Safe

I don’t understand why they call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The P and the T and D make sense, but not the stress. Stress doesn’t begin to describe what I feel. It seemed like such a simple decision. I need shoes. Actually, I desperately need shoes. I would just leave work early and go to the mall and buy shoes.

As I stepped out of the office, the bus was waiting as if it knew my mission. And despite the typical crowdedness the Muni usually offers me, instead there was a seat. Not just any seat either, but a solo seat. So I sat, headphones on, as the bus slowly crawled down the hill toward Union Square. I looked out the window and away from the action inside the bus. I could hear the yelling, but still I ignored the altercation around me. I had a goal and a destination.

As I stepped off the bus, I expected the swarm of holiday shoppers. I breathed slowly and deeply as I pushed through the crowd, reminding myself of my errand. I made it all the way in to the store and up the escalator and then it hit. The rush of anxiety, the feeling of being totally overwhelmed and this was beyond stress. My hands began to clench and I wanted to leave. I forced myself to wander the floor, touching shoes. But I knew there would be no success. I couldn’t open my mouth. The tears were already forming and all I could feel was shame. There was Christmas everywhere: Red and green wherever I looked. I could feel the rush of warm begging me to remove my coat. And I knew as the warm began to turn into pools of sweat I had to go.

I flew out of the store and onto the street and began to walk. I wanted to wander aimlessly until I felt better but knew I had no choice but to walk down Market Street to the bus terminal or I would be forced to take the night bus, which drops me off blocks instead of feet from my car and there would be more anxiety. As I made the walk down Market, I tried to ignore the faces walking by, but in every face I saw him. He was here in San Francisco. He was walking behind me. He was walking towards me. I couldn’t stop seeing him. My heart raced as the fear became paralyzing. I slowly let my gaze become unfocused as I continued walking, so I could no longer see anyone.

The sweat began to dry and my feet reminded me the shoes I was currently wearing needed to be retired. And I was desperate for home, the isolated sanctuary that protected me like a soft cocoon. How I wished I could metamorphose into a butterfly. There were months to go before my wings would develop and I could fly under the soft rays of the spring sun. But for now it’s tears. Not stress, just tears. Just like the deep drops of a winter rain, my tears flowed from the same dark place from within. And as I stepped inside my fortress of solitude the tears rolled down my cheeks as if to create a moat to protect me inside. And for now I am safe.

Little White Pill

I knew my mother’s offer of a treadmill was another thinly veiled attempt to let me know she thinks I am fat. It’s pathetic that there is no ability for her to offer me such a generous gift. Those niceties never really existed for me anyway. I suppose it was nice of her to give me a journal at 9 years old and a calorie counting book to help me track the number of calories I was eating per day. But the gift of a lifetime battle with an eating disorder was more than I thought I was receiving at that time. And now, I no longer looked forward to her gifts.

Unfortunately the timing of this gift offer coincided with a week of uncontrolled anxiety. And the more anxious I was becoming the more difficult it was to spend time with the man I love. I was embarrassed for him to see me like this. Leaving the house this morning I knew it was a question of minutes before the panic attack set in. Thank god he didn’t see me as I struggled to breath and my hands clenching ever so tightly. The mantras, the breathing, none of it working. I hate the shame I feel over my inability to take control over myself. I suppose I even blame myself for not controlling my nerves and letting them rule my body. And now I had a witness. Over a decade of secluding myself from others allowed me to escape the shame I felt having anxiety. Yes, I need to medicate. Who wants to admit that? The only way I can feel “normal” is by taking treatment. Realistically though, it works. It’s a relief to feel my heart begin a regular pace and my breathing no longer labored. And I don’t know how to be around him now as I work towards getting better… again.

I didn’t even know how to be better with the changes happening all around me. The Viking and I decided to take the plunge toward cohabitation. And now I had a real choice; I could choose to live with him or I could choose to live with my anxiety. At the moment I am leaning towards the anxiety because having him see me like this is too difficult for me to stomach. The fears of rejection, of him not accepting me, of him seeing me as difficult and ultimately of him abandoning me were too much to bear. Still I long for the partnership he offers and try to remind myself the concerns floating in my head were the result of my anxiety and not based in reality. I was too afraid to ask him for the truth since ultimately it would require a vulnerability I wasn’t comfortable with. I suppose for him to love me, to really love me meant he would have to know all of me. Even this… the stuff I didn’t even want to know or acknowledge about myself. The part of me I see as hopelessly broken if not for the little white pill. Yes, the little white pill. And with one quick drink of water I am soon on my way toward clarity once again.

$50,000 Angel

I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the Gulf. Perhaps it was the drone of the news playing in the background this morning that had me thinking how ineffectual I felt. The word I like to use is impotent. I feel impotent. And I felt far away. The Gulf feels far. The floods in Tennessee feel far. And I feel removed. And truth is I am. I suppose I began to feel guilty that I haven’t taken these causes under my wing. I simply hear about them and feel powerless and yet do nothing. Even as I made my way to work, my reality of my profession couldn’t seem to pull me out of this sense of not doing enough. Preventing and treating breast cancer wasn’t enough; Nor were my other “causes du jour.” Years of volunteering with animal rescue couldn’t seem to console this sense of powerlessness I felt nor the fundraiser I began to help an injured friend. I can’t seem to do enough in a world that is seemingly falling apart.

Now I promise I am not getting “emo” on everyone here. But as I looked around me, there does seem to be injustices happening. Besides the injustices that are happening on a global scale, as I shrink my world to just that, my world, I couldn’t help but notice what hits so close to home. From the murder of my mentor by a single shot in the back, to the accidental injury that changed my friends life, to the termination of employment experienced by another for simply doing what she loves (burlesque),and to the extreme health decline of another. How could I do enough? There just is so much.

Perhaps my sense of impotence was stemming from the anger I feel as I sit with the awareness that there are people out there taking advantage of the kindness of our community. Yes, I am mad as I learned about the defrauding of my community through the solicitation of funds for a cause based in fantasy rather than reality. I jokingly said I was selfish that this situation was distracting people from donating to what I deemed a more worthy cause, my friends’ medical expenses. But was I being judgmental? So what if this other party skewed the facts of their situation for financial gain and empathy? Would those who would have donated to my little cause turn their attention away to assist in a personal vendetta in the form of a legal action? Did it really matter who was suing who? Why do I care that they are putting their hand out to line the pockets of their personal cause?

Sitting on Muni, I began to think that perhaps it’s my thinking that is flawed. Of course I am not enough. As I constantly turn to my own community asking for support, I know this. “Be the bra people” has been my tagline for years. So maybe I need to look outside myself to understand how through these 6 degrees of separation my community is making a difference in the world. We are able to look outside ourselves and practice what is known to me as “Tikkun Olam,” repairing the world. Ironically the first person that came to mind is a biker I know and a former skinhead. And while his facebook posts tend to predominantly reflect his punk rock values of “fuck everyone” he never ceases to surprise me with a government official’s address or phone number or most recently BP and a suggestion to be proactive. Or the daily facebook posts from a Little Darling I was fortunate enough to cross paths with as she continues her crusade to save pitbulls, one bullie at a time. Or my curly sister in New Orleans who was forever changed after Katrina. She moved from California to Louisiana just to be part of the solution, one child at a time. I am not enough.

I suppose as I go about my Wednesday, I am simply looking for the comfort that I impact a greater world through the actions of those around me. Or maybe this is a call to action. Doing nothing is not enough. I remember years ago backstage with The Fixx (a story for another time), I made one of the band member’s cry. I didn’t mean to and I am quite sure alcohol fueled the response. But he asked me what I did for a living. My answer was “saving the world one convict at a time.” I was running a literacy and creative writing program for parolees that I had started in San Francisco. My goal was to reduce recidivism by creating healthy options for those leaving the correctional system and to reunite families. He lamented he never did anything for anyone. My response was to put my hand out. I reminded him that I couldn’t do my work alone. For everyone on the ground, there’s an angel dropping a dollar in my pocket to keep the work going. He was a 50 thousand dollar angel.

And yes, I am looking for that $50k angel today just to make a dent in my tiny community, my community of friends. But I would settle for just encouraging everyone around me to take a moment to just do something. Write an email for a cause or write a check or play with the puppies at Animal Control. Or even add my cause of the day, the Whit’s Knee Fund. Just do something. Because it is all overwhelming when we wonder what we as individuals can do. But looking at what we all do, there’s a comfort there, so I hope people will comment and share.

Managing

As quickly as this little being came into my life, it was just gone. It seemed so unfair that I was allowed to hold on to hope, but for only a few short weeks. I felt pathetic looking at the blurred images on my refrigerator as if they were anything more than pulsating cells. And all I had to show for it now was 6 extra pounds that felt like 100 under the emotional weight I feel.

I suppose I should feel grateful I had this moment of hope. For these several weeks, I was happy with this parasite growing inside of me. Too early on to call it anything else, it came to be known amongst friends as the sesame seed. It even got to evolve into the blueberry. And I became so superstitious. As if having the fear of losing the blueberry would bring on its demise. I even kept the picture of my deceased cat on my cell phone because for some strange reason I rationalized that deleting the picture would somehow delete the moment I was having. And I was full. Full of hope, full of dreams, full of future. The woman who lived her life in the present, who stopped looking ahead was actually living life with a calendar marked months in advance.

I started to imagine family. My own family. Family had become synonymous to my friends, not the people who I was related to by blood. The growing being inside of me would fit all conventional definitions of family though: we’d be stuck together, blood related and unlike my own, I planned to not abandon the little berry. This was the dream I never allowed myself to have. And now I am wondering what the point was in having this glimpse of a dream dangled in front of me, only to be snatched away.

And I hated the word for it; “miscarriage.” I didn’t miscarry anything, because if I was really carrying this precious being, I would have taken every precaution imaginable. The last image we saw of the blueberry, it looked squished, as if someone stepped on it. It sort of reminded me of the time my dad’s turtle laid an egg and the male turtle just walked right over it and it was no longer round but flatly oval. The blueberry was squashed.

In between the moments of sadness, I just feel angry. I had gone on my whole life never imagining this moment. Realistically, this was not meant to be at all. I remember the words of the emergency room doctor when I was just 17 as he told me I wouldn’t be able to have children. Of course what I heard and took with me was that I was broken. And I feel broken now still. My friends called it a miracle, while I felt that there was some other force at work. It just seemed beyond coincidental I could conceive the day my beloved cat had died. And still, I can’t see my own role in this still seeing myself as the broken girl.

And now I am the broken girl with the broken heart. For months I have been in my head with secrets. The secret of a pregnancy, the secret of a miscarriage, and now the secret that something in me just feels broke. The words of 12-step echoing in my head, “you are only as sick as your secrets.” And I do feel sick hoping to be on the mend. I suppose there is no way to truly mend this. I am hoping simply to add this to my list of experiences with the words of Mother Theresa to comfort me… “God never gives you more than you can manage.” I guess the better response when I am asked how I am doing, is that I am managing. Day by day, I am managing.

Thoughts on Paper

Both my writing and my reality have become this secret world I dare not share. I feel stuck as if I am in some cocoon waiting to emerge. Not knowing if I will arrive as a butterfly or simply a moth. Or perhaps I won't emerge at all. Even writing now in this free form style without thought is almost liberating. And the lies continue on a daily basis, hiding myself and my secret from everyone. The stress of it all is starting to wear on me and even as I scroll through online services just to find one person like me, I want my support in person. Cyber hugs just won't do. And my inner voice yearns for a mother I have never known. There is no consoling me at this time. I am truly alone.

It's merely days now before the anniversary of my birth. The thought of celebrating is so distant, when my mood is despondent and bleak. Every morning I wake up quietly hoping that my reality feels less a nightmare and more a fantasy. My childhood dreams had not prepared me for this. I am finding myself slipping daily into some abyss when I know as time goes on, there is a light at the end of this tunnel. Maybe tunnel isn't actually accurate, perhaps it's best described as a door. Because doors provide option even though at the moment I feel encased in my situation, alone in my head, solo in my journey and empty of choice.

I have come to rely on the kindness of those few I have allowed into my narrow world. I am exhausted by my own words and have turned to this medium to express myself, insecure with the thought that I may indeed be taxing those around me. I feel a desperation to find support and have come up empty handed. I am aware I am drowning and actually want to be preserved. And again, it's time I need, but like a junkie I want the instant gratification of truly knowing I am going to be just fine. Each morning is that reminder of my uncertainty. And all the blood, there is just so much of it. I crave a morning without reminders, I would embrace a day that creates no memory, just the humdrum of existence.

And some mornings I just wake up angry. My body is a complete stranger to me. I don't understand any of it's pains. Today I took the prophylactic deciding that I didn't need to know how I felt. I knew to feel pain only affected my mood for the day. And how much I yearned for movement, for intimacy, to feel independent. Damn I hated to ask for help. Last night I found myself sweeping my dirty home, crying through the pain because I was just to stubborn to ask anyone to help me. This morning I gave in and wrote the only person who was watching me bang my head over and over. I despised turning to him feeling no confidence that he truly didn't mind lending a hand.

Since when had I become this independent? Had I become my own fair weather friend? Only wanting to see my reflection when I felt my best. The word's of my mother echoing in my head, "no one cares about your problems, so keep them to yourself." But like an illness, my disease of secrecy only made me sicker by the minute. And I knew as I looked at the image of her surgically sculpted face that behind every peel and cut of the knife, she was sicker than me.