I've had this habit of saying bad things don't happen to me for a while now. The truth is, bad things do happen to me; bad shit happens to everyone. I tend to keep things in, I tend not to make my problems other people's problems, and I tend to "boil."
Effectively, this is wildly unhelpful.
At the end of last September, on a Wednesday evening, high, I got up in the middle of my ethics class, left the building, and started sobbing. I was standing on 6th Avenue, hacking out breathless, hysterical sobs. It had become clear that the last six months of my life were blurred memories. I had spent most of those months high, and when I wasn't, I was dissociated and confused. I felt slighted by myself; I was angry with the decisions that put me in this position. But in actuality, it was easy. It was easy for me to come home, sit on the couch, get high, and smooth brain for hours until I eventually fell asleep. It was easier this way to feel less worried about my family falling apart. It was easier not to feel guilty about all the people I hadn't been a good friend to. It was easy to combat the stress of growing up and becoming independent. It made it a lot harder to confront my problems. Rest assured, in that moment on the street, I was confronted. Granted, this was something I only learned over time.
In the weeks following this mega-emotional disaster, I felt this overwhelming sensation that weed was the root cause of my problems (it wasn't), and once I had expelled it completely, my life would be better. So, I stopped smoking weed and gaslit myself into happiness on a daily basis. My mom found out she had stage 2 breast cancer a month later. She had surgery, and it was removed, but its emotional impact only festered. When you find out anyone you love gets sick, you feel at least a little scared. But it's okay, "it could be worse," that was my totally normal approach. A couple of months later, she started preventative chemotherapy. For as long as I can remember, my mom has gone to the hair salon just about every two weeks. The woman loves a blowout; I can't blame her. I always thought my mom had the most beautiful hair: thick and dark, a short shoulder-length cut with bouncy layers that she never grew out of. She made me love my hair because I loved hers, and her hair was mine. After her first or second treatment, it started falling out. I was home one weekend, brushing her hair for her while she sat at her make-up vanity. She sat upright, composed as she always did, but I could see a fear in her eyes, a worry, but a worry she'd never let leave the tip of her tongue. I cried when my mom told me she had cancer. I didn't cry again until I held her fallen hair. Only then, when I had clumps of her hair in my palms, I accepted this was real and she was suffering. Between the end of September and this moment in January, I started seeing a therapist. She's excellent, but we hadn't spent much time talking about my mom's cancer; in fact, we spent no time at all discussing it. We spent many sessions discussing things I'd already dissected and rationalized on my own from years past. That night, when I cried for the second time, it felt like such a selfish avoidance, distracting myself with literally anything else. This, in addition to the loss of my sense of self from the fall, became uncontrollable. That following week, I talked to my therapist about my mom's cancer for the first time.
I was learning not to boil. I was learning that keeping these things inside and being afraid to let them out only made it worse and hurt more. I thought I was staying cool, calm, and collected by never speaking about it. Really, I turned myself into an anxious, isolated, and miserable individual. A time bomb. That's what you become when you refuse to confront your problems. As strong or numb as I thought I was to all the bad I've encountered, I was actually extremely sensitive. And when the right wrong thing presented itself, I fell apart. It might not even be sadness; it can be anger or resentment; it could be one little thing you let eat at you until you can't take it anymore. You have to let it out; otherwise, getting to that resolution and healing feels like a much further, more difficult feat.
I still have trouble talking about things with anyone other than my therapist or best friend because it makes me uncomfortable. I don't like pity, and I'm unsure how to accept empathy regarding my current issues. When I talk about things from my past that I've already dealt with, I talk about them candidly, like it's a funny joke. When it comes to things like my mom's cancer, my grandfather dying, going through a breakup, or even my depression, saying those things just makes me uncomfortable. Perhaps because it would be a lie to say I'm fine. I recognize I can be honest and say I'm not okay, but then those internal wounds become real again. As always, it's a learning experience, one step at a time. I'm still dealing with dissociation and memory loss. In starting this blog, I hope I'll feel more inclined to let my feelings out and help myself remember things. Additionally, maybe help someone else reading this and feeling a little shitty about things happening in their life. I've never been a prolific keeper of journals, but perhaps this time around, for you, I will be.
The last time I wrote for an audience, I was interning at a magazine and cared much more about sending a clear message than just saying what I felt. This is my blog!!!! And I don't have a clear message right now; I don't have an answer to how not to be a weird woman, and hopefully, that's okay. In some ways, I hope you can relate to this or learn something -- I don't know. I think I'll start posting regularly on Mondays. TGIM!
- D.M.
Comments