98¢ Green Beans

“I wish I was nearby so I could just come over and sit with you.”  C

I think that is what I need.  I just need someone to come sit with me for a while.  So I don’t have to cry alone anymore.  

Fuck drinking.  It’s a shitty substitute for a hug.

Dear Rum, 

How are you feeling?  Because I am feeling rather warm and comfortable wrapped in your arms.

Love,

Me

Dearest Rum,

You make my nostrils tingle, yet settle my soul.  

Love, 

Me

Dear Rum,

Here with me in the night.  Calming my fears.  I’m so very glad I picked you up.  Pour yourself out for me to drink up and feel safe.  I am safe with you.  You are my most comforting fiduciary caring for my life so that I don’t have to.  

I love you.

-Me

I hate drinking.  It hurts.

So, after kind of staying drunk every night for a while and taking painkillers, I got rid of all of the alcohol in my apartment.  However, I would like to point out that drinking at least took my anxiety level down.  I bought some rum.  And some soda.  I’m not going to let this get out of hand though.  I’m just having one or two drinks to calm my nerves down.  I have to do something until I go to this psychiatrist about this anxiety.  I’ve tried talking myself down, or distracting myself, or doing something else.  So cheers to drankin’ in moderation.

Have you ever wondered if you’ve made an enormous mistake and never should have stopped one thing and started another?  I’ve been thinking a lot lately.  I have nearly entirely lost my passion for learning.  It was the one thing that has held me together for so long.  Since I was a child, I’ve always just learned things.  I’ve learned things so I wouldn’t have to think about other things.  I would just bury myself in learning something until I was positively sick of it and then I would pick up something else to learn about.  But, when I was little I never thought learning would get me anywhere.  It was always just this defense against the world.  

Until I was 16 years old I was always going to be a dancer.  Everything I did revolved around ballet.  I loved tap dancing and it was probably my favorite, but everything in my life revolved around ballet.  All activities, thought, days, nights, and meals.  When I turned 16 I was severely afflicted with an eating disorder that began when I was 10.  I was tiny.  I didn’t eat and when I did I threw up or went running until I fainted.  I pushed my body to the extremes.  And for months I ended up a patient in two different eating disorder clinics.  They were always entirely focused on the dire physical state of the situation and not really the emotional state, so I never got to the emotional side of the issue besides meeting with a really nice nutritionist a few times a week.  Nonetheless, I left that portion of my life with a doctor’s order in my case file (foster care case file that is) mandating that I would not be allowed to participate in dance of any sort.  My entire world crashed down around me and I had to restart from the very beginning.  

A year or so later, I was sent back to my biological parents and decided it best to keep my mouth shut until I turned 18.  So, I just went through a period of grinning and bearing life and my case was terminated and things went on.  I could have gone back to ballet.  I could have gotten back to where I was, but I was terrified at that point of where I had been and where I had gone.  And thus, I swore off dance forever.  (I do occasionally teach a class or act as a consultant, but I no longer perform.  And I won’t ever again.)  But, I find myself in this state now of mulling over that decision.  I was never going to come to college.  After swearing off dance for the rest of eternity, I discovered a passion for art.  I threw myself into it and became fully immersed.  In addition to art, I still had my habits of defensive learning.  Learning is the one thing that no one can take away no matter how much they take from you.  

So, I decided that I would go to school after high school for art.  And I applied to the only university that I had ever been to.  I got in and here I am going on four years later…  I still love art and I’ve found a passion for Middle East studies, somewhat based on the time I spent living with a foster family with an Arab-Berber Moroccan father.  After the 9/11 incident I and the two other kids living there were pulled for “no reason.”  After taking two classes on the history of the region, I took another class with the same professor on Orientalism, which focused a lot on Arab stereotypes.  That sealed things for me in the realm of things that I wanted to study.  Because of stereotypes and misconceptions, I lost a good home and a sort of family.  That is so wrong.  And it is also really wrong that those stereotypes exist.  So, I found this passion for studying things related to the region and I would really like to become an art historian/restorations person of Middle Eastern art and architecture.  There are so many walls that could be broken down by introducing people of the West to the art.  Art is something that is not threatening, it is inanimate, but still somehow alive.  It’s almost like some process could begin in art to soothe hundreds of years of building stereotypes.  Teach people about art and eventually they will learn about history and then culture and finally one day reach common ground and understanding.  There is something comforting about art, something which speaks to the soul and soothes fears.  Even dark and disturbing art in some way brings people to a common ground there is something people take from it and something that they learn about themselves and the artist.  

But, somehow along the way and primarily after this rape, I’ve lost all track of things.  I still think I care very deeply about learning.  But I am somehow unfocused.  Somehow I just can’t anymore.  It’s like I was broken into thousands of tiny pieces that night and the faceless man absconded into the night with several of them.  Now I stand here fractured and wondering if these pieces are still here to put back together or if there is something entirely different to be made from them.  And if there is something new, what is that something, because I don’t care about anything else.

I just sit here and wonder now if I should have ever left ballet.  Maybe that was the one thing that I was ever any good at and these other things have just been poor substitutes for filling the hole it left behind.  It was the only thing I ever absolutely knew I was good at.  The only thing that ever made sense for me to be doing.  It was 14 years of my life that I will never get back.  I don’t know what I’m doing any more.  I don’t know where I’m going.  And I am never sure of myself like I was when all I was going to do was ballet.  I’ll never be able to go back to that.  And it scares me to think that I may never find a place in my life where I am so sure of what I am doing.  It scares me even more so that a piece of myself went missing on July 18, 2008 and I’m not sure if I’ll ever feel whole again.  I’m not sure I will ever feel my firey passion for learning again.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever find myself or even feel again.

In addition to going to see about medication I am beginning something in counseling called EMDR.  I’m a little scared, but we shall see I suppose.

My friends are by far the greatest people on the face of the planet.  Hands down.  They are consistently supportive no matter what ridiculous thing the world is throwing at me that I am overwhelmed by, no matter how dark and morbid I get, no matter if I am so anxious that I can barely function.  Because quite frankly I am all of those things right now and while it’s concerning it is ok.  So well, thanks, my friends, thanks.  Most of them won’t see this, but it’s like sending out a silent little blip of good energy to each of them.  

I have my own roots in the ground and I am my own tree, but right now my friends are like supports helping me prop myself back up and keeping me from toppling over and becoming completely unrooted.  

I’m still really anxious and in a really weird emotional place, but it’s just a good feeling when you know people are around in the dark with you and they have flashlights so that you can find yours.

I wore a polka dot shirt today… totally unintentional.  I thought about it just now.  I don’t know, I guess I’m not actually the itchy Bill Cosby sweater, but I’m certainly feeling a bit Cosby like.  I guess I’m just really bad at admitting that I need people’s help.  I mean, exceptionally bad at it.  I always feel like I’m being too needy or like I lean on people too much or that I talk/type too much.  I guess most of that is my inability to be very direct.  I kind of yammer on and beat around the bush a lot and sometimes avoid the actual issue at all costs.  I don’t know.  I’m not going to stop blogging in my time of shying away from human contact.  It’s kind of like the one life line still connected to the other side.  Hell, I even facebooked a little bit and responded to a couple emails today.

I did put down my pride of handling everything on my own last night to ask for some help with something. 

I guess I’m just feeling exceptionally vulnerable right now and so it’s hard for me to have people so closely in my bubble even though I really do need people close at the moment.

does anyone really need to hear from one person?  I think maybe I am entirely to communicative.  Period.  Because really who needs to hear the ramblings of a 21 year old half-wit?  How many people really need to know what’s going on?  How many people need an extremely insecure, needy, emotionally unstable person in their life?  No one.  No one needs that.  Some people might think they want that in their life, but they don’t need it.  That’s where I am right now and that is what people don’t need.  I think maybe I should take a hiatus from communication with other people until I’m not that ugly, three sizes too big, Bill Cosby sweater that people got from their Aunt Mae for Christmas four years ago, but feel to guilty to get rid of. 

Blarg… gotta stop being the the ugly sweater.  Sweaters are itchy, suffocating, and no one enjoys them.

Going back to the factory, perhaps I shall come out as a summery polka dot shirt.  Polka dots make people smile, right?  Well, they’re certainly round…

Wow, I make the worst analogies.

I am living a double life.  There’s basically happy-yeah-things-are-great me, that responds to emails, chats online, and occasionally answers the phone for friends.  And then there’s me, who is falling apart at the hinges.  Yesterday the two accidentally merged for a bit… a few people are on to my second life.  I’m no Superman and I can’t pull off Clark Kent despite the black rimmed glasses.

Yup, I’m feeling pretty sure that this is that one thing that I wont bounce back from.  Yesterday, I went to an ER type thing, it wasn’t really an ER but it was very similar.  I thought something was seriously wrong with my heart, but after an EKG and chest x-ray it turns out everything is alright.  Anxiety attack.  I am anxious all of the fucking time.  I’m afraid that people just know, I’m afraid that it’s going to happen again, I’m afraid of everything… mostly I’m afraid of the unknown.  

I know that this is going to sound completely irrational, but… I don’t know what this guy looks like, what if he followed me?  What if he’s here like a coiled snake waiting to strike again?  It had to have been someone who had been in my apartment before, it had to have been someone who was watching.  He knew where things were.  He disconnected my internet which was in a different room, he took my phone which was in a pretty hidden location, and he stole my wallet which was in a completely different spot in my room.  He had to have been there before, watching, planning.  What if he knew I was leaving?  What if he’s here?  

Every time someone walks by my front door, I get an intense surge of fear.  An image of a dark blur with a gun kicking down the door flashes through my mind.  When I go to bed, I hear one of the cats thud on something and I’m up immediately to check the whole apartment over to be absolutely certain no one is there.  I’m still basically sleeping on the floor and I can honestly say that I never want to have a real bed again.  I don’t shut any of the doors in my apartment except for the closet and the front door which I have to check at least 30 times to see if it’s locked.  I also usually check four or five times to make sure the lock also works from the outside.  But, then I worry about if the lock only works if you key it from the outside and what if it’s not really working on the outside when you lock it from the inside.  Which is extreme paranoia, I’m aware, but you’re thinking about that now, aren’t you?  

I’m just scared all of the time.  I’m afraid of it happening again because I don’t know so much.  I go through periods of crying for hours.  For no reason really, usually that’s how I stop crying… because I don’t know why I am.  I don’t want to be around people.  I kind of don’t want to talk to them at all.  I have some internet communication, but even that is starting to annoy me.  I just don’t want to talk to anyone or do anything.  It’s like I’m dead, but alive at the same time.  And this isn’t like me, it’s not my character at all.  I’ve morphed into something else, something that I hate.  Usually I have a lot of personality, I’m that slightly socially awkward, funny, social butterfly, who enjoys being a part of people’s days and trying to make them smile.  That’s just not my personality anymore.  These days I’m the quiet person in the room who secretly hates being there.  I’m overwhelmed by most any human contact and I want to move away somewhere that I will not have to see or deal with anyone else ever again.  Somewhere that I can just silently waste away and die alone and no one will know the difference.  I realize this is a pretty morbid thing to be feeling and talking about, but well, it’s what I’m feeling.  It’s what I want to go away, but won’t.  

But, then there’s this whole other part of me that is completely opposite from a desirable hermit state.  There’s a part of me that sits all alone wishing someone would just call or write or come visit and tell me that everything will be ok and that I can do this.  I keep telling myself, but it’s not really working very well.  Then again it probably won’t work if it’s someone else either… I’ll just get irritated because I know they’re just trying to make me feel better even though I might not ever be ok again.  But this whole other part of me craves human contact and needs it.  Needs a good friend and a glass of water and just needs to cry with someone else.  I need a hug and I need to cry with someone.  That’s the other part.  But, that won’t happen.  I don’t know anyone here and really have no desire to be the really weird girl that someone just met who really needs a hug.  And I rarely ever cry in front of even my closest friends.  Furthermore, the growing side of me that resembles a reclusive troglodytic is far bigger and far more present than the little girl part that wants to curl up and cry with someone.  Even though no matter how small that little girl gets, I know she will always be there… lost somewhere in the dark.  

I wonder who won the poll.  The one on how many things I could handle in life before I fell down and couldn’t get back up.  Whoever won better split the fucking winnings with me.  House rules.