impressions

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.

no big newsflashes here; i’m still ALL about the mad! i wake up in the morning furious and go to bed at best…disgruntled. my hubby is all about the understanding although it’s (understandably) at somewhat of a distance. what am i so angry about? life, fate, myself, god, all humans, and every detail of every day. yeah, that’s real normal……i mean, how much of this can be blamed on the wellbutrin and/or the sleep deprivation? or maybe it’s because soon i’ll be without meds entirely and we’re going to die without health insurance. little things like that. i could get a job…oh no wait a minute. i have a mental illness which means “good luck with that!” of course, being the unemployed dirtbag that i am also means i am not entitled to whine. or be sick. or eat. or have access to any health care. or have a home. or be angry about any of the above. i SHOULD be grateful just to still be breathing right? the only thing i am truly grateful for is the love of my husband, the blessing of him, the miracle of him. he loves me even though i am mad. he is the first and only person in my life who ever allowed me that right. i love him madly (pun intended). the only other person i’ve ever loved besides him is my mother. everyone else i just thought i did. but they were just all about the lie; and that’s exactly what CONDITIONAL love is.

a good overall description of me these days is a very angry hyper-zombie. my husband calls me “scary lily”. he’s just kidding. sort of. i don’t want to be this person; filled with bitter anger and hatred. it’s so enormous sometimes and i’m repelled by the ugliness of it, of me when i’m consumed with it. even the animals (well, my cats anyway!) sense it and behave differently. i don’t like being “scary mommy” to them. yes all you very important ones out there, i do realize they are not my children and that cats are actually quite different than people; in spoken conversation it seems someone always feels obligated to point this out, as if a person’s appreciation of animals as sentient creatures is indicative of extensive brain damage. yes that’s right i said it: animals matter too. and to those who don’t think so, i think perhaps you might consider a cat scan - no pun intended - though i suspect there’s no imaging technology available capable of detecting that kind of problem. but please, rule stuff out! my guess is you need a priest to get rid of it.
if you’re offended by this the only consolation i can offer is: i’m pissed off at everyone else too and this is MY blog.
today i am wallowing in my bitter stew of resentment and hostility and spewing it all over the place. this is to be expected occasionally after nearly fifty years of enforced “niceness”. and an equal amount of time of being told all my feelings and opinions are of no consequence, and furthermore, WRONG. i guess i’m most angry at myself for believing, up until a year or so ago someone stupid and amoral enough to tell a child this. how stupid must i be to believe such a life-form? fixing this mess is going to take a long time. i hope i can.

so i’m still here, still dysfunctional and all over the map emotionally and physically, taking wellbutrin only now. don’t much like it except for the fact that it doesn’t make me want to eat constantly, for which i am truly grateful, but i can’t sleep. if anyone ever reads this blog (kind of an unrealistic expectation given that no one has any way of knowing about it, other than the blurb on the blog index) any ideas on help with sleep that do not involve head injury or ingestion of drugs that are addictive and/or will make you sleepy or foggy 24/7 would be so very appreciated!!!

ok, i knew this every day thing was never going to work. i’m just not that organized or sane, especially now with half a dozen major crises going on in my life. i’m working through all this with no money, no job, and no doctor, with my brain chemicals being all mixed up like a friggin serotonin-dopamine frappe! a synaptic smoothie with norepinephrine sprinkles. i could go on with the psycho stuff here but i’ll spare you; i think you get the picture. started off last week feeling good. one day it lasted. then two days of horrific crazyland followed by the news that my husband has cancer. since then i’ve no time to analyze how the meds are making me feel because well…i just don’t care! i’d tell my family but they’d forbid me to be sad, the robots! i always feel like i have to be cheerful for everyone, like i’m letting them down, no, committing some atrocious sin if i’m less than cheery. i suspect they’re going to be facing some disappointment sometime soon. oh well. that falls into the category of “THEIR PROBLEM”
i actually feel much better now. oh, and i’ll be writing again….whenever i feel like it.

i was expecting tuesday to be around the same as monday but oh my god, it was back to clutching my head and being struck by sudden random waves of nausea. all i wanted to do was sleep which i hate during the day because it feels like the nightmare days of junkie-hood when i spent all my days in a semi-conscious stupor. i remember how good it felt after about a year of being clean (first year was mostly sickness, withdrawals and cravings) to be awake in the day, in the light, amongst the living.

monday was a ray of hope though, a promise of things to come. i’ll cling to that.

monday (as i’m writing this, it’s wednesday) was the closest i’ve felt to “normal” in a long time and closest i’ve felt to human since i took my last dose of elavil. only a very slight headache, surprising amount of energy, normal appetite, no nausea and best of all, the depression fog most definitely lifting! i cleaned the whole apartment; a superhuman feat by itself. i live in a tiny apartment with two cats and a hubby who is working all the time and i’ve been severely depressed for about a year and a half. not to mention the fact we live near a busy street so five minutes after you dust, it looks like you’ve never ever dusted. we live in a warm humid climate so the cats shed more and you practically have to take out a loan to do a load of laundry in this place so…need i say more? i wash my underwear and t-shirts in a bucket in the shower! (it’s florida, i live in thin 100% cotton) monday was a little step into the light again, the apartment all squeaky clean and smelling of fresh lemons and me tired at the end of the day from natural stuff like work and fresh air and not from side effects or long periods of sustained terror! maybe, just maybe there is hope for something other than drudgery and pain for the rest of my life. i just need to break out of this isolation. a lot of days, i’m afraid to make simple phone calls. i’m just going to be thankful for the good stuff for now though.

got some sleep last night maybe 2-3 consecutive hours…more than i’ve had since the start of this little excursion into the land of pharmaceutical mind mending. yoda was feeling a little under the weather and he always gets a little clingy then, so he jumps up on the bed at 2 or 3 in the morning, settles in all comfy right next to my head and screams till i awaken. it’s hard to stay mad at the frail little guy though, he’s really getting old and all he wants is some soothing and stroking and soft words and he’s so happy.. a few hours later i drag my expanding leaden body out of the bed. i’ve eaten more in the last week than i did in the previous 2 years combined and i feel huge and bloated and - after yesterdays enraged spaz attack - also feel like a dozen gigantic steroid crazed angry gang members beat the crap out of me last night. other than these minor complaints , sunday goes uneventfully. i take a whopping dose of ibuprofen with coffee and PLENTY of food in the morning and the pain subsides into a screaming, blinding kinda thing…at night it returns and i’m so worn down from it, i sleep! day 4 is passed.

don’t know if it’s the meds, or lack of sleep, or shock induced by mental and physical anguish but i feel NOTHING. i think i could watch my own hair catch fire and actually be bored. ok, occasionally i experience 10 seconds or so of extreme rage at a piece of carpet fuzz on the kitchen table or a difficult-to-open jar or something equally important. this is definitely not cool, man. i feel like those heavily botoxed idiots look! to make the day complete, in one of these micro-fits of mad I leaned over to pick something up off the floor (i live with 3 males, 2 feline, 1 human - i’m ALWAYS picking stuff up off the !#$% floor) and straighten up too fast because i always get real fast when mad and slam my upper back into the sharp overhanging corner of a piece of furniture. it knocks the breath right out of me and leaves a big gash by my shoulder blade and lots of black and blue. i feel the nerve pain all the way up my neck and halfway down my arm. so, that about sums up my day. you will pardon me if i’m not a little ray of sparkly, merry sunshine?!

i’m unhappy to report my second day of journey to better (or any) mental health…NOT good! screeching headache, paranoia and panic. would have been totally alone except my two cats yoda and butterscotch. they’re both male and feline. after that they don’t even seem to come from the same planet. yoda, 16, is tiny, spindly and will kick your ass for any or no reason; he’s cranky, demented and incredibly sweet. butterscotch, 7 is enormous, tiger striped the colors of cream and sand and wheat and will always be my little boy who showed up on my doorstep, scared and wanting to be held. he still does. he yaks constantly - more vocal even than a siamese - he’s dennis the menace and an angel incapable of harming anything or anyone. but i digress..

because i’ve been hearing soft wordless choir music nonstop that isn’t there and sometimes voices outside my door that i’m not sure are there and the rent is late and i think a check bounced and i think i’ve let everyone down. i’m so afraid of life and i’ve just realized my childhood abuse after a traumatic event a few months ago. and i’m pushing fifty freaking years old! i used to have everything - or so i thought - what happened? why do i feel so abandoned and unloved and deprived when i am loved? and why am i hurting the ones who love me most? today is hell; please god, let it be only a detour, a brief one.