CASE # 1284

This is an excerpt from my blog. I'm a truly different person from those sad days. Finishing up grad school, working on a nation wide study, writing for the university paper, etc. Besides these I have an 8 in scar on my leg from a benign tumor removal. I went into the hospital the same day that my sister went in for a cleft palate cosmetic surgery to her face. I remember hobbling down to the ICU to see her after her 12 hour ordeal. I lay there reading quietly in my room. I'm sure my parents thought the books I was reading had caused the whole episode that afternoon. Hardly. It had been six months since I had come home in shame from my Mormon mission. I'm sure the people in my church community thought I had performed some unspeakable sin to be sent home after only 6 weeks of a two week foreign mission. Hardly. They itched. I was obsessed with Anne Rice's Vampire Trilogy. Her characters so lascivious and rich were like me. As each character, initially human, were turned to vampires, they lost pieces of themselves to the process. I had been loosing pieces of myself for years. I gave up several pieces to my tormentors in Middle-School. After relentless name calling, snickering whispers, and threats of bodily harm, I learned. By High School, I could go through an entire day without speaking or making eye-contact with anyone. I gave up my personality to them to become the ghost that no one noticed. My parent's noticed me acting up at home and my poor grades; somehow they didn't notice I was missing chunks either. They just slapped, kicked and beat the rest of me back into shape, until I learned. I lied, got around, and got over on my parents, until they didn't notice me either. Parts of me were missing that I didn't even know belonged to me. The most innocent, playful me, was locked in a "Secret Garden." I'd left a trusting chunk with my foster brother as he crawled into my bed and in between my legs; he never noticed, after I pushed my way out of bed to sleep on the basement floor in the winter dark, that he had ruined that treasured possession. And I didn't miss it, then. The vampires heightened senses enabled them to see life as an amazing jumble of beauty, depravity, and sense. I lived for the descriptions of sumptuous feeding scenes and tortuous addiction. I hadn't lived for six months. Life is not sleeping, reading, and eating. Life is about crying, laughing and being angry, which I wasn't. And then there was guilt. I had honed my guilt to a razor sharp scythe to slice away unwanted strips of me. That nasty attraction to men, sliced off. I excised each bad habit as it came along. Today, with nothing left to remove, I lacerated my soul. I had gotten into it with my sister. Finally, after being egged on by her, I hit her, like so many times before. I had tried so hard not to do that anymore and I just wasn't good enough. I locked the bathroom door, staring crazily in the mirror. The guilt was cutting me to the core. My soul was so thin, so waffery thin…I broke open a shaving razor to a single blade and placed a half dozen ribbons along my left arm. I cried then. I cried and bled and the guilt was gone. Several years of therapy helped, but by then my alcoholism was in full force. I had just gotten pulled over for drinking and driving in Albuquerque. There would be no ticket, if "bastards" like me walked home, because my cop's children didn't need "assholes" like me on the streets. I stopped into Kmart for some razors and found my way under a road in a storm drain. Like many times before, I opened my skin but this time was different. I looked for my artery. Eventually, I found it in a peacock feather spray of warm blood that immediately soaked me. I lay down to die. God, I didn't want to be gay and I didn't want to be alive. My cut was true and as my body started to die, I began vomiting. Over and over, I retched to the side until I couldn't retch anymore. I lost bowel and bladder control as the physical begun to focus on my vital central organs. I couldn't see and I couldn't move. I waited for God, an angel, or hell to appear. They didn't. IT just said, "It's not time for you to die; there's more for you to do." "FUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK!!" is all I could scream. That's when I was found by a Midas Muffler's security guard at 3:30 in the morning. I lived with no real deficits. I am an alcoholic. I was sexually, physically, and emotionally abused. Do you have to have a bunch of trauma to be depressed? Not hardly. There are neurotransmitters that control mood. You could have had the best life in the world and so long as though chemicals or the pathways that use them are messed up, you'll be messed up. Am I a proponent of using medications to make you happy? If it will get you to a place where you don't need the medications, absolutely? If you want to take a pill and don't want to do the work, it doesn't really matter what I think. You won't be happy. You may even have to take medications for the rest of your life—small price to pay to live every amazing moment. If you're in therapy, these are my words of advice. The longer you make excuses to your therapist about how you can't or someone else won't let you, the longer you'll be unhappy. If you've done good work in therapy, you probably won't feel good when you've left. You're standing on the edge of a cliff. You're afraid, but you know to move forward you have to step off. You can go back down the mountain. You already know the misery that is there. It's simple then. You can stay in the misery of the mountain or you can step off. One of two things will happen. You'll fall to the rocks below and get hurt or you'll fly. Either way, you've moved forward. I smashed on the rocks several times. It's the only way I know how to do it. And I promise, if you keep going. You'll fly one day. How do I know? Because, here I am soaring like no other. You didn't choose to be depressed, but you can choose to stay depressed. I'll support you all the way, but you have to take the first step.