Somewhere far away

This place is strange, where I've been since October. It terrifies my mother who made me promise to give her number to my girlfriend across the hall. My best friend worries, I suspect she barely recognizes me. I came to this place when I realized I needed to accept what was happening to me. I gave in to the demands of my body and mind to rest and retreat. I let go of all my striving and desires and ambitions. U stopped caring about everything and let myself be depressed. I accepted that I was failing and that it no longer mattered. A massive step.

As I sank into this odd state I became regaled with every memory of everything I've ever done wrong in my life. I felt shame and guilt for 4 months solid. With every waking breath I was forced to look at myself and all my flaws. Completely naked. It was brutal. Horrifying to see all your ugliness. Every dark corner of my soul aired itself out. This happened quite against my will and wishes, but I couldn't stop it. That's partly why I felt I was losing my mind.

In this basin of torment, wrestling with these things, every other part of myself seemed to have disappeared. No personality trait survived such a beating. That was in December when I felt utterly decimated, like a ghost. I could barely have conversations with people because my mind was exhausted and blank. Still I continued on with getting out of bed and showering and feeding myself and answering the phone when it rang. I didn't bother with anything more than that.

This place felt absolutely barren of anything but the torture. Except that the last few weeks I had glimpses of the fruit growing here because the guilt eased up tremendously. I couldn't grasp what it was nor did I believe these fruits were real. Tonight I can see that this dark place is an orchard. If I can get through this business, it will mean that I have healed the broken parts of my soul.

Stripped bare without my work and successes, I found that I had no foundation for my self-worth. It was all built on my achievements. The lack of any such thing has brought me down the last two years. But now that I don't care about those things anymore...now I can learn to love myself for real. Pure and unencumbered. To love myself the way God does. What my parents didn't give me, I may find on my own. How to do that is the question.

Because people still love me even like this, a useless human waste of space. How do they still love me? I'm trying to answer that question and trying to see in me what they see. This is hard. But if I manage it, I will be set for life in terms of survival skills. I already have more confidence now in some ways. I discovered that today when I overheard some older female professors talking about me. It didn't hurt me. I was disgusted but it didn't make me feel bad. In September, I got a B+ on a paper and it depressed me for weeks. With no solid core to my being I've been frail. That left me vulnerable, needy and insecure. That doomed all my romantic relationships to fail.

I'm also teaching very differently since the acceptance. I'm not afraid to let my personality show through. Which means that it's still there. And having a bad day at work doesn't hurt me now. I can shrug it off but before it would cut me down because it meant I wasn't good. Hitting the bottom has given me the freedom of the damned; with nothing to lose then nothing matters. Assume everyone hates you and that you are a complete failure and it gives you carte blanche. And then, you get to prove yourself wrong. Going naked through the world has shown me that I can teach, students like me well enough and colleagues respect me enough. But I don't even care. It doesn't reach me out here.

huh, I just recalled telling my therapist about a year ago that I wished I could go to emotional bootcamp where I could get everything readjusted to healthy behaviors. Where I could learn how to be a happy person and unlearn the unhappiness I inherited from my family. That may be too much to ask, but I am rebuilding with major improvements.

Be very careful what you wish for my friends. While I'm at it, never pray for humility either. That's a whole separate post about what came from the misbegotten prayer. It was answered.

This horror my life has become may be the most incredible gift ever. How often do we get a chance to rebuild ourselves from the ground up? Realizing this now takes my breath away. God must love me more than I can ever fathom.

midnight babbling

It's a sleepless night in the celibate house. Probably due to the bag of Doritos I had for dinner. Not my best choice. I had a bad day. Which is too bad because last week was all right. I'm on the 3rd round of antibiotics for my UTIwhatever problem. I had the ultrasound last Thursday but I won't get the results until March 11. That was the soonest appointment at the clinic. Meanwhile, the kidney stones or whatever get to ravage my tu track for 3 more weeks. And that appointment is only to hear the results, I'm sure I'll have to make another one to have something done about it. Hopefully I'll be sent somewhere else so I won't have to wait so long.

They offered me 3 classes to teach in the fall in Long Island. I had decided not to do it after the day when it took me 5 hours to get home because I missed the first train by 30 seconds and the nest train after it wasn't stopped long enough for me to get inside before it took off. But now I don't know. My pops thinks I should stay there because I'm building a career. But it's so obviously not a good idea. It costs me 160 a month to commute out there--not including the occasional $50 cab ride required on the days when I miss my train out of Penn Station. That's already happened once this semester. And this school pays only 2,300 per class instead of the 2.700 I can expect from schools in the city. Yes, you read that number correctly. 2,300 per section per semester. So teaching 3 classes in the fall would be a whopping 6,900.

This is all foolishness. I need friggin health insurance. I need to pay my credit cards. I'm fed up with the poverty. Of course, even if I got health insurance this summer then whatever is wrong with me now won't be covered as it will be a pre-existing condition. I'm just so over this nonsense.

On a sidenote, one kind soul in the D.C. area is making me mixed cds. Hooray! As I told him a new CD is like Christmas in the celibate house. Thank you again. I have to get up in 5 hours then drag myself 3 hours to boohooville. Yeah. The reasoning behind that choice seems very faraway and foreign to me now. Good night.

Post- Blizzard 06 report

Here's a quick update on my health. I'm sorry to have given some of you a scare. I'm going to be ok. Today I had the ultrasound. I tried to get it done on Tuesday but when I got there they told I was supposed to be fasting. The facility was filthy by the way. It looked like that hadn't cleaned the waiting room in weeks. It was unpleasant but didn't take too long and could have been worse. I didn't even have to strip. But I was alone with the technician in the room and that made me nervous. I thought a third person was always supposed to be present in those types of situations. He didn't tell me anything other than to call me doctor in 4 days.

Meanwhile, my 3 days of antibiotics are over and I felt better until yesterday afternoon. I started feeling sick again before teaching my second class of the day. I had cancelled classes last Friday and Monday due to my feeling so bad. Tuesday and Wednesday morning I felt much better. But by that afternoon I had to sit while lecturing which is not as effective. I also let the class out early. I've noticed that my mental acuity fades when the fever swells. I felt so weak I even paid for a cab ride to the train station from the campus. It's a 2 mile walk but I usually hike it. I knew I'd miss my train if I tried.

lucky for me though I found I have a prescription for more antibiotics. The doctor wrote me the scrip then gave me free samples instead. I meant to get it filled tonight since I'm feeling so crappy but I put it off until it was too late and all the pharmacies are closed--one of the many disadvantages of not living in the city where there are 24 hour pharmacies. Of course, I could take a bus into Manhattan and find one of the drug stores but, ugh, I'm too tired. I have to go in tomorrow to teach my double class, it's 2 1/2 hours long so I'll get the meds then. I can't cancel again since I did last week. This being sick thing sucks. At least I don't have to blame my mental state for this one though.

Tonight I emailed two long-lost friends. I'm very proud of myself. I'd let them both go last year as I let everything in my life go. I wrote apologies and explanations to both of them. I have a long list of people I need to email similar letters to. I'm haunted by the people I've lost.

The Blizzard of 06 was amazing and beautiful! I loved it. I didn't have to shovel any of it of course nor dig out my car or navigate through 2 feet of snow on the road. I've never seen so much snow in my life. Which was very exciting. It started snowing Saturday afternoon while I sojourned to the health clinic and didn't stop until late Sunday afternoon. The snow plow came down our street three times during the night while I was still awake.

Sadly, today it is all melting because it is something like 60 degrees outside! I guess it's good it won't get dirty and ugly. I was disappointed there were no snowmen. Some of the drifts after the shoveling were 4 feet high. I wanted to make a snowman and might have if I'd felt better. I also wish I'd felt well enough to go to Central Park. I always like to see the snow there. I don't think I'll ever get used to the snow.

Valentine's Day was anti-climatic. I ate ice cream and watched TV. Last year at this time I had two men calling me for dates and one man I was dating. He didn't call me on V-Day because he was angry and punishing me though I had no idea. Mature, huh? But I did buy myself some roses this year. I had decided to be my own Valentine. The roses are an unusual color, rust on the inside and cream on the outside. Very Victorian looking. Surprisingly, my ghetto cat hasn't eaten them yet. Well, my deceased cat was the one who always ate my flowers, but this one likes to knock them over and shred them for fun. She started to mess with them but I yelled and she desisted. She has a new game of climbing my clothes drying rack like a jungle gym and that has kept her occupied.

It's hard for me to write because my the sickness makes me feel weird, like I can only think one sentence at a time. So that's all for tonight. I'll keep y'all updated on the state of my kidneys. My father has agreed to finance any necessary procedures, that's good because he's the money bags of the family. Good night. Thank you for all your concern.

A beginning

I have not made peace with time. She has haunted my life like an overbearing mother, one whom I spent 30 years trying to defy, manipulate and disown. Because she made me feel a stranger here: Time, the arbitrary and cruel mother, I, the rejected child. Yet, the whole world moves in accord with Time, myself excluded. So my greatest fear is permanently slipping out of time, unnoticed and forgotten like the lost toy a child never wanted in the first place.

Such animosity is not as bizarre as it may seem. Time and her devices torture humanity. We strap these things to our bodies and fill our homes with counting machines. We spend our days chronically fixated on 'the time'. And forever wanting to "be 'on time'". I, too, have spent half my days attempting to fit my maladjusted self into the measured minutes and hours of civilized society. Dutifully, I tried to discern how many units it would take to get there, to do this and to finish that. But I could never manage it. I always got the amounts wrong. Because no two minutes are exactly alike. They are not the same! Otherwise one could explain how it only took 30 minutes for me to leave my house yesterday morning but today it took 48? There is no explanation for this anomaly, hence my enmity with time.

The war began long ago, likely declared in the womb. I was born one month early. Not by my own design however, the doctors did it because we were twins. So I entered the universe too early and since then have been too late for everything else.

This war with time has cost me. I never knew how expensive it would be.

***I've been reading a lot of novels lately. It's part of this new relaxing thing I'm trying. And because of my twice a week 6 hour commute. But I had to put a novel down tonight because the whole first chapter was the day in the life of a woman with lots of friends, four smart kids and a goodlooking husband. Yuck. The point is that many of the books I have read in the last few months weren't great. And they're giving me an itch to do something that's better. So I'm letting the idea of writing a book mill around my mind. I even came up with a whole scenario for a fantasy novel--my trashy genre of choice. But I'm just not in the mood for it.

After putting down the offensive novel about the happy woman I picked up Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut. I was so impressed with his voicing. It's always distinctive and authentic. Far superior to most everything else out there. While pausing my reading to consider the genius of Vonnegut I was inspired with a beginning of my own. The above few graphs are what I came up with. Please keep in mind that it is after 1 am and I am on antibiotics and prescription pain meds for my kidney infection and/or stones and/or structural problem--diagnosis pending the ultrasound.* Also, it still needs working. But, from the glow of my pooter screen and the snowy streetlight outside, I'm fairly pleased with what I wrote. That will all change tomorrow but so be it and good night lovely readers.

Wow, it just lightninged and thundered amidst the snow. The flakes are all glommed up onto my window screen so I can barely see out of the bottom pane. Cool. This is supposed to be a big blizzard.

*I walked back to the nasty clinic this afternoon but I took a Ritalin first so I would have greater impulse control and not leave before it was my turn again like I did yesterday. It was better in there today with fewer people. I saw a doctor and peed in a cup. I need more tests but he gave me drug samples. Then I walked home in the snow because the clinic cost me all my cash. But that's ok because I like snow.

Don't read this

In less than 30 days I will be 30 years old. I have tried to prepare myself for this since the reality of passing time hit me in the face with my 29th birthday. This year didn't go the way I had hoped. It was supposed to be my big bang say goodbye to my youth year. Instead, it was my descent into acquiescent death.

I gave up. I lost the fight with myself and my ailing body. My heart broke twice over as my body struggled with withdrawal from 6 years of Xanax addiction. Now I'm trying to taper off the antidepressants I've eaten for a decade. Next month I'll be a 30 year old who wants nothing but to disappear. I ran my life into the ground, I can't salvage it. Because I don't care enough to bother. My passion is gone. Hope left me the day I spent an hour crying in my shrink's bathroom hoping someone would commit me. When they didn't I came home and cried myself to sleep after screaming and raging through my apartment.

I wasn't depressed last year. Not until after that day when I gave up. I had chronic anxiety and exhaustion, but they still told me I was depressed. Eventually my moods became unstable and my thoughts irrational but not depressed. I tried to tell them that. I wasn't sad all the time, I was hopeful, I didn't hate myself, I wanted to succeeed. But now all that is gone. Now I am depressed. Which disgusts and bores me. This is why I haven't been blogging. I have no interest in anything I have to say. It's all the same: boo hoo, poor me, I hate my life. Disgusting.

What now? I could eat myself fat. But I really can't afford to do that. It does have advantages though, then I could justify giving up on a love life. Wouldn't it be easier to stay home because I know I'm unattractive than it is to stay home because I know I can't get hurt again? Because I can't get over the last one? And because I can't figure out how to fix what's wrong with me? I want to buy a car and drive and drive and drive forever. Or maybe stop driving in a new city where I can find a new career and a real job that will pay my bills. Some dumb job where I just have to show up everyday and follow directions. Then I can go home and disappear in oblivion until work the next day. That's what I want. But I'm committed to teaching 3 classes until the end of this semester. That's through mid-may. I've taken a leave of absence or withdrawn or something from my phd program because I want it all to go to hell.

I have a bladder infection. I got this two weeks after I got over my kidney infection or kidney stone or whatever the crap it was that made me feel like I'd been run over by a truck, which caused me to spend January lying in bed. Today I spent two hours trying to get antibiotics at the local clinic. But I walked out when I couldn't take being there anymore. There were screaming sick babies and spanish novellas on the tv and uncomfortable chairs and fluorescent lights and I felt feverish. No one there spoke English. 4 people were served in 90 minutes and I still had 2 people to go before it was my turn. So I walked out. Foolish of me. I didn't want to walk the mile home in my weakened condition so I paid 5 bucks for a cab ride.

Since then I've been eating chocolate and watching garbage on tv. This is not a life. I am a waste of flesh and space. But I'm too tired to move. I'm beyond lonely and bored. I haven't been this unhappy since 1996. And that was different because I still had my future. I knew things would change. But this is it now. This is my wasteful hateful disgusting life. I'm ashamed of everything I've ever done. I'm ashamed of how I live now. I'm envious of the horrible characters parading on the tv because they aren't alone. What am I supposed to do now? I am the cat lady. I hide in my house and watch tv all day. It's despicable. I suspect much of this is the result of cutting down to 150 mg of Wellbutrin last month. Until I got the kidney infection/or stone cutting my meds made me feel better. My shrink didn't return my phone call in January so I consider our relationship terminated. She did tell me I was too depressed for therapy and beyond the help of medication so that means she has nothing to offer me anyway.

I need help. But I can't even get some freaking anti-biotics. Maybe I'll just leave it alone. In a few weeks the infection should spread from my bladder to my kidneys and then maybe I'll have renal failure. My father asked me what I was going to do for my 30th birthday--it was his bimonthly phone call. I told him I wanted to throw myself in the river. He laughed.

It will snow tomorrow. That will be nice.

***Today I find myself wondering if I've had this infection since last year. Last fall I got exhausted like this. I told my shrink that I didn't feel depressed but I was just too tired to do anything. Living in Brooklyn was when I started having to pee constantly. TMI, I know.