CW: Graphic intrusive, obsessive thoughts described as though they were actually happening.
I wake up and roll onto my back to enjoy that extra hour in bed that a Saturday buys. But within seconds I’m covered in blood, candy red, from head to toe. I’m used to it. I just cross my arms over my chest and live in this sarcophagus until I realize I’ll get no further sleep.
My jaw’s already clenched. My teeth already itch. A truck beeping outside makes my heart race and pound. I have to pee and I don’t know whether it’s real or not—is my bladder really full? Or is this a false alarm like everything else?
In the bathroom I examine my neck for wrinkles. But I can’t look at my neck without seeing it being taken to by scissors, by blades, by ropes… so I look away. I keep a “safe” distance from the mirror. One where I can’t see all the flakes of dead skin. All the lifted edges that invite fingernails and tweezers. Just put on moisturizer fast and get out of there.
I feel like being hugged, so I choose a leotard top. I pull on my softest, tightest jeans and try to ignore the pain it causes to the nearly invisible hairs on my legs. A mental note to shave later.
I carry several empty glasses down the stairs, but I trip on the bottom step.
My hands are immediately shattered like antique silk. Unrecognizable shreds of flesh with glass struck through. It’s ten times the amount of glass I carried. Ten times the amount of blood in my body, now on the floor.
I step over this mess of myself. I leave her—me—to contemplate brokenness.
I have tea to make. And dishes to clean. And work to get to. And there’s a ticking clock. Get your butt at the computer before these spawning nightmares crowd the room. Before your brain remembers how awful they are—how awful you are—and tries to explain your worth to no one.
I sit down—earplugs in, headphones on—but it’s too late. The voices of the past are in me and I must set aside the time to tell them off. I mentally dictate hopeless unsent letters that refuse to be forced from my fingertips into the keyboard. These letters will torture me all morning instead. Why didn’t you believe me when I was hurting? When I said I was different? What have I done to be untrustworthy?
I lie down. Tap out a crossword puzzle on my phone. Wait for my scant focus on the game to chase away knife-sharp memories. Beyond the phone screen, overhead, is the faint awareness of my body, dangling… swinging.
I walk to the grocery store. Every car swerves into me. Every car maims me. I cry over my destroyed legs, provided my eyeballs are still in my head. I’m not walking with anyone else, but I remember the times I have. I remember the times when the cars swerved into them. Remember the grief of every gruesomely lost loved one, with each half-block I walk.
Putting away groceries is a puzzle. Food items no longer exist unless they are part of the two-dimensional snapshot I see upon opening my fridge. What food has died back there? What food have I wasted?
It’s a good day (believe it or not), so I dig in there a little. I come up with plenty of rotten items. Rotten with mold. Rotten with my guilt. I stare at the trashcan the way hoarders stare at trash bags on the show, Hoarders.
Just do it. It’s exposure. Just do it. I throw strawberries away with a knot in my stomach that won’t be shaken for hours. How brave I am.
I identify with the hoarders because I am one. I don’t hoard so much in physical objects but in digital ones. My devices are crippled by storage. Duplicates upon duplicates upon duplicates. The thought of backing up or updating my phone or computer makes me physically ill. I never solve it. I buy more storage. I bookmark more pages. I make more redundant files. All in the name of saving things and backing up, yet one little disaster could still wipe me out in a second.
I can’t even look at my devices with this in mind. Help, I think, in a little mouse’s voice. But can anyone help? Can anyone be gentle enough to help with something that brings so much panic at the mere thought of a deletion or lost redundancy? Hold my hand. I’m begging you.
I hoard in secret. I do everything in secret.
“Help, I think, in a little mouse’s voice… Hold my hand. I’m begging you.”
I change into clothes that hug me even tighter. Clothes that need washing but get sprayed down with lavender oil instead. This is my limit. I’m at my limit. I’m doing my best.
I drive myself to the rink. Now I’m the one swerving a car into things. Into lakes. Into guardrails. Over embankments. And I do the thing I’m supposed to do—remind myself that all of this is because of a medical condition. It’s not me, it’s my malfunctioning caudate nucleus. I turn up the song that’s playing—the one I’ve had on repeat thirty times today—and force myself to sing along. I let the calamities roll over me. I learn to say hello and goodbye with less interaction, less meaning, in between.
I arrive at the ice rink and it smells the way all rinks seem to. I like how the smell gets into my clothes. I like the way it makes my bottled water taste. The cold air is soothing. The cold air is ritual. I’m never dead here.
But I am vigilant. I scope things out. Who’s here? How loud is the music? Did I remember to bring my earplugs, just in case? Will I share the ice with elite skaters? Will I be intimidated into a corner?
On a bad day, there’s music so loud I can’t hear myself think. On a bad day, there’s someone there to tell me how absurd that is. Someone to splash more water on my already-shorting circuitry with their doubts. On a bad day, fast skaters swirl around me and my knees go stiff. I go deaf. All sound replaced by ringing. I go mute. I have a panic attack and can only be unlocked again with gentle questions and propranolol.
But it’s not a bad day. It’s a good day. I’m going to go out there and make my muscles preciously tired and sore. I’m going to do lutzes and camel spins that belie all my inner obstacles. That make you see me as not just normal but good at something. That do me a strange disservice.
Then I’ll switch to axel practice, that threshold I’ve been stuck at for over a decade. A legend in his eighties skates up to me after another failure. “I don’t know why you can’t do it. You’ve got the height, you’re not afraid—I don’t know why you can’t just—” And then he makes a simple punch into the air. It’s far from the first time he’s approached me with this confusion.
He doesn’t know why I can’t just, but I know why. It’s the same reason I couldn’t let go of darts in time when I was little, causing them to dive into the wall below the dartboard. It’s the same reason I was so delayed in learning to ride a bike, to do a cartwheel, to swim…
There’s a lag between my brain and body. A lag I have to compensate for. A lifetime spent “tricking” my body into doing what I want. An axel jump apparently demands I get extra wily.
Skating leaves me tired. And warm. And glowing. I drive home with a “rinsed off” brain. I appreciate the park as I drive through. I see some deer and no horrible accidents befall them.
It’s time for recovery. Time to appreciate this exhausted state and take care of my many joints that love to hurt. I lie down on my bed with ice packs and a snack. I open my tablet and put on my headphones, ready to zone out, but my body intrudes.
There’s nothing I want more in the world at this moment than to rest and relax, but my clothes itch and my sports bra is trying to kill me. I extricate myself from the offenders, tear them off with Hulk-like urgency. But the tingling/itching/crawling resumes.
I am tired. But the surface area of my skin wants to swing from trees and run marathons. It will settle for me doing a four-minute plank as I softly cry. Because this is torture. Because wanting rest and finding it so unattainable is torture.
I am supposed to go somewhere soon. See people I’m excited to see. I have to drive myself to places I’ve never been. Park my car someplace I’ve never parked. There might be other people coming—strange to me—and no one will warn me or explain their presence or even introduce me.
But I get myself there. Because I love the people I love. More exposure, I convince myself, but over time, deep down, I’ve come to see exposure as a double-edged, often cruel, therapy.
I breathe a deep sigh of relief once the car is parked, the restaurant chosen—once all the decisions are made. I start to drink and laugh and joke. And I try not to be too self conscious of whether I am “succeeding” at this interaction.
The night wears on, an emphasis on wears. My behind-the-scenes efforts burn out like flash paper and all I have left to give people is my “placid smile.” I’m self-conscious of how transparent my shutdowns are.
I try. I try so hard.
But a stranger did come and there’s an odd number of us. Nobody has spoken to me for hours and I’m pinned in the corner of the booth. Trapped. Live music has arrived like a death knell. If the band were any flavor stronger than “xylophonist in a sweater vest with saxophone accompaniment,” I would explode.
I sip a drink, stare into the middle distance and take deep breaths. My skin still crawls and buzzes. I want to, like always, unzip from it and go for a long walk, free of its agitated nerve endings.
I stare up at the sky, trying to tune out conversations and xylophones and chatter and cars. I die a few times. Rivulets of blood tease and tickle the hairs on my arms. But I just breathe through it.
At worst, all anyone around me has noticed is a bored girl. Not a dissociative girl. Not an autistic girl. Not a dead girl. Not a mentally ill girl. Not a girl with deep shame over vile visions. Not a girl who works hard to meet the low threshold of looking like a bored girl.
When I’m home I’ll need a vacuum of silence. I’ll need darkness the way we need air.
I’ll sit in my apartment and try to be proud of the exposure. Of what I withstood. Where is the uniformed official who will pin the badge of “You Passed as Normal Today” to my lapel?
“Not a dissociative girl. Not an autistic girl. Not a dead girl. Not a mentally ill girl. Not a girl with deep shame over vile visions.”
Because all anyone else would have seen was a girl waking up, then sleeping in. A girl washing her face and picking out clothes. A girl who never tripped on the stairs, nor was crushed by a car, nor swerved off a cliff. A girl who made her tea and sat down and stared at her computer for three hours… working? A girl who went to the rink and spun and jumped and practiced something that’s been giving her a hard time. A girl who had fun going out, then got bored, as some do.
A girl. Not a woman but a girl. Because she knows she’s an imposter here, even when no one else does.
I’ll crawl into bed, and my itchy skin will swirl around my body like a psychedelic nightmare. I’ll smear myself with magnesium and capsaicin, and both will somehow get into my eyes later. I’ll pin down my “too alive” legs with weighted blankets. Plug my ears and shield my eyes. Build a fortress of pillows to press against me…
Somehow I’ll get a few hours of sleep and somehow I’ll “pass” again tomorrow.
Until I won’t.
Until that next public panic attack or meltdown.
Because I have jumped through the hoops of normalcy not for my benefit but for yours. Because I have no clue how to talk about this burdensome, “too much” thing, to those who show no interest. To those who avoid the names of my diagnoses after I’ve drummed up so much courage to share them. Who ask no further questions.
Those people are many, if not most. And with each perceived avoidance, my willingness to speak without being asked grows more foreign. The “we don’t talk about this” gets heavier. And I fear I’ll never be myself again.