Posted by Rzip on October 19, 2000, at 7:37:30
In reply to MY OFFICIAL INTRODUCTION, posted by laural on October 19, 2000, at 6:53:49
> WOW! Words can not express the amount of admiration I have for you after reading through your autobiography. What courage to have made it to this point. Wow! I wish you the best. I truly do. Wow, your story is just amazing.
- Rzip
I wrote this for my Psych of Personality class before I dropped out this sem. so thought i'de introduce myself by opening with this. I've always been skittish about posting poetry because some day i hope to actually put some poems in a book, chapbook whatever. some that i may consider have been published various places--but i have to say, reading this site has impressed me considerably--the truth trust respect and intellect all combined is, uh. . .neat ; ) so i'll think about poems maybe to add later--
>
> My mother claims to know the moment of my conception and has made it known to me that I was born out of love and wanted. Knowing this has kept me alive for almost twenty-five years. I was a bicentennial baby; born on February 2nd--Groundhog’s Day. If said rodent supposedly sees its shadow, there will be six more weeks of winter. If it doesn’t, then winter is supposed to end “soon.” I had fun trying to predict the season’s end as a child. Maybe it wasn’t fun as much as much as superstition and then finally obsession. I would go the entire day not looking down for fear that I would prolong the cold miserable days that claimed me as their poster child. It dawned on me a few years ago that after Feb. 2nd winter will always end “soon” because spring officially starts about six weeks later. I stopped trying not to see my shadow.
> My parents were hippies, I suppose, although not those “far out” bead-wearing, holistic healing, keeping their child with leukemia away from medical doctors, wheat grass drinking freaks. They did drugs, ran with intellectuals, moved back to the land, and kept politically liberal. I was not raised in a commune but our neighborhood was entirely liberal and networked. They set up a neighborhood school which I attended until I went to kindergarten in the nearest small town. I could read and write by age 3. At this time my father went to see a spiritualist and was told that in order to heal himself he must abandon his present life, wherefore he divorced my mother and left for Mexico. We didn’t hear from him for a year. My mother never said anything derogatory about my father, assured me that he still loved me and always supported the times that he and I did spend together in my youth. I can’t really say the same about my father. I still call my father “daddy” today, although I wonder why. I mean, why not something more grown-up like “dad.” When dad did come back, he wanted to take me to Mexico. Over the next few years, back and forth from travels with dad, I learned Spanish, got lice, fell in love with the ocean, and was repeatedly molested by a so-called friend of dad’s.
> At about this age I first remember wanting to kill myself to see what it would be like to be dead. I must’ve heard about the concept of heaven somewhere, although our family was not religious. I think I wondered if I would become a ghost. The reason I did not kill myself then was because I knew that my mother would be very sad and miss me.
> Over the years my relationship with my father was sporadic. When I spent time with him it was usually after waiting for him for four or five hours to pick me up and then following him around while he ran errands. My most vivid memories of him are actually trying to find him in hardware stores after waiting for him in the car. In therapy my senior year of high school, while dealing with my sexual abuse and mistrust of men, I also spent some time dealing with fear of abandonment.
> My relationship with my father now is good, I think. He’s not really so much a father as an adult who’s really interested in me. We have some good talks. We’re very much alike. Flaky, intellectual, shy, and kind. I know he loves me very much.
> By second grade I was ready to drop out of school. I was sent to the principal’s office so much that I think they were thinking of putting me in some kind of special ed class. Talking to my teacher my mother realized how limiting the class was and how limited my teacher was. She gave me a book about introductory astronomy and told me that when I finished assignments and got bored, instead of getting sent to the principal, if I read that book, she would send me to another school for 3rd grade. I read that book cover to cover a dozen times and enrolled in parochial school in Boonville a year later. I became very interested in God but not particularly interested in becoming Catholic so I sat out communion every Tuesday and Thursday morning. At night before bed, my mother would read me Lord of the Rings and teach me long division.
> From age 5 to 16 my mother lived with and eventually married Ken, and cared for his two children every summer when they would visit from Alaska. Ken did not love me or make any effort to be a part of my life other than to discipline me. He obviously loved his children and for that I hated them. I spent my summers away from the house, away from my step brother and sister thinking that I could talk to trees and dogs with ESP and that my stuffed animals were sentient and watched me and that angels were everywhere, protecting me. The journal I kept religiously until I graduated high school was my best friend. I made myself secret forts and spent hours there. Dinner was whatever mom or Ken wanted to eat. Being a child, I hated most things they liked but there was a rule instated by Ken that we must take some of everything and we must eat it all. Therefore, to retaliate, I refused to eat or couldn’t eat. Somehow even if I was hungry or really trying to swallow my throat would just close up and I would gag. I sat alone for hours after everyone else had left the table. I was anorexic at age 16. I also danced (ballet and modern) and was thus hypoglycemic. Ken had an affair my sophomore year which ended their marriage and made my mom the happy woman she is today.
> Through junior high I was a shy nerd. I could barely speak to people without passing out, and made straight A’s. Boys in my class would tease me about having no breasts and other sexual harassment. The real inspiration for trying to become one of the “cool” kids was a crush I had on a popular boy. I was successful largely because at about the 8th grade we moved up from poor to middle class with Ken’s new job. Then I got contacts, etc. etc.
> In high school I was introduced to people, guys, who were intellectuals. They were “alternative” which was a precursor to grunge which was a precursor to punk. They played guitar, they smoked pot, wrote poetry, and they were artists. I fell in love with them all. My hundred dollar outfits became two dollar thrift store specials. Priorities changed, although I still seemed like I was one of the cool kids. I didn’t know that I had been tracked into honors classes. I didn’t know that the real cool kids were preps. Or I didn’t really care. I laughed at them for being so junior high. And I began writing for others.
> About this time I remember my paranoia started getting really bad. I always thought there were cameras in the public bathrooms but now there was a camera in my showerhead at home and the mirror was two-way, so I made faces into it to let "them" know that I knew that they were watching. I could make people's heads explode with my mind if I ever decided I wanted to, and burn trees and buildings with my eyes.
> I was still being sexually harassed. I just didn’t have any self esteem. I fell in love with a guy a year older than me who was bipolar and wanted to have sex with him. But something told me that this would be a traumatic event for me and I didn’t want to end up hating him so I started going out with another guy who wasn’t as intimidating. We had sex spring break of my senior year. It was well-planned. For years after that the stress of having sex would bring on a hypoglycemic attack that freaked out my lovers and made me secretly glad that I was scaring them.
> I was accepted to Reed College in Portland, Oregon with a free ride. So I bleached my long hair white, dyed it a light silver purple (with old lady hair dye) and left. Something told me to try physics again as I couldn’t remember a thing from high school physics due to a guy bringing me to tears everyday talking about good I must be to f@!*& because I danced and how small a penis my boyfriend had and how it felt to have anal sex. Anyway I changed my intended major from biochemistry to physics. I made good grades my first year, gained 30 pounds, became bullemic, and tried acid for the first time. By the second year it was cough syrup, minithins, heroin, cocaine, extasy and anything else. I also slept around a lot, trying to teach myself to not be scared of men. I thought I might be gay, then decided I wasn’t. During the 2nd year I made it to class about 1/3 of the time and made my first C. I had intense mood changes, saw things and heard things, spent lots of money, cried all the time and pretty much decided I needed to stop living because I couldn’t stand myself. It hurt to think. I started seeing the school counselor who for some reason thought I needed anti psychotics. It turns out I did. (I’ve been paranoid since I was little and at this point, aside from hallucinating, I thought people could read my mind and everyone was watching me everywhere I went.) I also needed antidepressants and Depakote (We learned this after starting Zoloft and climbed the walls 24-7. I took a medical leave of absence to get this all sorted out. A year later I was officially diagnosed “schizo-effective bipolar”.
> Since high school I had developed a network of friends across the country from people I knew in high school who went away and new friends I met during the summers back, who drifted around, staying at various friends houses. When I dropped out of school, I became in effect, homeless. I refused my family’s help. I tried to take medications but somehow I always sabotaged my efforts. It got pretty bad. I raved for a good year and a half. One night on cocaine, I was raped. Then, after my first suicide attempt (slitting my wrists) and I was hospitalized, I let my mom intercede. They experimented with my medications forever while I prayed each night that I would wake up dead the next day because it hurt so much not to care that much about anything. It was physically painful. I spent an entire summer asleep. The side effects were sometimes enough to drive one insane. Finally, it got better. I started a long-term relationship. We got engaged. I wanted to go back to school. So I left for Reed. I freaked out at the stress. I couldn’t get up in the morning so I started doing coke to stay up all night so that I would be awake to go to class. Of course it failed. I lost it and cut my wrists again, not knowing that the muscle relaxants that I overdosed on would only turn me to mush. But this time I realized how it would kill my parents and called for help. I tried to keep it secret from my mother but she found out and flew up and got me. I waited another year, getting better under the roof and support of my mother. I decided to compile my autobiography in poetry form.
> Meanwhile I had quit my engagement and started the relationship I am now in. I keep changing so drastically. I don’t consider myself “punk” anymore. After years of not being able to hold a job and wondering if my mother would take care of me until she died, I started working, selling jewelry. It was stressful, but I maintained. Tentatively, I enrolled myself at ------- and changed my major to psychology. It was close to home and not as demanding of a school as Reed. I had many minor breakdowns, missed a lot of class, but finished the year. I still have my job at Zales. I freaked out the first week of school this year, but this is a new week. If I graduate, I will consider trying to get my doctorate in psychiatry, which means I need to raise my stress tolerance to acomidate medical school. After living for a year and a half with my boyfriend, I still question my independence but I don’t feel nearly the extent of intimidation I felt as a child around people. And I no longer fear for my psychological safety with men. I respect my body, drug free, and soul. And I actually believe in love.
>
> I had to change some stuff around a little. Anyway, I am now taking 750 mg of depakote, low dosage of wellbutrine, 40 mg of celexa and quit my resperidol about 1.5 mo. ago--my positive psychotic symptoms are in remission however my negative symptoms (lethargy) are QUITE intense. I have been somewhat stable now for a couple of years--stable meaning no more panic attacks, suicide, self-hurt. I have thoughts of suicide everynow and then but something inside, some spark really won't let me consider it seriously. I really really really really really REALLY want to live. I love when I'm somewhat normal looking and acting and I have a pleasant look on my face, people hold doors for you and smile and are very warm and loving. When it looks like you're in pain and full of HATE people are soooo uncomfortable. I never realized that until I became stable--
> Anyway sorry this is so long, I could talk about myself all night (except that its quarter to 7 am : ) ) but i'll save more for later if i find people are interested
> some things i'de like to discuss later are
> 1) family reactions to illness--should i expect support from my boyfriend?
> 2) what can i expect in terms of going back to school with this illness? I want med school but stress nullifies my meds--
> 3) how to combat lethargy?
> thanks so much for being here you guys! laural
poster:Rzip
thread:1286
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20001011/msgs/1288.html