V is for Void

I have a huge void in my life. Forget that Ex and I are no longer together. Forget that I live alone. Forget that I flunked out of dental school - twice. Forget that my family lives far, far away. So what, then is the void?
                           
My stupid therapist convinced me to turn in my hoard of pills. I hate her. I wanted them there "just in case," but she said I cannot have a life worth living if suicide is always an option. The door is always there and I was standing on the doorstep wanting to walk through. Not that there aren't a million other ways to kill yourself, but it was the symbolism of it.         
               

I have the worst headache, my back hurts, my wrist hurts where I broke it three years ago, my stomach hurts, and I feel like throwing up. I am not happy. To say the least. I hate my therapist right now. So much.

U is for Undeniably

I was talking to a friend of mine about life with Ex, and the rapist that was running rampant in my neighborhood came up in conversation. I told her that Ex was working out of town and the rapist had been on my back porch. This was before he had started his rampage, so the police were not that concerned.

Two days later, I came home to find news vans all over my neighborhood. The rapist had come back and "chose" the lady who lived on the corner of my block. Two houses away. He probably came back to my house, saw that I had fixed the window latch, and moved on. (The latch had been secure but was on crooked, so it looked like it was broken. I fixed it and installed a motion-sensor light.)

I called Ex and asked him to come home that weekend. He hadn't been home the past two weekends. I told him that "it would be nice to have a man around the house."

Oops.

Ex proceeded to yell at me for two hours. I still don't know why he was offended by my words. It was a compliment if nothing else. I called him a man. I said I would feel safer if he was with me. How is that bad?

I also wonder why I stayed on the phone for two hours and let him yell at me. What was I thinking?

I did not go into detail with my friend today, but I did tell her about Ex yelling for two hours. She said, "He sounds lovely. How could you let him get away?"

Undeniably true. What a prize.

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.

L is for List

I have a list of people who act the same way. They will claim to love/like me, do something hurtful, get mad at me for what they did, and stop speaking to me. Now granted, they all have serious mental conditions, but still, is there no human decency in these people?

Ex is at the top of that list. He did this so many times, there is no way to count. I clearly remember the time I got home from work one night and he was on the couch and refused to speak to me. He didn't speak to me for days. Things had been going fine; I had no idea what I had done to make him mad at me. Turns out, I hadn't done anything at all. He had gotten home from work early, gone on a bike ride, and then decided I would be mad that he went without me. So he got mad at me for what my imagined response was, and stopped speaking to me. For days. I didn't even know he had gone on  a bike ride in the first place, and I wouldn't have cared. But I got punished for what he had done.
                                                                              
My older sister decided I said something hurtful to her. She stopped speaking to me for an entire year. She and her family missed my college graduation and she was not there for me during my difficult divorce. She said mean things about me to her children. My nephews. One day a year later, she suddenly came to the realization that I hadn't actually said anything at all, and all was "forgiven." She explained to me that she understood I hadn't been mean, and that we could be friends. Life was resumed. I got no apologies; there was no remorse for adding to the extreme pain I was going through. Nothing. I forgave her because I love my nephews. I will never trust her. But I will tolerate her for my nephews.
                                          
Last night, someone I have been a friend to got mad at me because I called her on something hurtful she had done. She thoughtlessly used me (by name) as an example in therapy group, and even though she knew I was upset about it, didn't apologize or even mention it all week. In group, I said I was upset about what had happened. I didn't name her, but she named herself by getting up and leaving. She did apologize via text, which I accepted and apologized to her for not talking to her in private. She then proceeded to tell me why she was in the right. Why it was okay for her to use an incorrect example with my name involved. I didn't get mad. I didn't tell her she was an idiot. I simply told her to leave me out of her examples. "No worries about that." was her reply. And boom, she resigned our Words with Friends game and unfriended me on Facebook. She is mad at me for something she did.
                                         
Again, I realize these are very screwed up people I am dealing with. I need to choose better friends. Did you notice I said I had been a friend to this girl, not that we were friends. She was never there for me when I needed her. If I asked to spend time with her, she would tell me she was waiting around, hoping her boyfriend would let her spend time with him. The last time we went to the movies, she bought the matinee tickets and expected me to pay for the refreshments (WAY more expensive.) I missed the previews, which are my favorite part of the movie, because she had decided at the last minute to go see this particular showing and I wanted to accommodate her. Afterwards, I asked if she wanted to go eat or get a drink so we could talk. Nope. She wanted to stand on the sidewalk and talk about herself and then leave.
                                          
This behavior was typical, but I never called her on her selfishness. I was pathetically grateful that she had spent time with me, since she has a habit of abandoning her friends once she finds a relationship or someone to sleep with. That isn't a friend I need. It makes me sad, but I am better off without that in my life. I need to be around people who are respectful and considerate.
                            
I was thinking this happened to me "all the time," but really, it is just these three mentally ill people who cannot sustain relationships with anyone. I don't know why I think I can be different. I don't know why I should tolerate their insanity. I think my list will end here. Three people on my list of narcissistic people who get mad at me for the hurtful things they do is enough. I've learned my lesson. The list is closed.   

K is for Karma

The Buddhist definition of karma: the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences.
                                     
That woman in my therapy group had better have run into a car this week. Not have a car accident; that may have hurt someone else. I mean I hope the idiot was walking and tripped over a car and smashed her face. It's better for something like that to happen rather than me have to smash her face into a brick wall tomorrow.

My therapist said to just ask her not to talk to me. But she got in my face. I was sitting down and she was practically stepping on my feet. I don't normally get violent. I don't normally even get mad. But she was talking about my family. No idiot is allowed to talk about my family. It has been almost a week and I am still irate. She took something serious and sad and trivialized it with her stupidity. And thought she was cool.

I'll show you cool.
                        
I seriously considered not going to group, but my therapist says that isn't effective. Maybe ho-bag won't be there. Maybe she will be embarrassed about the bruises on her face from tripping over a car. If karma exists, that happened. I believe.

J is for Jitters

I have the jitters. What a weird word. But a good one, since it fills two needs I have: to start a post with "J" and to describe my feelings of nervousness about my upcoming visit to see my family. My older sister, her husband, and my four nephews will be driving through my city to pick me up, and then we will stay at a hotel halfway, and then go to see my little sister, her husband, my three nieces, and my mom. Whew!
                
We haven't all been together for years. I miss my family. Ex hated my older sister and her husband, which is extremely ironic, considering the fact that they took his side and remained friends on Facebook with him until (I'm assuming) he dumped them once he met his new wife. "Who are these people, honey?" Explain that. I do wonder if Ex told her he had been married before. My guess is no. But that is another letter.
                                      
Why am I jittery? Well, mainly because my place in the family has always been the entertainer. I'm the funny one. I'm the one who laughs first and longest. I'm the happy one.
                             
I'm not happy anymore. I'm just not. Happiness has flown from me like the spirit flies from the dead. It does not exist in this shell. So I'm jittery, because I don't want to let my family know how sad and dead I really am. I don't want to be fake and pretend like everything is okay, either. I don't know who to be anymore. I'm not the me I used to be.

I is for Insomnia

It's back.

I have struggled with insomnia my entire life, but had a brief respite the last few months. I was given a magical little pill called Ambien, and then was taken off of it, but was still able to sleep. I hoped insomnia was a thing of the past. Nope.
                            
Sometimes I wonder if it is that I cannot sleep or if I do not want to sleep. When things are really bothering me, I have crazy, scary dreams, and I don't want to go to sleep when I know they are coming. I know I've told you about the waves before - how they start out as just slightly odd dreams and then get progressively worse until I wake up screaming. That's fun.

I'm really tired tonight. Last night, I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. and then, even after turning out the light, laid there awake for a long time. I don't look at the clock once lights are out. It's too depressing. I really want to go to sleep, but the dreams I had last night were slightly odd. The wave is starting.
                                    
When I was with Ex, I would lie awake and listen to him breathe and it would comfort me. It was nice knowing that he was sleeping peacefully, and I would lie there and wonder what he was dreaming about. I would think of names for our future children until I drifted off to sleep. Simon and Sophie. Cute, right? Now I lie in bed and try to focus on my own breathing. It gets scary in my head. No one wants to be in my head.

I don't know if I can call it insomnia when I know I could easily fall asleep if I would just allow myself to do so. I just don't want to. I'm scared.

H is for Hard

I haven't been going to group lately, but did go tonight. I wish I had stayed home. We do "check-in," where everyone goes around and says their name, the high of their week, the low of their week, and a skill they used. I told mine. My low was pretty low.
                                                 
Two people came up to me at break and tried to share stories from their lives. One well-meaning girl only succeeded in making me feel sorry for her. The other woman is lucky I was able to refrain from jumping out of my chair and ramming her stupid face into the brick wall. Hard. I am not, by nature, a violent person, but when you are talking to me about something that really matters, don't be stupid. Don't. Just shut your stupid face and go sit down.
                                            
And then, once group recommenced, another girl used me as an example of people being nice and trying to help. They did not help. One genuinely tried, the other was just stupid and wanted to feel important. Don't use stupidity as an example of kindness. Do not confuse the two, and especially do not involve me. I spent the entire remainder of group trying not to just get up and leave. The only reason I didn't was that a late-comer was sitting right in front of the door and it would have caused drama. I couldn't make a clean exit, so I sat there and drew geometric designs and dissociated until group was finally over.
                                           
People tried to talk to me after group and they meant well but I was so far out of it and so mad and so sad and so over it that I just left. I had to. I had nothing to say to those people. Now I am at home on my couch, drinking. I have been able to not drink for quite some time. I do not think I have enough alcohol on hand to get as drunk as I want to get, which is probably good, because then I get really, really sad and am strongly tempted to just go ahead and take every pill I have. I blame Ex for all of this. If not for him, I would not be in therapy and would not be subjected to stupid people who need to have their faces smashed into brick walls. Hard.

I thought therapy was supposed to make me feel better. What happened?