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I'm trying to write an entry for NaNoWriMo, and I'm doing it here. Most of my entries for the rest of the month will be toward this, and will all be together on this page.

It has come to my attention that generally a novel has a plot, characters, development, the whole nine yards. I know I�m not really providing that for my readers, so I will have to start somewhere. This is going to be fragmented quite a bit. This kind of stuff is cleaned up in the editing portion of writing. I doubt that I will edit this, as I am only trying to WRITE WRITE WRITE.

I was born in Lowell, Massachusetts. I am the third child for my parents. My brother and sister were adopted a decade before I was born. My parents believed they couldn�t have children, as they had tried for four or five years without luck. Then they got a surprise. By the time I came around, my parents were pretty relaxed about childrearing. I had free reign of the house and yard � the entire neighborhood, in fact. There were times I would spend hours in the kitchen, concocting �brews� of mustard seed, cinnamon, paprika, anything I could get my hands on. I thought that was cooking. I wonder if I ever worked with the stove? My first burn was sustained with an iron, not the stove. I was helping my mom and the iron fell off the ironing board. Hmmm, I�m already getting off the subject. I don�t really like starting from the beginning, because that�s not how it goes in my memory. My first memory is getting lost in a hospital. My sister had all these medical problems when I was young. I think the instance I�m thinking of occurred when she was getting major surgery done on her ears. She�s partly deaf nowadays. Anyway, I was in an elevator, and I felt so scared. I couldn�t tell you if I was actually lost or if I just felt scared being in a cramped elevator with strangers in a hospital. I do remember liking the hospital food, though. Some other random memories: walking down the street with my sister and her friend and getting knocked over by our neighbor�s humungous dog. I was so bloody. Getting a ride on the back of my brother�s bike, walking back inside through the garage and seeing blood all over my legs. I still don�t remember feeling pain. It only occurred to me a month or two ago that perhaps I had pierced my hymen. Coming home from gymnastics, and falling down in the bushes next to my driveway and getting covered in red ants. My parents were getting ready for an Amway meeting, and I wanted to get ready too, so I took my father�s razor and �shaved,� then ran out into the living room all proud of myself and yelled, �I�m ready!� They shrieked with horror, dragged me kicking and screaming back into the bathroom and poked at my face with witch hazel-soaked toilet paper. Licking my sister�s face because that�s what I had seen the people on soap operas do when two people cared about each other. Getting the flu while I was staying with my babysitters. I had eaten bowl after bowl of cereal because I had this strange feeling in my belly that I didn�t understand. I figured it had to be hunger. We must have gone to a church youth group outing or something, and I ended up going inside this familiar person�s house, laying down on the couch, and puking all over his carpet. Then I got yelled at because I hadn�t called out to anyone. I was too weak to do anything of the sort. I was so embarrassed because my babysitter had to bring me home and sit there and hold a bucket for me to barf in while I was sitting on the toilet with diarrhea. The memory still makes me tear up. I was so scared and all I wanted was my mommy. Aside from that, I really didn�t like my babysitters. They scared me. They manipulated me. They had fun on my account. I was also a very panic-stricken little girl. I would cry at the drop of a hat. I was often heard to say, �You�re (sob) making (sob) fun (sob) of meeeeeeeeee!!!!� And very often they were. But my accusation always sent them into rolling hysterics. Which just compounded the problem. For a long time I was very angry with my sister because she was always the first to start laughing at me. One time she even spit Coke in my face because I made her laugh. The sound of her laugh now makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up straight. That�s the sound of someone poking fun at me. That�s the sound of being a joke. I looked up to her, my big sister, and she just laughed back. Kids do say the darnedest things, but I know better than to laugh. And if I do laugh, I always explain why. Little girls� feelings are like eggs; they can be broken, and they can�t be put back together. My anxiety disorder has never made any of this stuff easy. I wonder if I would have stood up to the test better if I didn�t have this problem. Would I have reacted the same way to my sister�s odd sense of humor if I didn�t have panic attacks? I am guessing yes. Once I went on medication, I felt so much more lighthearted. I was finally able to shrug things off and not take things personally. Before, that was never an option. �Relax,� had no meaning. How did one relax after all? Let other people walk all over oneself? Never! But now I just don�t let anything get on my nerves. I don�t sink down to other people�s levels. If they make fun of me, I say whatever. I�m sure they have some problem they are trying to cover up by pointing out my misfortunes. I�m over it. The first time I ever felt that way was when I was taking a semester off from college and was living with my best friend. My parents had introduced me to St. John�s Wort. I don�t remember how much I took per day, I think it was only one pill. I felt relaxed and in control of my emotions and my life! I started to exercise, didn�t cry as often, and was generally happy and cheery. Now, people who know me know that this would be an irregularity. When I went on the pill, I had heard that people shouldn�t mix the pill and St. John�s Wort, so I went off the stuff. My troubles started back up again. I don�t think I had come to the conclusion that the improvements in my life were partly due to St. John�s Wort. I was back in school, so I just figured the stress was getting to me all over again. About two years later, I realized what was going on. I had problems far more serious than basic stress. I had a good job, I lived with my boyfriend, I had a friendly kitty, and life was good! But I couldn�t sleep. I would wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling. I would think someone was in the apartment. Every night my heart would start to beat wildly as I search the apartment for potential rapists. I would take a shot or two of vodka hoping that it would relax me. I would be really tired for a few days at work, and then I would get one or two nights sleep and feel better again. But the night problems didn�t go away. I think I realized I truly had a problem when my boyfriend went on a skiing trip. Every night, I came home from work, drank a bottle of wine or a few shots of vodka, watched movies, and cried myself to sleep. Then I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would have to perform my ritual. Not to mention that I had to sleep with a night light and a fan on, because every little sound and every little shadow was a threat. Better to drown out the noise and scare away the shadows. The next time my boyfriend went away on a business trip, right before he left, I curled up in the closet and cried. What I didn�t tell him was that I was scared of myself and didn�t want to be alone. He thought we were just fighting over some little thing. It was far more serious than that. That week was just the same as the previous one. Even though these things seem so obvious now, I just accepted them as the norm. I was more aware of the world and how dangerous it was. This had to be how people protected themselves and worried about being attacked or raped or mugged. But then these thoughts crept into my mind. I desperately wanted to cut myself. From out of nowhere, I just wanted to take a knife and draw my own blood. That feeling scared me more than anything. I spent more afternoons coming home from work and soaking in the tub because I knew I needed to calm down. I would just lie in the water and cry. I hated myself and wanted the pain to go away. I wanted to externalize the pain, as if cutting would somehow purge the self-loathing. The wish to cut became more violent. I wanted to down sleeping pills or just slit my wrists. I would go into hysterics and cry myself to sleep on the couch because I wanted to cause myself pain and I knew that it wasn�t right. I knew that there had been a time when things had felt good and normal, and I felt right with myself. Everything in my life was good, and I had absolutely no reason to feel like killing myself, so I knew I had to do something. My boyfriend kept on encouraging me to see someone, but I had no idea how. But I was losing more and more sleep at night and cried far too often. My emotions were already interfering with my work and I would cry at my desk pretty regularly. It was time to stop this. It was either kill myself or kill the problems. I knew killing myself wasn�t really an option. The only thing that kept me from doing it was the mental image of my parents crying because of my death. I love them so much, and suicide would be so selfish, especially after everything that they have given to me and done for me. I had no idea how my insurance worked or if psychiatrists needed referrals, or even if I had a problem � maybe I WAS just being dramatic. I made an appointment with a family practitioner. The appointment had to be for something like three weeks down the road, so I bided my time. I remember how still and quiet the examining room was, all except the buzzing of the fluorescent lights. The doctor walked in, looking bored, and asked me if I minded if this intern came in to observe. Whatever, the more the merrier, I figured. Might as well get some witnesses here. So the doctor asked me what the trouble was and why I was there. Well, I have these problems with my feet, I think I need new orthodics, and I have this little irritation on my arm, I�ve had it for almost a year and it won�t go away with simple antibiotics, hmm, did I forget anything, oh yeah, I�m suicidal. Silence. The intern�s eyes popped out of his head. Boing. Symptoms? Well, I have an overwhelming urge to do myself in. Have I cut in the past? Have I tried to take my life before? Yes and yes, years ago. The cutting urge has resurfaced and I have tried, but I haven�t been able to draw blood. (Almost consider asking for advice on how to draw my own blood.) Anyway, the staff wouldn�t let me leave the office until they knew I had an appointment with a psychiatrist. Granted, the appointment was for a month down the line. But I knew that if I made it to the appointment that I would be fine. There were some really tough times in that month. For example, September 11th, 2001. I still had two weeks to go until my appointment. That night I got up in the middle of the night, not because I thought rapists would break into my apartment, but because I was afraid more planes had been hijacked. Truly, that was the safest I had felt in a long time, because there were no planes in the sky, and everyone in the country was so numb that I didn�t fear someone would have the heart to break into my apartment that night. If anything, September 11th gave me a reason to live. I don�t want to turn this dialogue into a patriotic rant or anything, but the attacks were a wake up call. The episodes didn�t stop because of them, but I knew I would make it. I had lived through September 11th, I would be fine. My appointment was on the 29th. I was late to the appointment because I got so fucking lost on the way. I even called the office for directions, but the secretary thought I was somewhere else, and I got more lost. I started taking random turns and suddenly wound up in the right place. I rushed in, half an hour late, desperately afraid that the doctor wouldn�t see me. I almost cried with relief when they invited me into his office. As most psychiatrists do, he picked my brain for 45 minutes. He asked me if I had any OCDs. Like what? Rituals you perform without reason. An alarm went off somewhere in my brain. I explained my night rituals to him. I had never thought of them as an obsessive-compulsive disorder, but that just made so much sense. I had never even thought of those episodes as part of my problem! The suicidal thoughts were the first and foremost thing on my list of complaints, but not the adrenaline rushes at 3 AM thinking a rapist was in my doorway. Do you know I almost didn�t go to the appointment with the psychiatrist because two days before the appointment I was feeling absolutely ducky? I was so happy and the sun was shining and everything seemed RIGHT. I almost cancelled the appointment because obviously nothing was wrong and it was all in my head. But then the next day I was down again and sitting in the bathtub crying. I explained this to him and asked how I could be depressed if I felt fine two days ago. �It sounds to me,� he said, �like you suffer from Anxiety Disorder.� (Big sigh of relief.) I was relieved to have a diagnosis. I was almost happy to know that I had a genuine problem. It was NOT all in my head and I was not being fucking dramatic. My world made sense. I was justified. I was so fucking happy to know that I, in fact, had an Anxiety Disorder. I won�t say my life has been peaches and cream since I went on Zoloft, but DAMN, I feel so much better. I can now sleep through an entire night. I might wake up, but I go to the bathroom and fall right back asleep. I can function when I am home alone and no longer drink any type of alcohol. I am not self destructive. There are days when I am down and lonely, maybe I cry and say how pointless my life is, but I can EASILY talk myself out of it and move on. My problems are not entirely gone, but my life is so dramatically improved now that I know what the matter is and I can deal with it. I suffer from Panic Attacks. I have an Anxiety Disorder. I have OCDs. But I feel better.

Listening to:
Thinking:
Weight: 125

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