Duality

"You've been through a lot of pain. And it's hard to trust anyone, hard to believe that anyone could care because you've always hated yourself. On one level, you've wanted people to believe your tough facade. But on a deeper level, you've wished that someone would be able to get past it, to get inside you and listen to your heart. But you've been afraid that no one in the world would understand - or worse, that you would drive them away." Rachel Reiland

This whole blog has been my demolition of my facade. All of my writing here is the crazy side of me, the side that unrelentingly points out: "I'm still here. Still sick". It's the reason my family can't stand half of the things I write because it's so much easier to imagine me as the fully-functional woman that gets up, goes to work everyday, performs her tasks easily, and goes to sleep with a contented heart. I understand that it's easier to see me that way because that is what I present to the "real world", - the world that lives outside this computer screen. At least most of the time. I've cried so often at work that people don't even seem to think it's strange anymore...it's just B....crying again.

I have a potential lawsuit against the FOB and a family that I rely on and need in so many ways that I can't even begin to count. When they ask me to take down a post or move it to my private blog, I honor their requests. Yet, there is this almost masochistic drive to prove to the internet that there are two women living inside me (without the dissassociation of a multiple personality disorder, fortunately).

There is the me that can bathe and dress a child in under 15 minutes and enjoy the beautiful peace and love of my son's smile when he cuddles up to me the morning, in bed together. There is the me that can be an A-student in a MBA program and sit through hours of unrelenting pain to learn subjects that I can't immediately apply to any conceivable work situation. Then there is the me that just wants to disappear. The me that says, "You've fucked everything up. Every decision you've ever had and every choice you've ever made has led to nothing but pain for yourself and those you love. Anything you haven't fucked up yet is just a matter of time. Leave now. Go. Just go now and you won't have to be around to deal with the mess you've made of everything. You're so pathetic. You've alienated everyone whoever trusted and loved you. They're sick of you and your so-called illness"

That's usually how it goes in my head before I end up in the hospital. On Thanksgiving I decided that I wouldn't make my Dad find me in my apartment. I decided to hide behind a restaurant and wait. Then the phone rang it was like Fate/God/Life/Universe was giving me a game show lifeline, one of those "Phone a Friend" gimmics. I answered and smiled. It was one of my best friends, telling me how much she loved me. Then suddenly my Dad was on the other line, demanding to know which parking lot I was in. I clicked back to my friend and told her that it was a neat trick to call my Dad while I was still on the phone with her. She said she was worried. I made an incredibly stupid decision and decided that my Dad would never find me if I was on the freeway...that I would just pull over when I got tired. It didn't work like that though. I drove almost 30 miles south with no memory. I woke up in the ICU the next day in the seaside town I drove to, vomiting, alone with a nurse that cleaned me up afterwards.

Four days and many pages to a psychiatrist who never answered later, I was released. I went back to both of my jobs, like I've always done. Sure, after two weeks of bickering back and forth about insurance and deductibles, I got a new therapist and felt excited about the possibilities of actually recovering. Nothing had actually changed though. Nothing ever does from an event like that. It takes all your problems and magnifies them by about 1,000 until you're lucky if you can make it out of bed every day without feeling like a worthless piece of shit that brought all of this down on yourself. I mean - if you feel like a failure, try failing at death. It's one of cosmos' cruelest jokes. On the screen of life you see the same message flash over and over: GAME OVER! You've failed at both living and dying! GAME OVER. Try to find someway to live now, sucka. Sucks to be you.

Fast forward to Sunday. I can feel it all happening again. I'm crying uncontrollably and I decide that I want to break the pattern. I decided to proactively go to a hospital that my new therapist recommended. She said that there was a unit there for highly-motivated patients. After several phone calls, I found out that the unit was closed and I would be placed into the general population in a locked unit. During the admission process, they took my blood pressure and heart rate. I was having chest pains and a BP of 149/93. My heart rate was a steady 110 beats per minute. I should be burning calories at that rate, instead I'm clutching my chest wondering if it's possible for a heart to beat so hard that it damages the muscles surrounding it.

I was taken to a large hospital in the Med Center. Ironically, it's the hospital that Dew now works at. I thought for a moment to ask for him, but I was deemed a threat to myself and put in a room with no medical equipment, save for a bed that moved up and down and table that rolls bedside at 7:30pm. The lock was on the outside of the room and required a key to enter. The light switch was also on the outside of the room. I was there for three hours before I got a glass of water and was able to go to the bathroom. I called my Dad. I asked for him to come down to the hospital and stay outside the door - just to remind them that I was still inside. He decided not to come. It was late. The nurses and doctors took my blood, did two physical exams, a EKG, and chest x-ray. They fed me a sandwich and locked the room back up. At 5:45am the next morning, I left the hospital, again in an ambulance, back to the hospital my therapist recommended. Apparently I had been medically cleared. My anxiety was the culprit to my chest pain, not anything vaguely related to the cardiovascular system.

At 6:15am I was back at the hospital. I had to wait until 10am to go up on the unit. I'm not exactly sure why, something about the nurses not being ready to admit me. The unit is the loudest, most choatic place I've ever been. Everyone is either yelling, listening to music, or singing. Nurses are shouting orders at each other and the patients. The patients are mostly ignoring them and I'm wondering where the closest bed is so I can go to sleep. I left, AMA, 48 hours later into my parents' custody. Although everyone from my psychiatrist to my sister thinks that I'm crazy for admitting myself one day to discharging myself three days later, I knew I wasn't going to get what I needed from that situation. Hell, I couldn't even get a decent nap in that situation, let alone intensive therapy.

So now I'm back. No one trusts that I made the right decision to go AMA. Yet once, just this once, I believe in myself. I stopped the destructive, abusive pattern that I've been putting myself through. I didn't give in to the urges of the dark side. If I could have seen into the future and known what life on the unit was like (it's not like they give tours before admission, ya know?) there is no way I would have admitted myself there. But I did, then I had the presence of mind to get out. I don't see it as a failure. Even my dark side doesn't see it as one, even though she desparately seeks the approval of her friends, family, and doctors and realizes that she won't find it.

I'm scared about the future...almost horrified that I've yet again fucked something up with this confession. Someone, somewhere will find it and I'll be embarassed and horrified to have my dirty laundry on display, but if I've learned one thing from the past six years, it's that you can't deny the existence of the duality. To do so leads to disasterous consequences.