A Mad Girl's Love Song

On "Being": The Girl With The Most Cake

2012-02-07T21:17:00.000-07:00

"What do you want to be?" Pens scratching, inquisitive face, the interviewer asks me. Forks slicing food, relative tongues pinpointing the image of you, swallowing their dinner. College recruiters, strangers, publications, advertising - What do you want to be?

If you had asked me when I was 10, 14, or even 18, I would've told you I wanted to be a writer. I pushed towards every publication I could find, I hunted down college fairs for the right creative writing school, I edited essays over and over in my spare time, attended poetry coffeehouses and seminars, and I wanted nothing more than words.

Somewhere along the line, I got distracted - which is to say, I had to stop "wanting to be." I had to want to survive, and whatever it entailed to survive was what I wanted to be. Distracted, I'd tell therapists "I don't know," I'd tell them I could only safely plan 6 months into the future max, even more safer: 4 months or less. I'd have panic attacks upon staying in one town for too long. I didn't trust a good day (surely the sinister ending would come). I'd put words on paper, I'd road trip, I'd push through college, I'd find a job, I'd struggle (and still do struggle) with financial security. I interchanged pills and specialists and those who projected onto me all their ideas of my potential.

Tongue in cheek, I'll now say "I'm working towards my PhD in psychology" I think.

I didn't mean to end up here - I remember in high school when I said I'd never enter the field of psychology/social work/human services, declaring I was too fucked up to help anyone else safely, petrified of hurting others in the process of my own healing. I remember when I was in elementary school and the biggest career preoccupation I had was with singing, soon enough squashed by the concept that I wasn't "good enough," that I couldn't hack the competition. I needed the safety of knowing I was good at something. I needed the safety of knowing I had a talent I could survive with... Notably, this is a dangerous concept to toy with: which of your talents, your traits, can you you really depend on to help you survive off of - would it be anything you could directly market anyway? Couldn't you argue its intuition and knowing yourself, working hard?

I shut all those switches off: I saw bills and grades and what I should be doing and a lot of netflix movies in order to shut off the panicked static of not knowing who I was or where I was or what I was doing anymore, moving in the persistent direction of "reaction, reaction, reaction," which to some people looked like intense action towards a determined destination. I'm working towards my PhD in psychology, I say tongue in cheek.

What did I always want to be? I wanted to be bigger than my surroundings, unforgettable - I wanted to be everything all at once, and I didn't want to stop. I wanted to be faster and stronger and multi-talented. I wanted to be independent and apart - I wanted to show the strength of my character through the diverse nature of my interests, through the thick line of my adapting to crises - I wanted to make chaos beautiful, I wanted to put my stressed worn-thin conflicted artistic identity out into every venue which ended up catching my interest. I wanted to be so in the thick of it that you could not tear me down even if you tried.

People could say I've lost my vision. I sense a lot of people are disappointed in my life path, the direction of my wandering. Most people who know me or meet me still believe my strength is in writing, that I'm the writer, that I should be pursuing writing - and I don't argue with these sentiments. I do, however, want to be more than these sentiments (while simultaneously acknowledging how hefty a task it is to be an accomplished, respectable fierce writer). I want to be more, I always wanted to be more - like Courtney Love, I want(ed) to be the girl with the most cake. I was demanding, I am demanding - and I believe I spent the majority of the last few years so stressed about reading, writing, and doing all the things I used to do out of great fear I could not keep up with my own expectations and would inevitably disappoint myself or others, or moreso that I could do more than I would even think of, that I could do so much I would inevitably overwhelm myself. I know most people know of me as a workaholic, and frequently, my solution to my desire to be multi-talented, faster, and stronger is to work extra hours and deprive myself of sleep while ironically acknowledging (and incredibly failing at) this concept of radical self-care.

In currently reading this memoir called "Manic" and thinking of conversations with therapists and late night google scrolling, what stood out most to me was this concept of mania - the sudden mood shift and frenzy of doing things, the fast talking and the compulsive need to do things and exert energy and be everywhere at else, the unceasingenergypulsingdesperateneed to avoid sleep. I think of how many nights have fallen upon me like this, I think of my general energy, my identity - how, even in my worst depressions, I could not stop wanting to be, always interested in being _________.

As I shift my studies in Goddard College to the concept of identity construction, I know I must bunker down and study my own beginnings, my desires, my foundational concepts that keep me running. I want to be the girl with the most cake: I want to be a body whole, I want to be a mind furnished, I want to be the personality that does not go away, I want to be the books that influenced me, I want to be the people I admire and the people I regret losing, I want to be the idols I never met and the person I charted out and changed all throughout my life, I want to be that force that blurs the lines and forces you to acknowledge the truths of being, labels aside; I want to be all my years of learning, and I want to be relentless in my learning the value of these years, and then some.

I like to think of Fiona Apple, churning the anthem "Here it comes, the better version of me." Tongue in cheek, vague smirk, but no, really:

I want to be an extraordinary machine.

Under the Bridge

2012-01-14T22:24:00.001-07:00

[Entry started 12/13/11 ]

I've stopped writing, and upon further considering this matter, I find myself hitting the reflection of how this fragment of myself serves as such a larger piece of truth: mistrust of surroundings/perceptions/reality. I would not say that nothing inspires me anymore, but perhaps I've dissociated from the idea of expression, the thought of being burned without the knowledge of foresight? As if studying books and over-experiencing different forms of sorrow had burned me out on this conjunct analytical-sensitive combination where everything hits and then dulls immediately. Where silence remains this vast landscape of my dialect, nothing pushing forward except the processing and recognition of patterns, seeing events fall into place as you guessed. Knowing that bodies have rhythms, and people are a sum of the events that made them (in every sense of that phrase), watching interactions and phrasing, treating life like a hypothesis you are out to prove: congratulations, you guessed right again. It makes me think: maybe I'm asking the wrong questions, not enough questions, maybe I'm repeating the question over and over again in hopes of getting a different answer (but really, getting nowhere). If I have nothing left to say about this life I'm living, if I acknowledge these are the patterns that remain consistent, if I'm running out of answers which I have not heard before, where does this place me?

If the items change, but the struggles remain the same, does a "survivor" ever evolve from just "surviving"?

What does survival look like when liberated from the terms of its oppressor? In firm desire to disenfranchise this oppressive system, do you inherently became part of the game that trapped you, always carrying the sliver of its anger? Where does the body lie when there is no rest?

[ Entry continued 1/14/12 ]
I waver upon the thin line, making goals and goals again - I catch the breath in my chest. I once worked with a Rolfer (Structural Integration) who said I breathe as if I'm consistently having an anxiety attack. I think of the times blacking out in my own skin, lining the ceiling and the walls, the blank spots that could contain a rambling mind. This was not the person I wanted to be, cringing at touch - somehow, it ended up being the person I became: splintered and searching. It has been five years past a time where I can identify a new person forming, one who grew more alive and more jaded, finally touching the edges of feelings that could only be based upon an otherwise blurred continent, a firmament that fell upon the idolization of future for escape of an indecipherable, heavy present. At age 14, going to college conventions. Throughout high school, tenaciously the writer - poetry slams, poetry publications, "most likely to publish a book" attached to my name, "the writer", the creative writing major hopeful, the straight-A-paradoxical-down-with-public-education shined shoes applicant: I believed in a precise knowing I could not yet grasp. Similar to most of my high school (and current) friends, I felt more wise than my age could bear, despite the not-knowing of emotional phrasing. I think writing and reading captured me for this reason.

And somehow, throughout the years, I stopped planning. I became disenchanted. I changed into a person who shucked away the hopes I had once contained, settled myself into a reality that determined itself based upon the breaths I was not taking, adopting a philosophy of taking life only 6 months at a time (maximum), roving streets amongst cigarettes and nightlights. In and out of states (mentally and physically), I flipped the switch of my personality rapidly, unable to be held - perhaps the way I felt most safe. I have frequently expressed my love for White Oleander and somehow have find myself rotating and fixating upon the quote

"Everybody asks why I started at the end and worked back to the beginning. The reason is simple. I couldn't understand the beginning until I had reached the end. There were too many pieces of the puzzle missing, too much she would never tell. I could sell these things. People want to buy them. But I'd set it all on fire first. She'd like that. She'd make it just to burn it. I couldn’t afford this one, but the beginning deserves something special. But how do I show that nothing, not a taste, not a smell, not even the color of the sky has ever been as clear and sharp as it was when I belonged to her? I don’t know how to express that being with someone so dangerous was the last time I felt safe."

I couldn't put words to my abuse, sobbing through trainings, clinging to friends as equally traumatized, slipping out of happiness, through prescription medications, drifting from classes into repeated absences. When I left college and entered "the work force," "the real world," I carried a very persistent fear I would not be able to hold down a job, an internal monologue that perseverated around how unstable I had been in prior years, how frequently I moved, how the running persisted despite the knowledge of where I was coming from. I ended up in graduate school despite the fact I frankly did not want to.

Although my attention span for graduate school is somewhat stagnant and sporadic and anxiety provoking (I somewhat seriously attest that undergraduate education traumatized me - but in graduating in 3 years at 44 credits in my last year, I am partially to blame), I began to hone down the definitions of what had been silently irking me for years. I am now on my second semester after an extended first semester wherein I had initially decided to enter the "Transformative Language Arts" program under the premise of studying writing therapy for sexual assault survivors, essentially an extension of studies I began independently through my undergraduate career (notably with a self-constructed major in Creative Writing and Social Change, and self-developed senior seminar in Feminist Sociolinguistics). Yet, I found myself more deviating towards domestic violence as I wrote draft upon draft of my study plan. Both sexual assault and domestic violence served as these immensely important ideas to me: I could not yet find a way to incorporate both concepts I seemed to fall upon - the idea of a mind/body dissociative split so associated with sexual assault, and the concept of "lost home"/mistrust/abandonment of family structure/gross characterization of inappropriate roles. I fumbled through my first semester (and dropped the concentration), ending it firmly, realizing what stuck with me most throughout both studies was the idea of identity formation in response to trauma/biology/environment/etc., the idea of a silence lost in the static of forced change, the strategic misplacement of self through perpetual adaptation. Perhaps defying genetics (or working in conjunction with), we find the fascinating formula of personality - picking apart my own bias, a grown white middle class girl now surrounded with low-level wages, a new legal name, an attempted restraining order against a family member, $50k in college debt, an outreach worker with an ever-stable job with ambitious promotion, graduate student, 22, spending all my free time being a self-prescribed (and socially recognized) workaholic. I am almost who I was in high school, but radically different. And I wonder perhaps, in the misplacement of my writing persona, I adapted one that needed to find the words I was living and implement them into the structure of my livelihood, expanding my life into experience I can help others with, pinning myself down to the study of my own identity creation, remembering to fight for the worth of the positive people I do have in my life. The words lost themselves in the significant ambition towards the creation of a being that could subsist on its own, still catching itself forgetting to breathe, being told to be 22 when I frequently forget.

I imagine Astrid of White Oleander, packing the identity shifts of her life into suitcases, wringing out the fervid waters of emotional adaptation, slipping an artistic lens onto the pain of forced transition, moving from one home to the next, cutting down the sky into something the hands can manage, carving the words from the base of her reality into a manageable image: packing her life into neat containers, giving chaos only a small space to breathe before she lets go, no longer trapped by the gross generalization of the present.

Mistakes

2011-11-21T22:30:00.000-07:00

I think a lot about the past. The things I regret. The actions I made, the naivety, the ignorance - perhaps forgiving others more than I forgive myself. Arriving unsure of where to place boundaries, when to lend myself a kind hand when others would not. I think of the relationships I severed with otherwise close friends, afraid of how toxic they could be when my own emotional habits remained unchecked - distance becoming my safe house, ever uncertain of where love existed. I think of these patterns - how, for years, I was angry at myself for the assaults against me - how I blamed myself for being naive, loathing myself for being "intelligent," an "empathetic doormat," but not keen enough to label abuse and put it in its place, not courageous enough to feel no self-doubt, self-pity, self-destruction, living in a perpetual nightmare where I was afraid I would wake up alone and unsuccessful, waiting for people to proclaim their hatred towards me, to walk away. I blame myself for things, constantly - as if I were always supposed to be aware, hyper-vigilant, unwaveringly kind and sharp - not the girl who bumbles through flirting, butchers intimacy and boundaries in any form of relationship, blaming herself for not being better/faster/stronger (thinking of close-minded and ignorant blog posts such as "trauma feminist" post, wondering if the world of advocacy could forgive me when I mislabeled myself and shamed others efforts with my own ignorance). Pacing, restraining, biting my lips until the right words come out - I grow more and more aware of my privilege of everyday, and saddened by the fact I have it better than a majority of people in this world and still come home feeling exhausted, regretting things, blaming myself, body-tired mind-heavy, remembering in the thickets of my skull of all those who have less resources than me who work harder/receive less/stick out as a knave in the corruption of the economic and politically oppressive systems.

I do not sleep on nights like this. It's almost a punishment, reminding myself of the wear and tear. It's almost like the series of suitcases in White Oleander. Except I cannot pack myself into these boxes, sleepless over the graves of the future, the past that remains unburied with motives I still question, wondering how the symbols fall into place, when the past will end.

I think of sitting in a mental health professional's office, listening to her tell me my depression isn't severe enough to qualify for inpatient hospitalization, as she remarks "getting into inpatient hospitalization is more difficult than getting into an Ivy League college these days," too stubborn to say the words I would've easily said (and meant) years ago, depression so deep that thoughts of suicidality were pervasive. I somehow stopped qualifying the more I learned to deviate from the past, crudely coping on my own. She tells me she's been working with "women's trauma for years," but will not listen to me as I say I cannot afford that type of time off work that she is recommending for a separate program. She acts as if my job is an inconvenience - she does not ask about my coping mechanisms. She is putting me into a box, ignoring the vastness of trauma, and the reality that "women's trauma" is based on a series of oppressions including economic oppression (insert easily found statistics about how little land women own/how many hours women work/how much less they receive than men). I do not say anything: she is putting me into a box, one where my depression, my coping skills, my identity does not adequately fit into.

I remember not knowing my abuser, what abuse was. Being afraid Child Protective Services would find me. Scavenging homes in the spare rooms and blow-up mattresses and couches of my friends. Cutting so many classes they would almost not let me graduate high school. Over 20 medications. Over 15 therapists. Crunching down to bills and $1 in the bank account. Smoking cigarettes and nude modeling. Being involuntary hospitalized once (and almost again). Being recommended rehab. Drinking so much coffee, taking too much classes, working too many hours that my body would not shut down - falling asleep at inopportune times against my will, 2 hours a slot, dropping down to 100 pounds: hospitalized again. The thumb of economic oppression, waiting to lose all that I had been given because I had refused to lie and accept an abusive reality as one that was okay. I remember feeling nothing the first time I had sex - knowing I was nothing but a thing. Scraping the system, body exposed, scavenging for money amidst mood swings. I could not regret how I didn't feel anything, because most of the time I felt too much. Desensitized through vodka, my memories would not leave me alone. Being told of my greatness, my strength, my talents, my intelligence - feeling none of these things: feeling survival, knowing that others have survived "worse."

I wonder how long it will take me to regret this entry, laying myself down before the internet, vulnerabilities and truth: the fact that I think every night of the people I have deeply burned in my own attempt to survive, the fact that I think walls mean protection. So tired I bottom out below the looking glass. I know my whole life people have been telling me (and likely will continue to do so) who I am, who I'm not, what I should do with my life - trying to stick me into a box, label me, give me an identity. I know they will find a way to make a definition stick. I know that I, too, have engaged in these behaviors. It is my greatest hope, amongst all my mistakes and re-learning, that these identities begin to slip away until there's nothing left except the narrative of truth.

Preserving Your Sanctuary: Reality with PTSD, etc.

2011-11-13T12:27:00.000-07:00

A lot of things have happened to me within the past few years, even within the past few months - and it's been more than a test of resilience. I find that with, having PTSD, every present moment becomes a test in and of itself - a question of awareness and hypervigilance. Being hypervigilant has a negative connotation, in the sense that it presents an over-alertness and intensified awareness of surroundings and motivations. Hypervigilance is sick - people who are hypervigilant have issues - they don't settle into their skin, they don't settle into the moment, they do not trust things to stay the same, constant, welcoming. I am admittedly quite hypervigilant, and half the time I'm not even aware of how hypervigilant I am. But it should be noted that I work in the mental health field and pursue the methodologies of writing and art with the idea that these otherwise troubling aspects associated with "mental illness" can simultaneously be our best gifts and our most creative assets if used properly. So, in this moment, I am very grateful for my hypervigilance: it keeps me alive, and more importantly, it keeps me from repeating the past. It maintains the progress I've made in looking back at my past littered with various abusive relationships, most of which masqueraded as love and self-blaming inadequacy. I mentioned to a coworker the other day that I don't trust anyone or any company or anything that masquerades as "perfect" or "above the others" or "a fully healing process," an organization or person that presents him/her/zeself as the only solution and best solution and full solution to any problem - those people and organizations trouble me. My coworker joked that this was because I was a cynical New Yawka. I responded that it was because, no, I just learned everyone has flaws and chances are, if you're masquerading as a person or company above and beyond flaws, you have some insecurity complex to work out because no one is perfect, and if you look closely into anyone's past, you will assuredly find one moment they regret or misstep. To err is human.

I may be cynical, but as this NPR article on mental illness and leadership postulates, I am also likely very realistic. In all my life experiences and mood swings and flashbacks, I had to find reality and define it every day - and still do. I learned to gauge: is this the bipolar? Is this the medications? Is it that time of the month? Was what that person said actually offensive - was my personal space and integrity violated and insulted? Is this happiness a fleeting euphoria linked to mania, am I genuinely happy? What does this feel like, why am I feeling it, is the feeling justified or biochemical or linked to memory/situation/projection and transference from trauma?

I get that most people don't live the way I do, or perhaps think the way I do. But this is the way I think most days - and I try to respect the world with the mindset I come in with and be fair to everyone else who has the distinct possibility of crossing me. And I try to treat my clients with the same respect and encourage them to fully consider things both objectively and subjectively, so they can channel their emotions in the proper direction.

And being an individual with PTSD, realizing your triggers and channeling your emotions in the proper direction is infinitely important to me and the way I cope with both the present and the past, respecting both and acknowledging the individuals in both - being hyper-aware and hyper-vigilant of myself and my surroundings helps me preserve the present, enhance my future, and help stifle the past from letting it dominate my judgments negatively when it could actually affect me positively through all the warning signs my life provided me.

In the past few years, noting all the turmoil I went through (mostly family related, but largely focused on identifying abuse and extricating it from my life on every level), I sacrificed a lot of things I love for the sake of what I perceived to be survival. I slowly stopped writing or reading at all. I stopped singing. I was hospitalized in an inpatient facility, and the counselor asked me what I did for fun, and that was when I realized I didn't do anything fun as I was left to stammer out: "I just... work." (As I threw fits about them confiscating my laptop, preventing me from completing academic work ;) ). It continued for at least a year or so even after graduating undergraduate studies - reading, writing, singing, doing the things I love suddenly became anxiety prone and stressful. Along this journey, I learned to sacrifice these things because suddenly, they stopped being about me. I met people, who I'm sure had good intentions, try to lead me one way or the other because they saw my potential in various areas and were very determined for me to follow their instructions that would assuredly lead me to greatness. This happened repeatedly. While this attention is flattering and my talents and intelligence are repeatedly noted throughout the various sectors of my life, it doesn't stop these sort of conversations from suddenly turning into a matter that has nothing to do with your ideas or your actual potential, but rather, what people want to see you do with your potential as it will greatly benefit their plans for you, their happiness, their reality and life choice convenience. Which is to say, the things I loved quickly became an otherwise draining and invalidating pursuit as I frequently found my own thoughts on what I wanted to do with my life, what I found important, and what I loved to do became inconsequential if it did not address the other person's needs and desires. If I did not think or love or care the way they wanted to, I was somehow useless and insignificant and wasting my time. Which sounds awfully like an abusive dialect to me.

Something, thanks to my hypervigilance, I am able to pick out incredibly quickly these days. Notably, I've begun to read and write again in bits the past few months, and have taken up singing here and there - of course, nowhere near to the extent I want to be - but it's a start. And I also notably put up with a lot less bullshit. For disclosure purposes, I can say this post is largely motivated by the fact I've spent the past month arguing with an insurance company over getting coverage for my mental health providers.... and is also motivated by interpersonal conflicts at work, where I realized I was putting in ample efforts beyond my status and job description (and have been doing so for months) and have not been adequately compensated in terms of money or adequate respect. With both these instances, I have been very upset - my immediate response was to feel depressed and blame myself or feel victimized that I live in a world where I am "punished" for trying to obtain what I need for basic survival (emotionally and financially). However, briefly after, another voice bounced in, in both instances, wherein I became somewhat passionately defiant and confident and enraged. A voice climbed into my head and said "I don't need this. I know what I'm worth. Shit, they can't treat me this way. I'm better than this. This was my past. I'm not going back there - I'm never going back there. If they think they're going to treat me this way and get by with invalidating my needs and punishing me for demanding what I'm worth and for what I need, they have another thing coming." Which isn't to say this isn't still at least partially depression - because it is. The important part is that due to years of hypervigilance and assessment of reality, I was able to bounce back substantially quicker than I used to - and rather than blame myself for demanding what I need out of this life (to get by without being substantially stressed each month), I realized that the likely culprits who should be blamed are the individuals who are reacting to my expression for need in such a negative and defacing light, that, for a moment I forgot the difference between the past and present and felt my abuser come into the present and impact my mood substantially, forgetting I had survived that already. Because, frankly, I know a personal life trigger when I see one. And when I see the trigger, I know its place, and I know that those triggers come with certain agendas and that my life intention is to stay far away from those agendas, triggers, and power-manipulating attitudes. I am done with all that. And I've noticed the fact that I'm done with all that is very alarming to a lot of people - that this intrinsic self-worth and the "this is bullshit" trigger radar - are not very convenient for people who would like to see my skills and other wonderful qualities pan out the way would best suit them.

I write this not because the "me who suffered severe prolonged depressions throughout high school and college, who lived under an abusive victimized mindset" is totally high five-ing the "me who can now largely compartmentalize triggers, minimize the impact of stressors, and continue on with her normal ADL skills/life as you know it while simultaneously being aware of her worth and when people are stepping on her Personal Boundaries which should not be disrespected," but because it's important to consider. Preserving the sanctity of your reality from being haphazardly power-maneuvered by individuals who would like to conveniently micromanage your worth into something that benefits them more than you when you are living your own life agenda is something that should become daily meditation. This sort of conflict is the type of conflict I find peace in - because, despite it all, I know I'll find myself at the end of the day (again and again), the more I assert my right to live a life where I am safe, where my necessities are met, where I am not impeded upon by another person's agenda and have the freedom to live out my potential as I see fit.

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.” - Sylvia Plath.

On "Surviving" and Silence

2011-04-10T23:48:00.000-06:00

There are so many complications to it: surviving. "Survivor."

I think of all the ways I've been surviving lately, breathing underwater in a stubborn refusal of reality: can't drop out of anything I've gotten into. Suffocating - surviving? I think of surviving - how I haven't updated this blog in what should be considered an absurdly long time for a writer (although I suppose there's been longer). I think of how many times I've come to a blank page with "nothing to say" - how writing my grad school packets becomes torture. I don't want to reveal to you what I know -

"The real question is about love:" Carol Gillian* asserts, "if I love you, will you leave me? It is a child's question: if you leave me, how will I survive?"

And when I say, I don't want to reveal to you what I know, I begin to really mean, I don't want to tell you of this great pivotal source of pain in my life that pushes so many people away, yet happens to have created so much of who I am. I tell myself, knowingly, recognizing it as fair: not everyone wants to know your story - sometimes, it's just too much for them. It doesn't make it better, but everyone has their limits of what they can handle, and that should be respected.

I work anywhere between 30-50 hours a week, dealing with variously traumatized or otherwise injured populations (mental health services, brain injury services, etc.) - and I spend this time attempting to micromanage chaos and crisis, trying to inspire motivation and healing amongst the mundane, the fights, the stubborn refusal to do anything other than watch television. And in this world, I try to pretend my own struggles don't exist - as I feel, professionally, they can't exist. And in interpersonal relationships at work, I make only vague illusions to "struggle" or "dealing with my own stuff" - I grow too afraid to unravel my history before them, watch people ricochet away from me, say things like "she belongs in our services, she's not fit for the job, she can't handle it on top of her own personal history - how can she help other people?"

I smile, oversimplify: "You know - I go to work all day and deal with trauma... and then go home... and study trauma.... It's hard."

I leave out, "and then there's my own trauma to deal with..."

I survive. I go through the day repeatedly catching my chest constricting, remind: breathe. Take in a gulp of air. I survive. And I spend a lot of time involved in my own silence.

It seeps out in dreams of death, of repeated panic attacks in the middle of sleep - dissociating. It leaks out when all I can find is this barring cloud of silence every time I try to write: frustration. It laughs at me as my paranoia escalates over the most casual of conversations, repeatedly reanalyzing the words I did say as if they were so much more worthy and caustic just because they were said. My relationships tremble before me as I wonder how long they'll last, if they'll last when the person becomes closer to me.

I begin living a life precariously on the edge. I begin splitting off from reality, dangerously. Fantasies kick in again and again, illicit if only for the content. Dangerous for their increasing frequency. They suggest another world - one where I ramble, and people listen. One where I confront others and this confrontation is respected. A world where my love is welcomed and reciprocated. I imagine conversations where I detail the ramifications of all I've been through, the consequences of having had my family and my situations - how my present is a conglomerate of the "if I must..." decisions. In these fantasies, people stagger with the weight of living which I am living - in my fantasies, I have witnesses and willing advocates for the traumas I've been through. In my fantasies, I am living in a world where I am laughing, where people realize when you're overstressed and willingly take the extra burdens off your plate without making you feel guilty about it.

I split off into these fantasies, where I am smiling (for once) at the triumphant conversation or the relationship that does not actually exist, leaving the world that's grounding me for the pleasant alternate scenario where hope actually exists and my voice is vibrant and alive. Where the only consequences of my voice are loving relationships, conversations over coffee, late night rendezvous. In this world, there is no awkward stigmatization and distancing, very little of people leaving - and there is generally an increasing acceptance that we're all flawed. It's a particularly unique form of dissociation and coping.

But I always ground myself again: pruning my thoughts and words, reprimanding myself on time wasted. I try to place myself back in reality, reading my homework or attending to an assignment. I concoct to-do lists that I can only hope I'll fully attend to. I remember to be elusive around people, protect stories. I try to control my focus, which tends to wane over the unrealistic for hours. I try to live in the silence which, in an almost disturbing sense, becomes my safe and realistic option. My silence becomes, what feels like, my essential survival tool.

Despite the consistent fatigue, the hyper-vigilance, the restraint, my body clutches silence in fear that it would all be much worse if I were not silent: trying to save up what little resources it has. It is an action that routinely begs many questions:

Is silence healthy or unhealthy?
As an advocate for sexual assault survivors, what example do I set by silencing myself?
Am I regressing back into my trauma or am I recognizing and incorporating my trauma into reality?
What are the limits of (hearing, engaging with) trauma in our relationships and working place?
How frequently do we stigmatize and isolate those who've been traumatized?

And, if silence is required to keep one's community from collapsing, how does one interpret the meaning of survival?
___________________________________________________________________________________________
*excerpt from "The Birth of Pleasure" by Carol Gilligan

what is feminism?

2011-02-21T10:09:00.001-07:00

Well, I would say, for starters - a good, basic article to read on what feminism is/is not, would be located here: http://blogs.menshealth.com/mh-feminist/the-f-word-an-introduction/2011/01/25/

Aside from that, I'd say that feminism has a lot to do with the concepts of sensitivity, equality, and the openness to learn. There's a lot of systematic oppression that goes in our culture and unless we are the group being oppressed (sometimes even if we are the group being oppressed), we're not even necessarily aware of it. There's a lot of behavior in our culture that has become normalized that really ends up offending/limiting/marginalizing certain populations, and we have to learn to become sensitive, as feminists and individuals in general, to the possibility that we could be offending someone with even the smallest behavior. We need to increasingly challenge our biases and enhance our awareness by participating in what may be perceived as challenging, charged dialects around heterosexism, classism, sexism, racism, ableism, and etc. Essentially, feminism involves the capability to listen to, and attempt to absorb, the stories of the oppressed in an attempt to not only assist the oppressed and broaden our own deepened knowing, but also to help achieve equality, which is feminism's end goal.

I hope that makes sense?

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