Once Upon a Time... in Phoenix

I had this therapist, this tiny little hobbit of a woman who reminded me of Dr. Ruth without the accent. I think I was around 26 or 27 years old at that time, so a good 15 years ago. I was not in a good place then. Hadn’t ever been, really, and I was still a million miles from where I am now. This therapist was at one of those based-on-income mental health facilities. It was a sometimes frightening place to walk in to. I saw this little hobbit lady for therapy, an hour or so a week, or as I could afford the $10 for the sessions. Then every 3 months, I went next door to the psychiatrist and he would prescribe me medications based on whatever the hobbit wrote in my file. I think that time around I tried Welbutrin (almost no affect) and then Paxil (made me feel dead inside and also increased the frequency of suicidal thoughts).

But the therapy, it was the therapy that mattered, and I never really realized just how much until tonight.

I talked to the therapist a lot about my relationship with my mother, my childhood, the abuse, my low self-esteem, and my arguments with Sperm Donor and a (not-anymore)friend that I was working for at the time. I remember talking a lot about how it made me feel when Sperm Donor and I would have these epic battles to my breaking point, the point where I could take no more and would just submit to him. Yep, you’re right, I’m a horrible person, I’m too mentally ill to survive alone in the world, I’m crazy, I’m garbage. And I remember talking a lot about my arguments with my mother during my childhood and adolescence. How we would go back and forth for hours, taking shots at each other, each meaner than the last. My mother spent a lot of my formative years saying all kinds of rotten shit about me. Then, as a pre-teen and teenager, I grew rebellious and I tried to fight back in the only way I knew how: with words.

My mom wasn’t very educated, dropped out of high school at 16 to get a job and help support her siblings because, I guess, her dad was a drunk and there were 5 kids, 2 older brothers and 2 younger sisters, and my mom had to help take care of the sisters. I could infuriate her with my vocabulary. She would say I thought I was better than her, smarter, and I was. I knew I was. I knew she wasn’t very bright and I knew how to befuddle her with words and took joy in watching her face turn red like a tomato.

Doing that got me beat many a night. Either with her fists or with my father’s belt when he’d come home from work.

Later in life, in therapy with the hobbit lady, she said to me a thing that changed me in a fundamental way. She said that, because of the way I grew up, the way I was essentially trained to argue, to fight to the point where I can push someone to hit me, was an addiction. That I was indoctrinated into believing that this was how grievances were handled and that it didn’t have to be that way. She helped me see that, quite often, I was initiating arguments with Sperm Donor for the high, the adrenaline rush, that subconsciously I knew would come if I could push him to the point of violence.

This is not an easy thing to admit, but it’s the truth. No, I did not deserve the abuse that he dealt out, regardless of who initiated any particular argument that ended in physical violence. I did not deserve his reactions, I did not deserve to be belittled and degraded and told I was not fit as a mother or wife. But sometimes I was almost literally asking for it. When I was feeling insecure, I would make accusations of infidelity. Ohhh, it would make him so mad!

Really, really hating myself right now.

When the hobbit told me what I was doing, I was able to actually witness it the next time it happened. I was aware of what I was feeling and what was happening and what I wanted to say. I was able to… just not. Not always, not every single time, but I gained some modicum of control over my own behavior.

So I just got off of a 3-day ban on Facebook. I couldn’t post or like or comment or any fucking thing for 3 days because of a comment I made to a piece of shit misogynist troll. Since being unbanned, I’ve been back up to my old tricks. I’m a sniper troll. I come along and I say some really clever, incredibly rude, usually hilarious thing to some moron Trumper, generally, because they’re easy targets. Like, “Is “poster child for stupidity” a paid position or do you just do it for the exposure?” I’m a bitch on the internet, okay? I mean, I’m a bitch in real life, too. I’ll say that shit to someone’s face if I think they’re being stupid. And, you know, that’s another thing I don’t feel real great about admitting. (sigh)

I was doing this thing tonight, commenting on some article about Trump’s ignorant-ass Space Command or whatever, and I realized…

I’m still fighting with my mother.

I’m still getting bored and insecure and I’m always dealing with some aspect or another of some mental illness. I’ve felt particularly ADHD lately, really out of control unfocused. And depression has been a pretty major thing lately, too.

I know who I am. I know I’m a decent person. But sometimes I feel like I’m still that little girl standing in the hallway, crying and begging her mother to pay her some attention, only doing it all wrong because I didn’t know how and any publicity is good publicity? My mom fed into my negative attention-getting tactics by reacting to them. They are some of the only times in my life where I felt like she actually knew or cared that I existed, and only because I was an annoying fly she wanted to swat away.

I think I need to part ways with a majority of Facebook. I need to remove myself from ALL toxic situations, and the internet is the most toxic place on the planet. I need to stop exposing myself to shit that upsets me and angers me. More than anything, I need to stop reacting to it. My mother had an opportunity to teach a child how to get positive attention and she failed. Why do I carry on that legacy? Why do I feel a need to react to negative bullshit when it all does is drag me down into the muck? Fuck the muck. I want out.

Once upon a time, I was a little girl locked inside my own mind. I kept waiting and waiting for someone to come let me out, but no one ever did. One day, I realized that I could let myself out, but only if I could stop being afraid to face the world alone. I didn’t need someone to save me, only to show me that the power was in my hands, and mine alone, to save myself. And I think it’s time to save me from myself.

Last updated September 02, 2019