Our break up happened in stages.
It started because he betrayed my trust, not just by making plans to take the girls, but when he walked away from a duty that he had promised to fulfill--a life or death one. I put a kebash on a newly added D/s aspect to our relationship (not that Alex explored it much with me--his preference for those things were Luna. Looking back, this might have been a sign of the pending heartbreak). citing that I couldn't trust him enough to continue it at that time. His response was to kick me and the girls out. We managed to work out a temporary truce, but it was not even forty-eight hours later that he betrays my trust again by lying to me about what he wanted to do. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, it would then be turned into him choosing Luna again, over what was best for our family unit.
Our little family was once again spread over two locations, and Alex only had a plan for seeing the girls, which boiled down to on the weekend, if he could manage it. But he kept talking about how much he loved me, so I put off starting over on my own. He would alternate between ignoring me completely and reassuring me that he did love me and cared for me. The dissonance between what he was verbally telling me and what his actions were saying tore me up--I blamed myself and came up with reasons. (If I wasn't so needy; if I hadn't lost my job and then the house--if I could still take care of him; if I was funnier; if I was thinner; if I didn't study so much; if I wasn't so broken; if I could be a Gorean like Luna.) Looking back, I can see the cycle, and how I fed into it by just accepting him playing with my emotions as just part of the situation, perhaps even as a just punishment for failing to take care of my family as a Choctaw was supposed to; as a Silverwolf was supposed to.
It came to a head the day before our 13th Anniversary. I was asking for a plan again, one to reunite our household or begin working to fix our relationship. Alex declared that he couldn't stand to live with me again. It hurt, gods did it hurt. But it was also freeing, in a way. I knew that I couldn't depend upon him to step into the provider role for me and the girls. That meant that I needed to find some way of stepping back into that role myself. I needed to be the one to provide my daughters with a home, because he didn't want to do so. He saw nothing wrong with the status quo.
So I initiated paperwork to become my own household with Division of Social Services. I knew Alex would be upset. I knew that he would be angry, because it would mean that he wasn't getting the money for the girls and would have to start paying out of his paychecks (from a job that I had gotten him the lead on, but that he later told me that I was delusional for thinking that I had anything to do with, despite screen-captures showing where I had gotten the tip to pass on to him). So I avoided telling him until the last moment possible.
It was a week after I had to tell him, that he came up with the idea to fraud the state. It escalated quickly as I dug in my heels and refused to break the law for him. In the course of that evening, he attacked me three times. That was back in April. I still have complications from my injuries.
Alex married Luna May 14th. They didn't wait to have the girls there, or to prepare them for the change in status of the woman who could barely stand their presence. Thousands of ways to communicate information, and they choose to spring the idea on me at court the other day.
When Alex and I opened our relationship, we had only a few rules: 1) our relationship came first; 2) everyone has to ask permission; 3) everyone had to keep clean papers; 4) the girls did not get involved--we weren't going to have a bunch of Aunts/Uncles floating in and out of their lives. His marriage to Luna was the final nail in the coffin of my officially-dead-but-still-there hope/expectation that we'd get back together after Luna leaves (as she has every commitment in the past). I didn't even know that I had it until it was destroyed.
It hurts. Oh, Goddess, how it hurts.
Friday, June 5, 2015
Saturday, April 4, 2015
I Am Not Invisible
I was a rather well-read child who was as captivated by nonfiction as I was fiction. I was seven when a teacher decided that as a punishment I would have to read a page from the dictionary. That had a latent manifest effect of me putting Webster on my reading list for the year. Best birthday gift that my grandmother ever gave was both a Webster and an Oxford--Grandma Liz may have teased me about it, but holy fuck if the woman did not simply understand me.
I was eight the first time I read my first Stephen King book: Firestarter. That was also the year that I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. That hospitalization was perhaps the scariest period of my young life. All I really knew was Mom said that we were going to a special park, but instead we went to big brick building that smelled like the Jefferson City Walls. The doors slammed behind us as we went deeper inward and the windows disappeared. We went down a green hall that had a flickering light. We went through a final set where we were met by a man who had to have been related to the Hulk (couldn't have been him as he was a normal white guy, not green) and he took the bag that Mom had been carrying before making her sign some paperwork. That is when my mother told me that they (her and my siblings) had to go, but that I was staying. Then they left.
We as a society have a tendency to ignore both children and the mentally ill. We talk about them but rarely to them. We assume that because they are young that they cannot understand--and the concept that children should have a right to informed consent is relatively new...and primarily reserved for physical illnesses.
They didn't explain why I was there or how long I would be. They didn't explain why they needed my blood or why they wanted me to take the pills. I shared a room for the first few days, but one day in the course getting my blood drawn yet again, my roommate was packed and gone with no explanation to where or why. And through it all was the smell of the place: stale and stinky like the place where they kept Daddy. There was no going outside and there was no books beyond the boring kids books. Regardless of whatever rules you think they should have followed, no one explained me what the fuck was going on beyond the phrase "we're trying to make you better" with no explanation as to what that meant.
With no distractions and no explanation, my little storyteller and overly informed self started coming up with my own theories as to what was going on. Mom had made no secret that she couldn't handle me--or rather she didn't pay attention to the kid curled up with a book in the corner when she talked to my grandmother or on the phone to various people and said kid had ears. Everyone fights with their siblings, though, and why would I want to read a book whose chapters were barely a flip of a page with boring stories when there were things like Beowulf or The Tell-Tale Heart or The Lost Years of Merlin--and the principal was stupid for thinking that calling Mom would force me to read a stupid book still mostly pictures. In hindsight, maybe calling her a bitch on top of it was a bit disrespectful, but surely the letter of apology that Grandma made me write was an acceptable sign of contrition. I had already known that they can lock you up and throw away the key for practically nothing--they had done it to Daddy and this place smelled like that one did. Then again, I had just finished Firestarter before Mom brought me here and all the staff would tell me is that they were going to make me better. Was this some kind of governmental research facility where they took in people for experimentation? I hadn't died yet from the pills they were giving me--did that mean that I was part of the control group or that the drugs were slow acting? Then again, I was not unaware of what the other kids called me on the playground and Mom had said once that it was unnatural how much I read, so maybe I really was a freak and "better" would be like the other kids. And wasn't that a wistful thought! Other kids seemed so happy and they didn't seem to have trouble talking to each other or to adults. Other kids didn't seem to boil uncontrollably with unexpected rage or not be able to sleep for days on end. What if they couldn't make me "better"? Would I be stuck in there forever and never see Grandma again or Daddy or Tigger or hell, even at that point snotty PJ or too quiet Jonny or the baby Jessica?
Thank God for West. West was the teenager whose room was directly across the hall from mine. Looking back now, he couldn't have been more than fourteen, but he was the one who explained that I wasn't in a prison or a government research facility--I was in a hospital in the mental ward. He was the one who finally got the vitals nurse to tell me my diagnosis and the name of the medication, both of which he recognized because he was Bipolar being treated with lithium as well. He was the one to explain that they weren't secretly vampires when they insisted in drawing blood every day, but that they were checking to make sure they didn't overdose me. When I was not able to sleep, he saw no problem with keeping me entertained. He had a marble and we would roll it back and forth across the hall--the challenge was to not get caught by the night nurse. When he was discharged, he managed to smuggle one of his books to read. To date, I still think IT was the longest book that I have read from cover to cover.
Once I understood what was going on, things got better quickly. I stopped fighting the staff and I agreed to the pills. The information that I had on what was wrong and how they were going to fix me was sketchy at best--but I understood that they were trying to make me not be other. And that I wanted more than anything else. I just wanted it all to end...and if I had to take a pill to do that, then that was acceptable.
But a lot of unnecessary psychological trauma could have been avoided if they hadn't assumed that because I was eight that I couldn't possibly understand and didn't need to be told what was going on. If a child had cancer, doctors go out of their way to explain every step of the way, and if not doctors, then the nurse or parents. The fact that they didn't because it was a mental illness is just an example of the institutionalized stigmatization of the mentally ill that goes on in our society. They locked me away and had it not been for West, I would have continued to have fought them every step of the way.
All because they assumed that I could not understand.
I was eight the first time I read my first Stephen King book: Firestarter. That was also the year that I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. That hospitalization was perhaps the scariest period of my young life. All I really knew was Mom said that we were going to a special park, but instead we went to big brick building that smelled like the Jefferson City Walls. The doors slammed behind us as we went deeper inward and the windows disappeared. We went down a green hall that had a flickering light. We went through a final set where we were met by a man who had to have been related to the Hulk (couldn't have been him as he was a normal white guy, not green) and he took the bag that Mom had been carrying before making her sign some paperwork. That is when my mother told me that they (her and my siblings) had to go, but that I was staying. Then they left.
We as a society have a tendency to ignore both children and the mentally ill. We talk about them but rarely to them. We assume that because they are young that they cannot understand--and the concept that children should have a right to informed consent is relatively new...and primarily reserved for physical illnesses.
They didn't explain why I was there or how long I would be. They didn't explain why they needed my blood or why they wanted me to take the pills. I shared a room for the first few days, but one day in the course getting my blood drawn yet again, my roommate was packed and gone with no explanation to where or why. And through it all was the smell of the place: stale and stinky like the place where they kept Daddy. There was no going outside and there was no books beyond the boring kids books. Regardless of whatever rules you think they should have followed, no one explained me what the fuck was going on beyond the phrase "we're trying to make you better" with no explanation as to what that meant.
With no distractions and no explanation, my little storyteller and overly informed self started coming up with my own theories as to what was going on. Mom had made no secret that she couldn't handle me--or rather she didn't pay attention to the kid curled up with a book in the corner when she talked to my grandmother or on the phone to various people and said kid had ears. Everyone fights with their siblings, though, and why would I want to read a book whose chapters were barely a flip of a page with boring stories when there were things like Beowulf or The Tell-Tale Heart or The Lost Years of Merlin--and the principal was stupid for thinking that calling Mom would force me to read a stupid book still mostly pictures. In hindsight, maybe calling her a bitch on top of it was a bit disrespectful, but surely the letter of apology that Grandma made me write was an acceptable sign of contrition. I had already known that they can lock you up and throw away the key for practically nothing--they had done it to Daddy and this place smelled like that one did. Then again, I had just finished Firestarter before Mom brought me here and all the staff would tell me is that they were going to make me better. Was this some kind of governmental research facility where they took in people for experimentation? I hadn't died yet from the pills they were giving me--did that mean that I was part of the control group or that the drugs were slow acting? Then again, I was not unaware of what the other kids called me on the playground and Mom had said once that it was unnatural how much I read, so maybe I really was a freak and "better" would be like the other kids. And wasn't that a wistful thought! Other kids seemed so happy and they didn't seem to have trouble talking to each other or to adults. Other kids didn't seem to boil uncontrollably with unexpected rage or not be able to sleep for days on end. What if they couldn't make me "better"? Would I be stuck in there forever and never see Grandma again or Daddy or Tigger or hell, even at that point snotty PJ or too quiet Jonny or the baby Jessica?
Thank God for West. West was the teenager whose room was directly across the hall from mine. Looking back now, he couldn't have been more than fourteen, but he was the one who explained that I wasn't in a prison or a government research facility--I was in a hospital in the mental ward. He was the one who finally got the vitals nurse to tell me my diagnosis and the name of the medication, both of which he recognized because he was Bipolar being treated with lithium as well. He was the one to explain that they weren't secretly vampires when they insisted in drawing blood every day, but that they were checking to make sure they didn't overdose me. When I was not able to sleep, he saw no problem with keeping me entertained. He had a marble and we would roll it back and forth across the hall--the challenge was to not get caught by the night nurse. When he was discharged, he managed to smuggle one of his books to read. To date, I still think IT was the longest book that I have read from cover to cover.
Once I understood what was going on, things got better quickly. I stopped fighting the staff and I agreed to the pills. The information that I had on what was wrong and how they were going to fix me was sketchy at best--but I understood that they were trying to make me not be other. And that I wanted more than anything else. I just wanted it all to end...and if I had to take a pill to do that, then that was acceptable.
But a lot of unnecessary psychological trauma could have been avoided if they hadn't assumed that because I was eight that I couldn't possibly understand and didn't need to be told what was going on. If a child had cancer, doctors go out of their way to explain every step of the way, and if not doctors, then the nurse or parents. The fact that they didn't because it was a mental illness is just an example of the institutionalized stigmatization of the mentally ill that goes on in our society. They locked me away and had it not been for West, I would have continued to have fought them every step of the way.
All because they assumed that I could not understand.
Sunday, January 11, 2015
Resolutions 2015
Well, it's a new calendar year for those who follow the Gregorian calendar. Soon it will also be a new by the Chinese calendar as well. Some time during this period of time, I try to decide what I will do for the year--what will be my goals. I'm horrid at actually keeping track of things, but I like the attempt, in some masochistic way, I think. I didn't do very well last year as a glance over my previous list showed me, but I did make some steps forward, so that should count for something, right?
Goal 1: I will become more healthy.
Objective 2A: I will maintain or improve my GPA.
I will find programs that will help with rent.
I will find programs that will help with utilities.
I will continue to pursue disability.
I will look into freelancing my skills.
So that's my gradoise plan for 2015. Hopefully it will work out better than my plan for 2014 did.
Resolutions 2015:
Objective 1A: I will be analytical about my habits and behaviors
rather than reactive.
- I will journal/blog at least once a week. Each entry must be a minimum of 250 words.
- I will keep a weight journal, both fasting weight and nightly.
- I will keep an oral journal--logging all food, drink, and medications.
Objective 1B: I will establish a set routine of physical and mental
activity.
- I will endeavor to walk a mile each day.
- I will journal/blog at least once a week. Each entry must be a minimum of 250 words.
- I will do my Yoga routine daily.
- I will do my Belly-Dancing routine once a week.
- I will take my medications as prescribe and attend all appointments.
- I will begin each day with meditation.
- I will cleanse myself daily.
Goal 2: I will better my situation.
- I will attend all classes.
- I will do all homework.
- I will study for exams.
- I will keep lines of communication open.
- I will not assume motives behind (in)action.
- I will ask for what I want rather than hint.
- I will write every day for a minimum of 250 words.
- I will finish a story project that I currently have in progress.
- I will finish the Glossary Project.
- I will finish getting the Haven System into book form.
- I will publish a 5k story at least once a month.
- I will establish a routine of prayer and meditation.
- I will write an essay about the upcoming Sabbat by said date.
- I will write an essay about the current month by the end of said month.
I will find programs that will help with rent.
I will find programs that will help with utilities.
I will continue to pursue disability.
I will look into freelancing my skills.
So that's my gradoise plan for 2015. Hopefully it will work out better than my plan for 2014 did.
Friday, January 2, 2015
It Gets Better...Yeah, Right
I'm sure that everyone has heard of Leelah Joshua Alcorn by now. You may have even read her suicide note found on her Tumblr page (here if you still haven't). She talks about the isolation that she felt, both due to her parents' actions and due to society's stigmatization of transgenders in general, and how that led her to the mental place where she couldn't see it ever getting better, even if she somehow managed the seemingly-impossible goal of transitioning. She was alone and all she could see in the future was more loneliness and loathing.
I understand how she felt. Being isolated because of something that you can't help hurts like nothing else. When this rejection of everything that you are comes from those who should love you most, it's even worse. You are left with a bitter taste in your mouth from it--the kind that lingers even when you've drunk something that normally cuts flavors. If your own mother can't love you, who possibly could? Or worse: your mother professes to love you and wants to help, but that help is contingent upon you accepting that you are wrong about something that is fundamentally you--your Cardinal Trait or Central Traits, to use the psychological terms.
To make it worse, when you do reach out to others, your concerns are met with derision ("You just need to accept God's Will."), condescendingly brushed aside ("Oh, everyone goes through that at one point or another."), or empty reassurances ("It gets better.")
"It gets better."
"How?" you beg, hoping for some guidance out of the Darkness, because you know that you simply can't continue like this. The darkness weighs on you too heavily--you can't breathe for the weight of it.
"You just need to decide to be happy." or "You need to be grateful for what you have before God/dess/Universe will give you more."
... oh, so this is my fault. I'm the one making me unhappy. If I could just be different, maybe I wouldn't be here in the Hole.
"There is no hole."
But there is! I'm trapped in it.
"You can't be trapped because there is no hole. It's just in your head. Just be happy."
How?!
"Doesn't matter. Just do it. You'll feel better."
That is usually when life seems its bleakest because you realize that you're on your own--there's no pill that will help you be like everyone else who laughs and smiles and can get things done in a consistent manner. No one's going hold your hand and pull you out of the pit. To them, there is no pit to climb out of, no wall that needs surpassed...and your acting like there is one is just a sign of you being selfish, lazy, and/or self-centered.
You should just try harder.
Those words are perhaps some of the most cruel that will be hurled at a depressed person. Most people don't realize the supreme effort it takes just to get out of bed for short periods of time when you're depressed. Some of the most common anti-depressants pump your body with Serotonin...which is also a chief chemical in the cocktail for sleeping. So you're tired all the time, in addition to not wanting to do anything. Even if you have something that you absolutely have to do, like work or school, it's hard to get through it, and you aren't performing at peak proficiency.
Have you ever been so tired that you're dizzy? Every step is like the ground is swaying under your feet. Your hands shake; your eyes itch; and your stomach seems to be eating itself, so you're nauseous on top of it all. You aren't well, but you don't look sick, just tired. You know what most people say about that? Beyond the jokes about "partying hard", there's also the oh-so-helpful admonitions to sleep more or go to bed "early". (Early is a term that is much debated because, heavens forbid, you go to bed in the afternoon, but even eight o'clock at night is too late to get the length of sleep that is required to be up at six in the morning.) Never mind the poor quality sleep that you get with frequent waking or even nightmares.
So you drag yourself to wherever it is that you need to be, and you try as hard as you can to not worry your friends/co-workers/family because you don't want to be called selfish or wallowing or whatever word is the favorite of the week. You now have a front seat watching as everyone moves on with their lives as if you weren't stuck in one place. It looks so easy. 'Why is it so easy for them, but not for me?' you ask yourself, filled with envy for their happiness, and their laughter. If only you could be like them...if only you weren't choosing to be depressed.
BUT!
It gets better.
I understand how she felt. Being isolated because of something that you can't help hurts like nothing else. When this rejection of everything that you are comes from those who should love you most, it's even worse. You are left with a bitter taste in your mouth from it--the kind that lingers even when you've drunk something that normally cuts flavors. If your own mother can't love you, who possibly could? Or worse: your mother professes to love you and wants to help, but that help is contingent upon you accepting that you are wrong about something that is fundamentally you--your Cardinal Trait or Central Traits, to use the psychological terms.
To make it worse, when you do reach out to others, your concerns are met with derision ("You just need to accept God's Will."), condescendingly brushed aside ("Oh, everyone goes through that at one point or another."), or empty reassurances ("It gets better.")
"It gets better."
"How?" you beg, hoping for some guidance out of the Darkness, because you know that you simply can't continue like this. The darkness weighs on you too heavily--you can't breathe for the weight of it.
"You just need to decide to be happy." or "You need to be grateful for what you have before God/dess/Universe will give you more."
... oh, so this is my fault. I'm the one making me unhappy. If I could just be different, maybe I wouldn't be here in the Hole.
"There is no hole."
But there is! I'm trapped in it.
"You can't be trapped because there is no hole. It's just in your head. Just be happy."
How?!
"Doesn't matter. Just do it. You'll feel better."
That is usually when life seems its bleakest because you realize that you're on your own--there's no pill that will help you be like everyone else who laughs and smiles and can get things done in a consistent manner. No one's going hold your hand and pull you out of the pit. To them, there is no pit to climb out of, no wall that needs surpassed...and your acting like there is one is just a sign of you being selfish, lazy, and/or self-centered.
You should just try harder.
Those words are perhaps some of the most cruel that will be hurled at a depressed person. Most people don't realize the supreme effort it takes just to get out of bed for short periods of time when you're depressed. Some of the most common anti-depressants pump your body with Serotonin...which is also a chief chemical in the cocktail for sleeping. So you're tired all the time, in addition to not wanting to do anything. Even if you have something that you absolutely have to do, like work or school, it's hard to get through it, and you aren't performing at peak proficiency.
Have you ever been so tired that you're dizzy? Every step is like the ground is swaying under your feet. Your hands shake; your eyes itch; and your stomach seems to be eating itself, so you're nauseous on top of it all. You aren't well, but you don't look sick, just tired. You know what most people say about that? Beyond the jokes about "partying hard", there's also the oh-so-helpful admonitions to sleep more or go to bed "early". (Early is a term that is much debated because, heavens forbid, you go to bed in the afternoon, but even eight o'clock at night is too late to get the length of sleep that is required to be up at six in the morning.) Never mind the poor quality sleep that you get with frequent waking or even nightmares.
So you drag yourself to wherever it is that you need to be, and you try as hard as you can to not worry your friends/co-workers/family because you don't want to be called selfish or wallowing or whatever word is the favorite of the week. You now have a front seat watching as everyone moves on with their lives as if you weren't stuck in one place. It looks so easy. 'Why is it so easy for them, but not for me?' you ask yourself, filled with envy for their happiness, and their laughter. If only you could be like them...if only you weren't choosing to be depressed.
BUT!
It gets better.
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