It is impossible to have a “happy birthday” if you aren’t interested in celebrating your life.

Yesterday, I was psychotically happy. So much so that I kept remarking to friends, “I feel like someone spiked my morning doughnut with ecstasy.” Everything was THE BEST THING EVER (my fajita at lunch? Best one I’ve ever eaten. My look? Best hair day I’d ever had, my outfit was adorable, my makeup was flawless, my skin looked amazing, and I was having a skinny daylikewhoa. All the songs on the radio? My favorite. My kitties? Best behaved they’d ever been and softest fur ever. Etc.) to an extent in which I legitimately started worrying that I might be mistaking a manic episode with “birthday euphoria”.

And then, in the afternoon, when I was cuddling with my husband, (who took the afternoon off so we could go to lunch JUST THE TWO OF US!! and cuddle IN THE DAYLIGHT HOURS!!), I realized that I was so happy because I was living in a life I am ecstatic to have an excuse to publicly/outwardly celebrate... And, while I’ve had that for a few years, it kind of took me a while to “get” it (as most things tend to, you may have noticed.) Because, admittedly, it’s hard to really be genuinely happy on your birthday when your birthday is the only day of the year you can force yourself to smile or when you accept love from anybody. I was weirdly/bothersomely elated the minute my birthday started, because I’ve been so happy and because I’ve been given so many awesome gifts (not necessarily tangible…duh) and so much love by so [SO! EFFING!!] many awesome people, I was just elated to be celebrating my life. Finally!

As I was pulling into my driveway last night (at a lame 11 p.m. because I was exhausted) after a full day of love and celebration, I felt this overwhelming urge to go running through the streets cackling like a crazy person and screaming, “I MADE IT, EVERYBODY!!!!! WOOOOO!!!! I’M HERE!!! I MADE IT!!!” (NOTE I did not do this a- because, as aforementioned, I was exhausted and b- because I didn’t feel like getting arrested.)

Instead, I sat in my car, in my garage for a minute and cried, praying to God/Spirit/The Universe with soul-shaking gratitude, “Thank you. I made it through that shitstorm back there! All of it! That storm when I tried to kill me and others tried to kill me (inadvertently) and I was full of hate and anger and rage and everything I’m not anymore! I woke up these mornings with a world full of gifts I’m not sure how I procured, that are more wonderful than I ever envisioned for myself. I woke up in a steady, solid state of mental clarity and joy that I, for many years, had decided was impossible. I am surrounded by love. I am healthy. I am sane. I am at peace. All of this is more than I ever thought I deserved. Thank you. THANK YOU. Please, please show me what you want me to do with all of these gifts I’ve been given, because I’m ready… and I’m even grateful for that. THANK YOU.”

It was, without a doubt, the happiest birthday I have ever experienced.

For the last 8 years I’ve struggled with an impulse that’s so embarrassing-on-a-personal-level that I’ve never told anyone. Due to the nature of it and the fact that I’ve done everything in my power to “cure” myself of something so ludicrous and shameful, I find that its persistence only makes me more ashamed of myself when it crops up… which is, incidentally, when I feel at my lowest. Not a healthy cycle. I know. I get that, too.

So yesterday, I waltzed into New Therapist #Whatever’s office (I haven’t been in therapy in a few years, although I’ve been maintaining my mental practices of reflection, self-inventory, etc.) and, when she asked Typical Initial Evaluation Question #1 (”Why are you here?”), I unleashed a 20-minute diatribe about how I’ve been dealing with this shit for what seems like forever and I’ve been through more “recovery” and therapy and group therapy and self-help and general “healing” than I could possibly begin to describe in the last 10-ish years and I’m just fucking EXHAUSTED with it because I find myself still stuck in the same stupid habits and mentalities as I was at the beginning and dammit, why aren’t I fucking fixed yet?! I’ve forgiven everysingleperson who’s ever so much at looked at me the wrong way; I’ve forgiven myself for everysinglemistake I ever thought about making; I’ve “let go” and “12-stepped” and “retuned my mental radio” and visualized and meditated and undergone hypnosis and dug up everysinglesecond of my childhood and “accepted” and “gotten the tools of serenity” and genuinely flung myself headfirst into every possible brain-sick antidote on the market (and, apparently, picking up aaaallllll the cliched recovery jargon along the way - seriously, try me) and I am ready for my subconscious to hop on board with me because I’ve been ready to move on and be done with all this noise now. For real. Seriously.
And I’m starting to become self-defeating in my frustration when my subconscious won’t cooperate.
And that’s become a battle in and of itself.
Dammit.

So, when asked to give an example of how my subconscious “isn’t jumping on board”, I described this aforementioned, embarrassing impulse of mine and how, when I try to fight it off (I am successful 98% of the time it appears), it haunts my dreams night-after-night and I hate it.

And she’s all, “Well, I’m not a dream expert or anything…”
Me: No, I know; I definitely am not looking for a dream analyst or something lame along those lines. Sorry…
Her: … but what does [the source of this impulse] represent to you?
Me: …Fwaahh?
Her: Or, rather, what part of you does [the source of impulse] represent? You mentioned that having dreams about a childhood antagonist you no longer know or communicate with is simply your mind creating a mascot for self-doubt, fear, and self-stifling, so what does this other impulse represent?
Me: Aaahhhmm…
(Beat. I’m embarrassed I’ve never stopped to think about this. I have the feeling it’s going to be painfully obvious.)
Her: Well, every time you give in to this impulse, you feel like shit, right? And you feel like shit even by having the compulsion to [do this weird thing] in the first place and after all these years and all your efforts, right? Because you recognize how destructive it is and has always been to yourself and how you’ve worked to get away from it for years now…? even though you didn’t for the first few years it was a habit because - as you said - your “self-esteem was in the crapper.”
Me: …yyyeeeaahh…?
Her: So could this impulse represent the side of you that believes you deserve to be punished?
(Another beat.)
Me: Holy. Crap… You’re exactly right. And it seems so blatantly obvious now.
Her: Well, not if you’ve never considered it that way. (smiles) So there; now you’re getting your money’s worth.

At that point, I felt like she should’ve spread her arms out like she’d just done a magic trick. Conjuring a major breakthrough in the first half-hour of our first session that has already started to change the way I’m reacting to my brain and, thus, started a chain-reaction of revelations (i.e. “So, if I feel self-destructive when I’m at my lowest, and that’s not really curing anything, that means I need to work on loving and forgiving myself immediately and constantly, even when I can’t find any reason to love and forgive myself… because THAT’S ultimately what’s going to make me feel better ever again and get out of these destructive habits/impulse-patterns for good… Whhhooooaaaa…”)?! She’s a wizard!
…and/or I’m actually on the right track…
…either way, I’m totally going back next Monday.

And, no, I’m still not telling anybody else what the embarrassing impulse is.

Change of plans.

The last few weeks have been a neurological nightmare. In the digging-through-and-revisiting of my past to start writing all of it, I’ve been inundated with a melange of Crazy, sending me into fits of depression and maniacal behaviors (all outdated impulse-habits of mine, of course. Nothing new and special to deal with; just old stuff I’ve been trying to leave behind/slough off for forever) and dreams filled with antagonist probes and AAAUUGHDAMMITALTOGETHER.

There was dysfunction. There were moments of genuine Crazy. There were impulse behaviors and then there was predictable regret. There was a blow-up. There was a meltdown. There was bad.
There was Crazy.

Which is funny, ’cause I’d made the assumption I was… y’know… good. Not still-volatile-and-easily-triggered-into-insanity.

I found myself drawn to a Caroline Myss book I’ve had on my shelf since 2002, when it was assigned to me in a religion class my sophomore year (the only class that whole semester that I finished.)

Myss talks about healing and why people don’t; I read about her thoughts on “Woundology” and how, even though we like to say we’re “healing”, we actually just hang on to the process of “healing” and use that as a definitive part of our identities and maybe even a way of feeling some sort of clout over others that we can manipulate for sympathy or attention. She went on to state that that’s not really “healing” because “healing” means you get past the wound, but if you’re still in the “process of healing”, then you’re still paying attention to the wound and letting it run your life, even if your original intent was to get over it. She didn’t say it, but she alluded to the fact that this sort of thinking is pretty gross. And I found myself agreeing. In not these exact words, she basically said, “Y’all need to get over this noise altogether ’cause you’re not becoming any more enlightened by hanging on to ‘recovery’; it’s taking up all your energy and prohibiting your growth and forward-movement.”
I totally agreed.

So I’m doing that.

Because that seems more imperative in general if I’m going to have any sort of selfless and/or progressive existence… which is, incidentally, the goal here.

It’s funny; you would’ve thought with all my therapy and introspection and noisy, unrelenting psychoblather about myself in these last years, I would’ve picked up on this before now. But nope. Finally hit me tonight.

It doesn’t matter how many people love me and give me so much of their time and patience and attention and unconditional (perhaps delusional) encouragement and how many people have done so over the course of my life that have outnumbered those who haven’t, if I am rejected by someone I thought was a friend without any closing discourse or response to my humble attempts at communication, I go into Ultimate HolyCrap Meltdown Mode. It doesn’t matter if this person/these people (it’s plural at the moment) are people that I’ve known for my whole life or less than a year, or if they’re people I’d keep on my Top 10 List of Friends, being rejected and dismissed without the consideration/respect for an explanation (even when I’m practically begging for it), I just straight-up lose my shit, reminiscent of the aching nights of self-loathing agony I endured in high school.

Without any adherence to the Four Agreements I tend to strongly believe in and desire to live within, I immediately/automatically turn inward and start tearing things apart. I begin to question my entire self-worth, what I’m doing with my life, what kind of person I am, why people bother with me in the first place. There is the old, almost-forgotten impulse to drive sharp objects into my forearms and thighs, the desire to randomly contact every person who ever rejected me in the last 20 years and demand answers, a barrage of memories to reiterate that feeling of impact when the realization of rejection first hits, the compulsion to contact any person I feel I might have wronged in the slightest and beg forgiveness for being such a shitty, horrible person in general and thank them for taking time out of their significant lives to pay attention to me, and that great, ever-present urge to drink or medicate myself until I can’t feel the powerlessness anymore.

Whoa.

Aaahhhm, I’ve still got some shit to deal with, apparently. Luckily, this all comes right after my physiological problems have been beaten back for a while and I’m actually in a level-headed spot for the most part. So this eruption of emotions comes at a time when my mental state is relatively stable, thus alerting me to the fact that it must be some sort of trigger. And, while it sucks a good deal, it’s definitely beneficial to be able to recognize these things, although, again, I can’t believe it’s taken me so long. Maybe I just needed all the exterior bullshit stripped away before I could deal with this one major quirk as it is singled out.

No, I know I have a shitload of people who care about me (and who bother to read me as I continue to ramble about being a neurotic nutjob) and I know I have a solid base of at least 10 friends whom I could call at any moment, after any length of time without speaking and say, “I NEED you,” and that person would be right there with me - no questions asked. I know that I have people I’ve tricked into believing that I am intelligent and capable and one of them even thought I was pretty enough to sign some papers saying he’d live with me and give me kisses every day for the rest of our lives. I know I’ve been blessed with scores of people who believe in me and don’t give up on me just because I’m a bit “off” and tend to screw up from time to time. (In fact, I just reunited with an old friend with whom I’ve had an on-and-off/kind of roller-coaster-y friendship with - due to our varied insanities/personal lives - who still finds me “amazing and intelligent” after having not spoken in two years and is okay with me just diving right back in where I left off.) I’m surrounded by so many wonderful people that it’s baffling, actually, but, should I lose one or two, my entire sense of self and my belief that I’m capable of maintaining a decent friendship are both shaken to the core and I am left with nothing short of the inherent knowledge that I am worthless and unlovable.

Instead of, you know, considering that their reactions might not have anything to do with me at all (like a sane person.)

I mean, mourning the loss of a friendship is one thing, but being immediately driven to attempting self-destruction because of someone else’s inability to rationally discuss a relationship-ending problem with a friend like an adult? That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it? I should probably have that looked at…

So, yeah, right now I’m hurting a lot. And I’m confused and vulnerable and fighting the temptation to just shut up and hermit myself away forever, in fear that everyone else in my life will eventually figure out what these recent rejectors must’ve and leave, too. And I’m scared that, because I don’t understand why I was rejected and why I wasn’t respected enough to be given an answer, I’m doing something wrong in my relationships that’s going to continue. And I’m probably crying too much.

But I also learned something about myself that’s apparently pretty fucking huge and may explain a great deal of my actions in the last 15 years. So I’m gonna be one of those obnoxious ever-self-discovering-types and thank the Universe for this learning experience, just like those doe-eyed optimists I always want to punch in the face. I’m grateful for the opportunity to realize that I have an unnatural reaction to human conflict/dynamic and now I have the ability to fix it… even though it’s probably going to suck, ’cause most therapy does.

Wooooo. Lemons to lemonade and stuff.

But, for now, I’m going to sit here and be confused and try to distract myself with funny videos of cats and fight the urge to send my first boyfriend yet another email about why he broke up with me in 1997. At least there’s no Ben & Jerry’s in the house; I’d hate to be an all-encompassing cliche.

WARNING: THIS IS MORE ABOUT MENTAL ILLNESS AND ITS INHERENT FUCKWITHERY. IT IS ALSO ME WHINING. NEITHER OF THESE THINGS ARE NOVEL EXCEPT THIS ENTRY PERTAINS TO PHYSICAL REACTIONS TO THE FORMER.

Last Thursday, I wrote a poem on a little slip of paper beside my bed. It went like this:
——————
Today
I lay
In bed
All day

And twitched
And twitched
And twitched.
—————–
Now, if written as the first two lines of a stanza, it’s very Emily Dickinsononian, so, um, I guess I could be proud of that? But what I think is the most appreciate-able of this personal achievement in literature is that it was literally the only thing I was capable of doing outside of the bare essentials from that day until yesterday, capping up a week of slow mental deterioration. (Chloe and I had “Pajama Day” a few days last week… she’ll only think it’s weird when she’s in therapy in a couple decades and realizes what it actually was) Thanks to New Drug #4thirty’leb’m, I’ve just endured the single most physically excruciating week of my entire life… And, thus, feel the need to publicly share it, if only for those other people out there who have told me that when I write about the lifestyles of the mentally ill, they appreciate the candor and the relate-ability. Also, I really felt I should document it for myself for future reference.

So lemme get you up to speed as though you’d never read anything I’d written about my breed of The Crazy before: I have chronic (until we find a cure) depression; it tends to kick up in the spring for inexplicable reasons; I have it under control for the most part otherwise. Well, this year during my annual Bout o’ The Crazy, New Doctor #7 (because I’ve moved in the last year) decided to start tinkering with my meds, which has lead to at least two extra months of BAAHHHHSTOPITCRAZY with the added bonus of my very first mania! WOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Aaaanyway, after “Well, let’s try you out on _____ for a couple weeks…’see how you do, umkay?” for four solid months now, I told my doctor to suck it; I’m stripping myself back down to the minimum, (which is the dosage at which I’ve been happily sane for 85% of the time for the last couple years) and I’m not screwing my brain up with any more of his chemical experiments that I’ve told him since their beginnings wouldn’t help anything in the long run. And I told him that if he was going to buck me on that, I’m looking into taking my humble dimes elsewhere anyway.

And this is why.

In the last week-and-change, due to 2.5 mg/daily of the drug Abilify (oh yeah, we’re calling it out by name. After the Vyvanse debacle of 2009, I’m calling anyone out where needed… for um… legal reasons? Igotnothingmumblemumble…), I’ve experienced the following:

~ Insomnia like whoa
~ Lethargy like whoa
~ Aching, gnashing pain in my limbs like fucking WHOA.
~ More-vivid-than-when-I-was-pregnant dreams including the most fucking horrifying nightmares imaginable (no, seriously. These made Kubrick look like PBS.) on the one night I opted out of the drug.
~ The complete inability to find a comfortable position.
~ The complete inability to remain in stasis.
~ 95% of the inability to move without inexplicable, aching, throbbing pain.
~ Increased heartrate.
~ Increased body heat (NOT fun for my husband, who isn’t a fan of keeping the house as chilly as I’d like.)
~ Bloating/Gas/Indigestion. Like whoa.
~ Seeing shit out of the corners of my eyes. (I’d say “hallucinations”, but saying “seeing shit” makes me sound more human and more lucid in that I have the wherewithall to be legitimately freaked out, right? It’s an affectation I’m trying on.)
~ Hearing things; either my brain completely misinterpreting a sound or fabricating sounds entirely… like children playing or bells chiming…
~ Exhaustion along with shaky fidgets.
~ Inability to focus (This entry has taken me three days to write. Not kidding. I’ve edited a lot.)

So, yeah, my last week sucked. I was awake more than any person should be for more than 3 days, I was both unable to sit or lie still and, yet, I was exhausted and in pain every time I moved, and I was legitimately out of my mind outside of the two former factors, so all of it was a cocktail of HOLYCRAPBAD. And I say that it was “the most physically excruciating week of my life” without any intention of hyperbole; at least in the aftermath of my C-section, I was able to sleep and take some pain killers and, in weeks when my body has been exerted and put through the ringer (high school volleyball training weeks/camp, expeditions with collegiate Outdoor Adventures group, etc.) I was able to rest for at least 6 hours a day or site where the pain was, specifically, and nurse it back to health with massage/warm showers/whatever was needed. This last week, my body has ached in ways that aren’t expressible and weren’t cured by the prescription-doses of ibuprofen I kept slamming.

And then, when I stopped taking the drugs because I couldn’t stand the side effects anymore (last Thursday), I had to deal with equally uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms. YEAAAAAAYY!!

I just hated it. And I hated that I hated it. And I hated that I was STILL dealing with psychiatric bullshit 2 months later than I usually do every year. And I hated what it was obviously doing to my family. And I hated that, no matter how much time and therapy I’ve gone through with this mental shit, I was still running into the same crippling physiological horseshit I’ve been dealing with for for-fucking-ever. ::sigh:: But we’ve talked about this before, right? I feel like this is just another redundant entry in the Captain’s Log of my Crazy.

Anyway, after four [expletive unrecognizable in human linguistic patterns and, thus, deleted] months of mood roulette (the ball landing on “Crazy/Bad” more often than not), I woke up yesterday with a feeling of serenity and stable optimism that didn’t quit before I went to bed later that night and, in fact, has continued right up until this very moment. And, I don’t want to get ahead of myself and/or say anything too soon, but it would really really be wonderful if this was The End of the 2011 Psychotics Episode for me. Seriously, I’m ready to turn that corner now and, frankly? I think after this last week I’ve had, it’s owed to me by the Universe at this point. I don’t usually make those sorts of cocky declarations, but I’d kind of reached a breaking point, to be honest, and wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be willing to tolerate writhing around in agony without immediate, intensive medical attention (which, after two experiences with this type of “help”, I’m none too hasty about requesting ever again.) So I’m glad to see the tides turn, even if it’s with such late arrival.

::exhales:: I’ll be turning the “Fasten Seatbelts” signs off momentarily. It feels good to be back at cruising altitudes… and to be of the state of mind that I can get away with terribly overwrought analogies referring to my mental state.

:::exhales again:::

When I first learned about my upcoming high school reunion a few months ago, I promptly threw up from anxiety.

The worst part is that, until today, I had no idea why. In the months since, this same terror and apprehension has plagued me every time I bring up the “To go or not to go?” debate in my head and I’ve stayed up for many nights wondering what the hell it is exactly that I’m so scared of; there weren’t any bullies that I’m still intimidated by (those were all in jr. high) and it’s not like I was a total loner. In fact, high school was, for the most part, pretty good to me (ESPECIALLY when compared to the more-cruel-than-most-kids-have-it middle school years I’d just endured in another state.) I was friends with genuinely wonderful people,* I had a supportive family (even though, like all adolescents, I got to wade through the my-parents-are-human-with-flaws-so-now-I’m-mad-about-it phase), I was involved with student activities and was social and had handfuls of good memories… All in all, it wasn’t awful. So what it that was keeping me doubled over with abdominal pain every time the idea of reuniting with this group of people sprung to mind?

Only after a few months of contemplation did I finally realize what it is that I’m legitimately, wholeheartedly, fucking terrified of. There’s one person I very desperately never want to reunite with in any circumstance and whom I feel will be unavoidable at a high school reunion: Me.

Look, I know that sounds melodramatic and disgustingly self-centered but here’s the thing: I’ve spent the last decade fighting off and then ditching the person I was back in the late-90’s/early-00’s (In fact, on one occasion, I literally tried to kill her and had to be hospitalized for a littletinybit to learn how to get along with her… but that’s another story that I’ve talked about entirely too much.) I’ve spent years going to therapy to learn to not be anything like her and I’ve given dozens of heartfelt apologies for the awful things she used to say and do to people and how she used to make people feel. (Some have been accepted while others have not. This, also, is something I’ve learned to accept and put behind me.) I’ve obsessively tackled [almost] every fault I can so I’m increasingly less like the person that everyone I was around in high school will remember. (She and I still share a penchant for overindulgence, but I figure that’s not as pressing a personal issue as, say, pathological lying or spewing hatred for no reason or other soul-sucking yuckness.) I’ve worked really, really hard to make myself into someone I like being around (a first for me) and to have as little in common with my former self as I possibly can (on a behavioral level, anyway.) I’ve moved myself far, far away from her nasty mentalities, her cowardly cynicism, her need to tear down those she envied and her unbelievably repellent self-loathing. And the idea that I’d have to spend a weekend revisiting the time I spent with her is enough to make me sick with the guilt and regret I’ve only just managed to get over.

Don’t get me wrong; there are many people from these high school years with whom I have some very happy memories and who have shown me that they don’t remember me as some horrible monster. But, even when I revisit old pictures and remember how my mind/actions were completely fueled by fear and insecurity, it’s too black and embarrassing to deal with. The self-induced chaos in which I conducted my entire adolescent being is just too heavy, too overwhelming for me now. I feel myself being tugged down with the weight of it [in tandem with residual shame] and I’m not sure if being around people who only know/remember that part of me is going to be beneficial at all.

It would be different if I was still struggling out of all of that mental muck, but the truth is that I’ve just gotten to the point where I’m no longer constantly, exhaustively burdened by my past; I’d like to enjoy that peace for just a little longer without having to “test it out.” I don’t hate who I was in those years; I’m just over her and all her bullshit, in essence. She’s taken enough from me and I don’t feel like she deserves any more time or energy. The risk of running into someone who can’t get past the gossipy, superficial a-hole I was to most people and having to try to convince them of a change of character just seems like too much work for me, especially when there are only a handful of people there whom I’d go out of my way to reunite with in the first place. (And those people know who I am now anyway.)

So, I honestly may be staying away from any class reunions in order to avoid running into myself… which is arguably the craziest-sounding thing I’ve ever uttered AS WELL AS the most rational introspection I’ve done in a while.

Thanks a freaking lot, therapy.

*As aforementioned, my one major romantic entanglement from my adolescent years will no longer be discussed - neither on this blog nor in real life - so all of the above assertions are to be read with the general understanding that this relationship is excluded.

I won’t get all long-winded about the backstory like I usually do but, in the last week, I’ve really been struggling with a haunting from my past and an unclosed door with a broken-heart situation and how it relates to my current life and what I’m doing that’s wrong in it and all that noise. It’s been really attacking me, actually, and gave me a hell of a depression spell for a few days.

And then I realized that, in order to actually, totally forgive myself, I have to stop giving a shit whether or not anyone else does.

I’m starting to think that basic life principles need to come with footnotes for those of us who don’t automatically realize the implied intricacies.

In this exhausting, cathartic, havoc-wreaking, daily-self-inventory-and-renovation I’ve been undertaking since I actively started working on recovery a few years ago (I might’ve mentioned it here… a few times…) I’ve had to dig out a lot of personal muck (usually of the self-induced variety), filter it, clean it and then put it back in my foundation where it belongs. It’s been pretty taxing and has lead to what seems to be an unending series of epiphanies about me as a person but, for the most part, I’ve been able to look at it all, deal with it accordingly and then move on when the time is right.

As it should be, I think.

But in the last couple years, it has become more and more obvious that I wasn’t just a terrible person when I was drinking or in my throes of depression or even when I started adolescence, as I’d first suspected when coming out of my drink-driven stupor. In fact, in the last six or so months, I slowly became aware that there might not’ve been a time in my life before a few years ago when I wasn’t completely self-involved, malicious, spiteful, wrathful, jealous, insecure and pathologically dishonest. And that stings way worse than the thought that I had an illness or even an addiction to hide behind.

I’ve discussed this ad nauseum (so if you’ve read anything on this blog before now, feel free to skip this paragraph because you’ve probably heard me talk about this ten times minimum) but, basically, I sobered up and started trying to figure out this whole mental illness-cum-self loathing lifestyle I’d clung to for the better part of a decade because I realized that I sucked to be around to everyone, especially myself. And I kinda went about all the follow-up work (making amends, identifying my flaws, addressing my insecurities, avoiding the catalysts/antagonists) in hopes that, eventually, it would chip away at this character my addiction and illness had created and reveal the bright, polished, pure person I used to be way back in the life I could no longer remember, mentally or emotionally. That was kind of the end goal- I wash away all the muck so I could get back down to basics and start rebuilding from there.

But what really happened was that I started making amends and looking at my flaws objectively and doing the really embarrassing/humbling work of raking myself over the coals to find out what the hell I was doing and try to fix it all, only to realize that my original foundation was made of crap to begin with.

I know that sounds really harsh because, for Christ’s sake, I was just a kid when the depression really started setting in. (I can remember my first episodes at 11, which is still “childhood” for me, I guess.) But even before that, I was never a nurturing, compassionate child. I was bossy and domineering and totally self-centered and brutal and meeeaaaan. Good Lord, I was mean.

Don’t think this is me just feeling sorry for myself or blowing typical childhood cruelty out of proportion; when I had this epiphany, I spent a good while going “No, that can’t be right. You’ve had friends since you were a kid; surely you didn’t suck that much. You’re just in a funk. Go walk it off and come back and look at this more objectively.” And, after a ton of deliberation it seems that this isn’t just a fluke.

I was manipulative and dishonest for as far back as I can remember. I can remember bullying other kids and enjoying taunting people who made me feel weak and imperfect as early as preschool. I can remember saying horrible things to and about other people at every age. I can’t remember doing selfless or unprompted kind things for those around me at all… not even once. And what’s worse is that I can’t remember doing anything really kind or selfless for my siblings at any time during my childhood, which is something that really tears me up to think about, to be honest. I could go on but, truthfully it hurts a bit too much. The point is that the evidence is present and clear. These are the things that were only magnified once the hormones and disease kicked in later on.

And, yes, okay, I’ve realized and explained where all my chronic meanness came from before now. I totally get it. I was so insecure and was so certain that someone was going to jump out and mentally assault me (which, incidentally, happened a number of times) that I preemptively did it to as many people as I could in hopes that… ::sigh:: it would make me feel better? I could beat everyone to the punch? Who even fucking knows? It’s all very textbook. It’s all very pathetic. I know. I get it.  And, as aforementioned, the worst part was that I honestly thought I was so insignificant that the awful things I said and did to people couldn’t possibly have any sort of repercussions because who the hell cared what I had to say? I didn’t. And, as blathered about for a few years now via this blog, this is what I’ve had the privilege of wading through and sorting out in my search for sanity and a better, cleaner, lighter soul. So far, it’s been working.

But now, at the bottom of all of it, when I make deliberate actions and I’m fully accountable and responsible for everysinglething that I do or say or think and I don’t do anything or say anything I don’t mean, I find that there’s not anything else that’s left for me to work with. There’s no real memory of anything likeable about me from before I was some sort of monster and I feel like I’m sort of grappling at straws while having to deal with this awful realization that the reason I was so eager to escape my reality to begin with was that I’d always just sucked to be around since I was like, 3.

Ouch. Didn’t see that coming.

Now my personal recovery is not just about knocking down all the rubble and shaking it off my limbs but it’s also trying to figure out likable aspects of myself as a base skeleton.

Shit. I don’t have the energy for all this. Wouldn’t it be easier just to do an Etch-A-Sketch restart where we shake it clear, pretend it never happened and start over?

And, of course, more than half of my problem with this realization is the utter grief and remorse I have for being that person and not realizing it up until now. Naturally, this is the part that I’m honestly trying not to assault myself with the hardest but it’s proving to be nearly impossible - seriously, who wants to think that they were never a genuinely nice person at any point in their youth? I just have to keep reminding myself that rolling around in the muck isn’t going to help me get clean. (I love cliches. Thanks, Aldous Huxley!)

But still, there’s a level of defeat and frustration to this huge realization that I’ve been working to fend off in order to keep moving forward. I guess I had always figured that, if nothing else, I had a real pure Self under there that I was hoping to recover and reconnect with once I got my Demon Era properly handled and filed away. Problem is, it looks like this going to be more of a discovery/construction mission than a reconnaissance one and I’m not sure I packed the right tools.

Liz Pardue-Schultz

In order to get my Chapter III off to a strong start, I’m hitting the “reset” button on everything and putting myself through a 90-day rehab of sorts. Due to external conflicts, I couldn’t actually start this on my birthday, mostly because I intend to incorporate a lemon-and-cayenne-nastiness Master Cleanse fast for the first week and my whole little family has a disgusting case of the Ick that I needed to tackle first.

(Also, NO, I’m not doing the MC in hopes to lose any weight; I know I’ll gain whatever I get rid of right back after the week is over and I’d never want to lose weight through starvation anyway… Losing hair, muscle mass and skin luster is gross. I honestly just have so much gunk from the last two/three months in my system and I really want to get myself to a healthy, balanced state to work from. I’m even doing the salt-water flushes, but I draw the line at colonics… and not just because I can’t afford them.)

I don’t intend to go into great detail in public about my motivations or intentions with my DiY rehab but I really want it to be a means of flushing everything out (physically and mentally) and building my daily life from scratch, which will have a great ripple effect on the Bigger Picture. Frankly, I think it’s a change that’s long overdue and I’m excited to see where I am on April 25.

So anyway, I thought I’d give everyone a heads-up since I’ve heard the Cleanse does crazy stuff to one’s mind and, although I’m going to try really really hard not to, I may be prone to spouting some insanities publicly.

Maybe I’ll just make a rule to keep to myself for the 7-10 days.

It probably wasn’t noticeable from the exterior, but 2009 was perhaps the most monumental year I’ve had in a little more than a decade as far as my mentality and resulting general life course goes. I know that sounds terrible considering I had a child in 2007 and got married in 2008 but honestly, 2009 is when everything about who I was and what my life was about during the last 10-14-ish years drew to a close.

See, around the time my mind started messing with me in a clinical sense, some people that I deemed “Important” began to make me believe these negative things about myself that weren’t true. As the story goes, these beliefs lead to more profound false beliefs which fueled actions to back up the initial beliefs and then allowed me to believe more lies about my identity handed to me by predatory self-loathing idiots and it all just spiraled out of hand and turned into this huge mess in which I had successfully morphed myself into this godawful person I never actually should’ve believed I was in the first place. Since 2003-ish when I first started realizing what a mess I’d gotten myself into, I’ve been steadily trying to pick up the pieces, refigure everything out and clean up the catastrophic messes I made. (I’m not saying I’ve been successful the whole time since then, by the way. In fact, I spent the first couple years after that continuing to inadvertently botch things out of sheer habit and blurred vision.) And, in the last couple years or so, I’ve finally gotten to a place where I’m consistently happy and [relatively] stable enough that I can really look back on all of it and go “Okay, since this is the most sane I’ve ever been, let’s see if we can figure out exactly what the hell actually happened with a [relatively] clear perspective…”

Okay, looking back on things and overanalyzing them is nothing new for me. In fact, it’s been pretty damned exhausting hauling that neurosis around with me for over half my life. However, this time when I took a second (or a week) for retrospection, I actually felt this incredible sense of closure and profound relief.

No, it’s true! In the last year I’ve finally gotten over some people and events that not only don’t exist and/or don’t matter anymore but really never did matter to begin with. (Yes, I’m still a bit embarrassed that I built such a huge framework for my life out of complete bullshit, but I’m certainly not about to waste any more time feeling sorry about it or worrying about what I could’ve done differently.) A few months ago I even performed a little one-person ritual in which I identified all the lies and false authorities on which I’d built my self-worth and discarded them formally. (There was a lot of candle-lighting, stone-charging, body-cleansing and meditation involved.) And then I sat down and identified all the truths about myself and my life that I’ve always known and that people who love me have always been willing to support. And honestly, it felt like a complete mental molting of sorts.

But wait! That’s not all that happened this year! This year I finally (FINALLY) was able to make all the amends to people I’d hurt that I’d been needing to for many many years. I honestly never really wanted any sort of response or forgiveness from these few leftover people (although forgiveness is always welcome) but I just needed to know that I did all I could to at least deliver the genuine apology that was deserved, no matter how past-due. Somehow, not only did I get this knowledge of successfully delivered messages, but I was honestly listened to and respected by the recipients, my apologies heard and taken seriously. I was even granted forgiveness, which was the icing on the cake and the ice cream on the side. The feeling that I don’t owe anyone else an apology for anything is an incredible novelty to me and makes me value and choose my actions with impeccable care. (This is not to say I’m not going to offend people or step on toes ever again - I do it at least monthly. I just don’t make offending others an objective anymore.)

And, in addition to being liberated from this completely invisible fear-based “prison” of false beliefs I’d crafted around myself based on the opinions and actions of people who are worthless AND finding closure from my unbelievable cruelty in the past, I also was able to finally get away from Myrtle Beach/South Carolina, (which really turned out to be more of a symbolic liberation than a physical one as I’d finally gotten to a place where I adore(d) the people I’d chosen to surround myself with there.)

With all of these genuinely life-and-mind-altering events combined I was finally able to look at my life objectively and see - without guilt or denial or refusal - all the truths and blessings that are lying in my lap, this great existence that kind of just happened upon me and the realization that, if I don’t go and screw it all up (again) I have the potential to do whatever it is that I may want to do. (Figuring that out is another issue altogether.) And I have more loving friends than any human deserves cheering me on, so I kind of owe it to everyone who bothers to have faith in me as a human (including myself) to point myself in a direction and quit making whiny, self-loathing, fear-based excuses as to why “I can’t”. And now that I’m not wasting all my time hurting over the past and the idiots I let dominate it/me or trying to therapanize (new word alert!) my brain into normal, everyday functionality, I don’t really have any excuse not to.

So it seems like my reevaluation and life-participation in 2010 is a bit more important than usual. This being said, none of these completely-invisible-but-totally-important changes I’ve made in 2009 were on my Resolutions list, so I’m not going to base the rest of my existence on some list I scribble down in the next few weeks. However, with all the shit I’ve been able to throw out of my daily life in the last year and where that’s put me right now, I know I’ve got a lot more momentum going forward than I have in a really really long time. It excites me to dream about what that will allow me to do between now and 2012 when the world/existence comes to a screeching halt.* I’d better get started.

* No, I don’t believe that crap.