T is for Today

My week has not been a good one. It started out with the therapy session described in "S is for Skin" and went downhill from there. School started on Monday, and in my first class, we were told to interview a person the teacher selected, and then write an introduction of that person, based on a fake and secret bias that the teacher handed everyone. On Wednesday, the guy who interviewed me volunteered to read his introduction about me.

His secret bias was, "You feel intellectually superior to the person you are interviewing." This guy took it all the way. He made fun of my green apple sunglasses. He said it was hard to take me seriously as I "gabbed on and on about aliens." (Um, he asked me if I believed in aliens, and I said not really, but I was open to the idea.) He said I had gone to dental school and it "didn't work out." He said I was still trying to get a degree after all of these years. Ouch. Ouch. And ouch.
                           
Could he have made me sound like a bigger loser? Yes, he could. When asked where I would like to travel, I said Belize. When asked why, I said, "Because a dude I know has been talking about it and it sounds like a great place to visit." That became: "She said she wants to follow a dude she knows to Belize."

Most of what he said was true. (Although I DO have my undergraduate degree - IN CHEMISTRY, you stupid film major.) But now, on top of horrid flashbacks from Monday's therapy session, I have the added stress of this asshole displaying my lack of success not only to the entire class, but more importantly, to me.

Is this what people think of me but are usually too nice to say? Does everyone think (know) that I am the Biggest Loser?
                                
Last night, I went out drinking with some friends. I have never gotten so drunk in my life. We went to a bar and then the casino that is a block from my house. Somehow, I ended up in the third-floor bathroom, nearly passed out, when my friend found me. They had to get a wheelchair to get me out. I couldn't stand up. I didn't care. I was laughing. Once they got me home and on the couch (I convinced them not to carry me up the stairs), I started crying. They took good care of me. I am lucky to have such good friends.

Today, I felt horrible. I threw up quite a few more times. I have a painful spot on my forehead, and my friend told me I hit my head "a few times." I am not surprised. Today, I talked to both of the friends who brought me home, and they both were concerned but not upset. They thought it was kind of funny. It was. But not really.
                 
Today has been the first day since Monday that I have not gotten drunk. I want to drink but still feel really ill. I am left struggling un-fortified with alcohol to help numb the pain in my head. Not pain that can be eased by aspirin. Pain from years of abuse, years of neglect, years of loneliness, years of self-doubt, years of feeling lost, years of feeling useless. What can you take to get rid of that pain? Anybody?

S is for Skin

I had a horrible session in therapy on Monday. Sometimes I wonder how this is all related back to Ex, and then I remember that I had myself together before I met him. Sure, my childhood abuse had already happened and was in no way connected to Ex, but I had managed to suppress it deeply enough that it didn't bother me. Then Ex came along and almost killed me, and now everything is over my head and I can't take much more of this.
                               
Monday. My therapist had me imagine my nine-year-old self, and picture my adult self sitting beside her while she read. I did. Then she said talk to the nine-year-old about what she was reading. I did. Then she said to rub her back.

Oh, hell, no.

I won't go into the details here because, well, frankly, I have never told anyone, and I don't intend to start here. Although, what better place than an anonymous blog with a pseudonym to die for? Still won't. Okay. Anyway, that suggestion brought up horrible - and I do mean horrible - memories of childhood abuse. I ended up in the fetal position on my poor therapist's floor, sobbing uncontrollably. So much fun I'm having these days. I can't get the ick of memories off of my skin. I have tried hot showers, cold showers, tight clothes, loose clothes, compression, avoidance, and just attempted to scrape it off with one of those gray sanding blocks. Nothing works to cleanse my skin. Nothing.
                                      
If I believed God answered prayers, I would pray for a train to hit me tomorrow on my way to work. Wishful thinking. If wishes were horses, Christy would get run over by a stampede.

R is for Recollect

I was making small talk with a coworker who happened to mention that she loved puppets. WHAM! I had completely forgotten a HUGE part of my childhood. My father made a huge, elaborate puppet theater for me, along with a plethora of puppets that were made of foam, had those huge, spinning eyes, and sticks with a complicated spring-contraption that moved their mouths. I think there was some way to move their arms, too, but I don't recollect if that is true or not. Either way, the whole thing was pretty fancy.
                                      
Why did I block this out? Was it traumatic? Is the puppet show and all of its demands for appreciation connected to hidden traumas? Is that memory attached to something dark and hidden for my own safety? Or is it just something I didn't care about, so let slip from my mind? Now that I am thinking about it, I do know that I never liked the puppet show. There was too much pressure to love it; there was too much pressure to embrace it as a love I owned, rather than one that was forced upon me. I put on my own show behind the theater. I pretended to love it. I had to.
                                    
I'm disturbed. I'm torn between wanting to figure out why I blocked this from my mind and wanting to leave bad memories lying dormant. But are they even bad memories? I don't know. I know that I found one of the records on YouTube that we used to play, and listening to it raised my anxiety level by about a million.
                        

Of course, I will talk to my therapist about this. And hope that she thinks it isn't important. I don't need any more bad memories. Thanks, anyway.

Q is for Queasy

I usually do not go this long without writing. I try to write every two or three days, so you guys have something fresh to read. But sometimes, I get stuck on a letter. Oh, well, you may be thinking; Q would be hard. There are not a ton of words that start with Q. That is not the reason, however. The reason is, quite simply, that I don't want to write this one. I knew Q would be for Queasy at around the letter L. I have been dreading it since then.
                                                    
I feel queasy almost all the time. My stomach hurts the worst in the morning, along with my head. I almost always wake up with both a stomachache and headache. This has been the way it is for years. So long, in fact, that I didn't even notice it until, in therapy, we started talking about my father. Then I began noticing that I was fine until I walked into my therapist's office, and while checking in, I would start to feel nauseated. By the time I got upstairs, I would feel like throwing up. My therapist is not a nauseating person; quite the opposite. So why this reaction?

The queasiness would get worse when we were talking about my father. Sometimes my stomach hurt so badly that I couldn't sit up straight. The need to apply pressure was overwhelming. It was worse than the worst cramps I have ever had. (I am not sure why I'm writing this in past tense. It still happens every week.) My therapist has educated me about the enteric nervous system. Apparently, humans have a ton of neurotransmitters in the stomach, and that is why troubling things are often felt in the gut. I found an interesting article in the New York Times about it, if you are interested in learning more. It was very enlightening.
                              
I think I have mentioned that I felt a cold knot of fear in my stomach every time I would drive up the hill to the house and see Ex's truck in the driveway, or every time I was home and heard Ex pull up. I never knew what mood he would be in, and it was generally a bad one, which resulted in the fear. Now I know why it was my stomach that hurt.

I have been doing a lot of thinking about my morning queasiness and have come to the conclusion that, during the day, I can control my thoughts. During the night, my subconscious mind is given full reign on my memories, and it runs gleefully through all of my past traumas. Which makes my stomach hurt. Which makes for bad mornings. Which makes me "not a morning person." You would not be a morning person, either, if you woke up with a mind stuck in the throes of tortures past.
                              
I feel better after writing this down. It has been bothering me for a long time now. I don't like to admit (especially to myself) that the first trauma I remember was when I was about two and a half years old. That isn't fun. Result: a lifetime of feeling queasy.

P is for Positive

Up until I got married on July 19, 2008, I was the most positive person you had ever met. My glass was not only half-full; my glass was overflowing. I was optimistic and ready to take on the world. God was on my side and nothing could stand in the way of me getting into dental school and using my skills to help people. I was going to help poor people. I was going to help people who were scared to go to the dentist. I was going to help put my nieces and nephews through college. I was going to support my mother.
                            
It was all going to happen. Of this, I still have no doubt. Then I met Ex and sent my life spinning down the drain.

                               

My overflowing glass is now shattered. I am no longer a positive person. I am the negative of that positive. Before July 19, 2008, I used to wonder what it would be like to be pessimistic. I thought it would be sad and depressing. Now I know. It is.

O is for Often

There are quite a few things that haunt me about decisions I made before marrying Ex. Red flags I ignored. Signs that practically slapped me in the face as I sped on past. I am often troubled by these regrettable decisions I made.

I often think about the conversation I had at Taco Bell with my mom. This was right after Ex had asked me to marry him. I told my mom that I was worried that Ex saw me as a meal ticket. I had not yet been accepted into dental school, but was well on my way. Ex often talked about all of the things we (he) could buy, once I was making a dentist's salary.
                                              
Those of you who have been reading this blog for even a little while know my mother is not the most caring. I don't know why I was asking her for advice. I often wonder about that. My mom just ate her food and told me to pray about it. I had been praying, often. This was before I lost my faith in the power of prayer. I still believe in God, but not that He believes in me. I often wish I would have listened to my own instincts telling me to run. (I didn't. Obviously.)
                                        
The thing that bothers me the most often about Ex is our disagreement about having children. I had never wanted to procreate. I didn't want any child to live through a childhood similar to mine, and I didn't trust myself to be a good mother. Ex lied when we first met, and told me he didn't want kids, either. This was a conversation we had on our second date. Long after that, we were engaged and on our way to visit my family. We had just been to visit Ex's family, and his sister told me that Ex had always wanted kids. So I asked him about it on the trip.
                                            
Of course he did. I often think about myself sitting on the gravel behind the car, on the highway off ramp, in the middle of nowhere, weeping. Why did I not just turn around, drop Ex off at his house, and go on with my life? I often wonder. Instead, we continued on to my mom's house and I cried there for hours. That is the one and only time I slept in my mom's bed. I was inconsolable. I often think of my cousin, who we met out at a city-wide garage sale the next day. She told Ex that she was so looking forward to having him be part of our family, and that everyone really liked him.
                  
I often wonder why I put in so much time in agonized thought only to come up with the wrong conclusion. I loved Ex with every part of my being. He wanted children. It was lose him or lose my fear of motherhood. I chose him. Oops.
                                       
I often feel a small, burning ember of hatred inside of me for what Ex did to me. I was perfectly content being alone. Then I opened my heart to wanting a whole family. Then Ex showed his sociopathic self and now I am alone. I often wonder how I could have been so stupid. I think I'll go cry myself to sleep now. I've been doing that often lately, but not about myself, lately. Tonight, I will cry for myself...and my unborn children.

N is for Notified

The office gossip just notified everyone that the boss is getting a divorce and the owner's right-hand woman is in the mental hospital. Two things I don't want to know. Two things that have happened to me that I didn't want other people to know. I hate the office gossip. She is lazy, snoopy, and annoying. She knows I do not like her. I do not hide my feelings toward her. I have no idea why she notified me of these things. I guess they were just to juicy not to tell.
                                    
I feel really bad for my boss. He has two young children. He seems really nice, but I only see him in the workplace, so who knows who he is when he is at home. I just know divorce rips a person apart from the inside out. I know it caused me to fail the biggest opportunity of my life - dental school. I know it still hurts, four years later. I know I will forever be "divorced."

The right-hand woman...I don't know. I didn't know she was depressed or suicidal or whatever it is that drove her to go to the mental hospital. I feel sad for her. She has three young children and a husband. I don't know how they get along. She works at a different office, so I haven't really gotten to know her. I know failing dental school was what made me go to the hospital. I don't know - and I don't want to know - why she went. It's not that I don't care. It just isn't my business.
                            
Sad things happen to people. The world is a sad, sad place. I hate it here.

M is for Murder

I haven't posted for a while because I was visiting family. For some reason, it reminded me of my Epic Plan. So, instead of writing about my visit with family, I've chosen to write about something that [didn't] happen several years ago. Go figure.

My Epic Plan was conceived after I received a text from Ex out of nowhere: "I miss your smile and your laughter." After I got over the enormous waves of pain caused by that, I moved on to my Epic Plan.
                          
1) Start communicating with Ex again. Let everyone know we were "working on things."

2) Plan a reconciliation trip with Ex. We had been to the Grand Canyon once, and I would suggest (insist) that we go there.
                         
3) We stand at the edge of the canyon, and I make sure there are people within hearing distance, but no one near enough to see us.

4) I start a fight. Not hard. It would be much harder to NOT start a fight with Ex. Make sure it was loud enough to be overheard.

5) Scream, "NO! EX!"

6) Throw myself over the Grand Canyon.
                      
End result: I die and get to end this miserable life, and Ex gets framed for my murder. It would have worked. I really had plans to do it. I had to tell my current therapist about it so someone would know the plan, which would make it not work. Ex would get off.

I figured, since Ex killed me on the inside, he might as well be blamed for killing me on the outside, too. I sometimes regret not committing the Epic Plan of my own murder. Life is full of regrets.