The Singularity

I recently read an article talking about famous artists, thinkers, philosophers, and the like, and how many of them loved to take long walks. Aristotle, Muir, Wordsworth, Thoreau, and more. It's been said that Charles Dickens used to walk 20-30 miles a day. While I walk anywhere from 5-11 miles a day, I don't think I could walk 30! Anyways, I was out on my daily walk yesterday when my mind wandered back to something that's crossed it before- the singularity. I'd planned on writing my last bit about my Oregon vacation, but I'll save that for later. I want to talk about the singularity today while thoughts from yesterday are still in the back of my mind.

I was well into my 3rd mile yesterday, when a seemingly innocuous pop song came on. It was "Talking Body" by Tove Lo. For whatever reason, the lyric "On and on. On and on and on" sent a jolt through my body. I've become really attuned to these blips of anxiety as they hit me, so I zeroed in on the feeling right away and began to think about it.

One of the first most intense emotions I remember feeling, even as a little girl, is a feeling that I can't even put words to. It's a feeling of pressure; unrelenting, unabated pressure. It's the feeling that this feeling would never end. By feeling, I guess I mean the pressure. I think I was so young at the time, I did't know what emotion I was feeling. Perhaps fear? Unrelenting fear. The most disturbing part of remembering this emotion is the feeling that it will literally never end. I can put more feelings with this emotion, including feeling so paralyzed I can't open my mouth to make a sound, and something so heavy sitting on my chest that I feel like I'm being smothered. My breathing becomes shallow because I feel like I can't breathe. I'm not sure what the "memory" is that is associated with this "emotion" but this same feeling reoccurs sometimes during Ambien dreams or night terrors. On and on. On and on and on, is how the feeling felt. Never ending.

The girl who grew up with all these feelings and emotions felt lost. Unhappy, fearful, and with an anxious tummy most of the time. That girl soothed herself with make-believe Barbie games, hoards of library books, and her favorite foods. When she turned 12 and the boys took notice, she soothed herself that way. And when she was 16, she discovered alcohol. Then marijuana. Then over-the-counter sleeping pills. Then cigarettes. Sex. Shopping. Anything to fill that void.

What is the attractiveness of all these substances? They numbed the girl. They made her feel like a different person, a happy person whose body actually felt good. For a couple of blissful hours, that skin-crawling anxiety that makes one want to rip their face off would be gone. She would be free. She could laugh and talk to strangers. She could flirt with the cute boy and put her hand upon his arm. She could, for 2 seconds, not think about whatever it is that is inside her that makes her want to end it all.

And what is it? It screams at the girl every single day, telling her she cannot go on even one more second, that it demands something. Because it is never satisfied. It is a pit that will never be filled. It is a black hole within the girl that only seems to get bigger with age. She dances around the event horizon, never getting close enough to reach the point of no return. Coming close, yes, but never fully engulfed by the darkness. She has never tried cocaine or heroin, lost all of her family and support, spent all her money on drugs, and been forced into rehab. She has never cheated on her husband, forcing him to divorce and leave her. She has never had a mental breakdown, forcing her into a pysch eval at a mental institution. Because she dances. She flirts, but she does not fall.

It tells the girl that it will get her someday. Someday, when her guard is down and she's had too many drinks or drugs, it will eviscerate her. It will put temptation in her way that it knows she will not have to will power to deny. Because she is weak. She is bad. She has no self-control. The singularity will find a way to show the world that.

And then, it will win.

Because that's what it wants. Ultimately, it wants the girl to have nothing and no one left so it can end it all.

I call "it" my Dark Passenger. That ol' Dexter reference again. I fight "it" everyday. When I have dark thoughts, I realize it's because I feel like I'm going to be doing battle every single day for the rest of my life. And that in itself is what's unbearable. I picture how utterly long 30 to 40 years could be, and I picture feeling the way I feel every. single. day. It's a scary thought. It makes me wonder if that's why some people actually go through with suicide. Because they can't image having to feel what they are feeling for the rest of their lives.

Does everyone have a singularity? A portion of themselves that's so dark that no light can escape from it? A portion so dark you can't gaze upon it and see anything at all? In my (non-scientific) opinion,  it's the singularity that drives addiction. How? The singularity causes a person to feel a certain way. If that person happens to try drugs or alcohol, they are going to discover that these things make them feel better. This will lead to the person seeking them out more and more often, until eventually they become an uncontrollable force in their lives. A person without a singularity isn't going to find the same "relief" that a person with a singularity does and therefore, they aren't likely to seek it out as much. Can't you see this is why some people who try drugs do not become addicts?

It's this belief that led me to follow Amber Lyon and her website Reset.Me. I've been looking into medicines like psilocybin, ayahuasca, and Ibogaine. Numerous studies are showing that these medicines are having a great effect on depression, anxiety, PTSD, and addiction. I'm really beginning to think that in order to feel better, in order to destroy that part of me that says "I WANT I WANT I WANT", I'm going to have to get rid of the black hole. As of right now, I don't know what the answer is. I feel stuck. I'm making progress in therapy, but it's frustrating because I know the Dark Passenger is still there. It still beckons and calls every day. It wants me to drink vodka everyday. It wants me to smoke cigarettes everyday. It wishes it could get its hands on some Xanex, Vicodin, or Percocet. Some days I do great ignoring the requests of the singularity. Other days are an abject failure. I don't feel like I'm getting the bottom of things. I don't know where the bottom is. I don't know what caused the singularity or what traumatic memories linger that makes it remain. All I do know is that the research being done on medicines like psilocybin, ayahuasca, or Iboga are finding that they may actually repair neural pathways. Pathways that may have been decimated by trauma.

Could this be the answer to the singularity? A destroyed neural pathway that could possibly be repaired?

It's a tantalizing thought.

Mourning All That Will Never Be

I go back and forth with my mourning. Just when I think I've processed everything there is to process, more shit comes gurgling up. Thrown in my face. Tearing my heart into tiny little jagged pieces.

I mourn for that baby girl that I suspect was abused as an infant. About 2 years ago, I recovered a hazy memory of a baby in a baby bath, one toy navy boat, and my uncle. Due to the fact I was in a baby bath (you know, one of those little baths you place inside the actual bathtub),  I've estimated my age at 6 months, maybe a year. Because I'm so young in this memory, I consistently and constantly question this memory.  But when I'm feeling healthy, I try to tell myself to just accept it, not to question it to death. My point in all that is that I feel I never stood a chance. Corrupted from the beginning. What could I have been if this any of this had never happened?

I mourn for the girl who might have been happy.

I mourn for the girl that might never have suffered depression, anxiety, PTSD, insomnia, chronic headaches, and IBS.

I mourn for the girl who didn't respect her body, or even herself.

I mourn for the girl who may have been outgoing. I mourn for the girl who may have been popular, who may have made the cheerleading squad. I mourn for the girl who may have become homecoming queen.

I mourn for the girl that got bullied for being different. I mourn for the little girl who looked in the mirror, and only saw glasses, braces, chubby cheeks, and a mushroom haircut.

I mourn for the girl that may have been a doctor. That may have gone to law school.

I mourn for the girl that may have had children of her own.

I mourn for the unborn babies she will never have, and the experiences that won't darken her doorstep. She decided when she was 12 that she would never have children, and now she is 32. Childless. Stuck with a biological clock that never started ticking. Only the memory of the day the decision was made.

I can vividly recall that day when I was 12. I was terribly sad that day. This wasn't unusual. It was summer, and I was laying on my back in the grass in the backyard of my parents' house. The clouds weren't flying by especially fast that day, they were just big fluffy air masses lazily making their way across my field of vision. Like large, white cotton balls among the brilliant cerulean sky. I heard shrieks and happy screams of the neighbor kids riding their bikes up and down the street, throwing rocks at each other, playing games. Those happy shrieks felt like a knife to my heart, and in the moment I told myself I would never have kids. I would never subject another human being to the awfulness that was life. How could I willingly bring someone into the world when everything hurt so bad? I could not, I would not. And my mind has never changed.

I mourn that I will never have the experiences that all my former friends are having right now. Some of them have 3 to 4 kids! Pregnancy announcements and baby pictures fill my Facebook feed. Sometimes I smile, with tears in my eyes. Sometimes I just have to close the laptop, the pain is too great. I mourn that I will never experience "the greatest of all loves". I mourn that I will never see my husband's happy face when I tell him I'm pregnant. I mourn that I will never see that grin when his children take their first steps. Say their first word. I mourn that I am selfish and I worry about who will take care of me when I'm old.

I mourn for the girl who only felt hate and anger. I mourn for the people she hurt when she was younger, and didn't know any better.

I mourn for the girl who saw forgiveness as weak.

I mourn for the teenager who could never let go.

I mourn for the girl who spent half her teen years and all of her 20's numbing herself with alcohol, painkillers, and benzo's, with absolutely no inkling of "why?".

I mourn all of this. And then I try to let it go.

This is life, take it or leave it. I could sit here all day with the "what if's?" and the "who knows?". Everything that has come to pass, I cannot change. I can only try to accept it.

After all, it's made me who I am today.

Dear Diary

Yesterday, I did something I haven't done in a while.

I went down into our basement, and into the boxes of my childhood stuff I've kept over the years.  I went down there looking for a journal. It was a specific purple spiral notebook, one I'd filled with quotes from poems and songs, and a few fiction stories I wrote in high school. I was looking for some inspiration for writing. As soon as I opened the first box, I felt a slight twinge that said this might be a mistake. There were so many pictures from high school in that box. Pictures of a young, smiling, goofy teenager. One who was so good at hiding the pain. Too good. There were stuffed animals, candles, dance awards, and trophies. I lovingly, delicately ran my fingers over the spine of a white teddy bear. I picked up the bear, and there it was. My childhood diary. Thoughts and events from my life from the time I was in 6th grade till I was a sophomore in high school.  Maybe I thought the purple journal would be in that big, black binder that was my diary, but nevertheless, I grabbed it and brought it upstairs.

I set the somewhat-crumbling binder down on the kitchen counter, and opened it. There was a clump of small pieces of paper tucked in the front cover. I smiled when I found $5 in McDonald's gift certificates, circa 1997, and a $10 Applebees gift certificate from my high school best friend. 'No expiration date' it claimed on the front. I imagined taking that certificate to the Applebees in my hometown during my next visit, just to see if they would take it. Nestled behind those certificates was a letter with my name on it. My dad's handwriting. It was an apology he had wrote me after "The Toilet Paper Incident". I was crying by the time I got to the end of letter and the words that moved me the most. At the end he had wrote,

"I'm going through a confusing time right now; something I don't understand, but am determined to resolve no matter what. I know it's tearing our family apart right now, but my hope is that it's temporary, and will lead to me becoming a better, more centered person. I have to do this because I don't see any other way right now. If I discover what's going on with me, I'll be home that day, that hour, that minute, but until then I have to keep searching."

That paragraph hit me hard. I didn't understand the letter when I received it, how could I? After all, I was only 17. It sure means a lot now, though. I completely understand what he went through, because that's what I'm going through. Complete and total personal upheaval.  The only difference is I don't have a family that I'm responsible for. I honestly believe that that makes my journey 100% easier than whatever my dad went through. Another thing was made clear by this letter- "the toilet paper incident" occurred when my parents were separated, not when I was in middle school being chased home from the bus. Memory is a tricky thing, isn't it? I'm trying not to beat myself up over not remembering something perfectly, I spend way too much time doing that as it it. And that in itself can cause more pain. More on that another time, though.

I wiped away tears with the back of my hand, and settled in to read the actual diary. The first thing that struck me, that always strikes me on reading that diary, is how much pain is inferred through the passages. The main reoccurring theme throughout the first handful of pages is how unhappy I am. I hate school, my friends don't like me and talk about me behind my back, and I am angry. Lots of scrawling, hateful epithets written in all capital letters. Lots of anger with my mom, and with my brother. The second thing that knocked the wind out of me was a passage written on 12-16-95. It was regarding an incident that was one of the first traumatic memories to boil over in EMDR. My mom was taking me to my first concert that day, a Reba McEntire concert in Portland, OR. On our way, my mom and I saw a German Shepherd get hit by a car. In the entry, I described the scene exactly how it's been burned into my brain since that day. That memory used to cause so much distress, pain, and depression, and it struck me how much that has changed since EMDR. Recalling that memory yesterday was a good way to evaluate that that memory still feels less disturbing since the onset of EMDR. Even though it's been almost a year since we reprocessed that memory. Which is the purpose of EMDR, so that's very positive. Another important issue regarding this memory was that I never remembered the date. I never remembered it was around the holidays. December is, by far, my worst month. I spend the entire month in a funk, every year. I always thought it was just because of the holidays, the pressure, my birthday... Now I'm wondering if this traumatic memory is also involved a bit in my holiday madness?

Another thing became transparent to me upon reading the diary. I've quite clearly had dysfunctional relationships with the opposite sex since the beginning. It was interesting to read about the onset of my first relationship and all the flawed thinking I've always displayed. I saw how elated I was when the relationship became physical, when I was 13. I saw how unstable in the relationship I was- always complaining about how he was obsessed with me and way too nice, so I ended the relationship. At which time, I became panicked and all I could write about was getting him back. And I did get him back. And the relationship became more physical. I noted that I didn't include in my diary that I lost my viriginity to him. I remember my mindset at that age. It was always in the back of my mind that my mom could find my diary, so I never included that. Reading through the entries though, I knew where it had happened.

The on-again/off-again relationship came to its inevitable end. And I wrote about the loss for no less than 1 year, truly fixated and unable to move on. I was in eighth grade. What 13-year old mourns the loss of a boyfriend for a year? I wrote that I felt like I'd lost a best friend, that I missed the closeness, that I felt lost. Empty. Alone.

And then, one year later, I met someone else. And the exact same process started over. Except this time, there were a few more detailed entries to go off of. This time, the boy I was dating went to a different school so I only saw him on the weekends. It was obvious, from reading the entires, that I was ok with the relationship when we were together (fooling around, being touched, etc.) but during our time apart, I got squirrely. I would start to doubt the relationship and how much he cared for me. I would think about breaking up with him, but then if we did break up, he would be all I would think about. And yes, this relationship became on-again/off-again too.

It was obvious. Written in front of me, in black and white. Only, I'd never seen it before. In my young brain, things were only balanced in these "relationships" when they were physical. Sex= Love. That's where I felt right. That's where I felt safe. And let's face it- when you are 13, you don't get a whole lot of time to do these things. So, I spent most of my relationships feeling depressed. Like things were wrong. Like I wasn't good enough.

And how does a young girl come right out of the gate, and behave this way?

The answer is plain and straight-forward- programming. I was taught to think this way, yet I had no inkling of what had happened to me as a child. Not one thought, not one time. Ever. I never thought, "Maybe I'm this way because something happened to me?". I remember how I felt at the time-

Born broken. I would be forever broken. Possibly just bad genetics. Possibly I was just a terrible person.

These revelations have put a lot into perspective. I realize now why my college relationship was so difficult, and why so many other relationships were. I (subconsciously) became paranoid over my relationships if they weren't physical. And during college, I was on Depo-Provera and had zero sex-drive. With the lack of physical closeness, I became even nuttier. More paranoid. Needy. And no successful relationship exists in harmony with that much negative emotion. I was more unlike myself than I've ever been during that relationship.

It's clear to me now why I feel my marriage is in trouble if we haven't had sex in a couple of days.

And while these things are evident to me, now I'm left wondering,

"How do I change this?" How do I break the association of love and sex? As A has mentioned many times, we are only getting older. Both of our sex drives will naturally decrease, and am I going to be thinking he doesn't love me for larger and larger amount of times?

I don't want this to be the case.