I am constantly overcome with envy.
I feel so left out.

I miss having a life.
I miss working.
I miss being busy.

I feel so fucking trapped.


I want out. I want out. I want out.

I never saw so many tigers

JD Salinger died today.

the ultrasound didn't show anything. I spent 5.5 hours at the hospital and eventually walked out. I got tired of being shut up in a small dirty room to panic. they could not tell me what to do next. I'm certainly not letting them cut me open to look around. they don't know what's wrong with me, why I feel this bad, and they just didn't seem to care. I'm not doing this cos I enjoy being on narcotics. heroin would involve jumping through less hoops, I am sure, and the end would come a lot faster.

I'm too tired for this: separation anxiety combined with increasing desire to avoid social contact. constant suicidal thoughts. I hate myself. I want to cut myself. I want to punch walls, to bang my head on the ground and scream. I can't stop weeping. I can't get my feet warm. loss of appetite. dysphoria even a brisk ride on a sunny day can't shake. anorgasmia.

I won't go back on meds. I am certain if I can figure out what is wrong with my uterus and narrow down a treatment strategy, this horrible emotional turmoil will resolve itself. I am just getting impatient. I cannot explain; you would not understand. this is not how I am. I'm losing my religion. I'm at the end of the rainbow and my rope. I kneel in the night before tigers that will not let me be. I never saw so many tigers.

I am too old to be acting like this.

I thought I would grow out of being crazy.

Instead I'm pacing around my apartment with needles in my toes and forehead weeping like a madwoman and punching walls.

I can't live like this. I don't know what to do.

I'm waiting for the time when I can be without

I can't make it through the night without pain waking me. I reach for the pills. if it's before 6, I can have one. if it's after, two. I count hours until I can take more. I ache and throb and burn. I'm taking more than the bottle says. I'm behind in class because I can't find a buffer zone between too fucked up to function and hurting too bad to sit still. my dreams are endless anxiety and abandonment and exhaustion.

the things that used to comfort me just don't anymore.

and I want you to notice when I'm not around

I found a new therapist, one who does EMDR. When we were setting up the appointment, we talked briefly about what I think is wrong with me and what I want to work on.

here's the thing: maybe I was in so much emotional pain that it just spilled over and became physical pain. then again, maybe I think I deserve to suffer. maybe I think that I have to be in pain in order to be loved. maybe this physical but invisible manifestation of pain is the only way I could get my parents to admit how badly they fucked me up. maybe it's my body screaming out I don't deserve this and no-one is listening. maybe after a decade of nightmares and self-hate and cutting and burning and screaming bloody hatred and rage into the big empty space where my lost personality- the person I was before I was made sick- used to be, maybe it just built up and shorted out and left me with these endless aches.

maybe if I can stop believing that I am sick I will stop being sick. I've been told I was sick and broken since I was 13. I don't even remember what it felt like before, to feel safe and coherent and cohesive and loved and accepted.

I wish I believed in unconditional love. I wish I believed that I will be ok.

I am terrified of what is growing inside me. I am terrified of finality. I am afraid I will never be wanted again, that I will never be touched by someone who desires me. I have so internalized these years of rejection that now my body is rejecting itself.

how do I stop
how do I feel whole

Love and Monsters

"you know, when you're a kid, they tell you it's all grow up, get a job, get married, have a kid and that's it... but the truth is, the world is so much stranger than that. it's so much darker... and so much madder... and so much better." Elton Pope in Dr Who, new series season 2

I have to believe that things will get better. that the way I see myself when I am down in it and blinded by pain is not how others see me. that anyone else would behave the same way were they in similar circumstances.

I can't live like this, constantly breaking my own heart.

I don't know how to be anything other than sick. I don't know how to keep my fucking mouth shut and act like a normal person. I don't know how to stop resenting all my neurotypical friends.

I am humiliated at all times. I have no emotional control. I have no filters. I can't pretend to be ok. I can't keep my heart off my sleeve. I can't keep my feelings from being hurt by minuscule things. I don't know how not to be a greedy, grabby, clingy, emotional vampire sponge monster.

I don't think I will ever rise above this.

I don't believe in the future being better. I don't think I will ever be anything but scared and alone and in pain. no matter how many painkillers I take it still hurts. I almost overdosed last night because it hurt so bad and I just kept taking more and it is never enough to make it stop.

I wish it had been me instead of Liza.

there is no-one what will take care of you

I'm not doing well. it came on pretty suddenly. cramps so severe I woke up before dawn crying, so bad that a triple dose of tylenol with codeine didn't even take the edge off. I got vicodin from my doctor, but even that is only making it tolerable.

there is something horrid and out of place in my body.

I need an MRI. I can't stop imagining this horrible evil dark sludgy teethy gnawing thing growing inside me. wishing me harm. it doesn't belong there.

then again I don't want to know how bad it is. if it's adhering to my organs too much then they would want to burn it off. I have no-one to take care of me if they cut me open. I don't want to go through the county hospital, with their endless lines and infection filled waiting rooms and below standard quality care.

I am giving Chinese herbs a few more months. after that I don't know if I will have any other option besides surgery if it keeps getting worse every month.

I am scared and I am alone and I feel disgusting and dirty and foul and broken and I don't want to be here.

proportions

After taking a year of Herbology classes that focus on learning around 300 of the most frequently used herbs in the Chinese Materia Medica, I've finally started a formulas class.

Putting together a formula is like organizing the government of one of those epic historical simulation computer games. there's an emperor, who dictates the main action and purpose of the formula; below him is the minister, who supports the emperor by either having a similar function or by addressing a second, coexisting symptom. the emperor and minister generally have the highest dosage range in the formula. at lesser doses are the assistants and envoys; the assistant can reinforce the actions of its superiors, it can reduce their unwanted side effects, or occasionally it can have an opposing effect when the disease has a complicated manifestation. the envoy focuses the actions of the formulas on a specific area of the body, such as the throat or the eyes, or else "harmonizes" the formula, sort of like taking the rough edges off. licorice root seems to be the most common envoy- it's very sweet and can make a particularly nasty potion a bit easier to get down.

sometimes the roles of each herb can be unclear: it's easy to pick out the emperor when it's dosed at 60g and everything else is 15 or 6, but certain herbs might be the emperor even if their dosage is small. wild ginger, for example, is an extremely warm herb that is used for severe chills with copious thin mucus; it generally is not dosed higher than 3 grams because it is so warm and drying. in a formula with wild ginger dosed at 3 or 4 grams, it will serve as the emperor even when the other herbs outweigh it by far.

despite the overall Confucian nature of herbal hierarchies, this last fact strikes me as rather Marxist- from each according to his ability, right?


In the past few months I've developed a fairly broad and varied group of friends. some of them are like me and have a lot of free time; some of them work way too much. the few people that I think of as my closest friends all fall into this latter category. I rarely get to spend time with them, but when I do, it means a lot more to me than when I hang out with people I see every day. their presences in my life are the most important, despite the fact that I might see them for only a few hours a week, or even less. My best girlfriend from back home and I rarely get a chance to sit down and talk on the phone for hours like we used to, but she's still my best friend. I can't remember the last time I got to spend a few hours with my closest friend here, but the twenty minutes every couple days and the waving at each other from our neighboring apartments' windows mean the world to me.

if you can't see the metaphor here, well, I don't know what to tell you.

"I'd rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery"

the year started out so miserably that I thought it best to keep my resolution unambitious. I hadn't really cleaned my desk off since I got it last spring and with comps coming up in April, I figured I should at least be able to get to all my notes.

before:


after:


and that's pretty much my plan for the year. just to let things be what they are. not to fly too high. to want less. to be happy with what I have.

there are times when I tremble at the darkness that hides inside me. there's a monster lurking in the depths of my mind and I forget she's there. I think I am a sweet and good person and that I am doing my best to deal with all this endless pain and be brave but I wonder how much fear and bitterness and resentment and hatred I am just repressing.

it only comes out after about 6 drinks, this demon. when I'm tired and hungry and way too drunk. all the bile I build up in the course of a year comes pouring out and I wake up horribly sad and ashamed and can't remember what I said to ruin everything.

I've told so many people I loved that I hated them while in the grips of this madness.
there's a reason I don't usually drink that much. it's not a matter of control, it's that I can't predict what will rouse this bleak hateful thing from where it's been sleeping. once it was because Dumbledore died. once it was because Matt looked at Stacy Like That. last time, I wish I could say. I was having such a wonderful night and then the hole in my head starts and I woke up with everything in pieces.

this is not how I am.