To read the first part of this series, go here.
1
I will repeat this, because it is important. This is the solution to fixing your problems:
First, you stop panicking.
Then, you remember that you are in control and that it is possible to get better.
Then, you do what needs to be done.
Repeat these steps for the rest of your life.
If you get the chance, the next time you're feeling anxious or upset, see if you can take a 5 minute break. Find somewhere comfortable and/or isolated. Even a bathroom stall will do. Breathe in. Whatever you may be thinking, whatever may be happening in your life, think STOP. Breathe out. Think STOP. Feel the rise of upsetting thoughts try to push its way through your stomach and into your head. At first this will be incredibly difficult, and you will feel like you are fighting an impossible fight. Your brain has become used to getting its way, but this is to help you retrain yourself to be in control. The more you practice this, the easier it will get, and the less your harmful thoughts will intrude upon your thought process.
This is an intermediary step, not an ultimate solution. In order to fix what you need to fix, you first need to be in control.
You are in control and not the thoughts that fire off inside your brain. You are not just your thoughts, you are also the observer of all your thoughts.
2
I called her Nameless.
She was an alter-ego of sorts, but she was also a parasite. She hardened herself against my skin and sunk her claws deep into my spine. I nourished her on the milk of pain until she became a thing that went beyond my control.
It was my ex-girlfriend who first recognized that dark part of me. I christened her Nameless, because to me she was beyond names. Or maybe she didn't deserve a name. Or maybe I knew she was inhuman, and could not be categorized. I imagined her to be skeletally skinny. She wore rotting fur coats and bright red lipstick and when she exhaled she exhaled a noxious gas. She loved cigarettes, and fuckboys, and whiskey. Her skin was a dull gray, like a drying slug.
I built her because I wanted to interact with the outside world without getting close to it. I positioned Nameless between the exterior world and my heart, so that I could still have friends and lovers without ever being in danger. I thought it was a brilliant solution, really, I could explore the world without
Nameless was cruel. She did impulsive things. She was condescending, hurtful, evil. She used people. She didn't care who she hurt to get what she wanted. It was all part of the game. When I was Nameless, nothing felt entirely real.
Don't forget, Nameless was me.
I didn't realize that by creating Nameless I was putting constant pressure on my heart. I didn't understand why after Nameless fucked someone I felt dirty. I didn't understand why after Nameless and I partied until 4 in the morning I'd go home and sob like I had to leak the experience of the night out of me. Nameless wasn't making me happy.
It turns out it's impossible not to be affected by the world around you.
It's just that I froze my misery, and lived in a gray dark stasis where I hovered in a bubble. I carried my misery wherever I went so that even puppies and sunshine could not. I had resolved to not be affected, but really all that meant was that nothing could really change my sour mood because I refused to let it.
I was a coward. I didn't create Nameless because I was brave. I created Nameless because I was familiar with misery. I found terror comfortable. Happiness was beyond my understanding at that point, it was a foreign region with foreign rulers and even the slightest glimpse of it made me feel naked and vulnerable like a young animal who had crawled out of its egg into a frozen winter. Happiness made me feel like I could shatter.
So I resolved to never let it enter me.
The most difficult part of getting better was wanting to get better.
People think it's as simple as knowing good CBT techniques or self-care, but it's not. You have to have the desire to be happy. And this may be surprising, but many of us want to be unhappy.
For years I delighted in my misery. I'd drink and starve myself with Nameless on my shoulder. I burned my arms with cigarettes and cut my arms. I cried constantly. I ruined my relationships. People would give me advice on how to get better, but I never followed up. I said I was cursed, remember? I thought it would be useless to even try. And I didn't want to, because all of my power was in misery. When I was Nameless, none of my accomplishments or joys mattered because if I let them influence me then I would be left wide open. Anything could happen to me.
If I stepped out into happiness I knew I'd lose a huge part of myself. That part of me that slithered and sang sharp in the dark. If I stepped out into happiness I didn't know who I'd be anymore. It was better to hurt myself than be hurt by the world.
It took falling in love and realizing that if I continued with what I was doing, I was going to lose my love. Not only that individual person, but everything that I ever held dear in my life. If I didn't get better I'd destroy everything I wanted. EVERYTHING.
That was what I'd designed myself to do, after all. I'd built Nameless to destroy and she was good at it.
So I killed her. I burned her corpse with a fierce delight.
That wasn't the end of my suffering, of course. And in the years that followed, I began filling the emptiness inside of me.
3
[Diary Entry]
August 23, 2014
I’m not used to asking for what I want.
I’ve never felt I deserved anything.
I’m used to shrinking into my head. Hello, sir, how may I destroy myself for you today? I’m touching you through the cool mesh that gives you a comfortable distance from me. And when it’s triggered, the possible idea that I’ve been too much of anything - too annoying, too close, too big, too loud, it all comes bubbling through me, cascading through the layers of being. I need to reduce my circumference - be less. Be less. Remember all the traumatic times in the past when they hated you for your size, when they told you to step back, calm down, control the urge, cut your hair.
Disappear.
Because my entire life has been about trying to reduce my impact. Even as I struggle to write novels and model and take photographs and promote promote at the same time I’m whispering into my head, “smaller, smaller, smaller.”
I know I’m never going to succeed in what I want if I continue to try to sabotage my circumference. Even as if it wants to expand, to crouch in the center, rocking back and forth, mumbling to myself. Muttering, sad smile, put on the pleasant face, shake the head. Be less of a person.
“Great people have big circumferences,” Robert said when I explained this phenomenon. “The people who are small are too stupid to be bigger, to see all the data points that connect. Think of all the people you admire. Are they big or small?”
This is going to require some sledgehammer surgery. A methodical but destructive bent of the self who cares. Because I’ve learned from Robert it requires tactics to implement a successful strategy.
I’m tired of the nightmares that shrink me down into a compact child
I’m tired of losing the desire to live because sleep is a valley of unsightly, banal monsters.
[Diary Entry]
September 3, 2014
We’re going to crash the goddamn spaceship because the pilot is down in the greenhouse tending flowers. The engineer is running down the hallways, screaming that we’re all going to die. The chief security officer has the defenses running on full blast despite the fact there’s no discernible danger. He’s injured several of the passengers with his automatic stun gun system. The doctor left the medical bay mid-surgery to attempt to fly the ship. Nobody can find the pilot and they’ve kind of forgotten who he is anyway. In a way they think their all pilots, because they’ve all got different course operatives and flight patterns that they all believe are top priorities. And they think the only way their operatives are going to be fulfilled is by grabbing the wheel and veering onto a new course.
Violence is built into the mainframe of this ship’s core. We have yet to figure out how to remove this as it seems to be a primary function for the ship’s stability.
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Other Posts You May Be Interested In:
The Writer Friend [Psycho-Surreal Memoirs]
The Curse of Atreus [PTSD Series: Part 1]
We are Wormwood [My Books]
The Genius with Eyes That'd Seen Fire [Psycho-Surreal Memoirs]
What kind of Content Do You Want to See From Me? [2018 and Beyond]
My Favorite Resources for Writers
Crooked God Machine [My Books]
The Halcyon Spaceship [Psycho-Surreal Memoirs]
Industrial Noir in the Red Earth: My Trip to Oklahoma