The Gnawing

I'm sitting on my couch, home from work for the second day in a row. A friend asked me “What do you think is gnawing at you?” I didn’t have a reply per se, only echoes and whispers bouncing around in my head uncatchable, undecipherable. That gnawing became an itch and the itch became a burn and the burn became a hurt, a dull hurt, non-cataclysmic really. An ordinary hurt. The deciphering began with thoughts of my school guidance counselor. We had an affair when I was senior in high school. I thought he loved me, thought he would make good on his promise to disappear over the summer in the BWCA so that his family would think he was dead. Thought he really would run away with me into happy-never-land. I didn’t know that he was doing the mid-life crisis thing. He was 40 (I remember our first kiss – his birthday in his office at school with black balloons floating about). Even after he told his wife about his secret feelings for me (he didn’t mention the actual physical stroking to her) and he dumped me, I still loved him. I also still believed he loved me. I believed in his love until recently. I’m 40-ish now, and a teacher. The thought of kissing or touching or promising a student I’d run away with him makes me sick. I’m just now beginning to transfer that sickness onto my view of what the guidance counselor did. He was sick. I was vulnerable. But that’s not the hurt that’s gnawing at me.

The guidance counselor was a kind man, a pillar of the community, respected in his school and in his church. He had two lovely daughters, one vivacious and outgoing sweet-heart and one beautiful and precious child with special needs. He was compassionate and nurturing. Truly, he was. I looked to him for help with my extremely confusing mental health issues – described my dissociation to him – turned to him for support in my effort to stop doing drugs. He tried to help me with all of it, by turning his comfort sexual. In no time I ceased going to his office for legitimate help and began going to his office for butterfly inducing kisses and thrilling sexual touching and to make plans to finally consummate the love. As upsetting as this story is, it’s not the hurt that’s gnawing at me.

She is a beautiful, funny, outgoing, compassionate woman. She is respected in her community and in her church. She has three successful and charming children. As a child I turned to her for comfort and safety and to meet my most basic needs. Indeed, she did meet some of my needs. I had food and shelter and clothing. She “enriched” my life with camping and ballet lessons and trips to the ice skating rink. Our extended family went on snowmobile trips and cooked hot dogs over open fires and drank hot cocoa from thermoses. But she hurt me.

There is a hole into which I peer sometimes. The blackness swallows me and my stomach twists in knots. Sometimes I see things that are like a movie to me. Sometimes I make up horrible stories to go with the blackness. This is what gnaws at me. I don’t know if the hole is the reservoir of feelings in which I dumped my reactions to my mother and the guidance counselor, or if it is another abomination, darker than the others. This blackness that pours from the hole and swallows my soul is shame, even a deep hatred for my self, a desire to be nothing for I hurt so badly I can’t survive. I have harbored this hole inside for as long as I can remember. It’s who I am. I believe it is beyond what mom did. I believe something happened when I was very young. I know Sarah has some knowledge of it, but even she only has vague shadows of foggy memories.

I remember being pre-school age, and wanting to play in just my underwear because I wanted to be an Indian. And as I paddled my canoe down the hardwood hallway, I was ashamed of my nakedness and felt dirty for wanting to play naked. I remember being 6 or 7 and having a fever and walking into the living room and announcing to my mom and dad that I hated myself. I remember always wondering why my parents loved me, because I was such bad girl, so I had to keep up the act I was performing so that they would continue to love me. I remember sitting on the couch with my sister playing a game and she explained to me that she was the best and I whole-heartedly agreed with her. I remember crying myself to sleep in fear that I would go to hell. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and creeping into my parents’ room to check to see if they were still there or if the rapture had come and taken them away from me, knowing I’d be left behind with my sin. I remember at age 5, singing in church, wondering if I was really the only one singing and everyone else was pretending or if it was me pretending. I remember how easy it was to please my grade school teachers. I remember walking on rocks at a campground when I was 3 and wishing I was dead.

Forty years later I still wish I was dead. That’s what gnaws at me.

Forever Finality - Couldn't It Just Be For Awhile?

I'll start out by saying I'm basically safe. My husband is aware of all this, as is my therapist. I am in contact with both on a regular basis. I feel a little guilty dumping this on any readers who will be tweaked out by it - like I'm a drama queen stirring up shit - but then again I'm not twisting anyone's arm to read this. I'll be honest, I'm an exhibitionist and I want to expose myself, and you get to be the voyeur.

My boundaries within have crumbled and the shame I try to hold in seeps out into every bone, muscle, tendon, nerve, and thought that is me. I am shame. I am deep, ugly, hateful, depressed shame that comes from before I was old enough to know what shame was. I feel like I was born evil and although my adult brain can comprehend the flawed reasoning, I still feel the shame. I worked it all out with my therapist last night - how as a child it's not ME who did anything abnormally wrong, the shame actually comes from the messages I received as a child from THEM and those ugly messages became internalized and here I am, 40 some years old, and shaming myself. Shame on me. Shame on me. Shame on me.

I have no place to go, now, to escape. I am steeped in shame. As usual, I turn to the Final Solution that comforts me, the ultimate escape from which there is no return. They have taken away the guns and locked them up, and I'm beyond the passive suicidal gestures of popping pills or slashing wrists. I want to do the real thing with no chance of survival. Guns, I know, are the best, but what if there are no guns? I've thought about this conundrum a lot.

I figured it out. It's about -15 F here, fucking cold, and there's a huge lake in my hometown that is not frozen. If I jumped off the bridge into the freezing water I can't imagine any rescuers could reach me before hypothermia sets in and my body quits responding to my brain's messages to swim and I sink. My guess is that it would take about 5 minutes.

I still have a hard time justifying the Final Solution. On the one hand, it represents a final peace and resting for me. But does that sweet ending justify the sadness on the other hand? I have learned that people love me; my husband, my children, my friends....As much as I'd like to think they would quickly and easily adjust and move on, I know the truth is that there would be some grief. My sweet ending would result in their grief. But there grief would not be forever, so what's the proper balance? Is my forever ending worth their temporary grief?

I've been here before. I've traveled this road. I know it's twists and turns. Somewhere in my head I hear a voice telling me that my logic is not sound. Another voice tells me that this in not a matter of logic, but rather a matter of the heart. Yet another voice tells me that the I'm not looking for a Forever Finality, I'm looking for some rest for awhile. But the loudest voice right now says I should jump.

Mouth Fucking Causes Nirvana

Muddled messages from inner space eek out in intellectual visions jam fucking packed with emotion. Shit. I see this little girl up against the wall getting mouth fucked. I’m not even going to sugar coat it. Mouth fucked. Then, back on earth, my back hurts. Then my head. I try to figure out if it’s a fairy tale. But my therapist, he says to maybe just leave the “why” hanging. But to know if it’s a fairy tale or not, is that a “why?” I want to know if something like that happened to me. But maybe I’ll never know. But that’s not good enough. I want to fucking know what happened. It really freaks me out the stuff I see in my head. There’s stuff I know, like the rape when I was 18, but I was dissociative well before then. Big split as a baby – 2? 3? 4? When stressed beyond capacity I go to a place where I can’t really talk, but I think. The stuff I think is basic, like “this soft,” or “make myself small.” I'm not thinking in words, more like pictures and senses and the action. No words. When I’m that way, I feel….I can put words to the feelings in retrospect but not when I’m there. I identify fear. I identify terror. I identify despair, hopelessness, and being alone forever and ever and ever. I experience giving up in that place, a surrender that is complete and not of my own free will. A surrender that brings me to a place of no suffering. You know, we humans are supposed to have free will, but there comes a point as a little one when complete surrender to terror is mandatory, because there is no way out. That suffocates me. It fills my mouth and throat and chokes me. It makes me pee my pants. And when I look back on it, makes me feel aroused. Kinda. Not normal arousal….more like an uncomfortable stimulation in my privates coupled with a sick feeling in my chest and my throat closes up. Right now, my back hurts and I feel panic. Panic and arousal. That doesn’t make a lick of fucking sense to me. Sometimes I look back on the birth of Sarah. I’m 12, and cannot integrate the deep shame and depression I feel with who I act like. You know, it’s not like I could label the feelings shame and depression back then. No. I hated myself. I loathed who I was. I made myself sick. I did everything I could to portray a different person to everyone else. That’s how Sarah was born. Grown up at 12, hateful, angry. The anger protected me, I see now, from the self-hatred. I was 12, and didn’t know what to do with the hate. So I gave it to her, she turned it on Amanda inside and everyone else. What about all those years between 2 and 12? Barren? No...I was such an outgoing child. Adults liked me. I was full of energy and wit, full of ideas and desires. I read. I read everything I could get my hands on. I performed at school. I performed at church. I spent every waking hour in a book or watching the adults watch me, deciphering their reactions, so that I could manufacture the best performance. When I could. Sometimes I holed up in the closet, playing with marbles. I played with Barbie dolls too, acting out the dreams in my head. Acting and performing for myself. Working it out. Playing. Playing. Imagining. Children imagine stuff a lot, right? So that’s normal. And I had friends. We imagined stuff all the time, and acted it out. I like playing with Kim and Sherry and Bella. I like pretending with them. I liked them because they knew how to play with me. And every night I put my self to sleep by touching myself. Every night. Couldn’t stop. Deeply ashamed. Which, as an adult, makes me wonder if I’m a born sicko. Born fucked up. Born with no self. Or something happened, something ike ‘trauma.’ Only I don’t know what it is. If I don’t know what it is, then that means maybe it didn’t happen and that means yes, I’m a born Fuck Up Psycho Twisted Yuck. If I’m a Yuck, then yes, I should just go ahead and drink until I blow my head off. Because if I’m a Yuck, then I can never trust myself. And if I might act out the fantasies in my brain then I’m better off dead as is the rest of the planet. Oh, and then, the 3rd major break – took on the Rae name and persona. I renamed myself. I was drinking a lot. Rae drank a lot. Rae got treatment. Rae goes to AA meetings. Rae teaches. Where is the "core self" Amanda in all this? Still very ashamed, I can tell you that much. Still hating herself. Still a little baby. Still terrified. Still hoping to make herself small. Getting fucked in the mouth in a corner, that’s where. Only, I think I’m fucking myself. That’s why I hate myself so much. Sure ain’t no on else fucking my mouth. No one else makes me do anything I don’t want to do. So I fuck my mouth. I choke my throat. I press against my chest and have to pee. Always, that fucking having to pee. I can’t hold the pee. Surrender. Surrender to terror. It’s awful, empty, and zen beautiful, this sense of surrender. In his book Essence of the Heart Sutra, His Holiness the Dalai Lama defined Nirvana as the "state beyond sorrows," or a "state of freedom from cyclic existence."A child can reach nirvana. I know I reached Nirvana, but only when I was two and getting fucked in the mouth.

Book information: http://inandoutoficeglass.weebly.com/

Wolf

I saw a huge black wolf stand in the road, staring at me. She just stood there- and I slowed the car down- and she just stood there. I was almost at a crawl and she sauntered off, into the ditch and beyond. For a moment, I was stunned as I was certain she spoke to me. This is what she said...

“I am a wolf, so what?” She said as she padded across the cold November pavement. She stopped in the tall grass sticking out of the snow, turned her head to me, and said again, “So what?” I sped by. But the look and the moment remained.

“I crossed the road, but I have my own path.” It leads deep into the lonely wood. She longs for something.

“I find prey, I gorge myself. So what?” Fine predator, she is. And scavenger. And thief. Nature is cruel in its circle, ritualistic in its rhythm. She eats and hungers for more, and she sleeps.

In her eye I saw that cool acceptance of her life, that cool acceptance of her hunger. I saw the longing that drives her to her own. Loyal to her instinct, loyal to her pack, she runs along the path hungry.

“I howl at the moon, so what?” A cry of union, a vocal tear dropping into the air, a song of calling. I do not run from emptiness, I fill it with my own tears. I surrender to its mystery.

I am a wolf, so what? I would rather shed a million tears, than have nothing to cry about. I’d rather feel the absence of you, than never know I was alone. I’d rather celebrate my hunger, driven to feed, than blindly starve.

I am a wolf, I say, so what? I will not run from her magic. I surrender to her power, cease fighting for control. It is the life that flows through me, silent and intuitive. I will obey its rules. I am It.

As in all life, I saw her message: Accept. Surrender. Live. And now, be hungry. The hunger moves me along the path.

Turning to the deep longing, rather than away, I discover its echo. I think we see ourselves and god in the bottomless eyes, windows to the soul, of the ones we love. I think this is the magic of connection; we taste and we know we belong, and if we must leave we will someday return. It's a taste of who we really are. It's no perversion of something holy. It is holy.

Angry

I don't usually write poetry, but I've tried a few times. I really wanted to be in a poetry slam once, and I wrote this one because it sounded angry enough to be in a slam, and was kind of a slam against the slam. I never read it because I was too afraid.

I could write poetry like you-
All pissed off at white man’s
Oppressive culture eating my freedom
Like maggots in a wound.
And the atrocity of war – Big Business
Christian Nation claiming oil under
The sands of heathens.
And the gross injustice of rich men
And women, visible over the layers
Of poverty and disease in Africa,
New York, Superior Street.
But instead, I write angry poems
About me.
Pissed at me for getting raped,
Being a drug addict.
Wasting years and brain cells.
Pissed at identity confusion –
Maybe I’m gay and that’s why
I hate myself so much.
I could write like you,
Throw in a “Fuck” or two.
But I’m busy
Being pissed at how
I’m too afraid to Love.

The Lilac Bush

I transplanted a lilac bush right outside my bedroom window. I dug it carefully out of the ground at my grandma’s. As a child I played in her wild wood, which was also my backyard. She had pin cherry trees, lilac bushes, rose bushes, birch, and moss and ferns. There was a ditch through the whole area, as a child it seemed like a river. Wonderful place to run to. The dream, of course, was to transplant this happy bit of my childhood into my adult life and wake up from restful dreams to the sweet smell of lilac wafting through the open window on lazy summer mornings. The bush is dying.

It’s been thriving for 6 or so years. Every year more blossoms, every year more growth. Two years ago it began to turn brown in the summer, a fungus or rot or parasite. I don’t know the intricacies of lilacs. I pruned. I watered. Last fall it seemed hopeless. By July it had curled up leaves, black/brown, and I anticipated cutting it down. I couldn’t do it in the fall with so much already turning from bright flaming colors to the ash grey of winter. And during the winter months, well, one can hardly discriminate the dead from the sleeping. Now it’s spring, with the yellow green of buds barely coming out to the sun. This time of year is ugly to me, as that which was coldly beautiful in the white frozen winter thaws to dirty life.

My lilac tree has green buds on it. Just a part of it, not the whole thing. It’s sickly. The leaves that dried and curled last summer are still on some of the branches and other branches live with those lovely buds of promise. I cannot cut it down now. But I am terrified to prune. So much would have to go. This branch, with its decay, that branch with its death. Another branch with its criticism of life itself, and the branch whose demons have choked the promise of spring from memory. In the pruning I could kill it. There might not be enough left sustain life. The roots of my happy childhood are shallow and the soul of the tree is not at home. If I begin to cut away that which is dead and that which is dying, the sickness, who can tell me if I might not cut away the soul of the tree? Who can tell me if the soul of the lilac is still not deep in the ground at grandma’s, in the wild wood, where I ran when I was sad?

Wolves in the Distance

A makeshift tent in the wilderness, complete with fire ring and fire, becomes my home away from home. The flames lick my toes and warm them against the cold. I’ve gotten so lost I don’t quite know where I’m supposed to rest my soul let alone where I should next go. I’m a nomad in my own life, not that that’s such a bad thing. Beyond my fire ring I hear the howl of wolves, not that that’s such a bad thing either. The sound keeps me alive in fear and wonder and amazement. The fire brings me hope. Dissociative Identity Disorder is the same – the same as the howl and the tent and the fire. If I think about it, my head gets a little loopy. I can go from holding a loaded gun in my mouth to carrying that wisp of hope one might call integration, another might call salvation, another joy. I feel suicidal and at peace. I think I get lost in despair, only to find someone inside holds great promise and a bright future. I sink into my personal shame and then burst forth with acceptance of my selves and my past. I crawl into my tent after putting another log on the fire, and howl with the wolves.