Transcript: Tonight

Hey there. I am beginning to think that going into “transcription” mode may be my form of medicine. My definition for what I think is mental illness in me is when my I can’t think straight because I am overwhelmed by all the defense programs I have running. Now, these programs have been running for a LONG time without me knowing so I was exhausted and didn’t even know it (showing up in “disordered” behaviors). And now I think I found a way to start venting out those defense programs. Namely, by naming them. By recognizing them and not allowing shame to isolate me and make me think that I’m a new special brand of terrible and I can’t let you all see me. In fact, I feel a significant amount of inhibition on writing this up and publishing this because I just published a blog yesterday! This means my mailing list will “be bombarded” with long, rambling emails from Marie this week. I can feel the judgment in my body as I imagine each of you, if you even look at it, review the blog and roll your eyes as you see me as some cartoon character in their preteens who just can’t stop talking from their stream of consciousness about whatever the hell it is that goes on in little girls’ minds. But then I think, Marie, if they don’t want to read your stuff, they’ll unsubscribe. Why the hell am I throttling myself so much that I think that people subscribed to my blog will be irritated by getting new blog posts? I can’t help who I am. But I can help not hiding it. It’s the hiding it that’s making me mentally ill.

So here I am. It’s 9pm at night and my head is thick in the clouds of multiple layers of thought and reaction to thought. I feel dissociated and derealized, I suppose you could say. So I considered in my mind what I think might help. For a while I chose to watch TV. I finished ReBoot on Hulu which was really awesome. Very soothing to the little me who learned oversimplified family dynamics from sitcoms. It was so satisfying to see real conflict and for Hollywood itself to break down its own 4th wall: awareness of itself. It was delicious to watch. So anyways, I was watching that. But I never really feel relaxed when I’m home alone. Or when I’m home with the family, to be honest. But it’s a different kind of not relaxed. When they’re home it’s like my usual Self head noise but then added layers of the head noise that accompanies having people in “my space” with whom I have relationships upon which I project my own residual trauma responses. But tonight! Tonight I was home alone. So there were a few layers of compulsive hypervigilant thought that play during that time. And it’s distressing. I find myself doing certain behaviors to survive these incredibly loud moments. I think that’s where the eating disorder comes in. I think that’s where rubbing my nose compulsively comes in. Or where fidgeting with my fish-scale pillow comes in. Or picking at the calloused skin on my heel. Meanwhile, I keep looking at the clock waiting for it to be late enough so that my body will feel tired and I can just go to sleep and stop watching time crawl in front of me. Maybe I’m still in survival mode. Maybe it doesn’t matter what mode I say that I am in. Maybe labeling it is a distraction from meeting it. I used to watch TV all the time in order to mentally escape. But over the last couple of years I’ve started watching TV as a form of church. I know how to identify which shows I like now and I know why I like them. They give me insight into the world, help me understand my self or others, help me feel calm and loved, share a mythology with me that I can project myself into, and boast the potential creativity of the human mind to communicate en masse their art and their human experience with the rest of us. I often feel like I want to text the creator of a show after I’ve seen it, saying, “DUDE! Seriously, dude. That was AWESOME. Please… keep doing what you’re doing. You’re on it!!!” But alas, these people aren’t my buddies. They’re strangers in California. So my energy is converted into a deep appreciation from afar and a little bit of obsession and fangirling.

Holy shit, I’ve gotten distracted. Ain’t gonna edit it, though. This is how my mind works.

Point is, while I was watching TV and while I was deeply appreciating it and engaging with it, I still felt restless, as I often do. I never really feel the full permission to do anything that I’m doing. Doesn’t matter if it’s TV or it’s a coaching session. I have this nagging sense that I’m supposed to be getting ahead on something else right now. I’m not surprised by this awareness. It tracks with everything else I’ve been learning about myself. So what do I do? Just keep faking that I’m relaxing until I make it? Or, like now, do I go and vent out these cyclical thoughts here or wherever else? I thought about writing it out with pen but that takes too much time and my thoughts are fast and furious. If I chose to write with a pen, it’s an intentional choice with the subtextual motivation of wanting to, again, domesticate my mind. And I am not interested in domesticating my mind anymore. And so if my mind thinks fast, then we shall TYPE it out so we get as much as we can from this juicy brain. That said, I could just write this all in a Google Doc. I could. But that sounds boring. So then, reasonably, I come to the conclusion of publishing here on my blog. But then that conjures projections of you reading all of this and judging everything, being annoyed that I’m invading your inbox and daring to think that my anxious ramblings have any benefit to you.

But here’s the thing. I think they do benefit you. At the very least, if you’re reading this sentence, you’re already self-selected that they benefit you otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this… unless of course you like to watch me squirm. In that case, I guess,… enjoy?

But I feel like I’m really ready to lean much more of my weight into leaving my mind undomesticated. Letting it speak to me and you both freely. And so maybe I’m gonna write more on here. Maybe you’ll find it interesting, maybe you won’t. But I’m tired of editing myself for invisible criticisms. How absolutely stifling and unnecessary. I didn’t used to be prepared to deal with criticism. As soon as I started doubting Jesus as Lord & Savior (tm), I was being existentially criticized by my community. I didn’t know how to defend myself. They wanted to study the Bible with me, have respectful debates and whatnot. They felt my mind was wrong and it was hard not to believe them. Anyways, if this blog turns into a thing where I write twice a day in a meditative stream of consciousness in order to help me digest and shit out the experiences of being a human, then that’s what this is going to become. I only promise you as much authenticity as possible. If you aren’t interested in that, you will figure that out quickly. Anyways, why am I talking to you like you started some shit with me? Damn, my trauma’s talking.

So this brings me to being here, with my laptop, just letting it flow through me. It’s good. It’s practice for listening to my mind and for translating it (for myself but also for you). And that brings more of my unconscious into conscious where my mind seems to be able to intuitively adjust to it and relate to it better now that it’s been exposed to consciousness.

So maybe I just type and type and type before … uh oh, I got distracted by an email with another job offer. Oh boy. Anyways, I think I may be derailed now. I’m not sure. It’s still just 9:30pm. What would I do? That’s the problem, see? I don’t really have activities that I do that I get lost in. I mean,… there are some things. Like I absolutely lose myself when I’m in conversation with others. It’s a pleasant feeling (so long as the group is small). I get lost when I’m playing piano. I suppose sometimes I can get lost in time when I’m writing. But not always. Especially if I get distracted like I just did. I lose the hyperfocus, other thoughts kick back in, and I struggle to remember how to move them to the side again and focus on this activity in front of me.

Oh! I remember where I was going with some previous thoughts. I was just feeling restless this evening. I am alone. I am distractedly watching TV. I’m just waiting for the night to be over, which is a recurring experience to be honest. I don’t really enjoy much of my life, if I’m being perfectly honest. That’s not to be interpreted that it is because of what and who I surround myself by but that fact that my mental experience is still of a hellish landscape that I haven’t fully reconciled. But dammit, I’m still aware of it which makes the self-punching hurt that much more,… because you see it coming and can’t seem to stop it. So I’m spending most of my life just having to watch myself be bullied and beaten by my own Self. Without really knowing it was happening (I was repressing awareness of it), nor what exactly to do about it. Well, I figure a fantastic strategy is to stop thinking that I’m any kind of crazy and begin to share what I’m experiencing. I’ve just reasoned it through and I’ve talked to so many other people and I just find it highly unreasonable that each of us who really think we’re a piece of shit are actually pieces of shit. It seems like a mass delusion that we’re all willing to subject ourselves to. That there’s something broken about me or that I’m a piece of shit. I hear that from so many people. When they open up to me, they basically speak from my journal or my unspoken thoughts. How could it be that we are all feeling the same kind of insecurity but think we’re the only ones who are that kind of broken? I think there’s something going on here and we may not be acknowledging that so many mental illnesses have to do with the perception you have of the image of yourSelf. Meaning, what does your mind believe about its own nature? That will limit its expression. Maybe that’s why they encourage creative thinking and open-mindedness. Because if we don’t stay open minded, we won’t see the potential of what our minds can perceive within their own experience. Maybe language was the beginning of mental health industry. I dunno.

Anyways, after writing about my eating disorder this morning, I felt more of a bump in the road to just using food to comfort. It’s been a pretty smooth road to take lately. But after those damn numbers came in, it raised the alert level in my mind to really start confronting these thoughts and impulses I have around food. And when cleaning the house today, I threw away a big bag of mixed candies I had bought as well as some ruffles chips. And then for dinner I had a balanced meal (aka DIY lunchables). But then the rest of the evening is rough. I don’t feel free to really do anything. TV feels like my only choice. I feel like a behavioral prisoner. My mind gives me ideas of things to do but then these big, vicious volleyball players show up in my mind and just smack down the ideas with big red flags and warnings about how that idea is hopeless, pointless, and that I don’t have the energy to do it. And so I’ll just keep watching TV and to cope with the ongoing battle in my head, I will eat snacks or ruminate on how I have no control over myself, all whilst trying to be aware of the show I’m watching.

So that’s what was happening tonight. Time has been creeping. I’ve wanted the night to end so much more quickly because I don’t know how to fill the time but I also hate being alive in this mind as it is right now. But then I realize that by venting my present anxieties through a “the sun will come out tomorrow” lens, I think about tomorrow and realize it probably won’t be different than today because I still have nothing to do and still haven’t processed why I feel paralyzed in my apartment when alone and why I feel like I’m drowning when I’m in the apartment with the family. It isn’t getting better by just sitting through it. I have seen the outcomes from beginning to disclose the content of my mental experience to my inner circle. It’s cathartic and it opens me open to see myself more clearly. But none of my partners nor my friends really have the space to be having two hour talks with me every night to help me process the backlog that I have. And talking to a therapist once a week just ain’t going to cut it. I think I need to do this on my own. Take this into my own hands.

And that’s why I’m writing. And it’s why I am being as honest as I possibly can. Because I really want to help myself escape from hell and start LIVING.