I am in a down mood; I have been since my birthday, actually.

First of all, I am stoked to meet Kel, her sister, and her brood.  I cannot wait to hear Vienna (though it’ll be in Norfuck Norfolk, VA, and not Oriental), and I am excited to see how Kel is going to shoot me (with a camera, of course).  I don’t take good pics, so I’m curious to see what she can do with Alejandro (her trusty camera).

That said, I still have a shit-load to do before I go.  The house is still a mess, and I have a day and a half to clean it.  I also have my session in the morning.  I also have to wash my hair, and I probably will do one more load of laundry.  I also have that job hunt to do and other shit (including losing weight).  Instead, I sit on my flat ass and do nothing of importance.

My best friend and I had a heated discussion Friday night about regrets.  She’s the type to not regret things in life in part because she looks at the bigger picture.  She says, “Do I regret doing this?”  While the experience may have been painful, overall, she’s glad she did that or this or whatever.  On the other hand, I am all about regrets.  There are more experiences in my life that I would give up wholeheartedly than keep.  The abuse by my father?  Gone.  My entire childhood, in fact, would be erased.  Thailand?  Goodbye.  My relationship with D, I would keep.  My relationship with M, I would not.

In addition, I wanted to cut off some experiences at some point.  She said I couldn’t do that, and I said why not if we were playing pretend, anyway?

By the way, I hate the heat.  I am unbelievably grumpy right now.  I am wearing my South Park boxers, shirtless, my hair braided,  and still sweating like a pig.  I have SAD in the hot seasons, and I’m not Miss Perky at the best of times.

Oh, and FYWP (fuck you, Word Press).  I just lost more than half this post.  Fuckers.  I will try to reconstruct, but it won’t be easy.

The one thing I have always prided myself on is my brain.  I am intelligent, and I have no qualms about saying that.  I am fucking intelligent, and I have no qualms about thinking that.  However, the same brain that allows me to read voraciously, have a magnificent vocabulary, come up with witty repartee, and lets me think nimbly on my feet is the same damn brain that spawned my demons.  They live in my brain, and they are quite fucking smart, too.  Therefore, they can use my intelligence against me because they know me so fucking well.  Did I create them?  Of course I did.  But, like Dr. Frankenstein, the monster has gotten bigger than his creator.

My demons know my weaknesses, and they gleefully pounce on every one.  Right now, I am struggling with my ED issues.  Well, that’s not quite accurate.  I am indulging in my ED issues.  While intellectually I know that they are bad for me, emotionally, the rituals bring me comfort.   And, I am a fucking beached whale, which I do not like.

Fear and self-loathing in Minnesota.  That would be the title of my autobiography if I felt compelled to write it.  Which I don’t.

Fifteen years I wasted dwelling in that deep, dark abyss.  Fifteen years of my life gone, and now, I’m thirty-nine with nothing to show for my life.  No career, no marriage, no kids, no published works, no legacy.  OK, I don’t want number two or three, but that’s besides the point.  All of my friends are successful in their own way (I only hang out with the best), and while it’s inspiring to me, it also underscores how bereft my life is.

Every step forward reminds me of how many more I have to go.  My therapist once said that if I get stuck regretting the lost fifteen years, in another fifteen years I’ll be sitting in therapy talking about the lost thirty years.  She’s right, of course, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me to break free.  You know the saying, “Ignorance is bliss”?  The opposite would be, “Knowledge is hell”.  I know the shit I need to do and to change about myself.  I have known it for some time.  The fact that I cannot make myself do what I need to do tears me apart.  It adds to my already huge reservoir of guilt.  If I didn’t know what was wrong with me, I wouldn’t be able to beat myself up so easily over it.

I hate that life is so fucking hard for me.  Let me clarify.  It’s not physically hard or monetarily hard (I’m ashamed to say), but the energy I use to do anything of significance is emotionally exhausting.   I can make a mountain out of any molehill, and I do it every time I do anything, without fail.  Even when I’m going to do something I like, such as hang out with my best friend, I have to talk myself into going.  If  I need to do something I really fear (like find a real job, my personal nemesis.  My therapist said that no one likes it, but it’s a phobia with me), then it takes me ten times the amount of time it takes a normal person.

I’ve used this example before, but it’s apt.  When my best friend separated from her husband and agonized about what to do, her mom said, “Kiki, you’ll be fine with him, and you’ll be fine without him.”  I joked that my mom’s answer would be, “Minna, your life will be awful with him, and your life will be awful without him.”  It’s true, though.  That is my family mentality–there is no right decision, only a wrong one and a wronger one.

It’s a no-win situation, and I know that I get myself caught in it all the fucking time.  I see what I want, and I see a barrier between me and my heart’s desire.  It doubly-sucks that I am the one who put the barrier there.  I hate the fact that I am the one creating the obstacles in my way.  It doesn’t make it easier to deal with the barrier because I just heap on the shame and blame along with doing everything I can to avoid going through the barrier.

The amount of time I put into avoiding doing the shit I need to do is just stupid.  I mean, if I could put it out of my mind during the avoidance time, that would be one thing.  However, I brood on the thing I need to be doing the entire time I’m studiously avoiding doing said deed.  It’s so fucked-up.

I’m exhausted.  If I could, I would take my rusty pitchfork and jab at my brains until they turned to goo and ran out of my nostrils.  My dreams suck.  My motivation sucks.  My energy sucks.  I suck–and not in the good way.  Bah.  Humbug.

I envisioned blogging about politics because they fucking kill me, they really do.  I would be a snarky, lefty political blog that was both erudite and amusing.  Then I realized that political blogging is hard work (what with all the fact-checking that one is supposed to do), so I decided to scrap that.  I would comment on politics as I saw fit, but I wouldn’t make it a daily habit.

Instead, I felt more a need to blog about personal shit because, after all, my blog is all about me.  It says so right in the title.  My blog, my domain.  My thoughts get jumbled when they are in my head, so it helps to write it down.   To my surprise, people wanted to read what I had to write, and that only propelled me to write even more.

My goal was to present my issues in an amusing and erudite way.   Even my posts about my depression were eloquent because I have had dealt with it for so fucking long.  I know that I have a way with words, and I am proud of my ability to weave a tale that engages even as it meanders aimlessly along the way.

Now.  To the crux of my post today.   But first, the video of the day.  It’s Depeche Mode’s Wrong, and a h/t to my fake-hubby #1, Tattoosydney for sharing it with me over at BJ.   I had to link the official video because embedding is disabled, and you really need to click on the link because it’s the official video that resonates with me.*  Meanwhile, here is a live version of the song.

As more people started commenting on my blog, I realized another reason I was blogging and posting my blog entries (as opposed to just writing for myself) is because I kept thinking how much it would have meant to me to have a blog like this to read when I was a teenager.  Ok, it wouldn’t have been a blog because we didn’t have blogs back in the stone ages, but if I had been able to read anything like this blog entry (and yes, I’m linking to that post again, damn it.  It’s a really good one) before I started dating, I would have been better prepared for sex.  I most likely wouldn’t have gotten into the situation I did in Thailand, and I certainly would have gotten over the guilt at being highly-sexual earlier.

See, back then, good (Christian) girls didn’t have sex.  Good (Christian) girls didn’t write about sex.  And, certainly, good (Christian) girls didn’t write about how much they enjoyed fucking someone(s) who wasn’t (weren’t) their husbands.  I was heavily invested in being a good (Christian) girl being as brainwashed as I was, and the conflict between my upbringing and my extremely hedonistic nature caused me much grief.

So.  I had more flashbacks in taiji class this past Saturday.  This time, though, they were movies instead of stills.  I had a substitute (who was a great teacher, and the rest of the class was excellent), so I didn’t get to discuss it with Julie at the time.  I just breathed deeply through my tears and tried to root myself.  The rest of the class was great, and I thought I was fine with it.  I went grocery shopping at the co-op next door, and then I walked outside in 38° wearing a t-shirt and sweats.  I drove home with the windows open, and that made me happy.

When I got home, though, I crashed–and I crashed hard.  All the depression, all the negative beliefs, all the stuff I had thought I had overcome came surging back.  I was overwhelmed by the intensity of the debilitating obliteration that was coursing through my body.   It was a palpable hit that felt…well…really shitty.

I need to break here for a minute to add something.  I haven’t blogged about this because it’s so fucking raw.  As I mentioned earlier, I pride myself on writing erudite and amusing blog entries.  Barring that, I expect them to be eloquent.  Melancholia is a beautiful word, even if it’s an ugly thing.  The words I now have to use are just ugly.  Incest.  Molestation.  Sexual abuse.  Ugly, ugly, ugly words.

Plus, I have no amusing patter about this topic.  I have no wisdom, and I certainly have no eloquence.  I am raw and disjointed, and I hate showing that side of me.

If you knew me in my previous incarnation, you most likely would not have known that I was severely depressed.  I hid it extremely well for the most part, and when I couldn’t hide it, I withdrew.  Only my really close friends knew what I was going through, and, of course, my therapist.

If you met me at a party, you would think I was charming, funny, raunchy, amusing, and perhaps intoxicating.  My public persona was deliberately created in order to help me get through life.  The problem was, after a time, I was compelled to put on that mask every time I left the house, whether I really wanted to or not.

I think of my blog like that in some ways.  I have been as honest and open as I can, but I have also hidden behind my words to a certain extent.  Most of the things I’ve written about are issues I’ve dealt with for most of my life.  I’ve written about all of them in the past, so I can write about them now with a certain ease.

This flashback shit is new to me and very raw.  I hate it because it exposes everything that is ugly, messy, disgusting, and wrong with me.

I am afraid that the new me is either another mask or too fragile to handle this sustained pressure.

To top things off, memories of my horrible relationship I had in Thailand are flooding my mind as well, mingling with my childhood memories, which I am still not completely convinced are real.  For the rest of Saturday and for most of Sunday, my mind was pelted with negative memories.  Mercifully, memories of the positive sex I’ve had in my life would show up once in awhile to conquer the negative memories, which allowed my mind a temporary respite from the horror.

I talked to friends Saturday, but then I did what I do best–I hid.  I withdrew into my shell, hunkered down, put on a happy face, and tried desperately to go numb.  My mind screamed at me to cut, to burn, to find someone to abuse me in order to reinforce my negative beliefs, to binge and purge, to do something, anything to numb the pain and make it all go the fuck away.

With all the positive emotions I’ve been truly experiencing in the last year, joy, love, happiness, peace, I had forgotten that I would have to  feel the negative emotions as well–such as rage, despair, agony, and white-hot, soul-searing pain.

The pain consumed me.  The demons came swarming out and did their damnedest to convince me that the only way to end the pain was to stop feeling once again.  I shut myself down the best I could, and the soul-deadening numbness settled over me again.  However, the mask, it no longer fits quite right, so the pain was still there, lingering, underneath the numbness.

In addition, the numbness felt worse than the pain because it wasn’t real.  It wasn’t–anything.  I was locked up again inside a cage of my own creation, and I could feel the real me suffocating.

The irony is, the little girl in me wants to grow up.  She thinks it’s time.  It’s the adult me who DOES NOT WANT TO FUCKING DEAL WITH THIS.

I want to rip my head off and scour my brain with lye so I can forget what happened to me.

I want to rip my heart out so I can stop the pain from crippling me.

I want to rip my brains out so I can stop thinking all the fucking time.

I have talked to more friends since.  I have a therapist appointment tomorrow morning.  Ironically, I had just decided to go from seeing her three times a month to every other week when the flashbacks hit me out of the blue.  I am going to chill with my best friend tomorrow night.  I am going to post this blog entry despite the fact that I think it sucks.

I hate showing weakness.  I hate displaying the ugly bits from my life in anything less than an amusing light.  I hate how small and frightened and disgusting I feel right now.

The only silver-and-black lining in the cloud is that this time, when my friends tell me that my negative self-beliefs are bullshit, there is a very small part of me who agrees.

Otherwise, I got nothing.

*I’ve made the wrong choices for most of my life.  I struggled to free myself from my demons, even as I had a mask of happiness soldered to my face.  Then, just when I finally break free from the demons, I am hit by a bus and killed.  Or in my case, sent back to hell again.

I have never decorated any place I’ve lived because I’ve never felt at home.  Now, this might be because I haven’t found the right place yet, but I think it’s more because I knew at quite an early age that I simply did not fit.

I got teased throughout elementary school, junior high, and high school.  I was semi-popular in college, but only after I totally remade myself over from the sad sack I was in high school.  I lost a ton of weight, slapped on the makeup, started dressing outlandishly, cut my hair asymmetrically, and wore mismatching earrings.  By then, I knew there was no hope in hell that I could fit in, so I decided to be as different as possible.  On a vanilla campus like St. Olaf, it wasn’t that hard to stand out, especially because the place was so damn homogenous back when I attended.

I made friends easily, but I was careful not to let them in too far.  It was another lesson I had learned early on–those closest to you were the ones who could fuck you up and over the worst.  College was pleasant enough, until I started falling apart.  During my third year, I would black out while talking to people or while attending class, and I would come to about ten minutes later with no idea what the hell had just happened.  The funny part was that the person with whom I was conversing (or the prof of the class) never had a clue that I was gone.  In fact, I got all “A”s and “A-”s that semester.  Granted, I did for most of the rest of my earlier classes as well, but I was actually awake in those.  For that one semester, I fell asleep in every fucking class every single day.  Ok, I’m not sure that ‘fell asleep’ is the best term for it, but it’s close enough.

In addition, I was blacking out while driving, too.  The same thing would happen in that I would come to ten minutes later with no idea where I was or how I got there.  I have no idea why I never got in an accident during that time in my life, but I am very grateful that I didn’t.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t say that I was blacking out because it was more like, one minute I was awake and then ten minutes later, I was awake again.  It’s hard to explain, but take my word for it that it was no fun to experience.

During the same time, I was in the middle of my first true love relationship.  I loved him with all my heart, and I just knew we were meant to be–despite the fact that we weren’t.  From that relationship I learned that who I was wasn’t enough and that even when someone said he loved me, I couldn’t take it to be true.  I have had the unique knack for picking partners who confirm my worst fears about myself, which, in turn, makes me shy away even further.

After D and I broke up for the last time, I was shattered.  I tried to carry on, but I did a piss-poor job of it.  I went to Asia for a semester abroad, and while in Thailand, I started a very destructive relationship that reinforced the notion that I didn’t deserve to be treated, well, like a human being.  It’s a good thing that I had to leave Thailand, or who knows how it would have ended up?  He never hit me with his fists, but there are many ways to kill a woman’s soul.

Back in America, I went off the rails.  My self-esteem, which has never been good, plunged.  I became convinced that I didn’t deserve to live.  I was a horrible person who should just die already.  I engaged in self-destructive behaviors, partly because I couldn’t care less if I died.  No, it was more than that.  I wanted to die, but I didn’t have the strength to actually end my life.  Yes, that’s how I thought of it.  I was too fucking weak to kill myself, so I tried to kill myself through neglect.

We don’t talk about suicide much as a culture because it’s not a very comfortable topic.  We rather pretend it didn’t exist or that it only happens to other people.  Well, I can tell you that approximately fifteen years of my life, I thought about it every day.  Sometimes, it was only a brief thought, and sometimes, it was a drawn-out fantasy.  Ironically, telling myself that I could kill myself if it got too bad was one of the things that got me through my worst depressions.  I have heard that from other people who suffer severe depression as well.

“I could always slit my wrists.  Along the vein, not across it.”  ”I can get in my car, turn it on, and fall asleep.”  ”I could walk into a lake, like Virginia Woolf.”  ”I could just not get out of bed.”  ”I could hang myself.”

What stopped me?  Fear.  I didn’t know what was on the other side, and I was afraid that it was worse than life on earth.  Love.  I didn’t want anyone I loved to find me.  I live alone, so the chances are, it would be my brother or a good friend coming to check on me a week after not hearing from me.  That would not be a pretty sight.   After I got my cats, it was because they needed me.  Sure, other people could take care of them, but not as well as I did.

For those years, I wandered this earth as if I were a ghost.  I got so good at not being present, I’ve had people not acknowledge my presence, even when I was standing a foot away from them.  I was so convinced that I didn’t belong and that I wasn’t worth seeing, I made myself invisible.  Believe me, that’s hard to do when you look the way I do, but I managed it.  I was dead inside, anyway, so why bother trying to look alive?

Now we get to the crux of the matter.  During this time in my life, I would sometimes see this visual phenomenon when I was driving on the interstate.  It’s hard to describe, but it’s like there was a wrinkle running down my sightline, and it was shimmering.   It was calling to me, and it was all I could do not to turn my car to follow it (which would have been detrimental to me and to anyone around me).  This happened a few times before I realized that I was seeing the death membrane.   No, that’s not a real term–it’s one I made up to describe this phenomenon.  What is it?  It’s the thin line (literally) that separates life from death.  It strongly called out to me, and it was beautiful.  Scary as hell, but beautiful, too.  Every time I resisted going to it, I felt a tiny twinge of regret in my heart that I didn’t give in to its siren song.

I don’t know when the daily call of suicide started muting itself.  It’s not something that abruptly ends–at least, not for me.  I still think about it from time to time, and once in a while, it flares up.  You see, I’m still not comfortable in this world.  I’m still not totally sold that I want to do the hard work necessary to feel like a viable human being.  Hell, I’m not even sure what that would entail.  I’ve been a mimic for so long, I’m not sure I can be the real thing.  More to the point, I’m not sure I want to try.

You have a fucking weird laugh.  You talk too much.  You’re cynical and lazy and sloppy and fucking moody.  You hog all the covers, and you toss and turn all night.  I fucking HATE you!  Get the fuck away from me!”

You’ve had that feeling, right?  Well, what do you do if that feeling is directed towards yourself?  I mean, I can’t just take a vacation from me.  I can’t storm out of the house, hop into the car, and race across the state because I will still be fucking there. Even when I sleep, I can’t get away from me as most of my dreams have me prominently involved.  I can understand why some people drink to oblivion in order to escape themselves.

I feel this way less and less, but I am feeling it right now.  I just want to take a break from me–to get as far away as I possibly can.  I don’t like being in my skin, though I am grateful that the weather is twenty degrees cooler this week than it was last week.

However, this post is not about my self-loathing, per se.  It’s about relationships.  ”What the fuck, Minna?”  I hear you say.  ”How the hell do you make THAT leap?”  Like this.  Sit back, relax, and connect the dots with me.

I cannot stand being around me all the time.  I get on my last nerves, and I wince at some of the stupider things I do and say.  I hate my obsessive thoughts, and I hate my clingy/push away dichotomous behavior.  So, if I can’t stand me sometimes, then how the hell could someone else?

More to the point, I couldn’t stand being around someone else twenty-four/seven.  I know me.  I know the limits of my capability for companionship.  Those limits stop weeeell short of twenty-four hours a day, seven hours a week.  This becomes more and more important to me as I get older because I can still get tripped up in the ‘shoulds’ and ought tos’ when it comes to coupling.  I ‘should’ want to live with someone.  I ‘ought to’  want to be in a committed, monogamous relationship because–well, just because.

Now, I am usually good at keeping societal expectations at an arm’s length.  I have learned to ignore the howling of the dogs for the most part because I know that for the most part, I do not peacefully coexist with mainstream values.  However, the couple thing is so pervasive, it’s not easy to escape.  I sometimes think there’s something wrong with me because I cannot maintain a healthy, loving relationship.  What the hell is wrong with me, I query.  What I neglect to question, though, is that many people are equally bad at maintaining relationships.  It’s not uncommon for someone my age to be on a second or third marriage.

I think a more pertinent question is, what would a healthy, loving relationship look like to me?  I mean, let’s strip out Hollywood movies (which I don’t watch) and Harlequin romances (which I used to read, much to my everlasting shame) and all the fairy tales we’re force-fed (I don’t need a prince to save me), and what do we have left?

We have, from what I’ve been told, something that takes work and effort to keep going.  It’s difficult for me to look at a longterm monogamous relationship with anything akin to joy and expectation.  I feel something more akin to dread and dismay.  Yes, it’s the stereotypical ball-and-chain vision, but let’s take a closer look at it, shall we?

Let me digress for a moment.  I have a best friend, Kiki, who has been my best friend for the last fifteen years.   Over the years, our relationship has fluctuated and changed with the times and the demands of our lives.  I see her once or twice a month, and we have a blast every time we get together.  We email and call intermittently, and she is my best friend in the world.  Every time we get together, it feels as if we’ve never left each other side.  I have that kind of relationship with many of my friends, and I’ve come to realize how much I savor that kind of timelessness in a relationship.

Why the fuck am I babbling about friendships as I’m pontificating on relationships?  Because I think we can learn something from friendships in application to romantic relationships.  In this country, we tend to put a lot of pressure on our monogamous romantic relationships.  To varying degrees, we believe that we should give our love to one person and one person only.  Ideally, that person should be our best friend, our confidant/e, our everything.  I know, that’s a gross simplification, but it’s basically true.

I am uneasy with that because there is no way one person can be everything to you.  This is why I brought up friendships earlier in this post.  I go to different friends for different things.  When I want to drink, talk politics, dance, smoke, and maybe pick up someone, I hang out with Kiki–or when I want to be around a kid.  When I want to eat good food, go to the library, take a walk around the park, or watch MST3K movies (or Depp movies or Potter movies or Batman movies), I chill with Natasha.  Going to a ball game, any ball game where I will eat bad for you (but taste so good) ballpark food?  I hook up with Marie and off we go.  Taiji and shooting the shit about everything from relationships to politics?  That would be Choolie’s department.

I wouldn’t expect to go to a ball game with Natasha or talk politics with Marie.  Taiji and Kiki aren’t a natural match, and I can’t imagine hanging around kids with Choolie, especially since neither of us has any.  I wouldn’t feel bad if Natasha went to a Potter movie without me (well, not much, anyway, as long as she also saw it with me).   I let my friends be who they are, and I am content to see them when I see them.

However, when I am WITH someone, all of a sudden, everything is more serious.  The one serious girlfriend I had taught me how NOT to play mind games since she was so good at them.  She expected me to ask her to go with me every time I went out, even if it was something she didn’t want to do.  She wouldn’t tell me why she was mad at me (I still hate that one), but expected me to KNOW.

All my ex-boyfriends were passive-aggressive, and it nearly drove me batty.  It seems like everything that is good about me magnifies in a relationship as does everything that is bad.

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating.  Ideally, I would like to see someone once or twice a week.  I do not want to cohabitate, and I like sleeping alone.  I like IM’ing better than calling.  I like having the window open during the night and periodically typing to the other person.  I like dancing, going out to eat once in a while, sports, and lots of sex.  The last one can’t be emphasized enough.  I am tired of dating people who don’t want sex as much as I do, but who say they do.

The most important thing, though, is that I’m not strictly monogamous.  However, I’m not a true polyamorous person, either.  I like having a primary partner with the ability to have dalliances outside the main relationship.  It’s not a very popular opinion, however, and I know it’s not easy to navigate an open relationship.  In addition, I also know that I can be by turns irrationally jealousy and positively aloof.

In other words, I still have shit to figure out about myself before entangling with another.  It makes me glum, though, to realize that what I’m looking for will be very difficult to find.  Sometimes, I wish I could be content living in the mainstream.