Piece of Switchbacks...

This is a small segment of my essay, "Switchbacks"

I do not want to be here again. The treatments have stopped working, and I hate that we’re wasting more time and money on a lost cause. But I lie down on the bed anyway, because I promised my brother that I would try one more treatment, for him.

I look up from watching the anesthesiologist at my arm and look at my brother. He came to the first treatment, and he is here again, for the last one. I know that he hopes this will work, that this will not be the last one because the ECT will work again and maybe I’ll be happy like I’ve only been for a week and a half in my life, but I know better. My body has betrayed me, and I refuse to allow myself to hope again.

My brother smiles at me and waves.

“Hey, Jill,” he says.

“Hey, Bill,” I reply. My body doesn’t respond at all when the anesthesiologist inserts the needle. I’m getting used to it. The needle has gone into the same spot each time, and has left a small round mark on my flesh. The vein isn’t hard to find anymore. They just have to do what they’ve been doing weekly for two and a half months.

The nurse cuts across my vision of my family and walks over to the anesthesiologist. I follow her with my eyes and watch as she tries to help him. They twist the needle, and I am immediately more aware of what’s happening in my left arm. For the first time, they have missed my vein.

They only twist the needle once, and then they know that they have to try somewhere else. The anesthesiologist removes the needle, and the nurse puts pressure on my punctured skin. He pokes me again, lower down on my arm.

“I love you, Jill,” my mom says.

“I love you, Mom.” I give a tight smile, but don’t really look at my family. The needle isn’t that painful, but I am frustrated. This is the best anesthesiologist at UNI, the psychiatrist is the best in the nation, the ECT treatments here in Salt Lake City are sought out by people from various places in the country because of their effectiveness…and here I lie, broken.

They cannot find a vein here. The anesthesiologist removes the needle and begins to feel around for more. My wrist, the side of my hand, the back of my hand, the other arm, shallow veins at my left arm again, and finally a few centimeters over from the original poke.

To make sure they actually have the vein, they let the blood run down my arm. I don’t think it’s necessary to let streams of red pour across my skin. I wish they’d clean it.

The tourniquet has made my arm numb and cold, and my blood seems strange. I can tell it’s on my arm, I can see it, and I can feel the path it’s tracing. But the blood feels cold. Not natural.

This small detail, of something else on my body being abnormal, nearly breaks me. But I don’t want my family to see my despair. I give a tight smile to my mother and brother, and feel hot tears fall from the corners of my eyes. I don’t want them to see the tears, but I can’t stop them from falling. I clench my jaw and feel the veins stand out in my neck as I try not to sob.

“I love you, Jill,” my mom says.

I want to answer her, to let her know that I love her, that I really do appreciate her, that I didn’t want my mind to betray either of us, that I didn’t ever intend for this to be such a waste of money, that I didn’t mean to give her hope that her child would be happy and then just tear that away…but I can’t unclench my jaw, because I know that if I do, my voice will betray me, and I can’t bear to have another part of me out of control. I have to have control.

They have the IV in now. I feel the plastic tube slide into the vein they’ve been trying to find for so long, and Dr. Bushnell finally stands up and comes over to me.

He doesn’t ask me if I’m ready. He knows I will never be ready to go through this again, so he just nods to the man who has made me bleed. I feel the burning in my veins. I feel my head start to spin.

Uselessly, I try to fight it. I don’t want to go under again, so I try to keep my eyes open, but the room is spinning and turning black.

“I love you, Jill,” I hear my mom say.

I want to let her know, just in case. Who cares if my voice gives out? Maybe it’ll keep me awake. I don’t want to submit to the darkness.

“Mom,” I whimper.

A final pull of darkness and I am forced into the black swirl of anesthesia, a tear still sliding down my face.

Anniversary

All my life I’ve just wanted to be better. I’ve just wanted to be healed. But people keep coming and hurting me. And he kept killing me, again and again, every day, by the things he did.

And I wonder, if I had let you see, really truly let you see...would I have stopped dying again and again? I do not know...

...I think I will try to tell you what happened between us, Asher, from my point of view. But it must begin further back, before we were married, before I even knew about your gender confusion...I want you to know, though, that I am NOT trying to be cruel. I am not trying to hurt you. I know you hurt enough. I would like to believe that I know you enough to know that you are already beating yourself up over this. I am not trying to make that worse. I do not want you to hurt more than you are. I do not want you to hurt at all. Even though I no longer love you, I still care about your well being. But I must let you go, and to do that, I think I have to tell you what really happened, from my view of things. Forgive me for trying to take care of myself. I am not going to say that it's okay. Not anymore.

And so the hurt begins...

Your senior year of high school, my junior year. I had collapsed at school, temporarily paralyzed, from a headache. They had called my mother, to take me to the ER, but I had not seen you all day. And I called you from my mother's car while she spoke with Cameron Shaw. And you answered your phone --you were not in school, you were at home, and you had just downloaded over 350+ images of pornography. I told you not to kill yourself. I hung up. And I died that day. I was going to break up with you but I didn't. I couldn't. Something stopped me, and after a time I almost forgot it, and I chose to ignore it, and I chose to claim that all was well, that everything would be alright...

In my dorm room at Old Farm, just you and me, talking. You told me you were having sexual fantasies about my roommates. I chose to believe that that was part of what you were going through. This was not you, not the real you. And I kissed you and told you it was okay, it would be okay. And I died that day, too.

I was happy when we got married. It was a beautiful wedding, a beautiful day, you were so handsome, and almost everything was perfect. I was in love with you, so the things that were irking me were unimportant. It didn't matter. I loved you. We were just sealed for time and all eternity. I had been right before. Things did work out. All was well.

But it was not well for long. You know that. More pornography. I thought that was the worst of it, but then that day when I came home from work early, because I felt something was wrong, that I needed to get back to our apartment...and you were not on the couch, lounging and playing that game like you usually did. I called out to you. You did not answer but I could hear you in the office. I came back, and as soon as I saw you I understood. You were hiding from me. You always had been. And I saw you in my dress, the dress I had worn for our wedding, and I died that day too.

And you did leave me alone. There was no partner in the marriage at all. There was me, trying to save someone who did not seem to care. Who actually left some of his underwear in the bathroom, "hidden" under the towels. Not your garments, of course. Your cross-dressing underwear, panties. And I asked you about them, though I already knew what they were. Your face actually lit up when I brought them out. And then you remembered to look disgusted with yourself, and you said you had been looking for those, you hadn't remembered where you put them. You took them. And I shuddered to think that the money I was making was going toward your drag. And I died that day, knowing that I was providing ways for you to give in, and that you were taking the opportunities.

And the apartment got messier and messier. I knew we both hated it. But most of the time I just refused to do anything about it. I worked. You did nothing. I wasn't going to clean up after your physical messes, even though I knew I definitely contributed...because I was already trying to clean up both of our emotional and mental and spiritual messes, and most people can not take care of those messes on their own for just themselves, much less two people, especially when the other person does not want the assistance.

I withdrew from you almost completely. I could not handle being at work because I never knew what was going on at home, what you were up to, what you were doing, what would be the next death strike to me, to you, to our marriage. And so I'd come home early almost, because I would walk slowly, calling random people, and then I'd pace in the parking lot, not sure if i really wanted to know what was going on in our home. But eventually I would go inside, trying to calm myself before I opened the door. And our apartment ceased being home to me, and the cinderblock walls were more crushing than usual, and inside I wept as I died.

And we went and saw Bishop Visick, and he told me I needed to be more concerned with your needs, and I stayed with you for a long time.

And eventually I went and visited with Bishop Grunig, and he did not council me in the same way. He had seen me at church, alone, always without you. I could see his hesitation when he said that he could not tell me what to do, Bishops aren't supposed to do that. But he would talk with you. And he did. And after he did, he talked with me again, later, another day of course. And he broke the rules. He agreed with me. I had to get out. If that's what I felt I had to do, then I needed to do it.

And so I called my parents, they came up. I had to leave. I couldn't keep dying every day. It had gone on for so long. I did not really know how to live anymore. How does someone live when they know that, every day, they will end up slaughtered?

I cared about you. I loved you. I tried desperately to help you. But eventually I couldn't handle the pain anymore. Not on top of the pain I had anyway. I was and am sick, too. I think that's why I stayed so long. I understand torture. I understand the internal war. But I did not understand not wanting or not accepting help fighting the war. And I could no longer tolerate being a casualty in it.

So I left. I felt, and still feel, horribly guilty about abandoning you. I know you were and are in desperate need of help and love and hope. But there is hope for you, there is help for you, and there is love for you. I can just no longer give those things to you. And I am sorry that I am so weak that I can not save you. I hope you will forgive my leaving you, and I hope that you maybe do know that I did my best. My best just wasn't good enough. And I certainly had no help from you.

You did help me through things in high school. There were even some times that you helped in our marriage. But it was...not enough. I was carrying you almost always. And in my opinion, in a marriage the spouses should be partners, sharing the burdens and lifting each other when needed and necessary, but no one can carry someone else to the peak of Mount Everest.

Especially when the person doing the carrying believes that the only reason the other person wanted to climb to the top with her, was because she could not remind him of the pornography, and because she would carry him for a while. He had no real interest in her love. As you said in your letter, "...there were sooo many emotions, thoughts, feelings, running through my head, though only looking at how those affected my struggles I was in a panic. There would be nothing at this point to keep me from making the change, and part of me was thrilled."

I am sad that things have ended the way they have for us. But it is not the end of you and it is not the end of me. Just the end of the intertwining of our lives.

!! foul language used here !!

WARNING: This post contains a LOT of serious and not-so-serious language. Beware! Not only is the language used herein completely stupid, some of it is also harmful for minors and/or people who have somehow miraculously never been exposed to swearing.

Also, prepare for a lot of headdesk moments. Just sayin'.

Alright, folks. Being an English major, this sort of post was bound to happen sometime. People do not know how to use the English language (or probably any language, based on how they use their OWN language) correctly! This is obvious not only to those who study language, but to anyone whose brain isn't rotting.

All of these examples are real examples. Things I've learned, seen and/or heard. If you don't understand what's wrong with them...I deny that I ever knew you.

• When I worked at Cinemark in Ogden, I worked with a girl that swore like nothing I had ever seen or heard before. The curses didn't make sense (they rarely do). One night, we were cleaning up the concessions area. She was counting pickles, and said, "Fucking pickles." I had enough. I looked at her and said, "Really? That'll be the day." She had to think about what she had said, and she didn't swear so much around me after that. Or at least, she no longer claimed she was going to do nasty things to inanimate objects.
• "There are four hurdles Dale Brown everyone will encounter in life." That right there is the first sentence on the biggest front page story of The Utah Statesman in the September 26, 2011, issue. I'm assuming that the words "Dale Brown" were not supposed to be where they were (or maybe "says" should be after "Dale Brown"?), but the thing is, that's just sad that a published article on the front page of a university newspaper was so badly messed up.
• "...and then their sending him checks in large amounts." Yet another front page article in the Statesman. It was in the September 23, 2011, issue, which is the publication right before the one the above mess-up is in. They didn't even correct the mistakes later on their website. Where are the editors?!
• My friends, a deadly epidemic has infected all of us. Like. Like. Like. Like. Like. Like. Like....it, like, never goes away. Like, really? Like, are you, like, serious? Like, why have you, like, done this? I, like, never asked for my ears to, like, bleed from the way you, like, constantly say like. Like, come on. Are you, like, really that stupid? I am not exaggerating the excessive use of "like." It's a bit more obvious that "like" is there when you're reading, but most people don't realize how often they say "like." They say "like" more often than rappers swear. And that's just pathetic.
• I understand that we all have different accents. But pronunciation exists in ALL accents. For example, "spiritual" is never, EVER, supposed to be pronounced as "spirichal." And no, there is no such thing as a preppy cheerleader accent. That's just...stupidity, right there. Anyway. I noticed this mockery of speech multiple times on Sunday in church. This person never pronounced "spiritUal" correctly.
• Mountain. About. Bountiful. That....what do you notice about all these words? That's correct, class. They all have the letter "T". But you wouldn't know that, because they're usually pronounced as, "Moun-ain. Abou-. Boun-iful. Tha-. The missing "T' is just an empty space. There's room for it to be there, of course. You'll notice that the throat stops and closes around the sound. I don't know where it goes when it disappears. It's just so tragic that so few people let their "T"s be heard.
• Let's have a test real quick. How many problems are there in the following quote, and what are the problems? "I read good. Me and my brother always have reading contests when we where, like, 4 or 5. Its funny, I always one. He's such a pore loser. I guess hes just inable to cope when he looses his pride. I like stamping out his eggo." You guys would be shocked how often these mistakes appear. It's just so pathetic.
• Your. You're. Their. There. They're. Its. It's. Lose. Loose. Sole. Soul. Through. Throw. Chose. Choose. To. Too. Two. These poor, poor words are so sick of being confused with their corresponding look-alike(s) and sound-alike(s). These words are individual words, everyone. They want to be recognized for what they really are and what they really mean. Why will no one take the time to learn what they are individually? It's just not fair.
• You all might be wondering what the big deal is. Well let me tell you something...this is a huge issue around the world and across time. A man was executed because a judge accidentally left off a REALLY important word in a letter to the jury. This is life and death, folks. Life. And. Death. If you don't believe me, look up the Lodi-News Sentinel from March of 1991.
• Sadly, even smart people who work with language for a living make mistakes. In dictionaries. That's right. A word was completely made up in Webster's Third New International Dictionary. "Dord" was considered a word for eight years.
• Chilean money had "Chile" spelled wrong. This was no joke. People actually used these coins, and they said "Chiie". How does that happen? How did NO ONE catch that?? It took 10 months for anyone to catch on!!
• And now, just to really shock everyone...one translation of the Bible accidentally left out a rather important word. One of the ten commandments left out the word "not", which made everyone believe they needed to be committing adultery. Though some people undoubtedly found this enjoyable, I think we can all agree that that was just...wrong.

This is bad, my friends. Do what you can to fight and win this war. Scholars estimate that it will take 10 years or less for the "Post-Literary Mind Age" to begin. People don't know how to read anymore, and no one seems able to speak correctly. Do you want your children only able to communicate in LOL's and JK's and ATM's and G2G's and BRB's? Something must be done. Teach people to read, write, and speak! This is important. And yes, I know everyone makes mistakes. Typos exist, and they're not always sins. But nowadays, speaking correctly sounds like a mistake. Using proper grammer sounds weird. And that's just awful.

Things I Wish I Said

We all have things like this, I know. Here are some of mine...

Situation 1

Receptionist: "Sorry about that phone call, how can I help you today?"

Me: "Oh it's alright, I could tell that you ordering flowers for your boyfriend on your two-week anniversary was important enough to make me stand here awkwardly for 15 minutes. Now, I am in the Emergency Room today because..."

Situation 2:

**smack smack chew chew slurp slurp**

Guest: "Thanks for that food! It was delicious!"

Me: "Oh it was no trouble at all. Next time though, I will be sure to get food that won't bite you back, because I'm quite certain that a civilized person like yourself couldn't possibly make such noises while eating...whereas the cow that the steak came from made noises like that all the time."

Situation 3:

*yelling*

Party Host: "Hey, the music isn't too loud, right?"

Me: "Of course not! It couldn't be too loud if you're screaming to make yourself heard. I'm just SO glad my voice will be gone tomorrow!"

Situation 4:

Injured Person: "Are you insane??"

Me: "If you're asking that because I just hit you over the head with a racket, then no. You were being an idiot and I was saving you from yourself. Otherwise...yeah, probably."

Situation 5:

Receptionist: "The wait is about three hours. Is that alright?"

Me: "Of course that's okay! I only came to the doctor's office today to relax for a while...I mean, I didn't really schedule an appointment that's supposed to start in five minute."

Situation 6:

**climbing into a hot car on a really hot day**

My Mom: "I have to make an important phone call."

Me: "For what?"

Mom: "A hair cut."

Me: "You do know that doesn't really qualify as important, right? Important would be calling 911 after one of us dies from heat exhaustion since you closed the car door to make a phone call for a beauty appointment."

Situation 7:

**Wendy and I in the truck, watching muscular shirtless man running**

Wendy: "Whoa."

Me: "Yeah. Too bad we don't have candy. He'd come in here."

Wendy: "He is so attractive. Everyone's honking at him, too. Oh man."

Me: "Actually, the light's green."

Wendy: "...Oh."

Untitled

I know no one reads these anyway, so I'm not really afraid to post what I'm thinking up here. I didn't create this blog to impress people; I'm not trying to get a lot of readers. The blog is for me, not anyone else. So I'll post what I feel like posting, because I already know that no one but me will read it.

I can't stand how much I'm deteriorating. I can't stand how useless and dead I've become. I've had to quit school because my brain doesn't work...I couldn't get anything out of classes, and attempting to do homework didn't go well either. I couldn't think well enough to do anything, and it just put me into a state of ridiculousness. One night I just gripped a knife for more than an hour and fought with my brain, pleading with the voices in my head to just let my skin be. So yeah, I quit school. I couldn't do it anymore. I wasn't just trying to be lazy; I just can't do it. And I hate that it's become this now.

Work is a joke; I love my job but even without school I can't do it. If I manage to stay for four hours it's a miracle. I'm supposed to get 20 hours a week but lately I've just been getting 15, and only barely. I know I won't be able to keep my job for long, with the way things are going, and since I had to quit school and have to pay back loans starting immediately, the whole about-to-be-jobless thing is not good. Not that it would be good anyway, but y'know.

I'm in a handbell choir up here and even that isn't easy for me. I love the music but I always leave handbell in the midst of a panic attack and I'm just exhausted after trying to hide how incredibly screwed up I am. I know the people that pay attention probably notice that something's wrong, but I also know that I've hidden basically all of it from them. They have no idea what's going on in my head; none of them. A few might know bits and pieces but they don't know...they don't know.

Is there any other aspect in my life? Well I have these books that I'm writing...or rather, that I want to be writing. I'll get bits down after a while but it's hard, it's hard for me to sit down and do it. These books that I want to write....they kept me going a while, just having the idea and everything, but now they just make me angry, because I can't even write them.

And people ask what I'm doing to get help, why have I given up, why am I not trying anymore...but they don't know, they don't have any idea how hard I've tried. They can't see that I really am *still* trying. Over ten years of trying to get better and now here I am, completely useless and spent. My depression has been worse, my psychosis has been worse...this isn't the worst I've been as far as that goes, and yet here I am totally incapable of doing anything, of doing anything productive or worthwhile. I can't. I just can't. When I was younger and very dangerously (to myself) psychotic and depressed, I still managed to get A's in school, I still functioned. And now I'm just nothing. And I hate that. I hate being nothing. I hate not being able to do anything useful. And I try, I do try. People can't see that I do, people can't tell that I'm trying, and so they blame me.

No doctor can take me that might be able to help me; and the doctors that try to help me don't know how to make me better.

The therapist I have...had...stopped trying to counsel me about my illness. The last few sessions we spent the hour discussing possible ways of me getting in to see someone else, because my therapist and no one else in his office knows what to do.

Medications are a joke and not worth trying, because none of them work.

Last-resort treatments ultimately didn't work, and just ended up being a waste of money.

And people say to just keep going, just keep trying...what more can I do? You tell me what avenue to try next and I'll try it. But I don't see any other options. I mean, if you had tried EVERYTHING I have tried, would still keep trying to find an answer? Would you? This illness I'm fighting is designed to make you give up, be sure to keep that in mind. And when every shred of evidence points to "there's nothing anyone can do to help you"....what am I supposed to do?

In the past I've said, "well I'm not giving up--what's there to do when you give up?" I still hold by that....what IS there to do once you've given up? Nothing. There's nothing. And that's no different from what's happening now. Have I given up? Not by choice. I suppose that doesn't make sense, it can't make sense for someone who has never gone through something like this. But I literally can NOT do anything. I can NOT function. Telling me that I'm not trying hard enough is just the same as telling a paralyzed person that he/she is not trying hard enough to walk. I can NOT do it. I didn't choose to have this happen; I didn't choose to drop out of school. It wasn't a matter of choice. I just couldn't do it anymore.

And by the way, no decent person would tell a paralyzed person that they weren't trying hard enough to walk and it's their fault they're in that wheelchair. So stop telling me that I've just given up and that I should keep trying to do things that are impossible for me right now.

I know I'm blaming everyone else right now. I do have that anger and I’m obviously not hiding anything; like I said, no one reads the shit I put up anyway so it’s pointless to edit myself for the sake of others.

But not all of my anger is toward other people. Most of it is just toward myself. I can’t help but think how enormously similar my situation is to someone else’s. Someone I abandoned. My ex-husband. I am not the only one who has made that connection. My mother has told me, “you’re doing what Asher did” “you’re acting just like Asher right now”. Thanks for that, mother. I really needed you to point that out to me, because that obviously is going to help me feel better about myself.

And yet, she’s right. There are a lot of similarities. Asher dropped out of school. Asher sat on his ass all day and did absolutely nothing. Asher didn’t sleep. He stayed up endlessly to distract himself. He didn’t take care of himself. He didn’t clean up anything…

And I’m doing all of that. And I hate it.

I hate it for many reasons. One, I of course don’t want to be like Asher. No one ever wants to be like their ex-spouses, ‘cause there’s a reason they left them. I left Asher because he did nothing and he didn’t try to get better. And here I am, doing nothing, and past options to even be trying anything to get better.

Another reason I hate it…I feel really hypocritical right now. I left him and blamed him for not doing anything. I left him for things he did and didn’t do and now I’m exactly the same way. How dare I do that? And to go along with this…why should I expect anyone to stick around with me? Not romantically of course; I’m not looking for anything romantic right now anyway. But I mean in general. No one would want to, and honestly, no one should have to. I’m completely useless. Is it my choice to be that way? No, of course not. But that doesn’t change that that’s the way it is.

How dare I leave Asher when I’m no better?

I’m not going to go back to him or anything, of course. That would be stupid, and I don’t love Asher anyway. But I still feel bad that I left him and have just become a lot of the things that I hated.

Part of me wants to believe that we’re different, though. Part of me wants to say, but I did try, I did. There’s just nothing left. Asher didn’t try anything to help him. He tried two different therapists and just stopped after that. He didn’t try. I’ve been trying for years. But really that doesn’t change anything for me. I gave up on him. I feel like it was the right thing to do, but I’m angry because now I really see that what it’s like to look at someone like me, and feel obligated to stay around when inside you hate all of it. There were so many days while I was with Asher that I just felt like I kept dying, over and over and over again, because of how he hurt me by his actions and by his inaction. And now I’m like him. I’m not transgender or anything like that, of course, but I’m just a useless piece of shit, sitting here completely unable of doing anything.

And I hate it.

I don’t want to be a bother to anyone but I can’t stand to be alone, either. It isn’t right that I should be that way. If I’m going to cause people pain, I shouldn’t try to be in their company. But I hate being alone. I hate being isolated and….and cold. I feel cold inside, totally by myself in a wasteland of ice where I can’t move and can’t get out and…and I just want to be okay again. I want to function again. I want….I want to NOT be me. I don’t want to change into someone else; I want to have never been this person I am right now. So sick and wasted. And rotten. My brain is rotted and diseased and no one knows how to help me, and those that can or might help won’t.

I can feel things slipping. The few things I’m trying so hard to hold onto are just leaving, slipping bit by bit. I don’t know if it’s them or if it’s me but I can’t hold on to anything any more and I’m scared. I’m just so scared. I’m terrified all the time, but I mainly just try to hide it behind a scowl or a frown so that no one sees how horrified I am, so they don’t try to take advantage of it. People do that, people take advantage of ignorance and weakness and fear and they never let you go. Even the people I thought no longer have control over me….they do, they do have control over me whether they think they do or not. I’m so sick and I’m so scared and I just want to be better.

I just want to be happy, happy for more than 3 weeks ever in my life. And I want the happiness to be real and deep, not shallow. I want to not always be afraid that I will never be happy again.

I want to heal.

I want to be better. I want to not be afraid to sleep. I want to be able to honestly think of sleep as a kind of rest instead of another form of blackness. Complete darkness is all there ever is, it surrounds me and chokes me. It’s all I breathe, and my lungs are tired of bearing the weight of the darkness. I’m suffocating and no one can help.

Can I please just be happy? And at peace? Without being worried that it’s just going to all go away? Please? Please?

Can no one make me better? Maybe not even healed. I’ll take not healed. I just want to be better. I want to breathe. And I want to live. I want to be able to do more than just survive. I want to do more than just crawl along. I want to be able to walk and run and not be afraid that I’ll never see light again.

I just want to be BETTER.

Please?