It’s been a while since the last blog. Phil, my father-in-law, had open heart surgery and most of the time was spent being exhausted and living at the hospital or handling the needs of the mother-in-law, Millie.

Now we are back home and school has started. The anxiety stares me down as a new semester begins and I feel myself clawing the edge of a cliff for leverage. I try to remind myself that we always get overwhelmed at the beginning and we always survive it. Last semester was our hardest yet and we managed to get all A’s. Still, the budding of each new semester brings an onslaught of fear and apprehension and positive coping skills are lacking. The option of death is the only thing keeping us living.

So one class we are taking is about teaching adolescents how to write. No, that’s not a joke. We’ve deceived ourselves into thinking we could become a teacher. I’ve heard from others who have taken the class that we are required to keep a journal and the class is a form of group therapy.

Bullshit.

Anyhow, the first assignement of the class is titled “Where am I now?”, but we changed the title to “Where are we now?”

If I had the nerve like Tina I would tell him not everyone is singular, mofo.

We are to spend an hour answering the professor’s dumb-ass questions. Then we fold them up, seal them in an envelope, stick them in our journal, and at the end of the semester we can read the letter “from someone you once knew.” Is this for real? As if this class is going to change our life!!

But I thought we would blog the questions we are to deliberate and print it out for the assignment. So this blog entry might sound crazy, but then, when does it not?

Assignment Begins:

I feel like shit about myself. To say I hate myself would be an understatement. I hate life just about as much as I hate myself. I can’t figure out what is wrong with this mind, only that much of the time it doesn’t feel like it belongs to me. We are diagnosed with D.I.D. but I can’t buy it. I am fat, ugly, worthless, and egotistical to think I in particular could teach a child. I have no friends and want to lose thirty pounds. In sixteen weeks, at the end of the sememester, I doubt I will feel any differently; that is because somewhere inside I don’t want to feel differently and that only makes me more of a loser.

I’m not struggling with anything. Life is so complicated and everything seems so hard but I can’t name one specific thing I’m struggling with. I know how maddening that sounds, even to me. Perhaps that is the root of the struggle: not being in touch with what is really bothering us at our core.

What is going well with me? I make good grades. Does that count, Dr. Professor? This one is hard. It’s so much easier to pick out the bad. What is wrong is so much easier to define. I’ll come back to this question if I can.

What matters most to me is not answering the questions the professor is asking. Also, using sarcasm to dodge his questions, even though I/we are the only ones to ever know what is written in our journal. On the serious tip, what matters most is losing weight and, if I’m being brutally honest, maintaining the status quo. No. I don’t want to get better. I do but I don’t. What will happen without the safety blanket? How will anybody care about me if I don’t have a therapist to pay? I don’t like change and I don’t want it, so before I ever get better I will die. When, and if, I see that is happening, that will be the end of the woman formerly known as Missing In Sight.

It matters to me to know who we are, where we came from, and why. What purpose do we all serve, and what happened to create us. For me, that’s the most important thing in the whole wide world. it’s also what makes me stillborn.

Something must matter to me or else I would be dead. There must be something I’m living for, I just don’t know what it is. Damn it to hell.

I know I sound negative; that’s why I’ve never gotten better. I hate the people inside my head. I feel incredibly, incredibly, incredibly sad and alone. It’s just another reason to hate myself. I find no redeemable qualities about myself. Some say I’m kind-hearted, selfless, and show concern for others. It feels like an act. I need to hate myself. If I don’t hurt and burn, what’ll I do?

I’m angry at the bitch that calls herself our mother. I hate her so fucking much it is unbelievable. I want to move away from where I live now so I never have to talk to her or see her. I never had a mother, and even when I asked her for one, all I got was a sour expression and an answer of “no.”

Dr. Professor asks what we need to let go of. Good question. What am I holding on to? Certainly not each other. How can this assignment be a good assessment of our writing skills at this point as well getting to know our inner selves when there are too damn many of us talking, thinking, inputting, and answering his asnine questions. Even though many are chiming in, there’s no cooperation. It’s a free-for-all. There is no cohesiveness or glue that helps us act as a unit. Most everyone does their own thing it seems to me.

What scares me the most is sex. I fear it may be the end of the marriage. I hate sex and avoid it as much as possible. I think D. knows what we’re doing. I know he wants it but I can have no respect for any person that engages in that activity. Even consensual is exploitive, but if one of us does not participate soon the marriage will truly be compromised. I don’t want to like sex. I don’t want to want to like sex.

Not true. If it means something other than what we know it to mean and fear belongs to D., then it might be okay. but damn, it is scary as hell.

there’s so many talking. there’s a black woman in my ear. i can tell by her diction.

I don’t have dreams and goals. I don’t have them in the sense that they could ever come true. I dream of losing weight. I dream of my clothes hanging off me. I dream of silence in my head, falling asleep at night on my own. I dream of the back not hurting anymore.

I dream of feeling loved. I want to be able to let D. hold our hand without cringing or claiming we are cold so we can keep the hand in our pocket. I want to be affectionate with D. so that he feels loved. I want to feel loved by someone and I want to feel love towards someone.

I would like to be able to breathe for the rest of this life. I would like to be calm, rational, and not hear anymore profanity.

I would just like to laugh and mean it.

I would like to write a really good poem.

I would like to feel safe.

I would like to be safe.

I would like to feel pretty.

i want a doll

I would like to feel.

Everything hurts but nothing hurts. It’s a headless hurt; unidentifiable. A headless monster following me around. People are scared of the hurt

and for good reason. the flashes pop, burst, and shock. they are frightening. if we can’t get past the most benign and propitious then how will we fare with the more challening, horrific, terrifying, and heart-wrenching memories?

Things in this life do feel like they are changing. There used to be motivation to achieve some measure of mental-health, or at least take the therapuetic journey as far as we could. Now it feels like we’ve stalled out. Going to therapy is harder than it’s ever been and the inclination to not go is getting stronger each visit. There’s no desire to get better or to even try. We are in a very precarious position. It could go either way. Depression may not be what drives us to self-murder; it may be the apathy. How do you overcome just not giving a damn anymore? How do you find a reason to live when even reason has retired its effort?

Yes, things in life have changed. I wonder where we’ll be in sixteen weeks?

End of assignment

I truly hope he doesn’t the students writings. He said he wouldn’t but I don’t know if I can believe that. I think I will jury-rig ours so that we will be able to see if he messed with the envelope.

I didn’t sleep last night and I’m tired. That’s all she wrote.