anoppositioninterms-blog

[anoppositioninterms-blog]

Better Feels

I’m feeling better.  

I’ve been getting a little more done each day.  Getting a lot of sleep, which I convince myself is great for my skin and my general well-being; not a hindrance, but an inherent trait.  Feeling a little high, a little off balance in a fun, tipsy sort of way, only at an unexpected moment here and there, masquerading as real enjoyment of life.  This improves my ability to focus.  It doesn’t matter if it makes me silent instead of vocal, that it quells me into a sort of agreeable state of general acceptance.  I’m being nicer to people.  To quote Ween, 

“No longer pissed and you don't bother me I'm makin' it through, I'm givin' my all When bases are loaded, I'm whacking the ball...”

But I’m also infuriated with myself.  The higher tolerance of living I am enjoying is definitely giving me abilities, I can’t lie.  It’s also taking a toll on my bodily organs and on my mind, as I have been using this mental health medication I am writing about for more than 10 years.  It was explained to me when I first grabbed at the straw as a short-term solution that would not be needed after therapy.  I’m still in therapy, and I’m still on the medication.

About three months ago I decided to stop taking this medication.  It is one of three medications I take daily along with my vitamins and protein shake.  This one was used for sleep.  It has always been my favorite one.  It was the first one I was sure I should take, with no question.  It is comforting.  I value dreaming more highly than I value most of my waking experiences, and it gives me the most beautiful quality of sleep that for me is euphoric.  It has other good qualities, all of which I understood I would be giving up, increased ability to focus, decrease in anxiety symptoms, pain relieving qualities, and it was generally a medicine that seems to work exactly as it should all the time, but limits one to the dedication of 10 hours a day to being literally unconscious or a “dream-like” waking state.

I congratulated myself on taking such a big step.  For valuing my mornings more than my dreams.  For making a real effort, that may be difficult at times, towards clarity of mind and control over my productivity.

I spoke to my family doctor and to two pharmacists, and successfully quit taking the medication for about four months.  I have been on the medication now for three weeks, having failed there.

At first not being able to sleep was easily dealt with, not with this medication but with herbal tea, essential oils, routine, and the raw thread of anxiety that ran through the days, making everything a little more prickly and real, tiring me out.  It was nice to be able to get up in the morning when I chose instead of when I had detoxed from what is a fairly strong medication in a low dose.  My night sweats were far decreased, as I was not slipping into a deep sleep with vivid dreams.  Using my ability of being a professional dreamer became an occasional victory instead of a daily must.  Then I started being a little less reliable, as my anxiety became a constant bondage.  Losing weight seems great, but I was colder and had fewer really workable hours each day as I lost ten pounds due to my reduced, selective appetite, which I also congratulated myself for.  Then something unexpected happened.  My body revolted.

As my anxiety became more of a constant battle that I had to deal with with worksheets given to me at therapy, busy work, and satiating constant cravings, my non-thought related organs all decided that this change was bad.  The biggest noticeable change was in my skin.  Losing hairs from the crown of my head, my skin has developed three kinds of eczema on about 70% of my body, my face broke out in numerous acne blemishes, and I became so itchy I honestly did not enjoy existing any longer.  I called in sick to work to visit with a doctor, as my hands were cracking and bleeding and everything I put on my skin stung.

The biggest reason for this problem is my general cortisol level became higher due to my almost constant state of “fight or flight” and my skin became sensitive and reactive, as skin may do when hormone or pheromone absorption levels change.  

I realized afterward that one important detail the medicines I am currently on have in common is that, in the fine print, both include the word “itching.”  One of them prevents it, which I had stopped taking, and one of them can cause it, which I was taking a slightly increased dosage of.  

So I went back to the doctor.  I am having blood work done to check my thyroid levels, as I am prone to thyroid hyperactivity, leading to mania if it goes untreated.  My family doctor has scheduled appointments with specialists and assured me that we could get this under control.  And to start taking that medicine again.

I had already started taking it again.

I tried to leave it behind, like a teddy bear that may in fact contain toxic materials from over use, but one that is so loved and helps you sleep each night like a “professional.”

I honestly wasn’t sure at first, but the same doctors and pharmacists, after seeing my skin, who were eager before for me to take the step to stop the medication, were just as eager now to tell me to start taking it again.

So I’m sort of still in misery, but at least I have this drug to keep me company.  Its like I stepped out into a really bright day, a really clear day where light is everywhere illuminating every surface and blinding you with its brilliance, and I enjoyed it for a moment, then I started to burn.  Like a vampire.  So here I am in the dark again.

It is a fail.  I failed at stopping.  And I’m comfortable.  But this comfort is a bondage of its own.

[anoppositioninterms-blog]

A Perfect Smile

I have often wondered what the best me would be, never really defining that idea too fully.  Now I am wondering why I didn’t create her, why I didn’t create and then become her.  If I never created her, how could I become her really?  I am an artist.  How come I never bothered designing myself, like Andy Warhol did? Like Celine Dion is making an attempt at doing as I write this on the stages of Las Vegas.

Perhaps I was afraid of how different the best me would be from my present state.  Perhaps I was taking into account how the best me would have had many differing experiences that were not numbingly painful, and because I cannot travel though time and prevent any of those in hindsight, that there is no way I would know this best me at all - we’d have nothing in common.  Perhaps I don’t really believe I have a best version.  Maybe I am so low on self-esteem I believe that no matter what I do, I will always rot here in place as an homage to how we are all killed slowly through inaction. I think though, like with many things, I was depriving myself of my own best abilities by only using my creativity for others.  

I have a poor or limited sense of self.  Therapists say I have very few “feeling words” but really this is because they wish me to speak only of myself.  As an example, when I think of the Cornwallis Statue in a little park at the South End of Halifax, I think of it only as a statue; as it was when I met it, only half understanding who and what it represented.  Even though, being some part Mi’q Maw native genetically, I have my own personal understanding of all the atrocities committed during those Canadian Dark Ages, I have trouble mustering real anger, sadness or fear at the existence and public display of this statue, at the memory of my personal experience at that little park, or at the debate that is currently at play.  They took the statue down today.  When I think of the Cornwallis Statue, I do however feel a huge weight, like everyone else.  I feel everyone else’s feels.  I feel the anger from the people who seem sort of conservative minded and empathy-impaired when they ratify the real man, Cornwallis.  The truth they focus on is that he was a brave man who was capable of the acts of war necessary and the acts of humanity necessary to settle his people an important part of this nation that they now live on.  These same conservative minded people seem to highly value the acts of war that define our borders and the men who were able to survive under those conditions, committing regrettable deeds, or dying.  I feel the heartbreak of the native peoples who have suffered more and for longer than almost any other people on this great round world, not only that, also at the hands of my ancestors.  I would not be here if they had not suffered.  I feel the hatred of native peoples, especially those that dwell here, welling up without their bidding and forcing them to make a change, to use this hatred to create a better place for their children.  Those against the removal of the statue have been heard saying, “You can’t change history by removing a landmark.”  The counter argument is only simple agreement because the statement is true.  The history of Cornwallis will remain unchanged in the event it is removed or not.  However, the history we are all currently writing with our actions at this moment will show to future generations that the public protested to remove the statue and succeeded.  Those against the removal of the statue say, “Commemorating events, good or bad, is to remember them.  Removing the statue attempts to erase history.”   The counter argument is in fact the emotion I feel welling up in the hearts of the unhappy.  This level of sorrow, once realized and discussed, will never disappear.  There are parts of that history that will never be erased in the genetic memory stored in the actual hearts of the people.  And in the end that is what tips the scale for me.  People hate that statue and are organizing themselves in hatred, needing for this to be addressed with action, and they have good reason.  Others, for the most part, perhaps excluding the far right, just don’t hate the statue.  They are fine with it being there.  And they feel like that is enough reason for it to stay.  This is the kind of thing a person would feel if they had indeed experienced privilege.  But I could be wrong.  I know that I am right in saying the statue should have been removed long ago, not for me, but to save those people around me from the heartache that is crippling them right now.  Heartache trumps the need to commemorate a history that can never be erased anyway.  Emotions play heavily into my direction, and into my actions, but they are more frequently the perceived emotions of others.

At some point in my life, the self I had so lovingly patched together, that I wore all the time proudly, began to affect my ability to be where I needed to be or to be accepted.  Being an individual with self-driven needs and desires became unnecessary to my advancement and a hindrance when I was interacting with people.  So I just put it away, like a dress that has shrunk and is now too short to wear, or like a plate that doesn’t match the set you are using now in your home, like a politic that has become unpopular.  I have taste and preference, somewhere in there, half remembered, like my loves for certain music and food.  But if I am exposed to new music or new food, I will always attempt to enjoy it as if it were my own preference.   I routinely cook supper for my partner and his son; it is always meat and potatoes for two men with very limited palettes.  I cook the food, taste it, plate it, and serve it to them, careful to ask if it is to their liking.  But I don’t eat it.  Even though I don’t usually have the time or ingredients to cook a meal I would love, I continue to focus on this expectation of theirs, of their needs.  When I began working as an Administrator after attending Business College, I successfully figured out (almost) how to blend in by wearing “appropriate” clothing and having the “appropriate” attitudes.  I can also be with people on an almost intimate level who are among those that cannot connect with others easily.  People who may be undesirable to those with limited patience, limited views of what is “appropriate”.  This is a skill that helps me in my current employment.  I am working with people who have disabilities and mental illness who are sometimes challenging, but I feel like I am successful in maintaining a good rapport with them.  My closet is full of clothing that others have given me.  About once or twice a year, I have to pick up new underwear, a warm jacket, maybe a pair of shoes that don’t leak, but other than that, almost everything I wear was only a suggestion made of who I was by a friend or relative, and I have been accepting of this.  It is inconvenient to my sensibilities to not accept a gift of this nature; to not agree, yes, this item is “totally me.”  They would know best, of course, I tell myself.  In utter seriousness, there are few things that I cannot abide.  I am a tolerant person.  None of those things sacred to me have stuck in my mind because they are the most “appropriate.”  I am who I need to be in the moment, and this is more of a fluid continuum.  I have been drained into a husk who threatens to bore me to death and then collapse into a completely inanimate analogue of a human.  At the core of everything I have written here so far, is the idea that I have forgotten who I am.  That I no longer really am.  I exist only as you see me.  My personality isn’t “borderline” however.  I am the same boring person each time you see me, able to rattle off useful facts or ask pre-thought-out questions that you are able to answer easily, then float away giving little of myself to review besides the mundane, expecting nothing of anyone.  I am benign, but not especially interesting.  There are only a few people in my current circle who have ever seen me even approach anger, produce tears, or act disappointed. The true opposition in this is: I think I am boring too. But somewhere I inherently learned that what I need is not important, that it is not worth expressing, and I am hard pressed now in the moment quite often to even identify my preference or be capable of expressing anything personal, especially in the negative.  In my own head however, I am being judged continually for not being banal enough, for revealing too much, for being whole and expressing it.

I have tried on several analogies of a better me in this identity-fugue-state, by attempting to take small steps towards “better.”  Sometimes I have success at building better habits, but just as often not.   I have created lists, made flow charts, timed out the perfect day by the half-hour, monitored my activities meticulously in many different journals, completed workbooks disseminated by gurus, attended motivational presentations and sought out videos of them, read self-help written by people with PhD s, counted my calories and my steps, identified my weaknesses, and generally everything that was ever suggested to me in attempts to meet my goals.

I work everyday at doing everything a little better than I thought I was capable, then I sometimes slip back into depression for several days, realizing I am not really any closer to any of the big goals.  The huge looming ones that can only partly be broken down into bite size pieces.

Today I am thinking that the problem is my approach - the size and speed of the steps.  The end goal of the amount of steps.  And the whole idea of taking steps towards the always achievable “better;” as a social worker or a therapist would direct a case like mine.  Sometimes taking a step towards better is a step in the wrong direction.  Sometimes just a little better builds a habit that is not scale-able.  Sometimes you should bet it all on black.  Not every person was built to climb a conventional ladder, sometimes a person will react well to being figuratively shot out of a cannon after being dropped from a great height.

I am also thinking about what it means to be me, how I am essentially different from others in many ways and maybe even on a different continuum altogether - parallel to an average happy human somewhere, but like a fun-house mirror, my shape and how people perceive me changes.  So, am I timing the perfect day and completing workbooks that were always meant for somebody else, someone who is not warped and pulled out of phase?

If I were to forget for a moment my meager capabilities, I could build a perfect person that has nothing to do with what I can actually complete tomorrow.  If I clear my mind, I feel like I am staring at a blank, sexless, line drawing of my form that is reminiscent of a Futuristic Deco design.  I am yet unformed, skinless, spinning in the middle of a sketch by DaVinci.  This is a new experience for me of late, as I have been completely stuck in the notions of what I cannot do with success and what my limitations are.

The last time I remember feeling this way, I was coming out of a traumatic few years.  I was, indeed, in my husk-form, completely stripped of all but the most basic wants and needs, and threatening to collapse into two dimensions like a paper doll.  My brain was addled with concussions, heavy medications and a penchant for escapism, and I could do little more than make sketches, quite literally.  I had very simple goals that I made mystical so I could focus on them, I truly believed these accomplishments would not only be a step toward a better self, but have the power to transform.  Some of them were bold and seemed far away, some were simpler than I thought they would be.  But I accomplished them all.  Some of them are the same goals that need doing again now.  The one I remember the best was an idea I made several drawings about in work towards my first one person show; the idea of having a perfect smile.  At the time, to me this meant getting the chip in my front tooth taken care of, a great cleaning, and a whitening and fluoride.  I have been able to keep up with my dental care since then.  But I’ve noticed other asymmetries and imperfections in my teeth since then...

Lately, I have been reading more and more on how if Canada were a truly developed nation based on democracy and humanity, we wouldn’t all be loosing our teeth by the time we’re 40, putting us out of the running for participating in a large percentage of the important things that get done in the world each day.  It is no one’s fault, teeth will only last about 40 years in humans most of the time.  The reason why people we see in positions of power or positions of celebrity have perfect teeth is because getting one’s teeth fixed is simply necessary grooming.  Many citizens in Canada can’t afford dental care, and another large percentage don’t realize the importance.  It is heartening that recently, it seems that others have taken up the the cause of paying for and promoting the necessity of “a perfect smile” with speaking engagements and news appearances being made by politicians and doctors which I hope may lead to positive changes in our Canadian free health care, which doesn’t currently include dental care except in young children.  But some would argue, is this only a hygienic practice? Will Canada soon pay for its citizens to have hair replacement and rhinoplasty?  That would be nice if it didn’t bankrupt us.  But where does it end?

Another strangeness that is particular to me is that I almost never assume that a higher dose of the same would be preferable, as many do.  After having un-chipped teeth, I thought, there, now my teeth are all as they were, and this is enough.  Since that one list made more than ten years ago, I haven’t wanted more for myself.  I achieved the basic things that I identified as having been taken from me with loyal focus.  Since then, however, I am guilty of only keeping up on most of the “musts” and “appropriates” in the eyes of others, drifting around losing myself over time the same way I did then.  

My current self-reflection is not based on trauma or a need for a drastic change to survive, and I am able to conceptualize it a little more completely now.  This desire to have self is little further from the past one I experienced which was a kind of schizophrenic-superstitious code based on my perceived low position and my need to survive as a way of getting revenge on my antagonists.  I called myself a Scavenger then.  I am a little closer to a self-realization based on my strengths.  Right now I feel like a blank Avatar.  

And as it turns out, designing the perfect Self has become such a delicious thought, I may just groove on that a while before writing more about it.

[anoppositioninterms-blog]

I talk too much in the morning.

Every bloody morning.

This is a phrase that I have made up to encompass how it is to be me during what I call the “wake up” part of the day.  It doesn’t always happen in the morning.  Sometimes I sleep for up to 18 hours.

When I first begin to be aware of consciousness, my impulse is to get comfortable and immediately try to achieve sleep again.  This doesn’t work eventually, I can’t climb back into the dream that was just here, and I begin to notice my surroundings.

Did you ever wonder what would have happened in your dream at that last moment?  From what I hear, we are always waking up right before the dream transforms to reveal a truth, a question, or a sensible answer to the nonsense preceding.  I think that most people bring themselves to consciousness attempting to shed the dream space immediately; only sometimes being haunted by fragments of dream memories when they really can’t shake some bizarre situation that does not compute.  Or sometimes being reminded of way-too-personal story-lines that involve people or places that are so familiar, having been stirred up with sexuality and resentments in the dream space.  I think this is normal.  I think dreams exist in solid terms as a sort of “psyche trip” meant for everyone, an autonomous and natural process given to us by our minds, like seeing God at the moment of death.   Dreams function to relive and release our fears or look forward to our futures with some sense of divinity.  For most people, dreams leave tiny clues in our waking brains to remind us about what’s important, to make good decisions in bad circumstances, or to lead us on to more good experiences.  For me however, my dreams are my Bible, they are my reason for existing, they are the only thing really worth analyzing or studying profusely, and they are preferred to being awake.

Climbing back into a dream can be a revelation.   I believe I have seen that last moment, the untold truth, and the meaning behind the strange symbolism in my dreams, and remembered all the details.  I attempt to do this by simply sustaining the dream space and pushing away my blooming half-conscious state as the world attempts to wake me each day.  Not to be confused with “conscious dreaming”.  This is not a learned behavior, it has always come completely naturally to me.  It has remained a quality of mine even though it definitely hinders my experience of waking life and my participation in it.  Its not always easy to stay in a dream, the subconscious has its own realm and it does not allow me to mix in any reality.  If I start to analyze or take control, it ceases to be, and not only that, it will vaporize from my mind, like a mist retreating from a harbor in the morning, and I will forget almost all of it.  I like to wake up slowly.  Quietly.  Slipping back into wakefulness with my eyes still turned inward, uninterrupted by anything too brashly real.  Then I remember the whole dream.  Which seems to be one of the main reasons I have for being awake at all.

If for some reason I am not able to remain in that space for the extra dream-time it takes to get the message of the dream, I am angry with myself.  I struggle throughout the day to remember parts of the dream, drawing pictures and trying to piece the events together.  I feel disappointed and confused for the remainder of the day, having not completed this important task with success.

Again, this is not a rule I have memorized, it is a state of being. An occurrence of a neurosis in me that acts as an imperative to understand and disseminate the meaning of my dreams.

When you see your whole dream strait though to the end and it becomes an operatic parody of itself screaming its message with the wildest images and language in those moments of over-sleep, this makes an impression.  I often feel like I have analyzed the meaning of the dream near the moment of waking, since I got the see the end of the story.  I also wake up feeling like my real life body has experienced whatever happened in the dream.  

I wake up out of breath often, with an elevated heart rate.  I am flushed and my skin feels warm and clammy.  My legs and hips are sore, as if I’ve been running, or hung upside down by my ankles.  I am usually fairly soaked with sweat; being wet when you wake up is uncomfortable: I feel cold, stuck to the bedding, and filthy.  My limbs feel itchy and sometimes I leave long red scratches on my legs.  My mind is sometimes spinning with whatever I interpreted as the meaning of my dream, and if my “wake up” was not slow and quiet as I prefer, my mind is also spinning with thoughts of what this day will hold and what didn’t get completed yesterday. 

When I get out of bed, I immediately get dressed.  I’ve discovered that if I take a short shower in the morning, this aids all the symptoms above, but I am seldom capable of it.  I wake up scared.  The best way to protect myself in the immediate future is to be dressed and ready for whatever I am terrified of.  When I was homeless for a short while,  a defense I developed was the getting dressed quickly, or staying dressed, so as to be ready for whatever was inevitably coming.  The habit stuck.  Even though I could get dressed in anything I want any day of the week now, it remains an important habit to have those clothes thought out, ready, and laid out very near the sleeper.  Better yet I found, was to put on clean clothes before bed, then they were ready for the morning, or the middle of the night, or whenever wakefulness thrust itself upon me.

I suffer from something known as “sleep drunkenness” occasionally.  I usually feel irritable by the time the clothes are on, but sometimes I am plain monstrous in the morning for about ten minutes or so.  Sometimes I am pathetic, and tears will come.  I say things I don’t mean.  I stumble and stomp.  I upset my family.

Through my irritation, I take my mental health medications and smoke a cigarette, by the time that’s done, I usually feel a bit better.  I make tea or drink coffee.  Eating seems like the absolute wrong thing to do.

I should mention: another helpful thing to get through this brief period of discomfort in the morning is my lovely kitty cat.  I have gotten her into the habit of being combed and pampered near when I wake, so she is always happy to see me on a rough morning.  My partner brings me a coffee in the morning and this is reason to get up as well.  I am a hedonist at my worst moments, and anything that makes me feel good is welcome.

And then, or I should say now, being the last several years, a curious thing happens.  I begin talking.  

When this began, it was always of my worst experiences, echoing what my dreams were repeating to me over and over for years.  I was speaking out loud the things that made me feel insecure, unaccepted, things that ruined me financially, ruined my health, took away my humanity.  This regurgitation of my least favorite times seemed right to me at the time.  It was like a lesser version of the me who believed she had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (now called by the doctors only Unresolved Trauma).  This symptom I call “being looped” where you relive your worst experiences in your head and out your mouth to the point that you can think of nothing else; for years this appeared to be my whole reason for talking at all.  Just having this happen in the morning was a little better than having that be the whole of me.

Those horrible experiences always make a comeback in my words as an example, as a worst case scenario, as a constant backing or proof for all my discourse and perhaps my existence, and I assume this quality may always remain.  With my words and my experiences, I can not only absolve myself of my head-space by vomiting it out, but trick others into thinking I’m tough - that I’ve seen things, and that I was there; that I was everywhere bad and felt everything that was bad.  I know it’s become something of a habit that makes me seem crude at times, low, “crazy”, or just a constant victim.

But now I just talk too much in the mornings.  It must drive my partner crazy.  If I am a little more capable, I remember to write or draw instead of using someone’s face as a confession booth.  Its as if I have so much to process in the morning that I simply can’t do it on my own.  The obvious question of why do I have more to process in the morning than others, who simply think of what kind of hair day it will be or whether or not work will be this or that; this is not something that I can answer easily.  The best answer I can give is that it simply hurts to be awake most of the time if I’m not involved in some form of escapism, many of these forms being healthy habits, like yoga and art.  The reality I built myself is complicated and at times insufficient, sure, but this is typical.  Having Generalized Anxiety Disorder is wanting to escape.  My dreams are not better than real life, being fraught with dangers, difficult journeys, uncomfortable interactions, etcetera, but I feel like I really “get something out of” them.  They tell me things that are helpful.  They are focused on me.  My dreams are a selfish mirror that is always inviting me gently to look at something I have a have a sort of pretend dominion over, my psyche.  My dreams are my only spirituality, my only prognostication, my only hint of what the meaning of life is, or what is to come.  Reality and my waking life are most enjoyable to me when I feel like “I am on my path.” Those moments when I have a feeling of Deja-Vu, when I meet someone unexpectedly that I want to see anyway, or when I find a five dollar bill on the ground when I needed bus fare on a cold day.  When I feel like I am being pointed in the right direction by experiences that are partly good.  But this happens so infrequently.  There are so many days that go by where I wonder before sleep why I exist at all.

The things I talk about really vary now.  I might start spouting about politics, or something easier to hear like gardening or cooking.  I might start degrading a friend or relative, only to talk in a circle until I’ve dismissed what I started to say.  I might talk about the film I watched last night, remembering all the details vividly and comparing them accurately to other arts.  I might un-assuredly start to try to discuss gender or race in delicate terms, as a way of understanding the times and the people more effectively.  Whatever mental unwinding I have to do, I do it first thing in the morning, and I am usually best spoken at this time, though the topics are always questionable.  Sometimes I talk about things I have no business talking about.  This process seems to be somewhat necessary to getting on with the morning.  While I am finishing that coffee or tea, I am spouting facts and feelings and expecting a response, whether it makes me late for my day or not.  It is another trait on a list of things that I do not do because I scheduled them or because they make sense, but because I have to.

I wake up soaked, sore, scared, and wishing I was still asleep.  Being chatty is not the worst of the whole package of the “wake up” for me personally, but it may be the remaining trait that still belies to others what I am.  A person who has recovered.  A person who is still recovering from hating life, every bloody morning.

[anoppositioninterms-blog]

January is heavy

I can’t become warmer.  I can’t get warm.  I need to realize I will not be warm.  This happens every winter.  The cold slips into all the places by January.  It gets to the skin, and clings there.

But, I am always fighting against a mysterious force that is holding me in place.  It is a voice in my head gently and constantly arguing about whether or not “everything is ok” using real life examples that I understand too well.  I ask my friend, “Hey, is everything okay?”  They have no idea how to respond or even to what I’m speaking.  

The force is called Depression, or Anxiety, but I have tuned into the fact it is actually every bad experience I have ever had, witnessed, or heard about, hovering in place like a cloud, refusing to leave the front of my thoughts. It is right now influencing everything I conceive and every action I take, like a television indoctrinating a coma patient, switched on all the time.  It is my own fantasy “victim”; a very personal worst case scenario.  Though she sometimes passes through dreams and unbidden visions as a fighter in anger, she often just craves death.

My Victim lulls me to sleep at night with intensely well-thought-out and detailed run through’s of how to kill one’s self while leaving no trace.  Like a tarp covered in the dirt from an open grave that lies just down hill, a hammock full of the most lasting rest, balanced on a plank with a string like a trap.  String in hand, a bed made once, and never unmade.  One little tug, and a person could be converted to solid ground, something earthy and permanent, for the first time in her life.

I am being pressed down further by the weight of my subsequent inaction.  Bodily ailments, defeated thinking and my lover/enemy sleep are preventing me from achieving milestones, small tasks, and acting alive.  Everyday something else slips and gives way, a small tug on a single rope that is suspending my burial.

This is common.  It is not a complaint, as it could be interpreted, but an explanation of my state of being.  I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder.  I have “Unresolved Trauma.”  I thought that I had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for almost 7 years before I got to see my file.

The other thought process that seems to repeat often is that fact that I can’t really tell if these darkest thoughts are based on anything real.  Perhaps a secret knowledge of a disease I have yet to be diagnosed with.  A hidden reason why death feels closer than life.  Maybe a real misalignment of space or place that prevents me from being happy.  But, I can’t really tell if I’m happy.  I still laugh, but I don’t really get hungry anymore.  Sleep has become a wonderful escape and much preferred to being awake.  Medication is a must.

I am existing as others see me; yes.  I exist.  People see me in public places and I appear to be autonomous and empowered.  In my best light, I am an intelligent young woman who is independent, overly polite and somewhat unconventional.   At others moments, I am neurotic, private or shy, crooked and unsymmetrical, ill in noticeable ways, and at the worst so unpredictable as to be untrustworthy. 

In the middle somewhere, I am basically a likable weakling.  Of average looks and intelligence, sometimes good company, sometimes not.  A hard-worker who is never on time.  I am almost totally functional.   I am something that was ruined but has been put back together with care.  My illness is a disability, I am simply not able to accomplish as much as fast as other people who have never been disassembled.  

I will never be “warm.”  I will very briefly experience moments where I don’t feel totally out of place in my own skin and this is my lot.

January is a reminder that comfort is a luxury.  No matter what you do, you will always feel the chill of that time in your spine and the bottoms of your feet.  You can wear a home-made hat, a mile long scarf, two sweaters, a proper coat, wool stockings, lined pants, army socks, and boots made for mountain climbing and you will still not always be able to achieve a real feeling of warmth in January.

No matter how many days I have in my best light, or how good I become at not listening to the voices that ponder my existence, no matter how many times My Victim is a warrior in my spinning mind-traps, I will never really feel like everything is okay.

January reminds me of this.  It makes me feel heavy.