Scars On My Soul- (Rewritten) Or Why I Killed My Muse

"I have scars on my hands from touching certain people. Certain people, certain events have all left scars on my hands. " - JD Salinger

As I look back at my life, I feel a kinship to Salinger’s Seymour Glass. A grown up who would have been Holden Caulfield, had Holden not been suspended in time as a teenager. And one day when the pain of being with people, the agony of being different and feeling things stronger than others got to Seymour, he took a gun and went gently into that good night.

I hope when I do break I am stronger. I guess I am lucky, when the time came to break, I bent like a flower that bends with the rainfall.

I’ve been thinking a lot about people lately. About the good ones I ‘ve met and the bad ones. The evil ones. Yes, I have met pure evil, those that wished to hurt me by raping me, or beating me to an inch of my life. And all have left scars on my soul, like Seymour’s scars.

I was in the hospital during December 2002 , and in December 2007. I’m in an IOP program after both stays and now, 2010. I’m supposed to be getting better, getting stronger. It’s hard. Last weekend I just wanted to destroy, to curl up in the bathroom and die. A few weekends ago I went to the train station and looked at the trains. But I didn’t jump. Or feel like jumping. It was if the act of train-spotting was enough. Indeed my carapace seemed to get stronger with each passing train. I finally left several hours later, went home, and slept soundly. I hadn’t been able to sleep, so the P-doc gives me Seroquel. That was the first night since then I slept without anything stronger than a glass of warm milk.

I went into the hospital on December 4 back in 2002. I didn’t want to go, I was given an ultimatum from work. It was like they put a gun to my head. "Hello Susan, well, you can either go to the hospital or you can get the sack. Which would you prefer?"

Let me backtrack. The human relations department gave me the ultimatum because it got so bad one night. I couldn’t jump in front of the train. I couldn’t be Anna Karenina. I didn’t have access to a gun -I had tried to purchase one to no avail. That left one method I never tried, namely because it frightened me. But the more I thought about it, the more it didn’t seem so bad. So one night in early December, when the pain was so horrible I couldn’t take it anymore, I took the belt from my green chenille bathrobe and an old kitchen chair and I went outside to find a nice sturdy tree in which I could hang myself. I found one, tied the belt like a noose around my neck and the tree branch, hiked it up, stood on the chair, and said a small prayer, looked at the moon and kicked the chair away.

I remember looking at the moon and how pretty it was, and how this didn’t hurt like I thought it was, it was very peaceful, like going to sleep. And I fell asleep ... And woke up with the branch on the grass, myself on the grass. I had failed and even worse, I had wet my pants. Talk about ignominy. I was totally abashed, ashamed, and I felt like a three-year-old who didn’t want their mommy to discover what they did.

So I went into the hospital. First I went to the local hospital’s emergency room. I was greeted by a nice older woman in her sixties who offered me a peppermint Life Saver as she typed my vital information into the hospital’s computer. Name, age, sex, social security, etc. She asked me how I felt right then, I said I really wanted to hurt myself. She asked me how I would do it in her office, I came up with several different ways. She looked at me. "You’re a pretty girl," she said. "Why are you in so much pain"?

Then two security guards came and got me and put me in a little independent room in the emergency room. Gave me one of those gowns that doesn’t cover your backside. I was given a chair to sit down, a blanket, and one of the guards stayed by my door for seven hours while the emergency room on call doc looked at me, a couple of nurses looked at me, and finally the doctor from the mental hospital came. During the time, I was treated to a turkey sandwich, which was delicious, and a carton of skim milk.

When the hospital doctor came, he asked me a few questions and then told me I better get dressed, I was going to be admitted to the other wing of the hospital. Two orderlies then came and got me once I was dressed and transported me to the mental care unit which is about three miles away, in the country.

About the hospital stay, what can you say, other than as hospitals go, this was a nicer one. My last hospitalization I had no insurance, so it was in the State psychiatric facility. This was more of a country club in comparison. The doctors were nice and I was medicated on different meds. But I was still suicidal. All I thought about when I wasn’t sleeping was how much I wanted to die. This perplexed the doctors. Surely the lithium, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, and all the other meds should be kicking in. I got worse. I started to see things that weren’t there. No worries, add a bit of Geodon to the mix, and Seroquel to calm the OCD that was developing. Everything will be OK soon. Trust the doctors.

But I was still suicidal. The nurses were watching me, on a one on one suicide watch, a record they said for the hospital. Fifteen days into the hospitalization with nothing getting better, I had been seen by a panoply of doctors and they sat down with my parents and decided that perhaps ECT might get rid of the depression.

Forms were signed, and a week before Christmas I got my first electroshock treatment. I had a total of six altogether. I had problems with my veins and had to get a PIC line put in to help make the treatments easier. The treatments left me feeling woozy, when they were done, it was difficult to get dressed again and try to remain "normal". I would try to eat my breakfast, but I just wanted to sleep. The first treatment left me in agony, I could count every one of my muscles. I remember in tenth grade biology class that a human has over 600 muscles. I felt every one of them that day. I couldn’t move. It was agony.

Only one other person close to my age was getting the treatment. We would hold hands as we waited on our gurneys as we heard the others getting shocked and waited our turn. The others were senior citizens. They looked at the young man Charles and I with understanding and pity. We were so young. Several told me their stories - they were depressed because their spouse of 50 some years died, or a child died, or a grandchild had been murdered. One lady had a husband at home who had Alzheimer’s and she was depressed over his care.

I just knew I would lie down, electrodes placed to various parts of my body and when it was over I could have a glass of cranberry juice. The cotton mouth I would experience was not akin to the type of cotton mouth you get when you drink.

My last treatment was the day after Boxing Day, December 27. I personally stopped the treatment against the doctors wishes, I felt my brain was being destroyed. I went home on December 28. On December 30, my beloved cat Cleopatra died. She was 16. I had her for 15 ½ years. About my despair on losing her I still cannot bring myself to write. I miss her, I think I will always miss my gray darling. She was my best friend. It hurt me that I was so fragile from just getting out of the hospital - and now this.

I started an outpatient program at the hospital right after New Years. Nine thirty till two thirty. Some of it was good, but a lot of it I found to be not helpful. I was still weak from the ECT, I had problems recalling simple things. I did not know it at the time, but I had damage from the treatment, I lost a lot of both long term and short term memory and at least 20 IQ points, which still, til this day has not returned. Ask me who the president was, I knew it was President Bush, but I thought it was the father, not the son. I thought it was a decade or so earlier than what it was. There were gaps in my thinking, I knew something horrible had happened on September 11, but I couldn’t recall what it was, despite the fact I knew people who died on that day. I would sit in group therapy, something which even when I am well, I have to admit I am not a fan of. I don’t have the personality type to be an effective patient for a group setting. I am too much the introvert. And that part of my personality was coming through loud and clear. I was not participating, or commenting to the other people. I couldn’t eat during meal times. I cried a lot. I asked to go for one on one counseling and was told the insurance company wanted me in this type of atmosphere.

Finally after six weeks I was discharged. I had made no progress, and the worst thing was I could not write. I realized I had to take the bull by the horns, and could not stay passive in my recovery. I had to be active.

I found a support group via the NAMI website that is about 10 miles away. It meets every Friday night. I would like to say I go every Friday but I am not that diligent. I go every other week. I went back to work. This was the hardest thing for me. My brain is barely functioning, and I am still suicidal. Some nights I still go to the train station, and look at the trains, thinking about jumping. But I don’t. I’m in recovery. Sometimes I think of OD’ing on my meds, but I don’t. I’m in recovery. The feeling is strong. I try to stay afloat. It’s two steps forward sometimes, three steps back. I’ve developed bulimia again, something that I haven’t had since I was a teenager. I have OCD now, in little snatches, and at work a mild case of paranoia. The Kinks sang "Paranoia, will destroya", and I just have to keep saying to myself, it’s all in my head. The suicidal thoughts will go away. It’s all in my head. The thoughts about wanting to hurt myself, all go away, I am in recovery.

Right now I have to go to work and make sure I stay afloat. I am in recovery.

I learned I have some real good friends who stood by me when I needed them. I had other friends who I lost because it was too much for them to deal with. I miss them terribly and blame myself, even though I know no one is to blame. I guess when the chips fall you learn who really do care about you. And for them, I have to get strong again.

I adopted a new cat, Holly, in February. I couldn’t take living by myself without something in the apartment. She’s a young cat and we are becoming fast friends. I still miss Cleo. But there is room in my heart for two cats.

****
I slept like a child. I dreamt that night, of the flying dream I haven’t dreamt since childhood. I must be getting stronger. I soared to the heavens, that must mean something.

Heavens. And Hells. The inner turmoil that comes with being up and down. A few years ago a friend, told me I wouldn’t get better unless I accepted that I have bipolar. At the time I didn’t want to accept it, I loved the highs and the lows gave me creativity. The problem was the lows were getting lower and lower and I was starting to embrace suicide. My attempts were becoming more lethal. But I didn’t want to be compliant. I didn’t want to take my meds, they were taking away the highs. I didn’t realize they were also giving me the crashing lows. The side effects were making me miserable. I was playing with fire and getting burnt. My life was hanging on by a thread. I can see that now. I didn’t need meds or alcohol to help me deal with my moods, I was getting high off of being high and low. The highs made me feel like God. The lows made me feel like a tortured poet.

I was hurting myself by not wanting to get well. It was a joke to me, so what if I was off work on medical leave for eight months? I got to write everyday. I slept till nine and wrote till midnight. I could be a hermit and isolate. And I had those lovely demons that only I could hear. My Muse.

I realize now my Muse is killing me. His sweet siren song was destroying me as surely as Odysseus had to chain himself to the mast to hear the sweet mermaids sing. The mermaids were singing to me, their songs weren’t waking me up as I drowned in the madness of my mind. Instead, they were causing me to drown in my own made lake, the route I was going was taking me more and more into the inner workings of my mind. The dragons I was fighting, self pity, self despair, fear and loathing, were winning. I was on a one way course to Hell, literally and figuratively.

It’s been hard to realize the things that you love the most can hurt you. And thus, I finally killed my Muse. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. To this day, I remain Muse-less. I wish I had one again.

I have finally hit bottom, moment of truth redux

I am going to start out by saying this happened a while (2 years) ago. It may be hard to read, I apologize in advance if it upsets or hurts anyone. I've moved on from the place in this piece and am doing better.

It was a very cold night, the thermometer was registering 15 degrees outside. My soul felt as cold as it was outside, I cannot stand it anymore. I cannot stand living in my skin. I hate this new med cocktail, and the side affects, the sleeping 16 hours a day, the grogginess, the nausea, the stupor and the fog on my brain.

It's another New Year, but what do I have to look forward to? Nothing, nothing. I cannot breathe. Years ago, I would go to the train station and trainspot, until the feeling passed. Now I am home too anxious to get in the car and go somewhere, anywhere til this feeling passes.

Or maybe I don't want it to pass. Maybe in my own warped brain, I want to hold on to it, to embrace it with every fibre of my being. I'm in serious psychic pain, what got me out of bed in my twenties is no longer working and I am living with these broken dreams, cutting my hands daily on them. I'm tired of the bleeding. I'm tired of living without a raison d'etre, without hope. I'm not living anymore, it's all automatic body functions. I cannot deal with it anymore.

I'm bored by TV, and too anxious to watch it. I wander into the kitchen for a glass of ice tea, and see the meds. I had just gotten all the meds renewed earlier that day at

CVS, something I found degrading. My hands shake so I cannot sign my name when I pick them up, or write out a check. I am lucky, there is a female pharmacist who sympathizes with me, and signs for me, with my permission, and takes the blank check, fills it out for me, and records the fee in the checkbook.

Now all the meds are staring me in the face....and maybe in a moment of weakness, maybe in a moment where it's "I don't give a fuck anymore", I go over to them, with my glass of ice tea, unscrew the top to one of them, lay them out on the kitchen table. 100 pills. That should be enough. The cat lies slumbering on my bed, snoring softly. My mother had just washed the comforter when I was hospitalized, and it smells linen fresh and clean. I love my bed, it's my own bed (with a different mattress) from my childhood, and it comforts me. My marital bed on the other hand, was too big to maintain, and has a lot of bad memories. I was glad to see it go.

Two pills down the hatch. I am optimistic, this doesn't seem to be so bad, I am looking forward to swallowing them all and lying down on the bed and just going to sleep. I choke on the third, it won't go down, but eventually it does. Four, five and six....when I get to seven the cat is rubbing up against my leg. I stop to pick her up, and she goes into purr overload. Then she bites my hand and runs over to the computer, daring me to get on it.

She puts her body on it, the screensaver wakes up and she hits a favorite button with her right paw. My first favorite is Google, the second and third favorite are the websites of my two of my several muses. One of them pops up, and I see it's been updated. So I read. I sit down and read.

And read and read.

Now let me explain about these two wonderful people in my life who are my muses One I know in real life, the other I have never met. Both people have encouraged me to write and believe in me not only as a writer, but a human being, and these are the two people have really motivated and challenged me to write again, when I have given it up as a broken dream. I've only had two other living muses, my first creative writing professor, and J.D. Salinger.

So, It was serendipitous that I stumbled across this little bit of writing written years ago and for some reason came up in a bookmark made long ago and forgotten.

Sometimes when you are that blue, that suicidal, you just need something, anything to get you out of the moment to help you get out of yourself til the feeling passed. And that was the gift this person gave to me with their gift of writing. They didn't know it, and I have never told them this. That one miserable cold horrible night, I read and read and read until the feeling passed and kept reading until the sun came up, and yes, I was still depressed, and yes, I still wished I was dead, but the feeling was passive, not active, and they may have saved my life.

Saturday Night Fever (on the brain)

Snow. Falling silently, softly, the neighbor's Christmas twinkle lights turning it all shades of blue, green, red, yellow. I lie in my bed, warm under five blankets, and the cat is near me. I have fresh washed flannel sheets on the bed, and to enjoy them even more, stripped down to my birthday suit, so I can feel flannel on my skin. It's a wonderful feeling. Window shade up, snow falling, I am lying in bed, propped up by two fluffy pillows, and one fluffy cat on my side, occasionally swiping a paw at an imaginary mousie she is chasing in her dreams. All I am missing is a cup of hot chocolate, on my night table.

Sounds nice, doesn't it? No. Not. My brain is going a million miles an hour. Since 2 pm the only thought in my head has been to change the lyrics on a popular song and sing it' - "Susan's got a gun".....but I don't have any. I do have a water pistol some where, but no... no gun. And again and again the thought goes through my brain- I wish I had one. But if I did, right at this moment, I would be too terrified these would be the last things I would be doing until I pointed it at my heart and pulled the trigger.

I am holding my AA coin in my right hand. Holding on to it for dear life. My 13 year coin. I have two- one for me and one I mailed to my blogging friend Mary. The last couple of days, I have been having drinking dreams, I dream of cool Long Island Ice Teas, White Russians, wine in slender glasses. I dream of getting high, feeling I can do no wrong, that I am indeed pretty, smart and a good person to be around. I have a trick up my sleeve- the same trick I used when I was first getting sober. Go to a 24 hour club, stay there all day if need be, and drink Diet Peach Snapple every time you want to drink.

So I am safe. Safe right now.... and trying to do every trick in the book to quiet my brain, hence, looking at snow and meditating. Giving into the purely hedonistic feel of flannel on an icy cold night against my warm skin. I'm staying alive.


In the morning, hopefully the thoughts will be quieter, and the loneliness I feel won't be so acute. Who knows? Maybe in the morning I will have something to look forward to, something to do that will take me away from my own existential angst. My own hell in my brain. Hopefully I will be able to eat something... and it will stay down. Hopefully I will be able to go to Sunday Dinner at my parents house. Hopefully, hopefully... it will be a good day.

Reminders of our own mortality-3 AM musings

It seems that every news story I saw last week, every friend I talked to, almost every blog I read reminded me- no hit me in the face with this- that we are mortal. We, as all mammals, come into this world and start dying the moment we draw our first breath.

That is a concept that most people don't want to think about. You mean babies start dying from the moment they are born?

Yes. Cells start sloughing off and die. The only way to escape this is to be a single celled organism that reproduces by division that way. For if you belong to any species that reproduces by sex- you start dying the minute you are born.

Take the following news events this week-

1. Big news if you live in the US and are a baseball fan. Derek Jeter broke the Yankees all time career hitting record- that was previously held by Lou Gerhig. Fans over the age of- well, 40? 50? were happy and sad. If a record had to fall, why one by one of the most beloved baseball stars of the last century? It's as a friend of mine said- "Soon all he (Gerhig) will be known for is a black and white movie and a disease".


2. Larry Gelbart passed away at the age of 81. Gelbart was the genius who brought M*A*S*H to television. My youth and teenage years were absorbed by this show- it was the entire family's favorite. My father still loves watching re-runs on TV when he accidently finds them while channel surfing.


3 The world's oldest person died at the age of 115. Wow. I cannot even picture myself at 50, let alone, double that. That is a celebration of a life, not a death. Think about seeing three centuries- New Year's Eve's go by! Think of seeing electricity, horses replaced with cars, man landing on the moon- that is a celebration of a life.

4. The world's oldest dog died in Manhattan at the very old age of 147- doggie years, and 21 in human years. And Larry, if you are reading this, she was a doxie. Maybe all those Sabrett and Coney Island dirty water dogs, added to her longevity.

5. Two people I know had to send their dog and cat to the Rainbow Bridge.

6. "King of the Hill', Mike Judge's brilliant TV show and razor sharp views of American family life, went off the air last night after a 13 year run. No more Bobby and Hank Hill! (Sniff)

7. And lastly The Beatles:Rock Band came out, and i realize, even though I was first into Paul and Wings- then the Beatles; I was alive when John Lennon died. Now i know the Beatles won't be reuniting, with both John and George Harrison gone.


I think about my friends children- little boys between 3 and 6, and it's a sharp contrast. Full of life, playing, doing all the things small children do, some of it to the consternation of their parents. I was once a little girl, sitting on the floor with story books and dollies, thinking about how cool it will be to be a grown up. To do grown up things, like drive and be a mom. And now I wonder, what is it like when you are grown up, and you cannot drive anymore? What is it like to be 40 or 50 and not recognize the current bands? What is it going to be like to be a parent- and hopefully, a grandparent?

It's 3 am in the morning. I wasn't planning on writing this. I just cannot sleep. But,even with these musings, I feel blessed that such things were in the world, and I was alive to experience and know them. Socrates once said "The unexamined life isn't worth living". All I know, as i stifle a yawn, I am glad I have experienced these things, but- i don't think in all honesty, I would want to live to be 115, in human years, or even 147 in doggie years. If I wake up on December 22, 2012 and am still alive, that will be enough.