Psychology

I was thinking of California. How it is nice, in a way, that a Californian should sort of help me begin the process of coming back to a sense of health and safety after having such strange experiences there that I can’t even be sure are real. I had some experiences that gave me bad vibes, some that gave me good vibes, because as anonymous as it feels in a way because of how huge it is, California has some good people. Since I was triggered just enough by certain experiences I cannot explain, I perhaps read into other things that were going on, too. Truly I had to make up stories to make sense of any of it and since I couldn’t come up with other explanations these half conceived stories se impulsieron — propelled, themselves into my consciousness. (Just now I didn’t know what I wanted to say in English but the verb came out in Spanish!)

The idea of even the traffic sounding and feeling angry and aggressive towards me? Of self-checkouts and train station ticketing machines not returning my money on *purpose*? All I know is I would have been scared to ask someone personally to return my money because I really did think that something inexplicable was happening and I was being in some unwelcome way watched… but then I look back on all the friendly encounters and I just don’t know anything, really. On this walk I bought the most expensive water on the back of the shelf of convenience stores to be absolutely sure no one spiked it with anything in anticipation of my arrival and as much as I know that is unlikely it was impossible to convince myself that that kind of scrutiny and intention to hurt me was not happening. I remember this little restaurant when I was walking somewhere near Hollywood with big black letters that said 100% Vegan. Maybe it was the lettering and that still does not look like a vegan font but… I remember walking up to the entrance and seeing a man standing behind a counter with bottled water in a row. I was afraid of him. I confused paranoia, based on having no reasonable explanation for what was happening (and the resurfacing of trauma and a really disorienting argument with my mother) with intuition.

I was suddenly afraid of everything being contaminated based on one or two experiences of that likely being the case… but there is a big difference between that and, no matter what restaurant I go to, or grocery store where I pick up bread, if someone knew what I wanted and could get to it before I did, they might lace it with something. I was having a strange never before had experience of fearing that kind of conspiracy against me perhaps organized by a hospital taking revenge on my whistleblowing was happening. I was sure that place was sinister but upon reflection I would take a bet on eating something there and surviving. Going through this does not mean I had no rational capacity, I just used that capacity in an ill-advised way and based a lot of my reasoning in false or unquestioned premises because I had no idea how to come up with any other explanation for what was going on and I had no one to talk to about it.

Maybe that was in my mind, but even looking back on it with more objectivity now it is so hard to tell what was real. I know what I know and don’t know. I can tell you with a certain degree of certainty what actually happened and what I am not sure about at all. What I have no idea about is how to form an interpretation of these things that actually happened in light of things I may have just imagined and my struggle to make sense of what it all means. Something strange was going on for sure, and there are events I cannot explain, but maybe my payche’s attempt to make sense of these events led me to interpret the whole world in a way that truly probably isn’t most accurate to what was actually going on. When ancient memories resurface they sometimes feel like they are happening right now and yeah, something got unrepressed in my psyche, for sure.

I know something hugely significant has happened to my psyche in terms of trauma processing and the sense I feel finally of being capable of living in the world, in the way I see everything, really,  yet I feel more aware of the reality of trauma and things to be terrified of and I can’t say I am not in a way constantly terrified and full of existential anxiety about who I am and if it even means anything to be if we disappear into nothing that carries our hopes and dreams and what we were when we were living after we die. I am at a place where I could risk the intimacy of imagining sitting with someone all night and trying to put something of it all together. What was inside my head and what actually happened and then why did it happen?

I was on my own on that dark night in downtown Los Angeles, sitting under a tree, crying, feeling somehow terrified of absolutely everything and like there was no foundation of anything I can trust. A woman asked me if I was okay and told me to stay safe but the world was somehow coming to feel more scary every minute. Sometimes even the friendly people start to sound like they are being sarcastic snd you realise, why wouldn’t everyone want you to go down?

Things happened to me, that cannot be explained, and I formed an interpretation of events, and became paranoid. If I felt like I had support at that time probably these things could be taken as of no big significance but I was hypervigilant. Why would a hotel try to kick me out claiming I was not a guest? There has to be a reason. Maybe it was that I walked up to the man behind the desk and walked away like I was scared. Who knows what it was, but then when I involved the police, they were friendly and took my side, and it kind of helped assure me that, if even police officers could take my side despite my fear of the whole world messing with me, maybe things were not wuite as scary as I was making them out to be after all?

That hotel was recommended by someone who was very kind and served me pasta. I have no idea what it means but the only words I can remember her saying to me are words she may not have even actually said: “you’ve done enough.” Those are the same words my philosophy advisor used when he waived a minor technicality as far as course requirements and signed me off on my philosophy major. I sometimes wonder if what he meant was, you’ve been through enough…

Many things were my own fears casting so many shadows and even the scary things would have been manageable if I felt like I had support but I had this painful, unnecessary fight with my mother, and then with all the simultaneous triggers which felt orchestrated it ft so painful I could not talk to her. The world felt scarier. Then who even knows what happened when I got back to my mother’s house, because yes, a lot of that was also my imagination… but everything  was so depressing too and I have no idea now what was meant to hurt me and what not. I feel like I was intentionally triggered. I had the worst fears like, there was all this sharp and scary equipment in the yard, and it felt so real that my father was going to invite the whole family over including surprise relatives I thought were dead but really had just moved away for reasons that had way too much to do with me. I was terrified in the most irrational way I have ever been in my life but it felt sooo real: family was going to come over and hit me with long metal objects and cut me up with a chainsaw and really just torture me and if that wasn’t enough they would probably leave me barely breathing in the cesspool… and then I went to the hopsital and they tortured me with those very things.

My fears of these things felt so justified because I was so vulnerable and it was clear they actually wanted me to hurt and suffer so it followed… and it is so strange that I am sure now that they are not capable of the things I was terrified of… but would they intentionally trigger me into some kind of psychotic breakdown? I was starting to fear that all the food was made in disgusting ways and they were also contaminating it and… I feel like they just didn’t care, all the males in this family, and when they found out somehow that I had such fears, they took advantage of them to scare me, which is awful. And then, if they would do such things to me, I did not know what was real, and ai made my mother’s husband into a monster and my brother into some kind of criminal spy and… all my wirst fears came out but they provoked them on purpose I’m sure if it and I have no idea how to explain how. Did my father know that when I heard clicking noises made in a certain way they would make me fear he was going to shoot me? Clicking like people cocking guns outside my room in the hospital, too.)

I even feared he might torture me and make me hurt other people. One day certain things that were said put into my head the idea that someone might be coming to visit me. I did not know who, there were a number of possibilities, but I suddenly had a rational realisation that *if* what was happening conformed to my worst fears, and my father was dangerous in that way, it would not be safe for anyone to try to visit me, let alone try to help me! I had to make an immediate decision: be patient and gather more evidence about what was actually happening, or do something that was a risk to me (calling the police) on the off chance that it might protect someone else. Immediately after I called I realised that, if my story about things was true, in the act of calling the police I might have pit others in danger when I meant to protect them. I couldn’t forgive myself and then the hospital started treating me awfully.

Something I am pretty sure happened: there was a German girl who was a patient. I thought it was subtle but I couldn’t help but give off tells that my energy was affected by hers, like my facial expressions, or the way I lost my balance walking by her… I thought this was all imperceptible but it feels like the whole hospital was watching every movement in my face and scrutinizing it. It was strange. It doesn’t even mean I liked her but her energy gave me feelings that were somehow pleasant and yet very much intruding and it was sooooo hard to hide that she had an effect on me. I do feel like they were watching me in my room and every time I couldn’t help smiling slightly thinking about her I heard some kind of commotion outside and it sounded like she was talking about feeling soooo violated and the more I tried to get her out of my head because my survival seemed to depend on it the harder it was and it felt like she could feel me experiencing her energy, and I almost felt violated in the way her energy intruded on me whether I liked it or not. I was trying with all my might to get her out of my mind and to stop feeling the feelings I felt being around her energy. I feel confident that in some way the hospital and perhaps she too wanted me to think she would feel the subtle things I was feeling inside and feeling violated by them.

So I heard this clicking like a gun and I had these fears, please don’t try to support me, you’ll only get hurt, no wonder I have chosen to be alone so often these years. But it was like within an hour of when I would expect them to be here. I could not find my phone and my immediate reaction was that my mother’s husband had stolen it from me so I couldn’t warn anyone that coming here could be dangerous, like that was his plan.

The only way I could warn them would have been Facebook from a computer that… well, he would find out I was warning them, and… I felt like I had minutes to make a decision about what to do. I called the police, they asked me if I wanted to go to the hospital to get checked out. I should have said no. I do not know what happened there. I felt so threatened; constant verbal threats of doing violence to me but never said to me directly except that time I was told to take my medicine that “your death is waiting” and perhaps others. It was like all the ‘patients’ were in on my ‘treatment’ plan and the plan was to terrify me with threats of violence and ridicule me and make me feel all the things I had been feeling right before I came in: like they had all anticipated my coming and that I was like the worst criminal on earth, and yes, once my full name was used by a patient, in that way, like the patients themselves were having meetings about me.

I could hear from my room that they had accessed Open Diary and they were making fun of it. My father recorded something for their sound system that was clearly meant to trigger my fears that he was hurting someone I care about: you hear the jangling of chains and his voice screaming that he was going to make someone sleep in the backyard with me. He could have meant my mother or someone else and I was terrified; this is exactly the sort of thing I mean, where… yes, this happened, and I don’t know how to interpret it, which is terrifying, but he really did record this for the hospital somehow and without my story of his being an absolute disgusting monster I have absolutely no idea how to interpret it at all. Why did he and the hospital want to trigger all my worst fears? It is one of the many objective things that happened that assured me that my belief system about what was going on — that the world was *as* scary as I was seeing it and my father was capable of Texas chainsaw massacre — was essentially correct. Things kept happening that would assure me that my paranoia was correct, I would respond with the only survival response my organism could come up with, and something would happen to confirm my fears.

Really I experienced every issue and fear it was possible to have: at the same time this was happening, my mother was having a surgery that terrified me, and everything felt so sad and so over anyway. I felt so much guilt about feeling constantly in the spotlight and based on how strange things happening around me were most likely on camera; but when I suggested there were cameras I was attacked rather than supported around my fears which made me feel even more assured that it was true. Now I think there are more likely explanations than cameras but I have no idea what they could be. Things were happening outside of me, very strange and often terrifying things, *and* I was processing more psychic (i.e. psychological) material than I ever had in my entire life at the same time. Despite feeling like the hospital should be sued into the ground for that kind of treatment and no one dealing with such things should have to go through that is there a way that it actually helped me in the end? I mean, that could never have been their intention; I wish I knew what it was, but it certainly was not to help me.

The next time I went into the hospital before the shelter was different: in retrospect, though such bizarre things happened there, too, I don’t think there was a need to be anywhere near as afraid of the people there as I actually was. I am aware that many of my interpretations of what was happening must be wrong and aside from the men who wrestled me to the ground and struggled to pull down my pants in retrospect what I found danger in when I was there maybe wasn’t so dangerous, and maybe not everyone was against me. Many fewer objectively horrible things happened there and a lot of what did happen may have been my own mind. In retrospect I had more freedom there than I would at so many similar facilities, access to delicious food, and a comfort room I could go into all on my own to listen to music which, in this little room, sounded amazing.

I did not know why they were asking me to do what they were asking so I was pretty much every day tortured by the question of, do I take the medication they give me or not, what are the consequences either way? If I let them do my vitals or didn’t what did that say about me and what were the consequences? I had no way of knowing and yet no matter what decision I made about these or other things I often immediately felt like I made the wrong decision and making the wrong decision would have consequences but I didn’t know what. When I went into that comfort room and listened to an album I immediately had a sense like music was as mindblowingly therapeutic  as cuddling with goats. It is 100% true, and I knew it as soon as I started listening, that so much if what I went through at that hospital and even before would have been sooo much easier and I wouldn’t have lost myself like that if I had only listened to music. I resisted it, could only take it in small doses, but I knew in retrospect that if I had made it a practice to listen to music in that room every day my connection with the patients there would have been totally different and I would not have been all alone in my own world. I would have known how to respond to moments rather than being tortured and confused and I would have gotten through that experience a lot more smoothly. So much of the difficulty was in mot being able to feel my heart, and when I listened to music my heart came immediately back to me.

Here there was also a strange sense of other patients in the hospital seeming to know me, a difference from the precious one being that they seemed to want to help me, or give me a chance to succeed, and I didn’t know what was expected of me, but I wanted to do it right. I felt like I kept failing and then being given another chance, but then I did something else wrong, even something like being too agitated or thinking the wrong thing in my head, and there was this theme that it seemed everyone was giving me all the chances in the world but never actually letting me succeed: finding some reason to take that success away from me by pointing to some obscure rule that probably only applied to me but really it is like they meant to consistently get my hopes up only to somehow always find some reason that whatever I did was not good enough. It made it feel like me that was failing but the power structure was such that if they wanted to they could make it look like I had free will and it was me that was a failure but deep down I knew that no matter *what* I did I would end up with the impression that I had failed and I knew they had the power to manipulate this but still I kept trying to feel like I did something right and hoping to get who knows what kind of reward, like maybe someone coming to visit me.

I think a lot of this was going on in myself: it felt like everyone was giving me chances, but chances to what, I don’t know, and yet it felt very consequential to me nonetheless. As for the girl who always wore the Taylor Swift shirt, and who always looked like she wanted to spread every germ from her face onto all the walls, I had this strong sense that she didn’t actually like Taylor at all despite the shirt. I had to not like her, somehow, to distrust her intentions, though she was fine enough to sit with around a table. I would not admit to having had a bit of a crush on her then but now I think maybe it is a little bit true underneath these irrational feelings of her being so awful, at times when I didn’t actually believe these things about her…

Well, all I remember right now is hearing her say the words, “she has an ear infection now,” and I had this… psychologically interesting and irrational and perhaps psychotic response: I don’t know how it happens but this girl might have access to some of Taylor’s friends via acting like a harmless fan and maybe she touches the walls because she likes the idea of spreading something. I already was afraid that she might *want* to spread something, I think, outside of the hospital if she got a chance… I mean, I think she would touch her mouth before she touched the walls, so when she said “she has an ear infection now,” I immediately thought, what I am doing is affecting others, and this girl has the capacity to spread that. I felt awful and powerless. I honestly do think this girl may have been playing me in the most subtle way but how did she know me well enough to play me, that is the thing? How did anyone know me well enough to know what they seemingly knew about me? Somehow or other, though even more unlikely than my brother being a murderous spy, by means that I could not understand but my experience scared me into believing it could be happening, I had no control over it, and something I had done wrong in the hospital might have even caused it.

But these experiences got a lot of fears and a lot of unfinished processes out of me and I feel… so confused, wishing for life to contain some kind of deeper meaning or truth and feeling myself in a sort of crisis of meaning and purpose whike at the same time, I *am* taking meaningful action, living purposefully, and I have never felt so on the other side of trauma in certain ways than I am now. I am maybe more terrified of the future than ever but somehow getting triggered like this and  going through everything I went through and then finally doing lots of EMDR… I do not think a lot of what happened in some of these places was right but if they hadn’t triggered me like that maybe I wouldn’t have gotten to the other side of my trauma. I feel on the other side of some really old pain that I never ever thought I would get over but I don’t even know enough to say what that old pain is about… so many old pains and ways that I had emotional flashbacks to early childhood traumas rather than being in the present seem to have resolved and now I am on the other side of something huge but I can’t begin to say what it is and as much as I want to I can’t put into any kind of comprehensible form what has happened to me psychologically.