the wrongs of passage

I’m not sure where to begin.

I am shocked sometimes how fortunate I am, yet I carry so much envy (resentment?) that some people drift through the world so easily and how difficult it was for me to get here. I am 33 and still have days it’s a crap shoot whether I’ll get out of bed or not. Even on the happiest days – I’ll be struck with the sudden urge to cry. When I’m out and about I never know if it will be fun, or it will be a roulette of sad, awkward, unresolved, hurt and weird.

At the age of 3, I was picked up, not even 10ft from where my mom was standing, thrown over a man’s shoulder and taken from the store not knowing how or if he would be caught and let me go. Later in high school, a strange man followed me part way to school each day until he finally tried to drag me behind a secluded loading dock area. I was able to get away. It didn’t phase me until school friends and a teacher had me wait in the counseling office for the police to show up.

There were at least a handful of car accidents long before driving was on my own radar. Homeless people ate, slept and shit in our doorway. They were up all night screaming in either agony, withdrawal or bouts of schizophrenia. I would say childhood was stressful and traumatic. Not a couple events here or there… every single day.

There was a long period of time I thought that’s all life was… a daily uphill battle full of stomach ulcers, sickness, migraines, rage. I actually believed I would be stuck at 6, 7, 8 years old forever and never escape. There was no concept of how to be a person or that I had some other life after that. The teens and twenties weren’t much different, but at least they slowly became marked by my own efforts at success and adventure.

In college I locked myself in a bathroom to keep a highschool friend from taking his seemingly innocuous campus tour invitation way too far. I spent years dating violent men, alcoholics, and people who frankly probably just didn’t like me, but didn’t mind hanging around until something else came along. Who c

One of them dragged me up the stairs in the back of our house by my neck, and then held a pillow and his hand over my mouth and nose until I blacked out.

I wasted time doing stupid shit. Taking care of people I shouldn’t have. Watching things get destroyed I couldn’t replace. I neither consented nor objected. I was there, a participant – at once confused, curious, apathetic, destructive – passive and complicit all up in the middle of my shitstorm.

And I am leaving so many things out. Things far worse than all this.

I am 33 and I still listen hard in every direction when I’m walking alone. Sometimes even when I’m not alone. I still have nightmares of leaving my house and then can’t find my keys to get back in, as a man chases me up the street. I still have nightmares of getting trapped in a crushed burning vehicle or being raped.

I’m cagey and anxious even when being good about exercising and meditation. I have days where I feel like a complete failure, even with top tier Bachelors and Masters degrees. I take vitamins, drink water and eat well.

I get told constantly I look sad or angry. Because I am sad and angry, even when I am happy. Even when I am happy.

Even when I am curled up with my dog and a blanket and hiding from all of it. Even when I am in therapy. Even when reading books on non-attachment, the universe, random this or that theory, and getting lost in fiction. Even when I was on Prozac, Zoloft, Wellbutrin. Those almost killed me in their own way, turning me into a walking blackout and leaving permanent bodily and endocrine damage.

I think about things that never cross many peoples’ minds. It’s too much to ever explain. It doesn’t translate. It comes out at the most inopportune times. I don’t like it and I don’t want it.

Yes, one could say “no amount of guilt can change the past, no amount of anxiety can change the future.” It’s not quite like that. Nothing is ever really wrong. We’re all doing the best we can at any given point in time. Yes yes yes, all of that. I can talk about it now without hesitation, but it’s not that it doesn’t phase me. It is in all these small idiosyncrasies that follow.

I am 33 and have no clue what I am doing.

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