Tears

  It's not often that I write while I've been really triggered to anger - but I'm on the tail end of that, so let's try this out.

  I just finished having a yelling match with and at myself while my mom drove home from a show we went to. Once she left to give me space and get some essential supplies for a Shareeta panic attack (ice cream and root beer, in case you were wondering), I turned the vehement anger on myself. I have a tendency to do that.

  It started with being sick on top of the usual illness. To say that I've been struggling with my current state of limbo - not being diagnosed and being continually disabled - is an understatement. I've been questioning the value of my existence a lot lately. Not the best starting point. I've been trying to keep this all in perspective lately ("I have to get through these nasty repressed feelings, then things will get better" or "Heavenly Father has something around the corner") but it seems like when the anger rises, that all disappears. I yell horrible things, I throw things, I become a tornado of rage invoked by the memory of what I've been through, what's been said to me.

  There were some uncomfortable reminders of bullying long-gone tonight, and a specific reminder to my (relatively recent) abusive ex, plus an unwelcome reminder of my first experience with sexual abuse.

  My regular state of being is to do everything to remain emotionally distant, so I don't come unhinged. I don't like me unhinged. After the loathing escapes my body, I turn on myself.

  I yelled.

  I brought up old hurts.

  I asked why I have such a heavy burden.

  I felt pathetic and powerless and furious.

  I swore.

  I blamed and screamed.

  I cried.

  I'm a funny animal. I'm incredibly emotionally reserved, though I'm a very emotional creature. I'm only able to manage this level of emotional repression by manifesting in irritation, frustration and anger. I keep my distance.

  For over a decade, I only cried when I was angry. It was an odd thing, though, like there's an endless chasm of sorrow inside me that only manifested as fury. But my eyes betrayed the lie I tell with the anger, I always cry.

  I cry because they look at me with suspicion in their eyes, just a gown and a chart between the aching vulnerability of my skeletally-thin body and their judgement. I cry because the same body lies in tests that I must feel well, while torturing me slowly in my bed, or writhing in the emergency room with unexplained involuntary contractions.

  I cry because of what happened in a garage to a twelve year old little girl who wouldn't even remember parts until almost a decade later.

  I cry because I was difficult and irrational and depressed and I wished for death, just to end the monotony of self-loathing. I cry because I wish I could talk to that teenage girl and love her half as much as I love everyone I know.

  I cry because I looked into the eyes of the man who tortured me on a daily basis, the one who assaulted me, knowing I was pregnant, while he told me he had just wished to end up with someone more beautiful. Or when he told me I wasn't loyal. Or stood between him and my mom, and neither of them could realize how much suffering that caused me... egos clashing over the tears I couldn't cry at the time. I cry because I could see the pain in both their eyes, pain that others were ignorant to or ignored.

  I cry because I failed so many things in life. I cry for what was lost. I cry for what might have been. I cry because I don't know how to build a life from these circumstances.

  I cry because people look the other way. I cry because people are uncomfortable. I cry because walk away. I cry because there's a note on my phone that I look at sometimes when things are extremely bad with other people:

People leave all the time when you're sick. And it's hard not to empathize with them, because that's something being disabled [or being the victim of abuse] really teaches you if you're willing to learn, how to be kind. You understand why they'd leave, really. You understand why they'd do anything to push out the pain of feeling so many things, and so deeply, even if it means purposely hurting you or knowingly neglecting you. You get it. It's too much for them.

But your heart aches. Do they know it's too much for you, too?

  I cry because every time I try to use the brilliant and very special skills of my mind, to connect things in unique and intelligent ways, I'm also connected to the pain. I cry because when I de-compartmentalize anything, the pain that I can otherwise keep contained runs all over my other thoughts bleeds all over my other thoughts, and people recoil in horror at the gore. I cry because my words and my memories are mixed up, and it never seems to go away anymore.

  I cry because I can't seem to do anything but lie listlessly in my bed, trying (mostly unsuccessfully) not to beat myself up. I cry because when I'm not moving forward, I'm falling back.

  I cry because when I lose control, first I'm angry at everything, then I'm talking to the mirror, telling the distant reflection how ugly it is all the way through and how much I hate it.

I once wrote that,

PTSD is like living with a knife inside of you. At first, every move forces you to freeze - you cut something vital inside and before your brain can even process what happened, your body reacts to the pain hitting you.

After a while, you learn how to move without cutting. Your life is half paralyzed from avoiding the knife so much, but you're not getting injured, you're not feeling pain.

You get restless, though. Before long you're making sudden movements again and the cuts are opening old wounded places. You thought they were healed places but they open more painfully, knife working through knotted scar tissue; they don't knit as easily as they used to.

And then you get so sensitive again, and you swear you'd never let the knife do that to you again, but you can't make promises like that when someone put something sharp and dangerous inside of you.

You'll spend so much of your time trying to keep up with people who don't have knives. They won't even know what you're talking about.

  Sometimes, I cry because I don't want to ask anyone to take on the burden of my tears.

  But I always manage.

Love and Admiration,
Shareeta