Be careful what you wish for.

On Monday, Ivan and I were having a bad day.  We've faced some pretty serious financial setbacks lately, and the stress of them added to having a new baby is really...hard.

I have been considering whether I should leave San Francisco and return to the east coast.  The toughest thing about it is that Sophia and I would be returning alone.  Ivan would not be joining us.  But other than him, there really is very little left for me here.  Most of my friends are gone.  I have been feeling terribly alone and lonely and isolated for quite some time.  And the cost of living that I managed to keep up with before is killing me.

When I look at how my life has changed in the last 3 1/2 years for the worse, it all leads back to Sept. 18, 2008 for me.  I still can't believe how one man could take so much from me in one night:  my power, my self-confidence and self-worth.  I just can't find them again.  And finding them again while struggling for basic survival at the moment is proving nearly impossible.

I read a Postsecret postcard awhile back that made me weep in sharp recognition:

Anyway, back to the bad day on Monday.  I was anxious and distraught and afraid.  I sat outside on the front steps while Ivan was inside with his sister and Sophia napped in the bedroom.  I closed my eyes and wished for something to happen to provide me with clarity.  I was trying to figure out how I could leave the person I love--and my baby's father--in order to try to make a new life somewhere else.  And to make it even worse, I would not be leaving from a place of strength.  I would be leaving because I am fucking broken.

In my irrationality, I imagined that a natural disaster like an earthquake would absolutely fucking shake things up--help me put them in perspective.  Despite feeling a little superstitious, I wished for it to happen.  I closed my eyes and wished it intensely.  I felt desperate for anything that might help me make this gut-wrenching decision.

Ten minutes later I was inside changing the baby and arguing with Ivan again when the oven caught on fire in the kitchen.  Ivan and Natasha tried to put it out, but it only got worse.  I heard Natasha say from the kitchen, "Get out.  Get out now!" and I grabbed my baby and we were the first ones out the door.  The smoke filled up the house so fast that we couldn't even get a baby blanket.  Natasha was on the phone with 911 while smoke billowed out of our windows.  Approaching sirens screamed while I curled myself around Sophia to keep her warm and covered her ears from the noise.

I felt guilty for the wish I'd made.

I sat on a nearby stoop while a crowd of neighbors and other passersby gathered and stared.  Three fire trucks blocked the intersection and the firemen rushed in.  I felt miserable and afraid as I held onto Sophia and crooned softly to her.  In my mind I was asking myself:  "Is this it? Is it time to go?"  I saw Ivan looking at me and knew that he knew what I was thinking.

We are now safe and back in our house.  There was minimal damage, but the damage we did have has only added to our financial burden.  I'm not sure that the fire provided the clarity I wished for, but it did sink me a little further.

I feel weak.  And terrified.  And terribly alone.  Where is the girl who arrived here in 2005 with such courage and hope and a 'fuck-it-I'll-make-it-work-somehow' attitude?  I need her now.

Saying good-bye to breastfeeding

Nine days ago I became a new mother.

About this I am filled with happiness and fear and excitement and exhaustion and weepiness, but also with an emotion I did not expect:  intense grief.  Regarding breastfeeding.  Or my lack thereof.  Let me explain.

I assumed I would breastfeed my daughter, Sophia.  I've assumed since I was a little girl that I would one day do this for my child when I saw my mother breastfeeding my brothers.  I had visions of my child emerging from my body, wet and wriggling, and being placed upon my ample breasts already overflowing with milk and beginning to eat.  My motherly instincts would kick in as I held her to me and basked in the glow of fertility and womanhood. My assumption was so entrenched that while stocking up on baby necessities in the last few months, I didn't bother buying formula and a bunch of bottles:  my boobs would supply what I needed!  Baby feeding supplies?  Check and check. 

I heard people talk about how difficult breastfeeding is and I thought I had adequately braced myself.  I was ready to be patient with both my body and with Sophia.  I was ready for sore nipples and purchased lanolin ointment in preparation.  I bought expensive nursing bras after test-driving a couple.   I thought I was reasonably ready for the challenge.

I was wrong.

The first time I put my baby to my breast, I felt anxious anticipation.  Within a few seconds Sophia had figured out what was going on, and her little lips had eagerly enveloped my nipple and she began to suck.  I was thrilled!  My baby knew what to do, and soon when my milk "came in" from wherever it mysteriously was, I would be able to supply her with the food she needed.  Awash in motherly competence, I beamed with pride as the nurses in the Intensive Care Nursery (ICN) at UCSF exclaimed over how good her latch was and how well she sucked.

"You don't have to worry about those two," Nurse Sue knowlingly informed other nurses who worked in the ICN, "they're as good as anyone I've ever seen at breastfeeding."

Well, of course my child would figure it out quickly. She was her mother's daughter!  She was smart, and it was a sign of the overachievement to come.  She would be walking at 9 months and reading at  3 1/2 years.

These positive feelings lasted for approximately 48 hours.  While I was reflecting upon my good fortune that breastfeeding was practically in the bag, Sophia was being fed formula in a bottle with a nipple that was much easier to suck from and much more productive than mine and had grown impatient with our little suck-on-mom's-nipples-for-half-an-hour-to-get-colustrum-and-help-her-milk-come-in-BEFORE-you-can-eat song and dance.  Soon she preferred to go straight for the bottle when she was hungry.

Who could blame her?

But it felt awful.  At first I just felt a little let down and disappointed that my milk hadn't come in as quickly as I'd hoped.  But after a couple of feeding sessions' worth of watching my baby repeatedly make faces when she realized which nipple she was being given, I started to get upset in earnest.

I was reassured repeatedly by nurses.  This was not abnormal at all, they told me.  C-sections slow down the process, it was explained.  Premature babies may also slow down the process, I heard.  Just give it a couple more days and it will happen, I was promised.

A lactation consultant dropped by my room.  An electric, hospital-grade breast pump was delivered to my bedside so that I could get down to the business of hooking myself up to the machine and pumping every three hours.  The ICN pediatrician stopped by to offer breastfeeding tips.  Each time the nurses' shifts changed, I got advice from all of them all over again.  In front of a small, concerned audience, I was instructed how to "express" milk from my breasts and then subsequently failed to do so repeatedly.  Everyone around me was "Rah-rah-rah!" on the breastfeeding bandwagon and I felt left behind.

While everyone meant well, what it ultimately meant was that my every three hours feedings with my baby began to feel like work.  Work at which I was failing!  Along with other exhausted new mothers on the 15th floor, I shuffled zombie-like in my gown to the nursery around the clock, but I began to hate it. It was stressful and goal-oriented and frustrating.  When the telephone rang in my hospital room or my alarm went off signaling that it was time for the baby to eat, I groaned and cursed.

I felt dread about feeding my baby, and I started to cry every time it was time to feed her.

When I managed to survive another feeding, I went back to my room and fell into bed with relief, only to immediately begin eyeing the clock out of anxiety for the next feeding.

Eventually, my colustrum stopped showing up when I pumped.  It felt like I'd officially failed.  "Your negative emotions are probably affecting the process," I was informed.

Well, hell.

These feelings were not okay with me.  I started electing to skip the attempts to get my baby to suck from my own breasts and began going straight to the bottle when I fed her.  I wanted back the moments we had previously shared when Sophie had her belly full and we would rock in the chair together and snuggle.  My nursery breastfeeding boycott was very controversial.  Nurses confronted me while I was feeding my baby about why I was doing what I was doing.  Had I thought about the implications of this decision?  Her doctor came to talk to me.  A second and much-lauded lactation consultant was sent in to get to the bottom of my situation.  A social worker came to have a little heart-to-heart with me about my feelings.  One nurse took it upon herself to call the lactation specialists and inform them whenever I fed the baby without putting her to my breast so that they could call me on the phone in my room later and ask my why I hadn't put the baby to my breast at her last feeding--why was I stopping breastfeeding?  I felt spied on and harassed, and that was the last straw. 

I desperately wanted to take my baby and go home and away from the eyes of all the doctors and nurses and the other mothers breastfeeding in the nursery.  An identical electric breast pump was scheduled to be delivered to my house the day I brought the baby home.  I looked forward to my own private attempts to feed and bond with my baby.  Then an address mix-up and the approaching weekend delayed the delivery by several days.  Now, even my hopes of succeeding at home were fading away, and I felt miserable.  I cried my first night home when I desperately needed sleep to be ready for her next feeding and changing.  "I'm not going to be able to breastfeed our baby," I moaned to my partner.  "I feel like a bad mom."

The next morning Aurelia, a home care nurse, arrived at my house to give Sophie her first check-up.  She was kind and soft-spoken and filled with questions and advice.  I knew in advance I couldn't bear another conversation about breastfeeding, and I prepared to put on a brave face about how it was going.  We sat down in the living room with Sophie and my mother, and Aurelia got down to business.  "I'm hear to check the baby, of course," she said, "but I really want to start with asking you about breastfeeding."  I broke down into a weeping mess and blubbered out the whole situation to her.  Fat, hot tears rolled down my cheeks and I felt embarrassed, but there was nothing I can do to control them.  It was heart-wrenching.

Aurelia was caring and empathic.  She listened to my story and said, "You are not required to do this.  You did your best.  You gave your baby the colustrum that would give her the antibodies that she needed.  That's the most important part.  They are very pro-breastfeeding at UCSF and there's a lot of pressure.  You can't beat yourself up about this. You know, not breastfeeding is a choice, too."

This was a new idea.  I wasn't sure I liked it.

Aurelia kindly helped me by making the phone call necessary to track dow the wayward breastpump that was supposed to be delivered to me, and assured me that it was not too late.  "Your hormones are very active for a couple of weeks.  If you decide you want to breastfeed, there's still time."  My relief was incredible.

Today while laying with Sophia on the bed, one of the lactation consultants from UCSF called me to check in.  I felt my stress level rise immediately.  How was breastfeeding going? she wanted to know.  Have you tried this?  And that?  What about this combined with that?  Predictably, I started to cry.  I explained to her that I felt that the pressure around breastfeeding was affecting my bonding with Sophia.  She softened. 

"Honey, if it doesn't work it's not the end of the world.  She will still grow into a wonderful young woman.  She will still be happy and healthy.  When you feed her formula, hold her skin-to-skin.  Your baby deserves to feel you against her--she deserves that contact and so do you.  Stroke her arms and hands.  It will be fine.  If breastfeeding is not working then don't let it affect your relationship."

I was surprised by what I was hearing, but grateful.  This active breastfeeding proponent was assuring me it was okay if it didn't work for me, and that I had nothing to feel guilty about.  I started letting myself off the hook.

Tomorrow the breast pump is supposed to be delivered to my house.  I still plan to work on breastfeeding at my own pace.  I don't know if it will work.  It may have already slipped through my fingers, and that still hurts me.  But I no longer feel like a bad mom.

Where I went and why I stayed

I imagine most people think they know how they would react in a given situation.  I know I did.  I always had a bit of feistiness in me that led me to believe I would fight an attacker tooth and nail.  Plus, I was smart.  I was educated in sexuality and gender issues.  I taught classes on those subjects fer chrissakes.

In the back of my mind lately--in spite of all the other things I have going on--I have been processing some of the issues that kept me from fighting back, from speaking up.  The list is incomplete.

1.  Though I struggled, I didn't scream while it was happening because I didn't want to make a scene.  I get made fun of for being overly dramatic; I always have.  And when I reported a molestation to a trusted adult as a child, I was told that I had misunderstood what had happened, and that it had not happened the way I said it did.  Because I misunderstood.

I thought maybe I was misunderstanding this time, too.

2.  Admitting to myself what was happening put me in danger of panic.  And if panic set in I felt like I would lose all control. 

Better to keep quiet and calm and alert.

3.  He didn't beat me up.  Didn't pull a weapon on me.  Didn't even say a word, in fact.  He just held me down with his own weight.  Despite the pain and the powerlessness, I kept telling myself, "It's just sex.  That's all it boils down to.  I've had sex plenty of times.  I can survive this."  Though I couldn't even allow myself to think about the word "rape" at the time, looking back I know I felt I wasn't "raped enough" (i.e., raped violently enough) as others I knew had been in order to be seen as having been "legitimately" raped by others. 

They wouldn't believe me--wouldn't take me seriously.

4.  I know you're not supposed to shower.  I've seen enough Law & Order episodes to know.  But the idea of going to a doctor or a police officer dirty and unwashed was unthinkable to me.  I just wanted to wash his presence off and forget. 

The shame and humilation were unbearable.

I can smell October on the east coast

October is my favorite month.

I suddenly had weird deja vu of reading T.S. Eliot. I digress. I have no particularly strong feelings about April.

Anyway, there is just nothing like fall from, say, the mid-Atlantic states up through New England. ("They are so a state! They have a football team!") October days--no matter where I am--make me think of leaves and wood smoke and homecoming parades and Monument Ave. and driving through the mountains. They make me think of still new school years and crisp sheets of notebook paper and fresh starts and good intentions.

While San Francisco has some pretty spectacular days in October, it will always belong to the east coast in my heart.

I can remember one October, in particular. 2003? 2004? I was so filled with joy and hope that I pledged to my friend Kelli that I would do something new and strange every day. Paint my nails blue! Shout sweeping proclamations off my balcony! Howl at the moon! Now that I think about it, my pledges involved mostly me being loud. But I wanted to share my ecstasy!

Actually, I am feeling that way now. But it is far too soon to spill any beans. I'm workin' on some changes. Comin' up with a plan. And I get more excited with each passing hour.

P.S. My friend Mary is far away and going through a rough time right now, and I want her to know I love her. 

What it's like

In September of 2008, I was raped on a date. I never told anyone. I mean I never told ANYONE. Not a doctor, or a therapist, or a best friend. No one. I was so embarrassed and ashamed this had happened to me, and I felt so stupid that I had not kept myself safe. I felt like all that money for all those fucking degrees ought to have been good for something, and here I couldn't even take care of myself. Normally so forthcoming and expansive, I kept my mouth shut. I didn't want to be told what to do or who to talk to. I didn't want to be asked any questions. I didn't want to explain. I just wanted to forget. Up until that point I felt like I'd been a fairly healthy woman with a fairly healthy sex life, and I was convinced I could maintain that through sheer will.

By the end of the same month, I had started to completely fall apart.

Anxiety seemed to ooze from my pores. I couldn't relax. I had recently started my first job and bought a car and suddenly I felt like I was losing control of everything. I couldn't sleep. I would be awake for three days straight. Not just awake, really, but AWAKE! I needed to talk, I needed to write, I needed to make things. Things to say were erupting out of me and I was unable to control them. I made greeting cards and little boxes. I started writing. I wrote all over my walls, in fact, and pounded out long missives on my computer in ALL CAPS because I WAS RUNNING OUT OF SPACE INSIDE TO PUT ALL OF THIS SHIT.

The lack of sleep made me wild-eyed and crazed, and the long commute to work (not to mention actual work) because impossible. The panic attacks started in earnest around this time, and they made me feel desperate and doomed and frantic. I had them everywhere--in my office, in my car, alone in my bed, in the shower. No place was safe.

I can remember driving home from work, my fingers clutching the steering wheel for dear life. I rocked back and forth furiously chanting:

"I'm sorry," she said, "I have nothing left to give."
"I'm sorry," she said, "I have nothing left to give."
"I'm sorry," she said, "I have nothing left to give."

One day on the drive home I felt so terrified to go home and be alone that I phoned ahead to Nannette and pleaded for her to let me come over as soon as I was back in the city. She told me I was welcome to come, and I fiercely held onto that as I drove. But by the time I got back to San Francisco, I was frantic again and couldn't bear to be around anyone. To her confusion, I told her I couldn't come.

Some nights she let me sleep on her couch because I didn't want to be alone.

I became obsessed with the Golden Gate Bridge. I needed to look at that bridge! I needed to see it, to drive on it, to read about it, and watch videos of people jumping off of it. I needed to know just how deep it was in the bay underneath. It felt important to know just how far down there was to go. I read, "San Francisco Bay is relatively shallow but reaches depths of 100 feet in some places." I had dreams about it. I dreamed of what it felt like when my feet left the side, and I dreamed of what I saw on the way down. I dreamed of the sound my back made when it broke upon hitting the water, and I dreamed of the light disappearing above me. I decided that the exact point at which I would jump off would be 98 feet deep, and I needed to keep that number in my head constantly. I wrote the number 98. I cut the corners out of books that showed page 98. I made a box I called "98 feet deep."

The awful part about it was that I didn't WANT to jump off. I didn't want to! It terrified and horrified me to think about it. But I was obsessed with it. My brain wouldn't leave it alone.

The days without sleep were punctuated by complete crashes. Depression and sobbing and apathy, days I called off work because I just could not function. After Nannette pleaded with me to see someone, I sent my doctor an email. All I could think to say was, "I'm going down fast." On my 32nd birthday, she had me come in for an appointment.

My doctor is wonderful, and she urged me to apply for disability and to see a psychiatrist as well as a therapist. I was getting in deeper and deeper shit at work, but I insisted to her that I could still work--didn't need the time off. I regret deeply that I didn't take her advice, but I was determined to hold on to the balls I was trying to juggle by the skin of my teeth.

Eventually, I got fired. I lost a lot of friends when they didn't understand what was going on or the decisions I made. I made a mess of relationships. I lost my baby.

These days I struggle with leaving the house, with seeing people. It feels like the only place I can be remotely safe is in my apartment, because the outside world is much too scary and unpredictable. The last time I tried to have brunch with a friend, I had to force myself to go. I threatened and begged and cajoled myself to go, and when I got home, my beloved bird was dead. A voice inside of me whispered, "I knew this would happen." It is a lonely existence.

I am taking medication now--slowly--and I have told exactly four people what happened to me. It honestly didn't occur to me until a couple months ago how all these things might be tied together. I'm sure I've told portions of my story in this venue before as I recounted my struggles with mental illness, but it has never been told in this complete fashion. I feel somewhat horrified as I type these words that now it will be OUT THERE and PEOPLE WILL KNOW and I CAN'T TAKE IT BACK.

But I needed to tell my story.

The bomb-diggity

Alternative title to this post:
Living in sin

It's official. We now live together.

In reality, things have only changed minimally. I mean Ivan got his stuff out of his old room today and we brought it over, but he's been here all along. We've looked at each other a couple of times already and marveled that it was for real now.

He brought over a tupperware container filled with duffle bags. I looked at it incredulously and, knowing how little room we have, said, "Are you bringing all those bags?"

He opened his hands to me and said, "What else am I going to put my stuff in when you kick me to the curb?"

After resting awhile late this afternoon, I woke up with the most amazing idea. "Baby, let's get a Christmas tree this year!" I enthused. He agreed and now I am nearly beside myself.

"There is no Naomi in view..."

"And my emptiness is swollen shut
Always a wretch I have become
So empty
And please, please don't leave me here."

Some of you have been asking where I've been and it warms the cockles of my cold, cold heart to know that I have been missed.

To tell you the truth, I'm doing well. I'm in a period of transition.

I love my new job. I really do. It's not like it's anything spectacular, but it's the normalcy of it that makes me happy. I don't dread getting up in the morning. I don't shake and cringe when my boss calls or stops by. No panic attacks. No tears.

I have been meeting a lot of new people and shedding cracks of light on parts of myself that have been hiding.

I have been taking stock. There are things I'm unhappy with and want to change, and I'm figuring out how to go about that.

I want to purge it all. I want all the weight of the things I've been carrying off of my shoulders.

A perfect example: In the closet of my office I have a bag of stuffed animals that I have been collecting since I was 16 years old. They're animals given to me by Chris or ones that we acquired together. I've loved them dearly for so many reasons--because they represented young love and hope and innocence to name a few. I haven't been able to look at them, but I haven't been able to get rid of them either.

The past is weighing me down.

When Nannette gently suggested it might be time to get rid of them, I welled up immediately. I think it's time for them to go.

I'm looking around all the signs of light and hope in my bedroom--a room which I've adorned with the things I love: lanterns, paper cranes, collage, words--and trying to pull out inspiration and the forms in which it comes.

I have two definitions written on my wall. One is for the word "desiderium": a yearning, specifically for a thing one once had, but has no more. The other is for the word "balter": to dance clumsily.

I'm ready for less desiderium and more balter.

Not so long ago, I mourned to a friend that the people who have loved me most and best are gone, and I don't know how to be. If I continue to lament this and to live in the past, then it will always be this way.

Part of the reason I stayed away from blogging, also, is because some of my thoughts on the things I need to let go of have the capacity to hurt other people--the last thing I want to do. As much as I love having readers, sometimes it's also a curse to have them. I've chosen to keep my thoughts private.

"She comes and goes most afternoons
One billion lovers wave and lover her now
They could love her now
And so could I..."

Poised

I love those moments when you're poised on the brink of something, not knowing which way things will go. Sometimes the moments when your life is about to change feel mundane and ordinary, with no clue in sight. At other times they feel heady with meaning.

I guess I'm somewhere in between right now. Of course, it may or may not be about to change.

I feel lucky to have had the recent changes that I've had and, no matter what happens, I will continue to pursue new ones. There are only so many tomorrows. I'm grabbing them.

Courage

Okay. Let's get this over with fast. While I'm ready.

So my therapist was trying to tease apart all the things that are wrapped up in me, and she said, "This is how I would describe you. You're prone to intensity--attracted to it, in fact, tend to think in black or white, all or nothing, alternate between feelings of closeness with people and feeling abandoned by them, have a lot of self-loathing and struggle with finding your identity internally versus externally."

I cried softly and said, "What is that?"

She gently told me she feels that--mixed up in all that is me--are some traits of borderline. She stressed that it was NOT THE FULL DISORDER, just tendencies and traits. She said it was very common for people with significant early trauma to experience these traits because they'd never had a stable sense of self.

As a result, and in addition to her former recommendation that I seek EMDR therapy, she suggested that I have some dialectical behavioral therapy in conjunction with it in order to seek a more stable sense of self.

That's it. That's all. It was just scary to talk about because there is a lot of stigma associated with borderline.

"...over the borderline..."

I want to write about this while it's still fresh in my mind, even though I have 1,000 things to accomplish.

There are days when I feel fragile enough that it seems like if I were to say what's really on my mind without censoring it--to really put it out there in the open--I might shatter into hundreds of tiny pieces on the floor. Today started out as one of those days, likely because I had an appointment with my psychiatrist and I haven't had one in a few weeks. It was overdue.

I love my doctor for many reasons, but one is because she is really putting effort into a finer-grained diagnosis than my others in the past have done. She agrees with my bipolar diagnosis. But she was the first person to put a name to some of the problems I was having that never occurred to me to share as symptoms of PTSD. And today she was the first person to mention that there might be shades of something else tied up in all those layers.

Before I get into that, let me describe part of how she summarized me today. I've never had someone describe me so completely before in their assessment of me, and it brought tears of recognition to my eyes...

fuck. i don't have the courage to do this. i thought i did. maybe later.

I can haz repetition?

I can be kind of all or nothing about things. I'm either all about it or could care less. When I find something I like, I LOVE it passionately, dearly. If it's a song I discover, I need to hear it 1,000 times on repeat (S.T. suggests this is symptomatic of the aforementioned need for medication). If it's a meal I enjoyed, I want to have it every day for two weeks straight. A movie I love? I need to watch it over and over, read about it, get the soundtrack, watch the trailer on YouTube.

I recognize that this extends to larger issues in my life, too. Taking this one step further (but stopping short of laying down ALL of my neuroses for you), I am attracted to similar intensity in others. I have been criticized for this, but is it something I can really change?

I don't know how to find the middle ground. It feels so...mundane.

Let it breakthrough

So. Today I had my first appointment with my new psychiatrist, Dr. T. I love her. Love, love, love her.

Of course the first appointment is pretty intense. You have to establish why you're there and the life experiences that led you down this particular path. Even when she asked me the most minor questions I burst into tears and barely got my words out.

Now I am emotionally exhausted.

She and I are adjusting my meds a bit, and we're going to explore some different types of therapy other than just the standard cognitive-behavioral therapy that was not enough in the past. She is interested in having me consider psychodynamic therapy and EMDR as a way to treat symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

I am willing to try.

I am happy to be back in treatment.

Año Nuevo

I wanted to post a New Year blog.

I wanted to curse 2009 and welcome 2010. I wanted to reflect on New Year's resolutions and my history with and without them. I wanted to say that I couldn't believe it's now been a decade since Chris and I sat on my couch in my first apartment in Richmond, VA, wondering if all hell would break loose when Y2K arrived.

Tonight I was at Safeway when Rod Stewart's "Ooh La La" came on. At first I was pleased and hummed along as I picked out my yogurt for the week. By the time I got to the frozen foods aisle, I heard:

I wish that I knew what I know now
when I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now
when I was stronger.

I started to cry. "Fuck," I thought. "Way to start out 2010: sobbing to Rod Stewart in front of the frozen pizza."

It's just that I really want this year to be different, and no words I can say or write can sufficiently convey just how urgently I want that. Every year I approach the new year with renewed hope about what my life might be, what I might accomplish. I suppose most people do.

This New Year's Eve I stared at the blue moon and thought about my best year so far: 2004. I finished grad school and my entire family came to be with me. My grandpa and grandmother were still here. I started training for a marathon and was in the best shape of my life. I felt like I was going places.

It's just that I've lost so much time. I have now lost years to depression, and I'll never get them back. I have always had a tendency toward nostalgia and melancholy, and my focus on absence--on the people I have loved best and most who are no longer with me for whatever reason--overtakes me for long periods of time.

They're never coming back.

I am turning 33 in a couple of weeks.

I am going to run. I am going to run my fucking ass off.

Horny butt

I've always had a special affection for old men. I think it came largely from having wonderful grandpas--the loved me and cuddled me and played with me and tickled me. For an attention-hungry little girl, this was addictive. I craved their affections: there was nothing like climbing up onto their laps and feeling that I was completely safe.

This preference for old men did not always serve me well.

Growing up in a small town, specifically on Lawman Avenue, you got to know your neighbors. I made it my business to get to know them--or at least to make a nuisance of myself. I picked their flowers, stole the apples off the trees in their yards, ate their candy, played spotlight with their children and grandchildren, and rode my Big Wheel in their driveways. One of these neighbors was Mr. Horner directly across the street from our little white house.

Mr. Horner was the grandfather of my friend Ronnie, who visited frequently and played with me whenever he was in town. Mr. Horner liked to sit out in a lawn chair early in the morning in his carport. Since I was frequently lonely and up early watching Pinwheel on Nickelodeon in the summers before anyone in my house was awake, I would occasionally sneak out of my house and run across the street to visit with him. I liked to think that I provided him with much-desired entertainment. He sat very quietly and didn't say much, so I sang, did cartwheels, and performed Pop Warner cheers in an effort to win him over and make him crack just one smile.

Early one morning, I elected to show him the Pepsi-Cola cheer:

Pepsi-Cola! Pepsi-Cola! Royal Crown!
You gotta hypnotize 'em
Boomerize 'em
Knock 'em down!
Hey!

He seemed to be impressed, and invited me to come over and sit on his lap. I eagerly ran over and climbed up, and he put an arm around my back. Suddenly I felt strange and began to chatter nervously as he listened. When I paused for a breath he said, "Give me a kiss." I hesitated, but in the end decided a kiss was harmless. As I moved toward his cheek to deliver a peck, he suddenly turned his head and thrust his wet, slimy tongue in my mouth. Horrified, I jumped off his lap and ran home as fast as I could.

I hurled myself through the front door, locked it securely, and closed the living room curtains. My heart thumped in my chest, and I was terrified that if I looked out the window, I would find him up on the porch, trying to get in. After several minutes passed, I moved the heavy gold curtain a few millimeters to the right, and peeked out. He was still sitting in his carport with his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap.

I didn't know what to do. I felt dirty and embarrassed. For some reason it never occured to me to tell my mother or stepfather; instead, I told my friends Christel and Traci. "EWWWW!" they screamed. "He french-kissed you!" I gagged at the thought of his slobbery tongue. Traci squealed, "Mr. Horner is gross! What a horny butt!"

For years afterward, we stood in my front yard and screamed at his house, "Horny butt! Horny butt!" Our mothers were puzzled as to our hatred for him, and gave an amused smile despite themselves whenever we referred to him as "horny butt."

"Do you know what 'horny' means?" my mom asked me.

"Yes," I answered matter-of-factly, "it means he has horns coming out of his butt."

She laughed as said, "You guys should stop bothering him." But we never did. We made prank phone calls to his house, rode our bikes through his yard, and knocked on his doors and windows and quickly ran away.

As an adult looking back, I realize this was my first introduction to grandpas who weren't as wonderful as mine, and this was a bitter realization. Even so, I thought that Mr. Horner was an exception to the kindly grandfather rule, and for the most part maintained my naive belief that men--especially old men--naturally cared about and wanted to protect little girls. I would go on to learn that he was not the only one, that sometimes men wanted to hurt little girls.

Dear Future Me

Awhile back I wrote about accidentally sending myself a message of love and comfort. Well, today at work my lovely friend S.C. told me about a wonderful website called http://www.futureme.org/ on which you can send letters to yourself to be delivered in the future.

I love this.

I have been inundated today with thoughts about what to tell my future self and when to tell it. Do I remind myself of my secrets wishes, desires, and plans? Do I warn myself against certain possible future actions? Do I reassure myself that--no matter what is happening at that point in the future--I am going to be okay? The possibilities are endless.

Round 2

After the first round of rejections, I'm submitting more of my writing for publication. My friend suggested an online journal called "Bent Pin," and from there I found a link to litmags.org--a site that lists literary magazines, the types of submissions they take, submission guidelines, etc. What a gem! As a result of this I submitted work to both "Memoir (and)" and "River Teeth." Plus, I found other possible destinations for my work if these fall through, including: "New England Review," "Cherry Bleeds," and "Apple Valley Review."

I'm excited.

For anyone who writes, wants to write, or has written

"The Nature of the Fun" by David Foster Wallace

(Thanks, Matt.)

Comorbidity

The presence of one or more disorders (or diseases) in addition to a primary disease or disorder; the term "dual diagnosis" is often applied.

Processing

I am trying to make sense of things and, for better or worse, the best way I know to do that is to write.

Thank god I took up writing instead of drugs. It would have been so easy.

All day I’ve been mulling over my life and hundreds of experiences and memories and thought patterns in my head. I have worried for months about what was wrong with me, and on occasion I mentioned some of those worries here in this blog.

I have a lot to learn—a LOT to learn—and I can’t speak for anyone but myself. But the path that I was spiraling downward on was terrifying enough that I want to tell people. I want to tell EVERYONE. I want everyone to know so that they can recognize these things in themselves, in others.

I am learning that obsessive compulsive disorder doesn’t always look like the classic textbook example that everyone is familiar with. It doesn’t necessarily involve washing one’s hands a hundred times a day, or checking to see if the door is locked a dozen times before climbing in bed. It certainly can be those things, but that’s not the only manifestation.

It’s always been roaringly loud inside my head, and I have no way of knowing how that compares to other people. I’ve always had things that I’ve done to calm myself, whether I told anyone or not. For me it was less about preventing some specific feared thing from happening and more about “putting things in order” inside my head. At an early age these things ranged from rocking myself and chanting, as I’ve already mentioned, to long, drawn-out prayers, smelling things, and counting. When my anxiety was more than I could bear and I was alone at night, I would pretend I was in one of my grandparents’ arms, being rocked to sleep. I would wrap my arms around myself, kiss my hand and touch it to various parts of my face, and say, “Sssshhhhh…..sssshhhhh….I love you. Go to sleep. Sssshhhh….”

Given the things I was experiencing as a child it’s no surprise that I needed to find my own ways to sooth and console myself. What I’m trying to understand now is how and why this has continued to affect me—with ebbs and flows—over the years. Especially now.

I’m telling it all now, okay? I’m not holding back. You’ve been warned.

Over the course of the last couple of months I have been on a downward spiral. [Cue Nine Inch Nails, please. Thank you.] I felt like I was losing control over my life. The best analogy I can think to describe it is this: It felt, at times, like there was a tiny person in a rocking chair inside my brain, rocking furiously. When this person started to rock, all I could do was be consumed by it. I was unable to do much of anything else.

A couple weeks ago at work I had a panic attack—the third I’ve ever had. I felt hysterical and inconsolable and terrified and helpless. I called my friend Shannon. I didn’t know what to do. I blurted my terror out to her, and she spoke to me soothingly as long as I needed her to. All I could think was, “What the hell is my problem? How does everybody else do this…this…LIVING?”

I went through several days between Christmas and New Year’s where I was obsessed with the Golden Gate Bridge. I needed to look at it, to read about it, to think about it. I needed to remember the times I stood on it and to visualize the way the water had looked when I was looking down.

Let me be clear. There was no time that there was a train of thoughts where I thought, “Everything is bad and it will not get better, therefore I will _____.” It was just an obsession. An absolutely terrifying obsession.

It felt important for me to know how deep the water was under the bridge. Exactly how far was it to the bottom? I read about the topography of the sea floor under the San Francisco Bay and how it has changed over the years due to dredging. I read that “it’s relatively shallow, and in some places is as deep as 100 feet.” I reasoned that some of the deepest places MUST be under the Golden Gate Bridge, to ensure that the ships could go safely under. In my head I decided that it must be 98 feet deep at the particular spot I was imagining. I would think to myself over and over, “98 feet deep. 98 feet deep. 98 feet deep.”

I had vivid dreams about the bridge. I dreamed of what it felt like when my feet left the side for the last time. I dreamed of what I saw on the way down. I dreamed of the sound my back made when it broke upon hitting the water. I dreamed of the light disappearing over my head and of sinking down…down…98 feet deep.

I alluded to bits and pieces of those thoughts here and here in an effort to channel them into something more creative and to work them out of myself. It wasn’t working, and when a couple of friends picked up on the fact that there was some scary shit going on in my head and wrote to me about it, I felt embarrassed. Touched, but embarrassed. And I stopped trying to express it.

I didn’t have the language to tell my friends what was happening to me. It was like the acknowledgment of this blackness that was overtaking me gave it even more power—telling people I can’t do this anymore. I avoided it not out of pride, but out of fear that admitting it meant I had lost the battle. My aunt said, “Sometimes the depths of sadness within you scare me.” Me too.

I was starting to scare myself so much that I finally emailed my doctor out of desperation. The best way I could think to describe it was, “I’m going down.”

Believe it or not, this is a happy story. Now it has a name. Now it has a face. Now I can finally take back my life from that by which it has been so consumed. The relief is indescribable.

There are still many unanswered questions, but I'll get there. I'll get there.

Thank you for reading with an open mind. I write this out of weakness, because I don't have the strength to hide it all anymore.

Closure, answers

Today was my grandpa's funeral.

Today I was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder with panic disorder. This helps a lot of things that I have thought and done since childhood make a lot of sense.

I imagine I'll have a lot more to say about all of this soon, but for right now I'm still processing everything.

I'm relieved. I'm exhausted. I'm glad to have a name for whatever it is that's been happening to me in conjunction with depression, especially in the last couple of years. The times as a child that I spent obsessively counting things and the hours I spent rocking back and forth chanting to myself (as described here, for example) were early signs. Other things from the past few weeks that still feel a little too intense to talk about but I probably will try soon--those make sense, too.

I'm so relieved. I'm not a lost cause. I'm crazy, but at least now I know what kind of crazy I am.