dispatches from crazyville

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?