I started this blog a year ago today, but I’m far too tired to come up with any blogiversary-worthy Deep Thoughts about What I Have Learned in the past year. I’ve been really tired all week. At first I worried that I was getting depressed, but then I realized that almost everybody I know has a cold or the flu or some virus or other. I am not sick, but it seems highly likely that trying to stay not sick is completely exhausting me. Being run-down like this is certainly better than having stomach flu, though, so I ain’t complaining. Since I am not up to spewing forth Really Deep Thoughts (not that I ever am), instead I will simply share with you what are probably my favourite lines of poetry ever:

On a razor edge of reality,
I knew I would come out of this, bleeding and broken,
and singing.
~ Gwendolyn MacEwan, “Deraa”

Speaking of What I Have Learned, yes, it’s true that a year ago, I knew that I had already come out of “this,” bleeding & broken & singing, and that I would be likely to do so repeatedly. I do become surer and surer of this fact as time goes on, though, and I guess that’s a kind of learning, too. Sometimes I forget that I’ll get better every time I get worse, but I have been remembering it more and more often in the past couple of years, and for longer and longer periods of time.

Today is the sixth anniversary of the second time I was raped, but I’m dealing with it pretty well. Actually, I’m doing great today, but apparently this is because I got it all out of my system last weekend. My boyfriend and I were drinking with friends, and I didn’t think I was all that drunk then; I felt fine until I got home. I remember throwing up, but I don’t remember anything after that. My boyfriend told me that I was afraid of the Bad People (hey, I need the euphemism, ’cause it’s awfully long and clunky to keep referring to them as “the people who raped me”), crying and saying that I had to keep my eyes closed because if I opened them, I would see the Bad People. He of course told me that there were no Bad People around, that I was safe, but I guess it took a long time for me to believe him.

I’m glad I have no memory of all of this, but I wish I hadn’t put him through it. I’m glad this weekend is better.

Apart from that, I’m fine lately, but I’m working extra hours for a few weeks, and I have almost no time to fit anything but work into my schedule. My brother, although out of the hospital, is not doing very well, but it’s going to take more time than I currently have to go into detail about that. I’m hoping I’ll have enough free time on Tuesday to manage to blog. I sure as hell won’t have any time tomorrow.

“My head is killing me, my throat is killing me, my stomach bubbles with toxic waste. I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?”
~ from Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Last night it occurred to me that I should mention there is an additional reason for my recent rapid cycling. May 7 is the anniversary of the first time I was raped, and I don’t do well with anniversaries. “Last night” I couldn’t fall asleep until 8 a.m., and I have been all over the place — tearful, then relaxed, then snappish, then hyper, and so on. I’m at the point where I wouldn’t even mind being depressed and staying that way for a bit, because it’s so jarring to keep abruptly going from fine to Definitely Not Fine.

I am expecting tonight to be bad, but maybe things will ease up somewhat in the next couple of days.

Apparently, in this town you only deserve to see a psychiatrist if you’re in crisis. I guess there’s no such thing as seeing one every three months just to check in.

I didn’t actually get to see a psychiatrist today, but that didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was that the mental health nurse I saw thought there was no reason to refer me to a psychiatrist, even though that was what my GP had requested. My GP had, in fact, requested a specific psychiatrist.

I have been completely stable for months now. I feel better than I have in years. And this is the problem. I feel fine, my medications are working for me, I finally have a GP in a nearby town, and technically I have a therapist but I only saw her twice, in January, because bus service near their office is very limited and I can’t really afford $16 for a cab there and back.

I filled out some forms and then the nurse asked me some questions for about half an hour. Mainly very basic stuff — describe my family, how is my relationship with my boyfriend, what is my level of education, what medications am I on, etc. She asked me about being assessed at the hospital in the fall, and she mentioned that the particular shrink who had seen me was going to be at the mental health centre that day. I looked at the door, kind of freaked out, as if I expected to find him walking right by, right then, because I kind of did. But he wasn’t. She clearly has a higher level of respect for him than I do, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to get my file from the hospital so she can see what he thought of me. And presumably believe him over me. Yeeha.

She asked me if there was anything about my life that I was unhappy with and wanted to change. I said there wasn’t anything, really, only that I’d like to be a bit less shy and a lot more organized, and that sometime I’d like to work on issues related to past trauma.

“What kind of trauma?” she asked.

“I was raped twice.”

“How old were you?”

“Twenty and twenty-one.”

She asked me how that currently affects me. I told her that sometimes it makes me sad and scared. She asked me if it affects my relationship with my boyfriend, and I said, “Only that it makes him worried about me.”

Then she changed the subject.

I definitely didn’t want to bring up the eating disorder thing. I was afraid she would think I was overreacting.

The mental health nurse said that the only thing she was worried about was my level of anxiety. She didn’t believe me when I assured her that I was only anxious because of the appointment and that I don’t usually have anxiety problems (which was true), but she said it was to up me to decide whether I thought it was a problem I needed to do something about.

“I don’t think it is a problem,” I said, “but I’m open to other interpretations. If I did have an anxiety problem, what should I do about that?”

“Well, we have an Anxiety and Mood Disorders Group,” she said, “but they just had their last spring session. It should start up again in the fall.”

The fall? WTF? It’s a good thing I don’t have an anxiety disorder. Imagine if I actually had one and I asked what I should do and she told me to come back in the fall. I can only hope that they have other anxiety disorder treatment options and she just didn’t feel like telling me what they were.

I hate how I’m going to keep replaying this appointment in my head, over and over and over again, wondering what I did wrong and what I could have said differently so that I could have actually gotten some help. I don’t know what I should have asked for. I don’t know what I should have said that I didn’t say, or what I did say that I should have left out.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

I hate this town. Hey, last week I was looking at buttons at a record store and they had one that said “I hate this town” on it. I’m totally going to buy one and put it on. That’ll make me feel better.

When in doubt, shop.

I left the appointment thinking, I wish I were dead, I wish I were dead. Then I came home and cried for a while. It was kind of nice to cry. I’ve been so stable and so genuinely happy that I almost never cry anymore. And I’m very used to crying, so it feels kind of weird not to do it anymore.

but i’m a modern woman baby
ain’t gonna let this get me down
i’m a modern woman
ain’t gonna let this get me down
gonna take my master charge
and get everything in town
~ Nikki Giovanni, “Master Charge Blues”

Gah, even when I’m not talking about Virginia Tech, I’m still talking about Virginia Tech.

Not really “everything in town,” though. Just that little pin, and some books (which I have gift certificates for), and THE NEW TORI AMOS CD. Must. Go. Shopping. I don’t even have a MasterCard, by the way.

Haha, I was just checking my email and the web clip near the top of the screen in Gmail is Ask Yahoo! - Who invented the shower? It’s there because I went to a wedding shower the other day and a couple of my recent emails mention that, but it’s still funny.

This is a bad time of year for me. I’ve gotten to the point where usually I’m dealing pretty well with past trauma, but I’m not good with anniversaries and I’ve got one coming up.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: sometimes I look forward to being able to think about it all at the end of the day. Usually I dread trying to go to sleep at night, but sometimes I just get so tired of consciously trying to block it all out during the day. That’s work. It’s hard work. This stuff will pop into my head during the day, and I have to make it go away. I have to make sure I don’t cry, I have to make sure I don’t scream, that I don’t start to hyperventilate or suddenly run out of a room, that I don’t do anything that will cause anybody to stare at me. In the night, in my room, I don’t have to worry what anybody thinks. Sometimes it’s a kind of relief, to just lie there and let all the memories wash over me. It’s horrible, sure, but at least it’s effortless. I can cry if I want to. No one else will ever know.