I’mma bout to have a panic ‘tack 

My members have gone gangsta on me. 

I’m feeling irritable tonight.  I can’t say for sure why.  I feel like I need to type the energy out through my nails.  I completed a major project for school that is worth 25% of my grade and decided to take the rest of the night off.  But nothing satisfies.  Not football.  Not music.  Not my dogs.  Not the letters from my students.  I think having nothing absolutely pressing to work on gives me a chance to be idle and to sit with myself.  And that just doesn’t do.  I can’t be alone with my head at all. 

My members have been out quite frequently.  Even at times when I didn’t think I was feeling stressed they were swirling in my head, staked out behind my eyes, watching and observing, sucking the energy from my body.  I went into my job today full of energy and hyper and high as a cat’s back, and soon I crashed.  I could feel them taking over me.  I started to get nervous.  I could feel them inside me.  I wasn’t feeling stressed.  I don’t know why they were out.

  Tonight I can’t settle down.  I’m watching the clock till I can take my sleep meds.  I really want to come off all my meds.  I’ve been down this road before where I wanted to take myself off my meds, but I was met with disastrous outcomes.  I know better, but I still play with the idea.

In ten minutes I can take my sleep meds.

This last month has been tumultuous, grand, exhilarating, and demoralizing.  I was interning as a student teacher and it was a very difficult placement in the public schools.  Every corner of my support failed me, except one of my favorite professors who thinks she understands me.    She does understand me, she just doesn’t know “what” she understands.  She doesn’t know I lose time, hear voices, see people, and feel people peering out behind my eyes.   But she does know how to alter my assignments in a way that I can understand and be successful, which goes a long, long way.

The placement in the public school was difficult.  And it brought out members that had been lying dormant for a while.  I think the last time (oh, hell) the last time I remember noticing them out was when I broke up with a guy about 15 years ago.  This man was abusive towards me.  These members had been feminists then, and as they have returned recently, they continue to hate men.  I’m noticing old fears creeping back up, old memories returning, old feelings of anger and hurt resurfacing.  We are much more reactive to movement and cognizant of escape routes.  We had a meeting with two of our professors, one whom I intensely dislike, and I had to sit in a pathway close to the door in case anything threatening happened. 

Part of what I am wondering, more especially as I type this out, is whether the return to middle school had anything to do with activating those members.   At first I thought my returning fears, time loss, and the general running around of the members had to do with my other professor for whom I have a strong dislike.  This bad seed professor has been unprofessionally abusive, harsh, and overly critical of me, which has set up a difficult teacher/student relationship.  So at first I thought he might have “tripped the wire” that brought out these other members.

Now I’m wondering if it was because I was interning in a middle school.  Middle school has extremely unpleasant memories for me; more specifically, I was bullied, endured parental turmoil, raised the birth mother, and was abused my by neighbor at the same time.  I hate middle school, so it is not a far stretch that some unpleasant memories and associations have been brought up for me. 

Memories of the old bedroom and certain landmarks of the neighbor’s house have been brought back to life for me.  I have felt myself shrinking back into a child that can’t handle things.  Back to “that” child.

I’ve come to know that those memories and feelings will NEVER go away.  There is always one waiting around the corner as soon as the current memory and association starts to fade.  There is always another memory waiting for me, waiting to hurt me and remind me I will always be a damaged child stuck in the body of a damaged adult.  I’ve come to learn there is no such thing as goodbye, because an old “hello” of a memory is always waiting for me.