Abandonment Angst

I was talking to my friend today, I was feeling very distant from myself.

So we reviewed my mood chart. The online daily record of my mood

Mildly elevated

Moderately elevated

Severely elevated

Baseline

Mildly depressed

Moderately depressed

Severely depressed

Mild anxiety

Moderate anxiety

Severe anxiety

Mild irritability

Moderate irritability

Severe irritability

Menstruating

Medication taken

Additional comments

Three weeks of my emotions recorded on the world wide web @ moodtracker.com right under

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Cymbalta

I was dis@&#@*co n@&#@nected. My friend who is psychic tuned into me. I was hiding in someone’s heart, she said. I said there was something under the surface, tickling, like scraping nails against a board, the inside of my chest. While I studied the cartilage and muscle of dog’s larynx. Every so often, the nails tickle my chest cavity, get my attention and then scrape. The noise is heard by every part of my body.

It’s 30 C^ooutside, I’m lying on my couch, my books surrounding me, a water bottle next to me, in front of my heater, wrapped in a blanket.

Phoenix my cat, climbs over me, like I’m not there. I watch a movie on my computer. The doorbell rings a few times. I do not get up.

I finish the movie, and in my chest her nails are scraping (I know anatomically the sensation cannot exist, but right now my consciousness perceives my chest as a hollow space with no organs). Her nails tickle the walls, moving against these tiny bumps, vibrating them, making them resonate in my chest in unison.

I vibrate internally

No thoughts

No feeling, only sensations

Physical

Simple

Panic triggered, I recall:

My best friend from high school.

Phoenix jumps up, someone is outside the apartment. The bell rings again. Her nails dig deeply into the walls of my chest.

I do not open, I recall:

“I can’t handle this, I can’t watch you doing this to yourself”

Moving on and away from me

My parents, their shields coming up holding me back at a safe distance

Mary (ex-partner who cheated on me) hiding deeper into her own misery to escape mine.

Resilient friends, who would pull away and return once the cloud of teenage morbid gloom lifts away.

I panic, because my current girlfriend (long distance), I’m not sure what else to call her despite the fact that that label throws me in a state of panic, is frowning at me.

Arms crossed, teeth clenched.

Well in my head she is at least, whether I’m projecting or not.

Lying pathetically on my side, not getting up. I feel this sense of failure overwhelm me. I can her in my head to the rhythm of the scarping lady’s nails, not blaming me with her words but the nails dig deeper and tear,

She says,

I really love you

Or

I love you so much

Or

I love you very much

Or

I love you a lot

But

I can’t handle you when you get like this, I’m sorry I can’t be with you anymore

Not an irrational fear based on past experiences with humans in close emotional proximity

I want to COMMUNICATE,

but the scraping lady’s nails plucked my recurrent laryngeal nerve and I

whimper

Manic Connections

Pages turning, pencils scratching on paper, I was sitting at the side of the lab on a stool, my back resting against a bench. I was watching my breathing, I was watching the students. Counting my breath to entertain myself while they took their anatomy exam. I was making sure no one cheated. Not like I would be able to figure out what to do if I caught someone cheating.

I was lying on the beach huddled up to the American Jew because it was cold and the car wouldn’t start. The (ig)noble savage who sings Dylan songs better than Dylan was on the American Jew’s other side. All of us huddled up together trying to stay warm. Both me and the (ig)noble savage hoping to get lucky with the American Jew. I fell asleep, my snoring kept them both awake.

I rubbed the American Jew’s shoulders. she was laying between my legs. The water rose and I saw a man walking on the water between the mangroves. The beer I had been drinking didn’t get me drunk, it just relaxed my constructs of reality.

I’m in my room in my parents’ house. Now once again my house, I’m listening to the same music I used to listen to when I was 16 and angry. Its loud. I’m screaming along. The door is closed and no one is allowed to come in. I have my Seroquel to bring me down from my mania and my Lustral to bring me up from my depression. Not sure which to take. I’m manically depressed right now. Morbidity vs. this word which means life that I can’t figure out what it is. My therapist labeled it.

These three students try to cheat. I panic, I don’t know what to do. I sort of glimpsed them, I don’t have any hard evidence. I feel everything dissolves around me the three students. Mary, Marwa and May. Cheating cheaters. I want to confront them but I can’t.

I wake up on the beach next to the American Jew. I don’t know if its Mary the cheater or Mona my friend who I am involved with.

I put the music down my cat is in the room, I don’t want to scare him.

I sober up on a bus making its way to Cairo, 11 hour bus ride. I have two hours to see Mona. The Egyptian intelligence is after me because I was hitchhiking with the American Jew and The Indian girl. We were trying to find a sea turtle nesting beach. The Indian girl’s last name means betrayed. The American Jew is a CIA agent. I have to see Mona. Nothing feels safe. Mary cheated, my co-worker is CIA and everyone is trying to fuck with my head. I know safety in Mona’s arms.

I left Mary, a million months later I discovered she cheated on me. I’m whiny and I’m not getting over it. Every story I write is about her. I want to curl up into her arms and to cry and for her to comfort me. I just want to curl up in her arms, feel her stroking my face. Kissing me telling me she’s sorry. I want to forgive her for cheating on me. I want to still be with her.

The antagonist in all my stories is called Marwa, this is my name for Mary in all my stories. She started cheating on me in May. I didn’t leave her because I didn’t have any hard evidence.

Between the mangroves the dugong lies being pecked by the Flamingo as the moon rises. My best friend isn’t speaking to me anymore. I fucked her sister, I feel everything I want to feel towards Mona as I rub the American Jews shoulders.

9 meters under the sea, it wets me with its tears. Another hotel up on the coast. Some Italian tourists are sun bathing on the first sea turtle nest of the season. 12 dugongs left in the Red Sea. One is hiding in the mangroves being pecked by that flamingo. The (ig)noble savage who sings Dylan better than Dylan sings:

“Well, I’m livin’ in a foreign country but I’m bound to cross the line
Beauty walks a razor’s edge, someday I’ll make it mine.
If I could only turn back the clock to when God and her were born.
Come in, she said,
I’ll give you shelter from the storm.”

Pink

Pink,
cotton candy
sweet, melting
in my mouth
sugar sweet
in my blood
sugar high
hyper manic, tingles down my arm
salmon pink
seroquel
in
my
mouth
pink
tranquil
pink cotton candy in my mouth
dissolving
sugar in my blood
sweet
tingling arms
twitching legs
shaking hands
caffiene and nicotine cravings
smoke shroud
smoke stink
emanating, with
your
every
move
cotton candy
cotton buds
between your toes
pink, painting with your pink
nailpolish on your toes
your cigarette butt
stained
pink
cotton candy pink
melting
in
my
mouth,
sweet
sugar in my blood
sugar high
salmon pink
seroquel
in my mouth
tranquil
pink lipstick
pink lips
pink handprint on my cheek
pulsatting pink
pink nails
cigarette stained
pink
cotton candy pink
pink dress
i
won't
wear
pink handprint
on my arm
cotton candy
in
my mouth
melting
pink
scars on my arms
pink nails glimpsed
when your hand
pinkens
my cheek
between the smoke
your pink
nails
shine
the smoke rises
from your
pink lips
cotton candy pink
pinkening
pink
pink
pink
cotton candy
nails
cheeks
salmon pink
seroquel

psuedo-post-expressionist bored in class psuedo-art piece

Paper Clips

Have you ever straightened a colored paper clip? Have you ever made little bends and twists in it? Have you ever rotated it slowly between your thumb and forefinger? Have you ever watched the shapes, the angles and length change as you rotated it? Have you ever spun it really fast and watched the tracers? Have you ever spun it really fast and watched what was under the tracers stain with the color of the paper clip? Have you ever changed the bends and twists and then rotated it between your thumb and forefinger? Have you ever spun it really fast and watched the tracers? Have you ever spun it really fast and watched what was under the tracers stain with the color of the paper clip? Have you ever looked at your hands while you were spinning between your thumb and forefinger a straightened colored paper clip with twists and bends whose tracers stained what was under them with the color of the paper clip? Have you ever had your hands be so far away? Have you ever had your hands numb and senseless? Have you ever had your hands look like they weren’t yours? Have you ever had your hands with all the scars that you carved into it look like they were someone else’s? Have you ever sat there staring at your hand as you spun a straightened colored paper clip between your thumb and forefinger as the tracers stained whatever was under it with the color of the paper clip not knowing when all this happened to you? Have you ever sat there and had your body feel like it was not yours? Have you ever sat there and had your body feel numb and senseless? Have you ever sat there knowing that this body you have loathed was not yours? Have you ever sat there knowing that all the memories that you regretted are not yours? Have you ever sat there knowing that this life that you have hated was not yours? Have you ever sat there with a straightened colored paper clip between your thumb and forefinger spinning mourning a hated life not lived? Have you ever felt a huge wave of sadness suffocate you? Have you ever felt the huge wave of sadness engulf you and drown you into apathy? Have you ever been so apathetic that the energy for suicide was not there and you sat there with a straightened paper clip between your thumb and forefinger spinning? Have you ever watched the apathy sever the ties that may feed a desire for life? Have you ever sat there loving and hating, hating and loving, spinning a straightened colored paper clip between your thumb and forefinger? Have you sat there with a straightened paper clip between your thumb and forefinger with all its twists and bends hating your pathetic existence? Have you ever wanted to die so much that it had already started to happen? Have you ever wanted to die so much that you sat there with a straightened colored paper clip with bends and twists between your thumb and forefinger spinning with the tracers staining what’s beneath with its color?

Parturition

The first time I did it I was 12. Prep 2, Home Economics. I don’t know what did it. Maybe it was being forced to be in the kitchen, cooking, more like over-cooking a pasty pasta. Maybe it was the smell of oil. My incompetence as a female to enjoy, the sounds of a scraping knife against a cutting board, or the sizzling of the oil, or the fact that I always felt I carried a deep dark secret that weighed on me through every moment of my day. They can see it in my eyes, everyone knows. I avoided him at school, wondered if his fingerprints would always be imprinted on my body. If I died, in the autopsy would they be able to tell where his hands went from lifting up the fingerprints. Home Economics, I had to be something I didn’t want to be. Don’t know what it is, but it was stifling. Just as stifling as wearing a skirt was. Every skirt was an invasion that cut straight to my center. Shook me and left me humiliated. I might as well be naked and for everyone to touch me. My hairless peepee, my completely undeveloped boobees. The skirt exposed them, the kitchen exposed them. The emptiness sliced through my gut. My head felt light and I felt I was passing out. I was passing the kitchen knife to one of the students. I wanted to help, but every time I tried, waves of shame would just take me under. I snuck the knife, outside the kitchen in my pocket. I took it to the bathroom. Locked the door. I sat on the toilet seat and stared at my feet. I was wearing different a shoe on each foot, a green shoe and a red shoe. I stared at my wrists, the knife, my feet. I pressed the knife to my wrist gently; as I pressed harder some invisible hand guided my hand to my palm. I cut deeply across my lifeline. It took a few seconds before the blood appeared. Shyly through the opening. Peeping, then a torrent. I breathed. I have connected with myself. I wiped the blood off my hand, wrapped my hand with toilet paper, and stuck it deep into my pocket. I returned the knife with out cleaning it. I watched with satisfaction, almost a euphoria as they struggled through their tears and runny noses to cut the onions with the knife that had cleansed me.

I had a new secret now, one that set me apart from everyone else. One that no one could know about. One that made headaches go away, loneliness go away, that crazy feeling that my chest was going to explode and splatter all over the walls, go away. One that no one must know about ever. I either hid it well, or no one cared, but no one knew. After knives, came sharp pointed object, from cutting to scraping away, repeatedly. From dead skin flaking off in a powder, to epidermis that would gather at the sides of the cut, to dermis searing hot collected around the tip of metal. To blood, to breathing, to pride, pride that this was mine, pride that I didn’t need anyone, pride that my secret was mine, it wasn’t a secret shared by two people. It was just for me. To burning, to blisters, to punching, to whipping, to biting.

When I look at my hands now, 13 years later, I feel proud of the scars, when I get close to someone I share the story behind each scar with them. It brings me closer to people, to share something that was so painful. I don’t share new wounds, I hide them. I will not be reprimanded. I will not give explanations. I will not be labeled. I can see you look at my hands, I can see you acknowledge them. Acknowledging my desperation, not judging me, Thank you for not judging, fuck you if you are. It has to be my hands, I have to feel it with every action, I have to conceal them. It sets me apart now from people, with shame that 13 years later I’m still 12 years old, that probably in another 13 years I’ll still be 12. It has to be my hands, because it’s the only part in my body that I can comfortably put into my mouth. Bite through, continuously, taste the skin and blood, gnaw and tear with my teeth. I feel better, but I probably will not share this with you, because I don’t want to see you look at me in disgust, to think I’m a freak, to look at me with pity, try to help me, I feel the rift between us because I will not share. I will hide it, make up stories about it, state it matter of factly devoid of emotion, allude to it, but this is mine and only mine and no matter how much you think that I'm sharing. I will not share it.