Hey, thanks for meeting me here,
Look, I want to preface all of this by saying that this is just something I need to get off my chest and have put off for some 17-ish years and that’s my fault.

By no means does this indicate that we’re done with this relationship that we have, nor does it mean that I’m not still incredibly grateful for the abundance of gifts that You’ve heaped upon me. Trust me, I remember and appreciate every single one and, frankly, am still amazed at all the times You’ve bailed me out and stood beside me, handling my incredible fuck-ups. (I’m thinking specifically of that time around 2003-ish when I drove 2 hrs. completely obliterated on an entire bottle of Unisom and 99 proof alcohol while listening to “Don’t Fear the Reaper” on repeat and somehow made it to my destination without hurting anyone or anything. You were in the driver’s seat, then - no doubt. I still have yet to wrap my head entirely around that one.)

And you know what else? In my years and years of dealing with my mental illness (which You probably know this post is going to be about) You’ve given me a ton of great opportunities and chances at “fixing” things and a support unit of unconditional love and, again, I am eternally, consistently, constantly, exhaustedly grateful for all of that.

But I need to vent to You for a second. And I feel like we’re at a place where You’re going to understand where I’m coming from and not hold it against me. So I’m just going to be honest here and let it all out. And I apologize for sobbing all the way through this.

It has taken me 17-ish years to muster up the courage to say all this and admit all this to myself but I’m fucking pissed off that I got slapped with such an incredibly bullshit disease as mental illness. Hey, did you know that this month is National Mental Illness Awareness Month? Because I sure as shit didn’t… along with, like, 99.5% of the American population. Meanwhile, we’ve got cancer walks and charities out the ass; there’s a whole Youdamned month for breast cancer; there’s a differently-colored ribbon to support every effing thing under the sun (You know what the color is for “mental illness awareness”? It’s green, which is also the color for kidney donation, and is more recognized as such, which is a big  “FUUUCK YOU” to us crazies out here… personally, I think it should be psychedelic tie-dye, but that’s for another discussion.) So what exactly is my point here? Basically, my biggest complaint is that I’ve been given the gift of a chronic illness that has tried to fucking kill me (specifically, about 6 “official” times, if you want to get technical here) and that MOST PEOPLE THINK IS COMPLETELY FICTITIOUS.

There are people starving to death and being destroyed en masse every day. There are children living in homes where they are abused and unloved and there are millions upon millions of people who are aching to have a life that resembles anything close to mine. And so, when I start telling people at age 11 that there’s something wrong with me and I’m depressed and don’t know why, I get told to suck it up and get over myself. When I tell family members and friends that I’ve been contemplating suicide in my late teenage years, I am brushed aside and reprimanded for “just trying to get attention.” I am called “melodramatic”. I am denied treatment. I am cursed with stigmas. I am lead to believe that all of this aching, relentless mental torment that I am experiencing on a daily basis isn’t real, that I am just an ungrateful product of a privileged lifestyle.

Naturally, none of this would have happened if I had, instead, complained of a tumor growing in my skull or, you know, something physical that doctors could point to and say “Ah yes! Here’s the problem!” so everyone around me could rally to my side immediately. I could’ve just combated the illness right out of the gate. I wouldn’t have had to spend years pleading with people to listen and/or believe me if I had something like cancer or lupus or a collapsing lung or an aneurysm. Nobody would’ve accused me of just trying to get attention; nobody would’ve refused to listen or tried to make me feel like less of a human being because of ancient misconceptions, myths or stigmas surrounding these sorts of diseases. I would never have tried to self-medicate for a decade or let myself give in so easily to my disease over and over for years if I had something that the masses acknowledge as a legitimate illness. Nobody ever would’ve mocked me or called me a “drama-queen” or a “whiner” or told me just to get over it or that I “just needed to find Jesus” or “just put a smile on my face and be grateful for what I have” when I tried to tell them why I needed help. (I’m thinking of a plethora of family-related specific instances here, but I think we both know what/whom I’m referencing, so I don’t want to drag that into a public forum.)

And, yes, I’m aware it could’ve been worse; I could’ve been born in a country or an era where people with ANY type of mental irregularity would be completely ostracized or locked in an institution or burned at the stake or whatever was deemed necessary at the time. So I definitely do understand that I’m blessed to at least live in a time and place where treatment is available.

All this in mind, I have to admit that, yeah, I’m kind of pissed that I landed here in a society where everybody and their mother is seeing a therapist and being medicated for somethingoranother. So, not only do I live in a society where there’s a stigma put on the mentally ill, but I’m also simultaneously existing in a reality in which so many people are overmedicated to avoid feeling human emotion that nobody takes real psychosis seriously anymore and, God, I gotta tell you THAT IS FUCKED UP. Even to a person who is mentally unstable on her own, that scenario is literally insane and yet! Here I am! Trying to just get a steady treatment/regimen going so, like someone with diabetes, I can live my life taming and managing the disease I’ll have to learn to live with. However, unlike that lucky bastard with diabetes (that’s sarcasm right there, btw) I get to play “musical doctors” for the last ten years because psychiatrists are just handing out various medications like they’re flinging them off a pharmaceutical company’s sponsored Mardi Gras float. Seriously, I hate to sound rude but it’s the only disease in the world where I have to fight against the stereotypes that abusers have set - I doubt if anyone receiving chemo has to listen to WASPs make publicly-acceptable jokes about what kind of IV they’re “tooootally addicted to” these days.

I swear to You, it’s an uphill battle in every Youdamned direction; I gotta fight with society, my family, my friends and these throngs of doctors just to get taken seriously ON TOP of having to fight my own fucking mind, which is perpetually trying to fucking kill me when it’s left to its own devices.

:::sigh::: No, I’m not mad at any of these people anymore and, yes, I’ve learned to deal with public ignorance about it and just do what I need to do for myself so that I can survive; I’ve been living (sometimes just barely) with this shit for almost 2 decades now so I’m mostly on Autopilot at this point. I hope You hear me tell You how grateful I am every single day for this incredible life I have right now. Please don’t think that I ever forget it.

But, dammit, that doesn’t make any of it hurt any less, God. And that’s what I’m so so very angry/frustrated about right now and wanted You to know. It hurts to think about how lonely it all was. I ache when I remember how alone I felt every time I went to the hospital, where nobody sent flowers and only my family attempted to talk to me like a person. I’ll never stop hurting when I remember the looks on my friends’ faces after the hospitalizations, like they were in a room with a wild animal and were too afraid of getting hurt to try to learn how to talk to me. It fucking hurts to remember having to be my only source of comfort during so many nights… both before and after I started any sort of treatment… always for the same reasons… It hurts to see my scars and try to rehearse how I’ll explain them to my daughter one day because I know in my heart that she needs to know.  It hurts to think about how I’m still not done; how I’m still having to deal with my Enemy Mind and how I’m just so damned exhausted with it all, God.

It fucking hurts, God. When does that part stop?
Can you make that part stop?

I’m not really mad at You, God - not when it comes right down to it. I know You’ve spared me from far far worse things and I really, honestly am grateful for where I am and the progress I’ve supposedly made and all that noise I feel like I’ve repeated into a cliche at this point….

I just want it to go away now, God. All of it. The recurrences/relapses and the memories and, hell, even the scars, if I’m being honest here.

But mostly the pain, God. I can deal with any more insanity and craziness and mental bullshit You wanna hurl at me, God. Bring it on. I’ve gotten this far and in far worse conditions.

But please. Please take away the aching. I’ve had enough pain from all of this; I’m so fucking sick of hurting from this one stupid problem that it’s now compounding into anger for still feeling it in the first place and it just gets heavier and heavier and I can’t fucking tolerate it anymore, God. I can’t…

…And I know when I say “I can’t” that You’ll stand right there with me and You’ll see to it that You can prove me wrong and that I can get through anything and all that crap that “people of faith” like to blabber to each other when shit gets rough so allow me to clarify:

I probably can tolerate more but I really, really do not want to. Seriously, I’m finished.
I mean, I didn’t even have the energy to be angry all the way through this letter, for Christ’s sake.

So yeah. That’s where I am. I’ve been ready for this to be over and done with for a long, long time.
And I would really, genuinely love it if we could both be on the same page with that.

Please?

Most sincerely,
L P-S

Today, I prayed.
Wait. That’s a lie.

Today, I begged.

It’s been an emotionally rigorous last-couple-weeks during which I’ve found myself pulling an Etch-A-Sketch redo on my mind and my thoughts and my definitions of everything and my agreements and my life and my particular existence and all that. And in the middle of all that upheaval I’m still dealing with my completeandutter feeling of hopeless lack of direction (an obligation for my immediate age, I think) that I’ve been tussling with for months now.

There’s just so many things I feel genuinely driven to do. I want to write a book, I want to sell sugar scrub, I want to make a documentary, I want to go back to school, I want to be a sex therapist, I want to have an op-ed column… All of these things I want to do in the next 10 years and I feel like I have no idea how to go about doing any of them, no particular confidence in my ability to be successful at any of them, (except the sex therapy. I’ve been giving frank, factual advice without blushing since the 6th grade. Ask anyone.) and really no idea which one God/Spirit/Universe is really calling me toward. (Although to be fair, I can always sell the sugar scrub on the side. I hope to open a stand at the local farmers market next season.) Most of the time I feel like one of those delusional “American Idol” contestants who is sitting around dreaming big with no shot of ever becoming anything anywhere close to what they envision. (No, Virginia, not all dreams come true.)

And it’s not for lack of trying to figure it out, either. I’ve meditated and prayed and read Tarot cards as a means for Spirit/God to speak with more clarity (which is usually pretty effective in dealing with everything else) and all sorts of weird rituals and centering practices to get a definite “YES!” on anything.

So today, exhausted from months of frustration on this and many other topics that have only just culminated in a bit of a meltdown and following emotional shutting-down for me, I found myself pleading with God.

“Look,” I said. “I’ve been doing really good here. And I’ve been grateful out the ass for a long time now and I rarely ask for anything for myself anymore. Sure, I ask for my daughter’s health and my husband’s inner peace and sense of self, but I can’t remember the last time I bothered you for anything personal. Not even strength or serenity or any of that. I’ve just kind of had faith that you’d give it to me and when you inevitably have, I’ve thanked you profusely. So right now I’m begging. Please. Please just give me some irrefutable message as to which direction I should go and where I should focus my energies and what sort of plans you have for me and what sort of gifts you’re willing to give me a leg up on because that’s what you made me for. Please tell me how I can best spend my life and my time and the gift of being here. Clearly. Without any room for argument. I’ll do whatever you want for me and whatever you intend and I’ll have confidence that you’ve got a plan here but I just need to know. I want to stop wasting my time running around from interest to compulsion and I want to start doing whatever the hell it is that I’m supposed to be doing right now. And, really, I think that’s what would work best for you and your plans, too. Just. Please.”

I’m not stupid enough to expect anything immediate. These sorts of things take time and I know better than to try to pressure God into anything or strike a deal with him or - as Will Truman put it - try to “punk the Almighty.”

This evening after dinner I found myself sitting on the couch watching the Emmys. I have a million things on my “To Do” list that I’ve been tackling all day and I literally have not watched the Emmys in the last decade or so. Nor have I had any desire to do so, actually. Even still, when Greg decided to go on up to bed, I told him I was interested in watching and couldn’t really provide a reason why (although at the time I was pretty sure it had a lot to do with my deep infatuation with Neil Patrick Harris combined with my desperate admiration and envy for Tina Fey.)

I particularly do not care about any of the shows in the Drama category because when I take refuge from the dramas of real life I don’t want to be bothered with those of fictitious characters. However, I was sitting in rapt attention through all of it, including when they announced the Outstanding Writer Award for a Drama Series. And for some reason I couldn’t stop watching two people I’d never heard of accept an award for a show I’ve never seen in a category I do not give a shit about. (Yes, I considered how mind-numbingly boring and technologically codependent this has made me look.)

And then Matthew Weiner looked dead into the camera and said, “This award makes writing look fun and it isn’t. But I want to say something to all the writers out there for a second.” And then he proceeded to say that it’s backbreaking work that seems impossible but that it’s absolutely worth it to never give up and to keep going for it because writers are all in good company.

You know, your basic “Dreams come true!” speech.

But this time it was from a writer who was actually proud to be a writer instead of some vapid actor who’s totally proud that they won an award for playing pretend. And he addressed those of us who are not only dreaming of it but are busy convincing ourselves that it can’t be done. And it was on a day that I begged for a sign. And nobody in Hollywood EVER talks to or about writers. Especially not low-life, unsuccessful ones.

Sure, it’s naive. Sure it’s a “People will believe what they want to” scenario I’m creating for myself here.

But I’m taking it as the sign I asked for.

And I’m so freaking scared and insecure and uncertain that I’m kind of wishing I hadn’t asked.

Crap.

It never ceases to amaze me how one whole week of Feeling Really Great and Being All Productive can be completely obliterated by one single evening of Shaking, Sobbing, Deteriorating Crazy that just descends on me from out of nowhere. Nothing caused it, mind you. My mind isn’t off beating itself up for sucking in general, I’m not sad about any certain, specific thing; I just started sinking and couldn’t pull up out of it. So, instead I sat on the couch in a tight little ball all evening, trying to focus on a movie that Greg put in for us and wringing my hands like I’d just snorted a line while little white flashes of light darted around my periphery for no reason. Occasionally, I’d need to inhale so abruptly that Greg would dive to my side to make sure I was okay like I was on the brink of dying. (Poor guy; three months of this has to be making him wonder why he’s married me.)

————————————————-

Okay, God,

 I’m exhausted with this now. I know I’m not one to argue with your judgment but seriously? Haven’t I done this enough? I’ve worked my ass off this round, not sitting back and taking it or drinking myself into dysfunction. I’ve been charitable and objective about my needs in recovery and I’ve changed my meditation and medication and eating habits and gone out and gotten some physical activity and rerouted my focus and talked to my therapist and gone to a different doctor and gotten out of the house to do things that I like and expressed gratitude and appreciation when I could and made amendments where I felt I needed to (no matter how outdated) and read scripture and self-help books and been still and tried to let You talk to me and had friends come to visit and literally every-fucking-thing I can think of to put into motion my feeling better and expedient recovery. I’ve held up my end of the bargain… 

…So, for fuck’s sake could I please just go for one whole week (or two) without contemplating opening a vein or overdosing on sleeping pills and wine in my bathtub? I’m literally begging You now. I haven’t had a week like that since early September, which is bullshit in itself because it almost completely wrecked the time around my wedding. (The week in Hawaii was bliss, mind you, if only I could have staved off those sleepless early mornings of quivering in my neuroses that I tried to hide from Greg in an attempt to keep him from worrying about anything on our heavenly honeymoon.) I mean, I don’t want to get all vindictive and fist-shaking and screaming stuff like “YOU OWE ME RESTITUTION!” but dammit, would it really damage me and my personal character development to be completely content and catch my breath for just a little while? I’m just wondering.

I appreciate Your consideration and expedient response in this matter.

Ever Patiently,

Castallare