This is going to be a little bit of a heavier post, so if you object to those, skip it.
One of the quotes he shared with me was this:
I laughed at the time. It was funny. I mean, burning the house down with lemons? Priceless.
About two years later, life in the form of abuse handed me about six pounds of lemons in the form of something we know as PTSD. Normally associated with soldiers, PTSD can follow any sort of traumatic event. It can follow anything mentally or physically scarring.
And it's not something that you can just make life take back. It's not even something you can make lemonade with, really. Lemon water, maybe; but there's no way to sweeten it. And no matter how many times you yell "I DON'T WANT YOUR DAMN JOHN KEATS-ING LEMONS," nothing happens.
Normally, I'm pretty good at forgetting about the (metaphorical) lemons. When I was in school, I shoved them behind classes and put so much effort into schoolwork that I had a good enough reason to just be exhausted and spacey at the end of the day. If something made me jump, or have a flashback, I felt it for a few minutes and then I would (unsuccessfully) stuff it and carry on with whatever I was doing. Usually, stuffing it would mean I was actually complete wreck trying to behave like a human; and people would notice, but they would let me continue to feel like I was functioning normally.
The closer I got to graduation, the more this would happen. March marked what would have been my two-year-wedding anniversary, and on the weekend after that particular event I was working at my job. I remember that day dimly, as is the trend with most things associated with my marriage, but the best way I could explain it is like walking in slow-motion through clothesline after clothesline of white sheets in the fog. My limbs felt heavy and I didn't feel I had a good reason for feeling depressed. I just knew that I wanted to be still, but being still meant thinking about things, and so I tried to do the tasks that had been set for me, but because it felt like I was mentally moving through an empty, sticky white space, I wasn't doing ANYTHING well. Really. Anything. It's a wonderful thing that my bosses understood and didn't take disciplinary action somehow, although they did talk to me about it later and mentioned that if I was having another crippling day, I should probably take it off because I wasn't any use to anyone like that.
Graduation day came, and, instead of being happy, I was terrified. I was terrified because of the vague nameless thing people call Real Life, but mostly I was terrified because I knew I wouldn't have school to distract me from the (metaphorical) lemons. I managed to put on a veneer for the people who were happy and proud of me for graduating. It was not a very good one, because veneers take energy (something I didn't have) to maintain, and mine started fracturing almost as soon as it was in place.
I kept it on for two weeks or so by telling myself that I Have A Trajectory. Which, I think I do, but what I realized is that at this point in time I don't have the impetus to get it moving. I don't have the energy to do anything other than what I am doing, because I'm too busy realizing the extent of the damage that has been done to me emotionally and mentally--because I didn't have to realize it when I was analyzing Shakespeare or talking about Postcolonial Literary Theory.
And then, about halfway through the second week of June, I hit a mental wall. I hit it full-force, face-on. Thankfully my best friend Kate was around to do a little Superhero-Movie-Night damage control, and it definitely helped, but it was triage to what I was coming to realize was a lot more complicated than your average mental hiccup. Waking up every morning has been walking-slow-motion-through-the-white-bedsheet-forest and some days it's worse than others. Some days I feel like a broken, invisible, non-functional friendless non-human and it's almost debilitating. Other days I'm irritated with everything around me and I feel like a trapped animal, itching to get out by any means necessary. But everything's gotten harder, and takes twice as much effort. On good days, I feel numb and exhausted, which is preferable and more productive to feeling like I'm stuck in a fog.
And then the nightmares started up this week. I don't dream normally, anymore. Sleep is generally a vast black landscape dotted with the occasional night terror that I don't remember clearly upon waking up. I've had at least four distinct nightmares that I can remember this week alone and it's making me wake up more tired than I was when I went to bed. Now, I've no doubt that some of you reading this might roll your eyes and tell me to get over myself, get therapy, take meds, etc. etc., and don't worry, I'm looking into that.
I'm not telling you all this because I want attention. I'm telling you all this for two reasons.
Reason #1: If there's one thing I've learned from this crappy mental state, it's that hearing that other people feel like they are stuck in the foggy, bedsheet forest helps the feelings of loneliness subside a little; a sort of "you aren't alone in your feelings." Which, I grant you, is a cliche. But I look at my friends, and they all seem so comfortable and happy with their lives, and I just feel like the poorly-glued-and-stitched together Creature. And don't give me any of that scars make you beautiful and unique crap. Sometimes scars are just ugly, and I feel like mine are glaringly obvious even when people assure me that they aren't and I'm normal. It gets incredibly easy to feel alone and disconnected because brains that function like mine are not how most people's brains function.
Case in point: The conversation that helped me the most this month so far was with a friend who has recently moved back from California. I went over to her place, and we both just ended up talking the entire evening about phobias, dysfunctions, and trauma, and not a minute of it felt like someone just mouthing their sympathy at me or patting me on the head and telling me life would get better, here are x, y, and z ways to fix it. I may have come out of this thing alive, and even come out of it a stronger person, but that doesn't mean it didn't mess with me in ways that I'm only beginning to understand.
Sometimes it's just nice to hear that life is unfair. And it's nice to talk to someone who genuinely understands what it feels like to have crawled through the darkness and are unsure what to do with their lives now that they're done with it. Because as unbearable as the darkness is, in some ways, the emptiness is worse: it's not as easy to shift.
You start looking for things to fill it up with, and nothing quite does the job. TV shows end. Books end. People disappear from your life, or simply just have to go home for the evening. And whatever sense of security you get from being whisked away to another world or being in the presence of people just dries up, and you're left trying to figure out how to deal with the broken piece of machinery you call your brain.
It's honestly no wonder that so many soldiers turn to alcohol or something equally potentially addictive in order to soften the harshness of the reality of 1) what has happened to them and 2) what to do next. The emptiness can set you reeling. And just when you start feeling a little better, another trigger comes along--a memory, a text, a place--and it starts all over again.
Which brings me to Reason #2: I figured it was time. I'm tired of being tired. I'm tired of feeling empty. I'm tired of feeling like an invisible non-functioning non-human thing. I'm tired of the little triggers that set my brain wandering in a negative chemical swamp. I'm tired of watching my ex bounce around, happy and living a normal life as though nothing in the damned world happened a year ago.
If you'd asked me before this month, I'd have said the hardest thing in my life up to that point was deciding to go through with the annulment. Now I'd say that was the second hardest thing, because what I'm about to attempt--paying attention to the problems in my brain, and actually healing from everything--is going to be more difficult. Mental and emotional scarring isn't like physical scarring. Especially because, in order to cope, my actual emotions have essentially been paralyzed for a year and a half.
I don't need to be told that I'm strong or that I can do this, because I know I can. I'm determined and I'm smart, and for Ray Bradbury's sake, I made it through college while handling a messy annulment. And I graduated with highest honors. I'm not afraid of tough things or challenges.
It's more, I'm not sure where I'm going to start; but I'm going to go ahead and count this as a first step. It's been so hard to convince myself to write over the last few weeks, and I practically had to bribe myself in order to write this post (episodes of Supernatural, I'm looking at you). I just know I've got to pull out of this if I'm going to accomplish any of the things I want to.
In the immortal words of Allie Brosh: "Maybe everything isn't hopeless bullshit."
*throws some metaphorical lemons at a metaphorical target*
Here goes, then.
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