Don’t Give Up
It’s not that my head was a mess this last week, it’s that my head has always been a mess. It’s like the person who has a cluttered bedroom, but they know exactly where everything is up until the point the person with the good intentions comes by and tidy’s the place up for them. Except instead of cleaning persons, you come in contact with folks who shake up your life. Some are for the better, some for the worse, and some you barely even notice they were there.
I asked Dan today why it is that I refuse to give up on myself. He said, “well because, that’s not you”. To which I responded, “sometimes I really, really want to”.
It was this last Wednesday morning, around 1:30pm. I told Dan he didn’t have to bring me my truck at lunch, and I would’ve preferred that he didn’t, but sure enough, come 1:17pm, I heard the motor to my ’85 Nissan pickup shut off in front of the house. I cringed. Happy to see my man, unhappy that he was going to trust me with the truck. I begged him to call in sick before he left, and he was almost willing, but I saw the look in his eyes. It’s not his style, he has this undying sense of responsibility that I both love and hate about him. He doesn’t understand that sometimes you just need to dive in without looking. He’s too busy thinking about the sharks that might be swimming just out of sight, and it’s cool. I love him for who is, I jump off into the deep end enough for the both of us.
But I really needed someone. I know it must be exhausting to love me the way he does, uncontrollable mood swings, constant gear shifts…there’s no walls here. He sees it all, pouring out of me at the snap of a finger, triggered by a thought, a smell, anything really…both bad and good, sometimes all at once.
But anyway, on a day I really needed to not be alone, he left me my truck. As soon as he left, I jumped out of bed, put my clothes on, grabbed my keys, and locked the front door on my way out. I looked down, and Bosco was wagging his tail and staring at me. Poor dog hasn’t seen his mommy in a month, so cool…I opened the door to the truck, and without a moment’s hesitation to sniff a blade of grass, he was in the driver’s seat.
I pushed him over, revved the engine, cranked the tunes, and a few minutes later, I was coming up where Center St. meets Tacoma Ave. Vehicles were a blur of colors and shapes as I dodged in between them and through the streets of my home town. The faster I went, the faster I wanted to go. Now with 2 brand new ball joints, so no fear of any dislocations in the front end. I have no speedo in my pickup, that went away with the old transmission, but I was in 5th gear in a 30 mph zone, and completely lost in thought. This is all part of the process, this is one of the ways I break.
The last time I felt this way was about around the time we first moved into this place, it was raining and I was hauling ass into Seattle via I-5, gaining speed in my ’84 Nissan, I lovingly called “Temperamental Bitch”. I had the pedal pushed down to the floor, and all I can remember was the music blaring and the way the rain looked pelting my windshield as I passed a blur of tail lights. Except that time, I was drunk. There’s a curve when you’re heading North on I-5, that is an overpass, I’ve fantasized many times over the years about not following the flow of the curve, and gaining enough speed to crash into the wall, hoping to throw my body and my truck over the edge, and this was the night I was going to do it. My truck’s name suited her well, and right when I was coming into the curve, something went screwy, and my truck dropped down to about 40, and I had to downshift and bring it back up. I started screaming and crying and slamming my fist into the dashboard…there was no way I was going to gain enough speed to break the wall, so I kept going in a zoned out state and eventually found myself at El Corazon.
I called Beren, and we had this crazy conversation as I’m blinded by tears and rain drops. He didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know how to help me. He told me he was sorry for the way he hurt me, but it wasn’t about him…it’s never about anyone, it’s about me and my lack of control…it’s about me and the way I can’t handle my trauma.
Back to present day…on the 20th, this is where my mind was at. No booze this time, just a blur of emotions I can’t explain and a pressure building up inside. The only thing I desired more than anything in that moment was to feel something substantial. I had no idea where I was going. When I first climbed into my truck, the plan was to hit up the taco stand to feed my hungry belly, but I went in the completely opposite direction with the dog as my co-pilot.
It wasn’t until I took a left onto Tacoma Ave. that I found my destination. An officer was pulled over to the right a few lights up, and he was out of his car, harassing a hooker. I couldn’t take my eyes off the car, I had it all laid out so perfectly in my mind; the moment the light turned green, I would just go, paying no mind to whether or not the next light was stop or go…I would go, as fast as I could, as hard as I could with my wheels pointed towards the back of the cop car. Not really wanting to live or die, just wanting to feel something. But the song stopped, the light turned green, and I looked at my dog when I went to change the song on my mp3 player.
Life is all about distractions. Bosco was looking at me with his stupid puppy eyes and his big, goofy tongue hanging out of his wide, doofy, grinning mouth, and I yelled, “Why the fuck do you have to be hear? Fuck!” I am convinced that life is based off of split second decisions, and I couldn’t rationalize how throwing my dog out of the car near the middle of downtown Tacoma would be any less dangerous than leaving him in the car as I collided with reality. So I drove down to the waterfront, and took him for a walk instead.
My thing is that I really don’t like giving shit about anyone or anything, because the moment I care, means there’s one more thing that I’m living for, one more peace of good in the world to remind me that smashing my truck, pulling the trigger, or jumping off the highest point of whatever just isn’t worth it. The flip side is that I’m also a logical minded person, so I intentionally put myself in situations where I have to care that way I don’t do something completely stupid and irrevocable.
Don’t let life break you completely.
I’ve always been a very extreme person and highly emotional. I’m sure the ptsd contributes to it quite a bit, but I’m really not fond of labels, so I don’t refer to it very often. As I’ve grown older, it gets easier to tell what’s in my head and what’s not, but not always. Perceptions are a fucking mind fuck, and the scenarios going on in my reality are worse than a lot of horror movies.
I’m addicted to trauma, addicted to the darker side of life, curious as to what makes the devil tick. It’s the whole therapist disease…where if you can figure out what makes the world broken, maybe you have a chance at fixing yourself. Everything is therapy to me in one form or another. Either therapy or a distraction.
The question that’s been weighing heavily on my mind the last few days is why this refusal to give up completely? I’ve died 3 times in my life, and overdoses fucking suck. I think it’s just as weird to see your body from the view of the ceiling as it is to feel the panic as a friend is dying in your arms. Life throws some very odd curve balls at you sometimes.
Living this soberish life, I thought things would be different, but I feel more deeply than I have in years. Sometimes I can’t turn off the water works.
There was this commercial floating around for a while about gun safety, it had the little boy that found the gun in his parents closet, then the screen goes black and you hear a gun shot go off. My auntie used to cry every time it would play, and I’d laugh at her for it. Fucking stupid to cry over a commercial, but the way I’ve been here lately, I’d probably cry too. It’s a fucked up thought…your kid accidentally killing itself because you weren’t responsible enough to lock up your firearms.
I’ve spent so much of my life trying to numb myself from everything that this woman I’m becoming is almost a culture shock to me.
More than anything, I just want somebody in my corner at all times. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. Someone who won’t push my buttons, will hug me when I need a hug, will reassure me when I start to doubt, and put a smile back on my face when the corners of my mouth are dragging on the floor.
If you have no idea what it’s like to curl your knees up to your chest, hold them tightly to you, while rocking back and forth for 6 hours in the same spot and telling yourself that everything is going to be okay over and over again, than you will never come close to understanding the hell I live inside of my mind.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my husband, but there’s days when I can see just how lost he is when he looks at me, wishing there was some way he could make the hurt go away, and he’s the closest anyone has ever gotten to knowing me completely.
So what do you do? What can anyone do?
Don’t give up.
Don’t give up so you can appreciate the joy when it comes. Don’t give up so you can celebrate life when it finds you. Don’t give up, because something amazing can and will happen if you open yourself up to it.
I say my pain is as great as my joy, because when the joy comes I revel in it, I let it swallow me whole, and I’m getting better at letting it drift on when it comes time for it to do so. Guess I’m a sucker for that whole “If you love it, set it free…”
You have to be the person you want to give and receive love from, otherwise you won’t recognize it when it finds you and you won’t be able to give it out when someone else so desperately needs it. I switch back and forth between the two…it’s hard and emotionally draining to give and give and give…you have to pick and choose who to give to, asses each situation differently, and give because it feels good to share, and not for that which you’re hoping to get out of it.
It’s a hard lesson to learn, a hard lesson to stick by, especially when I have every reason to hate the world around me, and I do…because people suck. They are spiteful and mean spirited…but some of them are also pretty fucking amazing. At the same time, I love people for their quirks and their curiosities. Every day, there is this constant war inside of me, but I think it lies within’ us all.
Don’t give up.
Don’t give up on hope, on your dreams, on your life…when you fall, stand back up. Stand up for the joy you might be fortunate enough to catch. If misery is all there is, then there’s no point in living stuck down in a hole, so I stand for a chance to feel joy. I push forward to feel the sun on my face and something new that’s never caught my eye before.
My life is a constant adjustment phase, and it gets fucking exhausting at times…easy to get burned out, real easy to get burned out…but at the same time life is far too short to not feel any sense of joy, so I tap into this child like nature, I dust myself off, and I push forward in hopes to find the sunbeam casting warmth down from the cloud that covers.
Don’t give up. Don’t give up on yourself, don’t stay in a hole, don’t let the darkness eat you up inside. Not easy to do, but neither is dredging through the shit most people have grown accustomed to.
Periodically, when I find myself in a hole, I have to remind myself of the following:
My heart, my sanity, my love, my hate, the bitter tendencies, so much going on, and no matter what, I will not give up, I will not be dragged down, I serve no master other than that which I choose. My life is my own, my heart is my own, my body is my own. I choose my path, and I will rule with love and an open heart.
I have to keep reminding myself that over and over again, because that person that is constantly giving me the assurance I need, that person that will always be in my corner comes from the same place that the asshole who tells me I’m a stupid, idiot, fuck-up comes from too. The company you keep is the company who will influence you the most, and I’m not talking about hanging with people who drink or whatever, I mean their general attitude and outlook on life. You have to recharge your batteries.
Don’t give up. Be the person you need in your life, because no one will ever understand your quirks and all that motivates you better than you do. That guy who says he loves you as he’s bruising up your face is not going to give you the love and respect that you crave. But if you can be the person that feeds you the positive energy, then that guy will leave a lot less marks.
Confidence and strength is a wonderful and powerful thing, and you can provide it for yourself.
I’d be lying if I said the darkness never took a hold of me, but it’s less and less with each passing day.
Don’t give up. Anything worth having is worth working for. Don’t stop until you see results. It’s that kind of fervor that’s needed in daily life, and it only builds on the positive energy you provide yourself with as a foundation. Most folks project what they feel onto others, it’s human nature…that’s why you can’t give up. I can’t give up, because there’s more to be done, and places yet to be seen.
Passing out…time for zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.