beautiful monsters

Blackness

What a miserable week. On Monday, my birthday, I got stuck at Melbourne airport for 8 hours. On Tuesday I was a complete wreck. My combo of lithium and prozac doesn’t seem to be helping at all, and I’ve been feeling worse and worse the past few months. But some days are even worse than others. Wednesday I had to cancel my birthday party, because their was a huge slip on the highway, other roads were flooded, the train workers were taking industrial action, and the weather was ghastly. Thursday it was just little things that went wrong. Like my psychiatrist cancelled our appointment. And when I was having a last minute panic about liturgy for Sunday and I went to get some books from the M’s office I couldn’t unlock the door. Turned out someone had tried to force the lock with a difference key, and part of the key had broken off and jammed in the lock. And they’d used enough force to break part of the lock, which was quite a sturdy one. Anyway I got the books eventually but still haven’t worked out what I’m doing. And given that it’s 3:30am and I am writing this, Friday isn’t off to a great start.

The rest of this post is all about how awful I feel. Self-indulgent I know. But here, I can be real. Don’t feel like you have to come any further. I don’t care if anyone reads this, I just want to say it. And maybe this will be one of those times when writing it helps, even just a little.

I’m high-functioning on the outside. Most of the time, anyway (not so much lately!) I don’t know how or why, but I can keep on doing the stuff I’m good at, right now it’s church stuff, newsletter, Matariki dinner... I can hold it together, even chat and laugh, while inside I feel like I am breaking apart. Sometimes the person I am in public feels like an act that’s so out of control I can’t stop it.

Can you believe I’m meant to be leading the service on Sunday? It’s a joke. Only it’s not funny. I don’t know what to do. Is it ok to talk about pain and hopelessness from the pulpit? I know, Jesus felt desperate. But not in public, I mean, he didn’t talk about it when he “preached.”

Bipolar sucks. If that’s even what I have, since the medications don’t seem to be working and none of the professionals in my life seem to have any better ideas, I don’t know any more.

There’s this cute picture book about depression, I Had A Black Dog, which I love, but it’s not quite right. I mean there are times when it’s perfect, but not now. A dog is too friendly. Too alive. This isn’t alive. It’s a black hole inside me. The darkest evil I know, eating away at the shreds of life I try to paste over it.

Shaun Tan comes closer.

I feel almost as bad as I did back then. I’m not actually psychotic, but I feel like I’m teetering on the edge at times, starting to get really irrational. Mostly just thinking everyone hates me and everything is my fault. Sometimes more drastic thoughts than that, but I don’t want to freak you out. At least I have moments like now when there’s a small part of me that can see that I’m not being entirely rational. My feelings still seem real though.

I’ve been cutting myself again. Not as deep as I used to, but as often. And probably only not as deep because the chemist I used to buy scalpel blades from doesn’t stock them any more, so I’ve been using blunt scissors and knives and broken glass.

Everything is too intense again, and more and more I’m overwhelmed by black waves that come from inside me but well up and over me until I feel like I’m drowning. I cry and cry, and more than anything I want someone to reach out to me, to reach down and catch hold of my hand, because I feel as though I am slipping under the surface... I feel scared that I may not be able to get out again. I bang my head against walls, hoping that if I push hard enough I’ll disappear, if I hurt enough I’ll stop feeling anything. I can’t stop crying because I feel so hopeless, and I feel as though I can’t keep going unless something changes... and I feel so alone. God, I feel so lonely, it feels as though I am breaking apart. And sometimes someone does reach out, and for a short time I do feel comforted, but so scared too, because I know they can’t hold me forever. Eventually I get so exhausted that I can’t cry any more. I feel numb. I know I have to pull myself out of it. So I do. Bit by bit I put the pieces together and drag myself through it. But it’s so hard – and every time it feels as though I have less strength to do it. Just knowing the waves will come back makes life seem unbearable.

Everything feels so out of control, I feel like I’m on a rollercoaster that’s jumped the tracks. I know that I’m being messy and manipulative and an emotional screwball, and I hate it, but I can’t stop myself.

Someone, was it Marsha Lineham? said that BPD is like the emotional equivalent of 3rd degree burns over 90% of the body. That’s what it feels like. The slightest touch hurts so much. Anger is the worst. Even the random anger of strangers. The anger of a cab driver, or a person behind me in a queue. I don’t feel like I can survive it. I just want to curl up, shrivel away.

I feel like I am wearing so many different masks, but there is nothing underneath them all, just this awful blackness. I feel as though my experiences are unconnected fragments. I constantly have to prove who I am to people... I have to show people that I am the things I do and the books I read and the music I listen too... because otherwise they will see the blackness. And they will hate me. Because I hate myself so much... I hate the blackness in me. I hate myself for letting it ruin my life. I hate myself for letting it impact on other people’s lives. I hate myself for the stupidest things, like the grades I got in school. I hate myself for things that rationally I know are not my fault, but inside I know I’m to blame. I hate myself for not being able to save a little baby, for not saying something, when I had this little worry inside that she might be breech again, for not dragging her mother down to the hospital. I hate myself for fucking so many guys, for still feeling them all over my skin, inside me. I hate myself so much for the time I was so messed up, my friend let out this strangled little cry, like a bird that’s being twisted, hurt, by something terrible. I scared her so. I hate myself because sometimes I have told lies, to try and make the darkness outside match the darkness inside. I hate myself for using up so much of the planet’s resources, for buying sweatshop products, for eating meat. I hate myself for not getting better, even when I have these amazing people looking out for me, my parents, doctors, counsellors, church... for being so messed up, even though I wasn’t horribly abused as a child. I hate myself for all the friends I have lost. Most of all I hate my body, for being so sick and failing, for being so fat. I hate myself for eating bad stuff even though I know it makes me fat, even though I hate that, doing it anyway. I hate myself for not succeeding the times I tried to kill myself. For not being strong enough to do that.

Until now I’ve always had hope in something. A new drug, doctor, life-change, someone or something that would rescue me. I still believe in that which I call God, but my God is no help to me at times like this.

I believe in a God of physics and energy. I believe that human love can be an expression of God. I believe in the God Michael Morwood talks about in Tomorrow’s Catholic: a presence within the depths of all that is… the love that is in our hearts… DNA, and the atoms and molecules in our bodily structure where there is spontaneity and life and movement; where there is growth; where, because there is freedom of movement and limitless possibilities, there is also illness as well as health.

I believe in a God as energy, incarnate in DNA, and in loving actions, and in stars exploding and leaves unfurling... but right now I want to believe in a God here like a friend beside me, God who has a plan for my life, God who I can pray to and know that my prayers will be heard. I pray, sure, but it’s more like a meditation, a hoping, a longing, a ritual. I don’t pray to anyone, I just pray. I want to pray as though God were a person beside me. Like I used to, years ago. But believing in that God is like opening Pandora’s box. All the pain and confusion I felt back then, all the conflicts. I just can’t do it.

Right now my belief about God leaves me lonely and afraid.

I have tasted the bitter wine
of loneliness, black
thoughts, love
in disarray.

I have come to receive
an answered prayer
a death sentence

I have loved
that they might have life.

Lord
if you are willing
you can make me clean

Eloi, Eloi
lama sabachthani?

I need, I

love

I

Please God
please...

Posted by Fionnaigh at July 7, 2006 05:27 AM | TrackBack