Ciara (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} winterberries) wrote,@ 2009-01-06 16:34:00 |
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LJ Idol Topic Week 15: "Cracking Up"
You want to know about cracking up. How much do you want to hear?
* * *
I'm seven years old and I just failed a math test. My father wants to teach me how to do it before the next test but I scream that I KNOW how to do it, I made some mistakes but I KNOW, and they tell me not to use that tone of voice and to quit popping off at them. I yell more and they yell back and I scream and cry and they tell me to calm down and then I run up to my room and fling the window open. I'm going to jump, I shriek, struggling with the screen, I'm going to jump, and in that moment I mean it. The screen finally skreeks halfway open, reluctantly, and I dangle my head out and I'm staring at the concrete steps one floor down. The screen is stuck and I can't get out any further before my father grabs me by the waist and drags me back indoors. When I try it again a few months later, the interior window won't open and I don't know why. Years later my mother tells me that my father nailed all my windows shut. It was sweltering in my room for every summer of my childhood from then on out.
* * *
I'm sixteen years old and I haven't slept in a week. I have a Spanish paper I'm going to fail and a calculus test I'm going to fail and a Greek presentation I'm going to fail and I have two AP exams coming up and final exams the week after that and I'm providing piano accompaniment for five choirs at my school's Music Night and six children who are singing solos at my church's year-end vocal recital. I'm having a full-on pacing-sobbing-hyperventilating panic attack, but it hasn't let up in five days, which is why I can't sleep and why I can't stop crying and my hands won't stop shaking and my brain has turned into a crazy warp-speed carousel that I'll never get off of, ever, until a spring pops loose and then another and I fly into a million pieces, dead. I don't go to school for a week because I can't stop crying or form a coherent sentence. Food chokes me and I lose seven pounds in five days. Everything is wrong with me and everything terrifies me and I should never have been born. I can't understand anything that is going on around me. I stay at my grandmother's house and watch Teletubbies with my three-year-old cousin as Grandma babysits the both of us, and I sob even more hysterically because I can't understand what the Teletubbies are doing. My grandmother gets me a copy of something called Kara, the Lonely Falcon to read, and it seems to be an inspirational book of some kind, but I can't understand it and the little I understand makes me cry harder because it's about how to be a good person, I think, and I will never be a good person. I'm a terrible person. I'm sixteen years old and I'm the worst person in the world.
* * *
I'm eighteen years old and I'm the best person in the world. I'm gorgeous, I'm blessed, I'm God's chosen one. I spent several hours talking to God through the medium of my ceiling fan earlier in the day, thanking Him for choosing me to be a modern-day Joan of Arc or Julian of Norwich or other similar saintlike person, but now it's time for me to let loose and explore the sexual side of my being that was chained for so long because I was afraid to be happy, but now I know how wrong I was to be afraid of happiness, so I am ready to dance my ass off and sing at the top of my lungs and hit on any guy that I see. The night is a swirling mass of color, I'm a radiant beam of light. My mother is worried about me but I tell her it's okay because it's a religious epiphany and what's missing from the world is faith in God, I've just found a depth and purity of faith I never had before so of course I'm ecstatic, and you know the passage in the Bible where it tells about how Jesus walked on water and then Peter followed, well what happened wasn't that Jesus *made* him walk on water, it was that Peter had faith that Jesus wouldn't let him drown, and any of us could walk on water, I could walk on water too, only not quite yet because I'm not that good of a person yet, but I will be, I know I will be. My mother is terrified, she thinks I'm going to drown, but I won't drown. Nothing bad will happen to me. I'm God's chosen one and nothing bad will happen ever again.
* * *
I'm eighteen years old and I'm in a locked psychiatric unit. I'm back where I was when I was sixteen years old but this time when the panic attack had lasted three days with no sleep my parents brought me to the ER and the doctor signed me in here. I can't sleep. There are twenty-five patients and four of them are under the age of sixty. I can't sleep. They shine lights in my eyes every fifteen minutes to make sure I'm not dead. I can't sleep. My roommate is in her eighties, wears a diaper, and can't feed herself. She screams and screams when they try to change her diaper. I can't sleep. I need medication to calm me down but I don't know how to ask and they don't offer because there are two nurses on staff for twenty-five out-of-control lunatics. I can't sleep. I huddle back in my pillow and try to close my eyes, but they make me open them so they can see that I'm not dead. I can't sleep. They are trying to feed my roommate a pill crushed in her oatmeal, and she won't stop screaming. No pills, no pills, no, no, no, no, no, she screams. No, no, no, I scream with her in my head. No one sees me. They watch my pupils dilate, and they don't see me. I am not there. No one is there. A girl is crouching terrified and alone in the corner of her bed praying for sleep that won't come. She can't sleep. I can't sleep. I will never sleep again. I read somewhere that in lab experiments rats can exist for ten days without sleep and then they die. In seven days I will be dead.
* * *
I'm nineteen years old and I have no facial expressions. They put me on medications that took my facial expressions away, but they say it's better than being manic, and I have to believe them because they're the doctors. I write long poems about suicide and put quotes from "Paint It Black" up as my AIM away message. My friends worry about me, then edge away from me when things don't get better. I don't leave my room except to eat, and I don't eat anything except hamburgers, fried chicken, and french fries. I gain sixty pounds. I write lots of fanfiction in which people commit suicide. Something is coming, but I don't know what. I am waiting.
* * *
I'm twenty years old and I have tipped a bottle of pills into my hand. I stare at it. I bring the pills to my lips. I pause. Then I break and I run into the bathroom and I flush the pills away and I'm crying and I run back to my room and I look up the number of the suicide hotline that they give you with your student handbook and I call them and I talk for three hours and I decide to drop out of school. Whatever I was waiting for is over now.
* * *
I'm twenty years old and in another locked ward, but a nice one this time. They have a Scrabble set and an arts and crafts table. I beat everyone on the ward in Scrabble and make little pen holders and keyrings and jewelry boxes for everyone I know, inside the ward and out of it. I'm manic, but they're fixing my moods with meds that don't take away my facial expressions. I go to group therapy every day and talk and listen. There are bad nights when I can't sleep, because I can only sleep listening to music and some of the nurses think that I might break my CDs in half and slice my wrists with one of the edges, but eventually I get a doctor's permission to have my CDs, and the nights get much better. I am in the hospital for Christmas and New Year's, but it's okay. On New Year's we're allowed to stay up to watch the ball drop, and my alcoholic suicidal roommate and the drug-addicted bipolar guy from down the hall and I all sit around making fun of the performers on Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve. I make a papier-mache sparkly ball to drop at midnight and we ring in the new year on our own, crazies hoping this year will be better than the last one. I had almost forgotten what hope felt like, but it's New Year's 2002 and I've found it again, here in this locked ward with manic-depressives and schizophrenics and catatonics and depressives, all of us living lives that no one should have to live, all of us trying our hardest to be well again.
* * *
I'm twenty-seven years old and I have been on medication and in therapy for nine years. I am manic-depressive with particular tendencies towards depression and anxiety, as well as something called sensory integration disorder, which tends to flare up alongside my panic attacks and sometimes makes it very difficult for me to carry on a normal life. But I take five kinds of pills every day, and then I go to work, and I come home and keep my house livable. I am married to a wonderful woman who supports me when things are hard, and I try to treat her with care and to keep my own moods and sanity under control so that my disorder won't tear apart her life along with mine. I work every day on my sanity, and some days I'm more successful than others. But I know what to do, now, when I can't sleep for days on end: I call my therapist and take a dose of neuroleptics until things settle. I know how to gauge my moods so that I can tell when I am going manic and head things off at the pass. I know who I am, and I know that on a basic level, I am crazy. I've known that since I was sixteen years old. But what I didn't know then -- what I have learned slowly and painfully in these past eleven years -- is that I can take control back from my disease. There will be bad times along with the good times, and I know that, but in the end, I will make it through. I won't commit suicide, I won't spend my life institutionalized, I won't lose my facial expressions or my ability to feel. I'm twenty-seven years old and next year I'll be twenty-eight, and I'll still be fighting, and I'll still be okay.
You want to know about cracking up. How much do you want to hear?
* * *
I'm seven years old and I just failed a math test. My father wants to teach me how to do it before the next test but I scream that I KNOW how to do it, I made some mistakes but I KNOW, and they tell me not to use that tone of voice and to quit popping off at them. I yell more and they yell back and I scream and cry and they tell me to calm down and then I run up to my room and fling the window open. I'm going to jump, I shriek, struggling with the screen, I'm going to jump, and in that moment I mean it. The screen finally skreeks halfway open, reluctantly, and I dangle my head out and I'm staring at the concrete steps one floor down. The screen is stuck and I can't get out any further before my father grabs me by the waist and drags me back indoors. When I try it again a few months later, the interior window won't open and I don't know why. Years later my mother tells me that my father nailed all my windows shut. It was sweltering in my room for every summer of my childhood from then on out.
* * *
I'm sixteen years old and I haven't slept in a week. I have a Spanish paper I'm going to fail and a calculus test I'm going to fail and a Greek presentation I'm going to fail and I have two AP exams coming up and final exams the week after that and I'm providing piano accompaniment for five choirs at my school's Music Night and six children who are singing solos at my church's year-end vocal recital. I'm having a full-on pacing-sobbing-hyperventilating panic attack, but it hasn't let up in five days, which is why I can't sleep and why I can't stop crying and my hands won't stop shaking and my brain has turned into a crazy warp-speed carousel that I'll never get off of, ever, until a spring pops loose and then another and I fly into a million pieces, dead. I don't go to school for a week because I can't stop crying or form a coherent sentence. Food chokes me and I lose seven pounds in five days. Everything is wrong with me and everything terrifies me and I should never have been born. I can't understand anything that is going on around me. I stay at my grandmother's house and watch Teletubbies with my three-year-old cousin as Grandma babysits the both of us, and I sob even more hysterically because I can't understand what the Teletubbies are doing. My grandmother gets me a copy of something called Kara, the Lonely Falcon to read, and it seems to be an inspirational book of some kind, but I can't understand it and the little I understand makes me cry harder because it's about how to be a good person, I think, and I will never be a good person. I'm a terrible person. I'm sixteen years old and I'm the worst person in the world.
* * *
I'm eighteen years old and I'm the best person in the world. I'm gorgeous, I'm blessed, I'm God's chosen one. I spent several hours talking to God through the medium of my ceiling fan earlier in the day, thanking Him for choosing me to be a modern-day Joan of Arc or Julian of Norwich or other similar saintlike person, but now it's time for me to let loose and explore the sexual side of my being that was chained for so long because I was afraid to be happy, but now I know how wrong I was to be afraid of happiness, so I am ready to dance my ass off and sing at the top of my lungs and hit on any guy that I see. The night is a swirling mass of color, I'm a radiant beam of light. My mother is worried about me but I tell her it's okay because it's a religious epiphany and what's missing from the world is faith in God, I've just found a depth and purity of faith I never had before so of course I'm ecstatic, and you know the passage in the Bible where it tells about how Jesus walked on water and then Peter followed, well what happened wasn't that Jesus *made* him walk on water, it was that Peter had faith that Jesus wouldn't let him drown, and any of us could walk on water, I could walk on water too, only not quite yet because I'm not that good of a person yet, but I will be, I know I will be. My mother is terrified, she thinks I'm going to drown, but I won't drown. Nothing bad will happen to me. I'm God's chosen one and nothing bad will happen ever again.
* * *
I'm eighteen years old and I'm in a locked psychiatric unit. I'm back where I was when I was sixteen years old but this time when the panic attack had lasted three days with no sleep my parents brought me to the ER and the doctor signed me in here. I can't sleep. There are twenty-five patients and four of them are under the age of sixty. I can't sleep. They shine lights in my eyes every fifteen minutes to make sure I'm not dead. I can't sleep. My roommate is in her eighties, wears a diaper, and can't feed herself. She screams and screams when they try to change her diaper. I can't sleep. I need medication to calm me down but I don't know how to ask and they don't offer because there are two nurses on staff for twenty-five out-of-control lunatics. I can't sleep. I huddle back in my pillow and try to close my eyes, but they make me open them so they can see that I'm not dead. I can't sleep. They are trying to feed my roommate a pill crushed in her oatmeal, and she won't stop screaming. No pills, no pills, no, no, no, no, no, she screams. No, no, no, I scream with her in my head. No one sees me. They watch my pupils dilate, and they don't see me. I am not there. No one is there. A girl is crouching terrified and alone in the corner of her bed praying for sleep that won't come. She can't sleep. I can't sleep. I will never sleep again. I read somewhere that in lab experiments rats can exist for ten days without sleep and then they die. In seven days I will be dead.
* * *
I'm nineteen years old and I have no facial expressions. They put me on medications that took my facial expressions away, but they say it's better than being manic, and I have to believe them because they're the doctors. I write long poems about suicide and put quotes from "Paint It Black" up as my AIM away message. My friends worry about me, then edge away from me when things don't get better. I don't leave my room except to eat, and I don't eat anything except hamburgers, fried chicken, and french fries. I gain sixty pounds. I write lots of fanfiction in which people commit suicide. Something is coming, but I don't know what. I am waiting.
* * *
I'm twenty years old and I have tipped a bottle of pills into my hand. I stare at it. I bring the pills to my lips. I pause. Then I break and I run into the bathroom and I flush the pills away and I'm crying and I run back to my room and I look up the number of the suicide hotline that they give you with your student handbook and I call them and I talk for three hours and I decide to drop out of school. Whatever I was waiting for is over now.
* * *
I'm twenty years old and in another locked ward, but a nice one this time. They have a Scrabble set and an arts and crafts table. I beat everyone on the ward in Scrabble and make little pen holders and keyrings and jewelry boxes for everyone I know, inside the ward and out of it. I'm manic, but they're fixing my moods with meds that don't take away my facial expressions. I go to group therapy every day and talk and listen. There are bad nights when I can't sleep, because I can only sleep listening to music and some of the nurses think that I might break my CDs in half and slice my wrists with one of the edges, but eventually I get a doctor's permission to have my CDs, and the nights get much better. I am in the hospital for Christmas and New Year's, but it's okay. On New Year's we're allowed to stay up to watch the ball drop, and my alcoholic suicidal roommate and the drug-addicted bipolar guy from down the hall and I all sit around making fun of the performers on Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve. I make a papier-mache sparkly ball to drop at midnight and we ring in the new year on our own, crazies hoping this year will be better than the last one. I had almost forgotten what hope felt like, but it's New Year's 2002 and I've found it again, here in this locked ward with manic-depressives and schizophrenics and catatonics and depressives, all of us living lives that no one should have to live, all of us trying our hardest to be well again.
* * *
I'm twenty-seven years old and I have been on medication and in therapy for nine years. I am manic-depressive with particular tendencies towards depression and anxiety, as well as something called sensory integration disorder, which tends to flare up alongside my panic attacks and sometimes makes it very difficult for me to carry on a normal life. But I take five kinds of pills every day, and then I go to work, and I come home and keep my house livable. I am married to a wonderful woman who supports me when things are hard, and I try to treat her with care and to keep my own moods and sanity under control so that my disorder won't tear apart her life along with mine. I work every day on my sanity, and some days I'm more successful than others. But I know what to do, now, when I can't sleep for days on end: I call my therapist and take a dose of neuroleptics until things settle. I know how to gauge my moods so that I can tell when I am going manic and head things off at the pass. I know who I am, and I know that on a basic level, I am crazy. I've known that since I was sixteen years old. But what I didn't know then -- what I have learned slowly and painfully in these past eleven years -- is that I can take control back from my disease. There will be bad times along with the good times, and I know that, but in the end, I will make it through. I won't commit suicide, I won't spend my life institutionalized, I won't lose my facial expressions or my ability to feel. I'm twenty-seven years old and next year I'll be twenty-eight, and I'll still be fighting, and I'll still be okay.
