I was swimming.  Not floating, but swimming.  I started struggling yesterday late and i sat to reflect on the things i wanted to get done this weekend, and the things i had accomplished.  I felt like i did nothing, because i have this monster of a mess i have to sort through.   I literally did eighteen other big things that needed to get done in my life, but not the monster.  
    Today, i'm exhausted.  The kind of exhaustion leaving my vision blurring and my mind foggy.  The kind of exhaustion where i'm afraid to blink, because my lids are too heavy to open again.  
    I have my gym clothes in my bag.  it's been three weeks and i'm pleased to say that i'm riding about ten miles each time i go, which has been four times a week.  I feel like i'm getting fatter.  I was told that seroquel puts weight on some.  I've been reading all the side effects again and i realized it's not the medication i thought it was.  I'm wondering if the half life of this is contributing to this exhaustion today.  There are sexual side effects and irregularities in sleep/wake patterns as well as the slowing effect to the metabolism.  I'm an eater.  So i'm sitting and eating for energy instead of taking a nap.  I can't take a nap.  i'm at my place of employment that provides, if nothing more, fancy dog food and health insurance.  
    And then five minutes before i started writing these paragraphs, i felt it.  the tears welling up in my chest, trying to meander their way around my body so i don't notice them making a path to my eyes.  I don't want to cry.  I feel like I've been slammed down with this invisible force.  It's depression.  I know what it is.  I've done this before.  
    I don't want the swing into the darkness right now.  i can't deal with this.  (which is making this weight heavier.) 
    There was a song a hundred years ago, or three lifetimes, i can't remember when - this song had lyrics, She's a brick and i'm drowning slowly off the coast and i'm heading nowhere.  She's a brick and i'm drowning slowly.  I feel both like the she in the song and the he who feels the suck of her weight upon him.  Another song just rotated into my ears with lyrics, I"m lonely and i'm tired and i can't take any more pain.
    I don't want this cycle anymore.  i'm so tire of it.  i'm tired of crying about it and feeling helpless.  My medication is making it better, but i'm hardly well.  Am i going to keep going?  Yes.  Am i going to be miserable for the next few days with a quiet longing for my blankets and sleep.  A hundred percent. 
    I'm in a place in my life where things are better around me and for me.  I kind of hate myself for feeling all of these things... the brick and the thing being weighed down, lonely and tired with an inability to take on one more prick of pain. 

I feel I should begin this post with some trigger warnings.  Rape, Violence, Anger, Sexual Misconduct, General Misconduct, Predatory Behavior, Intimidation, Social Acceptance of Repulsion, Politics, Economy... 

Complacent is not the word for how I feel toward the rape culture in which I live; but I feel like when I express my opinion about events in my life, my attitude may be viewed as such.  I was reprimanded by a favorite last night and was asked to stop talking.  I wasn’t finished talking.  I wanted to delve into why it was an uncomfortable conversation.  It certainly wasn’t a revelation that these things occurred in my life.  I didn’t think there was anything my friend was hiding.  And then the words were said, “Just because it regularly happens, doesn’t make it right.”  I used the word normal.  I’m big on mot using the word normal and try to use the word regular.  And when offense was taken to the word normal; I realized I meant regular, because it should not be normalized. 
I am wrong.  I wish I could express the jumble of apology with as much depth as I feel to this friend.  It wasn’t very nice of me to persist when I was asked to stop. 
And so I have been unraveling the feelings and memories I have.  I shared at least four times in the few minutes we spoke of physical or sexual violation using the word ‘first’ in each story.  And then this morning, I realize my words weren’t true.  There was a time before that I recall and a time before that.  It’s just a piece of who I am.  Some of it is what gives me the strength to walk around.  And some of it is what gives me the fear to - yes, walk around.
This is where it’s going to get detailed and personal and probably a little political. Unlike sitting at the bar and asking me to be quiet while I persist, you can shut off now and stop drawing in my words. 
Upon reflection, I don’t know if any of these are ‘first times’ but I’m going to try to make this a linear cohesive expression of what I’m thinking.  In eighth grade, I sat on the bleachers in gym class with shorts that were probably too short and too tight.  From under the bleachers, someone in my class touched the skin on my thigh and when I was startled, I shifted in my seat, enough to allow a finger to be inserted into my vagina.  Eighth grade.  I just noticed I wrote the word allow.  And I’m going to leave it there in that sentence.  But I didn’t request it, nor did I allow it.  My cheeks flushed and a tear formed in the corner of my eye.  I knew who was under the bleachers and by the end of the day, I knew which of the two penetrated me without consent.  I had to look at them in school that day and every day after for years.  I spoke with him on the phone outside of school.  I never confronted him about his finger.  I never told anyone I was in school with about it.  Three people, to my knowledge, knew it happened.  Me, and the two under the bleachers.  It was never addressed.  
In eleventh grade, someone who sat behind me touched my hair.  I sat in history class knowing the person behind me would sit for the forty five minute class and touch my hair.  He sat behind me in other classes, but the only class I noticed he touched my hair was history class.  I was afraid of him.  I’m not sure why.  He made me feel ooky when he looked at me and when he asked me for my phone number, I was strong enough to decline.  I was the weird girl in the back.  It would seem like I would welcome any attention I could get, right?  I didn’t want to feel ooky.  It occurs to me now that I did not consent to this hair touching.  I also did not consent to him cornering me near my locker, or following me home.  Other than the hair touching, there was no physical contact, but I was intimidated.  I was frightened.  
At the same time, I had a friend who made a false rape claim.  The situation was bizarre and this was the tipping point to alleviate myself from her friendship.  She had been lying to people with whom we worked about dating someone because she disliked being single.  (Eleventh grade)  There was no boy.  Of course those with whom we worked wanted to meet (the non-existent) boy.  She had to break up with him.  But why?  She claimed he raped her.  And her story convinced all of us.  She called me crying and short of breath.  And when I realized she was talking about the boy she made up, I was worried that she lost her grip on reality.  Understanding she lied to cover a lie and took it to a crazy dark place was not something I could handle.  I abandoned our friendship and did not try to make sense out of it.  We had friends who had been molested by family members and were witness to boyfriends and girlfriends treating each other poorly already. Middle school and high school.  Who was she lying to?  Who was she lying for?
I was in high school and a stupid thing we did was pick up the pay phone when it rang at the mall and give people our phone number.  Girlfriend who lied about her boyfriend wanted me to have my own.  She gave a caller my number.  He called and I was curious where it would lead so I talked to him.  Until he sat across the street from my house and watched me.  That was terrifying.  My father was a police officer and I felt like if I told him about this person, I would get in trouble for being stupid.  And trouble in our house didn’t mean being grounded.  It meant physical and emotional pain.  It was easier to deal with this alone.  After all I was almost an adult.  He became more aggressive, calling with sexual requests and masturbating while I was on the phone.  If I hung up, he called back.  It was a time of house phones.  It was easier to take the call than explain to my mother that I didn’t want to talk to someone.  When he knocked on the door when I was home alone and walked into my house and pulled me onto his tense lap in a chair I had to look at every day, I let him.  I didn’t want a fight in my house.  He left minutes later.  I can’t remember what stopped that situation.  I think I moved out of my parents house soon after. 
The first time I was actually raped, I was at a party.  Or I was under a party.  Someone at the party told me he would take me home because I was in no condition to be around people.  And to this day, I preface the tale with, it was my fault, and then I hate myself for post-consenting to the violence.  I was led down to a mattress in a stone basement and penetrated in both vagina and mouth by what I remember to be four people.  I was held down, but wasn’t fighting.  I just wanted to be sleeping in a safe place.  I remember thinking, I’ll just get through this and then I’ll get to go home.  But I blacked out.  Shut down.  My mind didn’t want to be there and powered off.  I woke up bloodied and bruised and alone.  Walking through the house to leave, one of the faces told me I should come around more often and I did everything I could to hold myself together until I was in the shower at school so that no one could see the tears stream down my face.  I was in college.  I just turned eighteen.  I saw the boy who said he would take me home later at a bar/club we frequented to dance.  I watched him dance with a statue and have a good time.  My body was frozen and my eyes could not leave him alone.  The friend I was with questioned me and when I pointed out that I didn’t know how to deal with the feelings I had thought I forgotten, he got into a physical fight with the rapist while I stayed frozen on a bar stool.  I don’t know how I got home that night.  I saw the rapist a few times after and each time I kind of black out while I was around him. 
Then I lived with a brutality I’m not prepared to share right now.  I’ve worked with people who have assaulted or intimidated me physically and sexually.  I’m also coming to terms with the fact I probably have post traumatic stress disorder. 
The friend I was out with last night reminds me that my life is terrible all the time.  It makes me smile.  Not that I’ve gone through it.  But that I’m still alive.  There’s a sense of pride figuring out the survival mechanisms to breathe.  And when I can’t figure it out, my brain just powers down so my body can work out the necessities without being paralyzed by something as stupid as fear. 
I know this is a long way to get to the political climate of the day, which precipitated the discussion last night.  
Last night, I watched Caberet for the first time ever.  I say I don’t like musicals.  I think I may really like musicals.  But that introspection is neither here nor there right now.  (actually, I’m going to explore this on the writing in a row house page in a bit.)  Caberet, for those who don’t know, has a gradual progression into intimidation with a backdrop of sexy naughty girls and boys.  Traditional gender roles were questioned, words were key for innuendo, and in this production, there was a blatant parallel between events leading to the Nazi rise to power and the Trumpian world I currently reside.
A movie mogul is accused of rape and sexual misconduct.  Our President treats women with disgusting depravity.  One has been ousted from his position, while the other remains…..  
I’m not surprised by the casting couch revelations.  It all seems regular to me.  I was in a pool when I was in second grade and the older boys in the neighborhood pulled my swimsuit away from my body.  One of them commented about the pubic hair he could see through the yellow spandex.  As an adult I hear family members and friends talk about their girls enticing boys.  It’s all a game of sex.  Everything seems to be sexualized.  And in my world, that comes without consent.  
So, I’m spending a lot of time in the past few weeks thinking on the matter.  And trying to sort it through with one of my favorites didn’t turn out to be productive.  
I had lunch or brunch or some kind of food with an old friend who told me that one of the best things they remember about when we first met was that I said they had a nice neck.  I was behind someone and felt it was appropriate to say, ‘your neck is beautiful’.  I remember the neck.  And I think now to when my hair was being touched.  It was around the same time in my life.  Was I the intimidating jerk sitting behind someone in class giving unwanted advances?   
There’s countless stories like that I’ve recalled over the past few weeks.  Sometimes it’s a word that I know makes people uncomfortable, yet persist in using for shock or to hurt, when that’s my intention.  Sometimes it’s an action that gets out of hand.  Still I’m the jerk face acting.  
I’ve had times when I’m sitting with someone and I think I’m reading signals, or I’m sending signals… there’s a sexuality present in many moments shared between people.  Except when it’s not.  Except when there is no thought of sexual attraction.  This consent though, this non-consent, this mutual intimacy only occurs when both parties are cool with the attraction.  But how does one tell?  Certainly a movie mogul who meets young actresses can’t believe there is an attraction to all of them.  He knows that he is a predator.  The president knows he is a predator.  Right?  
I’m as offended at the shirtless men who are ogled by women as I am by topless women ogled by men.  And then I go to a show like Cabaret where the boys are wearing corsets and garters while kissing one another and I’m aroused.  I’m aroused and I’m curious what their mouths feel like on each other and I think sexual thoughts about the scenes I’m witnessing as the Nazi’s are moving in to restrict who is allowed to perform in the theatre and go to the theatre and marry in Berlin while an American who doesn’t think these heavy things are his fight, turns to run home because these terrible events will not affect him at home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Sex sells.  Sex is pleasure.  Sex seems to be a part of everything.  
But I’m considering, as I have in the past, that it’s not the pleasure side of sex.  It’s the control part.  And in my experience, when sex is the best is when there is a release of control.  There is a freedom in not being held down and not holding anything back.  There’s an impassioned crescendo allowing the purest of breath to pass through and relieve all the senses.  Sight turns to darkness and sound blurs within ears.  Whatever the science is behind an orgasm, it has nothing to do with being restrained.  
I feel like we’re taught - not just girls! Everyone!- I feel like we’re taught to be desirable to others.  To what purpose?  And I feel like we’re taught to endure some abuses because the assumed benefit outweigh the atrocities to our spirits.  I feel like I’m at fault for learning these lessons as well as teaching them.  I struggle hard to get to the next sunset, I can’t take on the enormity of coming to terms with all the facets of sexism.  I don’t know what my place in this morass of depravity.  If I ever made anyone uncomfortable, not only with my actions, but with my words, or a look… if I am responsible for anyone questioning their worth beyond their dick or their pussy, then I am guilty.  I can’t fathom that I’ve lived so long without being in such a position to cause pain.  
And then I think about intention.  Intention is big with me.  The intention of the movie mogul (I assume) is to get the physical release of an orgasm, the emotional charge of being in control, and the sensational gain of another movie on the screen.  The President in his misogyny is, in my opinion, more despicable.  Since his days in the limelight, he has used his money and name to become a character in his own depravity.  No reports of rape have surfaced yet for him, but he has said things to imply his daughter was sexually desirable to him.  He has said on record that women allow his sexual assault because of his societal position.  Society is completely dismantling one man’s career and then providing excuses for another who is in a position to allow an egregious devolution of consenting society.  Is it because no one has confirmed he penetrated them?  It is because all of the other things I have experienced except penile penetration were not rapey enough?  Am I being sensitive when I talk about it and admit these things happened or am I apathetic when I ignore that which I don’t think I have the strength to change?  I’m consenting to silence because I’m repulsed when I admit these things occur.
Consent.  (My fingers kept typing the word condescend.  Maybe it is a condescension.  It absolutely is condescension!) 
I was forcing myself on my friend last night.  I was forcing him to listen to me as I spoke on the matter when he did not want to listen to me justify predatory behavior.  My intention was to explain.  Not excuse.  In realizing, I don’t think an apology will help.  I disregarded his consent. Truly the best person I know and I was a jerk to him.  
I’m sick about the state of the world.  And feel helpless.  I’m scared.  I’m scared that the the things that have been regular abuses facing people will no longer be shameful acts that people hide.  I’m scared of some big things, because of how small some things make me feel. 

​A few weeks ago, a friend who knows many of my mental illness struggles sat with me at lunch and I explained to her how I managed to deal with some everyday life issues.  Specifically, my home.  Aside from the metaphoric home that represents security and peace, the physical house in which I live – my home – is a mess.   The house is in need of repair and we live in it, so there is constant upkeep.  It’s a house.  It’s a home. 
So, specifically, my dog pee’d on the electrical outlet in which my refrigerator was plugged.  When you stop laughing at this and read on, I’ll tell you that I handled this situation with grace and intelligence.  I had a short-term plan and a long term plan.  A temporary fix and a permanent repair plan.  And I was able to do this without interruption of the day.  Literally moving the fridge to another outlet.  Easy right?  Well I tried to explain, and my old pal understood that on a different day, that action would have been excruciating. 
Yesterday morning, when I flushed the toilet, the handle popped off.  Just broke.  These things happen.  I take a breath, but instead of exhaling a plan to go to the store, buy the piece and replace the broken bit, I broke down.  I sat and drank a couple extra cups of coffee and fought against crying because regardless of all the things I pretend to be capable of dealing with, I feel like the mask of normalcy cracks, and I’m not even sure why I try at all.  I went to work, stopped at the home improvement store and bought the piece.  Waiting for the bus to get home, I wanted to collapse.  The piece weighs less than half a pound.  It’s a toilet handle.  Just the handle.  It seemed unbearably heavy. 
I was starving.  I wanted to eat.  I wanted to put the piece on the table and make something to eat first and I knew that would leave me exhausted and I would promise that I would change the piece the next day.  After all, the toilet still worked – just not the way it should. 
I took another breath and walked upstairs to the bathroom, opened the package and twisted the nut off the handle.  I slide the rod through the hole in the tank, twisted the nut back onto the threads.  Done.  Test.  It works.  Even running down the street for the eight dollar piece, all in, active time for this fix was less than a half hour.  It was exhausting.
These two things describe my complacency and agony with my brain.  Today is the agony. 
I used to scratch my skin until it bled.  My ex said, ‘you’re horrible to your skin,’ even though I knew I would use rich and expensive lotions and oils to keep it soft and elastic.  And yet, I scratched it open.  Frequently.  I was treated (in error) for kidney failure and next for a bum pancreas, with doctors explaining to me that my body is suffering malnutrition along with the anemia I knew I had.  I became enlightened to the fact that malnourished individuals have a habit of rubbing and scratching their skin as a means to stimulate nutrients to get to the extremities.  A survival instinct.  And I looked at my fingernails with an understanding that I had to stop scratching my skin open.  I reasoned that I could not keep bleeding.  And at my most recent doctor appointment, I was told, ‘no you cannot donate blood right now.  You don’t have enough for you.’  Quite honestly, I may be doing a disservice to those relying on the blood banks by giving them a batch of mine.
And today, years after I’ve begun wearing acrylic all the time on my nails so they are not sharp enough to cut, and I have lessened the habitual scratching, I feel a feeling that I know was a piece of that cutting and scratching. 
I’m crazy.  Or anxious.  Or manic.  I don’t know exactly what this is but it is what I know.  It’s a part of the home that’s inside me.  It’s a part of what makes me too uncomfortable to sit among the normals.  It’s a feeling that I want to peel off my skin.
I received a notification for a Halloween even.  It’s a burlesque show celebrating a performer who shows graphic sex and violence in his work.  Brutal bloodletting and torture as well as sex and anger.  I suppose there is a pleasure in the release of the heavy emotions associated with this type of act.  This type of art.  So, my brain went to work, skimming through my slim list of friends to invite to a nudie show that is going to be challenging to watch with my past experiences and the current state of my brain.  But I want to.  I want to go to this show because it sounds interesting and I want my brain to stop shutting down when experiencing the sights and sounds of brutality.  I want to train it to be better than it is. 
And then, as I sit and get on with my day and drink another cup of coffee, I realize, I’m completely mad.  I’m crazy.  I’m anxious.  I’m manic. 
I’m on the brink of tears without the strength or calm to reason why.  I feel dumb and brilliant at the same time.  I feel like this mass of blood and flesh is getting in the way of letting my brilliance shine.  I want to tear off my skin and be truly who I am without the mask everyone sees and judges.
I wish I had a lifestyle that allowed me to cocoon up and wait for this to pass.  (I do still have faith that these periods of insanity pass… or at least wax and wane with the movement of the moon and earth)  I’ve considered that if my lifestyle did allow such hibernation, it would be detrimental to my health and extend these periods of chaos.  For crying out loud, I was frozen stiff at an historic tour because there were birds crunching in the dry leaves of the park.  I know if I didn’t force myself to face the sunlight on the days my brain is most unprepared… well, I think I would devolve into a corpse with a ferocity slowed currently by the sheer will to see one more sunset. 
It’s hard.  It’s fucking hard to be crazy.  It’s even harder to be strong through it.  I feel weak and small so often and then I have to remind myself that I am strong.  I carried a heavy thing yesterday and did an important thing.  The perception of others that it was small doesn’t change the greatness it means in my life. 

“Look at the date,” a coworker who was obsessed with watching the news said.
I said the words, “September eleventh,” while I nodded, not understanding what she was trying to show me. 
“Nine eleven,” she said and then walked back into her office.
I sat looking around me for someone to explain.  I wrote the numbers, nine, eleven, oh-one.  I didn’t understand.
I had never referred to our emergency service as nine eleven.  I always said Nine One One.  I was in shock and didn’t understand the symbolism.  All I knew was the world changed.
September 11, 2001.  We all have a story about our morning sixteen years ago.  We all have a memory about where we were and how we found out and the aftermath of significance to our lives.  This is my story.
Now to interject, I should tell you that I’m not sure I’ve ever spoken about this with the gravity of my intention today.  It may be a little emotional and this may contain triggers. 
In my lifetime, we had become a global community.  As a child, the only way I would speak to someone on the other side of the world, barring an international excursion would be mitigated by a postal worker.  I had pen-pals in other countries.  I put pen to paper and mailed letters to recipients across the state, the country, and the world.  I was pulling in information, personalities, current events, right from the kids who experienced it.   I loved the exchange of paper, photos, and words.
And then the internet exploded.  More connections.  Everything became digital.  We shared photos in an instant.  My pen-paling lessened and new international friends were made with instant gratification. 
Information as well as entertainment flowed with ease.   
“A plane crashed into the World Trade Center,” a voice in the office announced.  My myopic brain scanned my memories.  Did I see this building?  Was that the observation deck I visited?  I didn’t understand it was an attack.  
There was an odd air that morning.  I felt like something was off when I boarded the train to commute.  But with my mental illness, I can’t always honor those guttural feelings I have.  I heard thousands of stories where people weren’t feeling right that morning - a collective unease with the sunrise and tick of the clock. 
 “A second plane crashed.”  My mind raced.  Something is not right.  I whimpered the words, “Is this on purpose?”  My fingers went to work dialing up news on the computer.  Any news channel.  All news channels.   
I remember feeling dark with an unease that I couldn’t explain.  I had no idea what was happening and how it would impact my life.
I worked in an historic building.  I discovered one of our related buildings was threatened.  We were told to go home.  I sat and looked at the news reports on the computer.  It was hours before I left the office and when I finally did, downtown Philadelphia was a ghost town.  Everything looked grey.  There was a veil of ash in the clouds from New York.  There were exactly three people on the train with me at one pm.  I sat in silence with my eyes darting back and forth to ensure none made a sudden move.
For weeks I sat on the floor of our apartment and looked at the television screen.  Over and over I listened to the same words trying to reason what occurred and what the result was.  I had babies in my care and I couldn’t even care for myself. 
“I don’t want you to go to work,” my six year old said to me. 
“I have to go to work,” I squeaked when I mustered the courage to face the world again.
“I don’t want a building to fall on you.” 
I couldn’t promise that wouldn’t happen. 
I grew up with an overbearing father who would boast about the strength of America.  He was a bombardier in World War II and got a pass for a lot of his opinions, although I challenged him as much or more than he challenged me.   I was afraid of the monsters in my home and in my head; not the ones roaming the streets of the world. 
To compact the protection I felt, I grew up in Philadelphia.  We had five hundred homicides before April one year.  I saw people with weapons on the streets, while riding mass transit, and have had more than my share of encounters with guns and knives and fists and steel-toed shoes.  Still, I always felt safe walking the streets to get where I was going.  I always felt removed from the situation, even when I was victimized.  My father was a cop.  There was an inherent sense that he would protect me from anything outside.  We were strong.   We were the strongest.  Come at me!
I suppose growing up in a house where I heard enough stories of atrocities but saw enough of a strong police presence; I somehow believed I was safe.  Certainly there was some insulation between me and any evil of the world. 
Militant killing happened in other countries; on other soil.  I grew up knowing America to have a defensive military strategy.  No active military bases in the contiguous states.  I grew up with an understanding of international war without having to live through the tension directly.  I was a Cold War Kid.  I didn’t understand how different an outside threat is from an internal conflict.
Nine Eleven changed all of that.  Today I can’t think of the numbers without remembering the blackness of that day.  I can’t say it without reliving the hollow feeling in my belly and helplessness I felt for weeks while I tried to pull myself together and do anything other than breathe.  I was breathing.  Some no longer could. 
Streets were closed off.  Homeland security was a new faction of protection present and the guns, bullet-proof vests, and handcuffs were brazenly displayed on officers whose presence noticeably increased.  Park Rangers were stationed on streets of the city, requesting we walk out of our way to control the pedestrians as diligently as they directed vehicular traffic.  Identification was newly necessary to move anywhere that may have been threatened by what was broadly referred to as terror. 
Terrorists. 
A new racism emerged.  But this racism was reasoned.  People were hiding their faces.  They were hiding their country of birth.  They were hiding their affiliations.  And the fact was and remains, the terror is as much within as it comes from outsiders.  Those who are not like we.  It became tolerated to be prejudiced at everyone who was not only different than we, but exactly the same.  It was frightening and infuriating.  Myself included.  There were too many sheep and the wolves weren’t easy to see. 
There was a time when I became angry with my dad.  He was well on his way to Alzheimer’s.  I think this may have been the cancer years.  But my dad who was always good at the very least of causing unnecessary fear about the mundane had missed this completely.  I remember avoiding him.  I couldn’t face him.  I couldn’t listen to a racist rant.  I also didn’t trust myself to not feed into it and become afraid – I was already disappointed and numb.
Today is sixteen years later.  I still hear my baby’s voice through tears ask me not to go to work.  I stayed home that day with her.  But when it was time to go back, I walked in fear that a building would fall on me and she would have to live whatever years she had remaining with the aftermath of that specific fear.  Every year since, I have reflected on the horrors of the day and wearing gloves and mask to process receipts and looking hard at where a stranger’s hands fell with their backpack on the train.  I think about the horrors I endured from my own reflection.  There was a psychological meltdown far greater than having a building fall on me.     
I read something that fear is being afraid and courage is walking through it.  I think the change of climate as a result of these attacks for me as an American is a courage that through the years I’m trying to honor within me.  I’m afraid of so much and I realize all the frightening things that I wash off and walk through daily.  And still, when Nine-Eleven rolls around, the numbness returns and I can only breathe.  
​

​Today I woke without alarm and without ache or pain.  Seems a lovely change of pace.  I lay.  Noise outside my rowhome was regular - a newspaper hitting the door, car engines whirring, a boisterous good morning from the porch houses.  None of it was deafening.  I lay.  I lay and watched the local meteorologist encourage me to get out and enjoy the day as summer handed the baton of season to autumn and a sunbeam cascade through the blinds onto my cheek.  
I could not bring myself to rise.  And the mere thought of getting pants on was not conceived in any synapse of my brain, also lying, in a laze, pain free and unaffected by the tick or the tock of responsibility. 
I lay.  
It is regular to be pained - even moreso when the sunlight illuminates. 
So why then, I wonder, on a day free of the inside noise and ache, do i lay in apathy for the world? 
Eight - thirty happened.  Nine o'clock did too. I was not a participant.  I lay. 
My head is in motion now.  It churns with the unease of being free of pain and chaos.  I sit at the train station with cicadas buzzing in my ears, waxing and waning in cycles of sound and think curiously about the one who isn't ready to make noise yet.  The one with the broken wing who may be ready tomorrow or the day after.  
I am that bug.  I am surrounded by noise and chirp through days because it's expected.  I power through the days I hurt and on the rare occasion when I don't, I'm not sure exactly what to do with my body - but there is a piece of me that just wants to lay.  
On the train, I hear the white noise of the air conditioning.  I see the flueresent lighting and overhear conversations.  Someone sniffles.  Someone turns the page of a graphic novel I strain my neck to read.  A woman whose bun is bigger than her head shakes in laughter at the absurdity a fellow commuter shares.  Another day, these noises would be uncomfortable.  They would hurt my ears and my thoughts.  Today, I'm at peace.  
And it seems strange to go on so long about it, but the very ease at which my eyes and ears are participating in my journey is alarming to me. 
For those who are normal - for those who don't understand there is a regular in which some take comfort because a normal is unattainable - there will never be an understanding of the rest of us.  
It's not quirky or cute - Its a struggle.  It's bizarre and wonderful and terrifying and disheartening and every other feeling there is, all jumbled up as a ball of knotted twine ... without the capacity to foresee what will be unraveled before it vomits out making a mess. 
Today I feel normal.  And perhaps I lay so that I could feel that?  Perhaps I lay so that I could file away everything associated with normalcy?  I think I finally understand why it's lovely to be in such a state.  
Thursday August 31.  The day seems important in a memory somewhere, although press me and I will not conjure up the truth or a lie about a moment that had occurred.  But this morning, I think the sheer complacency of inner peace is enough for me.  

     i kept my doctor appointments.  twice.  i went to the new psychiatrist two times.  i had called for an appointment at this practice a few years ago, but the wait was too long.  next time i called, they were not taking new patients.  this round, i made an appointment for three months out and finally started seeing a doctor who may [or may not] be the right fit for me.  
    he's kicking my ass emotionally both by challenging me and agreeing with me.  he laughs at my dissertations on the madness within because i seem to know all the things needed to move forward in a normal - but i am compelled to challenge my own thinking and push the limits of my own mind and spirit causing this cycle of undisciplined chaos.  
he gave me some homework round one.  easy enough.  buy a book and read it.  an unquiet mind.  i have one.  no problem.  every experience this woman had i could relate to.  i got the final chapters where she is accepting of her mental illness and trudges through knowing she has to follow the medical advice to keep the chemicals in her brain balanced while fitting in with her lifestyle.  
     i could have written a two hundred page book in the time it took me to read this.  i say that to illustrate this:  i'm a total chaos junkie.  i heard this expression on a tv show and felt like those words describe me without judgement.  [i'm talking about my own brain judging myself for a few reasons too complex to put into comprehensive sentences here.]  and i'm sharing this struggle i had with reading the book really to get to the core of this matter.  this doctor, through a smirk, asked how i felt while reading the author's words.  i told him i'm not ready to tell him how i feel, but i told him what i thought of the experiences she shared.  and when i explained that i thought many of her experiences were parallel to my own, i realized that there is the possibility of similarities in all unquiet minds.  he explained she became successful after regimenting her medication.  i pointed out that she appeared to be successful in her professional world, met someone who was willing to walk beside her in the noise, and when she was alone, she agonized over the chaos within her.  the outward action remained unlike her inward spirit.  
the doctor laughed aloud at my summation and when i asked him why he explained he had never heard an interpretation of the author's apparent success with such pessimism and cynicism.  i intuit as he has never seen. 
     so he gave me another bit of homework.  a list of 4 things this week.  [3 of which i already failed].  the book this week is called a first rate madness.  i have that too.  he's picking titles that appeal to my sense of humor at least.  [there is comedy in the tragic crazy i possess.] 
     so i sigh heavily, not having purchased this book yet, although i have a commitment to at least read the homework.  [with lethargy, i persist in trying.] 
   but this heavy sigh i have.  the one that comes in response to someone asking the question, 'how are you?' - this heavy sigh is a filter for my words so that i don't reveal the fear i have deep inside.  the feeling part that people are asking.  [the part i don't want to share because i want to singe-handedly change the priority of concern from heart to head.]  honestly, and without mincing words, i am afraid.  i'm scared that balancing the imbalance will not make me normal, but crash me directly into boring.  if there is one thing i don't want to be, it's boring.  and i don't give a fuck what others think of me.  i don't want to bore myself.  i'm terrified of the physical side effects of experimenting with meds.  i'm prescribed a low dose of something that finally works both in my brain and in my life, and i don't even take it on a regular basis because of the fear.  reading the account of the gold standard in meds sent me into panic and i had to close the book until i forgot what i was reading and had to read-over some pages to keep on with it.  
     i'm tired of being sick, but i've spent so long accommodating the aches and pains of both body and mind, i'm afraid of being well.  i'm afraid that i'm going to long for the chaos - i'm afraid i'm going to peel the skin off my body for exposure to try to feel when this shroud of sanity protects my actions from my thoughts.  i'm fear being well.  
     the author expressed the very same fear.  she was afraid of being uninteresting.  she used that word - uninteresting.  one of my favorite people says, 'normal is boring'. [along with a few other things he equates to boring.]  i feel like i will never be normal.  and i'm accepting of that.  but to be well-  to not have the chaos- let's forget the thoughts, because even on regimented meds, i have the bad dreams and chaos in my thoughts.  to control my actions, the outward man - i fear the boredom.  
     there is the reasoning that fixing the mind will fix that craving for madness.  but at this point, if i'm honest, i'm already thinking about ducking out on my next appointment with the good doctor [which will ban me from the practice for 2 years] because i'm not ready to let go of the crazy yet.  i don't know who i am without it.        

​I just forgot something.  As quickly as the thought formed in my head, it ran off without an opportunity for me to exchange it for an idea I'd much rather forget.  
I could be bound in a nutshell and think myself king of infinite space, were it not for the bad dreams.  --So said Prince Hamlet through the bard's pen.  
And so too, I feel in this most disheartening manner.  I no longer seem myself; neither the inward man nor outward. And then I am left to consider that what remains has always been; and therefore should cause no alarm to those with differing expectations - including myself. 
To sum up - I am broken.  I am the kintsugi of Edward reconstructed and all the pieces swept away is what those who hold a disdain for my spirit continue in their search 
I dreamed one of those bad dreams last night - maybe just the end that woke me in a start with an unease leaving behind a shroud of malcontent, weighing me down but too important to leave behind. It's the smell today that makes my stomach churn.  The smells from the dream.  The smell of metal and blood.  It's as strong and rank as rotting flesh and burning hair - it's getting in my mouth and I'm gagging on the metallic sting of a towel rack and the slip of blood into the back of my throat.  My skin is burning with a need to scratch the healing abrasions through the salty dust under my fingernails.  
The dreams have a way of rooting themselves and blossoming into uncontrolled life I'm not prepared to prune.  I know the parts that stem from my own thoughts and the parts reviving memories.  I recognize the strengths and weaknesses in the characters my head puts before in the paralysis of a dream. 
Yesterday evening I was asked about scars on my face and with a knee jerk reaction, I explained from whom and how they formed.  They are part of me.  They are lined with gold and make me - interesting - they are part of my story my very un-normal and not-boring story. Sum of my parts and all that.  
I forget that the scars are ugly and make others cringe.  I forget that I am hard to look at and makes folks have to imagine I am different than the skewed interpretation they have of my whole.  I forget not everyone is privy to my parts.   But I am - all of the pieces of my inward man and outward self.  I am the pieces I leave behind and those that I carry with me.  

     I have the habit of using the word WE when making absurd declarations.  Perhaps it is nothing more than hyperbole and perhaps it is a little more.  Perhaps, I consider, that it is a need I have within me to normalize the routine feelings of inadequacy and insanity (which i tell myself is really just an inadequate brain) seeping from my thoughts into my words.  
     Recently I used the word WE to make a declaration, including the word ALL, which I fundamentally know to be inaccurate.  I detest those who speak with absolute statements and writhe in self-loathing when i find, on rare occasion I've done the same.  I said, WE ALL... and then covered my faux pas with an indication I was speaking of a small familial group instead of including my companion as she was aghast with offense.  To my very grim and tearful surprise, within the hour and without my notice, my companion ducked out on me and left me alone at an event I would not have attended without her invitation.  
     WE.  It's an easy enough concept.  
     My life has turned gradually and painfully from WE to ME regardless how I contort myself into the confines of tolerance.  
   I encountered the word WE in my bipolar homework.  Kay Redfield Jamison wrote, WE all move uneasily within our restraints.  I wondered who is her WE?  Without defining her intention, I feel as though I am a part of this restrained grouping to which she refers.  I feel stifled and strangled and continue to struggle with.... everything. 
     In doing this homework, which is little more than preparing myself to be receptive to mental healing by reading experiences of bipolar disorder, I continue to encounter these moments of clarity within the fog.  It's a strange thing to read of my experiences with alternate details - like an odd dream with the head of one friend on the body of another.  But it reminds me that I am part of a WE.  And with an illness leaving me and my thoughts alone so frequently, it's somewhat comforting to know that there are others out there.  
     In my life, I've surrounded myself with others who have similar distaste for everything with similar cynicism or pessimism (depending on their labeling).  Birds of a feather and all that....   It's the WE to which I belong. 
  We all move uneasily within our own restraints.   My life seems a series of undisciplined intemperance and immodesty.  However, living in and out of my head, I assure you it is quite like being trammeled in bindings.  Between retreating when others are ready for me or intruding when they are not ..... i'm immobile.  
     And in looking for the right words to describe how I feel about this WE I read this morning, I return to being stuck in immobility - within my own restraints.  Or the chaos of my thoughts.   

     It took me far too long to realize that lost years and relationships cannot be recovered, that damage done to oneself and others cannot always be put right again, and that freedom from the control imposed by medication loses its meaning when the only alternatives are death and insanity.  -Kay Redfield Jamison

     I still don’t know what’s wrong with me.  I have a mood disorder or a chemical imbalance, perhaps both, for which I need medication, because my lifestyle certainly doesn’t support a sanity to which I could glom onto with a hope to assimilate.  
I am crazy.  I said these words when asked by another doctor why I was in his office.  What was the intention of my visit?  What was my expectation for him while I admit and understand that I’ve been undisciplined and unable to contribute in the past to my own mental health well-being?
     I am unwell.  I am the oddball, the weird one, the peculiar and the strange. 
I have homework.  I’ve been given the task of reading another’s account of their bipolar disorder.  I made it through seven pages.  The introductory paragraphs, I can tell, have the intent to shock.  But, it’s just regular to me.  I live this.  I lived the exact same experience, save the PhD.  
    I just want to be better.  I like who I am and I have a small circle of folks, who I believe, like the way I am.  But I’m so tired of the crazy.  And if I can be a hundred percent honest, being alone with it has me terrified - although I’m getting more comfortable with this aspect. 
     I guess I should warn readers right now- trigger warning or whatever the kool kids are saying.  I’m going to open up about thoughts of suicide here.  Please don’t call the authorities or my mom.  It is because I’m getting through the murky abyss that I can talk about it.  And I don’t know how this is going to go. 
I’m exhausted.  Physically I have a thing. Pancreatitis - I of course get struck with a thing that food doesn’t cure.  So I’ve changed my eating and drinking habits and instead of merriment I have a general feeling of ennui. I am probably an alcoholic functioning less as the days pass with recommendations to cease and decease all operations of imbibing.  
Here’s the thing with the alcohol.  1- I like the way alcohol tastes.   I’m a whiskey on the rocks and a skunky beer kind of girl.  2- On the tv show Shameless, Lip says, ‘-it lowers the volume.’ - It definitely is a buffer from the noise - inside and out.  SO, just as I have become an unintentional vegan, I have also become an infrequent drinker.  That being said, given the choice between a cheeseburger and veggie burger, I will choose the veggie burger provided there is no avocado.  However, if I’m hungry or sitting with friends and my choice is only cheeseburger with potato salad, please fill my plate.  Alcohol has taken me longer to change, but I feel like I’m having drinks once or twice a week instead of daily and also drinking one or two an outing, as opposed to seven of nine.  I’d like to report that I don’t drink alone anymore, but this week past I did.  And it was delicious. 
At any rate, I have this physical thing that, as I type, my belly appears as though I’m smuggling a basketball with the swelling and I’m in a little bit of pain.  The only thing to fix this is fasting.  Fasting.  No food or drink.  I’m already not absorbing nutrients from the food I’m eating.  
     Bottom line, I’m constantly hungry, hurty, and on edge.
    Okay, so that’s physical.  Emotional, I’m not ready to talk about. But mental - I’m ready to try to sort through it.  (Perhaps?)
     I am bipolar.  I have a mood disorder.  That’s what it is.  A disorder.  There is no order in my mood.  My mood is out of order.  
     I looked up the words mood and disorder.  The word mood is defined as the state of ones emotions.  The word disorder is a lack of regularity.  So my emotions are not regular.  And I pause for a moment to make a joke that it’s regular for me.  And I pause in annoyance because I think this bipolar disorder has little to do with emotions and more to do with chemistry.
     But I digress to the commitment I made to myself when reading Redfield Jamison’s words.  I’m going to share these things that have consumed me.  
     I’ve stepped away from a lot of people, but a few have seen my face in the past few weeks.  I have gone to work most days.  I’ve purchased dog food and cleaning products.  I’ve continued to walk around my days, doing the things that need to be done.  I’ve cried behind my sunglasses, on the train, and at my father’s gravestone.  I keep the words, I’m fine, on the ready.  And in every step, I’m ready to break. 
     My sister died.  It’s hit me hard.  She always took care of everyone, in the ways she knew how, and spoke of all the things she wanted to do.  And now she’s dead.  Dead.  My mom wouldn’t let me attend my grandmother’s funeral because I upset everyone who is around me.  I was 38 years old when she died.  I could have crashed the funeral.  But I took in the instruction, do not come, and the reasoning, because i have a way of upsetting people.  And now my sister is dead.  I am 44.  I was here this time.  Barely.  I suppose that’s a different story.  Or maybe the same one?  I don’t really know. 
     Focus on me.  I can’t see what the purpose is to hang on.  I sleepwalk around and do the mechanical, only to feel exhaustion and crash into sleep when I have a minute to stop moving.  If writing, I reason, was the intention… If the thing I’m contributing to society is my writing, and I no longer have it in me to string words together, then I’m done.  And there doesn’t remain a purpose for me to be alive any longer.  Someone can sort through my scrawlings when they go through my pants for loose change to make sense of it.  Or an art show.  Or fill a garbage bag.  For all the Dorothy Parkers, there is a nobody whose name I don’t know to put here for comparison.  I’m one of the nobodies anyway. 
     I’m not the suicide case who wants a bit of kindness on his way to the bridge as an ultimatum to life.  I’m not someone who is at a cross roads with kids moving out and a terrifying prospective of being alone.  I am this--
     Physically I am sick.  If I hang on for ten minutes, ten years, or ten thousand, what am I, if only awake, commute, work, asleep.  I contribute nothing.  Emotionally I am too much, living in a hyperbolic state of immobility.  And mentally, I am broken.  
Eight years ago when I was hospitalized for bipolar disorder, I was asked what I needed or wanted from the stay.  I replied I needed the coping skills to remain alive.  I knew I was crazy.  I had long given up thoughts of being — whatever not crazy is.  I just need to fit in.  I have a friend (who I quote frequently), note that I say things as if they are normal when they never are.  I corrected him, what they are is regular - never normal.  I think that hospital stay was helpful.  But still, I don’t fit in with the normal.  And now I don’t even have regular anymore.  I have swirling chaos.  I’m constantly in a game of survival with life instead of - whatever it is that normal is. 
     My sister - the dead one - was envious of me.  I hope that she came to terms with that before she died.  I have nothing for which to be envious.  I don’t understand envy for anything - especially for me?  My sister struggled.  And she fought.  I’m not saying she had it better than I, because I know that she did not.  But she did have it different.  Her own brand of mental illness.  Her own coping mechanisms.  Her own physical health problems.  And yes, suicidal thoughts and declarations.  Knowing my brain and actions, I can assume the internal pain she was in by the time the words came from her mouth.  I guess if anyone who knew her reads this, I should apologize for causing upset.  I should stick with my own head. 
     My head.  My brain.  My - me.
   There are some things broken that cannot be made right.  I’m entering into this relationship with a new doctor with those words as the foundation of treatment.  And a better woman may view it like I can put the past behind me and start again here.  (and I do excel at starting over!)  But I saw these words this morning, configured on the page as they were and it was confirmation of the destruction I create just by being as I am.  I have no contribution to further the human race.  And I’ve broken enough of it.  If I am dead, there may be emotion about it, but not very much reason.  
     My sister was as sick as she could be and fought hard until the end.  I feel like I’m as sick as I can stand.  I don’t know how much fight I have left in me.  And I can’t figure out why I’m fighting anyway.