Responsibility

“What happens when the pain doesn’t stop? How long can you put on a brave face before crumbling to the ground? Only to rise again and again to feign strength a bit longer until you can endure no more. It does not help when you realize that it was your sin – your tragic flaw – that brought you to the asphalt.”**

I feel like my mind has made my body sick, in a last ditch effort to quell my madness. The above quote may not appeal to most people dealing with a debilitating disorder like Fibromyalgia, but it certainly appeals to me. I have never been a healthy person; in the “survival of the fittest”, I should be dead. It was never serious, I was just sickly and small, in and out of the hospital all through my childhood. I was a weak teenager, but then, when I seemed to have left all that behind in my early twenties, I went a little crazy; bad food, booze, drugs, smoke, late nights and risky behaviour (wink, wink). Either I was over-celebrating my body’s freedom from illness, or I was being stupid. I’m going to go with stupid, but with just cause. No, just stupid. For fifteen years, I ignored all the signs, and landed myself in the hospital many times. A descent into chemically induced (yet untreated) paranoid schizophrenia had me hidden away from the world for over a year, and has left me with night terrors and bouts of crippling panic. “Traumatic Stress Disorder” is what they call it. Yet, with all that was happening, with all the people around me who wanted to help, I never took the time to listen to what was going on inside my own body and mind.

When I think about it now, I think that the worst of my tragic flaws is a desire for control. I see everything in my life, in my health, and in my world, in terms of power struggles and control issues. I fight for mastery over my own body, and over my thoughts. I see other people as either those I can control, those who are trying to control me, or those that I just couldn’t care less about. I hate loosing the upper hand, and when I seem in danger of doing so, I could usually figure a way to re-gain it, or I would simply turn my back on the situation. Yes, even in the most intimate of moments, I have calculated the power plays at work, but now I’m getting sidetracked, and a little flushed. Every day, every minute was taken up with little mental games meant to increase self-discipline. Whether it was knowing more than anyone else at work, trying to be faster, stronger and better, engaging in silent competition with an adversary, a pigheaded insistence on ignoring my body’s warning signs, or wanting to appear to be the calmest, most self-possessed person at the party. Never at the center, but off to the side, taking in the scene with an interested, innocent and aloof look in my eye. “Look[ing] cheerful while under the table I stuck a fork in the back of my hand”.* I delighted in making people I truly despised think that I was the nicest, smartest, sweetest girl they had ever met. I like people to feel that I am better than them. Makes them humble. Makes me self-absorbed. If I couldn’t do a thing perfectly, I simply wouldn’t do it. I hated my own weakness, and even more having to show that weakness to others. Never ask for help, they’ll just use it against you later. And yet, the flip side to all of this: guilt, terrible guilt that would rear its ugly head when I wished it wouldn’t. Guilt and fear of discover and judgment. It is my own lack of self-confidence that must make me behave like this, who am I to think myself better? What if they knew what a horrible person I really am, underneath it all?

How, one wonders, does that cute little girl in the pink dress, from the good family, end up so twisted, so bitter? Hmmm, too much time spent alone as a child, cripplingly shy from a young age? Too little serotonin in the brain? That boy who would not hear the word “No”? Or, am I just a bitch, and don’t want to admit it? Bitches rarely hold the power they think they do. ”Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” I always say. Of course, I don’t really have many friends, or enemies, now days. Sometime after I quit drinking, and gave up my social life, all of my control issues were left to fester at work and at home. Between the two, I ran myself into the ground and drove my partner crazy! I tried too long to discipline my failing body, hobbling around work like Quasimodo, but goddamn it, I was there, I was working! I wasn’t about to let a few aches and pains, or any of my co-workers, get the better of me. Pop a few painkillers and keep going! I certainly wasn’t about to become unemployed, unemployed people have no power. So, when I finally admitted that I could no longer do my job, I decided to take a three-month sick leave. Take a few months to relax and get myself back on track, then get out there and find something better. About two months in, my partner came home to find me moving furniture. Not wanting to ask for help, and thinking that no one else would do it right anyway, I decided to rearrange the living room and lug an unused armchair down to the basement. Stupid? Yes…but in control.

So now, here I sit, in my pink jammies with my cane across my lap, wondering how to dispel this tragic flaw, or at least find it another outlet. I feel as if my mind has made my body sick, and only by helping my body to heal, will my mind be made well. I went to a Restorative Yoga class a few weeks ago, and there I saw a glimpse of how to practice self-discipline in a sensible way, and it had nothing to do with performing the perfect forward bend or holding a posture longer than anyone else. Lying there, in the quiet, dim room, supported by bolsters and mats, listening to the tall, cherub faced teacher tell stories from the Yoga Sutras, I breathed deeply and could feel myself release. My body began to give in to the pain it wanted to express. I tried to calmly wait and listen to whatever it wanted to tell me.

“I’m sore, and you’re stupid” it said.

Well, it’s a start.



A.

** "Lord Melodrama" by Logan
* Marquise de Merteuil, “Dangerous Liaisons”

Well, here we go again.

I am a blog addict.

The act of putting my thoughts, and feelings, and problems out into the ether, creates a certain sense of satisfaction. The journal, laid bare for all to see. Okay, well not all, I do realize that there is a good chance that only a handful of people will read this, but even that is something. The idea of "bearing witness" to one's struggle, has always appealed to me. Of course, not in a reality TV, kinda way. But an individual's true pain, delight, lust, fascination, or confusion; not the drama fabricated to please an audience. I want to share the stuff of humanity, here, in binary code. And so, I will attempt one "publication" a week, on various topics. The only common thread: I can only write what I know.

A.