school (not like she helped me pay for that one either. She never signed any paperwork, if anything was sent to the house she promptly destroyed it, and I ended up having to go through the paperwork to declare myself as financially independent each and every term, because legally we shared the same home address) and I held out hope she’d pay for this one. Though, to be fair, one year I filled out the paper work that qualified her for a PLUS loan for my education, I think it was about 1,200, and I never have any intention of paying for it for her.

See, when she bought my brother car after car she told me that I wasn’t getting one because she was saving that money for my education. But when the time came, she bought him another car. So it’s only fair, right? That in the end she burden some costs. After all, she takes all the credit for my success; she might as well pay for some.

I only wish I could charge her more.

I only wish I hadn’t lied on that application, but then I would have never gotten out of that house.

Interesting side-note. I felt so bad after that first year, like everything was a lie and I was such a fraud, that I tried to transfer. This time the essay was real- it was raw. I talked of statistics. I was a female. I was from a life of government cheese and dumpster diving. I was from a violent single-parent home. I was the one in four of my friends who hadn’t been sexually molested. I was (if my mother was to be believed) a minority. Statistically, I shouldn’t be alive. Statistically, I shouldn’t succeed. Statistically, I was less than nothing. Yet here I was, applying to you the college, asking for your help in my continued success.

I was rejected from all places. Maybe I should have stuck with happy lies instead of sad truths. Such is life; we all want to live in cheerful oblivion even if everything underneath the surface is wretchedness. We want to take pills to make ourselves merry, rather than battling and defeating the demons that bring us down.

But I’m not lying anymore, especially to myself. I may have a dark past but I have a bright future, hell, even my present is pretty damn well-lit, and I won’t hide anymore, not even from myself. If a place doesn’t want to hear the truth, the true me, then I don’t want them either. It’s the only way I can be. And if I don’t want to hear the truth, I know it means there’s something there I have to explore and overcome

On Feeling Doomed

That was thing when I lived with my mother, and times now when I spiral back to being age twelve again. The sense of doom. The feeling that I’m not in control of myself at all. Not that I’ve lost control and will lash out, but that someone else (in that case, my mother) had full complete control of even my thoughts and thus my future wasn’t mine. And with a future that isn’t mine then basically, I have no future.

This sense of doom carries over into everything. I figured I would never do well at school, even though I always did. I just thought that what my family constantly drove home (that I was worthless) was true. But there was something else inside me, apparently. That split persona that I think forms in abused children. The part of me that wanted to exist, and that I wanted to be was kept hidden from ‘them’ but exerted itself in school.

Worthless. Ugly. You’ll never do anything in life. You think you’re better then us, you want to go to college?

I’m writing it tame, and that’s not the worst of it.

Here’s a good one. I don’t know what age I was when my mother decided to ‘gaslight’ me. It was probably around fourth or fifth grade. I would go to school, come home, and everything in my room would be moved. Or just little things. I had this dog doll with those paws that Velcro together or something. He’d hang on one side of my curtain when I left and the other when I returned. I asked my mom what happened and she’d say, “Nothing, your room is just the way you left it.” This went on for a long time. Books would be taken from my room, dolls moved, sometimes my sheets would be changed. But whenever I thought it was wrong, and voiced that things had changed she’d tell me I must be going crazy.

I forgot how I found out. I remember her laughing, thinking it was funny. I vaguely recall her trying to justify it, that I thought I was so smart getting “A”s in school while my brother struggled.

She tried to take away everything, even my mind. And this all led to feelings of doom. I couldn’t even trust myself, so what was the point?

I don’t know, honestly, what kept me from suicide. Maybe that was also the other persona inside me, the real me, not the shell I had become. Maybe it was that at the time I was searching for a savior and clung to God, who I argue with constantly now. The whole issue of religion is another post.

But now I realize these feelings. Like recently when the PTSD was triggered. I had been contacted to tutor some college kid, very bright. I had accepted. But when in that triggered state I began to doubt myself, to feel there was nothing I could offer and that he was smarter than me to begin with. I didn’t fill in my contract with the college I teach at because I felt too dumb, worthless, wondered why they wanted me anyway.

At my full time job they are signing off on a promotion for me and suddenly I felt like I was pulling the wool over their eyes, like they just hadn’t figured out what a failure I was yet. And now it just pisses me off that I could sink to those depths again.

I’m trying so hard to control that and realize my self worth. I am not doomed, I have a future.

I Do Not Have Depression, I Am Just Depressed.

I hope I do not have depression.

That worried me, because for two weeks I was agitated, I was restless. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep. I was waking up early in the mornings and walking through Central Park. My legs didn’t stop moving even at work, I’d anxiously shake them while at my desk.

And I didn’t really mind, because hey, who can’t stand to lose some weight?

Ennui. That’s what I said. And to make it more fun, Emu. I was feeling like a flightless fowl, unable to free myself from the earthly bonds. I stopped seeing my future. I stopped seeing the good around me.

Then I looked up the real definition of Ennui- depression. I took the survey from my therapist, I had to mark everything yes.

But that doesn’t mean I have depression, it means I was in a state of depression.

What I’ve had, for quite some time, is Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder, PTSD. Being a Manhattanite, that’s a trendy diagnosis. But it has nothing to do with the towers falling, it has to do with my ‘childhood trauma’ which are likened to over 20 years of torture.

My mother has a diagnosis, presumed by her actions: Bi-polar.

That scared me, for so many years as a child, as a teen, I was afraid to show emotions because she was like a shark ready to attack. Hell, she admitted later in life that she enjoyed making me cry, causing pain, doing what she could to feed off emotion. So I stopped crying, stopped everything.

Then, in my twenties and having severed ties with her, when I felt happy or sad or anything else I feared I was bi-polar. I am really still learning what emotions are and how to not be afraid of them. I have been tested many times, and so far a clean bill of health. Not bi-polar, PTSD.

The thing is, I get triggers. And after finding out what depression was and only knowing about Cymbalta I dive-bombed and found I couldn’t do anything, couldn’t make any decisions, felt like everything was futile.

But now that it’s past, I realize what happened.

Triggers.

When something happens that threatens my safety I become that teenager I was who couldn’t control anything in her life and had to deal with the irrational parent that enjoyed causing her children pain. That was a time when I felt I wouldn’t live to be twenty.

I feel so silly now, knowing that construction outside my house coupled with fleas in the apartment threatened my feeling of safety. I’m upset that such seemingly normal events can send me spiraling.

But I suppose that’s why I’m in therapy.