Another bad day

Panic. Fear. Not Good Enough. Twenty-four and no books, no paintings, no career, no new theory of Panic, Fear, Not Good Enough that holds water through the next bout of horror. Existential crisis. Have not read enough about existentialism to say this with authority. Failed intellectualism. Navel-gazing. Arrogance. Faking a sense of worth. They’ll all find out eventually. Like those dreams where everybody’s a werewolf/zombie/cult member except you. Bumbling, say something unbelievably stupid, “hey check out my silver dagger/cooked meat/book about Waco” and then they’ll all turn on you. Stupid. Keep your mouth shut. Your brain is a swampland. Do not let the muck flow out on the floor.

My therapist calls this abusive self-talk. An inward arrow, the faces and hands and unexpected enemies of a lifetime bound up in one package of mistletoe that I eat and eat and eat. Puking it up, I have the gall and insanity of reason to ask of myself, what is wrong with you. Why are you so sick. You Are Always Sick.

I am not so different from the rest of the world. I am asking, why did I stay. I am thinking, obviously I liked it. Obviously I deserved it. If I stayed that long, I’m sorry, no sympathy, it’s my own fault. It’s not like I was being beaten. It’s not like I couldn’t Figure It Out because the world is So Obvious, like I couldn’t Leave At Any Time so there must be Something Wrong, I mean, Something Wrong With Me. Abusive self-talk, is what my therapist would say. Only logical, is what’s on everybody else’s mind. Nobody puts up with pain who doesn’t like it. And how can I argue? I did learn to like it. Shame. Guilt. Fear. It must be My Fault. I can try to call that Survival but obviously I Don’t Know Things, I didn’t know I could leave, I didn’t know only people who deserve it get hurt, so how am I to know that what I call Survival isn’t actually called Broken.

Defend defend defend. Maintain the concept, It Is Not Your Fault, You Did Not Deserve This. Calming self-talk, provokes anxiety, paranoia, difference. Who needs to be calmed except somebody with something wrong. Moment of paralyzing fear: Other People Don’t Have To Do This. Don’t have to say, it’s not your fault, you didn’t deserve it. You Are Not Like Other People. And maybe that’s why All This happened to you. Wish virulently to be a part of the world, the normal world, the normal world that wants you to know You Must Have Liked It. Try that out, it’s comfortable, it’s easy, you have worn those clothes before. This is what is normal to think and you want to be normal. Pain. Panic. Fear. Iron bars clatter down. Rediscover, again, that this doesn’t make you Normal Real-World Girl. Why did you think this time it would work, to accept the blame, to say Yes It Was My Fault and hope you get into the club, the rest of the world that believes this and doesn’t get abused. Since You Must Have Liked It you can’t be in the club, you can’t be anything but Stupid and Crazy. And don’t think you’ll be clever and admit, yes, it was stupid, yes, it was crazy, that doesn’t absolve you of anything. Now you are just Stupid and Crazy and also an Attention Whore.

Crazy-making desire, need, fear of need, hatred of need. Want Want Want and Hate Hate Hate. Fuck you, world, you bunch of assholes, you bunch of “it’s your fault for being abused” creeps, you caste-making Once You’re Damaged Goods You’re Always Damaged Goods fuckers. I hate you and I hate you and I want in. I didn’t ask to be born a toilet. But that’s what happened and I didn’t wave my magic This Is Not My Life Because I Don’t Want It To Be wand so I must have liked it and I can never be a part of your club now. In desperation and terror and loneliness so stark I would become literally paralyzed with need, I have done things that are pitiful and absurd and disgusting and I guess that makes me the sum of my parts. Didn’t I know all I had to do was blink twice and realize the world is not what it is. Fathers don’t abuse daughters. Husbands don’t abuse wives. That’s not the Real World. That is in Your Mind. That is Your Fault for not Changing Things.

I am pretty sure I spent all that time thinking, I Can Change This. That I spent all those years eating less, spending less, smiling more, speaking quietly, cleaning harder, working longer hours, because I Can Change This if only I stop being so lazy and self-involved and Permanently Fucked-Up. But I didn’t change anything. The abuse rages on, a storm outside my window, and all I did was draw the blinds, move away. I failed. Not Good Enough. Either I have to have changed it or it has to have never happened in the first place. So now, the inescapable conclusion: You Deserved It.

I have been fooling myself, to think I can leave this behind. Cope with the memories as they come up, sure, peel away the layers of feelings, cry, heal, hurt, discover, integrate. Yes yes. I’ll do these things. Hating them, loving them, I’ll do them. That’s not my problem. I’m willing to work, to think, to move inward through the swamp. My problem is I thought this would solve a thing. Make me normal. Healthy. Full. Whole. Part of the club. But I will never be part of the club. This isn’t like a few extra pounds I can work off if I just try, make a plan, stick to it, no flashy new fads, just old-fashioned Put In the Good and Work Off the Bad. There are flat and wide plains I have visited, and when people ask me how I have been I can tell them about my travels there, and stop the conversation cold, and lose my membership card to the Human Race. Or I can learn their language, translate Swamp Talk into Fine and Good and All Right, I Suppose. Translate the rush of loneliness and hunger and the ball of tears rolling up my throat into a casual How Have You Been, and a polite smile. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT grab their hands and squeeze them, and touch their faces, because you will never get over your amazement of a real person, a Real Person, talking to you as if you are one of them. Restrain the desire to kiss everyone who smiles genuinely at you, like you are not A Crazy Person. Translate the bubbling questions that come with every compliment – How Do You Mean That and How Can You Tell I’m Nice and Do You Really Think So and Why and Why and Why – into a shrug and a roll of the eyes, so when they decide to take it back in the future nobody will feel too embarrassed because obviously you were Too Cool to care anyway.

Translate the only history you have into silence. There has never been a span of your life that was relatively normal enough to share in casual conversation. Here is what happens when you try:

Oh, I know what you mean, I had this boyfriend once who used to scrape the skin off his wrists with Brillo pads. I mean, E-MO. Yeah, totally, my best friend in high school was so crazy, she got raped seven times! Oh god the fights I had with my dad when I was a teenager, all you’re a monster this and you can’t leave the basement for the rest of the night that and clean the bucket because we don’t have a toilet and you’re a stupid whore and blah blah blah. So melodramatic! Well, let me tell you, my ex-husband used to fuck this other woman and then tell me he wished I was as skinny as her, and on our wedding night he, like, totally fucked her in our hotel bed before he had sex with me, and then he only fucked me because she was all, I don’t really want to do this and trying not to cry, and then I slept on the floor. Men, huh? LOL amirite.

So, say nothing. Gain a reputation as quiet and distant. Which hurts. You don’t want to be quiet and distant. You want to take everybody’s face in your hands and kiss them and hold them and love them for even deigning to speak to you, damaged as you are, inside and out. But you cannot without explaining, you see, I lived with a father who never touched us, never hugged, never patted us on the shoulder, and a husband who only touched me if it hurt because that is what he liked so I had to learn how to like it too, so every time you accidentally brush your arm with mine it’s so warm and sweet and not-painful that I want to cry. No, just smile tightly and pull away like normal people do from casual contact, because it’s scary for them, too, scary because they want it so badly, and at least you have that much in common.

All this will never go away. Maybe over the years it will become less intense. I don’t have a lot of faith in what my progress will look like. I am learning not to sabotage it out of fear, but I am not learning to imagine that one day I will pass for normal, or, hilarious magical thinking, one day I will be normal. One day I will not have to bite my lip to not say the thing that I know will stop a conversation awkward and cold, and say nothing instead, because I have nothing to share but horror that will lead to Why Did You Stay. I will always be the still cool face on the outside and the Damaged Self on the inside.

I am beginning to think of this as a disease. Incurable, but responding to treatment. Manageable. I have been infected, beyond my will, beyond my control. I will always be Diseased. I will always be Sick. I will dutifully follow my regimen – be gentle with myself, be forgiving, find the origins, find the solutions, let the feelings happen, let it flow, affirm It Was Not Your Fault and You Did Not Deserve This. Most days it will work. At times I will develop a natural resistance, my Disease revving up from the corners I have penned it into, and I will get Sicker. And I will write a thing like this, about pain, about panic, about fear, about being worthless, the sum of my parts, disease and pain and abuse and no real girl containing it all. I will be angry and helpless, because I did not ask for this. Because I have worked harder than most people can know or imagine to reverse the years, reverse the spread of the pathogen, find the healthy cells that existed before the disease. Find that there was no time before the disease, nothing untouched, nothing healthy, only cells that are less sick than others. And then, recognize that the despair and hopelessness that springs from this is itself part of the Disease.

It is not Fair and it is not Right. But it is a Disease, and what I can say for Disease is it doesn’t care whether You Deserve It or not, whether You Like It or not, whether You Asked For It. It simply is. It has learned to live with me, no matter what I do. And I will have to learn to Live With It.