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.

On Mothers' Day

And so it is Mothers' Day.

A couple of sweet and thoughtful friends have written in the last couple of days to check on me and to pre-emptively say they knew this day would be really hard for me. Strangely, it is no worse than any other. Maybe it's because I have never really gotten too excited about this "holiday." Maybe it's because I was still so new to the idea of thinking of myself as a mother. I don't know.

Today I will wake up with Ivan and Darius.

We will wipe away the crust from our eyes and brush our teeth.

We will drink coffee and milk, respectively, and I will make sure Darius ingests some sort of fruit along with his breakfast cereal.

Today we will admire yesterday's sidewalk chalk drawings (A volcano! That is erupting! Onto the playground! Next to the rainbow!) and re-visit the lopsided hopscotch board I created for surprisingly endless hours of entertainment on the part of Darius.

We will toast bread and eat the egg salad I prepared last night, and I will attempt to convince Darius that eggs are neither yucky nor smelly (even though I kind of think they are myself).

We will paint pictures and pick flowers, and we will send him home with gifts for his own mother for Mothers' Day.

Today I will open my bedroom drawer and check on my child's ashes in the terrible little white plastic box the funeral home returned her in.

And I will go on.

This is ridiculous.

I'm tired of scaring the hell out of myself by nodding off on I-280 before the sun comes up. I think I'm going to have to start traveling with a pillow and blanket in the car at all times.

In other news:

I'm positive my creativity has left. Gone. Shot. My boxes wait unfinished. My new greeting cards wait patiently for captions. Large portions of my bedroom walls remain bare. I have unwritten stories in me yet that haven't figured out how to come out. Even words I love hearing and reading are in short supply. The most interesting creative endeavors I have coming up are an origami paper unicorn centerpiece and a meat-shaped cake. Things have to get better.

I think it may be this whole full-time job nonsense. Note to self: Must put in more nights on the street corner so I can cut back on the 40 hour/week gig.

Hours of entertaining myself

I found this book on clearance at Border's: The Bird Songs Anthology (200 birds from North America and Beyond featuring Audio from The Cornell Lab of Ornithology). It's like a See 'n Say of bird species because you can listen to the different calls and clucks of each bird. My own birdies get very worked up when I play it, and I never seem to get tired of hearing them squawk in unison at each bird call. I am very careful not to play the cries of their natural predators, however; that would be cruel.

I am now working on or have completed 7 boxes! This morning I got up extra early so I could spend some peaceful pre-dawn moments working on one before leaving for the grind. I can lose myself in them for hours. The one I'm working on now is particularly personal to me (and that's saying a lot because they ALL are personal to me) and involves cutting the page number 98 out of dozens and dozens of my books to be put on the box. Perhaps with his fancy new camera and its enviable bokeh capabilities that my own crappy little camera does not share, Matt might assist me in documenting the boxes before I sell or give them away...

I'm greedy.

I don't want to lose this.

At this time I'm happiest when I'm writing and I spend evenings and late nights when I can't sleep on boxes. A couple I've originally intended as presents for other people, but by the time I'm finished they contain a piece of my life story and I've become so attached that I can't bear the thought of parting with them.

Things could start changing after my appointments tomorrow.

I have other things I want to do, too. I mostly want to start running again. I think about it nearly every day. I also want to be able to focus and concentrate and sleep and have normal conversations. I'm ready to stop fighting the urge to step on the gas when a Muni train is crossing.

Thank God for J. She is bipolar as well, and is the only person I've ever talked to that really, really understands. She gives me hope, and she gives me courage.

Sacrifice

Despite the difficulties and the wild swings and the erraticism and the strains that what I'm going through place on my personal relationships, I am enjoying a period of creativity right now unlike any I've ever known.

I'm making my boxes and I fucking love them. I made one a couple days ago of which I'm incredibly proud. As part of this endeavor I discovered SCRAP and am terribly excited by it.

Six Birds Cards was born, and I have hopes of trying to market them more seriously in the very near future.

I've written more than I've ever written in my life. I went this week and got Writer's Market 2009 and Guide to Literary Agents in order to learn more about writing query letters to potential publishers and about writing a complete proposal for the book whose pieces I've worked on.

This is all just part of the picture, of course: the good part.

Next week I have my first psychiatry appointment and I am both relieved and nervous. I am relieved because the rapid cycles of my mood and anxiety are wearing me out. I'm exhausted. I'm nervous because I will be on medication. Forever.

My therapist assuages my fears by telling me that I'll be much more level and that, while I won't have the same bursts of energy and motivation and optimism, I also won't have the long periods of complete blackness and apathy either. This is really scary to me.

I'm afraid of losing moments of relative brilliance.

I'm afraid of losing the parts of me that--though immensely challenging at times (just ask C!)--make me ME.

I'm also afraid that I'm just one giant fucked up package of crazy and that people will be afraid to be part of my life.

Strata

1. I recently fell in love with two songs and now I have to hear them over and over. And over.

Antony and the Johnsons - "Fistful of Love"

Bon Iver - "Skinny Love"

2. I want to go to Prague. I can't find the name of the cafe that lets you throw stale rolls.

3. I had the coziest Christmas with Nannette and Scott. I felt warm and loved and mentally stimulated. Prosecco, peach and blackberry cobbler, blankets, and decorating boxes. What could be better?

4. I didn't expect the box I decorated to become so personal. I was hoping to give it as a gift or maybe to sell it, and now I don't know if I can. My favorite parts say "It happened" and "At that moment, no one else compared." Other people's words that I made my own.

5. Tonight I am going through boxes of things, trying to clear out space in my office. Going through the strata of old letters from people I've loved, old pictures of myself, and the jottings I've made on scraps of paper over the years is painful and bittersweet. I'm trying clear space for the new.

Dipping a toe in the water

At this moment, I am filled with a wild, pent-up creative urge. (Of course I am. I'm trying to write some cover letters for job applications when, let's face it: I'd rather be doing anything else in the world. Need your gutters cleaned out? I'm your woman. Haven't balanced your checkbook in years? I'll get right to it. Need help applying hemorrhoid cream? Sure!)

Perhaps I took that a little too far.

At any rate, I'm looking around at various things I've started and wondering if they should be picked up at this moment. I had a little box I was making. I had a song I was writing. I haven't made a greeting card for awhile. Do I feel enough inspiration to take a stab at a second poem?

I want to sing, I want to make music, I want to paint with my fingers and toes, I want to record myself talking and experimenting with noises, I want to try to make a souffle, I want to take pictures of people's facial expressions when they don't know anyone's watching, I want to make collages of found objects, I want to speak only through drawings and pantomime...

Oh...

I did a step in the right direction. I have a friend who's organizing a little "show" at a local coffee shop and asked for submissions of various pieces of writing--the only requirement was that it had to fit on one page. I submitted four things. It's just a little tiny event in my neighborhood but it's a step toward making something I created public and it feels weird.

Remember that guy that invited me to submit to his book on stories about mothers and daughters? Well, I looked into it further. He wants stories of inspiration and triumph and strength in mother/daughter relationships. *Gag, cough* No thanks. If I want to blow sunshine out my ass I'll find another way to do it.