Up and Down and Up and Down

Today I talked with my doctor, and she agrees I don’t need a therapist. She asked if I want one and I told her no, because a good therapist is too hard to find. So it is agreed, having made it through the Junely mess I am okay. If this changes I will reconsider my choice to stop therapist hunting. It seems my ability to step back and look at why I am feeling things defeats the purpose of a therapist. My constant questioning the universe is also healthy. I really like my doctor.

It’s time for the annual blood work and well… while talking I dislocated my jaw. Which hurts each time and leaves me hearing pain, which I mentioned after Sprite fixed it. I still can’t quite get it myself which is very annoying. I cannot feel how to work the bone back in, which made my doctor suspect it’s not a bone issue so much as the soft tissues are damaged. I have been holding my jaw up, and talking less and less. She noticed that my jaw doesn’t move much when I speak either, which has always been there to a degree, but it’s more noticeable now. I can talk around the “broken” sensation because the immobility of my jaw is common. I adapted and barely noticed it.

The adaptation springs from singing, you do not move your lips and jaws to make note variations, and I sing to speak but work to cadence this song to match normal patterns. So I can still talk. It’s not as loud but it’s clear and most people understand me. My friends who are hard of hearing cannot hear me as well however. That bothers me as those are the friends I speak to the most often. We’re adapting as we go, we humans. That’s the point of life I think.

I feel really good right now. I have had less emotional distress since my pain meds were upped, and my doctor agrees that this is probably related. The rain makes me dizzy still and yet I can go outside when raining to open the gate I just book it back inside after. It started raining once I went out to get her in. Normally my carer would but M the Carer is out sick. She came in and was obviously ill. It’s an allergic reaction to latex. I know she’ll be fine but she has to get treatment first. She didn’t want to go in to the ER until I promised her today was just a cleaning day anyway, where we were opening boxes and with the weather I wasn’t too into that idea. I also swore I would call her if I needed her. I added in I would try to not of course. Yes I will call her if I need her, it wasn’t empty words.

She’s been with me for three weeks, which is usually the time when things start happening and I start to have fomentation of doubts with carers. Still? Nothing. I still have no niggling doubts, the cats still trust her, the cleaning is still happening when the mops aren’t molding and sold out, and the cooking is still there. She made sure I still had food even though we cooked yesterday. I really feel safe.

Feeling safe is another up feeling, I feel safe for the first time in a long time. Not mostly secure but out and out safe. I close my door, pop the lock, and I can go to sleep. I still have dreams sometimes that are disturbing but that is my normal. I no longer have to run to mother or other in order to free myself from them. It’s been ages since I last needed to call someone out of fear of the night/sleep.

The last dream I had that scared me was only scary while I was asleep and was a rare dream where I wasn’t aware I was dreaming. I was trying to get to M by bestest friend evar, and he was up stairs. I had to find him, because there was trouble coming and if I didn’t he could be eaten by outer-space. I figure this dream has to do with my having gone out that day and been frustrated by accessibility issues, wanted to talk to him about it and he was unavailable for a few days straight. I often dream about him being out of reach when he is unable to talk for more than two days, and I dream about having to go upstairs and being stuck because of my need for the buttwheels. In each dream however, my chair is not the cause of the problems but the stairs are sentient and out to get me.

So between this and that and the other things are medically okay. We’re checking all my hormone levels because I had a period, aka RED ALERT. The thing was my period did the backwards blood thing again. For those who don’t know a period should get darker and more brown as it goes along. Mine starts out brown and turns bright red. This one also lasted for four weeks. However, instead of needing bed rest, being in horrible pain and screaming the entire time I was awake I was fine. More pain yes but not to the level that I couldn’t function. Normally my cramps feel like my spine is being ripped out, this time? Just crushed and that’s due to the location of my injury so that much pain is considered minimal. This is a red flag, again with the menses puns I know I know bad Kat. So we’re following the trail.

I am still thinking on my jaw, and how much I hate CT scans. However if there is treatment that could make it where I can talk without epic pain again, I want it. I am after all a blabbermouth. I cannot keep secrets, I cannot keep my mouth shut, and now I have to hold it shut? It’s just a little cliche. I can see this in Tim Burton animation style, some sort of morality tale about talking but there’s no real point to it. Plus the sensation is my jaw is lopsided. It is just weird. I don’t use that word much even about my body, normally I can figure it out before I even mention it to a doctor but nope. Totally weird.

Another up is Nymph. She is getting taller but not wider, she will be a very long cat. Her heritage is showing now, she is a minimum of 1/3 siamese. Her markings show this anyway, but her bone structure does, as does her miaow. It’s not a mew, it’s a squeak. She also has some Rex so her fur is curly but not visibly so, just to feel it. That adds in some very tall back legs. She literally stands an inch taller at her butt than her shoulders. Her ears and tail are much larger than the rest of her, and they are getting bigger. I am not sure if she will grow into them but she’s very adorable. She has figured out how to climb into my lap without claws, but this only works when I can sit a certain way.

Nymph has also figured out how to turn on and off my Windows Media Player with my keyboard. I have been watching Andromeda and several times now, including during my doctor’s visit, she has gotten her paws on my keyboard and pushed the play button. This requires some finesse as the play button is not located near the rest of the keys and each time she does this she has to get on my desk. At first I thought it was dumb luck but no, we had a play war for a few seconds. She hit play I reached over and hit pause. She hit play. I think she is smart enough to become a service cat, and she also is proving to be loyal enough. In the first year of life however she has to figure out what parts of a human are connected to the mind.

She figured out my hands are part of me but is working on the feet and a change of clothes throws her off. The rain makes me sleepy and the storm is getting a bit heavier so I am going to curl up in bed with the cats a bit early. I just wanted to post an update because I literally had nothing to say for a while.

Oh and for those of you who I owe lines? Working on it.

Whiteness Means I am Smarter Than Who? (Trigger Warning)

I don’t know what made my brain connect the memory, perhaps it is because it is the least convinient time ever for me to go, “Oh… hey… institutionalized racism, fail on you Estancia New Mexico!” I swear, that town is the most ism fueled town I have ever seen. That is the town where I was burned at the stake, oh yeah, I am naming names now bitches. I should admit, my dear readers that I was angry before then. Between reading a crap ton of sexism about Zsa Zsa Gabour, my computer still acting up and so badly that I lost more data, more time, and had to reinstall things, and the rain… I woke up from my mad thinking it was six am, and suddenly this anger slammed into me. Likely I was triggered in my sleep but this anger was here first, not the idea, so my reaction may be disproportionate. Or not.

My revelation comes at the hands of my mother, I woke up and my first conscious thought was about the Gifted Program, a term I use lightly, and the special ed program. It was one shrouded in thunder like a horror movie revelation. Why were there no children of color in either program? Are you telling me that out of the majority of hispanic children there were no gifted kids? Wrong. Fail. Nope. This doesn’t seem factual, when some of the barbie doll white girls in my class were put back in regular cycles because they could not actually keep up with the school work and the gifted program was an at your own pace sort of class. Even the teacher, though she did a bang up job and did address racism, was the aryan dream. Well the first one we had was too but she was full of fail and was fired for being creepy, and has almost no bearing on my memories of the Gifted Program. Thunder Thunder.

I remember everyone they pulled out for IQ testing, and as an adult i know that the tests used were skewed not in my favor or in the favor of accuracy but these tests hailed from the days when white people tried to prove with science that black people and other “races” are just plain stupid. I am so glad that these tests failed but at the same turn there are more accurate assessments of a child’s needs and these tests were easily skewed. In fact, I remember clearly how angry the test assessor was that I passed the test and was deemed to be a genius. The twitching, the muttering with the principle who I clearly heard say, “Then we’ll have to deal with her and her mother, but you couldn’t just lie?” I asked what for, and that was it, I was stamped “Gifted but Troubled, beware the contents of this package”.

The thing is, they only TESTED THE WHITE KIDS. Each of us was taken one at a time, and it was announced on the PA. I won’t name their names, as these children did nothing to deserve being used as pawns for racism, but hello… the superintentendet was antisemitic, and clearly so, something I was aware of before the end of the first year of the gifted program. We were stuck in a windowless room our first year, with the teacher that was very much lost in her own illness both physical and mental, and mostly just futzed around. The cool part was when one of the boys’ fathers, who works at or worked at the time Sandia National Labs brought in a truckload of monitors, keyboards, and broken towers. Our job? Reprogram them, make them run then brand new XP, the Labs funded this, and set up the entire school district with an internet worthy network.

I was born for this. Though it was clear very rapidly my hands weren’t my mind was. I took over, and we split up into areas where we each excelled, I was the head programmer, and another person who was also less strong and agile helped me. We wiped hard drives, expanded ram, and essentially took several hundred computers, and mutated them into two hundred computers. Last time I asked, my brother and sister told me these are still the computers in use in that educational system. My teacher was fired, though possibly illegally I think there was more to it than I know. The next year we had windows and the teacher that I dream about often. Not sexually but as a guide.

She is still alive so I know this is just my imagination, but Miss S was the first teacher to teach me anything. I remember how surprised she was when for a project that required basic math, I asked for help. That was the first time I spoke in her class to say something productive, and the first time I asked for help. She had me stay in during lunch, and bought me pizza and we used pizza to get the problems solved. She then asked me if I wanted to type all of my assignments. Type? Really? I could use a format that didn’t send pain shooting through me and was so distracting that I could think my work through? I never said yes, instead I let out a squeak and ran away. All my assignments for all classes were then typed, printed, and I completed homework even in that year.

Yet still, all of my classmates were white. Not all of them turned out to be gifted, despite this test. I have had my IQ tested several times and with several tests, and I am left to wonder, why weren’t any of the hispanic students tested? Our future valedictorian was hispanic, and I think she was gifted. Sure she was mean to me, but everyone was and if you weren’t mean to me it was social suicide. I understand that as an adult, and maybe have forgiven some of the kids who confused me by being nice to me alone, but if someone else was around out and out cruel. I can think of several students, especially in English and Math, that didn’t even have to think about the work as they learned it, they more than excelled.

None of the hispanic kids in my class actually left that town. All of them are trapped in tendrils of what is institutionalized failure. I know that my mother probably didn’t see it as racism as she said “Now you don’t have to be with them” but I did think she meant the horrible hispanic children. There are a lot of racist moments in my family as we know and a lot of moments where my mother failed but she actually fought for the gifted program to exist, because it was what I needed. My older brother also could have benefited but by the time she won this fight he was gone. I don’t think she would have done it for just me, but maybe? Maybe.

I asked the then Superintendent about it, and the answer I had was, “Well you are just smarter than them.” Them again. How can you know without testing? How? It makes absolutely no sense. I knew I was smarter than most of my classmates but I had some doubts. Sure I was the smartest in the gifted program but as an adult I still cannot add or subtract without a great deal of struggle and even then I have to use a calculator to verify my results. I have been told that is Autism which is ableim when said, just like my white skin automatically makes me worthy of the funding for this test.

I have no doubts I am smart, not many do. In fact the general presumption people have when meeting me is that I have several degrees. I don’t have any, which bothers me, because I wonder… if I was hispanic, black, or a person who is of First Nations descent, wouldn’t they presume I worked at taco bell, or am faking disability for the benefits? Is this why no one was tested but the handful of white students, and some of those were bumped up for appearances?

The popular girls were actually thrust into this class, and only two could stick it out. I remember the two that did because they were nice to me even infront of others after a month in the class. I think they saw that there was more to me than the beligerant and mean student who targeted every weak point with military prescision. In fact it was those girls that gave me some good memories of school, in the very cliched hollywood way that things went down. They could keep up with the advanced work, and yet… again… with the boys the entire football team was tested, the head cheerleader and football guy, no idea his position but I know it was his thing and he banked his future on it. They came into the class and were lost with some very basic things, which in the test you had to have in order to be used. Reading. Writing.

I am not saying they cannot be gifted, but how can you take a test that is WRITTEN if you cannot read it? They certainly didn’t read the questions to me. Theyhanded me the test and said I had all afternoon to complete it. I didn’t need that much time, which lead to another argument, me having to retake the test because I had to have cheated… but… you have to be able to read to do it.

That bothered me then, though then I thought it was just their popularity that got them in. Now I think it was the whiteness of their skin. Would my mother have even managed to make federally mandated special education programs availible if she wasn’t white? I doubt it. I think on that town and how everyone with any power is white. The mayor? WhiteyMcwhiterton, the superintendant? Hispanic last name but she has gone off the deep end with the bleach and presented as white. She may still be the super but I don’t care enough to check. The principals? Only one was not white. The high school principle also used his whiteness to bully teenage girls into sex acts. The track coach? Same. His kid may not want me believing that but I knew the man, and I never trusted him alone because of his grabby hands. Sorry, no need to name names, a simple google search reveals all.

This town, this town so chock full of religious extremism, racism, and of course crime… more crime than I can believe… this town also has the worst educational record in the state that often is the worst or second to worst. No point in differentiating when you are last out of fifty, and this school is last out of however many my state has?

Now, there is something else that I remember. I wasn’t put back in the gifted program in Highschool but instead the special education program, which I was familiar with. There I found most of the white football players from the gifted program’s first year… and a lot of hispanic kids that did know the basics of reading, writing, and had no actual issues that I could see. They were just deemed less than. My reason for being dubbed inferior was having mental health issues, though I still had my freshman year made of awesome between winning a national computing award and being valentines princess (Prom Queen equivalent). Still, the kids from special ed that I knew in Middle School, some of whom I kept in contact with after the advent of becoming “Gifted” because hey, lets make a term othering and one that can cause the majority of students to feel bad too…

None of those kids were in these classes. They were in a third level class, where they had even less instruction than the special ed class. I think that they tried to rename it remedial everything but that was too little too late by the time theyear was most of the way through, and yes I did find humanity in some of my fellow students in that class and vice versa but it wasn’t the Breakfast club, it was an educationless room where we were passed ahead, without knowing or learning anything unless like me you read a book and surprise surprise, the others got curious so you ended up teaching them some reading skills and had a book club. It was short lived because I broke down again. However, it was a start. If I could teach kids I loathed and thought were no better than animals, why couldn’t the teachers?

The teachers at this school, with a few minor but fantastic exceptions, don’t care and don’t try. Actually that’s the educational format for this state before you get culled out usually by education and color, or being form out of state between the local community college with it’s basic courses and the university for the “more advanced”. Yeah. They said it that way for a few years there. I think they stopped but wowza.

So there it stands… my entire memory collective of these events. In a town where the population divvies up between white people who are inbred with each other (literally) and a few outsiders who you just don’t talk to if you are local because they aren’t part of the Cult of Estancia, the town with a catholic or baptist (and that one methodist ) church on EVERY CORNER. They have one bar, and at least ten churches I can think off off of the top of my head… then the rest are hispanic folks, a lot of them are not legal, though every student was here legally born in either Albuquerque or Estancia itself. Even the doctor was racist, and would treat people’s ailments with some sort of outdated “medicine” that killed a lot of people.

In a town of 90% color vs 10% Whiteness, why is it that almost all of the white children are in a special class? I wonder now if this is why that awesome teacher with the pizza (and a lot of other extra time spent teaching me things like advanced beading and how to focus even when angry) chose to teach us about the Nuremburg trials. She took history and made us reenact it. We had to work together to write a script, and every time I was triggered she would let me go for a walk as long as I came back. I was allowed to do what I had to in order to be okay with the work, and actually made more progress with my PTSD in her class than I ever had in an institution up to date. I played the roll of Herman Goerring, and we had the honor of performing our class play, which was actually ripped fairly much from trial transcripts, infront of holocaust survivors, one of whom presented evidence and reprised this actual event. Each survivor brought a piece of atrocity with them, and it stuck with most of us, these lamps of human skin, chairs with bone, and bits of humanity were all that the Nazis valued of people who weren’t like them. Infact, when these survivors thanked us for our portrayal (I even faked hanging myself) I was scared. I didn’t understand the waves of emotion, and I still cannot. I do know that the men and women that sat and watched children with great seriousness learning, and for some of us seeing when we held the actual items, such as a Nazi flag, the horrors that the impact was great, not great as in good but massive. Huge.

I remember many things about my teacher, including when she left. She left the school system when I went to high school, or as I oh so fondly remember it.. the land of no one cares because we’re almost done with you horrible children (except my computer sciences teacher who was known as an evil witch because she actually cared and had expectations the horror..) She left because they would not change the system. She told each of us goodbye and said, “There are things in your town that aren’t right. When you go elsewhere, people aren’t treated this way based on how they look but what they know or could learn. Keep that in mind, you aren’t the only smart people here.” I took this as a get out while you still can, and I still think that was a part of it. She wanted us to keep our minds open.

My teacher in her lesson on Nuremburg taught about not just the Jews but she taught about all of the other peoples targeted, she herself was of german descent, and as I said was the Aryan dream in appearance. I wonder if her teaching this was based on seeing the potential for the same crimes to occur, and feeling guilt because her family name is tied closely to the Nazis. I wonder… but all I can think of is… if I am the most successful by the traditional money money money standards, and also by my own out of these students what went wrong? I had the least amount of potential to succeed being that I was actually preparing to kill them all rather like a cartoon villain. What lead each of the smart women in my class to become pregnant and then housewives without fulfillment. I won’t say every housewife is unfulfilled but when I ended up back in that town a few years ago, it was clear that they wanted out. I even had one ask me why I wasn’t married and how I had managed to survive without a man. The outsiders were now insiders, married to someone else there, I think the fact that everyone in that town who remains has relations to someone else is a bit horrifying and someday I may write a horror movie based on the phenomenon… yet even with everyone there being mostly blood related, it was those deemed more than the others, because of last names bearing whiteness, skin, hair, in fact the entire gifted class had only one person without blonde hair in it, and one was me.

So… why was it that this old idea of whiteness being superior shaped the futures of children? How fair is it? Yes, my otherness nearly cost me the gifted program, but that is more proof isn’t it? They wanted the children with the “super good” label to be the ones who matched what they see on TV as superior. There was never consideration that the twins or their brother could have been smart. THere was never consideration that anyone excluding myself with a mental illness could be smart, or could be super frigging bored because there were a total of four teachers in my entire experience there that taught (though a few of them I had more than once). Why was it all of our teachers were white too…

The hell Estancia. How can a town that has such a rich history, one with so little whiteness, be so sick? Most of your white people are CRIMINALS. Most of your hispanics, at least while I was there, ran businesses,worked to make the town a better place. Sure, the serial killer that nearly got me there was a man of color but, he was the exception to the criminal scum there not the rule. Then again your town embraces criminals so why am I bothering to scold you? I just wish for the future children, those being educated now, that you weren’t run by racist scumbags. So glad I am out of there.

I will never cross your border again, I will never look back again, unless triggered like so. That is all you are to me you cesspool of a town, you are the worst years of my life. You contain my lack of recovery, a lack of love, and hatred. THe few exceptions stand out with gleaming clarity because they are EXCEPTIONS, and even those were tainted by my being other. Every moment in that town was a torture. Even the moments when I learned the most,s omeone was in pain at all times. How is that healthy? No being white doesn’t make you smarter. Neither does my autism. Just because you were forced to follow laws you have to find a way to sully the idea of smarts? Good frigging grief.

Ability

I am shaking. I just sat down after choosing to walk to get my bottle of soda. I still wish I could afford not soda to drink but the shaking has nothing to do with sugar and everything to do with the grinding pain of yesterday. I wanted to write yesterday but my brain couldn’t handle moving my fingers and breathing. I ended up going to bed at 9 pm, which is ridiculousness.

I go to bed between 2-5 am. This is a huge variance for some people but is much smaller than it used to be. I sleep every night usually, now. Yesterday my bones had shifted. I don’t have to have a doctor to tell me when the bones in my back moved a milimeter closer anymore, there is no pain quite like this. I used to faint every time. Yesterday I still took my meds on schedule, even though they would do nothing I could feel. I did this for two reasons, 1. Pyschologically taking my meds gives me a bit more stamina when dealing with the sensation of having my spine torn in half. 2. I am sure there is effect because I do feel better without them. 3. Habit. This is a good habit to have, because it protects me from forgetting to take my meds on schedule.

I woke up with this pain. It didn’t wake me but instead effected my dreams, I shifted to get up and almost fell on my face. I could feel the nerves pinching and slicing. It took effort to breathe. I considered staying in bed a bit longer, but the alarm was going off which means it is time to get up. No ifs ands or but I havent’ slept yets. Sprite and Nymph got me upright, and the wall kept me there. My bathroom cannot handle my chair, even removing the door would be laughable, so I slithered along the counter. I peed. Washed my hands. Bemoaned washing them before opening the cat food. OPened the catfood, managed to get the slop into a bowl. Turned, washed my hands again. Noted that my face is covered in zits, which makes me laugh as I look about 12 to myself. Then I, still covered in my darling cats, stumble for my chair and my pills.

I have started putting the daily dose into a small container at night for ease of use and if I hadn’t I would have lost my pill bottle. Sprite and Ny didn’t leave me yet, clinging to me with claws in cloth and purring. They didn’t go to eat until I had swallowed my pill and started trying to get comfortable. Ny went first and I could hear their stomachs growling. They like to eat about four hours before the last alarm goes off. Usually they get to but on days like this, I have that alarm for a reason.

The shaking started then, it was subtle but I spent the day in my chair, and had to have help getting to and from the bathroom. This irks me but is a part of disability. It was around 4:30 that I shifted and made myself raise my arms over my head, despite the sharp pain. I needed my meds after all. There was a loud snap and my newest carer now known as M the Carer (running out of letters here!) jumped. She was startled, and my pain eased off for a few seconds before my brain recieved the sensations of broken bones and pressure increase. I have to say I am surprised I didn’t pass out. I usually do.

Some of you by now are going, “Kat, why on earth didn’t you go to a doctor?!” So before I continue I want to address that, I have gone to a doctor for this over and over, and finally my spinal specialist and I agreed to just avoid the ER. I get sick, they make things worse, and there is literally nothing that anyone can do. Each time my back feels like this, it is the degredation taking a sharp spike. It means I am about to lose ability. That part sucks but I would rather be alone or in my home with friends and dealing with that than in the ER with strangers, with bad seating and puking on strangers shoes. My vomit seems magnetically drawn to shoes when in public spaces and there is no bucket on earth that can contain it. I projectile vomit, so it gets across the room. So this is why I stay home. I did tell my carer what was up, and filled her in on the shifting needs, she rose to the occassion on her second day with me more than admirably. The last time this happened the carer left and quit out of terror. Not M the Carer. She instead told me that if I needed to shut down or reached overload that she’d stay if that was what was best. We’d work that out.

I didn’t overload because M the Carer followed my directions, we got everything done and even had time for a friend to drop in. I haven’t really talked about Lily (so not her name but I have a few friends with flower names so it’s an ambiguous flower name) though she is many blog posts unto herself. Lily is old enough to be my grandmother, but is a dear friend. She reached out to me when I first moed in and told me yesterday that I hadn’t looked that pale or shaky since my first week here. I told her my pain was bad and she understood.

Lily and I chatted for about a half an hour and she went home because as she put it, “You really need your nap today.” I did but I couldn’t sleep. The cats were clingy yesterday because i needed it of them. After M the Carer went home, no lateness to that either, I took some french toast (it was delicious) and curled up with a book. I read three books before my eyes couldn’t see even my reader and it was getting dark. I tried sleeping but for an hour came back online and chatted with a friend about his daughter’s awesomeness. She recieved a huge achievement award froma program for low income kids with undereducated parents. That sounds horrible, but the program is there to help children with less opportunity, and that is the point. Her parents though, make me jealous of her childhood in some ways. Theya re far from perfect but they love and support her.

Then I went to bed. I hurt so much that I had a migrane. I recently was told that’s what that headache is when I mentioned it to my spinal specialist. They are common, and the only cure for me is sleep. I have to sleep until it is gone. Which means it is a good thing I didn’t have a weekend carer yet. It is now five pm, my time, and I have been up for three… okay two and a half hours. I kept getting up to bathroom, I ate something around 10 am and still had to sleep. I am still tired too. I may not be able to walk as far anymore, I barely made it back to my chair after getting my drink off of the counter, which is much closer to me than the bathroom.

I am sitting here and I am wondering what ability is lost this time. THis isn’t pessimism but I am trying to preplan. I watch my hands shake and the room whirl and consider going back to bed, though my body will wake me up at 2 am and then I will be bored and… so I will wait a few more hours before regular naptime occurs. I just dislike losing ability. As good as yesterday was there was this undercurrent of mourning in me, because I never know if I will walk when I wake up after. If not then I am so screwed for the weekends without a carer.

That is in process but there is a dimension of degrading that is often overlooked when I read about disability and that is the toll that a day in day out knowledge that tomorrow you lose something else can cause serious mental health side effects. So often I see a disaprity when it comes to acknowledging that mental disabilities, mental health disabilities, and the physical can all mesh together to create more complex issues. I trust my spinal specialist so much that I will tell you who he is if asked, once I get his permission to recommend him via the blog.

I think I wouldn’t be so accepting of my body without his influence, and each time I visit him I know and he knows there is change. He has been the most supportive doctor I have ever had, and even if I go in and am cranky he’s fine with that. He knows it’s pain. He has answers for my pain and is willing to try somethings that others call revolutionary. He is able to see that just because my body really sucks my brain is magnificent and often the ideas we try are a mix between his actual knowledge and my ideas, he has even taken some of my ideas that failed to other patients (with my permission) and so I have helped random spinally challenged strangers.

Ability isn’t what you can do alone, it is what you can do with the help of others.

This is what I am learning anyway. Just because I cannot walk does not make me disabled. What makes me disabled is the light post in the middle of the side walk, the cashier that tells me I cannot buy something, or the person that decides I am pitiful, while they are unaware that in my life I have done more than they dream is possible because I can.

Yep, it’s five pm, and I am starting to ache again so I am napping early. Bleh. Tomorrow I can try again.

Emergencies Suck aka Please?

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Above these words should be a nifty graphic with some graphs to track any help I am getting for this. If not click here please.

Kat’s Emergency Computer Fund Drive:

Of the estimated $950 I need to obtain a new computer, I have saved $300.

My computer has proven that it just doesn’t want to live, as I have a very short time to replace this very old, well loved but worn out friend I need some help. I have tried to sell some of the things I own to make up the $650 dollar difference and cannot sell anything else, so I am turning to you my blog readers, facebook friends, people randomly linked to this post…

This will be the last monitor and tower I buy, because from here on out I will upgrade or replace worn down parts if possible. With my All in One via Dell, the first generation many moons ago (This is five years old) I cannot open it up to replace anything. I also cannot use the monitor with any other computer.

I live on $600 a month, and that is with the help of a friend. I have been working very hard to save where I can but my computer is not going to last as long as I need it to. So I am turning to you all for help.

So what do you get besides my undying gratitude for helping me?

I will be writing four songs. I will give you the sheet music and an audio track for each of them in return. You can do anything you want with this, share them with friends, use them in podcasts, etc. They are copyright to me but, this is all I have to offer.

I am looking at the path of least resistance, long term upgradability and use, and I am hoping that enough of you can toss me a dollar that this works out. The XPS one has been giving me the black screen of death, the comforting blue screen is no more. Just a low hum, a gritty growl, and blackness.

I will post here once the four songs are completed, and anyone who has already donated will receive them via email.Each audio file will be at the 192kbps, .mp3 format.

I Have Rotten Lemons, Want Lemonade? (Trigger Warning)

I regret opening my email after my nap. I have spent the last two hours in a frenetic search to verify facts and details. I have foregone my evening blog read because I was introduced to the existence of Sharron Angle. Before I continue in my writing of this article I want to state explicitly that every link I give on this page will have something triggering on the other side.

The first thing I saw was the subject line, “Angle tells incest survivors “If you have lemons make lemonade.” I clicked the subject already confounded, but I had to know who this person was and what the lemons are. Lemons are fetuses. The Lemonade is teenage pregnancy without abortion even if your father or brother raped you. Let me be upfront, the things I read after this shocked me even further.

It seems that this woman has counseled incest survivors, she was a teacher at one point and is an elected official. This woman is now running to be Nevada’s senator. Her idea of counseling children seems to be convincing them it’s a great idea to risk their lives, when they do not want to, and that it is God’s plan to have them raped.

Just like I was told. It is clear to me at this point that this, my second actual attempt at writing this, will still contain the personal. This woman wants little girls to forgive their fathers, to love them, and accept them. She has helped one girl get adopted away from her rapist father but of course the rest of us who no one listened to? Well we have to suffer it out. This woman also thinks the ObamaCare plan is a bad idea, that ERs should be able to turn people away if they are uninsured, and with her antiabortion status being so far to the extreme that I suspect some of her conservative counterparts raise a brow I think she just wants the underprivileged to up and die.

Of course if you HAVE medical care, are not disabled, are white, have not been raped by your father, and have not forcibly had an unwanted pregnancy you are going to be fine with these policies. Actually that isn’t true, many people do use their brains and know better. Though with her being elected I am struggling with that idea right now. Angle aka the Queen of Poovlidge USA wants to remove Medicare. She seems to think Social Security is Welfare, and I am surmising this part, I would expect she also thinks all of us with disabilities have families who can take care of us. If not well who cares right? We’re just people who get mentioned so that she can make her antiabortion policy seem less about her need to control everyone else and more about how much she loves people, especially us poor wittle ickle broken folks.

My body is responding to my PTSD right now. I can’t shake it off. I am queasy and I feel my father raping me again and again. I feel his fingers tearing open my vaginal walls. I feel his penis doing the same. I feel pain. The thing is, I feel that pain whenever I have vaginal sex or most stimulation. I feel reduced to a hole for my father and his friends to fuck again. I feel inconsequential. This woman’s idea that you can make lemonade by having an unwanted child at great risk has shaken me and made me feel two again.

I get that the girls in question are no longer two, but, having survived abuse I also know that the odds are against the rape that caused the pregnancy being the only one. In fact, rape is likely far from the only abuse they suffered. This woman has managed to dehumanize people with her words, bringing more than just the rape victim down.

I had to look into her to see who this Senator is. Be sure and read Senator with as much venom in the tone as possible, that is how it is written but there is no way I can show how snarly I feel in the text. Senator Angle. Should sound like the way Lex Luthor says Superman.

In attempting to read what used to be her personal website I find it inaccessible. This woman that states she loves everyone regardless of ability has summarily cut off people with vision issues from accessing her site. She loves us disabled folk sooo much. My magnifier couldn’t help me much with the site either, the text is tiny on my screen even with the control + function and the magnifier that stretches across the top of my screen enabling my ability to compensate for my poor vision with most sites.

Her new site, made safer for her political aspirations is just as wonky, but readable. Even what is left up says quite a lot about this woman. Still there isn’t enough there so I keep looking, i go to news sites, I go to wikipedia, and I read.

This woman has a spokesperson that seems to constantly contradict what she says, as if by using the old “No I really meant…” will fix it all. She doesn’t want pot, alcohol, or drugs. Which is fine except we already tried prohibition. She thinks God has a plan for everything. She doesn’t believe in the educational system, despite being a teacher.

She also supports Bush, which influences me away from her yet a lot of people do. I feel shaken, as I stare at the words before me. All I can think of is lemons… my lemons are rotten. Is that God’s plan? Does your god converse with my pantheon? What ever happened to the separation of Church and State? I get it, everywhere has their issues yet using God to excuse your bad behavior, your lying in stating you value all life when legally mandating all pregnancies even at the cost of the mother’s life be carried out? Come on Sharron…

Lets talk woman to woman here. You don’t really like poor people. You don’t really think the disabled have any value. In fact you secretly think that these girls must have done something to deserve being raped. Why else would it be God’s plan right? Just between us girls now. You have never had to fight for every meal, you have never had to look at the money you have each month and wish you had enough for a pair of pants at walmart off their clearance rack, you have never been raped. I wasn’t sure I should state this definitively but my instincts and common sense tell me that if you had been raped especially by your father you wouldn’t call it lemons.

I do not sit here crying every day because I was raped, I am still living, but that does not erase the consequences. A baby would not have made my life better, even if it was adopted. Adoption isn’t a magic bullet, and the physical consequences of rape? Well those can be made worse IF the teen lives. Their bodies are still growing and aren’t ready for children. Then again you also think that a marraige is between only a man and a woman and that people only have two genders when there is plenty of evidence to the contrary.

I want to rail. I want to call you names, but I suspect that you will dig your own political hole. I wish that this sort of depravity you display was isolated only to one political party, and though your own republicans will call you an extremist they still vote for you.The Democrats will gasp in horror but they won’t do anything to definitely stop your ridiculous policies.

Sharron Angle for Senate, because dehumanization is a political win!

This message is brought to you by my indignation, PSTD, and lemonade! It is paid for my the tears of women and children being raped by their fathers everywhere.

What is a name? (Trigger Warning)

I wrote about my homicidal impulses and how they were taught but now that’s my repsonse to anger recently. There is another aspect of anger that I think I should write about. This post started as a reply to the comments there.

The first thing is I know I will not kill someone. Having been there for a murder, taken part in it albeit against my will and as a very small child, I know that I could not live with myself in that situation because of the pain I caused everyone else. I want to make this absolutely clear though I think it was already. I can kill but I really don’t want to, it is the way I was trained to deal with anger. It’s fairly simple.

Accepting my anger is something that I must do with each flair of temper. This is why I often shut down a bit when angry, it is a conscious choice and something I trained myself to do. I am told it is unhealthy to suppress your anger, and each therapist swears this is what I am doing. I disagree. I am not holding IN my anger but I am holding it back so that I can still choose with a clearer mind and can feel it without executing someone for something petty. This again is to me simple, but it took a lot of work to reach the point where I could chain my anger.

I fear anger and also find that I mentally romanticise anger and violence. I think this another aspect of the way I was raised, but I think that the culture here in the US plays a huge part in this. Everywhere I turn it is not love that is glorified but murder, abuse, and violence. It seems as if in some part everyone is complicit in this reverence for destructive anger. The anger that I romanticise in my mind is not destructive any longer and is actually the source of my last name. When it came time to choose a name and I was identified as someone else, I could have rejected it. When I looked into each definition the one that rang the clearest for me was Fury.

Fury, as a name is a mythological reference of course to the Erinyes or the furies of greek mythology. Vengeance embodied, beautiful at least to me, and always in defense of something. That is fury for me. The mental picture I have of myself is also given over to this aspect of fury. I see myself standing or if I am very angry sitting in my chair, the variance based on more vulnerability from my anger is something I have yet to figure out but more and more often when I imagine myself doing something I am no longer standing. It may just be my mind adapting to the way I now see the world. My posture is always what I would call threatening. My eyes are lowered slightly, not in deference but because that is threatening to me. I have twin swords, there is no shield for me. I am offensive even when defensive. I wear no armor but battle naked in a red stained world against myself. My enemy is either someone who has truly hurt me such as my father or myself in the various stages of my life. These are things I dream of as well. The angry child lashing out at the world must be stopped without hurting her. The mindless creature of wrath that I was as a teenager that tries to kill people by building a bomb takes the form of a really fast zombie like creature that can do the most damage. This creature must be made human. My swords rarely are the answer to my dream problems even.

Fury. I like the sound of it. It makes my heart beat a bit faster. The word makes me feel a hint of my power. I think of all the times when I felt so angry with someone that I wanted to lash out and therefore moved to cut them off and they forced me to look at them and felt fear. I like those feelings. Fury is not always anger for me either but I have felt the fury of love, and at times am protecting others in my dreams. This is something that is a growing trend.

I used to dream of rescue by a Dark Knight (Literally Batman) and now I am fighting my own battles. Yet each dream I am soaked in blood. This is the part that I do not like about the name, it tastes like copper and pain. Fury is never without pain. I have never been without it either. I know I stopped being rescued once before, then I got unmarried. Since I remembered the murder my father committed and that this was a very real incident, I understand some of the things about my dreams. Blood on my hands existed in reality and for me this has become the memory that makes me the most sorrowful.

Fury can cry. That is the other part of my anger that I dislike the most. When my anger is out of pain I often cry. When someone else hurts, I get angry. It seems at times that anger is my primary emotion, though this is not the truth and has not been for 7 years or so. Since I met M. I am not sure how much he has to do with my being able to be happy but joy is my default emotion now. Yet even when I am happy I still feel fury.

I think my anger may be seperate from it but I am still not sure. What I label anger tends to be very petty. Anger is self serving, and it is in anger that I often want to do things that are rash. This is what I hold back, and this is when I do not speak because I am always aware it is petty. I may have wanted to stab someone with scissors but I will not actually do so. Fury is often born out of love, sorrow, and anguish. Fury may be my elegy.

The philologist in me also believes that the Furies are the advent of the Arch Angels in Christianity. They can be both wrathful and loving. It is later tellers of the Greek stories that turned them into creatures only of anger. These earth born goddesses of flight who avenge in the name of the most innocent. There is also evidence that once upon a time a whole host was known beyond the three most often cited. The Furies also are considered beings of death.

I consider myself one as well. I have been beaten until my heart stopped, I have seen things that I cannot explain and a part of me truly believes that what I have seen is real but the rest of me tries to write it off unsuccessfully as a reaction in my brain from trauma. The part of me that writes here with passion is also that part of me that is Fury. That part of me that demands justice? That would be the final reason I chose the name of Fury.

I see Fury as a balance to my mindless rage. I see Fury as my conscience. I see Fury as my reason for being alive. I acted with Fury for the first time when I was certain it would bring me death. Yet when I remember and envision that July 5th, I see it from outside of myself. I always do with most of my memories. I see my face, I see his eyes. I see from inside me too but also from behind him. That was the day that I chose to start hunting a name. That was the day I swore to myself that I would never let someone hurt anyone smaller than me again.

Fury does not mean shouting, though I often want to scream out my fury. It means instead taking action that will benefit more than harm everyone. If possible do no harm and only good. Fury can echo with small words, and it can be quashed by silence. Fury is the part of anger that I think people seek but as emotions are forbidden by all not just for me, mine were just more forbidden and with more force than others, itis harder for people who have not had to step away from the life they know and everything familiar in order to be alive and good. Rageomatic comes to mind with this. Something he said in another comment on another post again.

When he thinks of what I have endured he cries. Well, that goes the same for me. When I think of anyone feeling anything like I have, with that fear and sorrow I weep. I cannot cry for myself, that feels like defeat. It might be that if I cry for myself I will never be able to stop and my fire will be drowned in a river of my own blood. I can cry for the children, I can cry for the men, I can cry for the women who are silenced and I write to fight for them. This is my sword. This keyboard is my pen.

My openness here on this blog and with everything I do is also a part of the dream. It is my other sword. A double edged blade that can cut me. If I am open always then I will learn more, I will laugh more, and I may cry more but it makes it hard to sometimes do what I must to deal with things that try and drag me back to that space when anger is all.

Yesterday the temporary caregiver came in and she was wonderful, and reminded me that it’s okay to need help. I can fight as a warrior and there is someone else to tend my wounds. With that image in mind, I can let go of my renewed fears with caregivers, and the anger melts away. My fury does not, and my passion for making things right by my own moral compass, even if it is a little broken, remains. She reminded me without knowing it that I am a person, and not just a job. Today I found out what I will be doing around my birthday. I am going to a play. In the space of that anger I feel other things again.

I think Fury is different than anger because with fury there are other feelings I can discern. With anger or rage which I use interchangably since as a person made of extremes there is no little spark of anger from me but a fire that explodes and tries to consume. Anger is like salt. There is for me always too much salt and when I am angry it is never the amount that fits the situation.

On the subject that was mentioned of accepting my anger, for me this became simple when I realized that it is my anger because I am the one feeling it. I am responsible for any actions I take when I feel anything. If I get really horny and decide to screw a random girl then that’s my risk to take. I try to not be rash, but I am rather rash despite that. It is rarely anger that makes me rash though, and instead fear or not understanding something. I am glad too. I would rather be rash in ways without anger.

A poem is flicking at the edges of my mind, perhaps a mirror to a song I wrote earlier.

Icarus flew too high
So did I
Icarus saw the sun
I saw the moon
Icarus burned and drowned
I flew past the stars
Icarus never returned
I will see the darkside of the moon
Icarus lives in Elysium
I live in shadows too
Icarus lives in memory
I live in reality

To deal with my feelings and to get back to normal I struggled more than I expected, and even with the date today I felt a bit off. Perhaps it is my worry and my sorrow for my family and friend. I cannot escape that sense of not just empathy but the need to defend. This is another part of abuse that “bites”. When there is someone hurting a child you can stop that, or at least do something. When there is no abuser it feels strange, unnatural, and more horrible. I know this is something that springs from abuse seeping into every part of your mind, the gaslighting aspect that always seems to be ignored when statisticians talk about how victims never seem to leave. Abuse becomes so familiar that things that aren’t abuse become terrifying. Add in the fact that in reality no matter who you are, an abuser is likely to kill you for leaving. YOu can live longer with the abuser than without them in most cases.

This makes me both angry and furious. So while struggling here and knowing my struggles are nothing compared to my friends’ K and J as well as their child’s, I reached for music. This way when my friend needs me, even if it is just to scream at the heavens I am ready and I am there.

These songs may be triggering as some of them describe actual symptoms of PTSD (but they do it so well!). When I could find the lyrics I posted them below the videos as a transcript.

Burn My Pain by Stream of Passion

A thrill, a sigh…
my lips are trembling.
Your breath is thick,
it blows me away.
I know why, I know why,
it’s the curse you’re weaving.
And I know I, I know I
am more than willing to comply.

To rush, the dance
ignite my senses.
You Hear my plea,
it drives you nearer.
You know why, you know what
it’s the spell that binds us.
And I know I, I know I
am more than willing to comply.

I toss and turn
as sleep evades me;
the waves are strong,
the urge is stronger.

Burn my pain away,
sing the song that I long for.
Find the flame within
and reveal all I need to know.
Bur this pain away,
my soul waits in sweet devotion;
all emotions sweel
as I cry out for you.

Burn my pain away,
sing the song that I long for.
Find the flame within
and reveal all I need to know.
Bur this pain away,
my soul waits in sweet devotion;
all emotions swell
as I cry out for you.

Leaves’ Eyes- Elegy

Teardrop on a fragile eyelash
She’s looking like a dream
Hoping for some understanding
An answer or at least
A calming word a single sentence
To restore her heart
Aching since the day I left her
Crossing lonely seas

Silent tears of a woman
Make a warrior cry
Heaven, I beg you
Please release hopes from fears

This is my elegy
Do you know what I feel?
This is my elegy
Do you believe it’s real?
Will I hold you in my arms again?

Dewdrops on a single rosebud
This purity of rain
Reminds me of the moment I left her
Kisses filled with pain
And if I should leave her waiting
For another year
Will she ever know the answer?
Will she follow me?

Silent tears of a woman
Make a warrior cry
Heaven, I beg you
Please release hopes from fears

This is my elegy
Do you know what I feel?
This is my elegy
Do you believe it’s real?
Will I hold you in my arms..
Hold you in my arms again?

A calming word, a single sentence
To restore her heart
Aching since the day I left her
Crossing lonely seas

This is my elegy
Do you know what I feel?
This is my elegy
Do you believe it’s real?

This is my elegy (this is my, this is my..)
Do you know what I feel? (this is my, this is my..)
Elegy
Do you believe it’s real?
Will I hold you in my arms again?

The Endless Night by Stream of Passion (Lyrics included in Video)

Kat’s Note: This would be one song I would give to anyone who wanted to know what PTSD was like, it’s very much a description of dealing with the night time effects of PTSD.

Buried in my pillow
are the marks of your mistake;
as soon as I lay down
I’ll feel them closing in.

Like hitting replay, I’m ready there…
going through the story
I should’ve never lived.

Pull me through this endless night.

There’s a ghost by the door,
there’s a memory that won’t let me go.
Will you please set me free
from the burden that won’t let me sleep?

Buried in my pillow,
to forever taint my dreams,
are those hurtful moments
I should have never lived.

I’ll try anything to stay awake,
and forget the story
that’s taking the best of me.

Pull me through this endless night.

There’s a ghost by the door,
there’s a memory that won’t let me go.
Should I keep looking in,
in the hope I’ll ever feel again?
I don’t know…

There’s a ghost
bearing memories that won’t let me go.
Will you please set me free
from the burden that won’t let me be?

Stream of Passion- Haunted

Same Note as above but this one is more the general feelings of PTSD when that first sense of triggering comes or just after a flash back, at least for me. I rarely just flash back anymore, which is a very good thing.

Días enteros caminando en silencio.
Apuro mis pasos para dejar todo de tras;
Busco en la soledad el espacio para olvidar
Esa voz que me atormenta.

I live in fear when the shadows reappear
Unleashing all their might..
I never thought I´d face the demons on my own.
Make it stop!
Haunted, hunted.

Un suspiro que penetra mi alma,
Un pensamiento constante y hiriente.
Sé que estás ahi, aunque no puedo verte.
Nunca he podido escapar Del yugo de tus ojos.

With every breath I take,
My heart beats faster,
No matter how hard I try to unwind
Tears keep falling from my eyes.
Haunted, hunted, I´m down on my knees;
Forever I´ll mourn the loss of my innocence.

Within Temptation-Pale

The world seems not the same,
Though I know nothing has changed.
It’s all my state of mind,
I can’t leave it all behind.
Have to stand up to be stronger.

Have to try to break free
From the thoughts in my mind.
Use the time that I have,
I can’t say goodbye,
Have to make it right.
Have to fight, cause I know
In the end it’s worthwhile,
That the pain that I feel slowly fades away.
It will be alright.

I know, should realize
Time is precious, it is worthwhile.
Despite how I feel inside,
Have to trust it’ll be all right.
Have to stand up to be stronger.

I have to try to break free
From the thoughts in my mind.
Use the time that I have,
I can’t say goodbye,
Have to make it right.
Have to fight, cause I know
In the end it’s worthwhile,
That the pain that I feel slowly fades away.
It will be all right.

Oh, this night is too long.
Have no strength to go on.
No more pain, I’m floating away.
Through the mist see the face
Of an angel, who calls my name.
I remember you’re the reason I have to stay.

Have to try to break free
From the thoughts in my mind.
Use the time that I have,
I can’t say goodbye,
Have to make it right.
Have to fight, cause I know
In the end it’s worthwhile,
That the pain that I feel slowly fades away.
It will be alright.

Stream of Passion- When you hurt me the most

The air was cold the night I fled,
your eyes were more than I could take;
I ran so fast, I ran like hell,
and still wasn’t able to escape…
The picture’s still fixed in my head:
the stage was all set at my request;
you took the role, you played it well,
I knew it would be easy for you.

Strike me harder now,
push me to the ground.
Pain is sweeter coming from your hand,
I love you when you hurt me the most.

So fell the lash repeatedly,
the icy words cut me deeper still;
I begged for more, you gave no less,
surrendering fully to the game.
You took control, I took the blame,
you had enough so you looked away;
deprived of love, deprived of pain,
no choice but to keep on sinking.

Strike me harder now,
push me to the ground.
Pain is sweeter coming from your hand,
don’t you leave me when I need you the most.

No pain or love left for your slave;
my heart is torn yet you smile the same.
I’ll break the vow,
I’ll tell myself the words that free me from you.

Strike me harder now,
push me to the ground.
Pain is sweeter coming from your hand,
don’t you leave me when I need you the most.

The air was cold the night I fled,
the pain was more than I could take.
You’ve learned your role; you’ll play it well,
I know it will be easy for you.

Empathy

I feel helpless. I just got in from my date, which was fine but he revealed his misogyny over my pocket watch so there will not be another date. I then found out my friend’s son is in the hospital having emergency surgery. All I can think on right now is the fear she must feel, the sorrow, and my own emotions well up. This will likely be a very short post as I am going to try and find a way to offer my support. There is not much I can do, but I will do all I can.

Parts of me whirl with that ever present omnithought that never eases, even when I sleep. I think on how lucky he is to have a mother that doesn’t ignore his pain. I think on how odd it was that I dreamed about something similar. I think, I think, I think. I struggle to not feel. The empathy for her, for him, and for the pain has me on the edge of tears. I do not want to feel this.

I do not want to care, but at the moment this worry has dominated my thoughts and my heart. Over the last two years that I have known this family, I have been brought only joy. When it looked like I may have to flee this state to survive, they would have not just taken me in but hauled me across the country to do it. I don’t have many friends that I feel this close to. I do not want her to pain. I do not want him to suffer.

So I must let the feelings go. No one harmed him, it was an accident and that also feels out of depth. Just an accident in my reality is so rare, I think it has never happened before. Not where I could believe it. What do you do when there is no one to defend against? Who do you you shelter when there is nothing you can shelter them from?

When my family aches, I ache. When they break, my soul shatters. When they cry, I shed tears that few ever merit. When there isnothing but a prayer that can save someone, I sorrow on. I prayed. I prayed to the something. I wish I could feel that thing that religious people feel in this moment, and I hope that my friend and her son do. I understand a part of religion in this moment. It is a shield when there is nothing to grab ahold of.

I know that I will do anything she asks of me if it will truly help her family right now. I know she knows this. So I will take my empathy and I will let it live in me. I will love them and I will worry and mourn with them.

Betrayal, Sorrow, and Rage: Things I Do Not Understand (Trigger Warning)

It seems that since my carer was fired this afternoon the little things that went undone or should not have been done are still building up. Trash on my doorstep, which I expect to be strewn thoroughly by the stray cats, my juice down in the raw meat drawer of my refrigerator where it has been with raw meat for a while. A neighbor helped me get a box of yoghurt off of the bottom shelf and there it sat, hidden from view, beneath a pane of glass in what appears to be a puddle of meat juice.

I have had a hell in me for the last few days and yet now that I do not feel endangered, a feeling I couldn’t clearly identify because I wrote it off as my being paranoid, I feel oddly empty. The rage is still there but the degree of heat is down, it’s simmering in my lower back where the pain never fades. The music is helping, as is the fact that my specific flavor of metal is the Elegy disc by Leaves’ Eyes, who doesn’t like viking Symphonic Gothic Metal? Yeah… they took their norse heritage and the Edda and twisted into something that suits my ears nicely.

I felt desperate earlier, and this entire time I have been trying to give her a second chance, I felt… off. It has effected a good deal, including my comfort level with being identified as a nice person. I dislike the aspect of betrayal that nters into any caregiving situation where the caregiver turns out to think that not only am I required to say please and thank you, but that they cannot say they are unhappy in the pairing when it is policy, if you aren’t happy say so! The little jibes that came, the attempts to hurt me? They worked.

To need care is one thing. Most of us could actually benefit from a bit of care in our lives. To admit that you need care is another. To let a stranger into your life, your home, and to see you at your most vulnerable is wholly a third. The aching sorrow that stabs into the darkness that seems right for my soul, it is a bright light like a silver blade under the scales of a dragon. This sorrow comes before I even realize it, it steals my breath, and I want nothing more than to be independant.

I think that moment when I feel the need to assert my dominance in my home is a sign things aren’t okay. I am having to learn what to look at. I did say something well before today’s incident. I did. I also was listened to but there are laws for both her and I. I do not want her to lose all livelihood, but that is something she should have thought of before trying to feed me raw meat. That is something she should have thought of before LYING.

I don’t know what makes a lie something that flares my temper so, but, if there is one thing that can make me lose my temper, it is knowing I was lied to. I have managed to not do foolish things in my anger for a while now but that does not mean it is not there sizzling beneath my skin while I try and root out the truth that a betrayer does not seem to value. A little white lie? Welcome to job hunting.

The lies weren’t little. They were also a smudgey grey color with dots of snot green. Very icky lies. I won’t go into details here, because I already did elsewhere but why bother lying? Then again, I didn’t believe she was sick when she called in, but was hung over after the fourth anyway. She didn’t call me but seemed outright nervous afterwards, flinching when I said I am glad she feels better. Is that not the right thing to say when you are glad someone isn’t sick? Ah well. I don’t think my idea of logic or sense was near hers at all.

To me things that are simple to know were shocking to her. Cat venom exists in her reality where as in mine I know that retractable claws don’t work the same as fangs, which don’t actually retract but lie flat in a snake’s mouth until the mouth is opened via a sort of internal pulley system. They aren’t the same at all. She certainly thought the song Cat scratch fever was imperical evidence that cats have venom and will infect you. I found this out when Nymph sank her claws into me on her second day here. She asked me if I was worried about the cat venom.

That was just an example of her conversational style, I am fairly sure she meant this literally but if not she spent a lot of time on a personae of unintelligent blather. There’s nothing wrong with that, and there are things she did know. It was merely that once a day she asserted something like cat venom. I tried to not let that bother me but it did. It worried me, because if she thinks cats have venom or the other things stated, how is she going to ever graduate college and achieve her dreams? Of course I want her to achieve her dreams, I want all people to.

So there it sits. I am leaving out the gorey details, because the people who need them have them. The things that really devestated me internally. I am once more proud that I did not cry over this. That also makes me sad. I feel as if I should turn away and hide myself. As if I should try and live on my own for a while.

Sense and instinct are clashing. Sense tells me that if every time I get my own food I break things, spreading glass around my house then I must NOT go without a caregiver. Instinct, or perhaps something base and fearful in the mask of instinct, tells me the next one will just be another failure and that it would be best to not get attached. IT would be best to not hope.

I am trying to shut that voice up. That voice started before my first caregiver, and with the bad ones gets a little louder but with a few has gone away. I wasn’t right for them. That’s different and I am okay with that. I know that voice is really the voice of a terrified little girl waiting for her father to force his way into her bedroom, to hurt her where she is most vulnerable. That little girl who fears everything and everyone, and wants to be isolated beyond what is comfortable. That little girl that never will grow up, but cannot reign over the adult. I mourn her pain. I mourn my pain.

I know the little wounded child in me is wrong, and that being alone will mean I just starve to death. I know that I will wake up in the morning, I will get things done with the temp and wait for Monday. Then I will meet another potential caregiver, I will move on.

Even tonight, I will merely take the step forward to do what I need to do. There is no point in anything else, there is no point in waiting for the sorrow to eat at me but I can try and let it go. I won’t forget, I probably won’t forgive because I don’t think I could unless I thought she didn’t actually mean it. I will try and let go. That’s not the same. It will take me a month I think, that’s my usual, to stop playing the moment when I nearly lost my temper out in my head.

The moments. I didn’t get a real dinner last night because of her lies. Today she asks me if I ate. I almost screamed at her. I couldn’t hide my frustration. She asks what is wrong. I say I don’t want to talk about it and lets just have a day. She pushes at me, picks at me for fifteen minutes. “Not telling me makes this a hostile work environment.” My temper almost escapes again, I consider seriously squirting her with the cat squirt gun and telling her she’s bad and wrong and disgusting. I instead lift my phone and say, “Okay you can go home then.” She says never mind. I turn on music loudly.

She lasts a whole hour and a half before she nearly wins out. I think she wants me to yell. She seems to be enjoying pushing buttons. It’s in the facial expressions, it’s in the raw meat she called a cooked hamburger. I think these doubts are over reactions at first until she huffs at me for asking her to microwave the burgers for three minutes. That cooked them, nearly burned them. I couldn’t let go of the rage. I was so very hungry, so why couldn’t I get real food from her? Why couldn’t I have my needs met? That takes less time. I picked up the phone again, told her the time, and I said “You can go home now.” The little smile, it bothers me. Why smile when you are clearly not going to be allowed back to work?

“Fine.” Out she went. I spent the next few hours making sure things weren’t going to lead to me starving all weekend. They won’t. I will be okay. I will have enchiladas and spaghetti I think. Not sure yet but that sounds like a delicious weekend to me. I will face the next set of demons that I know comes afte rnot eating. The urge to eat or not eat, I am not sure which will be out of proportion but I am prepared. I was already after I didn’t get food last night. Peanutbutter Bowl is not dinner. It’s snack. Peanutbutter and jelly without bread in a bowl. It is also quite gross. Protein however lasts longer than carbs so it worked better to fuel me.

In the last hours all the things that she said and did were rehashed, each thing that I see as wrong shared, and documented. The previous documentation was pulled forward. I haven’t documented something or someone this much in a while, not since I had to fight to get handrails in my bathroom. The time that is unaccounted for bothers me the most, as do the whispers of my neighbors. Her racist accusations almost had me fire her last week out of a want to protect my neighbor yet she is a behind the back racist, which feels worse to me but will not directly effect my friend as I will not have her around him.

I wish this was the worst caregiving experience I have had. It’s very bad. Top three. She just comes under K and HIM… I doubt anyone will ever surpass him in the horror department. For that I am grateful. There is nothing left for me to say that should be said in a public space but, I will be okay. I will mourn, I will sorrow. I will remember this betrayal.

I will unlock my door in the morning, I will look to the sunny or cloudy sky, I will know that the future rises with the sunset, and the dawn brings something new for me to live with.

Heavy Metal (Trigger Warning)

I am considering changing my blog title to Trigger Warning, seriously. Might save me some time debating on if my words could cause someone else pain. I know that this pain can be beneficial and not everything I write is a knife through the heart. Still, I am bothered again.

I realized today that I still am struggling with the expression of anger without referencing violence. Quite honestly, I don’t know how. I have gotten to the point where I won’t actually raise my hand and make a stabbing motion anymore but it is there, in the words I use and in the words i manage to not. At every turn anger is equated with violence.

I think this is contributing to an issue that I am having with someone, but I can’t talk about that as we’re working on it. None the less, I am finding this depth of anger is not something that I can seem to satiate. I have tried everything, and yet the only thing that brings me peace right now is to crank the metal. It can be any band Dimmu Borgir, At Vance, Black Sabbath, Nightwish… most of my metal is more symphonic than heavy. When I reach for the gut busting ear gouging metal, I know I am reaching critical mass. Today, I did so.

I use music in the place of drugs, I think. I listen to a lot of classical and folk music because it mellows me out. I listen to metal when angry because it helps me burn off the anger. Yet what I visualize with each song is also very different. With Walking In the Air by Celtic Woman, I imagine myself dancing in the stars, there is no one but me despite the lyrics implicating another person (or Snowman). Instead I am merely awhirl in the stars, freed to be nothing but what I see as my inner core. Sometimes I take the cats out for a twirl too.

With metal, it is always violence. I am a warrior with at least one sword, never a sheild. I take blows but deliver them with more force. My gleaming blades reflect light into the dark abyss of whatever hell this place is. I see my enemy mostly as shadows and it takes more than just speed to survive. I will dance the dance of death, and blood will fall.

Right now, probably because I am hungry against my will, I want to make that dance real. I want to take the sword off my wall and play with it, to tease it, to whisper promises of blood. I won’t. I am not actually a danger to others, I am just so angry that this seems like what a reasonable person does with anger. I have no conception of how to handle my anger in a constructive way. I guess at this a lot.

What I do instead of stabbing someone between the rips to pierce their lung and watch them drown slowly, and yes a slow death seems way more fun right now, varies. The fact that a part of me derives pleasure from the imagery that my anger carries also bothers me. These are the things that I learned weren’t normal in the mental hospitals. Those places are where I get the information to formulate a guess on how to handle my wrath from.

“Why did you punch Eric?”
“He touched my fork.”
“Okay did you ask him to not do that?”
and I punched the therapist.

That’s how my brain sees anger. You just hit someone and are done. Except that actually hitting or stabbing doesn’t make me feel anything but worse. I feel guilt for their pain and or near death experience. I feel guilt because I am capable of such things, and I feel broken because I could not surmount it. These feelings are especially potent because I have been taught how to kill you in ways that won’t show. I know how to do damage. When I give in to that anger, I do damage. I haven’t since I was 17. I don’t consider punching someone who won’t back off and is hurting me as an attack of anger, as usually I don’t feel THIS kind of anger. Instead I see that as self defense. I only hit them once, and I made SURE it wasn’t somewhere that was a vital area and could do permanent damage.

I wonder too if my choice to only hit someone when I actually am rather calm is “off”. I know hitting is bad and it is my last resort but why? What makes it wrong? Do I have those guilt feelings when I do hurt someone with my anger because it is wrong or because I was told it is wrong?

I think I have them because the act of violence especially out of the idea that hurting someone will bring me pleasure is one of the things I see as a supreme wrong. If hurting someone was a good thing, and I mean hurting them for real not the consensual acts of BDSM, then BDSM would be vanilla sex, pets would be tortured because that’s what they are there for, and humanity is even further into the abyss than I realized. Good thing that most people see hurting someone as bad. Stabbing is assault with a deadly weapon with the intent to cause harm. Then there’s attempted murder. Bricks, sticks, and stones also count as weapons in this case too.

So when you are taught that you really should stab someone to death because they pissed you off what guesses can be made on how to really handle anger?

1. Take a breath and say something, don’t yell it if you can help it but say, “This job was not done properly, please try again and if you need help or more directions ask me.” or “I am not okay with your choice of date, I don’t feel comfortable with you trying to coerce me into going somewhere that makes me feel unsafe.” It feels cheesy to me. It feels like something from therapy. That’s where I got it so this makes sense. I modified their methods though, they wanted me to be so passive that I apologized for being angry. Sometimes I do because my father and mother made it clear my anger meant I was very very VERY bad. Not just a little naughty but the worst of the worst.

2. When the above does not work, it’s okay to wait and write down the angry words, then come back to the person, hand them a note with the words that aren’t hurtful and are to the point and explain you can’t say them right now. Some people read this as a passive aggressive gesture, and it may very well be for some people but when the slightest challenge to my expected patterns can put me into a state where I cannot function or panic when I must, such as fire or hunger etc, then this is different. This is a tool for communication. Therapists may not agree with me, but this plays in to why I am not succeeding in finding one. If they aren’t willing to work with me because of my disabilities or think outside the DSM, they aren’t going to be able to work with me. You work with me not ON me and we’re good. That one word makes a difference.

3. Tell them to fuck off. Yes, this is one of my methods of handling my anger. I know it isn’t super positive, it borders on the edge of not okay land. If it comes down to stabbing you in the eye and telling you that you can go fuck yourself with a razorblade, you can go fuck yourself with a razorblade.

That’s about it. Counting to ten makes me angry. The act itself causes anger so it doesn’t work when I am at the point of snapping. I have objects that I use to visualize containers for my anger too. If something else carries the burden of not stabbing the dumbass, then it helps. I am told that this is also unhealthy. I don’t agree.

I know my mother tried to help me find outlets for my anger. I rarely think of the good things she does, and today my anger may be related to my brother’s birthday (old now haha) but i don’t think so. I think it is the other things. In fact, I think with the current events I cannot talk about in a public space occuring, anyone would be this angry. My mother once told me something that I think turned out to be wise after all. I thought she was just pandering to me at the time. I was 9 or 10, and I thought I knew everything. Then again I also nearly killed someone over a sandwhich. “A parent can only teach you the skills they have.” I think she is wrong but also right. She cannot know everything but she can still find resources for you to learn with. Then again, I think my mother was actually trying to do so. She just had no idea that a mental hospital is a jail where they torture you and rape you. The other things I am angry with her for aren’t excused or gone of course but on this, I think she had a point. If she responds to anger by shutting down and this is unacceptable to me, and the only other people I have seen angry stab someone to death or other things on that same level, what am I going to think my options are?

So I am cranking my metal, not enough to bother the neighbors though, and I am trying to ride out the wave. After all, the villains in my imagination all wear the faces of my abusers, if I contain the anger until it passes without hurting anyone else or even myself (anger isn’t harmful if channeled properly) then I am actually stabbing them in a way. They want me to suffer, and instead I am obtaining pleasure from imagining a scythe in their viscera, their eyeballs bleeding, and their screams as I hack them to pieces.

This is my dark side, the side I fear most. It is the side of me I try to pretend isn’t there but it haunts my everyword. Maybe it is time I stopped pretending that if I ignore it then it will go away? Maybe I have been working towards this point for a while and didn’t realize the top of this mountain meant facing the mirror image of myself made of hate, rage, and nazi sentiments. This next step in my life won’t be pretty but if I don’t take this plunge I stagnate. Besides, I get to imagine really cool swords, who doesn’t like awesome swords? Raise your hand?

Never Ends Tomorrow (Trigger Warning)

Never ends tomorrow, the little bird sang.
The girl was curious but turned away to the shadows.
The morning came.
The girl was dead.
The bird moved on it’s flying path.
Never ends tomorrow, the black bird cried.
The boy turned back to the shadows blood on his hands
The morning came
The boy was dead.
Never ends tomorrow, the raven screamed
The sun did not rise for the town
All were dead
Dead
Dead.
Never ends tomorrow.
Never ends tomorrow
Tomorrow comes today
The dawn brings blood and sorrow.
So on flew the raven, around the world.
It had grown up carrying this baleful message.
Never ends tomorrow.
Sorrow made the wings of the raven heavy
Sorrow made his voice coarse
Sorrow nearly silenced his warning
Then he saw below him one more to warn.
Never ends tomorrow, the little bird screamed.
The girl turned from the shadows.
She looked at the bird.
The bird stared at her.
Never ends tomorrow, the little bird sobbed.
The girl nodded and stepped out of the shadows.
The morning came.
But not yet was it tomorrow
The raven followed the girl
The girl danced in the sun
Morning came again and again
Her hair turned grey
Her eyes went dim
Never ended this morning
Not on someone else’s whim
Never ended when it was time
When she was grey and it was past the Raven Time
Never Ends Tomorrow.

Sirens made me cry. I felt for a moment that despair that I have worked so hard to shake. The despair came a day late? It only lasted a few moments but I cried. For that split second I wanted something, there are no words for the want. Perhaps there are, but I do not know them. I sit in silence, my tears shaking my world, and I hear the words that I whispered every year after that one.

Never Ends Tomorrow.

Each year I had meant to kill myself. This year, I mean to live. Perhaps this is the tomorrow, and never turns out to be a bad thing? I do not know. All I know is this, Never ends tomorrow so I am going to live and fight today. Tooth and nail, heart and claw.