I have been trying to figure out when I have switched personalities, what triggers them, why they come, how long they stay, and who might have seen them. Stress and fear trigger them. I know that the one I have been coconscious with always, Mikey, comes out for fun, but also when my body wants certain things, sexual things that I don’t need to discuss here. Mikey knows how to be there and still let me do the talking, so he is perhaps sucking my thumb, or curling up in a corner crying, or just losing it in laughter over things that are only marginally funny. He laughs a lot over silly things because he has the sense of humor of an 8 year old boy. Mikey talks like a much younger child because he has speech issues. But when I ride roller coasters, he laughs and laughs, he loves them. He turns his head and rides as if he is going backwards. He is the only one with enough guts to ride Splash Mountain. He can take the drop that I am terrified of. Mikey also comes out when I am completely comfortable, snuggled under a blanket, warm and safe, because this safety is something he loves. Some of you may have been around when Mikey is out and just thought I was screwing around talking like a baby. Or you may have ridden a roller coaster with me and heard me laugh and laugh, that’s Mikey.
I have another alter named Annette. She is triggered by stress. I guess I really don’t know what the trigger is so much as when she shows herself. Annette usually does my job interviews. She is the one who has interviewed me into jobs I am not really qualified for and that I have had to scramble to learn quickly. Annette is very self-assured, confident, put together. Annette really only comes up in job interviews or situations where she feels the need to show a very well adjusted, strong, confident woman. I know very little about her. I seldom am conscious of what she does or says, so I often have no idea what happened in job interviews. Annette also often takes exams for me when, and only when, I am completely nervous about them. She often takes over as I am about to speak in public, but she lets me do the public speaking, she just takes over as I wait for my turn.
Sian Barbara is the one who flirts. She flirts shamelessly. She flirts with men when I am drunk. She flirts with women when I am completely sober. She doesn’t actually show up much. She is very quiet for the most part.
MJ is a male alter full of anger and hate for those who have hurt me. He knows turns all of that hurt in on me. He cuts me, scratches me, basically self mutilates. MJ has road rage, and many of you have seen or heard him. He is often one to get out of the car and threaten people who get him angry when I am driving. He does things to me to try to let out the pain that I cannot stand to feel, but long to feel.
Patty is an alter who I know of, have seen in my mind very clearly, but she will not speak. Mikey has told me that she knows all of the math I was supposed to learn from 2nd to 4th grade. This explains why word problems puzzle me so; I should have been learning them then.
Reeny is Mikey’s twin. She stutters. I have no idea what triggers her or why or what triggers her. She will often show up just enough to make me stutter, then goes back deep inside. Excitement makes her stutter I think.
Gregory is around 17 or 18 and is able to drive. He is very laid back. He takes over when I suddenly realize I am behind the wheel of the car and have no clue where I am I or where I am going. I don’t know what triggers him. He’s hard to tell from me I think. I am not sure.
And the only other alter I am aware of is Jolene. I just found her by accident. She is a 50ish southern lady. She defends me, not afraid to get up in someone’s face.
That is all of the ones I know about now, but apparently, according to the number of people in my head trying to talk to me.
I know you don’t all believe me, and that is ok. I would like to say that being as most of these alters have been with me for years, protecting me, they are all adept at acting like me when need be. They answer to my name. They act like me, or switch back so that they are not known.
I have not been switching at all for the last couple of weeks. I am able to be coconscious with them now for the most part, but sometimes I still lose time occasionally. I was at Disneyland and lost pieces of the day, but the people I was with said I didn’t do anything crazy, just cracked up on coasters and a few other things. I think that the med they gave me to try to quiet them is working. They will come forward if asked. I am able to be aware that they are out. My therapist has brought these alters out and introduced me to them to me.
I still think that you are all confused, or angry, or disbelieving, so am I. I don’t know what to think. I am don’t know anything about this stuff other than DID people lose time, usually big chunks of time, I misses math and I lost moments, hours, never whole days or longer. I don’t want to be this way. But I dissociate most often in therapy sessions because any time we get to a subject I can’t handle talking about, one of them does it for me.
Some of you who believe, have seen, or are concerned want to know what to do if you encounter an alter. Establish who they are, ask, and then use their name if it doesn’t bother you to do so. I am told it is best to acknowledge who they are and make them feel safe. I am indeed trying to keep them inside in front of other people because I know that my friends don’t want to hear about it, see it, or know it.
I am very freaked out buy the whole thing. It explains some things for me, like feeling I am standing outside myself, doing or saying thing I would never do. It’s weird that they have conversations with each other. It’s weird to know there are others in there I haven’t met yet.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
learning, teaching spark, and handle!
I am sure now that I am going to apply for grad school back at CSUDH where I got my BA. I am going to go for the rhetoric and composition degree. I base this on conversations with my old professor, family, friends, and lastly on an article someone posted a link to that said basically no one can teach one to write creatively. I am a writer, a creative writer, a liar if you will, creating make believe and putting complex feelings into the shortest most vivid images possible. I can go to a creative writing program, where they will fill my head with different formats for poems, and suggest ways out of writers block, but mostly I would be put in a workshop with other people who think they can write, and probably they can, and we would all tear each other’s writing apart, or be too polite to say anything constructive at all. Workshops only work if the people in them are equally talented and are willing to both build up and tear down. Workshops don’t really work. I did the workshop thing as an undergrad, bleh! I learned more from reading other people’s work, published people, than I ever learned from some person randomly assigned to me in a group who has a writing style completely different from my own. I learned more in community college creative writing by keeping a journal than I learned from the teacher. Keeping a journal made me aware that I can spend hours writing alone in a room. Being able to write alone in a room for 8 hours or more at a time is when you make writing an actual job. I write every day. I don’t write because I want to, I write because I must. There are too many ideas in my head and not enough hours in the day to put them all into words on a page (or screen.)
So I know I can write creatively, but I also know I can write critically. I did it to get my BA and I did it with honors. I started looking beyond literal meanings of words and stories in the sixth grade when a student teacher taught us Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and made sure we knew that it was not a book about birds, but about people. It was not a novel as much as it was a philosophy. Richard Bach is often touted as a novelist, but his writings are philosophical and spiritual, and when looked at that way they become much more interesting. I digress. I know I can “lie” and make up stories. I know I can compress complex emotion into the simplest terms in my poetry. I know I can write critically. I am so very sure I can teach people to look past the literal meanings see of all the possibilities. I think one thing I want to teach is that it isn’t always what it means, but what it means to you that matters. No one really knows what an author or poet was thinking when she wrote something unless we are in her head, or we get to interview her. But then there is symbolism, and isn’t that fascinating, or motifs, and all of that other cool stuff that goes with critical reading.
I cannot believe I cannot begin to explain how excited I am to be getting back to school. I am excited at real challenges. Honestly I am not sure creative writing would have been the same kind of intellectual challenge for me. I plan to buy and read books on poetry writing, and to read other people’s short fiction, and creative non-fiction so that I can see for myself what is good, what isn’t, what fits my style, what doesn’t, where my talents lie, and where I fall short. In other words I plan to still get what education I can on how to creatively write on my own. I’m so freaking excited at the idea of classes and class discussions and arguments, not disagreements, arguments in the sense of debate.
Learning is so exciting! Why in the hell can’t I just make a living learning? But alas the closest I can get is teaching. I hope that in teaching I get to learn from my student’s ideas, their viewpoints, what they see and feel when they read. I hope that I have the talent and skills to pull these things from their heads. I really believe what Richard Bach says when he says, “Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others they know it as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers.” He also says, “No one forces you to learn. You learn when you want to.” Teaching isn’t filling up an empty vessel it is pulling from the vessel what it doesn’t even know it contains. It is like everything they need to know is already in their heads, not the literature, but the insights, the ideas, the passion is in there simply waiting to be found and pulled out into the light. Seeing the light come on in a person’s face when she gets something for the first time, makes a connection to some concept she already knew, or sees something from a different point of view, a spectacular point of view where it had been a mundane view before, that is what makes teaching the most awesome thing in the world. Teaching isn’t teaching, it is making lights come on, it’s making connections, it is showing a new way to stack the blocks, arrange the letters, see, feel, smell, taste the world.
Right this moment I am seeing hope, seeing a future, feeling good. I don’t want to stop writing. I don’t want to go to sleep. I don’t want to lose this. Tomorrow the darkness may be there again and nothing will make sense and voices will be telling me I’m stupid, or trying to remind of every time I ever embarrassed myself. Tomorrow I may be falling into the damn rabbit hole that is my insanity again. I don’t want to be crazy. I didn’t ask for this. If getting excited about learning and teaching can keep the black beast out of my damn head, then I need to focus on that excitement! Somehow I need that focus, that energy, that spark. I want more of what I have written here tonight. I have been writing all day, and I feel fantastic. I need to read. I need to reread Illusions, so inspiring me.
I wonder if college students would be interested in Richard Bach. I wonder if they would find the same inspirations, the same excitements I found on my first, second and fiftieth readings. There is so much in his writing to be inspired by. But then there is Salinger, and Lee, and so many other wonderful authors to find mysteries, inspirations, and insights in. I know I cannot teach Bach and only Bach, although I am sure I could write a paper on Jonathan Livingston Seagull that would actually be longer than the book is. There is so much in there. And Illusions, and the Messiah’s Handbook, companion piece to Illusions, I would never be finished teaching that book. I find new insights into life and into writing, and into spirituality every time I go back to those old friends. I put quotes from the Messiah’s Handbook on my Facebook every day, sometimes more than one a day.
Ah crap, I’m already losing the feeling. I am losing the flame the fire, the excitement already. NO, I will NOT lose this feeling. If I have to write it as a poem I will keep the fire. Teaching is an awesome thing. Teaching brings life and light to minds wandering in darkness, and the coolest part is they don’t know they are in the darkness. They don’t know until they read these books we assign, and we discuss them, and they find they do know the answers. I want to be able to move the desks in a circle every class so that there are no front or back rows. Everyone is part of the circle. I want every student to know that no idea is a bad or wrong idea. Insights can’t be right or wrong. Some insights might be off the mark in some people’s thinking, but right on for others, and all a student has to do to show off their insight is to show the rest of us in the text where they see what they see. If an idea can be supported by the text, if a student can make the argument with support, then it is a valid point, a true insight. That is where the lights come on.
I will soon be back in an atmosphere of learning. And soon after that I will be the one at the front of the room telling people to pull their desks into a circle. Soon I will be where I want to be, that is my future and that is where I will find my “handle” to hold on to, keeping me sane. I will hold on to learning, teaching and writing. I cannot die yet, I haven’t written all of my best stuff yet.
I am writing these entries to this blog in hopes that I can begin to know myself better, but also to let my friends know me. Funny how it seems the people I would most like to read my blog probably aren’t reading it anyway.
I have tried to let go, let my alters out to write, to see if they can write, if they write like me or totally differently. But I have also been put on a medication that is stifling them. Now this was the plan, quiet the cacophony in my head, keep the alters where I could be in control of the body and choose when they come and go. So far I have kept them out of my friend’s hair because it has been made clear to me that I am not believed. It has been made clear to me that I am not to allow them to contact my friends. But I am feeling stifled a bit too much. I need to let them out some time. I want to know them, know who I am talking to. Cindie seems to be able to pull them forward and I cannot.
Ok, it is time to try my hand at a little poetry. I haven’t written anything new in a few days. Some of what I write is such shit that it never makes it to the “save as” button, lol.
So I know I can write creatively, but I also know I can write critically. I did it to get my BA and I did it with honors. I started looking beyond literal meanings of words and stories in the sixth grade when a student teacher taught us Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and made sure we knew that it was not a book about birds, but about people. It was not a novel as much as it was a philosophy. Richard Bach is often touted as a novelist, but his writings are philosophical and spiritual, and when looked at that way they become much more interesting. I digress. I know I can “lie” and make up stories. I know I can compress complex emotion into the simplest terms in my poetry. I know I can write critically. I am so very sure I can teach people to look past the literal meanings see of all the possibilities. I think one thing I want to teach is that it isn’t always what it means, but what it means to you that matters. No one really knows what an author or poet was thinking when she wrote something unless we are in her head, or we get to interview her. But then there is symbolism, and isn’t that fascinating, or motifs, and all of that other cool stuff that goes with critical reading.
I cannot believe I cannot begin to explain how excited I am to be getting back to school. I am excited at real challenges. Honestly I am not sure creative writing would have been the same kind of intellectual challenge for me. I plan to buy and read books on poetry writing, and to read other people’s short fiction, and creative non-fiction so that I can see for myself what is good, what isn’t, what fits my style, what doesn’t, where my talents lie, and where I fall short. In other words I plan to still get what education I can on how to creatively write on my own. I’m so freaking excited at the idea of classes and class discussions and arguments, not disagreements, arguments in the sense of debate.
Learning is so exciting! Why in the hell can’t I just make a living learning? But alas the closest I can get is teaching. I hope that in teaching I get to learn from my student’s ideas, their viewpoints, what they see and feel when they read. I hope that I have the talent and skills to pull these things from their heads. I really believe what Richard Bach says when he says, “Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others they know it as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers.” He also says, “No one forces you to learn. You learn when you want to.” Teaching isn’t filling up an empty vessel it is pulling from the vessel what it doesn’t even know it contains. It is like everything they need to know is already in their heads, not the literature, but the insights, the ideas, the passion is in there simply waiting to be found and pulled out into the light. Seeing the light come on in a person’s face when she gets something for the first time, makes a connection to some concept she already knew, or sees something from a different point of view, a spectacular point of view where it had been a mundane view before, that is what makes teaching the most awesome thing in the world. Teaching isn’t teaching, it is making lights come on, it’s making connections, it is showing a new way to stack the blocks, arrange the letters, see, feel, smell, taste the world.
Right this moment I am seeing hope, seeing a future, feeling good. I don’t want to stop writing. I don’t want to go to sleep. I don’t want to lose this. Tomorrow the darkness may be there again and nothing will make sense and voices will be telling me I’m stupid, or trying to remind of every time I ever embarrassed myself. Tomorrow I may be falling into the damn rabbit hole that is my insanity again. I don’t want to be crazy. I didn’t ask for this. If getting excited about learning and teaching can keep the black beast out of my damn head, then I need to focus on that excitement! Somehow I need that focus, that energy, that spark. I want more of what I have written here tonight. I have been writing all day, and I feel fantastic. I need to read. I need to reread Illusions, so inspiring me.
I wonder if college students would be interested in Richard Bach. I wonder if they would find the same inspirations, the same excitements I found on my first, second and fiftieth readings. There is so much in his writing to be inspired by. But then there is Salinger, and Lee, and so many other wonderful authors to find mysteries, inspirations, and insights in. I know I cannot teach Bach and only Bach, although I am sure I could write a paper on Jonathan Livingston Seagull that would actually be longer than the book is. There is so much in there. And Illusions, and the Messiah’s Handbook, companion piece to Illusions, I would never be finished teaching that book. I find new insights into life and into writing, and into spirituality every time I go back to those old friends. I put quotes from the Messiah’s Handbook on my Facebook every day, sometimes more than one a day.
Ah crap, I’m already losing the feeling. I am losing the flame the fire, the excitement already. NO, I will NOT lose this feeling. If I have to write it as a poem I will keep the fire. Teaching is an awesome thing. Teaching brings life and light to minds wandering in darkness, and the coolest part is they don’t know they are in the darkness. They don’t know until they read these books we assign, and we discuss them, and they find they do know the answers. I want to be able to move the desks in a circle every class so that there are no front or back rows. Everyone is part of the circle. I want every student to know that no idea is a bad or wrong idea. Insights can’t be right or wrong. Some insights might be off the mark in some people’s thinking, but right on for others, and all a student has to do to show off their insight is to show the rest of us in the text where they see what they see. If an idea can be supported by the text, if a student can make the argument with support, then it is a valid point, a true insight. That is where the lights come on.
I will soon be back in an atmosphere of learning. And soon after that I will be the one at the front of the room telling people to pull their desks into a circle. Soon I will be where I want to be, that is my future and that is where I will find my “handle” to hold on to, keeping me sane. I will hold on to learning, teaching and writing. I cannot die yet, I haven’t written all of my best stuff yet.
I am writing these entries to this blog in hopes that I can begin to know myself better, but also to let my friends know me. Funny how it seems the people I would most like to read my blog probably aren’t reading it anyway.
I have tried to let go, let my alters out to write, to see if they can write, if they write like me or totally differently. But I have also been put on a medication that is stifling them. Now this was the plan, quiet the cacophony in my head, keep the alters where I could be in control of the body and choose when they come and go. So far I have kept them out of my friend’s hair because it has been made clear to me that I am not believed. It has been made clear to me that I am not to allow them to contact my friends. But I am feeling stifled a bit too much. I need to let them out some time. I want to know them, know who I am talking to. Cindie seems to be able to pull them forward and I cannot.
Ok, it is time to try my hand at a little poetry. I haven’t written anything new in a few days. Some of what I write is such shit that it never makes it to the “save as” button, lol.
Monday, February 15, 2010
I Remember Papa
I remember Papa…
Warm Sunday afternoons,
Watching baseball on TV,
Me watching him.
Window full of sun,
Dust dancing on air,
Vin Scully’s voice droning on,
“It’s a beautiful day here at
Dodger Stadium…”
The game plays on.
I remember Pap’s lap…
Warm, Wide,
Safe at homeplate!
Yawning, I drift into the voice
and the sun,
Sleeping in the safety I feel there.
Waking on the sofa,
Sweaty, thumb in my mouth,
Pillow wet with drool,
Papa, did we win?
He was always there at waking.
Sun slanting lower in the window,
I remember Papa
On warm Sunday afternoons.
Warm Sunday afternoons,
Watching baseball on TV,
Me watching him.
Window full of sun,
Dust dancing on air,
Vin Scully’s voice droning on,
“It’s a beautiful day here at
Dodger Stadium…”
The game plays on.
I remember Pap’s lap…
Warm, Wide,
Safe at homeplate!
Yawning, I drift into the voice
and the sun,
Sleeping in the safety I feel there.
Waking on the sofa,
Sweaty, thumb in my mouth,
Pillow wet with drool,
Papa, did we win?
He was always there at waking.
Sun slanting lower in the window,
I remember Papa
On warm Sunday afternoons.
Just another Monday Stuck in bed
Today I got a great message from an old friend. She is also in recovery of a mental health issue. It gives me someone I can talk to who understands the viewpoint of one whose vision is distorted by mental health stuff. We really do see the world differently.
I know that I see the world through a glass that alternates between everything looking rosier than it is to everything being just awful. I know I have a lot of negativity, and that the negativity is what I generally show people, but it isn’t all of who I am or how I see the world.
For instance, love, I believe in it no matter how many times I try and fail. I believe that there is indeed someone out there who will love me for me and treat me the way I long to be treated without having to ask her to do it. I believe in the basic goodness of people. I believe that people want to connect, to love, to help one another. I think that some people think they are helping when they say things, and sometimes they unintentionally hurt.
I try not to hurt people, but sometimes I do. I am not always the person who is doing the hurting. My alters do a lot of things I wouldn’t do. I am not trying to escape responsibility for my mistakes, just explain that I never intentionally hurt people. I shouldn’t say never, I should say seldom.
So if you have been reading my blog and following what I have been considering, you should know that just because the dumbass county doctor sent me home, it does not mean that the darkness in my mind is any better. I have held myself together for two weeks while my nephew was here to avoid making his leave at home a crappy one. But I am still feeling like lights out would be better for everyone. I am tired of being the reason my family is torn up, or at least tired of being made to feel that way. I am trying to find a new thing to hold on to because my worry about hurting people by dying isn’t really helping anymore. I survived my brother’s suicide, others would recover from mine. So now I am holding on to this, I still have a lot of poetry in me. I still have a lot to say to the world. I still have a lot of writing to do. Maybe knowing I have not finished my mission here on Earth yet will keep me going.
I know I have laid out a lot of memories in this blog, but I have not talked about the holes in my memory. I have almost no memory of life before my parent’s divorced, just tiny bits and pieces and in most of them I am alone. I have a few bad memories, and a few good ones. One good memory stems from falling off a bike. My arm hurt like hell. I fell asleep on my father’s lap, crying. When I woke up he was trying to gently put me in the back seat of the car to take me to get an x-ray of my arm. My arm wasn’t hurting anymore. We went back in the house. He made me something to eat, got me clean clothes, and was very nurturing. I think the memories of being taken care of like that are awesome, but still there are more holes than memories in my life before the divorce.
I also lost time in school a lot. Teachers would think I was day dreaming and do things, like smack the back of my head, to get me to come back. I don’t know where I was. I only know that when I was there we were doing one subject, and when I was smacked awake, we were doing something different. But that isn’t really typical of my lost time. More often than not I would just come back to myself and have to fake it until I figured out where I was and what was going on. This has gone on for years; as recently as a few weeks ago. I still lose time, but now I know why and I don’t really try to cover. I just ask people what’s going on, what did I miss.
I fought the diagnosis of DID for about 20 years because most people lose big chunks of time, have had people notice their changes, and other things I haven’t had, but I do dissociate in therapy sessions. I also dissociate in certain social situations and become either very chatty or very quiet. I lose time in minutes or hours, not days and years. But if you factor in that I remember almost nothing until age 8, then I have indeed lost a large or several large chunks of time. I think people have seen me switch and not known that is what I was doing. My switches can mimic mood swings. I also fall into a character that is Southern and my friends will think I am just playing around. Here’s the deal, for a few years now I have believed I might be DID, but I haven’t wanted to be, so I don’t talk about it. I know; I talk about everything right? Wrong. There is so much people don’t know about me at all. I have started to be somewhat coconscious with a few of my alters, like I am standing outside myself watching these people doing things in my place. I have NEVER talked about this with anyone as might well imagine. People would think I was crazy of course. Well it turns out that I am indeed crazy.
I want to get back to what it is that keeps me holding on to this world, my writing, and my mind. I am going to get a masters degree. I was going to go for a creative writing degree, but now the composition and rhetoric. I was looking at private institutions rather than a CSU. Well now CSUDH is a possibility. They offer the advanced degree in comp and rhetoric and they have on campus housing. Given enough student loan money, I could afford to live on campus and get myself out of this living situation. My mom could stop having to sleep on the sofa. I can teach English at a community college with the masters. I may still find a way to pursue creative writing, but I think I am going for more safety than creative writing, or at least the possibility is on the table. I really want to do the creative writing thing. You know, do what you love, and the money will follow. But an old professor of mine, a mentor and voice of clarity for me in my semesters at CSUDH suggested this other route. Richard Bach says, “Shop for security at the price of happiness and you’ll buy it at that price.” Happiness would be following the dream of creative writing; security would be the composition and rhetoric. But going the safe route would possibly get me on campus housing and not so far from everyone that I want to be near.
I would love some feedback on the school thing. I am going to make my own decision, but I would like feedback.
I know that I see the world through a glass that alternates between everything looking rosier than it is to everything being just awful. I know I have a lot of negativity, and that the negativity is what I generally show people, but it isn’t all of who I am or how I see the world.
For instance, love, I believe in it no matter how many times I try and fail. I believe that there is indeed someone out there who will love me for me and treat me the way I long to be treated without having to ask her to do it. I believe in the basic goodness of people. I believe that people want to connect, to love, to help one another. I think that some people think they are helping when they say things, and sometimes they unintentionally hurt.
I try not to hurt people, but sometimes I do. I am not always the person who is doing the hurting. My alters do a lot of things I wouldn’t do. I am not trying to escape responsibility for my mistakes, just explain that I never intentionally hurt people. I shouldn’t say never, I should say seldom.
So if you have been reading my blog and following what I have been considering, you should know that just because the dumbass county doctor sent me home, it does not mean that the darkness in my mind is any better. I have held myself together for two weeks while my nephew was here to avoid making his leave at home a crappy one. But I am still feeling like lights out would be better for everyone. I am tired of being the reason my family is torn up, or at least tired of being made to feel that way. I am trying to find a new thing to hold on to because my worry about hurting people by dying isn’t really helping anymore. I survived my brother’s suicide, others would recover from mine. So now I am holding on to this, I still have a lot of poetry in me. I still have a lot to say to the world. I still have a lot of writing to do. Maybe knowing I have not finished my mission here on Earth yet will keep me going.
I know I have laid out a lot of memories in this blog, but I have not talked about the holes in my memory. I have almost no memory of life before my parent’s divorced, just tiny bits and pieces and in most of them I am alone. I have a few bad memories, and a few good ones. One good memory stems from falling off a bike. My arm hurt like hell. I fell asleep on my father’s lap, crying. When I woke up he was trying to gently put me in the back seat of the car to take me to get an x-ray of my arm. My arm wasn’t hurting anymore. We went back in the house. He made me something to eat, got me clean clothes, and was very nurturing. I think the memories of being taken care of like that are awesome, but still there are more holes than memories in my life before the divorce.
I also lost time in school a lot. Teachers would think I was day dreaming and do things, like smack the back of my head, to get me to come back. I don’t know where I was. I only know that when I was there we were doing one subject, and when I was smacked awake, we were doing something different. But that isn’t really typical of my lost time. More often than not I would just come back to myself and have to fake it until I figured out where I was and what was going on. This has gone on for years; as recently as a few weeks ago. I still lose time, but now I know why and I don’t really try to cover. I just ask people what’s going on, what did I miss.
I fought the diagnosis of DID for about 20 years because most people lose big chunks of time, have had people notice their changes, and other things I haven’t had, but I do dissociate in therapy sessions. I also dissociate in certain social situations and become either very chatty or very quiet. I lose time in minutes or hours, not days and years. But if you factor in that I remember almost nothing until age 8, then I have indeed lost a large or several large chunks of time. I think people have seen me switch and not known that is what I was doing. My switches can mimic mood swings. I also fall into a character that is Southern and my friends will think I am just playing around. Here’s the deal, for a few years now I have believed I might be DID, but I haven’t wanted to be, so I don’t talk about it. I know; I talk about everything right? Wrong. There is so much people don’t know about me at all. I have started to be somewhat coconscious with a few of my alters, like I am standing outside myself watching these people doing things in my place. I have NEVER talked about this with anyone as might well imagine. People would think I was crazy of course. Well it turns out that I am indeed crazy.
I want to get back to what it is that keeps me holding on to this world, my writing, and my mind. I am going to get a masters degree. I was going to go for a creative writing degree, but now the composition and rhetoric. I was looking at private institutions rather than a CSU. Well now CSUDH is a possibility. They offer the advanced degree in comp and rhetoric and they have on campus housing. Given enough student loan money, I could afford to live on campus and get myself out of this living situation. My mom could stop having to sleep on the sofa. I can teach English at a community college with the masters. I may still find a way to pursue creative writing, but I think I am going for more safety than creative writing, or at least the possibility is on the table. I really want to do the creative writing thing. You know, do what you love, and the money will follow. But an old professor of mine, a mentor and voice of clarity for me in my semesters at CSUDH suggested this other route. Richard Bach says, “Shop for security at the price of happiness and you’ll buy it at that price.” Happiness would be following the dream of creative writing; security would be the composition and rhetoric. But going the safe route would possibly get me on campus housing and not so far from everyone that I want to be near.
I would love some feedback on the school thing. I am going to make my own decision, but I would like feedback.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
When You Read This, You Will Know I wrote it for You
To the terrific person I wrote this for, I'm glad you have learned to let your heart come out to play, even though it wasn't with me.
Won’t you let your heart come out to play?
I don’t know the words,
I don’t know the tricks,
I haven’t got the keys,
to open that door.
Something jammed it tight.
The lock is rusty and full of crud.
I try the only key I’ve got,
insert love, hope and a prayer.
The door won’t open;
what’s really in there?
I don’t give up.
I’ll never quit,
you mean too much;
I can’t let it sit.
I know it’s hard.
I know you’ll fight.
I also know I’ll get in
because I know I’m right.
The pain is real,
the memory sharp.
Taking another look I think I see,
I can’t open the door.
It’s not up to me.
The knob’s on your side
and the lock is too.
If it’s ever to be opened,
it must be by you.
Won’t you please
let your heart come out to play?
The bad men are gone,
it’s safe,
you’re okay.
I wouldn’t lie,
There are dangers too.
Living inside keeps them away;
so does it keep love from coming to you.
There’s a well in your heart,
or maybe a dam.
The well is deep
and the rope too short.
The water at the bottom
is stagnating and still.
The dam is thick;
The walls are hard,
But it can’t hold on.
The water is filling it to the brim.
It’s open the gates
or learn to swim.
If it breaks, the rush will be great,
out with all the love
will come all the fear,
all the hate.
Open the gates,
ease the pressure behind,
let out a little,
it’ll be easier next time.
I didn’t put this hurt on you.
I can’t take it away as I’d like to do.
Won’t you let it come out to play?
I promise to be gentle and kind.
I’ll treat you well,
And soon you will find
being alive is not living hell.
I want to know you,
Please let me in.
If we’re to be friends,
it’s got to begin.
I think I am risking as much as you,
Afraid of hurt,
what else can I do?
I’ve tried it your way,
locking it up.
It causes more pain.
I almost gave up.
My heart was dying,
and taking me with.
I needed to change or just give in.
The dam broke open
and flooded my life.
The valley is gone,
a lake in its place.
The waters are choppy,
there’s spray on my face,
here it’s deep,
there it’s cold,
over here warm and safe,
it all depends on where you are in the lake.
I’m free now to float,
letting everything flow.
My body is light,
I let everything go.
To feel is to live,
to dance and sing.
I can’t go back.
It would hurt,
it would sting.
Won’t you please
let your heart come out and play?
I’ve said all I can,
no more can I say.
Please open the door,
or die all alone.
Won’t you let your heart come out to play?
I don’t know the words,
I don’t know the tricks,
I haven’t got the keys,
to open that door.
Something jammed it tight.
The lock is rusty and full of crud.
I try the only key I’ve got,
insert love, hope and a prayer.
The door won’t open;
what’s really in there?
I don’t give up.
I’ll never quit,
you mean too much;
I can’t let it sit.
I know it’s hard.
I know you’ll fight.
I also know I’ll get in
because I know I’m right.
The pain is real,
the memory sharp.
Taking another look I think I see,
I can’t open the door.
It’s not up to me.
The knob’s on your side
and the lock is too.
If it’s ever to be opened,
it must be by you.
Won’t you please
let your heart come out to play?
The bad men are gone,
it’s safe,
you’re okay.
I wouldn’t lie,
There are dangers too.
Living inside keeps them away;
so does it keep love from coming to you.
There’s a well in your heart,
or maybe a dam.
The well is deep
and the rope too short.
The water at the bottom
is stagnating and still.
The dam is thick;
The walls are hard,
But it can’t hold on.
The water is filling it to the brim.
It’s open the gates
or learn to swim.
If it breaks, the rush will be great,
out with all the love
will come all the fear,
all the hate.
Open the gates,
ease the pressure behind,
let out a little,
it’ll be easier next time.
I didn’t put this hurt on you.
I can’t take it away as I’d like to do.
Won’t you let it come out to play?
I promise to be gentle and kind.
I’ll treat you well,
And soon you will find
being alive is not living hell.
I want to know you,
Please let me in.
If we’re to be friends,
it’s got to begin.
I think I am risking as much as you,
Afraid of hurt,
what else can I do?
I’ve tried it your way,
locking it up.
It causes more pain.
I almost gave up.
My heart was dying,
and taking me with.
I needed to change or just give in.
The dam broke open
and flooded my life.
The valley is gone,
a lake in its place.
The waters are choppy,
there’s spray on my face,
here it’s deep,
there it’s cold,
over here warm and safe,
it all depends on where you are in the lake.
I’m free now to float,
letting everything flow.
My body is light,
I let everything go.
To feel is to live,
to dance and sing.
I can’t go back.
It would hurt,
it would sting.
Won’t you please
let your heart come out and play?
I’ve said all I can,
no more can I say.
Please open the door,
or die all alone.
To The Wonderful Young People In My Life
Why did you come into my life?
All light and air
Full of love
For me to poison
With rot and decay
Why did you come into my life?
Why are you here?
Don’t you know?
I am poison
I bring death and destruction
Depression and fear
Where ever I go
Why did you come into my life?
Surely not to be made sick
By the ugliness and slime
That fills my soul
And ruins my mind
So why?
Why did you come into my life?
And why now
When fear is so great
Depression so deep
I am unworthy
Of the love you bring
The light in your heart
Will become darkness
If you stay in my life
Why did you come into my life?
All light and air
Full of love
For me to poison
With rot and decay
Why did you come into my life?
Why are you here?
Don’t you know?
I am poison
I bring death and destruction
Depression and fear
Where ever I go
Why did you come into my life?
Surely not to be made sick
By the ugliness and slime
That fills my soul
And ruins my mind
So why?
Why did you come into my life?
And why now
When fear is so great
Depression so deep
I am unworthy
Of the love you bring
The light in your heart
Will become darkness
If you stay in my life
Why did you come into my life?
I Am Sick and Tired
I’m so tired. I am so tired of always being accused of being the drama in my home. I am so tired of always being told I lie, or I do things for attention sake. I am tired of people telling me what goes on in my head. I am tired of feeling like I am shit and the rest of the world is just fine. I am tired of feeling guilty for upsetting other people. I am just plain tired. I finally got tired of hiding who I am, who we are. I finally got tired of arguing with and lying to therapists and gave in to a diagnosis that I am now bloody fucking tired of defending to others.
Let me ask you all something, do you think this is the life I thought I was going to lead? Do you think that I dreamt my whole life of never being able to be completely self-sufficient? Do you think I wanted to be a lesbian, or childless or partnerless at this point in my life? Do you think I wanted men and boys to do the things they did? Do you think I wanted a mom who was absent when I needed her most in childhood, only to find her embedded in every aspect of my life as an adult? Do you think I wanted my relationships to fail? Maybe you think I want more than one voice, one person living in my fucking head. Do you really think I make this up for attention? I do a lot of things for attention, I cry, I talk too much, I try to be funny, but I don’t feign mental illness for attention. I would never disrespect the illnesses of others by faking one of my own. When you get migraines or get depressed, do people question your motives or the validity of your complaints? If I had multiple physical disabilities, would you question me then?
I am sick to death of people who know a little something about psychology deciding they know what is going on in my head better than I do. If I don’t know everything that goes on in my head, how in the hell can anyone else even begin to understand? If you have never seen me switch, or known that is what you are seeing, does that mean I never do it?
I have been the one in my family to tell the truth, and been called a liar for it. I have been the one in my family to know I am fucked up and seek help, and been criticized for it. I have dared to share family secrets, and caught hell for it. I dared to love my brother’s kids, and been accused of trying to steal them from him. I have needed my parents help, been honest about it, grateful for it, and accused of being a leech for it.
Let me tell you that I had a dream of being a writer, a lyricist, poet, and teacher. I had a dream of a life with a partner and raising a child of our own. I have had a dream of living alone somewhere in a little studio with my bed, TV, a computer, and of course at least one cat. I had dreams of being a good friend, a loved friend, a good person. I had a dream of weighing 150 pounds again. I have had and still have many dreams. But here is my reality, I am not self-sufficient. I am not living alone. I don’t have a partner or child of my own. I am not teaching college like I thought I would. I am not published. I have mental health issues. I have anxiety so bad it keeps me from holding a job for any decent length of time. I have flashbacks to nightmares that were real and didn’t happen when I was sleeping. I have nightmares that flashback to reality. I have trouble relating to people. I don’t know how to act socially. I don’t know how to feel it when people love me. I don’t know how to stay present during lovemaking. I can’t stop buying things for people I love. I can’t stop loving once I start. I can’t stop feeling like I need to fix everything for people. I can’t stop feeling like everything is my fault, even stuff that couldn’t possibly be, like oil spills and earthquakes. And I can’t stop resenting feeling like it’s my fault.
The world just isn’t the same for me as it is for other people. People are fond of telling me I can’t expect to be taken care of forever, well no shit! But I also can’t take care of myself very well. Left to my own devices with my meds, when the dark times come, I can’t trust myself not to just take every damn pill in every bottle. As a student I can keep track of assignments, read what I should, write and turn in on time my papers; but as an adult person I fuck up things like remembering to clean the cat box, or put food away, or wash my clothes. I remember to shower daily, but I think that is my OCD more than responsibility. I spend my money even when I know I have bills to pay and I do this because I went without things when I was young and I keep trying to fill that void.
Every minute of every day I am aware of what a failure I am as a human being. I know my family thinks of me as a failure. I have friends who see my application for disability as proof of my failure. I fail to know when and where to do or say things. I say the wrong things at the wrong times. I post things in public that people think should be private. I can’t speak in private of the things that I should be able to. I have known safety, total safety only once in my lifetime; and that was with a person, not a particular place. I still feel safe with that person because for some reason I know she will never hit me or yell at me or make me feel small. But I don’t get to be close to her anymore because I have used up all of her goodwill. She has come to my aid too many times. She and so many others, see my cries for help as the boy who cried wolf. Part of that would be my suicidal feelings that drive me to seek help at a hospital, but then my anxiety overrides the darkness and I need to be home, my home. So it looks like I am not serious about being suicidal. I go home and I want to suicide, but then how does that look? I go for help, and then do it anyway? The truth isn’t that my suicidal dark feelings aren’t as real as can be and as serious as death, it’s that I fear fucking it up and surviving brain damaged and I hate the idea of my father dealing with a second child dying in suicide.
I did not choose this life. I did not choose to be this fucked up. I can say a lot about it being my reaction to the events, and in some ways that is true, but the events sucked, there were horrifying, terrifying, and they weren’t only childhood. My tormentor has taken this into our 20’s. He beat me down over an argument I was jokingly having with my mother. And I’d like to see how others would react to the same suck as events; how many of them wouldn’t splinter into pieces, allowing alters to take some of the pain for them? How many would survive at all? At least I survived, in pieces, fucked up, disabled to a point of being unable to really take care of myself, but alive and high functioning enough to know I need help and getting it.
I have been raped, beaten, force fed, threatened, and all manner of other indignities. I have been thrown in dumpsters, had hot sauce poured in my eyes while sleeping. I have been hurt. I’ve been forced to watch one of my parents have sex with a stranger while so drunk there was no memory of it the next day for the parent. I have had my life threatened, my cat’s life, even my mom’s. I had a cat mysteriously die when I got us caught cutting school.
I don’t make up these things. Truly so many rotten things could not, should not happen in one family, but let me say that in this family, all of this and much more happened in my family. Somehow the word victim got imprinted on my face and everyone saw it, the school bullies, my brother, other older boys, strangers on the street, everyone saw it, even me. I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw a victim, a punching bag, a receptacle for unwanted bodily fluids.
I have no idea what goes on in your head. Maybe I didn’t get to know you well enough; I don’t know how your mind works. I ranted about my life, perhaps because I just needed to be seen heard and believed. I don’t know how your mind works, what your demons are, etc, but you also don’t live in my head. You don’t know really what I think or feel unless I want you to know it. I can hide, oh boy can I hide. I lived through years of abuse, hiding bruises and my own shame; do you think I can’t hide parts of me from you? I managed to hide sexual abuse, tears and bleeding from my mother; do you think I can’t hide myself from you?
I am applying for disability because I am truly unable to hold down a job right now. I am applying for any aid I can get to help get myself out of this living situation. I am going to finish my advanced degree because I want to believe what I have told others so many times, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” I love writing.
I reposted something on FB today that someone else wrote that had to do with why in the hell do we have to prove ourselves to you? Here is how I feel about it, you do not live in my head, you have not lived my life, you do not see the world through the same damn pair of cracked lenses that I do. You can’t prove or disprove the validity of my mental illness, my DID. I can’t prove to you that what I say is true. I don’t know that you don’t have alternate personalities in your head. I don’t live in your head and you don’t live in mine.
The damndest thing about everything I have written here is that none of the people who need to see it will because they won’t read my blog, too bad. Maybe someone else will copy and paste this someplace where it can and will be seen by the right people, but I don’t think that will happen either.
Let me ask you all something, do you think this is the life I thought I was going to lead? Do you think that I dreamt my whole life of never being able to be completely self-sufficient? Do you think I wanted to be a lesbian, or childless or partnerless at this point in my life? Do you think I wanted men and boys to do the things they did? Do you think I wanted a mom who was absent when I needed her most in childhood, only to find her embedded in every aspect of my life as an adult? Do you think I wanted my relationships to fail? Maybe you think I want more than one voice, one person living in my fucking head. Do you really think I make this up for attention? I do a lot of things for attention, I cry, I talk too much, I try to be funny, but I don’t feign mental illness for attention. I would never disrespect the illnesses of others by faking one of my own. When you get migraines or get depressed, do people question your motives or the validity of your complaints? If I had multiple physical disabilities, would you question me then?
I am sick to death of people who know a little something about psychology deciding they know what is going on in my head better than I do. If I don’t know everything that goes on in my head, how in the hell can anyone else even begin to understand? If you have never seen me switch, or known that is what you are seeing, does that mean I never do it?
I have been the one in my family to tell the truth, and been called a liar for it. I have been the one in my family to know I am fucked up and seek help, and been criticized for it. I have dared to share family secrets, and caught hell for it. I dared to love my brother’s kids, and been accused of trying to steal them from him. I have needed my parents help, been honest about it, grateful for it, and accused of being a leech for it.
Let me tell you that I had a dream of being a writer, a lyricist, poet, and teacher. I had a dream of a life with a partner and raising a child of our own. I have had a dream of living alone somewhere in a little studio with my bed, TV, a computer, and of course at least one cat. I had dreams of being a good friend, a loved friend, a good person. I had a dream of weighing 150 pounds again. I have had and still have many dreams. But here is my reality, I am not self-sufficient. I am not living alone. I don’t have a partner or child of my own. I am not teaching college like I thought I would. I am not published. I have mental health issues. I have anxiety so bad it keeps me from holding a job for any decent length of time. I have flashbacks to nightmares that were real and didn’t happen when I was sleeping. I have nightmares that flashback to reality. I have trouble relating to people. I don’t know how to act socially. I don’t know how to feel it when people love me. I don’t know how to stay present during lovemaking. I can’t stop buying things for people I love. I can’t stop loving once I start. I can’t stop feeling like I need to fix everything for people. I can’t stop feeling like everything is my fault, even stuff that couldn’t possibly be, like oil spills and earthquakes. And I can’t stop resenting feeling like it’s my fault.
The world just isn’t the same for me as it is for other people. People are fond of telling me I can’t expect to be taken care of forever, well no shit! But I also can’t take care of myself very well. Left to my own devices with my meds, when the dark times come, I can’t trust myself not to just take every damn pill in every bottle. As a student I can keep track of assignments, read what I should, write and turn in on time my papers; but as an adult person I fuck up things like remembering to clean the cat box, or put food away, or wash my clothes. I remember to shower daily, but I think that is my OCD more than responsibility. I spend my money even when I know I have bills to pay and I do this because I went without things when I was young and I keep trying to fill that void.
Every minute of every day I am aware of what a failure I am as a human being. I know my family thinks of me as a failure. I have friends who see my application for disability as proof of my failure. I fail to know when and where to do or say things. I say the wrong things at the wrong times. I post things in public that people think should be private. I can’t speak in private of the things that I should be able to. I have known safety, total safety only once in my lifetime; and that was with a person, not a particular place. I still feel safe with that person because for some reason I know she will never hit me or yell at me or make me feel small. But I don’t get to be close to her anymore because I have used up all of her goodwill. She has come to my aid too many times. She and so many others, see my cries for help as the boy who cried wolf. Part of that would be my suicidal feelings that drive me to seek help at a hospital, but then my anxiety overrides the darkness and I need to be home, my home. So it looks like I am not serious about being suicidal. I go home and I want to suicide, but then how does that look? I go for help, and then do it anyway? The truth isn’t that my suicidal dark feelings aren’t as real as can be and as serious as death, it’s that I fear fucking it up and surviving brain damaged and I hate the idea of my father dealing with a second child dying in suicide.
I did not choose this life. I did not choose to be this fucked up. I can say a lot about it being my reaction to the events, and in some ways that is true, but the events sucked, there were horrifying, terrifying, and they weren’t only childhood. My tormentor has taken this into our 20’s. He beat me down over an argument I was jokingly having with my mother. And I’d like to see how others would react to the same suck as events; how many of them wouldn’t splinter into pieces, allowing alters to take some of the pain for them? How many would survive at all? At least I survived, in pieces, fucked up, disabled to a point of being unable to really take care of myself, but alive and high functioning enough to know I need help and getting it.
I have been raped, beaten, force fed, threatened, and all manner of other indignities. I have been thrown in dumpsters, had hot sauce poured in my eyes while sleeping. I have been hurt. I’ve been forced to watch one of my parents have sex with a stranger while so drunk there was no memory of it the next day for the parent. I have had my life threatened, my cat’s life, even my mom’s. I had a cat mysteriously die when I got us caught cutting school.
I don’t make up these things. Truly so many rotten things could not, should not happen in one family, but let me say that in this family, all of this and much more happened in my family. Somehow the word victim got imprinted on my face and everyone saw it, the school bullies, my brother, other older boys, strangers on the street, everyone saw it, even me. I looked at myself in the mirror and I saw a victim, a punching bag, a receptacle for unwanted bodily fluids.
I have no idea what goes on in your head. Maybe I didn’t get to know you well enough; I don’t know how your mind works. I ranted about my life, perhaps because I just needed to be seen heard and believed. I don’t know how your mind works, what your demons are, etc, but you also don’t live in my head. You don’t know really what I think or feel unless I want you to know it. I can hide, oh boy can I hide. I lived through years of abuse, hiding bruises and my own shame; do you think I can’t hide parts of me from you? I managed to hide sexual abuse, tears and bleeding from my mother; do you think I can’t hide myself from you?
I am applying for disability because I am truly unable to hold down a job right now. I am applying for any aid I can get to help get myself out of this living situation. I am going to finish my advanced degree because I want to believe what I have told others so many times, “Do what you love and the money will follow.” I love writing.
I reposted something on FB today that someone else wrote that had to do with why in the hell do we have to prove ourselves to you? Here is how I feel about it, you do not live in my head, you have not lived my life, you do not see the world through the same damn pair of cracked lenses that I do. You can’t prove or disprove the validity of my mental illness, my DID. I can’t prove to you that what I say is true. I don’t know that you don’t have alternate personalities in your head. I don’t live in your head and you don’t live in mine.
The damndest thing about everything I have written here is that none of the people who need to see it will because they won’t read my blog, too bad. Maybe someone else will copy and paste this someplace where it can and will be seen by the right people, but I don’t think that will happen either.
Friday, February 12, 2010
How do I Help You Understand What I Cannot Myself
Do you know how it feels to always have a companion in your head? An alter ego that can deal with whatever you cannot. You know him; you can see him, talk to him, in your mind of course. You can let him take your body when things threaten you, and you feel safer because he is there. Do you know how that feels; I do.
I have always, as long as I can recall, had Mikey with me. He is 8, but he has always been with me, seen what I have seen read what I have read, and he is smart. The degree on my wall should have his name on it too. He read the books and wrote the papers with me. He did all of the playful theatre stuff. He’s 8 and he is 48, if that makes any sense.
Now I am finding out there are others, not always present, who don’t know everything I know. They do know every moment of pain, abuse, humiliation. Some of them know things I am missing, well they all do. Each holds some memory or memories of events I could not handle. Indeed this is why they came into being. These alters have taken my place during some of the worst, or that’s what I am told.
One alter, named Patty, took all of third and fourth grade math, but just the math. And here’s the kicker, she won’t tell me what she knows. I don’t know how to do word problems because she holds the keys to how they work. She knows and I don’t and it sucks.
So many pieces of my life are missing, and now that I have acknowledged that they are there, and have met a few of them, the rest want to come forward. They want to tell me everything about who they are and what they know. Some of them feel like I do, others feel differently. Some of them like the brother. Many of them have conflicting feelings. And what is so rough on me, causing me major headaches, is the talking all at once, the trying to force me to see them, acknowledge them right this second. I am not ready to meet all of them.
I am fearful that if I start to get to know them, they will start to pour out the memories of the events I wasn’t able to handle before and I still won’t be able to handle them.
I have lost little bits of time here and there all of my life. I cover well, something I had to learn to do because my family already called me stupid, I certainly didn’t want to give them more ammunition. Losing time is only one thing. Another is that I have had conversations in my head with people I seem to know well. I often find myself speaking with a Southern dialect I can’t shake. I see these people in my head, I know what they look like, sound like, but I never knew they were “real” in any sense of that word. I stutter sometimes. I do a lot of things that are out of character for me. I feel compelled to do certain things, go places, act in certain ways, and people think all of these behaviors are mine. For me it is like watching a movie, seeing it on a screen; I have no more control over what happens than I do over a movie. And there are the voices, not like schizophrenic voices, telling me to do things, they are just talking. They talk to each other, sometimes to me.
Since I was 28 three of my therapists suggested DID and I rejected it, but when this therapist, the fourth to say it showed me I had to give in and say yes, I have those feelings, those symptoms. The therapist that first suggested it got a Kleenex box thrown at her head and I got “fired” from therapy. The next therapist suggested the same thing. It seems that I actually dissociate during sessions.
So honestly, all of this craziness, this DID thing is completely new to me. I don’t know how it works, or why it happened to me and when. I don’t know a lot of things about it. I know that for me it explains a lot of mood swings and crazy behavior. It explains the voices I hear in my head, the time I lose, and other things. So what I do know is they are all supposed to be pieces of me that broke apart at times of stress and or trauma in my life. But I don’t understand the different genders, or ages. Some are older than I am now; others are young and never get any older. Mikey, the one that I have been coconscious with as long as I can remember, is always 8 years old. I don’t understand, so how do I begin to let others know how to understand? I thought he was just an imaginary playmate that I kept with me all these years.
I have always, as long as I can recall, had Mikey with me. He is 8, but he has always been with me, seen what I have seen read what I have read, and he is smart. The degree on my wall should have his name on it too. He read the books and wrote the papers with me. He did all of the playful theatre stuff. He’s 8 and he is 48, if that makes any sense.
Now I am finding out there are others, not always present, who don’t know everything I know. They do know every moment of pain, abuse, humiliation. Some of them know things I am missing, well they all do. Each holds some memory or memories of events I could not handle. Indeed this is why they came into being. These alters have taken my place during some of the worst, or that’s what I am told.
One alter, named Patty, took all of third and fourth grade math, but just the math. And here’s the kicker, she won’t tell me what she knows. I don’t know how to do word problems because she holds the keys to how they work. She knows and I don’t and it sucks.
So many pieces of my life are missing, and now that I have acknowledged that they are there, and have met a few of them, the rest want to come forward. They want to tell me everything about who they are and what they know. Some of them feel like I do, others feel differently. Some of them like the brother. Many of them have conflicting feelings. And what is so rough on me, causing me major headaches, is the talking all at once, the trying to force me to see them, acknowledge them right this second. I am not ready to meet all of them.
I am fearful that if I start to get to know them, they will start to pour out the memories of the events I wasn’t able to handle before and I still won’t be able to handle them.
I have lost little bits of time here and there all of my life. I cover well, something I had to learn to do because my family already called me stupid, I certainly didn’t want to give them more ammunition. Losing time is only one thing. Another is that I have had conversations in my head with people I seem to know well. I often find myself speaking with a Southern dialect I can’t shake. I see these people in my head, I know what they look like, sound like, but I never knew they were “real” in any sense of that word. I stutter sometimes. I do a lot of things that are out of character for me. I feel compelled to do certain things, go places, act in certain ways, and people think all of these behaviors are mine. For me it is like watching a movie, seeing it on a screen; I have no more control over what happens than I do over a movie. And there are the voices, not like schizophrenic voices, telling me to do things, they are just talking. They talk to each other, sometimes to me.
Since I was 28 three of my therapists suggested DID and I rejected it, but when this therapist, the fourth to say it showed me I had to give in and say yes, I have those feelings, those symptoms. The therapist that first suggested it got a Kleenex box thrown at her head and I got “fired” from therapy. The next therapist suggested the same thing. It seems that I actually dissociate during sessions.
So honestly, all of this craziness, this DID thing is completely new to me. I don’t know how it works, or why it happened to me and when. I don’t know a lot of things about it. I know that for me it explains a lot of mood swings and crazy behavior. It explains the voices I hear in my head, the time I lose, and other things. So what I do know is they are all supposed to be pieces of me that broke apart at times of stress and or trauma in my life. But I don’t understand the different genders, or ages. Some are older than I am now; others are young and never get any older. Mikey, the one that I have been coconscious with as long as I can remember, is always 8 years old. I don’t understand, so how do I begin to let others know how to understand? I thought he was just an imaginary playmate that I kept with me all these years.
Big Man
Big man!
Man of the house!
Or so you thought.
Hitting doesn’t make you a man.
Taking by force what isn’t yours,
Does not make you a man.
Dad left,
You thought you were
In charge;
Fool!
Captain of the ship
In your little mind.
You could not command
A turd floating in the john,
How could you command a family?
In charge;
A joke.
Who held mom’s hand
When she was falling apart?
Not you.
Who rode a bike to the bar
And drove her home,
Barely able to reach
The pedals?
Who didn’t resort to violence
To settle her problems?
Not you.
Who are you big man,
To think you could
Ever be in charge?
Big man,
Fists,
Intimidation,
Rape,
Abuse,
Big man?
Small mind,
Stuck on one thing,
The way Dad did it
Did you like belittlement?
Did you like the violence?
The yelling?
I did not.
I could not be like him,
But you,
Big man,
Little mind,
Copied the one
Who hurt and abused;
Why?
What did you get from exerting
Power over me?
What did you get?
Smaller!
That’s what you got.
Not bigger,
Smaller,
Stupider,
Meaner,
Never bigger!
Wasted talent,
Wasted intelligence,
Wasted time.
Big man!
2009
Man of the house!
Or so you thought.
Hitting doesn’t make you a man.
Taking by force what isn’t yours,
Does not make you a man.
Dad left,
You thought you were
In charge;
Fool!
Captain of the ship
In your little mind.
You could not command
A turd floating in the john,
How could you command a family?
In charge;
A joke.
Who held mom’s hand
When she was falling apart?
Not you.
Who rode a bike to the bar
And drove her home,
Barely able to reach
The pedals?
Who didn’t resort to violence
To settle her problems?
Not you.
Who are you big man,
To think you could
Ever be in charge?
Big man,
Fists,
Intimidation,
Rape,
Abuse,
Big man?
Small mind,
Stuck on one thing,
The way Dad did it
Did you like belittlement?
Did you like the violence?
The yelling?
I did not.
I could not be like him,
But you,
Big man,
Little mind,
Copied the one
Who hurt and abused;
Why?
What did you get from exerting
Power over me?
What did you get?
Smaller!
That’s what you got.
Not bigger,
Smaller,
Stupider,
Meaner,
Never bigger!
Wasted talent,
Wasted intelligence,
Wasted time.
Big man!
2009
Ode to a Burger (something fun for a change)
Have you ever eaten a classic Coco's Cheeseburger? This popped into my head after eating one. I hate burgers, and yet every time I go to Coco's I get one because they are the best burgers I have ever enjoyed.
Ode to a Burger
Oh Wonderful burger
all beefy, juicy, and hot,
dripping grease, sauce,
and gooey melted cheese.
Pillow soft bakery bun,
toasty tender frame,
sticks to the roof of my mouth.
Leafy lettuce languishing
luxuriously on top of
tomato red and ripe.
onion slices, thin and crispy,
and pickles,
what can I say about pickles?
Tart, tangy counterpoint
to sweet secret sauce.
oh wonderful cheeseburger,
my shirt wears you well.
Ode to a Burger
Oh Wonderful burger
all beefy, juicy, and hot,
dripping grease, sauce,
and gooey melted cheese.
Pillow soft bakery bun,
toasty tender frame,
sticks to the roof of my mouth.
Leafy lettuce languishing
luxuriously on top of
tomato red and ripe.
onion slices, thin and crispy,
and pickles,
what can I say about pickles?
Tart, tangy counterpoint
to sweet secret sauce.
oh wonderful cheeseburger,
my shirt wears you well.
Cutting Class
Sometimes when I start a poem I have no idea where it will take me or what memories will come up. I had no idea this one would jump from cuttng class in high school to a job i had soooo many years later. It's always a journey, maybe not always one I want to be on, but it is a journey.
Cutting Class
She was a freshman that year.
She went off campus with
Some friends from freshman choir.
They weren’t druggies.
Just kids cutting class.
Oh crap! Cops, run for it.
They were busted.
She knew they would call him,
And she was petrified.
What’s your name?
What’s your address?
“Please, I’ll do anything if you don’t call him.”
They didn’t listen.
Everyone’s parents were called.
He’s coming,
Repeated itself inside her head.
She was going to die of fright
before he got there.
There was a mix up.
They sent her back to school,
they never told him.
The anger would be doubled.
“I have got to get out of here,
Don’t you know? Can’t you see?”
No one could see, no one knew,
This hell was all her own.
He finally found her.
“Will you hit me?”
“I would brake your rotten neck!”
She was driving delivering auto parts
For a living when the memory came,
again.
The truck she was driving needed brakes.
She asked her boss, and thought it was no big deal.
The look in his eyes,
The same as in her dad’s
Cold, hard, deadly,
“I’d rather you died
Than spend money on that truck.”
She thought of her dad,
And flinched when her boss came near.
“Will he hit me?” “Ridiculous.”
Before she could explain,
She was fired.
Cutting Class
She was a freshman that year.
She went off campus with
Some friends from freshman choir.
They weren’t druggies.
Just kids cutting class.
Oh crap! Cops, run for it.
They were busted.
She knew they would call him,
And she was petrified.
What’s your name?
What’s your address?
“Please, I’ll do anything if you don’t call him.”
They didn’t listen.
Everyone’s parents were called.
He’s coming,
Repeated itself inside her head.
She was going to die of fright
before he got there.
There was a mix up.
They sent her back to school,
they never told him.
The anger would be doubled.
“I have got to get out of here,
Don’t you know? Can’t you see?”
No one could see, no one knew,
This hell was all her own.
He finally found her.
“Will you hit me?”
“I would brake your rotten neck!”
She was driving delivering auto parts
For a living when the memory came,
again.
The truck she was driving needed brakes.
She asked her boss, and thought it was no big deal.
The look in his eyes,
The same as in her dad’s
Cold, hard, deadly,
“I’d rather you died
Than spend money on that truck.”
She thought of her dad,
And flinched when her boss came near.
“Will he hit me?” “Ridiculous.”
Before she could explain,
She was fired.
Big Black Hole
Big black hole
Sucking wound
In my middle
Implosion eminent
why do I feel
why do I care
big black hole
sucking wound
in my middle
implosion eminent
will I ever feel okay again
will they ever go away
big black hole
sucking wound
in my middle
implosion eminent
what is anxiety
what is real
big black hole
sucking wound
in my middle
implosion eminent
Who really cares
Who even notices
Big black hole
Sucking wound
In my middle
Implosion eminent
Where are the memories
Where is my mind
Big black hole
Sucking wound
In my middle
Implosion eminent
Fear conquers all
Sucking wound
In my middle
Implosion eminent
why do I feel
why do I care
big black hole
sucking wound
in my middle
implosion eminent
will I ever feel okay again
will they ever go away
big black hole
sucking wound
in my middle
implosion eminent
what is anxiety
what is real
big black hole
sucking wound
in my middle
implosion eminent
Who really cares
Who even notices
Big black hole
Sucking wound
In my middle
Implosion eminent
Where are the memories
Where is my mind
Big black hole
Sucking wound
In my middle
Implosion eminent
Fear conquers all
Fence Sitting
The fence, stretched out for miles,
One side safety and all you have known,
The other a question unanswered as yet.
You sit on the fence
Looking this way and that.
Past on one side,
Sparkling and clear,
Future the other,
Shrouded, foggy, unseen.
Why do you sit?
Why not make a choice?
The fence isn’t life,
Sitting is just sitting.
It takes you nowhere.
Jump over the side,
Back into safety,
Out into unknown!
You must make a choice
Because if you don’t
You’re going to find
You die on the fence
A post permanently stuck up your ass.
One side safety and all you have known,
The other a question unanswered as yet.
You sit on the fence
Looking this way and that.
Past on one side,
Sparkling and clear,
Future the other,
Shrouded, foggy, unseen.
Why do you sit?
Why not make a choice?
The fence isn’t life,
Sitting is just sitting.
It takes you nowhere.
Jump over the side,
Back into safety,
Out into unknown!
You must make a choice
Because if you don’t
You’re going to find
You die on the fence
A post permanently stuck up your ass.
Survival Mode
Survival mode. I am more than a survivor, I am a thriver. I can be the confident me if I choose to be. I don’t want him under my skin and triggering me. I can be ok, it is possible, and I am going to choose to be ok, to be the best me I can be no matter who lives in my home.
There is a woman who feels like a girl living in fear and allowing others to have the power. I am not going to give him the power. He is an ass and he cannot hurt me now. I won’t be victim to him or anyone anymore. I am a poet, I am a fighter, I don’t give in, and I am walking forward one step at a time. I can be real, present and in control. I slept in my room last night and slept all night with no nightmares.
In group I feel safe to let myself go, and let out the fear and show the child frightened inside. But I don’t show that inner me outside of therapy.
I’ve always known my insides are fractured, not completely different people, but different me’s. I know which ones to pull to the front to get what I want. I use them to hide, masks that I wear, to be who anyone is expecting. In therapy I don’t have to wear a mask at all, but when I am home or in the outside world, I wear different ones and they work for me. I would like some day for the competent, confident me can be the one who takes over and skips out on having to use masks at all.
I use my poetry to let them out. There is safety in writing because the voice of the poem doesn’t have to be mine.
I do not remember writing or posting this blog. I am not a thriver. I am a survivor at best. I have to borrow energy from others to even be out of the house. I almost never go out alone and when I do, I get on the phone and try to find someone to chat with while i drive. Interesting indeed that this would show up like this now.
There is a woman who feels like a girl living in fear and allowing others to have the power. I am not going to give him the power. He is an ass and he cannot hurt me now. I won’t be victim to him or anyone anymore. I am a poet, I am a fighter, I don’t give in, and I am walking forward one step at a time. I can be real, present and in control. I slept in my room last night and slept all night with no nightmares.
In group I feel safe to let myself go, and let out the fear and show the child frightened inside. But I don’t show that inner me outside of therapy.
I’ve always known my insides are fractured, not completely different people, but different me’s. I know which ones to pull to the front to get what I want. I use them to hide, masks that I wear, to be who anyone is expecting. In therapy I don’t have to wear a mask at all, but when I am home or in the outside world, I wear different ones and they work for me. I would like some day for the competent, confident me can be the one who takes over and skips out on having to use masks at all.
I use my poetry to let them out. There is safety in writing because the voice of the poem doesn’t have to be mine.
I do not remember writing or posting this blog. I am not a thriver. I am a survivor at best. I have to borrow energy from others to even be out of the house. I almost never go out alone and when I do, I get on the phone and try to find someone to chat with while i drive. Interesting indeed that this would show up like this now.
This time Will Be Different
I wrote this after beginning therapy with the therapist I have now. Her Name is Cynthia Henrie and if you have lived through trauma, or just need a kick ass therapist, you should look her up. I am reading this little snippet and thinking this is before I gave away the secret of Mikey and Cindie called forward other alters. But even though I feel like it is going to take longer, I still believe I am going to get well. Every therapist I have ever had since I was 28 has been an intern and when an intern finishes their internship, guess what? They leave! So I end up starting over again. Cindie is a real therapist offering me real hope, giving me things to do to deal, to grow, to cope.
This time is different, and I know why, help isn’t dangled like a carrot, but given with care. I am feeling hopeful for the first time in my life. The past is going to finally be past, eventually. My future is wide open, so many choices ahead. I have some research to do, finding what I really want to be when I grow up. I’m up to the challenge. I will move forward and that is all new. I’m not afraid like I used to be, though not fearless for sure.
The idea that I have a future is so new. And my family, wonder of wonders is supporting me in my choices. Life radiates 360 degrees from where I stand and it’s all open to me.
I feel today like there is more good than bad in my life. Even with the weight of the girlfriend who won’t leave, and no job, no money, and lots I don’t have, there is still more that is good in my life than bad.
I sit here thinking of all that I have and I know it’s a lot. I’m lucky to have a roof, food, a car, gas, and help from family. I may be codependent with my mom and that will have to be taken care of in time. It’s good right now that she is helping me survive, but as soon as I find a job that pays well, it’s time to find a room to rent. I will find a school, and find lodging nearby. I will stand on my own, I’ve done it before. I’ve gotten comfortable here, settled in since my longest relationship ended. I know that the time to move on is quite near. I am looking forward to a space of my own.
This time is different, and I know why, help isn’t dangled like a carrot, but given with care. I am feeling hopeful for the first time in my life. The past is going to finally be past, eventually. My future is wide open, so many choices ahead. I have some research to do, finding what I really want to be when I grow up. I’m up to the challenge. I will move forward and that is all new. I’m not afraid like I used to be, though not fearless for sure.
The idea that I have a future is so new. And my family, wonder of wonders is supporting me in my choices. Life radiates 360 degrees from where I stand and it’s all open to me.
I feel today like there is more good than bad in my life. Even with the weight of the girlfriend who won’t leave, and no job, no money, and lots I don’t have, there is still more that is good in my life than bad.
I sit here thinking of all that I have and I know it’s a lot. I’m lucky to have a roof, food, a car, gas, and help from family. I may be codependent with my mom and that will have to be taken care of in time. It’s good right now that she is helping me survive, but as soon as I find a job that pays well, it’s time to find a room to rent. I will find a school, and find lodging nearby. I will stand on my own, I’ve done it before. I’ve gotten comfortable here, settled in since my longest relationship ended. I know that the time to move on is quite near. I am looking forward to a space of my own.
Twisting the Kaleidescope
Twisting the Kaleidoscope
Twisting it reveals different shapes and colors,
Changing perception of the beholder,
Light makes it brighter,
Darkness makes it difficult to see.
But every twist changes the view.
Mine is all tangled emotion,
Confused details,
And missing pieces.
What is yours like?
When you twist the kaleidoscope
Of your mind
What do you see?
I have trouble making out what is
And isn’t real in mine.
Seeing past tangled with present;
Colors are muted
By darkness in my mind
But colors are revealed
Slowly as I heal and grow.
What would it be like if I
Could see into your world,
Your kaleidoscope?
I am curious,
I am healing,
Perhaps one day
I will see as you do.
Perhaps one day
You will imagine
What mine is like
And have compassion for me,
Or not!
The entire world is colorful,
Bright and cheery,
Or it supposed to be.
The future is rosy,
Isn’t that what they say?
Mine is getting rosier
As I learn to see past the past.
Time is all I need,
Can you give me time?
Can you be my support?
Or do you plan to pull
The rug from under me?
Everyone makes their choices.
Mine aren’t always the best.
But I am learning
To cut away
What hurts,
Causes drama,
And learn to live in the now.
The process is slow,
Progress in small steps,
But there is progress,
And I am going to win;
Be victorious
Over my past,
In time!
Twisting the kaleidoscope
Of my mind today
I see bright spots,
People who love me,
People willing to help,
Efforts made on my own
And I am uplifted;
Looking forward to so much,
Trying to let go of the fear
And take steps
To make my life
A better place
Just like you.
Twisting it reveals different shapes and colors,
Changing perception of the beholder,
Light makes it brighter,
Darkness makes it difficult to see.
But every twist changes the view.
Mine is all tangled emotion,
Confused details,
And missing pieces.
What is yours like?
When you twist the kaleidoscope
Of your mind
What do you see?
I have trouble making out what is
And isn’t real in mine.
Seeing past tangled with present;
Colors are muted
By darkness in my mind
But colors are revealed
Slowly as I heal and grow.
What would it be like if I
Could see into your world,
Your kaleidoscope?
I am curious,
I am healing,
Perhaps one day
I will see as you do.
Perhaps one day
You will imagine
What mine is like
And have compassion for me,
Or not!
The entire world is colorful,
Bright and cheery,
Or it supposed to be.
The future is rosy,
Isn’t that what they say?
Mine is getting rosier
As I learn to see past the past.
Time is all I need,
Can you give me time?
Can you be my support?
Or do you plan to pull
The rug from under me?
Everyone makes their choices.
Mine aren’t always the best.
But I am learning
To cut away
What hurts,
Causes drama,
And learn to live in the now.
The process is slow,
Progress in small steps,
But there is progress,
And I am going to win;
Be victorious
Over my past,
In time!
Twisting the kaleidoscope
Of my mind today
I see bright spots,
People who love me,
People willing to help,
Efforts made on my own
And I am uplifted;
Looking forward to so much,
Trying to let go of the fear
And take steps
To make my life
A better place
Just like you.
Life just Kept on Walking
Our autobiography is to be about our movement, geographically, emotionally or educationally. I am not sure where mine is going at this point. I am unsure what I want to share. If I tell the truth, the whole truth, it becomes something unbelievable for most people. Suffice it to say I am torn between telling it as it was, or as I wanted it to be. Or maybe I just want to put in the few good memories and leave it at that. I do not want to shock anyone with the horrors of my childhood, but I want to be honest. Being honest may mean being harsh and shocking. My life reads like bad fiction. I walked through much of my life wearing labels other people put on me. Later in my story I will address this label issue. For now I think I will leave out the goriest details and just put in a few of the moments that have had the some sort of impact on me.
First Memory
My earliest memory is riding in the back seat of our family's car and noticing that the appearance of my leg changed if I lifted it off the seat. I kept lifting it and setting it down again, thin, fat, thin, fat again. I was intrigued. I do not know how old I was, but my foot barely extended past the seat bottom, so I was fairly small. I am alone in this memory, as I seem to be in most of the memories prior to my family going through divorce when I was eight years old. It is one of the few positive memories I have before my parents divorced when I was eight.
We lived in the sleepy little town of Whittier, California. My mother had attended college at a small Quaker college in Richmond Indiana, Earlham College, which just so happened to be the sister school of Whittier College. She had a professor who always talked of Whittier with great fondness and all of her school friends wished he would just move back there. Never did it occur to her that Whittier would one day be her home.
I did something that surprised my mother when I was about 4 years old; I began to read. I read labels at the grocery store. I read the simple books I had. Mother thought I had memorized the books and chalked the label reading up to the pictures on the cans. But when she brought home a book I had not yet read, or had read to me, I was able to read most of the words in it. No one told me that I had done something spectacular in teaching myself to read, they never really said much about it at all. The opposite was true in our home. I was treated as if I was stupid and frequently called "stupid" or "idiot" by my parents. By the time I started Kindergarten my brother was studying cursive writing, and I began to imitate him. So the first time I was asked to put my name on a paper at school, I wrote it in cursive. Again, no one seemed to think this was unusual. However, I began to know I was doing something different because my friends could not read or write. It would be many years before I truly knew I was not stupid. I wrote this poem because of the label my family put on me and the one I finally chose for myself. It is my voice and the voice of many others.
LABELS
You called me STUPID,
And I believed,
I called me SMART,
And I achieved.
You called me DYKE,
Like I was dirt,
I called me LESBIAN,
It didn't hurt.
You called me OLD,
All used up,
I called me YOUNG,
I'm just a pup.
You called me GREASER,
No good and lazy,
I called me LATINA,
Worked like crazy.
You called me NIGGER,
Good for nothing,
I called me BLACK,
Now I'm really something.
You called me KIKE,
Christ killer and cheap,
I called me JEW,
My pride to keep.
You called me INJUN,
Drunken red face,
I called me NATIVE,
I was here in the first place.
You called me FAG,
A person to bash,
I called me GAY,
Your labels I smash.
You called me STRANGE,
Twisted and bent,
I called me NORMAL,
Just a little different.
You called me by LABELS
That made me want to hide,
I called me by LABELS
That I could wear with pride.
You called me a NOTHING,
What could I do?
I call me a PERSON,
Just like you.
I loved to read. The first book that I fell in love with was Harold and the Purple Crayon. It was a marvelous story of a little boy who drew adventures with his purple crayon and then lived in those adventures. He became part of what he had drawn. It was a while before I understood it was his imagination that he was living in. I would draw in hopes of somehow getting into my drawings like he did. Harold was my hero and purple was his color. To this day purple is my favorite color. The other book I loved the most as a child was Where the Wild Things Are. I loved stories where children went away from the real world and had adventures. I was living in a not so wonderful family and longed for escape, which I found in the books I read. I loved The Owl and The Pussycat. I loved to look into the drawings in picture books and see myself in them. I wanted to be free, and in reading I was; free of the dramatic rescues of a mother who tried to kill herself, free of the males who hurt me, hit me, free of the other children who taunted me for wearing glasses and being “weird.” I honestly don’t know what weird or different is to a 5 year old. It was as though they could see through me to the abused, broken child I kept hidden inside.
First Grade
I had the coolest teacher for first grade, Mrs. Schubert. She was wonderful. She helped me adjust to the discovery that I needed glasses. The discovery was actually quite startling for me. A note was sent to my parents spelling out that I was more than likely going to have trouble learning to read. Now they knew I could already read so they blew it off. Two weeks later they did routine eye screening; the woman gave me a Dixie cup and told me to cover my right eye and read the chart. My response was, “What chart?” A letter went home immediately telling my parents I am legally blind in one eye; reading ability no longer in question. She made me feel special about wearing the glasses, so I didn't feel like a geek. In the middle of that year her husband accepted a job in another state, and she left me. I was devastated. This is my poem about it.
Mother’s Day
As I sat in my first grade class
waiting for the time to pass,
I twiddled my thumbs and twirled my hair;
for the assignment of math, I didn’t care.
My beloved teacher had moved away.
How much that hurt I wouldn’t say.
Mrs. Schubert was gone, Miss Boils in her place.
The first one was kind, this one a rat face.
It was my job to drive her berserk;
from the day she arrived I refused to work.
The time for math over, now time for fun,
I wasn’t allowed, my math wasn’t done.
We were to make gifts for Mother’s Day.
I sat with my math, not allowed to play.
Colored popcorn and beans on a paper plate,
That I wasn’t included filled me with hate.
I sat alone facing her wrath.
I wouldn’t give in, I would do no math.
Everyone left carrying their prize,
I walked home with down turned eyes.
Looking down I found a wondrous thing;
I discovered a butterfly wing.
Oh, it was a beauty to behold
the delicate wing of black and gold.
My face lit up; the day wasn’t black.
Over the years, and looking back
on the gift I gave that day to my mother,
it’s the one she remembers above any other.
Many years later I found a ceramic butterfly wing that had broken off my girlfriend's ceramics project. I wgave my mom that ceramic wing and wrote this for her:
Simpler times,
and simpler things,
do you remember
the butterfly wing?
Trust was always an issue for me. I taught myself things because I did not trust my parents or other adults to teach me. I wouldn't let them teach me math, someone else learned the math in third and fourth grade. I taught myself to ride a bike. I taught myself to swim. One day my father tried to take me to the deep end of the pool and I threw a fit, a huge fit, and he asked me, "Do you think I would let you drown?" My answer was a very loud, emphatic, "YES!" Maybe I knew he didn't really love my mother. maybe I knew he was going to leave. I don't know. He was always the more nurturing parent, hugging, holding, singing to me. He fixed the boo boos. But he was also the man who beat me black and blue for spending dimes out of his collection. He was the man I saw hit mommy, scream at me, and my brother, and take spankings way, way beyond spanking.
Christmas A. D. (After Divorce)
The year my parents divorced I was eight years old. We moved, not once but twice in that year. We settled in an apartment in La Mirada, right on the line between La Mirada and Whittier. We were within walking distance of the home I had lived in the first eight years of my life. Money was tight, very tight. Mom had almost no money and it was getting close to Christmas. She sat us, my older brother and I, down for a heart to heart about what to expect at Christmas time. We were both past the age of believing in Santa. She was frank with us. We were not going to have a tree. There would be no presents. She would save what she could to make a nice holiday dinner for us. It was going to be a really poor Christmas. She was so depressed and she cried as she told us all of this. I, being the one who assumed the role of "fixer" in our family, decided I would have to do something to fix it for her.
We lived in an apartment on a street behind a Vons grocery store. They had their Christmas trees out the day after Thanksgiving. I went there to play in the trees; to pretend one was mine, all decorated and pretty. As I was playing there for the umpteenth time, I spotted this spindly little tree about my height. It had very sparse needles and it was kind of light green, not the rich green of a firs I was used to seeing. I was reminded of the forlorn little tree in the Charlie Brown Christmas Story. I stopped to read the price tag. If I could afford this tree, I would help mom and make the tree not so lonely. It was only 75 cents, but for me it might as well have been $75. I asked the man if that was the price, "If that's what's on the tag kid, that's the price!" However, I decided I was going to get that tree. I hoped that being so sparse and all, no one would want to buy it before I could gather that much money. The man in charge of selling the trees, or guarding them or whatever his job was, allowed me to put the tree way in the back, shielded by other trees.
I enlisted my brother's help. Asking him for help was not easy. I never knew if he would be nice or mean. He was nice this time. We began to scrounge through the dumpsters behind our apartments looking for returnable bottles. All pop bottles were returnable back then. Small bottles were a nickel, bigger ones a dime. We found some, but not enough. We got into mom's closet and looked through the bottoms of her old purses, where we found a few more pennies. We pooled our own meager resources, which was a laugh because even at that age I was a complulsive spender; if I have a penny to my name, I would buy a gumball. But we did come up with a few cents. We started expanding our dumpster search. He boosted me over the side and I would dig through the yucky trash looking for those bottles. It took us almost a week, but we came up with the 75 cents we needed. The tree was still there last I had checked, and I checked twice a day at least. Neither of us ever considered sales tax, it just never occured to us. Apparently the man selling the trees at Vons decided just to let the tax slide.
Mom must have known we were up to something because when we asked her if she needed anything from the store, she sent us after something cheap she didn’t really need. We ran off to the store. Mom was home watching TV. The tree was right where it had been all along. We paid the man, and started carrying it home. Mom says she heard us giggling as we climbed the stairs to our apartment. We set the tree down in front of the door, knocked and hid behind the air conditioner.
Mom was flabbergasted. She cried. She couldn't think of what to say. She put her arms around us both and cried some more. I felt warm inside. Mom was happy and I hadn't seen her happy in a very long time.
Something in Mom changed at that moment. She went out and took out a loan against our home furnishings to make sure we had gifts that year. Our little tree dried up and died before Christmas; Mom replaced it with a larger, greener one. I was grateful for the gifts I got that year, though I cannot remember one thing I got. I only remember the gift I gave. I had given my mom a tiny, spindly, forlorn looking Christmas tree, but I had given her and the family much more as well, I gave us all a dose of Christmas Spirit. I learned that year that giving was really the best gift at Christmas.
A few years later, about 20, I found an almost identical tree, but inflation made the price $7.50. My mom grew up in an orphanage and never once had a brand new, all to herself bicycle, so that was exactly what I got her that year. I got mom another spindly little tree, put it in the front yard, and placed a shiny red bicycle under it.
Sixth grade
I moved in with my father, and for the 5th time in 4 years, I changed schools. At my new school there was a student teacher who read to us the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull. He made it come alive for me. He pointed out the symbolism and forever changed the way I read anything. I began to look for meanings beyond the words. But even more than that, he introduced me to Richard Bach, a writer and philosopher who has changed the way I see the world. I was very fond of the man, whose name I still remember, Mr. Dzerzhinsky (I am unsure of the spelling, but we all called my Mr. "D" anyway.). The day he was leaving for good I cried and cried. My friends all thought I had a crush on him, but I did not; I simply admired him and felt close to him in a father daughter kind of way. I was afraid to go see him while I was crying but my friends urged me on. So I went to him and as I got angry with myself for not being able to speak to him without crying, he spoke softly to me and said, "Remember this, it is better to feel things and feel them deeply than to never feel at all." I have never forgotten that and I have learned to forgive the tears I cannot always control. He changed my life forever.
High school
I actually got to go to three years of high school at one school. That was the record for me until college, three consecutive years at one school. So I started ninth grade, a geek, or a freak depending on who you asked. I was definitely not one of the "In Crowd." I had to ride a bus to school in Pomona; we lived in Diamond Bar at the time. At the bus stop there was a girl, a geek like me. She didn't wear the cool clothes. Her hair was pulled into to pony tails at the sides of her head. He hair was blond and her eyes a piercing blue. She had a full woman's figure, with hips and curves. I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I was shy, but in time we became buddies, sitting together on the bus every morning and every afternoon.
Over the course of a few months we got to be best friends. I was smitten with her. I was just beginning to understand the feelings that had made me feel so different from my school-mates all through the years of puberty. I was just learning about lesbianism and I knew it was finally a label that fit me. I was in love with, or had a major crush on my best friend.
There was an afternoon when we were hanging out in my room. We were listening to Neil Diamond, Forever in Blue Jeans. I leaned over and kissed her softly on the cheek. She turned to face me and I kissed her mouth. My heart was beating a mile a minute. I felt like I was going to fly into bits. I thought she would push me away, but she kissed me back, for a moment, and then the moment was gone. She said she couldn’t do “that” again, explaining that she had already had a lesbian experience and the guilt over it had eaten at her, so she just could never do it again. She was my first friend in a long time; I do mean close friend. She was the first person outside my family, and therefore required, to hug me. We were so close through most of the three years I was at that school that my fantasy of her being in love with me almost became real to me. We never kissed again, but the kisses in my fantasies, wow, those kisses were dyn-o-mite. I mention her not only to tell you i am a lesbian, but also because Meri Lou, that was her name, was the first person to tell me I was smart. She encouraged me to excel in school. She got me into deep discussions about books we had read. She challenged me to be the "A" student I could be. I was still attached to the label of "stupid" my family had given me, but I think I began in that time to shrink that label if not yet to discard it.
It was in these, my teen years, that I also began to show signs of what would many years later be diagnosed as bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder, and other mental health issues. I had some rather spectacular psychotic breaks, one very memorable one at school. I don't know what spurred it, a whole chunk of time is missing and I was suddenly throwing my book bag at a boy's head and screaming at him that all men were disgusting and stupid. Then I started roaming the halls trying to find Meri Lou. I knew I would be okay, I could calm down, if only she were there. A campus proctor tried to grab me, but I pulled myself loose and kept moving. It eventually took two proctors to rein me in and get me to the Vice Principal's office. The school psychologist was called in. The nurse was there. They got out of my rantings and ravings about men and school, and whatever else I was ranting about, that I wanted Meri Lou. They got her from her class. We were allowed to go into the nurse's office and there she held me until I could calm down. My father was called and I was taken home. My father's reaction was not one of understanding, but of threats as to what might be my punishment should I ever "pull any crap like that again!" There were to be many more outbursts of that nature, and with them many depressions, with a few suicide attempts thrown in here and there. Neither of my parents, or anyone for that matter, ever tried to find out why I was having such outbursts and depressions. I was 35 before I was diagnosed and treated with medication. To give my mother credit she knew I was troubled back when I was 8 or so, and took me to see a therapist. The therapist kind of traumatized me by exposing her crotch to me. I was fascinated seeing a grown woman’s private pats and also so freaked out I puked on the way home.
My mental illness kept me from completing my education in a timely manner. It is still a factor. I have been going to college off and on since 1980. I took three years of Theatre classes and went out into the world to work as a stagehand. I have one AA degree that I got in 1995 with highest honors. I applied to Whittier College and was accepted, but could not afford the tuition because I had defaulted on an old student loan. I stuck around community college a while longer while I rehabilitated that loan then applied to California State University Fullerton and started attending classes there. My mental health became an issue as I tried to balance a relationship, a job, and school. I screwed up my GPA and dropped out of school to keep my job and relationship. I was blessed to have a very understanding and loving partner. My mental health was an issue in the relationship as well. At CSUF in my poetry writing class I wrote two sonnets, or attempted to; this is one:
Sonnet of the Mentally Ill
You know what it’s like to live in my head?
Connections aren’t made like they are for you.
More often than not you wish you were dead.
It’s hard keeping straight what’s what and who’s who.
Important things get lost in the jumble.
The pill drill can help, though not all the time.
Frustration at this can make you mumble,
But take them you must, or walls you will climb.
Some days it’s hard not to sink through the floor,
With mangled thoughts and twisted perception,
I don’t want to feel this way anymore.
Shrinks say they cure; what cunning deception.
Counseling may help, and the drugs do too,
But all said and done, I’d rather be you.
1998
The Chemistry Game
My brain chemistry
Plays games with me.
Day after day,
Level I can stay.
But one tiny bump,
Comes to my throat a big lump.
As I Choke on the rage
Too varied to gauge,
I fly off the handle,
And Flare up like a candle.
Then suddenly it drops,
The mania stops.
Falling out of control
Deep into a hole.
Passing ground zero,
No longer the hero.
Deep into the pit.
I’m tired of this shit!
My brain chemistry
Plays games with me.
We never have fun,
It’s a loaded gun,
Pointed at my head,
One slip and I’m dead.
2003
I wrote this one while staying in a mental health unit trying to get through a deep depression.
The Pillity Pop!
I've got lots of questions,
please don't tell me lies.
What happens inside me
when sanity dies?
Chemicals, Shmemicals,
how hard can it be,
Pillity, Poppity,
to find the right key?
What makes me so different?
Don't pretend its not so,
my pistons aren't firing
all in a row.
Chemicals, Shmemicals,
what kind of a mix,
Pillity, Poppity,
my brain it might fix?
How is it possible,
how can it be,
that taking a drug,
makes me more me?
Chemicals, Schmemicals
take this one to see,
Pillity, Poppity,
some semblance of me.
What can I tell you
I don't make the rules?
If this isn't real,
the doctors are fools.
Chemicals, Schmemicals,
I take a bite here,
Pillity, Poppity,
I'm shrinking, I fear.
Where did she come from,
my strange, evil twin?
Who opened the door
that let her walk in?
Chemicals, Schmemicals,
what else can I try,
Pillity, Poppity,
to make the twin die?
All of that doesn't matter,
what matters is this,
I act like I should,
if a dose I don't miss.
Chemicals, Schmemicals,
take them I must,
Pillity, Poppity,
or my sanity's dust.
2001
In 1996 I was first treated for depression and later for bipolar disorder. It was a memorable year in other ways too. I found what I thought was to be my soul-mate; I found the woman with whom I intended to spend the rest of my days. She is the most patient, understanding, loving, giving human being I have ever known; we are still good friends. Her life experience is not at all like mine and yet when we were together we fit together like a hand in a glove; or at least I thought we did. The trouble with emotional illnesses is that our perceptions are not the same as those of other people. I have written many poems to her and about her, but this one I think says more about what her love did in my life than anything else I could say.
All my love
All my love packed away in little boxes.
Saved for one day when Ms. Right would come along.
Stored unused, dusty, yellowed with age,
They sat so very long waiting for the "one."
Rusted to each other, pieces large and small, from the damp,
Dampness of tears shed over love that came and went,
Stunted in growth from lack of light and air.
All my love packed away in little boxes.
Dragged out and dumped at your feet,
Smelling of mildew, and mold, in damaged boxes.
Given to you in one big heap,
For you to sort through, looking for the salvageable;
You, Ms. Right, receiver of half-forgotten bits of love,
Must somehow breathe new life into the dying love.
All my love packed away in little boxes,
Labeled, "father," "mother," "brother," etc.
The box labeled, "lover," far, far back on the shelf.
Boxes long ago given up on, never filling, always draining.
Convinced was I, that I would never use them again.
All my love packed away in little boxes.
You opened each one to see what it contained.
Handled each fragile bit with care,
Examined them in the light of your love,
Tossed out what was broken beyond repair,
Repaired all that you could with love of your own.
And after all you set aside as garbage,
I still need bigger boxes to hold all my love again.
I am still on my journey of love, of discovery, of education. In 2004 I was attending Cerritos College to pull up my GPA. I applied to CSUF and CSUDH. My wonderful partner that I thought I could not live without broke up with me. I had to move into my mother’s apartment. CSUF turned me down, telling me to keep going to the CC and pull the GPA up a little more, CSUDH said if I finished the classes I was in with Cs or better, I was in. I went to CSUDH the following Spring. I was determined to get my BA. I was told I would never finish it, but I did, straight through; even enduring the suicide of my younger brother during my first semester there.
I thought I wanted a teaching credential, but schools are laying teachers off. There are no jobs in teaching. I tried my hand at Management in graduate school, but I hated it and I knew I would never make it in management. I lost the job that I wanted the management degree for anyway. For once I did not lose the job over the economy or my mental health. I simply blew it and made a serious safety error that got me fired.
I’ve been told I can write. I have been given a gift. I love to put words on paper; stories, poems, creative non-fiction, essays, pretty much any opportunity to string together words in order to convey feeling. I have had not one, not two, but four creative writing instructors tell me I should pursue my talent by getting an MFA in creative writing. But I’ve always asked myself what in the hell could I do with that degree. The funny thing is I have told many, many people to do what they love and the money will follow. I love to write more than I love to read, and I never thought that was possible. Where the road will take me now is anyone's guess, but I am applying to an MFA creative writing program. When I get that degree I will figure out how to make it into a living.
My mental health is still a concern. I am still adjusting my meds. I have been given a diagnosis that makes perfect sense if you know my whole story. It makes perfect sense if you know that from time to time I come to behind the wheel of the car not knowing where I am or where I am going. I have missing memories of most of my childhood. I have a lot of missing memories from my teens. I lose time here and there regularly. One minute I know where I am in a conversation and what seems like moments later is much later and I have no idea what I’ve said or if I have offended anyone. I use humor a lot to mask my fear. Did I mention I am afraid of everything? Some of my fears have no basis in anything, like being afraid I’ll skewer my eyeball on a straw by accident, or worse on purpose.
I know where I want to go, I want to be published and I want to teach community college. This time I can see myself getting there. Visualization is one of my favorite tools for learning. I visualize where I want to be, or how I want to be, or what I want to come into my life, and by repeated visualizations, I bring those things into being. I love to use visualization, but for some reason I have drifted away from it. Perhaps because I can’t get my mind to be quiet, there are all of these alternate personalities trying to tell me their stories and share their memories. I don’t want these memories and stories. I don’t want to be DID. I don’t want to be sicker than I have to be.
When I do visualize I do the footwork, don't get me wrong; I don't expect magik to make my life better without getting off my ass and moving myself along my chosen path. The road doesn't move, so I have to! I will leave you with this thought:
Out of breath,
running just to keep up.
Fear like lead weights
holding down my feet.
Each stride, each step,
monumental effort.
Hills too steep,
climbing and stumbling
I fall further behind.
Another hurdle,
I trip and fall,
pick myself up,
start running again.
Worn out shoes,
blistered feet,
I want to stop,
just stop and rest.
Huffing and puffing,
I cry out,
Wait up!
No dice, no slowing,
Life just kept on walking.
First Memory
My earliest memory is riding in the back seat of our family's car and noticing that the appearance of my leg changed if I lifted it off the seat. I kept lifting it and setting it down again, thin, fat, thin, fat again. I was intrigued. I do not know how old I was, but my foot barely extended past the seat bottom, so I was fairly small. I am alone in this memory, as I seem to be in most of the memories prior to my family going through divorce when I was eight years old. It is one of the few positive memories I have before my parents divorced when I was eight.
We lived in the sleepy little town of Whittier, California. My mother had attended college at a small Quaker college in Richmond Indiana, Earlham College, which just so happened to be the sister school of Whittier College. She had a professor who always talked of Whittier with great fondness and all of her school friends wished he would just move back there. Never did it occur to her that Whittier would one day be her home.
I did something that surprised my mother when I was about 4 years old; I began to read. I read labels at the grocery store. I read the simple books I had. Mother thought I had memorized the books and chalked the label reading up to the pictures on the cans. But when she brought home a book I had not yet read, or had read to me, I was able to read most of the words in it. No one told me that I had done something spectacular in teaching myself to read, they never really said much about it at all. The opposite was true in our home. I was treated as if I was stupid and frequently called "stupid" or "idiot" by my parents. By the time I started Kindergarten my brother was studying cursive writing, and I began to imitate him. So the first time I was asked to put my name on a paper at school, I wrote it in cursive. Again, no one seemed to think this was unusual. However, I began to know I was doing something different because my friends could not read or write. It would be many years before I truly knew I was not stupid. I wrote this poem because of the label my family put on me and the one I finally chose for myself. It is my voice and the voice of many others.
LABELS
You called me STUPID,
And I believed,
I called me SMART,
And I achieved.
You called me DYKE,
Like I was dirt,
I called me LESBIAN,
It didn't hurt.
You called me OLD,
All used up,
I called me YOUNG,
I'm just a pup.
You called me GREASER,
No good and lazy,
I called me LATINA,
Worked like crazy.
You called me NIGGER,
Good for nothing,
I called me BLACK,
Now I'm really something.
You called me KIKE,
Christ killer and cheap,
I called me JEW,
My pride to keep.
You called me INJUN,
Drunken red face,
I called me NATIVE,
I was here in the first place.
You called me FAG,
A person to bash,
I called me GAY,
Your labels I smash.
You called me STRANGE,
Twisted and bent,
I called me NORMAL,
Just a little different.
You called me by LABELS
That made me want to hide,
I called me by LABELS
That I could wear with pride.
You called me a NOTHING,
What could I do?
I call me a PERSON,
Just like you.
I loved to read. The first book that I fell in love with was Harold and the Purple Crayon. It was a marvelous story of a little boy who drew adventures with his purple crayon and then lived in those adventures. He became part of what he had drawn. It was a while before I understood it was his imagination that he was living in. I would draw in hopes of somehow getting into my drawings like he did. Harold was my hero and purple was his color. To this day purple is my favorite color. The other book I loved the most as a child was Where the Wild Things Are. I loved stories where children went away from the real world and had adventures. I was living in a not so wonderful family and longed for escape, which I found in the books I read. I loved The Owl and The Pussycat. I loved to look into the drawings in picture books and see myself in them. I wanted to be free, and in reading I was; free of the dramatic rescues of a mother who tried to kill herself, free of the males who hurt me, hit me, free of the other children who taunted me for wearing glasses and being “weird.” I honestly don’t know what weird or different is to a 5 year old. It was as though they could see through me to the abused, broken child I kept hidden inside.
First Grade
I had the coolest teacher for first grade, Mrs. Schubert. She was wonderful. She helped me adjust to the discovery that I needed glasses. The discovery was actually quite startling for me. A note was sent to my parents spelling out that I was more than likely going to have trouble learning to read. Now they knew I could already read so they blew it off. Two weeks later they did routine eye screening; the woman gave me a Dixie cup and told me to cover my right eye and read the chart. My response was, “What chart?” A letter went home immediately telling my parents I am legally blind in one eye; reading ability no longer in question. She made me feel special about wearing the glasses, so I didn't feel like a geek. In the middle of that year her husband accepted a job in another state, and she left me. I was devastated. This is my poem about it.
Mother’s Day
As I sat in my first grade class
waiting for the time to pass,
I twiddled my thumbs and twirled my hair;
for the assignment of math, I didn’t care.
My beloved teacher had moved away.
How much that hurt I wouldn’t say.
Mrs. Schubert was gone, Miss Boils in her place.
The first one was kind, this one a rat face.
It was my job to drive her berserk;
from the day she arrived I refused to work.
The time for math over, now time for fun,
I wasn’t allowed, my math wasn’t done.
We were to make gifts for Mother’s Day.
I sat with my math, not allowed to play.
Colored popcorn and beans on a paper plate,
That I wasn’t included filled me with hate.
I sat alone facing her wrath.
I wouldn’t give in, I would do no math.
Everyone left carrying their prize,
I walked home with down turned eyes.
Looking down I found a wondrous thing;
I discovered a butterfly wing.
Oh, it was a beauty to behold
the delicate wing of black and gold.
My face lit up; the day wasn’t black.
Over the years, and looking back
on the gift I gave that day to my mother,
it’s the one she remembers above any other.
Many years later I found a ceramic butterfly wing that had broken off my girlfriend's ceramics project. I wgave my mom that ceramic wing and wrote this for her:
Simpler times,
and simpler things,
do you remember
the butterfly wing?
Trust was always an issue for me. I taught myself things because I did not trust my parents or other adults to teach me. I wouldn't let them teach me math, someone else learned the math in third and fourth grade. I taught myself to ride a bike. I taught myself to swim. One day my father tried to take me to the deep end of the pool and I threw a fit, a huge fit, and he asked me, "Do you think I would let you drown?" My answer was a very loud, emphatic, "YES!" Maybe I knew he didn't really love my mother. maybe I knew he was going to leave. I don't know. He was always the more nurturing parent, hugging, holding, singing to me. He fixed the boo boos. But he was also the man who beat me black and blue for spending dimes out of his collection. He was the man I saw hit mommy, scream at me, and my brother, and take spankings way, way beyond spanking.
Christmas A. D. (After Divorce)
The year my parents divorced I was eight years old. We moved, not once but twice in that year. We settled in an apartment in La Mirada, right on the line between La Mirada and Whittier. We were within walking distance of the home I had lived in the first eight years of my life. Money was tight, very tight. Mom had almost no money and it was getting close to Christmas. She sat us, my older brother and I, down for a heart to heart about what to expect at Christmas time. We were both past the age of believing in Santa. She was frank with us. We were not going to have a tree. There would be no presents. She would save what she could to make a nice holiday dinner for us. It was going to be a really poor Christmas. She was so depressed and she cried as she told us all of this. I, being the one who assumed the role of "fixer" in our family, decided I would have to do something to fix it for her.
We lived in an apartment on a street behind a Vons grocery store. They had their Christmas trees out the day after Thanksgiving. I went there to play in the trees; to pretend one was mine, all decorated and pretty. As I was playing there for the umpteenth time, I spotted this spindly little tree about my height. It had very sparse needles and it was kind of light green, not the rich green of a firs I was used to seeing. I was reminded of the forlorn little tree in the Charlie Brown Christmas Story. I stopped to read the price tag. If I could afford this tree, I would help mom and make the tree not so lonely. It was only 75 cents, but for me it might as well have been $75. I asked the man if that was the price, "If that's what's on the tag kid, that's the price!" However, I decided I was going to get that tree. I hoped that being so sparse and all, no one would want to buy it before I could gather that much money. The man in charge of selling the trees, or guarding them or whatever his job was, allowed me to put the tree way in the back, shielded by other trees.
I enlisted my brother's help. Asking him for help was not easy. I never knew if he would be nice or mean. He was nice this time. We began to scrounge through the dumpsters behind our apartments looking for returnable bottles. All pop bottles were returnable back then. Small bottles were a nickel, bigger ones a dime. We found some, but not enough. We got into mom's closet and looked through the bottoms of her old purses, where we found a few more pennies. We pooled our own meager resources, which was a laugh because even at that age I was a complulsive spender; if I have a penny to my name, I would buy a gumball. But we did come up with a few cents. We started expanding our dumpster search. He boosted me over the side and I would dig through the yucky trash looking for those bottles. It took us almost a week, but we came up with the 75 cents we needed. The tree was still there last I had checked, and I checked twice a day at least. Neither of us ever considered sales tax, it just never occured to us. Apparently the man selling the trees at Vons decided just to let the tax slide.
Mom must have known we were up to something because when we asked her if she needed anything from the store, she sent us after something cheap she didn’t really need. We ran off to the store. Mom was home watching TV. The tree was right where it had been all along. We paid the man, and started carrying it home. Mom says she heard us giggling as we climbed the stairs to our apartment. We set the tree down in front of the door, knocked and hid behind the air conditioner.
Mom was flabbergasted. She cried. She couldn't think of what to say. She put her arms around us both and cried some more. I felt warm inside. Mom was happy and I hadn't seen her happy in a very long time.
Something in Mom changed at that moment. She went out and took out a loan against our home furnishings to make sure we had gifts that year. Our little tree dried up and died before Christmas; Mom replaced it with a larger, greener one. I was grateful for the gifts I got that year, though I cannot remember one thing I got. I only remember the gift I gave. I had given my mom a tiny, spindly, forlorn looking Christmas tree, but I had given her and the family much more as well, I gave us all a dose of Christmas Spirit. I learned that year that giving was really the best gift at Christmas.
A few years later, about 20, I found an almost identical tree, but inflation made the price $7.50. My mom grew up in an orphanage and never once had a brand new, all to herself bicycle, so that was exactly what I got her that year. I got mom another spindly little tree, put it in the front yard, and placed a shiny red bicycle under it.
Sixth grade
I moved in with my father, and for the 5th time in 4 years, I changed schools. At my new school there was a student teacher who read to us the book Jonathan Livingston Seagull. He made it come alive for me. He pointed out the symbolism and forever changed the way I read anything. I began to look for meanings beyond the words. But even more than that, he introduced me to Richard Bach, a writer and philosopher who has changed the way I see the world. I was very fond of the man, whose name I still remember, Mr. Dzerzhinsky (I am unsure of the spelling, but we all called my Mr. "D" anyway.). The day he was leaving for good I cried and cried. My friends all thought I had a crush on him, but I did not; I simply admired him and felt close to him in a father daughter kind of way. I was afraid to go see him while I was crying but my friends urged me on. So I went to him and as I got angry with myself for not being able to speak to him without crying, he spoke softly to me and said, "Remember this, it is better to feel things and feel them deeply than to never feel at all." I have never forgotten that and I have learned to forgive the tears I cannot always control. He changed my life forever.
High school
I actually got to go to three years of high school at one school. That was the record for me until college, three consecutive years at one school. So I started ninth grade, a geek, or a freak depending on who you asked. I was definitely not one of the "In Crowd." I had to ride a bus to school in Pomona; we lived in Diamond Bar at the time. At the bus stop there was a girl, a geek like me. She didn't wear the cool clothes. Her hair was pulled into to pony tails at the sides of her head. He hair was blond and her eyes a piercing blue. She had a full woman's figure, with hips and curves. I couldn't keep my eyes off her. I was shy, but in time we became buddies, sitting together on the bus every morning and every afternoon.
Over the course of a few months we got to be best friends. I was smitten with her. I was just beginning to understand the feelings that had made me feel so different from my school-mates all through the years of puberty. I was just learning about lesbianism and I knew it was finally a label that fit me. I was in love with, or had a major crush on my best friend.
There was an afternoon when we were hanging out in my room. We were listening to Neil Diamond, Forever in Blue Jeans. I leaned over and kissed her softly on the cheek. She turned to face me and I kissed her mouth. My heart was beating a mile a minute. I felt like I was going to fly into bits. I thought she would push me away, but she kissed me back, for a moment, and then the moment was gone. She said she couldn’t do “that” again, explaining that she had already had a lesbian experience and the guilt over it had eaten at her, so she just could never do it again. She was my first friend in a long time; I do mean close friend. She was the first person outside my family, and therefore required, to hug me. We were so close through most of the three years I was at that school that my fantasy of her being in love with me almost became real to me. We never kissed again, but the kisses in my fantasies, wow, those kisses were dyn-o-mite. I mention her not only to tell you i am a lesbian, but also because Meri Lou, that was her name, was the first person to tell me I was smart. She encouraged me to excel in school. She got me into deep discussions about books we had read. She challenged me to be the "A" student I could be. I was still attached to the label of "stupid" my family had given me, but I think I began in that time to shrink that label if not yet to discard it.
It was in these, my teen years, that I also began to show signs of what would many years later be diagnosed as bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder, and other mental health issues. I had some rather spectacular psychotic breaks, one very memorable one at school. I don't know what spurred it, a whole chunk of time is missing and I was suddenly throwing my book bag at a boy's head and screaming at him that all men were disgusting and stupid. Then I started roaming the halls trying to find Meri Lou. I knew I would be okay, I could calm down, if only she were there. A campus proctor tried to grab me, but I pulled myself loose and kept moving. It eventually took two proctors to rein me in and get me to the Vice Principal's office. The school psychologist was called in. The nurse was there. They got out of my rantings and ravings about men and school, and whatever else I was ranting about, that I wanted Meri Lou. They got her from her class. We were allowed to go into the nurse's office and there she held me until I could calm down. My father was called and I was taken home. My father's reaction was not one of understanding, but of threats as to what might be my punishment should I ever "pull any crap like that again!" There were to be many more outbursts of that nature, and with them many depressions, with a few suicide attempts thrown in here and there. Neither of my parents, or anyone for that matter, ever tried to find out why I was having such outbursts and depressions. I was 35 before I was diagnosed and treated with medication. To give my mother credit she knew I was troubled back when I was 8 or so, and took me to see a therapist. The therapist kind of traumatized me by exposing her crotch to me. I was fascinated seeing a grown woman’s private pats and also so freaked out I puked on the way home.
My mental illness kept me from completing my education in a timely manner. It is still a factor. I have been going to college off and on since 1980. I took three years of Theatre classes and went out into the world to work as a stagehand. I have one AA degree that I got in 1995 with highest honors. I applied to Whittier College and was accepted, but could not afford the tuition because I had defaulted on an old student loan. I stuck around community college a while longer while I rehabilitated that loan then applied to California State University Fullerton and started attending classes there. My mental health became an issue as I tried to balance a relationship, a job, and school. I screwed up my GPA and dropped out of school to keep my job and relationship. I was blessed to have a very understanding and loving partner. My mental health was an issue in the relationship as well. At CSUF in my poetry writing class I wrote two sonnets, or attempted to; this is one:
Sonnet of the Mentally Ill
You know what it’s like to live in my head?
Connections aren’t made like they are for you.
More often than not you wish you were dead.
It’s hard keeping straight what’s what and who’s who.
Important things get lost in the jumble.
The pill drill can help, though not all the time.
Frustration at this can make you mumble,
But take them you must, or walls you will climb.
Some days it’s hard not to sink through the floor,
With mangled thoughts and twisted perception,
I don’t want to feel this way anymore.
Shrinks say they cure; what cunning deception.
Counseling may help, and the drugs do too,
But all said and done, I’d rather be you.
1998
The Chemistry Game
My brain chemistry
Plays games with me.
Day after day,
Level I can stay.
But one tiny bump,
Comes to my throat a big lump.
As I Choke on the rage
Too varied to gauge,
I fly off the handle,
And Flare up like a candle.
Then suddenly it drops,
The mania stops.
Falling out of control
Deep into a hole.
Passing ground zero,
No longer the hero.
Deep into the pit.
I’m tired of this shit!
My brain chemistry
Plays games with me.
We never have fun,
It’s a loaded gun,
Pointed at my head,
One slip and I’m dead.
2003
I wrote this one while staying in a mental health unit trying to get through a deep depression.
The Pillity Pop!
I've got lots of questions,
please don't tell me lies.
What happens inside me
when sanity dies?
Chemicals, Shmemicals,
how hard can it be,
Pillity, Poppity,
to find the right key?
What makes me so different?
Don't pretend its not so,
my pistons aren't firing
all in a row.
Chemicals, Shmemicals,
what kind of a mix,
Pillity, Poppity,
my brain it might fix?
How is it possible,
how can it be,
that taking a drug,
makes me more me?
Chemicals, Schmemicals
take this one to see,
Pillity, Poppity,
some semblance of me.
What can I tell you
I don't make the rules?
If this isn't real,
the doctors are fools.
Chemicals, Schmemicals,
I take a bite here,
Pillity, Poppity,
I'm shrinking, I fear.
Where did she come from,
my strange, evil twin?
Who opened the door
that let her walk in?
Chemicals, Schmemicals,
what else can I try,
Pillity, Poppity,
to make the twin die?
All of that doesn't matter,
what matters is this,
I act like I should,
if a dose I don't miss.
Chemicals, Schmemicals,
take them I must,
Pillity, Poppity,
or my sanity's dust.
2001
In 1996 I was first treated for depression and later for bipolar disorder. It was a memorable year in other ways too. I found what I thought was to be my soul-mate; I found the woman with whom I intended to spend the rest of my days. She is the most patient, understanding, loving, giving human being I have ever known; we are still good friends. Her life experience is not at all like mine and yet when we were together we fit together like a hand in a glove; or at least I thought we did. The trouble with emotional illnesses is that our perceptions are not the same as those of other people. I have written many poems to her and about her, but this one I think says more about what her love did in my life than anything else I could say.
All my love
All my love packed away in little boxes.
Saved for one day when Ms. Right would come along.
Stored unused, dusty, yellowed with age,
They sat so very long waiting for the "one."
Rusted to each other, pieces large and small, from the damp,
Dampness of tears shed over love that came and went,
Stunted in growth from lack of light and air.
All my love packed away in little boxes.
Dragged out and dumped at your feet,
Smelling of mildew, and mold, in damaged boxes.
Given to you in one big heap,
For you to sort through, looking for the salvageable;
You, Ms. Right, receiver of half-forgotten bits of love,
Must somehow breathe new life into the dying love.
All my love packed away in little boxes,
Labeled, "father," "mother," "brother," etc.
The box labeled, "lover," far, far back on the shelf.
Boxes long ago given up on, never filling, always draining.
Convinced was I, that I would never use them again.
All my love packed away in little boxes.
You opened each one to see what it contained.
Handled each fragile bit with care,
Examined them in the light of your love,
Tossed out what was broken beyond repair,
Repaired all that you could with love of your own.
And after all you set aside as garbage,
I still need bigger boxes to hold all my love again.
I am still on my journey of love, of discovery, of education. In 2004 I was attending Cerritos College to pull up my GPA. I applied to CSUF and CSUDH. My wonderful partner that I thought I could not live without broke up with me. I had to move into my mother’s apartment. CSUF turned me down, telling me to keep going to the CC and pull the GPA up a little more, CSUDH said if I finished the classes I was in with Cs or better, I was in. I went to CSUDH the following Spring. I was determined to get my BA. I was told I would never finish it, but I did, straight through; even enduring the suicide of my younger brother during my first semester there.
I thought I wanted a teaching credential, but schools are laying teachers off. There are no jobs in teaching. I tried my hand at Management in graduate school, but I hated it and I knew I would never make it in management. I lost the job that I wanted the management degree for anyway. For once I did not lose the job over the economy or my mental health. I simply blew it and made a serious safety error that got me fired.
I’ve been told I can write. I have been given a gift. I love to put words on paper; stories, poems, creative non-fiction, essays, pretty much any opportunity to string together words in order to convey feeling. I have had not one, not two, but four creative writing instructors tell me I should pursue my talent by getting an MFA in creative writing. But I’ve always asked myself what in the hell could I do with that degree. The funny thing is I have told many, many people to do what they love and the money will follow. I love to write more than I love to read, and I never thought that was possible. Where the road will take me now is anyone's guess, but I am applying to an MFA creative writing program. When I get that degree I will figure out how to make it into a living.
My mental health is still a concern. I am still adjusting my meds. I have been given a diagnosis that makes perfect sense if you know my whole story. It makes perfect sense if you know that from time to time I come to behind the wheel of the car not knowing where I am or where I am going. I have missing memories of most of my childhood. I have a lot of missing memories from my teens. I lose time here and there regularly. One minute I know where I am in a conversation and what seems like moments later is much later and I have no idea what I’ve said or if I have offended anyone. I use humor a lot to mask my fear. Did I mention I am afraid of everything? Some of my fears have no basis in anything, like being afraid I’ll skewer my eyeball on a straw by accident, or worse on purpose.
I know where I want to go, I want to be published and I want to teach community college. This time I can see myself getting there. Visualization is one of my favorite tools for learning. I visualize where I want to be, or how I want to be, or what I want to come into my life, and by repeated visualizations, I bring those things into being. I love to use visualization, but for some reason I have drifted away from it. Perhaps because I can’t get my mind to be quiet, there are all of these alternate personalities trying to tell me their stories and share their memories. I don’t want these memories and stories. I don’t want to be DID. I don’t want to be sicker than I have to be.
When I do visualize I do the footwork, don't get me wrong; I don't expect magik to make my life better without getting off my ass and moving myself along my chosen path. The road doesn't move, so I have to! I will leave you with this thought:
Out of breath,
running just to keep up.
Fear like lead weights
holding down my feet.
Each stride, each step,
monumental effort.
Hills too steep,
climbing and stumbling
I fall further behind.
Another hurdle,
I trip and fall,
pick myself up,
start running again.
Worn out shoes,
blistered feet,
I want to stop,
just stop and rest.
Huffing and puffing,
I cry out,
Wait up!
No dice, no slowing,
Life just kept on walking.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Labels
You called me STUPID,
and I believed,
I called me SMART,
and I achieved.
You called me DYKE,
Like I was dirt,
I called me LESBIAN,
It didn't hurt.
You called me OLD,
all used up,
I called me YOUNG,
I'm just a pup.
You called me GREASER,
no good and lazy,
I called me LATINA,
worked like crazy.
You called me NIGGER,
good for nothing,
I called me BLACK,
now I'm really something.
You called me KIKE,
Christ killer and cheap,
I called me JEW,
My pride to keep.
You called me INJUN,
drunken red face,
I called me NATIVE,
I was here in the first place.
You called me FAG,
a person to bash,
I called me GAY,
your labels I smash.
You called me STRANGE,
twisted and bent,
I called me NORMAL,
just a little different.
You called me by LABELS
made me want to hide,
I called me by LABELS
I could wear with pride.
You called me a NOTHING,
What could I do,
I call me a PERSON,
Just like you.
1995
and I believed,
I called me SMART,
and I achieved.
You called me DYKE,
Like I was dirt,
I called me LESBIAN,
It didn't hurt.
You called me OLD,
all used up,
I called me YOUNG,
I'm just a pup.
You called me GREASER,
no good and lazy,
I called me LATINA,
worked like crazy.
You called me NIGGER,
good for nothing,
I called me BLACK,
now I'm really something.
You called me KIKE,
Christ killer and cheap,
I called me JEW,
My pride to keep.
You called me INJUN,
drunken red face,
I called me NATIVE,
I was here in the first place.
You called me FAG,
a person to bash,
I called me GAY,
your labels I smash.
You called me STRANGE,
twisted and bent,
I called me NORMAL,
just a little different.
You called me by LABELS
made me want to hide,
I called me by LABELS
I could wear with pride.
You called me a NOTHING,
What could I do,
I call me a PERSON,
Just like you.
1995
Bliss
Kissing
Passionate
Hot
Urgent
Tongues seeking
Meeting
Flicking rubbing
Clit swelling
Teeth biting lips
Hands
Roaming
Urgent
Hot
Seeking
Touching nipples
Sliding into
Pants
Finding
Softness
Clit
Swelling
Tingling
Throbbing
Fingers
Rubbing
Downward
Into me
Fucking me
Harder
Pants off
Fucking me
Mouth
On clit
Tongue
Dancing
Urgently
Manipulating
Fingers
Fucking
Tongue
Rubbing
Explosions
One
Two
Three
I can’t breathe
Four
Fucking me
On and on
Cumming
Again
Again
Spent
Sweaty
I fall back
And breathe
2005
Passionate
Hot
Urgent
Tongues seeking
Meeting
Flicking rubbing
Clit swelling
Teeth biting lips
Hands
Roaming
Urgent
Hot
Seeking
Touching nipples
Sliding into
Pants
Finding
Softness
Clit
Swelling
Tingling
Throbbing
Fingers
Rubbing
Downward
Into me
Fucking me
Harder
Pants off
Fucking me
Mouth
On clit
Tongue
Dancing
Urgently
Manipulating
Fingers
Fucking
Tongue
Rubbing
Explosions
One
Two
Three
I can’t breathe
Four
Fucking me
On and on
Cumming
Again
Again
Spent
Sweaty
I fall back
And breathe
2005
Love Poetry
Years ago they hurt me, pulled off my wing
to watch me buzz about it demented circles
as I tried to fly, for fly they could not bear to see me do.
Your love. My pleasure.
Frustration grew, I longed for the freedom of flight,
the climactic rise.
In love my wing brew back, twisted, scarred, functional.
Flight returned short hops.
My freedom. Your patience.
You loved me, I flew again,
Higher, if not faster, braver, if not farther.
My twisted wing forgotten for long moments.
Your love. My healing.
I love you.
to watch me buzz about it demented circles
as I tried to fly, for fly they could not bear to see me do.
Your love. My pleasure.
Frustration grew, I longed for the freedom of flight,
the climactic rise.
In love my wing brew back, twisted, scarred, functional.
Flight returned short hops.
My freedom. Your patience.
You loved me, I flew again,
Higher, if not faster, braver, if not farther.
My twisted wing forgotten for long moments.
Your love. My healing.
I love you.
It's Not That I Don't Care
Losing you as a love was painful
Losing you as a friend is equally painful
But lost you are
The walls are sooo high
And the finely honed saber
I had when I began storming
Your citadel isn’t even
Sharp enough to
Slash my wrists
It’s not that I don’t care
It’s just that caring is
Soooo painful
That I have to learn
Not to
anymore
Losing you as a friend is equally painful
But lost you are
The walls are sooo high
And the finely honed saber
I had when I began storming
Your citadel isn’t even
Sharp enough to
Slash my wrists
It’s not that I don’t care
It’s just that caring is
Soooo painful
That I have to learn
Not to
anymore
Mouse on a Wheel
Mouse on a wheel
Running running
Where am I going
Do I know
Do I believe I ever move
Is all an exercise
This is my life
This wheel
Running to get ahead
Never moving at all
The race in my head
To move from the past
How do I go
Where do I go
It isn’t real
Illusion of movement
Forward no different
Than reverse
Climbing up the side
Glass walls
Trapped in a box
Depending on others
For small bits
Of food
And love
Where is the home
Out of the box
Where I can be free
And run a straight line
Not round in circles
It doesn’t exist
This is all
The world
For me
A glass box
A wheel
Endless running
No end in sight
Running running
Where am I going
Do I know
Do I believe I ever move
Is all an exercise
This is my life
This wheel
Running to get ahead
Never moving at all
The race in my head
To move from the past
How do I go
Where do I go
It isn’t real
Illusion of movement
Forward no different
Than reverse
Climbing up the side
Glass walls
Trapped in a box
Depending on others
For small bits
Of food
And love
Where is the home
Out of the box
Where I can be free
And run a straight line
Not round in circles
It doesn’t exist
This is all
The world
For me
A glass box
A wheel
Endless running
No end in sight
Waiting for Belief
I stand alone
Waiting for belief
Wondering if love
Will find me again
The secrets I kept
Made me sick
I shared them
And got shit
For my trouble
Belief does not come
Love does not come
I die a little
Each day
They don’t believe me
Those who believe
Don’t know
What to say
Those whose words
I need to hear
Will never speak
Never apologize
I live in fear
Sleep in fear
I walk through life
Afraid of shadows
Afraid of anger
The voice in my head
Telling me I lied
Makes me feel
Like I am wrong
But it happened
I know
And no one believes
I stand alone
Waiting for belief
It will never come
Fear will never leave
This is my life
I want out of it
To die and
Let my family
Sort it out
Friends get tired
Of hearing
Friends get tired
Of isolation
Depression and fear
They don’t understand
It isn’t their place
To hold me up
To be my safety
I stand alone
Waiting for belief
That will never come
Waiting for fear
To lose its grip
And let me live
A life of peace
When does it end?
The past in my head
Tearing my mind
Twisting my soul
Waiting for belief
Wondering if love
Will find me again
The secrets I kept
Made me sick
I shared them
And got shit
For my trouble
Belief does not come
Love does not come
I die a little
Each day
They don’t believe me
Those who believe
Don’t know
What to say
Those whose words
I need to hear
Will never speak
Never apologize
I live in fear
Sleep in fear
I walk through life
Afraid of shadows
Afraid of anger
The voice in my head
Telling me I lied
Makes me feel
Like I am wrong
But it happened
I know
And no one believes
I stand alone
Waiting for belief
It will never come
Fear will never leave
This is my life
I want out of it
To die and
Let my family
Sort it out
Friends get tired
Of hearing
Friends get tired
Of isolation
Depression and fear
They don’t understand
It isn’t their place
To hold me up
To be my safety
I stand alone
Waiting for belief
That will never come
Waiting for fear
To lose its grip
And let me live
A life of peace
When does it end?
The past in my head
Tearing my mind
Twisting my soul
I Know What Strong Is
I know what strong is
Getting up every day
With pain in your back
Soreness in your heart
Wounds that never seem to heal
And showering
Dressing
Facing the day
I know what strong is
Every day struggling
To make forward progress
Knowing you’ll probably fail
More often than not
Each time you fall
Standing up again
Taking on the challenges
Of every day
I know what strong is
Haunted by your past
Unable to let it go
But yearning to learn
Facing yourself in the mirror
Knowing others see failure
Trying not to let it get you
I know what strong is
Walking through the pain
Refusing to give up
Staying alive when dead would be easier
Loving people you know won’t love you back
Standing up to abuse
When cowering is what you want to do
Letting yourself cry, or scream, or feel
Instead of building walls
Keeping others out
Or holding it in
Letting it eat you from the inside out
I know what strong is
Not perpetuating violence
Letting it stop with you
Even when hitting
Or throwing things
Would be so easy
I know what strong is
Getting up every day
With pain in your back
Soreness in your heart
Wounds that never seem to heal
And showering
Dressing
Facing the day
I know what strong is
Every day struggling
To make forward progress
Knowing you’ll probably fail
More often than not
Each time you fall
Standing up again
Taking on the challenges
Of every day
I know what strong is
Haunted by your past
Unable to let it go
But yearning to learn
Facing yourself in the mirror
Knowing others see failure
Trying not to let it get you
I know what strong is
Walking through the pain
Refusing to give up
Staying alive when dead would be easier
Loving people you know won’t love you back
Standing up to abuse
When cowering is what you want to do
Letting yourself cry, or scream, or feel
Instead of building walls
Keeping others out
Or holding it in
Letting it eat you from the inside out
I know what strong is
Not perpetuating violence
Letting it stop with you
Even when hitting
Or throwing things
Would be so easy
I know what strong is
Why Would You Do That?
Why would you do that
Say you care
Then turn your back
Give me your friendship
Take a piece of my heart
Then pull away
Ignore me
Take away your support
Why would you do that
I placed my heart in your hands
Trusted you
Listened to you
I Work to be a better person
For knowing you
Seeing the person I thought
You were
Seeing the person I thought you saw in me
Making positive changes
Using your support
Support withdrawn
Floating
Uncertain
Why would you do that
Give your friendship
Take my trust
Make promises
Break it all
The promise
My trust
My heart
Why would you do that
Is it me
Is befriending me such a burden
Why would take the time
to teach me
then walk away
as I begin to learn
why would you do that
give your friendship
then turn your back
what am I
a toy
a project you tossed aside
my heart is not a toy
an experiment?
in sociolology perhaps?
I gave you my trust
Listened to your lessons
Came to care about you
Then you were gone
Here I am missing you
Doing this dance
Attempting to be someone
You could be proud of
But do you care
Why would you do that
Give your friendship
then turn your back
My life is forever changed for having known you
And forever empty in the spot you left behind
Empty space
A friend is all I seek
Where did you go
Why would you do that
I needed you
But being needed scared you away
Why?
Say you care
Then turn your back
Give me your friendship
Take a piece of my heart
Then pull away
Ignore me
Take away your support
Why would you do that
I placed my heart in your hands
Trusted you
Listened to you
I Work to be a better person
For knowing you
Seeing the person I thought
You were
Seeing the person I thought you saw in me
Making positive changes
Using your support
Support withdrawn
Floating
Uncertain
Why would you do that
Give your friendship
Take my trust
Make promises
Break it all
The promise
My trust
My heart
Why would you do that
Is it me
Is befriending me such a burden
Why would take the time
to teach me
then walk away
as I begin to learn
why would you do that
give your friendship
then turn your back
what am I
a toy
a project you tossed aside
my heart is not a toy
an experiment?
in sociolology perhaps?
I gave you my trust
Listened to your lessons
Came to care about you
Then you were gone
Here I am missing you
Doing this dance
Attempting to be someone
You could be proud of
But do you care
Why would you do that
Give your friendship
then turn your back
My life is forever changed for having known you
And forever empty in the spot you left behind
Empty space
A friend is all I seek
Where did you go
Why would you do that
I needed you
But being needed scared you away
Why?
Finding the Right Mix
Henry David Thoreau spoke of men leading lives of quiet desperation. I can relate to that. I feel like my whole work life has been a desperate attempt to earn enough money to live on my own. I have been desperate to get enough education to have the kind of job that would give me that independence. I have been dependent on family for my living for most of my life. I have worked at a large number of jobs, trying to find the right fit. I have had difficulty with my work life because I have a disability. Not a visible disability, but a real one just the same. I have bipolar disorder.
Bipolar disorder, which is also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person's mood, energy, and ability to function. It is different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through in that the symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe. Left untreated these mood swings can result in damaged relationships, poor job or school performance, and even suicide. There are times when thoughts are mangled, and perceptions twisted. I cannot rely on what I think or feel when mania or depression hits. It isn’t always clear to the sufferer that he or she is in a mania or depression. It is good to have a support system in place. There is good news for most of those who suffer from this disorder; it can be managed with medication. The tough part is finding the right medication or combination of medications that will work for the individual. For many the process of finding the right mix takes years.
I have worked at so many different jobs that sometimes I forget what some of them were. I seldom hold a job long because I have troubles with absenteeism. I have had troubles with concentration on the job. I can’t seem to keep myself in a job for long. I have wanted to work. I have tried to work. Until I got stable on my medications I could not hold a job for more than nine months, with one notable exception. I worked at a pizza place for three years. I think I never lost that job, even though I had the same attendance problems I had experienced elsewhere, because I was really good at the job. There weren’t that many good workers in that place. The turn over rate was high because people quit, or were fired, all the time. I work hard when I work. I do a good job as long as I am not on a manic high, or a deep depression. It has been difficult to find a balance, to find the right mix.
In addition to attempting to work hard all of these years, I have been trying to get my degree and teaching credential since 1992. I managed to get my AA degree in 1995. Since then I have had trouble moving on. I have applied to Whittier College, where I was accepted, but could not afford to go. I took more classes at Cerritos College. I applied to and attended Cal State Fullerton. I had troubles with my mental health and screwed up my GPA. I had to quit school there. I attended Cerritos College again to pull up my GPA. I applied for readmission to Cal State Fullerton for this semester, but was told my GPA was too low. I applied at CSUDH, and here I am.
I was diagnosed with the bipolar disorder in 1996. It took until at least 2000 to find a combination of medications that worked for me. I became completely stable for the first time in as long as I could remember. I had actually been working for Bank of America at the time. I managed to work there from 1996 to
2003. I spent some of that time on disability leave, and the rest of it on written warning for attendance. I was always in danger of being fired.
Although I was stable on my medications in 2000, I had more trials ahead of me because one of my medications was what they call black boxed. It was taken off the list of medications used for my disorder because it had serious side effects affecting the heart, so I had to try a whole new list of medications. In 2002 we finally found a new combination.
Desperation sets in after a while. I want to be “normal.” I want to be stable. I was about ready to give up. I wanted to let go, sometimes even wanting to kill myself just to make the whole thing be over. I am lucky that I was able to find a combination of medications that work for me. I know people who are so severely bipolar that medications don’t work for them, or at least not for long. It took a relatively short period of time for me to find the right mix. I had more trials with medications in the last year; once again looking for the right mix.
I have lived most of my adult life with family. I have had my own place a few times, even for a few years at a time, but always with help from my life partner, a roommate, or my family. I have never been able to support myself completely. For me this creates a desperation I cannot begin to explain to you. I am not young. I need to know I can make it on my own. I am here, contemplating an advanced degree, trying to get a degree that will eventually let me earn enough money to live on. I am hoping for total independence. As long as my medications work, and I am stable, I am going to be just fine.
I am fearful about my decision to be a teacher. There is a lot of stigma attached to mental illness. If I go looking for a teaching job, and they find out about my condition, I could be turned down just for that reason. If I lie about my condition, and it comes up somehow anyway, I am also likely to lose my job and be branded a liar. I will have to keep a balance, not telling, but also not lying if I am asked directly.
My mother taught me the value of hard work. She taught me that I should be independent. I feel as though I have always been letting her down. She raised my brother and me alone. Our father left when I was eight. She worked hard to pay all of the bills he left her with and to take care of my older brother and I. I have never been able to do what she did, what she did until just about a year ago. She was working full time, at the age of seventy-four, to put me through school. I feel like I am again failing even as I succeed at school. I am letting someone else support me again so that I can try one more time to get ahead.
Thoreau was talking about how we work to have things, things we don’t need, things we want. I don’t want material things; I want to live on my own. I want a life that is not dependent on anyone else. I am living a life of quiet desperation as I try to find my way in this world. My desperation is in dealing with a condition that will not ever change. My brain chemistry is something I cannot change on my own. I have to take medications for the rest of my life. My desperation is in never feeling like I can make it on my own; medication and doctors will always be part of what I do. I am determined that this time it will be different; this time I will make it to my goal. This time I will get my degree, get a job, or get disability, and get out of my mother’s home. I live in my desperation, but I live, I work hard, and I go on.
Bipolar disorder, which is also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person's mood, energy, and ability to function. It is different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through in that the symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe. Left untreated these mood swings can result in damaged relationships, poor job or school performance, and even suicide. There are times when thoughts are mangled, and perceptions twisted. I cannot rely on what I think or feel when mania or depression hits. It isn’t always clear to the sufferer that he or she is in a mania or depression. It is good to have a support system in place. There is good news for most of those who suffer from this disorder; it can be managed with medication. The tough part is finding the right medication or combination of medications that will work for the individual. For many the process of finding the right mix takes years.
I have worked at so many different jobs that sometimes I forget what some of them were. I seldom hold a job long because I have troubles with absenteeism. I have had troubles with concentration on the job. I can’t seem to keep myself in a job for long. I have wanted to work. I have tried to work. Until I got stable on my medications I could not hold a job for more than nine months, with one notable exception. I worked at a pizza place for three years. I think I never lost that job, even though I had the same attendance problems I had experienced elsewhere, because I was really good at the job. There weren’t that many good workers in that place. The turn over rate was high because people quit, or were fired, all the time. I work hard when I work. I do a good job as long as I am not on a manic high, or a deep depression. It has been difficult to find a balance, to find the right mix.
In addition to attempting to work hard all of these years, I have been trying to get my degree and teaching credential since 1992. I managed to get my AA degree in 1995. Since then I have had trouble moving on. I have applied to Whittier College, where I was accepted, but could not afford to go. I took more classes at Cerritos College. I applied to and attended Cal State Fullerton. I had troubles with my mental health and screwed up my GPA. I had to quit school there. I attended Cerritos College again to pull up my GPA. I applied for readmission to Cal State Fullerton for this semester, but was told my GPA was too low. I applied at CSUDH, and here I am.
I was diagnosed with the bipolar disorder in 1996. It took until at least 2000 to find a combination of medications that worked for me. I became completely stable for the first time in as long as I could remember. I had actually been working for Bank of America at the time. I managed to work there from 1996 to
2003. I spent some of that time on disability leave, and the rest of it on written warning for attendance. I was always in danger of being fired.
Although I was stable on my medications in 2000, I had more trials ahead of me because one of my medications was what they call black boxed. It was taken off the list of medications used for my disorder because it had serious side effects affecting the heart, so I had to try a whole new list of medications. In 2002 we finally found a new combination.
Desperation sets in after a while. I want to be “normal.” I want to be stable. I was about ready to give up. I wanted to let go, sometimes even wanting to kill myself just to make the whole thing be over. I am lucky that I was able to find a combination of medications that work for me. I know people who are so severely bipolar that medications don’t work for them, or at least not for long. It took a relatively short period of time for me to find the right mix. I had more trials with medications in the last year; once again looking for the right mix.
I have lived most of my adult life with family. I have had my own place a few times, even for a few years at a time, but always with help from my life partner, a roommate, or my family. I have never been able to support myself completely. For me this creates a desperation I cannot begin to explain to you. I am not young. I need to know I can make it on my own. I am here, contemplating an advanced degree, trying to get a degree that will eventually let me earn enough money to live on. I am hoping for total independence. As long as my medications work, and I am stable, I am going to be just fine.
I am fearful about my decision to be a teacher. There is a lot of stigma attached to mental illness. If I go looking for a teaching job, and they find out about my condition, I could be turned down just for that reason. If I lie about my condition, and it comes up somehow anyway, I am also likely to lose my job and be branded a liar. I will have to keep a balance, not telling, but also not lying if I am asked directly.
My mother taught me the value of hard work. She taught me that I should be independent. I feel as though I have always been letting her down. She raised my brother and me alone. Our father left when I was eight. She worked hard to pay all of the bills he left her with and to take care of my older brother and I. I have never been able to do what she did, what she did until just about a year ago. She was working full time, at the age of seventy-four, to put me through school. I feel like I am again failing even as I succeed at school. I am letting someone else support me again so that I can try one more time to get ahead.
Thoreau was talking about how we work to have things, things we don’t need, things we want. I don’t want material things; I want to live on my own. I want a life that is not dependent on anyone else. I am living a life of quiet desperation as I try to find my way in this world. My desperation is in dealing with a condition that will not ever change. My brain chemistry is something I cannot change on my own. I have to take medications for the rest of my life. My desperation is in never feeling like I can make it on my own; medication and doctors will always be part of what I do. I am determined that this time it will be different; this time I will make it to my goal. This time I will get my degree, get a job, or get disability, and get out of my mother’s home. I live in my desperation, but I live, I work hard, and I go on.
Respect Me
Respect me
If I don’t want to be touched
Respect me
Being naked is not an invitation to fondle me
Respect me
I am a work in progress
Respect me
It’s about progress not perfection
Respect me
If I cannot change do not nag, walk away
Respect me
If what I eat and drink is not the best for me
Respect me
It’s my body
Respect me
I have my own friends
Respect me
My happiness does not depend on you
Respect me
If my choice is to feel and express my emotions
Respect me
If crying is better than not feeling at all
Respect me
If I spoil my cat like a child
Respect me
My daughter comes first
Respect me
If you cannot live with me as I am
Respect me
Walk away if you expect me to fit into your mold
Respect me
If I am afraid, it’s real
Respect me
I try and fail more often than not but I try
Respect me
Money isn’t as important as love
Respect me
Romance me even years after we start
Respect me
I’m not ever going to change some things I like in myself
Respect me
I’ll always want to know why, to know more
Respect me
I love hard and break easily
Respect me
Don’t make promises you aren’t going to keep
Respect me
Trust doesn’t come easy
Respect me
My scars run deep, healing is slow
Respect me
I face the pain and walk through daily
Respect me
Accept who I am, not who you want me to be
Respect me
8/16/07
If I don’t want to be touched
Respect me
Being naked is not an invitation to fondle me
Respect me
I am a work in progress
Respect me
It’s about progress not perfection
Respect me
If I cannot change do not nag, walk away
Respect me
If what I eat and drink is not the best for me
Respect me
It’s my body
Respect me
I have my own friends
Respect me
My happiness does not depend on you
Respect me
If my choice is to feel and express my emotions
Respect me
If crying is better than not feeling at all
Respect me
If I spoil my cat like a child
Respect me
My daughter comes first
Respect me
If you cannot live with me as I am
Respect me
Walk away if you expect me to fit into your mold
Respect me
If I am afraid, it’s real
Respect me
I try and fail more often than not but I try
Respect me
Money isn’t as important as love
Respect me
Romance me even years after we start
Respect me
I’m not ever going to change some things I like in myself
Respect me
I’ll always want to know why, to know more
Respect me
I love hard and break easily
Respect me
Don’t make promises you aren’t going to keep
Respect me
Trust doesn’t come easy
Respect me
My scars run deep, healing is slow
Respect me
I face the pain and walk through daily
Respect me
Accept who I am, not who you want me to be
Respect me
8/16/07
All My Love
All my love packed away in little boxes.
Saved for one day when Ms. Right would come along.
Stored unused, dusty, yellowed with age,
They sat so very long waiting for the "one."
Rusted to each other, pieces large and small, from the damp,
Dampness of tears shed over love that came and went,
Stunted in growth from lack of light and air.
All my love packed away in little boxes.
Dragged out and dumped at your feet,
Smelling of mildew, and mold, in damaged boxes.
Given to you in one big heap,
For you to sort through, looking for the salvageable;
You, Ms. Right, receiver of half-forgotten bits of love,
Must somehow breathe new life into the dying love.
All my love packed away in little boxes,
Labeled, "father," "mother," "brother," etc.
The box labeled, "lover," far, far back on the shelf.
Boxes long ago given up on, never filling, always draining.
Convinced was I, that I would never use them again.
All my love packed away in little boxes.
You opened each one to see what it contained.
Handled each fragile bit with care,
Examined them in the light of your love,
Tossed out what was broken beyond repair,
Repaired all that you could with love of your own.
And after all you set aside as garbage,
I still need bigger boxes to hold all my love again.
Saved for one day when Ms. Right would come along.
Stored unused, dusty, yellowed with age,
They sat so very long waiting for the "one."
Rusted to each other, pieces large and small, from the damp,
Dampness of tears shed over love that came and went,
Stunted in growth from lack of light and air.
All my love packed away in little boxes.
Dragged out and dumped at your feet,
Smelling of mildew, and mold, in damaged boxes.
Given to you in one big heap,
For you to sort through, looking for the salvageable;
You, Ms. Right, receiver of half-forgotten bits of love,
Must somehow breathe new life into the dying love.
All my love packed away in little boxes,
Labeled, "father," "mother," "brother," etc.
The box labeled, "lover," far, far back on the shelf.
Boxes long ago given up on, never filling, always draining.
Convinced was I, that I would never use them again.
All my love packed away in little boxes.
You opened each one to see what it contained.
Handled each fragile bit with care,
Examined them in the light of your love,
Tossed out what was broken beyond repair,
Repaired all that you could with love of your own.
And after all you set aside as garbage,
I still need bigger boxes to hold all my love again.
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