Monday, December 30, 2013

I'm agoraphobic

Realizations are scary... At best. I know academically that I am agoraphobic.But I am also he master of denial. Until this evening. 

Three years ago I had a breakdown. My mind was pushed to the ultimate boundaries of endurance and I finally snapped. And for ten years before that I lived in Memphis, TN. Unarguably one of the worst places to live in the United States, Memphis has a long enduring history of hate and anger and a strong cultivation of apathy. They strive for apathy here like animals strive for survival in the wild. It’s their instinct, it’s their culture, it’s their lineage, one they will never change. I hate it here. I would rather live with my abusers than live here. 

While doing the dishes this evening, I do what I always do and had an in depth internal dialogue about my situation and things I have observed about myself. I do this all the time. I self analyze. I dissect myself and try to filter out the bad. At times it is excruciating because I see certain parts of myself and know I cannot change them or filter them out. I try so hard to better myself all the time and tonight I realized I was doing something wrong.

As I mentioned before, I dislike Memphis. I have never hidden that fact. I also blamed a lot of my condition on the fact that Memphis is the root of all evil. I started working again in 2004 and I continued to work until I couldn’t anymore. And for the longest time, I blamed Memphis for this. I blamed Memphis for me not wanting to go outside, explaining to anyone who would listen that I was different before I came here, I used to go outside all the time in California, in El Paso, in Savannah, etc. I explained that I have held down jobs, I have spoken to people, I talked on the phone all the time. I would drive to the store without ever worrying about it. I would... I would... I would... But that wasn’t true either. In California I went outside because my then girlfriend wanted it that way, and then the girlfriend after that. I held down jobs during that time because I needed more money than I had. In El Paso I the same thing, in Savannah same thing. It was always for someone that I pushed myself beyond my endurance level and in the end of each of those, I suffered. 

So, when I first started noticing that I was slipping away emotionally, I did try to reach out to people and explain it was happening but I also kept blaming the job, the people I worked with, the type of work, the amount of work, the mentality of the people who grew up in Memphis and their incessant apathy, and having to commute with the piss poor drivers here. I blamed everything else. 

It wasn’t Memphis at all. I’m agoraphobic. At an early age I was conditioned to stay away from people. Every time I was close to people they harmed me in some way. When I started to stay away from people I felt ok. During my childhood and adolescence I learned to be alone and I felt safe. 

I’m agoraphobic. When I was leaving the house each and every day to go to work, I was pushing myself beyond what I could actually handle. And slowly I lost every ounce of strength I had to hold back the fear and anguish I felt. Each time I went to work, I got weaker and weaker until that day in August in 2010. Then all bets were off, the damn broke, and I fell to the ground in a heap of tears because it was all just way too much. And this evening when I finally saw that it was not Memphis at all, something clicked, it was like someone ran a pen up my spine and dotted the back of my head. I’m agoraphobic. I never wanted to believe I was that bad off. I never wanted to believe I still had years of work ahead of me to deal with what happened. I have spent 44 years not dealing with what happened. And now, my mind, in small bursts of remembering, is forcing me too. I had a major memory recently thanks to Dexter, the tv show. Long story. Some people haven’t seen the most recent episodes so I don’t want to spoil anything. Needless to say, there was a very triggering scene for me and since then my brain has been waging war with itself with releasing memories and fighting to keep them at bay. My defenses are faltering and acceptance is rearing its ugly head. 


I’m agoraphobic. I don’t have enough energy anymore to keep any of the crap at bay. In the past when I have been in therapy, I always reach a point just before I start talking about my childhood and then I stop going. I can’t do that anymore. There is nothing else to blame, nothing else to do but move forward and to do that I must, I must confront the crap.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Acceptance and All Things Brave

The day I finally reached acceptance of my system was like feeling the sun on my face. It was 1996 and I remember I went inside and stood in the doorway of their house and just watched them for a long time. They have a viewer in the middle of the living room, a huge screen where they can watch what is going on outside. They have a sectional couch facing the viewer. On the couch sat Cassi, Cathi, Mimi, Sara, and a handful of Littles. On the back of the couch sat Richi doing his nails and every once in a while interjecting into the conversation. I just watched them and it suddenly occurred to me what they went through. It wasn’t just about me having gone through some terrible times at the hands of my family and their friends, my system did too. They probably got the worst. I stood feeling these enormous emotions slowly start to overtake ma and I remember I started to shake. Soon, I was crying heavily. Soon after that, as they have done my entire life, my system came to me and lifted me up, taking me to the couch and cared for me until I regained my composure. 

I don’t have words to adequately explain my system, what they did, who they are, and what they did for me. Words almost fail me. If it wasn’t for them, I would surely be worse than I am.  

I will never know what it is like to form friendships and bonds after enduring war. I will never fully understand how people share those fundamentally, soul altering experiences when faced with gun fire and carnage. But I can, with 100% clarity, know the bond I have with my system after we endured ongoing onslaughts of repeated torture, rape, mutilation of body and mind, and seeing in their eyes how even the light of day is kept at fingers length. I know the pain of a survivor. I fully grasp and understand how life goes on but in mechanical motion. I know and see how the heart is wrung close to death at the painstaking awareness that people in this world wanted us dead. It is not a cavalier statement, people wanted us dead, erased from the earth, wiped clean of any knowledge to our existence. And when you are a child, fighting against those odds, who you were meant to be becomes moot because that person is gone. In their place is someone who will never fully trust, who is constantly on guard, who is wrought with scars, both external and internal. 


So, looking at my system as the forefront of all things brave, one can begin to fully understand why to me they are heroes.