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i'm not here - this isn't happening - last entry / next entry - The "G" experience - 124 | 11.19.02 12:10 amI don�t think I could possibly do as well as I did last night on this thing, and I�m only 7.5% through. Will I ever make it? I got an updated email today talking about 30,000 words. Yeah, right. I get so many ideas of things to talk about, and then I lose them ALL. I have to start keeping that little book in my back pocket like I used to. I considered talking about my experiences in Germany. What a depressing time that was. I had no interest in the place, but it changed my life. I was so convinced that I was miserable there that I couldn�t see all the opportunities. When I came back to Chelmsford, nothing was the same. My home had changed. I expected it to be exactly the same, and it wasn�t, and I was so disappointed. I was so depressed while I was in Germany. What was my problem, any way? Was I convinced that I would have been happier somewhere else? Let�s face it, I was already suffering from panic attacks, so no matter what I did, I was going to be unhappy. Sometimes my bus would get to school early. At first, I didn�t know what to do, so I would lock myself in one of the stalls in the girls� room so I didn�t have to talk to anyone. Later on, I would sit myself in front of my first period class, French, and read. I became extremely organized while I lived in Germany. I kept a planner and always did all my homework. That was a first. I wrote several letters every day. I actually practiced piano. But I was sad every night. Every night I would think about my home, six hours behind me. As I was getting out of school, my friends were starting third period. As I was going to bed, my friends were doing their after school activities. As I was getting up, they were going to bed. I kept my watch set on Eastern Standard Time for about the first 5 months. I hated myself and was so angry with my parents for making me move. I think about it now and realize how much stress I must have put on them. They were unhappy themselves. My dad had been lied to about the job. He was doing the work of several people and was extremely unhappy. My mom couldn�t get a job. All jobs at the bases were first given to the dependents of active military = not my father. So she had nothing to do all day. She was unhappy, my dad was unhappy, I was unhappy. What an unhappy little family we were. Under those conditions, it�s amazing none of us took on drug or alcohol addictions. My mom smoked an unusual amount of cigarettes. When they moved out of their apartment after two years and took the paintings off the wall, a think layer or soot was revealed from the cigarette smoke. I had my own vices. First it started as not eating lunch. My mom would give me some money every day for lunch. The first couple of days I tried to go into the lunch room to procure some food. To my dismay, the entire high school had lunch at the same time, along with the middle school. The lunch room was filled with middle school kids. I was so filled with anxiety about sitting alone among a throng of middle-schoolers that I just left. We had an open campus, so I went over to the commissary very often. I never bought anything. I just walked over there and back. Or around the school grounds. After a few months, I started to get to know the teachers and I would stay in their classrooms during lunch. I still didn�t eat anything. I was too unhappy to eat. The knot in my stomach was so big that it wouldn�t let me digest food. Then I stopped eating breakfast. I think I was trying to punish myself. I felt that I didn�t deserve food because I was such a miserable human being. My mom bought me yummy yogurts for breakfast. I knew she was keeping track of how many she bought and how many were left before she had to buy more, so I would scoop them out of the containers and flush them down the sink. How mad she would have been if she had found out, not so much because I wasn�t eating, but because I was wasting money! I still feel guilty about that. So, I was onto no breakfast, no lunch. Sometimes the hunger would really get to me by the end of the day. My last period teacher, Ms. Clavenna, was my computer science teacher, and she was also the sponsor for the National Honor Society. For the NHS, she sold soft pretzels every day, all day. I think they were a dollar. During the last five or ten minutes of school, she would sell the pretzels for 25 cents. Those pretzels were my only weakness. Then came Christmas. I hadn�t been eating very much and I was becoming forgetful and even more angry and depressed. About this time, a choral group I had gotten involved in hosted a dinner concert. We all had to make a dish to bring to the function and perform in the show in one facet or another. My memory doesn�t serve me too well, but I think I sang a solo. All the food was sitting out in the hallway. At the end of the performances, I walked out into the hallway with one or two other people and just started gorging myself. I ate a couple pieces of cake, some cookies, and all desserts. I ate until my stomach started to hurt. I lay in bed that night, trying to fall asleep, crying because of the pain in my abdomen. I hadn�t been eating, so my body didn�t know how to deal with all the food. My intestines were churning and gurgling, and I swore I wouldn�t do that again. And then, another episode � my parents had gone out and left me alone. There were these Christmas cookies lying around. They were calling my name. I hadn�t eaten well in several days, and I was so hungry. I ate two, four, six, maybe a dozen or so. Suddenly it hit me that I was going to be in pain, so I dashed to the bathroom and stuck my fingers down my throat. All the food came up quickly and painfully. There I was, sitting over the toilet, puffy eyes, slimy hand, dripping mouth, balling my eyes out because of what I had done and what a miserable ingrate I was. That wasn�t the only time I made myself puke. There were several other instances, just like that one. But I was home alone so rarely, and my grandmother lived right downstairs and could hear just about everything that went on in our apartment. I calculated the risk of getting caught versus the absolute need, and stopped making myself vomit. It just wasn�t worth it. It was some time around Christmas break that my head snapped back on. Right now I can�t remember exactly what the reason was � I think it was a boy? I had this awful crush on a senior. My friend Annessa was trying to get us together, but to no avail. We wrote notes to each other, and he made me smile. He even brought me to the movies, but he made it painfully clear that he wasn�t interested in me and thought I was a head case. (But wasn�t I though?) I think flirting with him and just being �in love� made me happier. It gave me hope that life would go on. He gave me a Christmas card with a reindeer wearing sunglasses that said, �Have a cool Yule,� and he wrote a message to me in French, something about how I was such a good friend�. How he broke my heart! I started to make friends, and had a really good friend, Genevieve, who lived in the next village over. I could walk over and visit her so easily, which was rare living off base. Our school bussed in kids from over an hour away. She was independent and didn�t hang out with a clique. I appreciated her so much for her independence and conviction. She did aerobics and listened to NKOTB, and she didn�t care what anybody thought about that. I spent New Years Eve over her house. We built (or tried to, anyway) a paper clock and watched movie after movie after movie on tape. Eventually we fell asleep, sometime around 7 AM. The next six months seemed to fly by. So much so that I can�t remember those months as well as the first four. Those months weren�t nearly as painful. It was like the down side of a hill. I knew I was leaving at some point, and I didn�t care as much. I started to feel comfortable in my surroundings. At no point did I feel that K-Town was my home. It was a nice place to visit and waste a year. But it was not my life. I wonder how much damage that year did to my social growth. One of my doctors told me that anxiety disorder is usually triggered by a single traumatic experience. My first �traumatic experience� was breaking up with my first boyfriend. I was diagnosed as suicidal. I had, after all, slit my left wrist and cut up my right thigh. But I specifically remember thinking that I wanted to cut myself because if I took sleeping pills, I would die � SOMETHING I DIDN�T WANT. But anyway, I could convince my counselor or the doctors or anything, so they said I tried to commit suicide. It was the first time I was ever truly depressed and suicidal. Something in me snapped and I started to hit myself and bang my head against walls and truly believe all the nasty things I was saying about myself. This was the end of freshman year, right before I moved to Germany. I think all of this was setup for a miserable year, a miserable lifetime, full of anxiety, depression, and woe. It would have happened sooner or later, but it decided to happen then. After that, I never felt as confident, I never spoke out, I never really �chatted� with the girls and gossiped anymore. I was always biting my tongue, thinking that no one would want to hear what I had to say, because I was nobody. I thought of myself as a royal nuisance. And the truth is that in eighth grad and prior, I had been quite the opposite. I had thought of myself as really close to my friends and very social. During and after Germany, I wasn�t like that. I was angry, suspicious, accusatory, violent, and moody. I took everything people said very seriously and had little sense of humor. I took myself entirely too seriously. It�s amazing what a little medication can do to change one�s outlook on life.
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