dispatches from crazyville

One night in the fall of my second year of college, I was lying in bed half-naked with J listening to Tracy Chapman. The only light was a desk lamp so dim it blurred the edges of reality enough that I could pretend I hadn’t just had sex with a woman. I still wasn’t out as a lesbian, even to myself. I thought I was just attracted to this one woman. It wasn’t like I was in love with her.

We’d met in the break room at Kroger. She worked in the deli and I was a courtesy clerk. She said, “You look tired.”

“I just moved. I am tired.”

That was it.

A few days later she asked if I wanted to come to dinner. She was cooking Thai food with friends. That she was hitting on me did not even cross my mind. “Yeah!” I said. “I love dinner.”

I invited her to dinner a few days later to return the hospitality. She showed up with flowers.

OH. I thought. SHIT.

I commenced to drinking an entire bottle of wine very quickly. We sat in the dark after dinner and she caressed my cheek. It felt good. I hated it. It was all I could do not to scream. I stayed very very still. The next day I told her I wasn’t gay.

The longer we were friends, the more I was attracted to her. Then one night, I got bold and pushed my lips onto hers. I was making out with a girl. And I liked it. I wanted her. My skin wanted her skin. It wasn’t gross or uncomfortable at all, nor did it feel like I was compensating her for being nice to me.

There we were. We could hear her roommates guessing the questions to Jeopardy answers through the wall behind us. I decided to join in. “Why do you live with a married couple?” I asked her.

The story revolved around her roommate A from freshman year. They were best friends and had all these freshman misadventures together. She didn’t use romantic terms to describe it, but it sounded like A flirted with J, then got married to some man, making J jealous. J construed it as anger that A had married a man who was controlling. She hadn’t seen A in over a year.

Neither of us talked for awhile. Then I asked, “Were you in love with her?”

“Why?”

“Well, because, I don’t know. The way you described your friendship, it was intense, like you were in love with her. And maybe it was reciprocal, but she was so frightened of that, she married this man. And you were jealous.” She didn’t respond. “It sounds just like my friendship with N.”

“Are you in love with N?”

“I never thought of it until just now while you were talking about A. It sounded so familiar. I guess I am. I’m in love with N.”

More silence. I guess that’s not the thing to say when you’re lying in bed with a woman who’s not N.

“But she’s straight,” I said. “So it doesn’t matter.”

Except I couldn’t let it go. It mattered more than anything. I was consumed by this realization.

I biked home. We dated sporadically for a year, and I never did spend an entire night with her. Subconsciously, I think I believed that if I spent the night, there was no going back. I was holding on to the hope that I wasn’t gay, I just liked this one girl. Now, I knew I was in love with N. That’s two girls, so I must really be gay. How could I be gay? How could I live with myself for 19 years, being gay, and not know it? That’s a huge thing to not know about myself. It didn’t seem possible. I dated guys. One, in high school, for a whole year. Three in college so far. I wasn’t in love with them either, nor, I realized had I been attracted to them. I’d dreaded the ends of dates when there was the potential for physical intimacy. I hated the way they smelled, and their hair, and the weight of them. Those hideous genitals. I managed to avoid having actual intercourse with any of them. But, they were nice. I figured sexual contact was like a payment to them for being nice to me. I believed that all women must feel that way about sex with men. Even then, didn’t occur to me. . . hello. . .

Regardless, here I was, gay. I wanted to have sex with J. She was soft and gentle and smelled good. She was in love with me, and for the first time in a romantic relationship, I felt like she was in love with me, not just desirous of my body. But I was not in love with her. I desired her body. I hated myself for wanting her. I hated that no matter how far I ran, I could never get away from myselfishself.

I would sit on the hood of my car and stare at the moon. The moon kept coming back. The moon didn’t care who was gay or dead or dreaming of standing on it. Ever. People all over could see the same moon. And the moon had been there long before me and would continue to be there whether I was or wasn’t.

I would drive to the grocery store at three or four in the morning and walk around for an hour filling grocery carts with themed items (say, things that started with p: pineapple, pancake mix, pantyhose, party favors, pork n beans, pretzels, prophylactics) and leaving them around the store. But ultimately, I had to go back home. And ultimately, there I was.

When I couldn’t sit any longer with the discomfort of being unable to escape my body, I prowled the kitchen for sharp things. I cut my hands and my face. I was afraid to sleep, afraid I would wake up and discover some new huge disturbing thing about myself, like maybe I was also a Fundamentalist Christian or a Nazi or something, and I didn’t think I could handle any more surprises.

I distrusted everything about myself now. Everything except that I was in love with a straight girl who’d been dating the same guy off and on since sophomore year of high school.

November of my first year of teaching. I was cutting myself again. I started cutting when I was fourteen, and, if you read the first post, you know I was never treated. At that point, I was in my mid-twenties.

I would come home from work despondent. My students’ lives were a hot mess–poverty, sexual abuse, addictions, legal trouble–and I couldn’t fix it. They didn’t do homework. They didn’t do class work. They didn’t read. They wouldn’t write. They were failing by the roomful and didn’t seem (to me) to care. Or even to understand the correlation between turning in assignments and their grades. A student once asked me, “Could I get an A?” And when I said, “No, you haven’t done any work,” she asked, “Well could I at least get a D?”

I couldn’t talk about my day. No day. I hated my imperfection. I was terrified to expose what a failure I was as a teacher. I didn’t inspire them. I gave them things irrelevant things to read. My assignments were meaningless. I talked too much. I talked over their heads. I couldn’t keep doing this job; I couldn’t quit. There were no other meaningful jobs I could do. The drive home had the potential, every day, to be my out. The concrete overpass supports, so big and still, waiting indifferently for me to make up my fucking mind and either wreck into them or not. I couldn’t make up my fucking mind. And if I did decide to drive real fast and wreck my car into the overpass, what if I didn’t die? What was I so fucking upset about anyway when I was practically wallowing in privilege compared to many students? What kind of asshole was I?

Then, somehow, I would be home. I would look at one of my thirty page to do lists and feel trapped. I couldn’t do it all. I couldn’t do any of it. There wasn’t enough time. There wasn’t enough me. The items on the list would march into my chest and spiral like electrons, humming the tune of what wasn’t getting done so loud I couldn’t focus on getting them done. I got sucked into the center of their spiral until the edges of me seemed so far away from the hole I was in I thought I’d never be able to surface and, say, have a conversation with someone. And I would hate myself for my impotence. Why couldn’t I do one goddamned thing? Why was I so fucking shitty?

I stood in the spare bedroom I used as an office (and spare it was) shaking, my skin getting tighter and tighter as the list grew and grew. I kept sharp things on my desk. A serrated knife. A pair of scissors. An exacto knife. And I cut myself. To interrupt the noise. To let in some light. To loosen the skin. To relieve the pressure of the unreasonable expectations I was drowning myself in. To prevent myself from doing something much more final.

My arms bled. Finally, quiet. I could breathe. I rolled down my sleeves and moved on.

I didn’t tell anyone.

Then, one night, my partner N and our friends X & Y, another lesbian couple, were hanging out. I was usually very careful not to expose my arms, but their house was warm. I pulled off my long sleeve shirt. As I was folding it, X grabbed my wrist.

What’s this? She pointed at three parallel slashes on my forearm.

Busted.

I shrugged. I don’t know.

She dropped my arm.

I didn’t expect an answer. I’m letting you know I noticed.

We have to leave, said N.

We left. N was hysterical. I felt like the lowest, most disappointing asshole fuck-up. I had been harboring a secret for over ten years. Now everybody knew the truth about me. I don’t remember what was said, but the conversations that followed that night tended to be like, Why didn’t you tell me, Why would you do this, How long have you been doing this, Why aren’t you talking to me?

Why didn’t I tell you?

Because I am ashamed. Because I am in my mid-twenties, and should be beyond this. Should should should be able to cope. Should be able to do the job I was trained to do. How can I tell you how I am failing? The state has issued me a professional license and entrusted me with the responsibility to teach the children to read; I’m making them stupider.

Why would I do this?

It feels like I am saving my life. If I don’t, all I imagine is a thousand ways to die. I can’t breathe. I am paralyzed, I can’t possibly finish all the work I have to do, I can’t give a fraction of what my students need. All the time, it feels like they are stabbing me when they talk to me, like they are taking something away from me, draining me of something I need to survive.

How long have I been doing this?

Since I was fourteen.

Why am I not talking to you?

Because if I talk, if this comes out of me, it will obliterate me. It will swallow me. I will disappear. There will be nothing left.

We went to bed.

Fuck. On top of not being able to do my job, all the people close to me now hate me. How can I get them to like me again? If only I could die.

I spent the night awake, as I did most nights, obsessing over the last part of the evening. I took my shirt off. Why did I take my shirt off? X held my arm. Three red lines. If only I could die. I took my shirt off. Three red lines. I took my shirt off. What’s this? I took my shirt off. We have to leave. If only I could die. On a loop. All night. If only I could die.

X emailed she wanted to help in any way she could. Would I see a therapist?

No. No professional help. It’s not that big a deal.

The day I met a psychiatrist for the first time, I was terrified. I knew I had to reveal all the things I had been thinking and doing, things I was embarrassed about and ashamed of (and hadn’t ever told anyone) to a person I’d never met before. I’d never gone to a psychiatrist. I hadn’t wanted to see a psychiatrist at all, but the people who love me convinced me that my life depended on it. I knew the doctor would confirm one of two fears: a) I was broken, irreparably; or, b) I was making it all up.

I was a first year teacher. Most days on the drive home from work, I wanted to drive my car very fast into something very still. And most days, what stopped me was the fear that I might live. When I got home, I did work–planned, read student work, averaged grades–and there was never enough time to get everything done. I was failing. I didn’t sleep. I felt trapped, and like I had no skin. Every time anyone talked to me, it felt like they were literally stabbing me. Robbing me of something. After these exchanges, the conversations would bang around my skull for hours, frantic pinballs, as I revised my parts, hating myself, knowing that the other person in the conversation hated me or thought I was stupid, or a liar, or fake, or just ridiculous. I invented a thousand ways to get people who didn’t like me to like me–gifts tangible and not–to make them like me again. Except they already liked me.

Having conversations and doing a job are pretty basic things. I expected myself to be able to do them. And I loathed myself for my ineptitude. The feverish narrator in my head ranted. What the fuck is wrong with you? Just suck it up and do your work. You’re a fucking asshole who can’t do anything. You suck at your job. You suck at life. You hate you, with good reason, and so does everyone else. Why don’t you just stop wasting everyone’s time and energy and die?

Had I not sought help when I did, I’d be dead now.

I needed the psychiatrist to help me. In order for him (he was a him) to help, I had to tell him my insides. I didn’t have a language for my insides, which turned out to be a big part of my problem. But if the psychiatrist could help me, that meant I was crazy. Mentally ill. Too weak to just suck it up. Too whiny. Or, what if it turned out I was like Hannibal Lecter crazy? What if I had to live in a psych ward with people who drooled and shouted and weren’t allowed to wear belts?

How could I convey myself to him, precisely? What if I said the wrong words?

His office was an old Victorian house that had been converted. Iron steps led to a small stoop. A sign instructed patients to ring the doorbell. I pushed the doorbell and a voice demanded my name. After a moment, the door clicked. I entered waiting room was small. Worn green carpet, washed out watercolors of empty landscapes, somber people. Sour breath. Sadness. The air leaden with waiting. I checked in. Without looking up from her computer monitor, the receptionist said flatly, New patient. She handed me a clipboard.

Fill that out and bring it back with your insurance card. Doctor A– will be with you soon.

I sat down. As I filled out the required information, I filled up with dread.

Symptoms.

I had to write it down? Writing it down made it indelible. Undeniable. Unrevisable. Known. The doctor’s idea would be shaped by what I wrote. The insurance company would file it away. My name, flagged.

Symptoms. I cut myself.

I finished the form and returned it to the desk. Soon after, Dr A– appeared at the top of a staircase. L–, he called. Pins of panic shot out of my heart and lodged themselves under my skin. Shh. Don’t say my name. Oh, god. Don’t say my name. Everybody can hear you. I wanted to slam my hand over his mouth. Instead, I followed him down the stairs. His office was in the basement, flanking a dreary conference room. He waited at the door to usher me in, then shut the door behind me and introduced himself.

I’m Dr A–.

L–, I said.

His office was spare and revealed nothing about him except that his taste in lamps was as questionable as his taste in framed decor. The watercolor on the wall opposite me was a sailboat next to a fence on a beach. A beached sailboat, like a metaphor for impotence.

Tell me why you’re here, he said.

He was about 900 years old, a white-haired white guy in a suit, an archetype of a psychiatrist. The only thing missing was a beard. I started jiggling my leg so furiously that he became blurry. I told him everything I could think of. He must have asked me some questions, but I don’t remember them, with the exception of:

You’ve never been in treatment before? Never? How old are you?

That settled it. The loose skin of his face puckered up into itself with incredulity. His eyebrows hung like question marks punctuating his questions. I panicked. I was crazy.

And the slightest bit relieved I hadn’t made it all up.

No, I said. I’m 25.

Silence.

He reached forward to shake my hand and I ducked.

It was nice to meet you, he said.

I sat there feeling crazy.

Finally he said, Come back in two weeks.

I left. Now what?