There’s this threshold inside of my brain that others either cross in a grain cut painfully against me, or never cross at all. It is a horrid barrier that I’m sure I have created myself; but it is a sound and solid barrier, all the same – an impenetrable construct by my own mind, immovable in my own mind. This is a threshold that grants closeness and kinship or falseness and nothingness between me and other people who come into my Life.
It’s hard to explain, but I’ve been trying my best when it gets brought up by (a) certain (male) people (person) whom I struggle to maintain “healthy relations” with:
the way that my ability to even experience anythinggood or positive with an individual diminishes completely once I feel the slightest bit of vulnerability to him, because I am fucked up and my brain doesn’t work normally.
the way that after I experience any vulnerability on a conscious level on his behalf, I seem to automatically try to sabotage everything.
the way that if sabotage fails, I will resort to some innate mechanism of my emotions to execute the process of shutting down to him.
the way that I spend the entire time this hideous process plays out in hating myself and constantly having to re-focus myself on what’s right, as opposed to what feels right.
I noticed it the instant she arrived this morning; and walked through my front door on her own: no struggling for breath, no panicked look on her rosy-cheeked face, no coughing…
I smiled bigger than I have dared in weeks at her as she shuffled past me in the entryway for a cup of coffee (she used to love my coffee, but hasn’t wanted any for a long time now). My smile was immediately reciprocated; and my heart warmed me down to my toes at that. I don’t know when she last genuinely smiled at me before today, but I do know it was too long ago.
As I sat down beside her at my kitchen table, and said something like,
“Well, well…look who wants coffee again and seems to be feeling a little better…”
I saw it; the lump on her neck that was the cause for her diagnosis with terminal cancer; or shall I say, the lack of the lump, altogether. It has become invisible to the naked eye since yesterday, somehow, amazingly. Anyway, I am not deluding myself about her survival or anything; I am just SO VERY HAPPY TO SEE HER GETTING SOME RELIEF from the constant inability to breath or stop coughing…so very happy. Today was a throwback for me of my healthy Mama, who smiles and drinks coffee.
I got the Adrenaline spin,
not sure
which is the right direction
obscure
the thoughts that begin
to swim
inside my imagination
again.
I do the ADHD thing,
mumbling
heart weighs in heavily
numbing
sweat pours down steadily
panicking
my thoughts race ahead of me
evaporating.
I have scars for all to see,
they fixed me
a return from captivity
a recovery
a horror film slashing
bleeding
just as the final pint
emptied.
I have a heart that’s still learning,
I’m trying
a desire to indulge in humanity
difficulty
to connect with someone like me
a daydream
a baby of Lithium, Ritalin and Dexedrine.
It’s been a really hard week; we buried another friend from childhood yesterday, after a long and painful fight we have all watched from the sidelines. He didn’t want to die, and never stopped saying so until the very end: an element that leaves a much more impossibly bitter taste to swallow in everyone’s mouth. In my experience thus far until his death last week, people usually get a sense of relief with the death of a loved one who has been suffering badly in life – but not this time. His absolute unwillingness to die makes it difficult to find that relief anywhere in this specific context. And, it feels really bad.
Jackson is sick; like, really sick with some despicable strain of pneumonia or something and has been hospitalized since last week. Jack saved my life once; he saw it all, while he was still a paramedic in the armpit of America, where I was almost killed by my ex-husband.
Jack is the underlying reason for any of what might resemble “recovery” in my own case. It is often somehow easy for me to forget from day to day: exactly how much I owe this man when it comes down to it. If circumstances had been shifted even slightly in regard to who they sent out in the ambulance to my crime scene, he would be totally absent from my world; in actuality – there would be no world for him to be absent from, because I would not have recovered as I have without Jackson.
The more I think about it, the more it becomes obvious that he truly adopted me on the day I almost lost my life, unknown to my near-dead brain at the time. And the afterwards; well all I can really say about “the afterwards” is that without that man there to assure and comfort and baby me like did (and does), I would have been so ruined by humanity that I would likely be in an asylum. There simply aren’t enough Gods to offer my prayers to when it comes to Jack’s recovery and homecoming. Had I opened my eyes as the maimed and Frankenstein-esque creature I had become to anyone other than Jackson in the exact way that I did, and if even the slightest thing played out differently, I easily could’ve slipped into sheer madness from it all.
In the spirit of rescue and recovery, please send any good energy to Jackson if you’re reading this.
When every single face becomes
just a reason to divert my eyes
and every carbon-based “human”
alerts my nerves to stand on high
when every time that I try to break ahead
just enough to finish this looking alive
a backpedal finds me a crack in my head
and then I stupidly struggle to survive
where progression is stunted by stagnancy
and my clothes are all pocket-less
the place between strength and subjectivity
where I stand without answers to this
And every day brings another slap to the face
every night finds me hollow and numb
each decision that I’m left unable to dominate
every turn of the screws in my thumbs
where I’m hungry often but hardly ever eat
and my shades stay drawn all year round
there’s no word for such charged irritability
every day becomes just a target to take down
I am overly tired and I am deeply annoyed
there is a train wreck surging through my veins
I’m living in the body of a fabricated android
being taunted by the distant cries of a runaway.
Lost amid the aimless
inside a place that’s timeless
vast and hollow emptiness
hostage to the heartless
washed up against the nameless
hung to dry with the airless
swinging on the line of the hapless
in a repeated pattern that’s effortless.
All that is happening now does, indeed, go back to the incident in Arizona. The surgeries that she has already undergone and recovered from have each been in attempt to separate scar tissue that has grown around Boo’s trachea from being cinched by a belt for nearly two days; also – her inability to speak has finally been de-mystified as well. The same thing is happening at the base of her vocal chords, as a result of scar tissue build-up, only the vocal cords have been permanently affected by residues left from the chemicals that Boo had been forced to drink during her captivity. The doctors have done what they can without sending her to a specialist for what is considered as “delicate surgery”; the next step to come.
Within the month, she will be going to Stanford for such things…and I have little doubt behind her strength or ability to deal with it. She remains in care still – a milestone in and of itself; she is bored beyond description, covered in bed sores, and must be feeling pretty low…yet, she hasn’t left again. Her little boyfriend (the one who do not necessarily like so much but cannot deny his humanity in comparison to the other men she has surrounded herself with in the past) comes to visit her now; I know that makes her feel like the world isn’t ending, after all. Anything that helps her to stay put and ride out the road ahead through her physical recovery – I am on board with it.
She has grown up so much…in such a short time…she is so jaded and darkened by her own experiences, that I watch her struggle with simply being cared for by another human being…it’s rough. But she’s letting it happen – as hard as it may be on her.
Would you be, any fonder of me, if I suddenly chose, to be listening? Would you decide, to more deeply confide, the darkness behind, so many eccentricities? Shall I unbind, this heart of mine, put it on your table, where the other parts lie? Would you prefer, if I were more like her: if I lived co-dependently, on the coat-tails of your future? If I leaned on you indefinitely, with intentions only pure? Would you think again, if I’d used words better chosen, had I’d considered more carefully, enchanted might you have been? What then? I’m in… to an ill-wished fortress, he’s host – I’m hostess, let the party begin.
Dear Self:
1) How many times have you actually carried the bag out your car before leaving, despite its precarious position on the inside of the door-knob to the front door? Time for a new reminder spot, dumbass…
2) While sleepwalking, try to somehow remember that you will be held accountable for the things you’re up to during the early morning hours in the man-cave, by the men who cave there…
3) Over dinner with the parents of a childhood friend (who is now, unfortunately, deceased), try to avoid talking about “death throes” – even in the intended context of the fish on your plate. Talk about awkward…
4) Not everyone feels the way that you feel about certain historical figures, including, but not limited to: Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Socrates, Moses and Josephus; sometimes it’s just best to let ignorance override a situation in order to avoid a five-hour marathon of “truth versus textbook”…
5) YOU ARE NO EXCEPTION…not to ANY rule, ANY time, or under ANY circumstances…
6) The VERY gradual tapering off of the use of the air horn you keep stashed under the passenger’s seat of your car DOES NOT truly count as “changing your ways” in regard to ‘Road Rage’…
7) Using only one hand to flip off the dude next you (who cut you off twice) instead of both doesn’t count, either…
8) Again, when you don’t pay your bills – you lose your shit…
9) “All-Day Wear Lipstick” should be illegal for what it ultimately does to your appearance, after only a partial day – you’d be better off smearing wild berry stain inside your mouth and all across your own front teeth…go back to Blistex…
10) Lastly, just because you’ve had luck in the past with training (notably trainable) finches, does not mean that you can start ‘Homing Pigeons’ in your spare time…
I got the Adrenaline spin,
not sure
which is the right direction
obscure
the thoughts that begin
to swim
inside my imagination
again.
I do the ADHD thing,
mumbling
heart weighs in heavily
numbing
sweat pours down steadily
panicking
my thoughts race ahead of me
evaporating.
I have scars for all to see,
they fixed me
a return from captivity
a recovery
a horror film slashing
bleeding
just as the final pint
emptied.
I have a heart that’s still learning,
I’m trying
a desire to indulge in humanity
difficulty
to connect with someone like me
a daydream
Lithium-esque, Ritalin Babies and Dexedrine.
I’m sitting in misery with one side of my face doubled in size; pain-killer-free because I am a non-practicing addict these days; in an exceptional amount of radiating pain…
I am angry today;
I am angry because I can’t dissociate and escape this…
I am angry because I am angry that I can’t dissociate…
I am angry about my decision to let people near me – near my life – today…
(This renders me far less able to detach and then isolate myself in order to crawl into the familiarity of the proverbial comfortable default “hole” to deal with things – solo).
Today, I feel notably angry that I have been so unable to foster and maintain anything worth a fuck in my time alive; I feel as if everything I touch disintegrates beneath my fingertips…
I am fearfully responsive today…
I got the wobbles last week and haven’t fully found my way completely out of the fear…
I am feeling unstable at the knees…
Again, I question everything… because all of my ‘hard-earned’ power and control over my own existence was removed temporarily (during the anxiety attack/ the wobbles) to remind me of my subjectivity with a fresh coat of “you are nothing”.
These are the days in which EVERYTHING and ALL OF IT seem to be futile…
Days like today render my spirit: obsolete and out-dated…
“Anomalous”, an “exception”, a “phenomenon”; these are all things I have been called in the medical community throughout my recovery from a near-fatal attack over ten years ago.
The “anomaly” came into play during the initial sweep of MRSA that ran through the ICU and burn units, claiming the lives of two patients and yanking many others into the circling of the proverbial drain for months afterwards; I was, once again, somehow spared death at that time as well, despite the many open wounds that left me like a sitting duck for the infectious riptide. Immediately following exposure to the initial strain of MRSA, twelve out of nineteen of the patients there, in my particular unit, broke out with the Shingles (a strain of it that is STILL with at least two of them, to date). Again, I was “unscathed”. It’s important to keep in mind while reading this, that I was unconscious for the better part of 3 ½ weeks straight upon arriving and being rushed into emergency maxiofacial/vasculature surgery – it’s not as if I even had a clue as to what was happening afterwards, in the unit. I wasn’t putting up any conscious fight against anything…that entire period is dark for me, and I carry no recollection of it now. Either way, it was then that I received the medical file label of “immuno-anomalous”; a label that has stuck with me ever since that time – only to be elaborated upon by other surgeons, doctors and various medical professionals in the days to come.
Next was something wonderful: ‘Raynaud’sPhenomenon’.
This is a very strange condition in which cold temperatures or strong emotions cause microvascular spasms in the fingers, nose, and/or toes. Doctors rarely see this condition – it has a very, very rare (identified, at least) occurrence in the world; thus, is difficult to get properly diagnosed, much less treated. I nearly lost all ten of my toes on two separate occasions due to Raynaud’s;
Once, before getting it diagnosed accurately, when a doctor came through on his rounds and basically told me that my toes were so gangrenous that they would need to be amputated;
Again, before getting it properly diagnosed, another doctor came through on his rounds and said that they wouldn’t need to amputate, because my toes were shriveled into raisins anyway, and would soon “come off on their own” (that was on my birthday, by the way). Happy fucking birthday – you’re toeless!
Either way, I managed to keep my toes – all of them – to the absolute shock and surprise of all of us…I’M still not even sure how that happened without medical interaction – my toes DID literally look raisins for about a week. But – “phenomenally, they bounced themselves back to bloodflow…”, according to the treating physician at the time. And so, was born: “thePhenomenon”.
Lastly, but most sticky, has been “the Exception to Every Rule of Medicine”; a quote, verbatim, about me from a seminary speech made at Stanford Hospital during a retirement celebration thrown for my original reconstructive surgeon – one amazing individual – when he was asked if I was the reason behind his “early retirement”. So many other people from the Medical community were there to hear an esteemed and well-respected old-timer say such a thing, that I will likely NEVER live it down.
Try me, spicy, cursive Roman lettering… A secret alphabet, Dicey; enticing the skin of my fingertips; dividing the places between my hips; underneath, and in between, how did you know? How can you be? The Keeper of the lock and key… when I can’t even find the thing? Try me, scarface, nemojte me obožavaju?… Made of bones – Which dialect Do you know? si me obožavaju? can’t you understand? Made of flesh – And strung around your neck, you want it wet… I’m in your net. Please? Release… Try me, Handsome, I’m yours for sure Your unsecret whore, Of the North Shore. Made of stones, tell me… who is right and wrong? It does not matter, It never will, Let me in – Let me kill; Your darkest chatter, Be it gone, so that my ears will hear… your every love song. Push me and pull me Carry on… I hear you I see you I know your soul, you know that I do… it can’t be controlled; it won’t be withheld, that wouldn’t be fair… tongues and tresses, swallowed air… necklaces of skulls and things, bite marks and ink stains; I love your pleasures, you love my pains. What the fuck was my point again?
This week has been sullen for me, as an individual human being on a solo journey through this thing called ‘life’…I’ve been stabbed once more in my back – the back that resembles Swiss Cheese these days from so many of these trivial betrayals.
“Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness.”
Or so, I like to proclaim quite regularly; but in all actuality it’s much more the opposite. I am a weak individual in terms of emotional control: I am cursed with the permanent role of Devil’s Advocate, as well as the additional layers of extreme and seemingly untreatable abandonment issues that have morphed into rejection issues over time. When I say “rejection issues”, I don’t simply apply that to the context of romantic relationships, either…no, unfortunately my insecurities, leeriness, and inability to commit have crossed all boundaries throughout the realms of my world by now – rendering the recluse, socially anxious and withdrawn “thing” that writes this blog. I know that I am the common denominator in all of the failed attempts at intimacy in the years since I learned the truth about the Real World and how quickly someone can literally become someone else altogether. I have repeatedly been shown the lesson of trusting the wrong individual, but have yet to actually learn it, I suppose.
My worst wounds are the ones people can’t see; the most painful experience of my own survival are born from my psyche, from my perceptions of the world around me as well as the people in it. In reality, this past week has been very minimal in interaction or dialogue or exchange with the backstabber in question; that’s my issue – that’s my symbolic open wound: the ways that others feel so obliged to “use” my weaknesses to their own benefit somehow.
I operate fairly simply and without complexity:
If you’ve hurt me in any way, I will let it be known to you – at which point, you have the option to either do right or wrong by me.
After a window of a day or so passes by, if you have not chosen to show me the fundamental decency of communication in any sense of the word, you’ve been systematically chalked up with those before you who have acted like a mutant.
In life, I realize that we are each essentially on different journeys in this thing, motivated by varying factors and ambitions; only coinciding to unite forces when the purpose serves each person involved; I get it. I am not some numbskull from whom such concepts escape, trust me; I am however, apparently in some highly masochistic sort of denial to the blatant and repeatedly painful realization that 9 out 10 of the living, breathing, “functioning” carbon-based, human life forms around me at any given moment in time: are quite likely already chalked up to the formerly mentioned category of “mutant”.
I use the word mutant to describe many types of creatures who live under the palpable existence of “humanity”:
People who steal from other people.
People who bully or terrorize others who are unable to defend themselves due to size or restraints.
People who are dishonest with those who are not.
People who think that they are the exception to “the rule”, any rule.
People who are intrinsically satisfied by watching others suffer.
People who are obnoxious in the need to flaunt and display celebratory behaviors at the cost of others in a form of mockery.
ANYONE WHO HURTS A CHILD.
People who believe that a certain social status or popularity amongst the tanning lights will protect them from the dark side.
People who carry a badge or yield a gavel out of an unsatisfied need for control over others.
People who knowingly look the other way when something WRONG is happening, because to say something would somehow affect their pocketbook negatively.
There are many more types of mutants too: pimps, johns, most government officials, bible thumpers, bullies, etc.
This week, I’ve been dealing with #s 3 and 8 on a pretty regular basis…and it’s been rough on me because I am an adult now, and I have to behave like one – but it’s NOT always easy is it? Sometimes, I would give anything just to be able to allow my fifteen year old Self to come out, just for a few moments and say, “Oh really? You think you’re backstabbing is anything new to me? Seriously, because I wanted to know if my back was hurting your fucking knife yet, you little Weaseling Snake…”, or, “Can it seriously be possible that you’re as fucking Princess Stupid as you’re acting, you stuck-up little spoiled rotten Dumptruck?”…
…Jesus, I stomp around my house like a fucking Terra Cotta soldier, cursing and snarling under my breath whenever I’m in the same room with one of them – the 1st of May CAN NOT get here fast enough I’ll tell you that much…because I can hardly stand to look at my soon-to-be former roommate or either one of the little shit-kick dogs that are attached to his presence here in what was a once quiet and calm, easy-going and reciprocally supportive home front. I hate sharing space with such an opportunist; as I am NOT built that way by any means. I take yeah…but I am most certainly far from last to refrain from giving back.
I’m trying really hard to be mature and to just let it all roll off my back like water off a duck’s, but I guess I’m not as mature as I need to be, because things bother me when it comes to humanity. It really bothers me when people use me, when people not only use me, but then carry on as if that were always the plan, afterward. Why does some pompous, rich, pretentious fuck need to fuck with me and take from me when he already has more than enough for himself? Greed. Self-absorption. Lack of substance. All I know is that it’s hard to keep giving like the human being that I am by nature, when those with their hands out have mouths so full that they cannot speak to me.
Ok, that’s all for now…I will step down from the podium now…
I’d like to drag an index finger across my fully recovered throat for the most recently discovered Diamond in the Rough, and very celebrated newest member of the growing Cut-Throat Club Online – a place where the spirit of the strugglingSurvivor is acknowledged in full.
The following is an excerpt is from her blog; in my opinion, this small piece of her written thoughts – this snapshot of her brave struggle – bleeds the essence of the survivor for whom I hold the utmost appreciation and respect. This excerpt is a testament to her status of what I consider to be the epitome of a truly “cut-throat” soldier of the survivor clan – and I’m proud to welcome her talented presence into the club.
The first thing that caught my eye on her blog:
“I have borderline personality disorder, but I am not my diagnosis. I am a loving, sweet and kind person. I want to help others, I want to explore the world and make people happy.”
The piece that sealed her fate as a “Cut-Throat”:
“….The few months following her death were a blur, I guess I went to classes, I have the degree to prove I did. My heart wasn’t in it, my head wasn’t in it. I isolated myself, angry at every one. What’s the point of even leaving this bed if every one I love will leave me? I longed to lay down in the dirt where she was left, for two weeks, I longed to somehow drift away into a peaceful death where I could be with her.
It’s been a little over six months and it’s not easier, but it is different. I ache for her every morning when I wake up. I dream she’s still with me, before my rational brain screams “she’s dead” in my ear and I’m woken up with a jolt. The abandonment is real, there is only loss, but I’m learning to love and cherish the good. I’m learning to use my grief to motivate my own life….”
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