impressions

i wasn’t even actively seeking the answer when i found it. i’d seen it before, even thought about it. in an act that only reinforces the validity of it, i dismissed it. pointedly thought about something else. that’s what i do. i did this a few times over these last few months. then one day, i suppose my psyche was finally ready, receptive. and there it was, in front of me again. asperger’s syndrome. that’s me. that’s so EXACTLY me!! i knew it. know it. in my bones, in my gut, in my heart and soul. it’s so clear and it explains every last weird-ass, dysfunctional second of my life. since the moment of revelation, i’ve taken several tests, and reached out to people, and all indications are that my feeling is right on the money. as it turns out, i am not a piece of garbage. maybe one day i will really believe the words.

is this even a word? if not, it should be. it perfectly sums up my usual mood, lo these many months. far back in the most remote reaches of my mind Curiosity loiters, too: just how long can a person be so pissed off? i say ‘loiters’ because it’s an idle, detached sort of curiosity. i mean, whenever it runs it’s course is when i’ll be done with it. i try not to wallow in the fury or even embrace it, but i will NOT stuff it or deny it. ever. never again. after stuffing anger for forty odd years, i think it’s not only adds up to an enormous amount, but possibly it kind of…mutates. starts to get malignant, even. malignant cells grow wildly fast and out of control, so i just want to get it all out, all the malignancy or potential malignancy. if others don’t, won’t or can’t understand this furiosity of mine, it doesn’t change the fact that, in allowing myself to feel the way i feel without pretending it just isn’t so, i am fighting for my life. i want it back. as long as i am in no way violating the rights of others to live just as freely and safely, i’m going to do whatever it is i need to do. just because it isn’t pretty, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s evil and wicked!

some days my psychological paralysis is so extreme that i’m afraid to pick up the phone or leave the apartment. i have no idea what exactly i fear. as far back as i can remember, i’ve been afraid of people. in varying degrees. it’s this vague, visceral feeling; people seem sinister, no matter how pleasant or benign they are in appearance or manner. and sometimes they seem beyond sinister….. like, monstrous. i can remember getting these feelings around some people when i was three years old. i want to know why. i’m forty seven years old and this stuff is just now occurring to me and i want to start living. i really don’t understand a lot of what is happening to me. i fluctuate between two main states of mind - extreme anger and complete, numb, dead detachment. i’m so tired. even the thought of living makes me tired. a few weeks ago, i was talking to my older (by four years) sister and we were reminiscing about old times, growing up. i mentioned the fact that i had had these feelings around people even back then and she said casually “oh yeah, mom and dad took you to a child psychologist once, because you didn’t talk for about a year.” i have NO recollection of this!! i said as much to her and i had a million obvious questions, because our mother died years ago and of course asking the big giant shithead (dad) about it isn’t an option. but she didn’t know a lot and i guess it couldn’t have been too big of a deal if nothing came of it. but it nags at me. not that it especially matters now but i keep wondering if it could be a clue, an insight. i keep thinking maybe back then (it would have been the early 1960’s) they just didn’t know enough to make a diagnosis? unless there was no diagnosis to make. but why would a child simply stop talking, and for such a long time? i just need answers; my life has been so messed up. or maybe this kiddie shrink DID make a diagnosis or hell, just gave my parents some good information but my dad decided nobody needs that information and no one needs to act on it. after all, he did decree many years ago that the entire psychiatric profession is a joke, that only a nutcase would be interested in the field. i’m perfectly serious. not kidding. not even exaggerating. what else would you expect from a man who tells emotionally distraught child to “snap out of it”? a man who finds another person’s pain irritating? i could go on, but i think anyone reading this who is human and also has more than two or three synapses firing gets the picture. anyway, i keep thinking maybe there could have been help for me if not for the shithead and if so, then my whole life could have changed course. i won’t latch onto that as the only possible truth though. things could have played out in infinite other ways. i just need to have some answers. i can’t remember anything really traumatic happening to me as a child that would explain the not talking thing. i mean sure, my dad was a shithead but he did not hit us, or abuse us in any physical way, he didn’t drink, he provided well, gave us a clean, safe home and everything we needed to be (physically) healthy and educated. looking at what i’ve just written, now I feel like the shithead for trashing him. but not for long. he spent my lifetime trashing me. telling me to stop being mentally ill. then shaming me and writing me off as garbage when i could not. and for such a noble parent, how did it escape his notice that all i ever sought was unconsciousness. that my only goal in life was to be dead? either walking dead or under-the-ground dead it didn’t matter to me; it all seemed like inconsequential variations of the same hell. and i just kept up the act. all the right little mannerisms, the right little stupid things to say, just a robot living on auto-pilot, programmed for many different kinds of situations but not for deep, substantial relationships with other human beings. and above all else, programmed to never ever let the real self show. programmed for permanent “nice”. for some reason i find i’m suddenly interested in knowing about all of my ancestors, what were they like and what was the nature and the circumstances of their lives? i want to know what their personalities and their mental condition was like. it’s almost become a need like hunger. i have a lot more pouring out to do but for now, i think this is all.

everything i write seems so boring lately, maybe because it’s a personal journal and my world has become so isolated and insulated….. it definitely doesn’t make good reading even if i try to open up and write frankly about my inner, most demented emotional life. it’s therapeutic for me, sure, but to the reader it’s largely the periodic accountings and rantings of another angry person. i guess this is why i fantasize about writing fiction. why don’t i stop fantasizing about it and actually DO it? i’ve got a million theories but am not sure what the real reason is. as a general rule however, i’ve always preferred fantasy to anything too real. reality - for the most part - is fraught with unpredictability. the only predictable thing is that there WILL be coldness, harshness and cruelty, it’s just impossible to predict what sharp jagged-edged form it will assume to creep or crash it’s way into your day and it seems to have an infinitely imaginative and horrific array of shapes to take when it does. i know there are also joy and beauty and other good things in reality, just as there are courageous, truly admirable and great-hearted people. too much of the time though, this knowledge feels faded and distant, some old theory you can’t for the life you remember how it applies. what does this have to do with why i don’t go ahead and write my novel? i’d be afraid of the nuts and bolts work and the confronting of painful and hugely unpleasant realities of life and myself and human nature and to do so is necessary if you want to write well and really connect with and touch and move and entertain the readers. i guess i’ve been afraid of having nothing to say, no imagination to spark interest and of not doing words justice. i know i’m going to do it though and very soon, because the thought of not even trying is worse than all those fears and more, combined.

i think i’ve become indifferent to terrifying situations. it’s like i lived so many months in a state of constant sustained terror, panic and grinding anxiety that numbness finally set in, and it’s still here. i don’t worry about stuff i can’t control like the serenity prayer says, but the problem is i can’t control anything and i don’t know what i’m worried about….it feels like the world is about to end anyway so it doesn’t really matter if i’m homeless next month or next year. and then the next minute i feel life is too harsh and cruel to take because my vacuum cleaner broke, WE are broke and we have two cats and the disgusting carpet filth and massive accumulation of cat hair is going to kill us. my hubby recently escaped cancer just to be destroyed by a giant mutant hairball. yeah, that sounds about right.

i can’t believe it’s been five weeks since my last post….only five. five loooooong, eternal weeks. time is so weird the way it stretches and implodes seemingly at once. with all the stuff happening and not happening in my life, i feel absolutely paralyzed. as if it doesn’t matter what i do or don’t do, as if i have no choice but to sit and wait for stuff to happen, let other people’s schedules and whims and whatnot determine my fate. i just feel very detached, not connected with humanity in any way. some of that’s by choice; i’ve been copping quite an attitude against humanity lately. certain life experiences have made this inevitable i guess, but it doesn’t always have to be this way now that i understand where it comes from. that’s all for today. kind of a blah post, but that’s the way it goes sometimes.; if i’m going to write every day, or at least more often, i’ve got to accept that things are going to be mundane at times. or ugly. or boring. or scary. or just plain ordinary. that’s me; that’s life.

long, long tiring day today, full of facing up to a lot of hard things. with hubby sick/in recovery these past few weeks i had a purpose outside myself but also an excuse to avoid my own issues and procrastinate about doing the unpleasant. (and the terrifying!) my day began at 4:00 AM with hubby’s first day back at work on “light duty”. he still needs help with bandages, wound care, and even getting dressed as he still pretty much only has one functional arm and hand. he’s getting better though despite the not-so-perfect diet and the considerable stress. i am so grateful that they got all of the cancer and that he will get better instead of suffering any more. and i won’t have to face a life without him; i’m not sure it would be worth living. hubby, my home (wherever it may be), my two sweet kitty cats: these are my world. i stopped taking meds because i can’t afford them anymore. it’s not too bad. mild withdrawal physically. been kinda all over the map emotionally but what else is new? just a little more so since i stopped three days ago, but then again i’ve got my period so who the hell knows what’s causing what….anyway i just really NEEDED to write today. most importantly, i needed to get a message off my chest and even though anyone reading it will not know it’s true meaning, the thought that another set of eyes might see it somehow gives me hope and fulfills some need i cannot identify (?!). i know it makes no sense and sounds completely insane but i’m doing it anyway, so here goes.

to dadula: the government is one giant, festering, useless pustule; it sucks. ORGANIZED religion blows! i own five cell phones, am changing my last name, and getting a tattoo. i am permitted to have any facial expression or opinion that i want and if it conflicts with your’s, that’s the best indication of it’s goodness and rightness and in any case i AM entitled to it! don’t ever utter the word “spirituality” in my presence again, much less try to preach to me about it. that good word mutates somehow when being spewed from one with no soul, rendering it obscene. that’s right, all those four-letter words are things of pure, near mystical beauty compared to that one other word being excreted from you.

you will never ever be able to feed on my illness again, you arrogant, idiotic, hypocritical, inhuman, life-sucking piece of !@#?*&^%!?$%#!!!!!!

goodbye, dadula. enjoy hell. unless this IS hell. which is probably the most sane assumption i’ve ever made.

now that i’ve excreted some stuff, readers, i feel much better. until next post, toodles!

well i finally scraped enough together to get my lexapro online. it seems to be the only thing that works for me. a commercial enterprise halfway around the planet is more reliable in getting me the psychiatric meds i need to stay alive than all our government agencies combined. (nothing plus nothing does come to nothing!) what a bunch of useless pustules. no one wants to help, everyone wants to judge. hubby had surgery friday and thank god, came through this one alright. he needs total care and i’m fighting to keep it together from one minute to the next. i want to be strong for him now. i have to be. yet i feel scared, sad and alone. thank god for our one good friend, who is helping us with the transportation to and from the hospital without making us feel like sorry excuses for human beings just because we need help; it’s actual help, not the venomous, self-righteous crap some people offer just to ease their own conscience. tomorrow we spend four hours on buses to get to the follow-up visit and get lab results. please let it be good news. friday is another surgery. we’re both scared. i’m exhausted, feel like i have failed everyone and oddly, like everyone has failed me. i don’t even understand my own feelings these days.

i wish it were possible to legally pursue the party responsible for installing my mind gestapo in the first place. i mean forty seven years of back rent has to add up to some real moolah, does it not? not to mention the damages for trashing the place. meanwhile they’re still occupying MY space rent-free, patrolling and interrogating every thought that comes through, judging each and every, pointing out what’s wrong and assigning guilt by the truckload despite being told to get the hell out hundreds of times daily! how am i supposed to heal with these parasites running rampant through the scrambled mess of neurons? it’s just that they’re so comfy there i guess; they’ve called my mind home for nearly half a century now. i’m the hostess and i need to insist they get out and start paying what they owe, but how? in order to finally get past all of this, i believe it’s necessary for me to confront the nazi installer but there is a teensy logistical problem: he always travels with his ceaselessly chattering shield and the two of them have fused into a giant monstrous outshouting thing that i have named the dadula. the dadula will not let me utter one sentence to it’s natural completion. so how are you supposed to say your healing piece to someone who no longer permits you to speak? it’s one thing to know it falls on deaf ears but at least the words are out there. but what if even the words are caged? of course i could seek the help of a mental health professional but there’s a teensy logistical problem there too: i have no job so no insurance. (the fact that the old half of the dadula obliterated my ability to sustain any job in which there is any interaction with people seems to be an inconsequential bit of trivia.) so i guess i’ll just have to get real and stop imagining that i’m entitled to mental health.

It came to me as a question in the wee hours of a sleepless morning, during one of my imaginary conversations with my real sister and brothers. For the previous nine months or so, ever since the terrible and miraculous event of April 2007, I had been walking around in a swirling stew of powerful emotions and equally powerful chemicals, needing answers more than anything else, knowing finally I needed them to heal. The question I asked them in my mind was aimed more at my sister and brothers who have children, although I wanted to ask it of my other brother also: Imagine that your child at a young age, maybe 6 or 7, begins to occasionally behave in unusual or puzzling ways and gradually over the next few years these behaviors become faintly alarming and progress towards disturbing. Then maybe an incident in which it becomes more extreme, delf-destructive, immoral even. It happens again, sometime later. Maybe even a criminal act. Now imagine, how would you feel? I imagine that you’d feel anger, lots of it. And hurt. Disappointment. I’m guessing any human being would feel this way. So you yell, punish, whatever. It stops for awhile. Maybe you notice your child seems troubled or unhappy or just different. Maybe not. Maybe your kid can put on a good front. Anyhow, disturbing behavior starts up again.You try talking to your child, maybe he/she tries to express unhappiness. You know they’ve been unhappy for awhile, but you don’t understand why. You work hard to give them a good life. But you know growing up is sometimes rough and rocky, and you try to be understanding, but your child’s despondence persists and the downright offensive behaviors eventually return. I would imagine that as a human being, you are now more angry, more hurt and in your weaker moments, starting to get fed the hell up with the ungrateful whining. In your frustration, you try every tactic you can think of. But your child is still a negative person. My question is this: if this continues, are you ever, at any point in time, going to get past your own feelings, your own moral outrage, for long enough to wonder “what is wrong with my child?” For long enough for it to occur to you that this behavior is not done for the sole purpose of creating problems for you? Further, for you to consider this may not even be part of the reason for this behavior? Do you imagine yourself - as the adult in the situation - ever, at any point in time, getting past your own bad feelings enough to realize THIS MIGHT NOT EVEN BE ABOUT YOU AT ALL?!! Would it be within your capability as a spiritual entity to stop being judgemental for long enough to consider that this might be a sign of a deeper problem than just whining and self-pity? After a period of years, might you consider this? Underneath all of your own issues would you ever be afraid for your child? Afraid enough to think, okay I just can’t/don’t get this. Is there anyone who might know what is wrong? If so, where are they and how do I get their help? My child is in pain. Do you think as a parent, you could, even in a matter of a couple of years, recognize the morally outrageous behaviors, however repugnant they may be to your superior senses, as cries for help, NOT deliberate attempts to make you look bad? And the second, more important part of this question: or, can you imagine yourself instead deciding that your child is garbage, and treating them accordingly? You can’t understand the problem, therefore your child is making it all up and your child is just evil? After all if you don’t get it, it must not exist. It’s just the evil spirits. Now, brothers, sisters, parents: would you ever seek help for your child? Or would you remain focused solely on your own pain for the entire life of your child? Would you ever be able to recognize your role in conveying to a person who believes you and trusts you that they are completely worthless? You told them over and over again to snap out of it and they did not. Would it ever occur to you that the constant lying and living in fantasy and the perpetual seeking out of unconsciousness through alcohol and other substances might be more than just a plot to hurt you? That it might instead be a sign of disease? Or would you take the easy way out? Lecture your child over and over again about morality, try to shame the evil out of them? Maybe it appears to work for a brief time, so you think aha! This is the only thing they understand. Repetition. Being told the wrongness of their thoughts, ideas and feelings. Of who and what they are. When they relapse, step up the treatment. It hurts you to have to tell them what failures they are, but you nobly do it anyway because you love them. And you must keep repeating it because it’s the only thing they understand. Like training an animal. Parents, if you ever did devolve into this would you ever ever recognize that you no longer even view your child as human anymore? Further still, since your child believes in your wisdom, he/she now “realizes” more than ever their own unique worthlessness and the fact that they are not entitled to the same treatment as human beings. Would you never experience a moment of empathy in which you recognized that the escalating self-destruction in your child was a result of their extreme self-hatred, not necessarily a sign of inherent moral weakness or a purposeful and ongoing mission to hurt your feelings? Or a deliberate choice to live that way instead of happily? Might this bit of logic enter your mind whenever you’re lecturing your child regarding their illogical “decision” to live an insane life?! Between lectures on the importance of spirituality, would you ever recognize that your treatment is systematically breaking the spirit of your child? Between lectures on the stupidity of your child’s “choice” of lifestyle, after a couple of decades might it occur to you, after examining the evidence, that your “toughlove” (who are we kidding, it’s bloodsport by now) tactics are not working?

When it turns out that your child is unable to function as an adult in life, are you going to tell him or her how deeply ashamed and disappointed you are in them? Are you going to tell your second wife and your other children (including the very young ones) what garbage this child is? And when your child is in terrible despair and fear and deep financial trouble (they cannot keep a job) are you going to let that child know just how despicable they are for getting public assistance or assistance from anyone? Or for even asking for help? Are you actually going to believe that you must remind this person of what they’ve lost, what they’ll never have, and what they can no longer even hope for? Then tell them that other people have “real” problems and they cope well. And all of this you can tell them with no rules and no boundaries as to what you can say or how you say it, because it’s the only thing the animal understands. The fact that your adult child does not understand how to interact with other humans and therefore is doomed to keep losing jobs is of no importance – it’s just another excuse to you. If your adult child has been clean and sober for 16 years, then gets hit by a car while on a bicycle (Carrying groceries home) and then the next day gets arrested for stealing a pack of cigarettes SEVENTEEN YEARS PREVIOUSLY and has to go through the terrifying, humiliating ordeal of being handcuffed, searched, booked, fingerprinted, put into a small holding cell where – being claustrophobic – she/he kinda freaks out (thankfully, all the police officers around that day are kind and respectful) then waits for hours in a brightly lit, cold place with a hundred others, mostly also mentally ill, while contemplating the fact that sixteen and a half years ago although he/she did go to court, the man who would ultimately beat your child while he/she was pregnant (yes, readers, I get it) as he beat him/her on a regular basis because he/she honestly believed that’s what he/she deserved, that this man said he would pay the fine for her, but he did not. Your child never received the subsequent letters from the court. Or so he/she claims. But he/she gets to take a stroll down memory lane to those good old days, while experiencing the worst day of his/her life. Your child doesn’t call you, wouldn’t. Ever. But another family member does. So you and your new wife go to pick him/her up. And before the two of you go to work on him/her, you do not even for a split second ask or even care: “Are you alright?” As one might do with any human. People in the jail have shown your child more kindness of spirit. Not one second, nor one spark of humanity towards your own child, though, for your job as the moral one, the good one is to tell him/her what a failure he/she is. Today, now, you need to remind this one, because he/she has been unaware of it, especially on this proud day. And you let your new wife lecture him/her about selfish they are. You are aware your child was hit by a car the previous day but that’s of no more consequence than her dying spirit. Remind your child again he/she has never in their life done or been anything of value. And when you reach your destination and the angel who saved your child’s life and soul all those years ago comes down to greet you and apologize, you look at him like you would a pile of shit and you tell him how ashamed and disappointed you are of him, although he is a middle-aged, hardworking, law abiding, God loving man who has done nothing but watch over and take care of your child’s mind body and soul after saving them all those years ago. You are justified though. You are disappointed. You’ve had a bad day. You’ve shed tears in front of your other, good, worthwhile child. You are the good father, nobly bearing the burden of this pile of sewage you are ashamed to call yours.

I ask of you brothers and sisters, parents, and human beings: do you think that after 80 plus years of your own life and 45 plus years of your child’s life, you would finally even for a split second, be able to get past how YOU feel about what actions the prison of loneliness, despair and shame has compelled your child to do? Nearly two decades previously?

My guess is, you would. Because you are not an animal. And I don’t think you have a sickness that needs to feed upon the sickness of another. Because you actually have love and compassion in your heart, not just the words and motions. And you possess more than just the intelligence to understand the intangible, the abstract , but also the courage and willingness to change your perceptions based on new information, new experiences instead of believing only what is most comfortable to believe and clinging to rigid, blind convictions simply because they are familiar and easy for you to conform to.

That day, the universe as I had known it for nearly half a century changed drastically in a matter of minutes. I didn’t even hear the last of what my father said to me that night, couldn’t hear anything above the deafening roar of a lifetime of perceptions crashing around me. I saw his lips moving as I struggled to absorb the new knowledge of this person before me. This person who colored and judged every thought that ever entered my mind, either consciously or subconsciously, ever since I could remember. The voice of wisdom, however much I didn’t want to hear it. The voice of truth, from one who loves. I always believed he was a loving perfect father who was wise about people and the world and life and intelligent in all other things too. A father who knew everything, would know what to do to take care of and protect his child. If he said I was garbage, then, much as it hurt, I knew that was the truth. He would know. End of story, no question about it. And I suddenly saw the ignorant, brutish and petty male creature in front of me. At the same time I realized I’d known this truth for awhile but through some kind of self-protective coping mechanism or something, I just ignored it. It couldn’t be true. But I think ever since, years previously, his and his partner’s very young child innocently repeated something she could only have overheard from them in passing, when no one else happened to be near, I knew then. But I told myself all kinds of lies about it, the soothing anesthetizing lies that come naturally to me after nearly fifty years of needing them to survive. The truth, jumping up and down screaming and waving it’s arms, millimeters from my nose, and I simply turned my head to the side and said loudly and clearly to myself, “that just isn’t there” But when I finally really knew, the world just rocked. Even the ground seemed to become molten and unpredictable, thin smoke beneath my feet. The person who represented to me the gold standard of respect, hell he WAS respect, however much I might rebel against him. My rebellion always looked to me like some useless scumbag punk stupidly venting his shiftless, no-count, white trash little grievances against THE man.

And now I know none of those things are even close to being true and he is not even of the same species that I thought he was, much less in possession of the characteristics I thought he had.

I’m starting to understand so many more things about my behavior now, things that so baffled and frustrated me for so very long. The things that locked me up in a cage.