Unmoored

Every time I come to this beach, I see it with new eyes. All the events of times long gone, all the faces that once seemed so important, slip into those waves, forgotten.

I’m reminded of King Haggard when he trapped the unicorns in the sea. I look for them in the white caps, even when I know they don’t exist. It’s like a dream, standing there in the fog. You can’t see ahead or behind, and I get now why that one unicorn couldn’t go back. She was too changed. She fought the thing everyone was afraid of, she did the right thing, but in so doing, she lost everything that could let her relate to the others in exchange. She lost everything that could allow her to be one of them. Because once you fight the things that haunt your own dreams, once you face true terror, the fear that lies deepest in your bones, you will never be the same.

I’m so raw and full of feeling. I haven’t felt this way since I was a child. I feel everything, all at once. It’s as though the walls I built crumbled down, broken by my actions. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know this is what it meant. I don’t regret it, but I feel an ache now. I can say what I feel now. But it is alienating and othering in a sense I hadn’t anticipated.

I can never join them again because I am so terrifyingly changed. Every time I see a stranger withhold something, every conversation with a pause or deflection, makes me laugh. I’m not afraid. I don’t care if you know me and you see me and that frightens you. There’s nothing I can do for you. I’m not going to wait and be patient and hold your hand so you can be comforted like a child. That’s what they are, I guess, children afraid of monsters.

I say what I mean in a way I never have before. I don’t mince my words or add a honeyed dash to make it palatable. I just fucking say it. And people become alarmed. They will even leave. And I see now that I can’t go back. This is it now. I am free, and I will never be able to exist with everyone else because of it. I can’t not be who I am. It is so ingrained and it happened so quickly, I’m still in a whirlwind with it. I branded it into my own soul.

Not from not wanting to, but because every word out of my mouth shatters the illusions, shatters the shields made to guard the fear. I don’t care if you know me or want to use it against me. Go ahead. I had someone say that to me, that “you shouldn’t talk like that. Some people will use that to hurt you.” So? Is that supposed to stop me? Frighten me? It did once. I can see it frightens you. They can’t take anything from me with my own truth. I think it’s funny that you don’t get that. But it’s okay. I was just like you once. I said these words before, not realizing I didn’t fully embrace them then. I thought I had, then this…

I know there are others. I know one of these days I’m going to look across the mountains and see the speck of a person across the way. That’s strange to think about.

And now that I say that, I know deep down that I already saw one. I am not the only one, I am not the last. That’s comforting in a way. Someone else before me has already made this journey, taken the same paths with different burdens, and made it shine anyway, a self-explosion to make a star.

All I need to worry about is my own journey, my own way, because there is nothing more important.

What is moving on?

What does it look like? I’ve been asking myself this question my whole life, wondering what is the formula, what is the scientific answer, but knowing intuitively that there isn’t one. It’s a soft science, moving on. There’s the crying and the distress, the grief. Perhaps even entangled with depression and a gnawing anxiety. I feel that too sometimes.

I’ll wake in the dead of night and my heart will pound for no reason at all. I’ll feel the inevitability of fate as though it has already wrapped the noose around my throat. My body responds as though I’m standing there at the gallows, even in piles of blankets and the stillness of the dark. A cold sweat descends on me, my hands get clammy. I feel an existential dread. I wonder about purpose and sadness. I wonder if pain is worth anything at all.

I’ve been sad, but something else is lurking beneath it this time. There’s a resolve, a deep, solid resolve, as though whatever happens, there is nothing to fear. Even when it feels like the anxiety might crush me in its unrelenting grasp, I manage a smile to my lifelong captor. You think you can stop me, but you can’t. Every time it rises up in my chest, I rise to meet it now. When it pushes, I shove. When it gets unbearable, so do I.

Because what is this in the face of everything? A body’s response to lifelong trauma? Fear? But people forget that fear, too, can be exciting. Those anxious pangs become butterflies in your chest in the right conditions, don’t they? The initial reactions are the same, yet the thoughts make one horribly unpleasant and the other one exhilarating.

It’s the after where you think too much and doubts make you insecure. It’s the time spent in between action, the purgatory of thought that really penetrates that lizard brain and makes you see shadows in the dark that aren’t there. You have to shine light into those corners, grab those fears by the collar and snarl in their faces, see them up close. Once you’re face to face, it’s harder to fear something so inconsequential.

That doesn’t mean they don’t sometimes get the best of me. That means sometimes they get ME by the collar and back me into a wall where I want to shrink away and cry and hide too. But I don’t. I can’t anymore. I can’t let them dictate anymore, not after everything. I might falter, I might regress for a moment or two, for a few beats of my heart, but then it floods me with crashing, deafening clarity: we are our actions, and I take back the power, again and again and again, in that unending pattern.

You can say all the big words you want, talk a big fucking game, but at the end of the day, all that matters is what you do when YOU are pressed to the wall. And somehow it’s so much easier to find your balls when you think it’s life or death, even if you never liked life anyway. It’s instinctual, like how sometimes people pull the gun away just enough that it’s not fatal. You can have all the intentions, but that animal part is etched into each of us, and it takes a lifetime or mental illness to stomp all over it and do as one will. I’m getting there, but there’s much more work to be done. There always is. There is no end to that.

Trauma convinces you that every emotion is life or death, that some invisible phantom stalks you on the daily, knife in hand, ready to stabby stab because someone opened a door a little too loud and you had a ptsd flashback, and your hands got sweaty and you had that cold slap of anxiety prickle across your forehead and the back of your neck. You don’t even know sometimes what will trigger it. You’re just walking around, living your life, then suddenly, out it comes from the murky, disgusting depths, the swamp thing that never dies.

It’s when you start realizing that the reason you chased people was because you thought you couldn’t live without them. But then you finally start to see that that were the ones that needed you, they needed your validation and your body to use as a whipping boy. What fun, to spend life in a glorified gimp suit waiting obediently for the next beating.

You don’t even know you’re doing it, then one day, you just see it, and you can’t unsee it. So you stop reaching out. You start realizing that when they call you it’s because they want something. You realize when you get sick or hurt, nobody shows up, even though every time they were you jumped on an airplane or into a car and were at their beck and call, all to get treated like a servant, convenient until you aren’t anymore.

And then when you really need help, they can’t bother to care about pedophilia or anything else. Can’t you just shut up and stop talking about it? It was years ago, just let it go, they say. Then you realize they were there all along, they knew all along, and they didn’t care how much you got hurt, only that they could shut your mouth so they could have their silence and enjoy the pedophile. Hmm.

And it was all you, all four of you that did this. Four adult human beings, so scared of having to deal with any emotion or accountability that they sided with the pedophile. What a world we live in. I had dark thoughts about it before, but now it is undeniable to me. Saying the world is full of cowards is too kind. I am still baffled, and it makes sense to me how I intuitively knew as a child and didn’t reach out for help.

God, I can only imagine how much it would have broken me to know that then, that the people I called family would just watch it all happen and BLAME me. I still believed in a just world then. But I see now that it is not the world I need to believe in, but myself. I can be just in an unjust world, but it will cost everything. And that’s a price I decided wasn’t too high. I won’t say it isn’t hard, but it happening at the time it did? Poetic.

I don’t think they know yet that they just hurtled me toward everything I’ve ever wanted, the person I’ve always knew I could become. I was inching before, but now I move in leaps and bounds. It feels so unreal. I can’t believe it’s really happening.

I won’t say it’s easy. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but the most gratifying as well. I can see now that I will stand by what I believe and not be swayed. I have never been tested like this. I thought secretly that I would fail if the time ever came, that I would choose comfort over isolation, yet here I am.

And it doesn’t feel isolating at all. It feels like I made it to the mountaintop and they’re all below now, and it’s me and the crisp night air that I am breathing in for the first time. There’s a sorrow, but it pales in comparison to the sense of accomplishment and the pride I feel in who I am becoming. I cry often, but is in mourning for the lie of what I thought I had.

Don’t let the bastards grind you down. You can do it alone, they just don’t want you to know that.

What you wish they were

They say you grieve the fantasy, not the person. And it’s true; I can think back to everyone I’ve lost, everyone I’ve had to walk away from, and I remember the longing for better. You see potential in someone, you see what they could really be if only they would grow. But instead you see the rot slowly take them.

Overwatered, underwatered, their leaves yellow and eventually brown. They regress, even. And you watch with baited breath, hoping against hope they will turn it around, that they can offer you the kindness and the comfort that they showed you once. You’re fixated on it, think “if only they could be like that again”, and you eagerly collect the breadcrumbs and wait, assuming things inevitably must improve.

But that’s the catch, see. They don’t. They hurt you more and they use you more, and when they tire of you, they move onto something else. Because you’re just a game, just like all the games I’ve played. Who can blame them, really? Even my own mother is the same.

They think you won’t leave, that they caught you like a fox in a snare, but that wasn’t for me. I’ve seen them. I’ve seen that mangy coyote with one leg chewed off. And I did, I chewed it all off, I gave it fucking all to free myself from that snare. I thrashed and I pulled and I bit and I chewed until the whole rancid thing came off. With shock and awe and disbelief, I walked away mangled, but somehow still whole in spirit.

I think it was your words. It was the dream too. I didn’t expect it from you, to be honest. You’re cold sometimes, and angry. We lash out at each other like cornered animals, and then it will calm, and we’ll laugh and have a joke. I don’t know what possessed you that day, but thank you, truly.

I hadn’t expected the best words I would hear come from a mere acquaintance. I hadn’t expected you to offer support when I’ve done little but act defensively towards you. I couldn’t get support anywhere I turned. It was so defeating and jarring to realize how little my pain meant to them. To see that I was a tool and not enough to help or fight for. I see now that you were trying to help, and the next time you tried again I finally let you.

You’re not perfect. You’re moody and I find you frustrating. But you’re a little too smart and discerning for your own good. I don’t like how you see things so clearly and state them like it’s scientific fact. It’s unsettling. But at the same time, you said what I needed to hear. You offered me help when no one else did. And it gave you nothing, that’s what is so surprising to me. There was no reward. Yet you did it. For a stranger. For me.

And when I saw you again, once more you went out of your way to help me. You were upset. I’m sorry for that too. I’m sorry if it hurt you.

I hope you liked the card. I didn’t write what I really wanted to in it because I knew you would probably be surrounded by other people when you read it. Your emotions are constantly shifting—same, motherfucker. I know from experience pushing someone like you will just result in a fearful reaction, as much as I might want to. And I admit it, I push a little, but not too much.

I got your message. I’m sorry I didn’t answer. I do care a lot. You’re kind of a prick sometimes, but you know. I guess you’re a tolerable one. You took some of the grief; maybe too much. I didn’t say it then, you’re a prideful creature after all—but I wanted you to know that I understand. I feel things that way too. I’m like a siphon processing everything around me, feeling whatever can be felt. Good, bad, pain. Lots of pain. So many people hurt, and I hurt too. And I can see your hurt as though you spoke of it aloud.

You said some things about your mother I won’t repeat. I’ve thought of our conversations often. I wanted to say that in the letter too. But I couldn’t. You always remember everything about me, and I hate it, because everything I said goes into the vault and you use it like ammunition to get my guard down and sneak all that shit into the conversation, so I’m left confused and blindsided by my own damn words. I can’t tell if we’re enemies or friends sometimes. What the fuck is your deal, anyway?

As it is, I am grieving the family I thought I had, and the people I thought cared. And the fucking most depressing, awful part about it all? A stranger did more and cared more about the outcome than people who’ve known me my entire life. What a fucking end to a monumentally fucked up situation. Jesus Christ.

I’ve learned in all my experiences that those people never loved me. I never meant to them what they meant to me. they wanted me when I was quiet, when I shrunk to fit their expectations and rules. And when I didn’t, they punished me and rejected me, even intentionally hurt me. It’s hard to believe. It’s hard to look at that and say “this is what happened”. It’s wreckage. It’s the tower, and everyone is falling, smoke is billowing while fire burns bright, and all I can do is watch. It’s all gone. Every hope and every dream. Every want for love and connection. Gone.

But when the tower falls there’s room to build. And now I am starting to see all the possibilities over this great expanse, this hole in the dirt. I’m rebuilding on a graveyard.

My greatest fear is that the ghosts are going to haunt me.

Visions

I read somewhere that the first dream of the new year tells your future. I’ve been thinking about that dream since I had it; its nightmarish quality, the way I woke up gasping like I’d felt something touch me through the veil. Little did I know, that it did.

I was on a houseboat that had gone adrift at sea. Everything was on it, everything important to me. All the material things you acquire in life because you feel deeply hollow and empty at times. They are things you need to fill the space so you can’t hear the echo of your screaming soul in the midst of those heaping piles of bullshit. There was more to it, too, a sense of home. Like home was on that boat, the only one I ever knew, as rickety and broken as it was.

It was stormy and grey. It often is here. It was raining, and the boat rocked back and forth like a deathly cradle. I knew it was doomed. I could feel it. That electricity in the air, like the night I went up that mountain in the dark. When I got to the top, my hair stood on end, everything thrummed. The dream must have pulled it out of my memory banks somewhere. There was death that night and there was death in the air out in that dark sea.

It got a hole. It started to sink. The panicking, the fear. Not knowing what to do or where to turn. But I wasn’t alone. We tried to patch it up to make it last awhile longer. I started dumping everything over the sides, just like I didn’t realize I would be doing in real life. There was a deep fear and dread to it. I couldn’t get rid of things fast enough—the boat was sitting deeper, treading water. I could see the shore, but we were still so far off.

Just when I thought I would be going down with the ship, I saw the dock. A lone pier reached out across the white water, like an extended hand. We tried to steer the boat through the crashing waves and downpour, but it was slow and pathetic, like trying to direct a hurricane. More things dropped off into the ocean with every thud of water pounding into the boat. I watched everything I held dear just disappear like it had never been.

Finally, we were close enough. You screamed at me through the thundering skies “we have to jump!” And you were right.

Even my car fell off the side in that final moment (ironic because I had to give one up when I cut out my father), and you made it across. The sea was trying to swallow that pier, but you stayed and you yelled at me again. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t make the jump. But still you persisted, and you called to me again. It became clear I would be down on the ocean floor too, consumed in a rush of cold, black water. I remember that deep dread, inevitability.

So I did it. I swallowed down all that fear and regret and pain, and I took a leap of faith. I remember slippery boards and your grip on my arm. We both looked back at it for a moment, and just then, the ocean took it all down, and I could make out its ghostly form for just a moment before the waves covered it all up in lapping white.

I remember standing there, stunned. Everything was gone. God, I had no idea how true it was all going to be, especially in the dream, tears mixing with the rain, wondering what the fuck I was going to do.

“We made it.”

“Barely,” I whispered.

And then I woke up.

Where have you been?

I didn’t realize this was going to be the worst year of my entire life. I feel like I’ve burned to ash, been reborn, only to burn again. I flew too close to the sun, but instead of falling like Icarus, I became something else.

Whatever I did, I can’t go back now, and maybe that’s what I truly grieve. They don’t tell you that becoming means there has to be a death, often a painful, shameful one, where you have to face the worst parts of yourself and somehow come out with your ego intact.

It wasn’t even intact, if I’m being honest. I made a new one, and it’s fragile and soft and vulnerable in all the ways I always hated. And now? Now I see why I was so scared all the time.

I became my own source of justice. I did all the things I thought I would never do. I reported him to the police. I cut out my mother and my father, and everyone who aligned with them after a lifetime of being abused. I finally let go of the belief that any of those people loved me. If they loved me, they wouldn’t have claimed neutrality, if they loved me, they wouldn’t have hurt me again and again for their own gain.

I cut out my godparents and my aunt and I’m sure there will be more to come. I should feel alone, but instead, something has shifted. I can feel things now. Sense them. It’s like all the instincts I denied came back, but tenfold. I know what people will do before they even act. I see them. I see them so clearly it fucking terrifies me. It’s like by cutting out the abuse, I turned up the volume.

I feel like Guts. I’ve been branded with a mark that calls them all to me, those demons out in the dark. Every few nights I have a new confrontation, I get threatened or backed into a corner, literally. I don’t know how it keeps happening, but it does. I feel like a beacon for all the bad things in the world. They come find me now because I’m like a lighthouse out in the dark. I can’t help but shine.

And I shine so much brighter now, like Danny or Abra. I can’t hide it or dim it anymore. And that’s the worst part, because it feels so out of my control, as though I can’t quiet myself anymore, and why would I want to? And that’s the problem, see. Why would I want to? What happened that I stopped caring, that being true to myself was worth having my life threatened?

Some guy even tried to mug me the other night and I sent him packing. I knew what he was going to do, even when he was around the corner, before he even approached. Just like the mall preacher that tried to get me close. I knew it before he even spoke, I could see the desperation, the envy. The way he moved, he said it all as though he said it out loud.

What the fuck is happening to me? What have I done? And I can’t go back now. It’s going to be like this, forever. I’m going to see, forever. I’m going to spend every night getting preyed on by these fucking things, and I have to have a standoff again and again. I’ve even had to deal with the police. What am I, a goddamned vigilante? How do I escape this fucking timeline with shirtless psychopaths, pitbulls and screaming women?

But then… there’s part of me that likes it too. I don’t have to be in that parking lot at 1am. But somehow I find myself there just the same. Maybe it’s the rush. The fear. Maybe it’s my shitty response to cutting out my entire family and trying to find a way to cope with it. But a good portion of the time, I’m not doing anything to cause it. It just happens. I’m always in the wrong place at the wrong time, day or night.

But some days, I want more… some days, I hope they fucking try it.

And they do.

The cycle repeats.

My monster gets fed, and we all go to bed content. I sleep like a baby on those nights, especially when I know I scared them and I watched them shrink and twist and finally retreat in fear. It’s satisfying, like being the scariest thing on the block, so why would I need to sleep with one eye open?

I saw he moved his lawn chairs. I’m guessing walking up to his house and to his open door, gave him a fright. Keep your door closed, or the monsters will come in. Everybody knows that. You even sent your dog. What a weak man. I took care of that too. I guess it’s too much to expect you to fight your own battles, eh?

You and your fucking leaf blower. I liked watching you try to be passive aggressive because you had nothing else. You’re right to retreat into your house. But you needn’t worry! Have a rest, motherfucker. You’re a waste and not worth the effort. I won’t be back. But I know you’ll remember.

And maybe someday, some time out in the future, it really will be mine, I’ll lay claim to it, and you fuckheads won’t feel safe enough to lurk there anymore. I’ll run you all off, and I’ll enjoy every second of it, even when my heart pounds and I think I’m going to die. I’ll enjoy every dagger to the chest as it beats too hard, and my blood chills to ice, and my body tries to freeze in fear. I’ll do it anyway. I’ll confront you anyway, because I’m here to face all of my fears. I don’t give a fuck how hard it is. I’ve done everything else, haven’t I?

Night air

Sometimes I go outside in the middle of the night. I’ll walk around the corner, over by where the trees start, out there in the dark. There are streetlights in some parts, then it goes black, and all I see is the ember burning on the end of a cigarette. Even the smoke almost disappears and the slight chill of the air is a welcome sensation.

Breathe in, breathe out, remember where you are, what time it is, count the lines in the cement if you need to. Enjoy the night air and the faded sky, blurred out by light pollution. It’s not a forest sky, but it’s something.

I remember nights alone, looking up there. I remember walking through the darkened woods and the snap of sticks, with frost clinging to pine needles and the air piercing my lungs. That place might be home, but I’m not sure. I don’t know where home is. I know that it feels lonely. But I think it always has, now there is just an absence that was once filled. It’s okay, but it’s sad. Maybe sometimes I’m in love with possibility, even when it’s not structurally sound and I’m not even ready for it. Not in a place for it, but I want to believe that I am.

I feel alone now, but maybe it’s just what I do best. Maybe it’s a part of myself I need to learn to accept. I feel alone in every room I’ve ever stood in, and I think I wish it would be different with you, if only for a moment. Maybe that’s too much expectation for one person, I’m not sure yet. Yes? No? I have no answer.

I’m excited finally, to a point where it’s broken through everything. I’m going to plan and wrap things and force through. The devil-may-care attitude always suited me better, as much as I would deny it. I charge and go, and sometimes I ruin things, but maybe that is just my nature and I need not cry over it. I’m too much for any container, more than the sum of my broken parts. Nothing can hold it and that’s okay, because I can.

I can hold it and even more, as big as it may get. And it is growing, whatever this is. The parts are moving and realigning, and I’m going to readjust and make room. More and more and more. I feel smashed and broken and in a ruin, but I know it will all come together again, all find its place. You have to shatter to be able to make the pieces work together, like the teacup on the table.

It won’t be the same when it’s done, and I relish that part. What new pieces will I find within myself, long buried in that rubble? I found my feelings there, found them after a lifetime of digging. It feels so raw and frightening, smothering, even. I feel like those emotions are choking me and forcing my head down sometimes. But I’m angry and it’s easy to move through, when I finally rally enough to try. There is even more to discover, and I can feel it. It’s killing me, reaching down so far, but I know that I can make it. It’s the only reason I continue. I know that I can. That is enough somehow.

I’ll be seeing you soon. Traveling to meet you like someone did for me once. What a strange place to be standing in. Cycles repeat, sometimes we just stand in a different role.

And life goes on, as long as I decide that it does.

He’s not the wisest, but he is the bravest. His salamanders represent the element of fire, and wands are passion and manifestation. There are mountains ahead and he faces left to the past. Maybe the past is filled with troubles, but it makes no difference, he and his horse charge on anyway.

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An open letter to my dumb therapists

I made the header slightly nicer because you don’t want to start out calling someone an idiot.

Hey, I’m ______. We have a session on the 20th. I wanted to send this first so you have an idea of what’s going on, and that you’re the 15 or 16th therapist I’ve seen.

I’ve done several years of therapy. I started going when I was 19, and have been going most of the time up to now (I’m 33). Most of them ghosted me without warning or quit on me, except the last few, which I quit on because I’m much better at recognizing when someone’s jerking my chain (look, it’s bitterness disguised as personal growth!).

When I moved, I had three tubs in my garage full of binders for CBT and DBT classes I took, along with the papers from my individual therapy. I’m not interested in getting recommended books (I mean it), or having therapy just being me talking with no input from the therapist, like I’m having memory show-and-tell while they “ooooh” and “ahhhh”.

The talking feels extremely traumatic and painful, and when I leave a session, I feel awful for days afterward because those emotions didn’t have any outlet. It was all brought up with not closure or any sort of solution. It just feels like pointlessly rehashing old memories, then getting told platitudes. “I’m so sorry that happened to you,” etc, which is nice, but doesn’t help me any. It feels gross, disgusting—like something slippery and evil masquerading as empathy.

I feel like a lot of the therapists I’ve seen use praise to try and encourage me, and also spend most of the session sympathizing with me instead of teaching me or showing me. I don’t like praise because it was how abuse often started. I’ve explained this to every therapist I’ve ever had, that it makes me extremely uncomfortable to receive praise from someone I don’t know/trust, and it makes me assume they have bad intentions toward me. It doesn’t help me establish trust, and in fact makes it even harder. Yet every single one has repeatedly praised me or complimented me when I have reiterated why I don’t want it/am not ready for it, considering the point we are at in therapy. That’s crossing a boundary, yet some people don’t seem to interpret it that way. Is it surprising that commenting on how someone looks feels objectifying?

I feel like praise and encouragement work for some people, but not for me, not when I am just starting therapy and it can take me a year or more to begin to get comfortable enough to feel like praise is nonthreatening. I feel like CBT is not effective for me because I don’t believe what the therapists are saying. I don’t like them or respect them enough to give merit to the things they’re saying, which seems to limit me greatly and tie back into my lack of trust. I feel like therapists have constantly crossed my boundaries, even in a sexual manner with one in particular, and the ones who manage not to do that, don’t seem invested in helping me and are content to just let me ramble and not go anywhere. I suppose they get paid the same, so it’s not like it matters to them. Makes sense from that perspective, but obviously doesn’t do me any good.

I feel like I’ve asked for reasonable things from therapy. I get promised that “things will be different” but even when we discuss exactly what I need from therapy and there is a plan, the plan never seems to make it to fruition. I will bring it up more than once, get told again that we’ll be working on it soon, but then a few more months go by, where I just talk and nothing happens. Unsurprisingly, I end up feeling worse and then they tell me how great I’m doing, which feels like an insult. I have to tell them how badly I’m doing, they argue with me, I leave because they continue once more with the exact same methods as though the conversation never happened. It’s like they think I’m going to forget, or just disappear if they shut their eyes tightly enough. Nope, still here. Too bad for you.

I want to have some kind of desire to be alive, instead of feeling like I don’t want to be here and I’m playing a game that’s gone stale. That is a lofty goal, but it’s a personal one.

I’m not interested in CBT or DBT anymore. And if I get anymore stupid books or stupid forms to fill out, I’m going to erect a bonfire and make those pages useful for something other than being an eyesore. At least they’ll keep me warm.

Anhedonia is my biggest problem, and while I don’t expect that to change much, I would at least like to leave sessions feeling like I’m working toward something.

I’m so tired of therapy, sometimes I just want to scream. It feels like it’s so utterly pointless and no one knows what to do or how to help me. They say they do, then they show up every week and tell me the same things over and over. Read this book, fill out this form, we’ll start working on that in a few months… and nothing changes. Nothing at all. Just “there, there, ______ you’re doing so much better!”

Except I’m not and it’s worse and now I believe in it even less. And now I’m writing an email and having an internal debate with myself as to whether or not it’s worth the effort to do any of it at all. Again. For the billionth time. And I do mean billionth, it’s not a typo. And it’s funny because being in a state of perpetually, crushing depression means that squeezing the emotions out for that, takes away the tiny dusting I have to try and do everything else.

Lastly, if you know someone who could read this page and discern things other than “she uses sarcasm to deflect her pain” please introduce me to that practitioner, because I want to get somewhere for once in this miserable lifetime without hearing “you’re so self aware! You’d make a fantastic therapist!” Yeah. I’d rather shit twice and die, than have to listen to some bore tell me about their unequivocally dull life (good thing that’s your job, no offense). But it’s also a great deflection for them not having a clue what to do with me—I see that too.

Do you have the answers? Probably not. This is a lot for a first email, but you have to start somewhere—go big or go home? A mentality to live by, I expect.

Thanks,

the bitch that writes this blog

What it feels like

It’s weird sometimes, because I feel like I’m completely external, like I’ve dissociated to look back down on myself from a distance. But this person from a distance—-they know things. They know things they shouldn’t.

I guessed four times in a row today. There are 78 cards. And earlier, hearing someone talking felt like rewatching a movie I’d seen too many times. Maybe I’m imagining it. Maybe I didn’t hear a song in my head the other day when I woke up. Maybe I didn’t hear the same song on the radio when I turned on my car… they’re all pointless things, so why? What purpose would this even serve?

Maybe it’s the fucking medication. Maybe I’m going insane. Whatever it is, it makes me feel like something is crawling under my skin and I need to claw it out.

The forgotten voice

I’m nervous to go, but I’m not sure what other options there are anymore. This always feels like I’m Sisyphus and I’m waiting to get crushed. Waiting for inevitability, for failure. It hasn’t worked the last thousand times, some part of me says. And that is true. But maybe my unwavering faith in myself, rather than something that fails me, is something to take away from all of this.

I keep trying, in spite of it all. My determination is an asset, and it holds more value than any faithlessness ever could. I want to find home, wherever that is. I want to find that place where the calm is there for me to grasp at a moment’s notice. I want to pull away from what ifs and prophesies.

There is a truth, and that truth is that I get to choose.

Lying

It has gotten really hard to pretend. I don’t usually have to anymore, but then, something always comes up. I forget a lot that sometimes it’s better to feign being weak to appeal to those that feed on vulnerability. You say, “I need help, please help me”, with big, watery eyes, and a quavering voice. That can have more power than a show of strength—and often does. But I find it repulsive. It makes me swallow down that oily disgust, the kind that rises in your throat and makes you want to vomit. But maybe it should make me want to smile instead.

No one knows. There’s no posturing or bullshit. Just shy uncertainty, an uncertainty that they are all too willing to believe. They devour it. Rightly so, for how else can you paint yourself as something you’re not? They’re here to paint, let them paint. Let them see what they choose to see. Is it really my fault then, if they find their own perceptions, their own illusions of grandeur, to be so palatable?

They want to be the hero. So let them. It’s hard for me to stomach, but maybe that’s the next thing I need to learn.