you asked me more than once yesterday if i was okay what gave it away it is clear that you are unable to listen or unwilling it doesn’t matter which you are unable to read my face until it is well past too late yes, I know that you are going through some shit. yes I know that there are some things that seem beyond your control. I have learned that it is safer for me to not engage with people who are acting like this until they stop, but that is the crux. I am uncomfortable in my own brain in my own body in my own self so to be around and be barraged by cutting commentary is not something I can sustain. every least sneer is an accusation, is a judgement.
I am trying to remain whole, one. Here. There is too much turbulence and I cannot keep fast to my core. I cannot weather the storm any more.
There are conversations that need to happen. There are people that need to be confronted. There are people who need to know exactly how I feel about them, about the things that they’ve done. There are people who need to stand in front of me while I fume and scream and rage in their motherfucking faces. There are people who need to stand in front of me and look me in the motherfucking eyes while I scream at them. There are people who need to listen to the things I have to say.
What I would really like actually, is to punch these people. To hit them, to punch them in their stupid fucking faces. To rip them limb from limb to tear them fucking apart. I want to make these people bleed people I want them to bleed and suffer and scream in pain I want them to know exactly what they’ve done. I would like to take these people’s skulls and smash them into the ground I would like to watch their brains spill all over the sidewalks. I would like their blood and guts and gore to run into the gutters. DO YOU GET IT YET DO YOU?
do you get it?
No I am not okay. No. I will never be okay you keep fucking with me I will never be okay.
it’s pure fear in my brain in my skull full of open-mouthed terror and no No no no no no (mouth opens wide as if to scream but no sound comes out) it is as if my brain knows not to attach worry to the unchangeable my brain is so quick to send out the orders but my body, my body says otherwise there is nothing and everything specific the overwhelming state of my life
I smoke and smoke and smoke and cough so hard I puke there is still no lift, no elevation.
I have all of this proof Physical proof of how good I am, how talented, how good, how kind. I have emotional proof. People say lovely things, in front of other people. About me they say these things. Lovely things in front of other people. It can be an entire day of people saying lovely wonderful things about me, showing how much they appreciate what I have to offer.
And all it takes is one motherfucker to bring it down.
I was already in trouble when I woke up yesterday morning. My only goal was to get home to Mojo. To keep that in my head to get home to him, to make sure that he was eating, that he was feeling okay. My only goal, my far point was Mojo. I talked to myself all through my shower to make sure that I brushed my teeth. I brushed my teeth.
I was still not okay when I got out of the shower. I was not okay when I got dressed. The entire drive. Not okay. Knowing my far point.
Got where I was going. Shared that I was not okay. Shared enough fast enough to be as clear as possible. Eyes bright and wide. On. I know that when I am like this (you know how you get) I know that when I am like this I have to protect myself at all costs because to not do so would be dangerous for everyone.
The day went. Carefully. Shared my work to delight, to lesser delight. To what seemed cursory, perfunctory, obligatory. Unreal. Inauthentic. I want people who love, truly. I don’t want someone uncaring, not in any part of my life.
Other skills, gushed over. Lauded. Delighted in. Shared. shared out loud.
All day all day I had teetered on the edge, this rollercoaster poised and threatening at the very top. LOUD VOICES CLOSE CLOSELY loud and close and disharmonious and unyielding eyes slitted, accusing Voices louder.
No. I can’t be, there. I excuse myself away, not far enough but out of sight but not out of tension’s grasp. The only thing I have left to help is disassociation because I cannot physically get far enough away. So I go away. Eyes burning into the computer screen totally focused on the pen in my hand and the rage behind it summoning internal music to fill my skull loudly drown out the screeching noises outside and in. I share. Bits of what’s happening. To exorcise it. Flush it out.
My face is a mask, deadened expression, eyes down. I comply when needed.
The only thing I can remember now is this: “I know you get anxious when it’s loud and there’s a lot going on and and and but you can’t let that SHOW. They said you’re always angry.”
typewritten 33 years ago. found in the attic at the last possible moment.
darkness — thick, oppressive congealing as if blood around an open breathing wound i am this the wound ed panic steers this two-ton beast not i racing racing heart racing through mazed streets dimly lit by infrequent lights sudden dip plunge headlong into wooded thick et cricket thicket surroundsound i turn up the radio to shut out the nature nature of this two-ton beast of steel racing heart racing.
I wrote this 33 years ago on the way home from somewhere/something stressful. My engagement party? I was less than a month away from turning 21.
I would have stopped to pull the car over to write this; wherever my first Filofax disappeared to, deep within its pockets lies a piece of looseleaf covered in my handwriting, tense and manic and completely out of control from the feel of it. This was about 6 months before I married my first ex-husband, The Sociopath. I hadn’t yet gotten anywhere close to the diagnosis I finally have, I mean I had finally gotten away from the schizophrenia misdiagnosis and was hovering somewhere in limbo, hinting around manic depression and clinical depression, but no one understood suicidality and ADHD back then, much less accounted for the PTSD I already had and would continue to have. I’m pretty sure by this point I had been put on Prozac which only helped to launch me fully into extreme mania.
The terror that I know that I was feeling that night, it is a familiar one. The time of year, well into the beginning of spring, added to the mania I know I was experiencing. Without understanding that this is how my body acts in spring, without any tools to help mitigate what would always be outside of my control, I can feel (finally, I think) really aware of just how much I have survived, and continue to survive.
I kept going when I had no proof of better times to come. I have that proof now.
I am that proof. My proof lives in me.
It always changes; it always shifts. It gets better and it gets worse and it gets better again. Gam zeh ya’avor / gam zu l’tovah. This too shall pass and it is all for the good. גם זה יעבור זה גם לטובה
The Salty Widow 