9/6/08

It’s not life history of my mind tonight.  I’m not really sure what is.

I know I’ve kept it bottled up for too long.  I don’t really have any friends, and I’d feel terribly guilty burdening them with something I can hardly bear myself.  So, ultimately, I hope to let it all out.  At least, as much as I can through writing.  And I suppose that will involve a large amount of life history, eventually.  But not tonight.  Tonight, I deal with the present.

I had a dream last night, one that I remember very clearly.  I was in some sort of accident (car crash maybe?), and in the accident I sustained several lacerations to the back of my legs.  The doctor came to do my stitches, but when she saw all the scars, she said, “I’m done with you”, and left me bleeding on the ground.

Maybe there will be some history in this, after all.

A few days after Christmas, the year I was 15 (I was almost 16), well, I don’t really remember what was going on.  I have a really bad memory, you see.  I know I wasn’t feeling any more down, or useless, or self-loathing than usual.  But after laying in my bed for a few minutes, I just didn’t feel right.   I’ve never been able to put a label on the feeling, though it’s come many times through the years.  Eventually, the feeling always translates into a need to harm myself, and I really wanted to get some sleep that night, so I figured, “what the hell” and went for it.  In my haste,  I ended up cutting much, much deeper than I intended.  I was horrified by the wound, which was about an inch wide, and I was horrified by the amount of blood, which was enormous.  But, more than anything, I was terrified that my mother, noticing that my bedroom light was on, would come into the room to see what was up.  I clumsily bound the wound with some gauze (cutters are always prepared), mopped up the blood with an old shirt ( I would dispose of it later), and crawled into bed for what would be the longest night of my life.

The next morning, I removed the previous night’s sloppy dressing and was greeted with a new large puddle of blood.  Also, I began to have worries—most likely irrational—about infection, gangrene, and amputation.  More likely, I should have been worried about shock and heart failure, but I was 16.  I knew that I needed some kind of medical assistance, so I did the hardest thing I have ever done in my life: I told my mom.  And while she was mostly rational about it, I felt like I was the biggest failure of a human being that had ever existed anywhere.  She gave me a choice.  I could either go to the emergency room, or I could go to my personal doctor.  I chose my own doctor.  When I arrived in the examining room, she already knew what was wrong—she had talked to my mother—but she asked me anyway.  From the way I told the story, I made it sound like this was really a one-time thing, and I was just a stupid dramatic teenager.  And she bought it.  But she was extremely cold towards me that day, like I was wasting her time.  And for the 6 years since then, it’s never been the same as it was before.  I’ve been a waste of time since then.

Apparently, this is pretty common.  Healthcare professionals have enough work to do with accident victims, they certainly don’t need us to harm ourselves on purpose.  But the feeling of being a waste of time has stuck with me, and it was that day I learned that I simply am not worth anything.  My doctor strongly suggested I see someone, and my mother wanted me to as well, and I figured, “I don’t want to hurt her any more”, so I went.  But even though I had a whole hour once a week where I was the only thing my therapist was supposed to be thinking about, I still felt like I was wasting her time.  Like I just wasn’t worth the time.  I managed to knock what was supposed to be a 6 month program down to less  than 3 months, by faking a recovery.  Not because I didn’t want to get better, but because I didn’t believe I deserved to.