avalanche, veux-tu m'emporter dans ta chute?

I've been buying herbs from a Chinese pharmacy in Little Saigon for a couple months now. the owner is a diminutive woman who appears to be fluent in several languages. she stocks all the major medicinals for decoctions as well as the most commonly used pills and teas and creams and liniments. We've gotten to be on a first-name basis and I've joked about getting her to sell me her shop when she wants to retire.

I've been in there about 5 times in the past week; I've been having horrible hot flashes that make me feel like my bones are boiling, sending a very uncomfortable fizzing sensation through my muscles. I get so hot that I get goosebumps, despite having no measurable fever. I'm frantic with worry and sadness, not sleeping well, nauseated, downcast, miserable. I've spent about 80 bucks in the past week on medication and herbs trying to get my body back to its normal miserable state. seriously, I can deal with just fibro, but this endometriosis and pseudo-menopausal crap are grinding me down.

Lin, the owner of the herb shop, was asking me about my health. she knows what she's selling, so she can tell from my purchases that I'm not the average 30 year old. I was trying to give her the short rundown and somehow ended up giving her the whole life story.

I don't give myself enough credit. I really don't. between the culture shock of the South's suburbs and my brother's attempts to molest me and then getting sent off to a brainwashing lockup and force-fed lithium for years, I went through more hell in my early teens than most people do in their whole life. and shit didn't even stop then. my life has been an avalanche of poor health and poor decisions made from an inability to plan for the future for most of my adult years too.

I've had a hard time being around people lately. I'm ashamed of my inability to keep my composure. I am constantly afraid that the few friends I have will turn their back on me, that they will be sickened by my neediness if I ask them to keep me company when I am sad or scared or feeling self-destructive. I have been hiding in my apartment for weeks, watching hours of downloaded tv, sticking needles in my feet and hands to keep from cutting myself. I schedule one or two social events a week and try my hardest to put on a brave face.


I am fragile. I am crumbling. but I have to believe that I am not broken past all hope of mending. as much as I want all this pain and fear and anxiety and sadness to be over, I'm not done living yet.

I just have to hang on a little while longer. and then a little more after that.

I'm too unforgiving towards myself. I let my physical fragility cause emotional fragility and then get angry at myself when my circuits overload and I lose control of how I feel. I need to learn to step back.

these past few weeks, I've felt like I'm running on a giant hamster wheel, constantly tripping and falling down and skinning my knees and palms, busting my lip. I feel like a giant bruise emotionally.

I should have broken down and called my shrink. she was out of town and I didn't want to bother her, but she told me to call if if I wasn't doing well, and fuck. this past week has been one of the worst I can remember.

hindsight is 20/20, right.

cheer up, honey (I hope you can)

today seemed slightly better, as if I've rounded some sort of bend, as if the light at the end of the tunnel has come microscopically closer. there was an earthquake this morning and a foot of snow on the ground. soon it will be March.

I don't think I have ever missed anyone this intensely. not and still believed that they were coming back.

please come back.

fail

I gave herbs and acupuncture a year to try to fix all my mysterious lady problems; today, after having to combine vicoprofen and tylenol 3 just to get out of bed, I broke down and called my doctor for a birth control script.

I'm so hormonally overloaded it can't possibly make it worse, right?

I'm ok with my boobs growing, but I can't afford new britches, so let's hope my ass stays the same size...

consolation prize

I keep telling myself, "At least you still look good," but honestly, it's not really helping. I'd rather be ugly than hurt this much.

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.

boy, those wings are made of wax

lately I feel less like Sisyphus and more like Icarus. careening around up in the sky, way too high up than could possibly be good in the end.

I went to my doctor and got on pain pills after spending Thanksgiving with gritted teeth. nothing real serious, just Tylenol with codeine. still, it takes the edge off, and it sure was a sharp edge. I'm hoping this new set of Chinese herbs I'm on will make an improvement in the next couple months. I can't stay on opiates forever. I'm already anxious as hell about how messy it'll be when I decide to go off them. I had a bit of trouble getting another set of refills before I went to Memphis for the holiday, and just a day on half doses had me ready to fall apart.

I'm sitting in bed in my old room. looking out the window at the same puddle of yellow under the same streetlight as all those other Saturday nights, alone, bored, miserable. I could be with my favorite cousins and aunt at my grandfathers' house, but I just don't feel well enough to keep my composure, despite the drugs.

The first three weeks of the month were brilliant. literally, filled with an almost blinding light just coming out of everything and glinting in every puddle and shop window and blazing out from chinks in the clouds. I had a lovely birthday, the best I've ever had. I threw a party and people came. half a bar, taken over by people who like me. I made it through finals, passed everything, even Anatomy. Hell, I made a damn hundred on my Herbs final. I celebrated the solstice with the people I love the most. then I was riding high, grinning the whole way to the train, even the whole plane ride. too high, I guess, cos the second we landed I crashed like hell.

I'll be out of here soon, back to my cozy apartment and my rumbly cat and my familar things. back to bountiful, if dry and clanky, heat, back to not having to be carted around in my dad's oversized SUV, back to my bike and my friends... a week left before class starts, a week to spend Xmas money in thrift shops and on hair product and to spend time reading gratuitous fiction at the coffee shop...

I'm still working out what my New Year's resolution will be this year, if I have one at all. I think maybe last year it was just "to be happy." I think this year it might be "to want less." or "to believe in happy endings."

Until then, it's all about happy middles.

it's a ritual sacrifice, with pie

last week was one of the darkest and most painful in memory. I am glad that I made such a serious effort to make more friends this summer or I am not sure I would have made it through. I'm still having a hard time being around people for too long with the amount of pain I am in, but it helps not to be alone, too.

this week we are having an orphan Thanksgiving and I'm so excited I can barely sit still. I was playing D&D for the first time last Friday with my neighbors and we were talking about how Thanksgiving and Christmas make the first part of winter bearable. then it's January, and the Super Bowl just doesn't do it for us, and we are miserable. so sometime next year, when it's dark and minus 3 out, I'll go over to the gaymers' and make pie and roast a beast and we'll offer up a libation to the Winter gods and hope that spring comes early.

here's hoping.