RealMental

I said, “I don’t want to hurt this person, I’ve spend a lot of time trying to deflect their pain”.

“But aren’t you hurting yourself in the process”, he asked.

I said, “In way, yes.  But…”

His response, “But what?  Isn’t that how it was as a child?  You put others before you, you weren’t important.  You were made to be responsible for other peoples emotional well being and that’s never the job of a child.”

“Oh” I thought aloud.  Back to that.  It always goes back to the origin doesn’t it.

If I take care of them, they will at some point take care of me.  Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?  No.  That’s how we think it’s supposed to work but it never comes out that way. Not for me anyway.  Maybe someone, somewhere (besides Hollywood movies) it’s worked like that.  Never for me, yet I keep trying to complete that cycle and I lose myself in the process over and over again.

The source of that thinking, if I can protect the others, take their beatings for them, take the blame, take the spotlight and make it all my fault, I can control it and, somehow make it better.

No one comes out and asks me to do this, it’s one of those wordless agreements that we all make.  It’s an entire script, in my head, set on auto pilot.

My therapist suggested (about a year ago) that I needed to have a conversation about that wordless agreement, to tell the other person that I could no longer hold that position.  I was losing myself in the process and it wasn’t their fault, but I needed to resign from that job.

Sometimes, I think other people don’t mind that we lose ourselves as long as we serve as a prop for them.  (Again, auto pilot behavior.)

Once you’ve established that type of “agreement” it’s hard to move away from it.  It takes time, more conversations, discipline.  I have discipline to change my behavior, or I’m pretty sure I do.  It can be done even if it is like trying to turn a commercial ocean liner.

Funny how it is that I forget this small detail, that I push myself to the side in order to make things better for another person.  Not because I’m a martyr, I have ulterior motives (see above “If I take care of them…”).

All this collected crap manifests itself in many ways.  Much like plant roots, seeking the water and nutrients it needs to survive all the while hidden underneath the ground never seen by the casual observer.

Until something starts to wilt or die, then the journey begins again to find the source.  In order to make it right.

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I have recently reconnected with someone from my past.

This someone was the most important person in my life for many years.  He was instrumental in my highest-flying moments of joy, and in the worst, dark depths.  He was my best friend and my worst enemy.  In the end, he fulfilled a pattern that had been present in my life since childhood:  the ones who say that they love you are the ones that hate you most when no one else is looking.

I focused almost all my energy alternately on pleasing him and rebelling against him.  Relative to how I am now, people say that I looked smaller then, more like a ghost.  (Physically I’m the same size as I was.)   I was more of a sidekick than a wife.

I don’t blame him.  I know his past, and how it shaped him.  After the divorce, I read that two only children should never marry.  You’ve both been brought up as the centre of attention.  You never had to learn to share.  We were two only children in a battle to be at the centre.  He was dominant.  All our space was his space.  All our plans were his plans.  All our friends were his friends.

And yet, he was my best friend for twelve years.  He was my high school sweetheart.  He had some wonderful qualities.  After I left him, despite how bad things had gotten, I missed him unspeakably.  I felt as though I had chewed off my own leg to be free.

Time passed.  Close to ten years after I moved out, I have reconnected with him online.  I barely thought of him anymore by then, but it was nice to share some memories together, and catch up on news.  We started writing more often, re-kindling the friendship side of our connection.

At first it was fun and easy.  But it’s been getting more difficult for me.  The more I know him now, the more it feels like he’s a real presence in my life, the more all those unresolved feelings come floating to the surface.  There were so many things we never talked about, near the end.

Sometimes after an e-mail from him, I can’t sleep at night.  I wake at 3 am with a pounding, racing heart.  All the insecurities I thought I had outgrown are being triggered, almost as though no time has passed at all.  I thought I had forgiven him, but I had only forgotten.  Now that I’m reminded, I can time-travel back to my old self instantly.

I have to stop, look around at my new home, my new life.  I remind myself what year it is, how old I am.  I look in the mirror and see that I’m different.  As soon as I stop focusing on the now, the past snaps me back like an elastic band.

Why don’t I just cut him off again?  Same reason why I can’t sleep at night.  There are too many unresolved issues begging to come to light.  I hope that if I can weather the anxiety, we might be able to talk through some of the past, and heal it.  He has changed.  He went through his own personal hell, and it humbled him.  I can’t bear to lose him again.  I’m willing to let it be messy, difficult, and awkward.  The possibilities are worth the risks.

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When do you know it’s time to go?  Does the end have a sign posted to let you know it’s the end?  Tell me what the end looks like, tell me in your words what the end feels like.

You replay it in your mind, what you think will happen.  You warn the others, hoping they’ll prepare.  If they don’t prepare, you can’t be held responsible for them not preparing can you?

False starts of the end impede progress, you are too busy thinking “this is it” so you walk around looking at the sky.  The birds can see it faster than you, so maybe if you climb up in that tree you can see it too.

You look to the clouds for a sign, hoping you’ll see a formation or at least a diagram telling you to get out while you still can.

Hope whispers in your ear, it tells you that maybe just maybe it’ll work.  This time.  This time, things will really change.

This time, the person will see the impending doom of a black cloud that’s been over your head for longer than you can remember.

Hope tells you to wait.  Wait, wait, and wait some fucking more for the thing that’s going to really get through to the one it needs to get through too.

But it doesn’t.  It’s time to make good on all your threats, you didn’t sign up for this, you didn’t sign up for this class, this session, this fucking workshop.

Bastards, all of them.

Just pick up your toys and go, start fresh, begin again.  Do it better this time, make it clearer this time.

Go on down to Slab City, join the others looking for freedom.

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By Dianna

I’m 35 years old and I live with my Mom and Dad. I’m OK with that…most of the time. They are my crutch as there are things I probably would do that I shouldn’t and things that I wouldn’t do that I should. My Dad is “old school.” He doesn’t believe in mental illness but believes everything is an act of will. Don’t want to feel crazy? Then stop.

There are many days when getting up seems way too hard and the very thought of walking out that front door in bright daylight fills me with terror. My stomach clenches, my hands shake, but I know I have to because the look on his face, the disguised remarks, or the silent treatment will be so much worse. So I do it, and in the end I am better off for it as the reality is never quite as bad as what I create in my head.

There are nights I’d like nothing more than to sit in my room with a bottle of wine and drink myself silly. This only leads to hyperactivity and a walk out the front door to a bar, because the truth is, I don’t like to drink alone. I have the built in excuse not to do it, too, because my Daddy will get mad at me. In the end I am thankful, when I wake up fresh and ready to face a new day. Each day this happens is a day that fills me with pride that I made the right choice and conquered the demon in that moment. You see that’s the thing. The moments always pass if you just refocus the energy, the battle is learning how to do that, the rest of my battle is to learn to do it for me and not for someone else.

Then there is the knowledge that eventually I have to let go of the crutch and I have to find a way to make it on my own. I have to get out there and build a life of my own and more often, I finally want to. Most days I am no longer scared.

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In the ensuing days since December 31^st, I keep finding new bruises.  One on my shin (darkening, still, as of this morning), a smattering of small ones on my thigh and arm.  A large one on the back of my thigh, two square inches and a deep purple-black.  All self-inflicted, not on purpose—not really—but the result of a few hours of banging around drunk.  Purposefully drunk.

Every New Year’s Eve since I turned 21 has been same verse, same as the first.  I have spotty memories of them, woven in and out of drinking games and one final magnum opus, the moment when it all reverses and I vomit until I no longer can.

It’s cleansing, in an exceedingly fucked up way.  I start each new year with an empty stomach and an insidious headache, sleep away that first day.  Sleep away the memories.

That first year—21, the end of 2006, the beginning of 2007—is full of other meaning and connections.  The last time I was completely untethered, the end of the Big Bad Hurt, the almost-end of us.  By the end of the day, January 1^st 2007, I would have lost an engagement.  I would realize, truly, for the first time how close I was to really losing everything.  I would realize that I had lost my mind.

***

My best friend eschews digital cameras, for the most part, sneering at a technology that allows us to have what he refers to as “instant nostalgia.”

This semester, my friend Charlie has dutifully toted his camera around at night, documenting our drinks and the way we sink into each other as the night progresses.  In the mornings after, when I wake up on someone else’s couch [or when he wakes up on mine], I download the pictures into a folder on my hard drive.

I take advantage of this so-called “instant nostalgia,” track all of the pictures he has surreptitiously taken.  Pictures of the side of my head, or my pointed glare into the camera—wielding a smirk, dimples blazing.

And one picture from New Year’s Eve—post-ball drop, at the very edge of my memories.  1/10 of the nights of the year I wore my hair straight and down.  1/3 of the nights of the year I wore high heels.

A genius picture, really—though probably not intentional.  “Serendipity,” as it goes.  “A beautiful mistake.”

On the right side of the picture, I am laughing.  Loud, it would appear.  And on the left side, an expanse of kitchen between us, the same boy who broke an engagement three years ago.  [He’s laughing too].

***

It’s been more than a thousand days since that first year, the first time I ever puked from over-drinking and the day I almost lost everything.  The days since then have seen the biggest changes—I’ve gotten used to nightly meds and psychotheraphy, gotten used to feeling desperate in the grocery store when I’ve forgotten the previous night’s Lamictal.  I’ve gotten used to trying to decipher my moods—and used to sometimes failing.  I’ve gotten used to divulging my bad habits to my best friend and my psychiatrist.  I don’t know if I’ll ever spend a New Year’s Eve without feeling sad, without wanting to empty my stomach or hurt myself crawling up [and falling off] banisters.  And I’ve stopped pretending that I’ll never feel the hard things ever again—I’ll never be done with sadness or frustration or longing.  And I’ve stopped pretending that I’ll ever be 100% ok with the idea that I can’t have a 100% normal life (whatever such a thing is…).

So, on January 1^st of this year, I wrote this:

“At the end of the year, I sometimes feel pretty. And sometimes hurt or overwhelmed. Sometimes filled with soul-shattering longing. Sometimes blessed and fulfilled. Sometimes invincible.”

The most I think about these words, the more I feel the gravity and the truth in them.  The reality of my life is that I have an illness that sparks a shift in emotions, that once swung me in and out of moods that I could barely recognize, much less control.  But now, I get to experience the most beautiful and real emotions—crushing sadness, blossoming anger, the frustration that makes me shake in my shoes.

And happiness.  The kind that leaves you laughing in a kitchen with someone who could have left.  But didn’t.

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I bought a Korean red bean bun as an after-work snack.  According to the packaging, the first ingredient was “Bean Lump”.  For a laugh, I brought it home and showed my husband.  He patted his large belly and declared “This is my Bean Lump.”

He and I are a bit like Jack Sprat and his wife, reversed.  He struggles not to overeat.  I can’t seem to gain an ounce.  Granted, I do exercise more and snack less than he does, but in the final analysis most of the credit for my low BMI goes to luck.  I have skinny parents.  He doesn’t.  It’s not fair, but that’s life.

When I’m feeling good, it doesn’t matter.  My husband is a handsome man with smooth skin, a mischievous glint in his eye, and an alluring dimple when he smiles.  He also has very charismatic eyebrows.  And sexy hands.  Perfectly straight, white teeth;  a cool haircut.  Women flirt with him, and love it when he flirts with them.  His waistline isn’t big enough to overshadow all his attractive features.

Frankly, if you could give me a guarantee that my husband would live until at least the age of 85, I wouldn’t care about the bean lump.  It’s not an issue of insufficient superficial beauty.  I count my lucky stars every day that the wonderful man I married happens to be so good-looking.

However, when I’m anxious and under stress, I can’t ignore the bean lump.  It taunts me.  Bullet points from magazine articles about Metabolic Syndrome scroll across my mind’s eye like quotes along a stock ticker.  I’m sure he’s going to get diabetes.  I’m sure he’s going to die of a heart attack.  How selfish of him to abandon me through an early death!  He loves bacon more than he loves me!

Technically, he could be doing more.  He says he has “no time” to exercise, when I know he spends at least 4 hours every night playing on the computer or watching TV.  He swears off snacking for a while, and then I start finding wrappers in the garbage and unwashed plates in the sink when I get up in the morning.  When he orders a side of bacon with his brunch, I bite my tongue.

The thing is, I know he’s doing his best.  I’m not the only emotionally fragile person in this house.  He has his limits too.  While he may have time to exercise, I know that he doesn’t have the emotional stamina to deal with it.  He took up jogging for a few weeks two years ago.  Every time he came home, he talked about how much it sucked to be “that fat guy trying to run”.  Everyone else on the track was fast and athletic.  That was outside, at night, in the dark.  I can sure understand why he hasn’t been able to face a brightly lit gym.

Yes, he eats compulsively sometimes, but do I have any right to get on his case about that?  He doesn’t smoke, drink to excess, gamble, or get too wrapped up in online gaming.  His family has a history of alcoholism.  He’s had a rough past.  All things considered, if all he does is eat a whole big bag of potato chips at 2:00 am every once in a while, he’s doing pretty good.  In fact, he’s doing excellently, and I’m proud of him for coming as far as he has.

But when I’m down and nervous, all of that counts for nothing.  All I can see is his early death, the funeral, and an old age of loneliness and endless grief stretching before me.  The bean lump may as well be a tombstone hanging around his neck.

I always think that I’ve got myself under control.  I tell myself that I’m doing fine.  But my resistance slips.  Although I should know better, I justify to myself that I can make this comment, leave that article on exercise out for him to find, because it’s “for his own good”.  Then we fight.

“Do you think I don’t know that I’m fat?” he asks me sharply, wounded.

“I have to look at this” (he grabs his belly) “every day in the mirror.  I’m the one whose pants don’t fit.”  By the time I’ve realized my mistake, it’s too late.  I have failed to love him unconditionally.  I’ve basically told him that he’s not good enough.  And guess what happens when he feels bad about himself?  He eats for comfort.  He lies around more watching TV because the stress of fighting is exhausting.

He also gets that I’m trying to control him, and he doesn’t like being controlled.  What better way to rebel than by doing exactly what I don’t want him to do? 

Hello, self-fulfilling prophecy.

I hate the ugliness in my head when I fall down that hole.  I hate that I never learn, that I make the same mistake over and over again.  Once the words are out of my mouth I feel so stupid, like the biggest dolt that ever walked the face of the earth.  I’m a bad wife.  I’m a crappy friend.  I’m a mess.

Every day I try to live up to my ideal: take life as it comes, and leave the things I can’t control up to God.  Be grateful for what I have when I have it.  Don’t grasp.  Don’t presume that I can know what the future holds.  Anything could happen.  Life has surprised me more times than I can count, and the surprises are often good ones.

Or, let’s say that my worst fears will come true.  What then?  What if my husband is destined to have a heart attack and die at a young age?  Do I really want to spend our remaining days together fighting over whether or not he puts too much butter on his pancakes?  I can enjoy what I have while I have it, and be grateful for every second.  I can be open to uncomplicated joy.  I can be fully in this moment, with all of my heart, without conditions.

He’s doing his best.  I can see that.  He puts in 110% effort every day, and that has to be good enough. 

I love him so much.  I hope that we both live long, happy lives together.  But the only thing I can truly reach for and achieve is long, happy moments, right now, one breath at a time.

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In that period of time I mentally call the Big Bad Hurt—April 2, 2006-December 2, 2007—I found myself in bed with a series of boys.  Always in bed, often through the night—but never sleeping.

Even after they would fall asleep—as they inevitably would—curled around me and snoozing like infants, I would lie awake for hours.  Crunched up in their arms, suffocating and guilty.  Hours and hours of staring at the ceiling, thinking too fast.

The mania didn’t help, as it never does.  It was an amalgam of factors, the natural loss of sleep I’d be getting when I was manic, added to the guilt and the suffocation.  I hate to be touched in my sleep and hate, even more, being cuddled when I’m tired.  A lifelong and unapologetic thumbsucker, I need to lie in a certain position to drift off.  But they never cared, never paid attention.  Just wrapped me up too tightly in their arms and dropped off, never caring if I joined them on that other side.

Except once, in the middle of the Big Bad Hurt—I got drunk in my house when my parents were away.  Joey and I weren’t “together”—we were on the break that would last from my birthday and for a little less than two weeks.  The same night I fell out of bed and he helped me back in.  Then let me turn on my side, like I prefer.  He didn’t wrap me up in octopus arms, but just let me be.  And calmly fell asleep beside me.

I woke up next to him the next morning, and I knew.  I knew that he was the one.  I knew that he was the person I was supposed to be with—after all, I’d fallen asleep with him.  Of all the boys I’d ended up in bed with, he was the only one who I could actually sleep with.

It takes a great deal of comfort, I guess, and a level of trust to fall asleep with someone.  With him, it was so natural, so unmanufactured.  I didn’t have to fake it with him. I never had to fake anything with him.

I was lucky, you know.  I was lucky that we made it through the Big Bad Hurt.  Truth be told, I’m lucky that he had the dedication to make it through.  That he stayed.

Every night, now, I get to drift off beside him, perfectly calm and sleepy.

And sometimes, when he’s staying at a friend’s house until late or staying up to play games on the computer, I fall asleep on his side of the bed, just so he’ll have to wake me up and move me over.  He wakes me up to move, and then I drop right back to sleep.  Just like then.  Just like always.  Perfectly calm.  Or, simply put, just perfect.

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