Terrified

Today the fear is on me. I have an appointment with government offices to attempt to further my cause toward Medicaid. I have been approved for their free sterility program (big surprise) but I still have no access to therapy or meds. Partly I am a little afraid that I will not be approved, as is every supplicant truly struggling with a desperate situation that they cannot handle or afford without this help, as is any beggar, I suppose. The bulk of the fear is from the thing that keeps me in hiding most of the time - the fear of muddling in with the masses of humanity, with other needy, possibly sick, possibly dangerous people. And worst of all, the fear of being swept up with them and taken away because we are defective. Perhaps that's why I have this driving need to be useful and practical no matter what, because I fear that if I am not, I will be locked away. I know that I am lucky, I have a kind of personality and mind that allows me to be able to function highly a lot of the time, and especially well in a crisis. Despite my handicap, I can keep myself afloat at least, and more, most of the time. I have proven for 40 years that my illness and injury has not rendered me useless. I have refused, though I did not have to, to be a drain on society. But now, my age is catching up with me. My tolerance is thinning rapidly, as is reality, and my physical condition is even worse. Will I be swept up? Will I be turned into Soylent Green? Will I be locked away or put down? Put out to pasture is too good to hope for. I like that thought though. Maybe they'll round us all up today and take us to a nice farm, away from dangerous roads, with big fields where we can play and other crazy, injured people will be there to play with.

Today has been a non-day. I feel so ashamed and guilty about them, even when they are forced on me by uncontrollable physical circumstances. I have a physical ailment that causes me a lot of pain and some mobility issues, especially when it is cold or I am sick or very stressed. Winter is tough. I have done nothing all day. Talked to no one. Read, written a little, petted the pets, had lunch. Nothing else. Part of me feels so bad about this, as if I have wasted a day of my life. That part is like my skin. The part of me that wants to feel fine about it, feel grateful that I can rest and do as I please while my body writhes independently of my minds' control. I'd say my pain scale today is about an 8, but considering that I have not experienced a day below a '5' in years, and that I am now accustomed to levels that go beyond 11, it's pretty bad. The main difference between a productive day and a non-day is whether or not I can move my limbs. My arms don't hurt today, but my back and shoulders do, so I could only do a simple, slow task in my lap, like sew or type. There is also pain in my feet and my tendons are seized in a kind of perma-cramp, so it is difficult to walk today. Thankfully, this is occasional. My diet, exercise, fluid intake, mood and the weather all heavily influence it. I can control the nutrition and exercise issues (on the worst days I at least soak and stretch), but some things you just have to ride out.

Point being, I do have a concrete reason to do little or nothing. But I can't let that be it. Something in me drives me to need to feel useful, practical, low-consumption, high out-put. Maybe it came from the need to be good at things so I would be treasured, or at least less of a target. Or msybe it's the freedom and independence that comes with knowledge and skill. Anything to assure that I wouldn't have to live like this when I finally had the choice. I feel more pride in accomplishment than I do almost anything else.

My parents were lazy. Not always, but both of them were, and extremely, disgustingly, dangerously so at times. It would be impossible for small children not to suffer in such conditions. There were times when my mother would sleep for days straight and father would work nights and sleep days as well. We were too little to figure out appliances yet, so dirty laundry would pile up and become part of the floor. We would eat dry, uncooked cereal off the floor like animals, mooch around the house and the neighborhood, sometimes in the nude. We lived like wild things, and though we had family, friends and neighbors who saw it all, no one did anything to stop it. If anything, they enabled our parents and gave us false hopes by occasionally sneaking food to us, or taking us in, feeding us and gingerly pitying us until under our parents came out of their comas and then they sent us back to the pit. It's not just my physical condition that keeps me confined, though I freely admit I'd 10,000 times rather be sitting on a rock by a river and hating people than doing it from the confines of pain. Somehow a non-day is NEVER 'non' if you do it outside. That's therapy, that is.

this isn't happiness

It's sad that to be able to be honest and try to reach out, we have to be hidden and anonymous and reach out through code and signal. Thank goodness for music, art, fashion, all the things that allow us to try to tell each other how lonely we feel and help each other feel how lonely we aren't.

An article about siblings of the mentally ill.

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/siblings/

The first part.

A guarded pink light glowed in the damp darkness, faintly illuminating the close walls and garish toy faces. My room smelled like small children and the lingering reek of smoke damage. The window was open, but the August air was unmoving. Despite the heat, the pink ruffled coverlet was pulled over my head. I was whispering the words on the page beneath my light, “One fish, two fish…”
I was not conscious of the familiar mantra, it was merely a way to help me focus while I listened carefully to every other sound. In the far distance, I could hear the highway, and though there were no cars this late, Mobile or Jackson bound, or even to the state-line juke joints closer, I could hear the vast emptiness of the place where the solid wall of pine trees used to be, and the echo of the whole night sky bouncing off the tarmac.
Closer, but still all the way across the small town I could hear the combined breathing of all the people and animals resting or trying to rest in the hot night, a dog out near the black cemetery on the far southwest of town was howling in its sleep, so softly that its owner didn’t even wake to shush it. It stopped when it woke itself, rattling its own chain. Closer still, near my grandparents’ house, just the other side of the park and across the school campus, I could hear Ed getting ready for his shift at the mill. He was surely not the only one getting ready for work at this hour, but he was up earliest and making the most racket.
In my own neighborhood, near the town park, neighbors were sleeping. Sighing, snoring, doing other things that people only do in the night, at least in towns like this. My own parents, in their room at the other end of the small brick house, were sleeping so deeply that they almost sounded dead. I pictured them so, and what the next day might be like if I “woke” to find them so the next morning. I would call my grandmother and her grandfather would come. He would take us to the neighbors and ask them to take us back across town to his house. It was only minutes away (and of course grandmother would keep us) but it would give him time to assess the situation and decide what happened. He was the town coroner. It was his job. It would not be the first of his crazed and broken children he had found dead, and this, accidental suicide by overdose, would be kind compared to vengeful murder. It could be blamed on the dealer and not his daughter, her husband, nothing but bad drugs. And how sad, how tragic, good riddance. Life would go on... but their shallow slow breathing continued. In the wake of a good drunk fight with good drugs to follow, they slept like they imagined small children slept. Black unconsciousness that would make them ache and cause them to be surly tomorrow. The best we could hope for was that the adults would be kind out of guilt. It was a slim hope.
I tuned into the sounds of my siblings. Only the infant was sleeping, the sleep of the righteously drugged. Doctors would give out prescriptions at the drop of a diaper in these days. Mothers’ little helpers. The older was awake as well, and he was listening. I smiled in the dark, a smile that had to work its way through bloody pieces of broken heart, but when it surfaced, it lit me up like the blanket tent. My wolf-brother was listening and he could hear that he was not alone.



Up to this point, I did not have a collection of memories, only two or three. Falling, and blood and doctors and needles, a flash of one peaceful moment, sitting on the floor at my mothers’ feet asking for food, and of course the fire. There was no gradual awareness, no growing up. I just suddenly realized one day that I existed and that I had a job to do, and that job was to stay alive. That required a kind of thinking that most 5 year olds weren’t allowed, but are capable of, and I had no other choice.
My mother was a thwarted intellectual, who easily learned almost everything that came her way. Large words, snippets of other languages, tricks, facts, illusions. She amused herself and relieved the brutal tedium of her life by teaching these tricks to her first child, but became angry when I learned them and then kept learning more on her own. She would punish and humiliate me for my accomplishments, but fortunately by then I was not dependant on my mothers’ approval.
My father and grandparents allowed me access to any resource they had. Novels, some trashy, some not, the same with magazines; comics, old encyclopedias, dictionaries and of course the limited local library, but I was granted complete uncensored access to anything I found, and so I taught herself to survive.
Some things came easy. The watching, the listening, the learning to hide seemed instinctual, and I was very, very good. I learned to notice and remember things that other people didn’t. I learned to tell by the smell of my parents bodies what the day (or hour or second) might bring. I could tell by the music they listened to what kind of mood they were in. I learned not to trust strangers and to judge people quickly and well. I learned to be fast and guileful. The hard part was learning to understand what adults meant when they spoke, understanding how they thought. The nature of desire confused me, but I knew that only time and experience could teach me these things completely. I learned to adjust.
It seemed as if one day I was just suddenly there, as if I had sprung into existence like a small mortal Athena, age 4, pre-programmed with the necessary survival skills. There was a cloudy, questionable time, those first four years of life, when I must have existed and survived terrible incidents without thought, by instinct alone. That must have been how I learned. There are flashes of memory, pictures from stories I was told about different events, all differing stories too, and the night of the fire. It seems that my awareness began that night.
My brother and I were alone in the house. My father was working, night shift at the mill. My mother was very pregnant, soon to deliver, but she was somewhere else. I will never know where. The fire began in the kitchen. It was an old farm house, the town had grown up around it, and the wiring was original. A spark, some smoke and then flames. I don't remember what woke me. Only that my wolf-brother was standing there, pointing the way out. There was a child gate across the door, and I was too small or too scared to climb it. My brother climbed it and pulled it out of the door frame from the other side and led her through the smoke and flame to the front door. Firemen came, someone took us to our sweet old neighbors’ house and tucked us into a clean warm bed. I have no memory after that for some time, and then there is a shack beside the white cemetery, where we are allowed to stay until more charity housing comes along. We are sick, the baby still has not come. They have almost no possessions and the adults are disturbingly depressed. Perhaps this is where the drugs began. Or at least got worse.
...

tbc

Mismatched Socks and Evil Creatures

Yesterday's festivities went "relatively" well, and pretty much as I expected. None of these people are my blood relatives. They are all my partners' family. The one family member with whom I have the most differences and who has the least clue as to how to deal with my personality made a few harsh, rude comments. That's fairly standard. Sometimes it's worse. Sometimes I am cornered and lectured. There is often conversation wherein this person just fills in my answers for me - in front of everyone - as if I am a doll. Some time ago, I asked them (politely and privately) not to give me any more gifts. They cornered me after that (in front of everyone) at another important family gathering and told me that my thoughts and feelings didn't matter and that they were going to continue gift-giving, despite my wishes. Yesterday, they asked me what I wanted for Christmas and before I could reply - and I could not help but give a concerned expression - they continue on with "Oh, is that a touchy subject? No, it's not. So what do you want for Christmas." A very similar conversation about another subject came up the last time we were together. They asked me a rude question in front of everyone, then ASKED me if it was a rude question and before I could answer they said "Yes, it is, but I'm going to ask anyway..." Minor in the face of real sorrow but still just another way of saying "You don't matter. You aren't real. You're a little paper doll in my world and if you don't please me you go back in the box." This is a definite issue for me and puts a cold, greasy knots in my stomach, heart and mind. As we began the pre-meal prayer, in the first quiet moment of holding hands, this person looked down and commented to me - and all gathered - that my socks didn't match. I am over 40 years old, have been in this family for the better part of a decade, and well known for my haphazard and colorful "fashion sense", though I do try to be appropriate and presentable for each occasion. I am usually especially safe and conservative at THESE gatherings. I was embarrassed. I replied "I know." Everyone looked a little embarrassed. "...and thank you dear Lord Jesus for L__'s humiliaton..."
My own mother physically, mentally and emotionally tortured us, starved us, locked us into old sheds with animal corpses, rats, each other, shared us with her lovers, sexually abused some of us, humiliated us, allowed us to be savagely beaten many, many times... the list seems endless. Those things were so clearly wrong. She was a definite enemy. I could at least understand and fight that. This demon is different. It is covert. It smiles. It pretends to be a friend, and successfully, so that no one will even rise to my defense. They just sometimes notice and share my embarrassment. The best trick is making me seem to be the bad one. The one who DESERVES this treatment. I EARN my humiliation by being different. I get the distinct feeling with this person that if I played 100% by the rules, I would be just as coddled as the others (though still considered broken, damaged, odd, etc.) - but I see this person needle and humiliate the others sometimes too. This person has a slight fear of losing them, but not me. I am not only utterly expendable, but due to my "condition in life", it would be GOOD for this family if I was gone. Not everyone treats me this way. The others seem to actually like me, and even if they don't completely understand me, I see them TRYING to build bridges. I do not feel uncomfortable, broken, unfortunate or evil around the others. I just feel that I am me and that's ok, and maybe even kinda' neat in some cases. There are blessing to count. I should find some more creative ways to deal with the Mean One, because I enjoy the others. If it weren't for my partner though, I would walk away from all of them for good, as I have done with 99% of my own family, because I promised myself I would never again put up with any kind of mistreatment just because "families are supposed to stick together." FUCK THAT. But here I am, doing just that, because the others are truly worth it, my partner most of all. It could be and has been worse.

Today is the one year anniversary of another Fun Holiday Incident. Last year, in the midst of recovering from a break-down and hospitalization (support your local Trauma Stabilization Centers!) I was at work in my office. My office was on one of the main streets of our quaint little town, right next door to (and belonging to) one of the oldest, most well-established business organizations in town. It was close to noon, the whole town was quiet on a sleepy, warm fall day. My office was closed to the front parking lot (to drown out the sound of lawn workers) but none of the dozen windows were covered, I was visible through all but the front two windows. I had little holiday candles burning in the windows of every room in the office. I had groceries keeping cool on the back deck, where there were also uncovered sliding glass doors right next to my desk. My remarkable vehicle was parked out front. It's a VERY small town, I've lived here more than a decade and have had the same vehicle for most of that time, and it has a vanity plate and other singular markings. Basically, due to my work, personality and appearance, everyone in town knows me. Nonetheless, without knocking, making a phone call, running my tags, looking in the windows, anything, two town police officers kicked in my door and pulled guns on me.
As I said, I had just come out of treatment for trauma. I was on a variety of prescriptions for anxiety, trying to cope with the mess my life was at the time, depressed, worried, paranoid - you name it. And as with many abuse victims, I have a terrible fear of the overwhelming power that police have, and for good reason. It is fair to say that my feeling regarding the police are phobic. When these two idiots burst in, I collapsed to the floor, then pulled myself together enough to ask what was wrong. They still, one year later, have not given me a logical explanation for this. I had no apology from them. They were not punished in any way. The incident was written off. Nobody cares what happens to weirdos. When I asked them if they had knocked and I hadn't heard them, the first one in (and still holding his gun on me) said "No. We LIKE to surprise people."

If I am crazy, then there's a reason. And if the SANE people are the ones humiliating and abusing others, and abusing their power to do so, then I'd rather be crazy.

turkey day

Family holidays are not my thing. At least I'm not alone in this, and I do love to cook and eat. My partner is not fond of holidays either, for other ethical and personal reasons and we hack it out together. Solidarnosk. Usually it ends up making it more pleasant, and we are aligned in our desire to get it, get out go on to celebrate occasion in our preferred way (our friends or ourselves, our food, insobriety, amusement.) When I was younger they caused me to sink into serious depressions that I would mask with manic cheer and activity. It worked out for everybody and made me feel exhausted and lonely, but at least satisfied with my work and with the fact that I was coping and not just sleeping and crying.

Today we go to my partners' family, as we do on 100% of the forced-action holidays. The sigh I released after I typed that phrase was sickening. They're decent people. Mostly they are good people. They try very hard to be. I am not like most people and I am very not like them, and so I am prickly around them always. I keep it light and polite and hide behind exhaustion. I sometimes don't sleep well and have a physical condition that causes me to feel tired, so this does not seem unusual. I haven't slept well in days now and it's not hard to see that I look a little punch-drunk. No one will mind, and I may even be treated more nicely out of sympathy.
I realize how sad that phrase is too, but this is life, and not just my life. V's blog and others I've read - good comics too - tell us all how completely someone else out there is feeling our pain. It's solidarnosk.

I was talking to a close friend the other day, a writer, and the subject of blogging came up. I asked him his opinion of blogging and he said he had done some and that his quickly became a diary of mental illness. I hope my shock didn't show too badly. I was too surprised to ask him if he had read any blogs and if so, what he liked to read. A lot of writers seem to struggle with the question of whether what they are writing is valid or important and I think since no paper is being wasted, very little energy (ok, a LOT of time, but fuck it. i'm charles bukowski motherfucker!), and for most of us, no money, why not. Does it help? Who knows? It helps me. I need to feel real, even if I know that I'm not* and this helps. Writing it out helps me to consider the truth and the impact of what happened to me. What happens to me every day. Robotherapist.

Most of my childhood family holiday memories are relatively (ahahaha) pleasant. My family was happy when there was food and booze and a reason to bunk off work. The kids were left to their own devices and there were often a lot of kids around. We began drinking their drinks, as we were used as bartenders of course. I started drinking whiskey when I was 12. Sweet with coke, mm. There was often chaos surrounding all the visiting that comes with holidays + large, convoluted, possibly inbred, multi-wed families. There was often a post-event fight, due to the open and absolute drinking so we pretty quickly learned how much alcohol to give the adults to make them pass out. It was not until I was older that my mother taught me to hide sleeping pills inside my stepfathers' tylenol capsules for the bad nights when he was only inclined to have a few. I always liked the holidays because they gave me opportunities to be alone or be with the kids i liked sometimes, time to pursue my hobbies, there was extra food around, and the grownups were generally more pleasant and often gone hunting or otherwise occupied. It took "nice" Christian people to make me hate the holidays, when you'd think the fucked up people I grew up with would have ruined them for me. Don't get me wrong, there were weird and sometimes terrible things that happened on the holidays too, but that was normal. There was usually less awfulness around the family holidays, and more fun. the rest of the year, the shit didn't come with tinsel.

I am not too stressed out about the day now that it's here. Christmas however, is a whole other story. I have cooked and made some plans OUTSIDE the "traditional !@#$" that involve food i can eat and people i can stand. it's just another thing, right.
I try to tell myself it's worth it all for the cranberry sauce.


*This is not crazy talk, both Buddhists AND Physicists tell us this is so!