LOVE?

Why does loving a man have to be so complicated?  These passionate beginnings are the trap door to a world of questions and self-doubt.  Do we ever know what love is?  Does it even exist?  I imagine it's warmth and familiarity and friendship.  That sounds right, that's what I have.  But in the midst of it all, I feel hateful and tired and completely frustrated.  As a woman, am I just programmed to want and demand what I can not have?  Are we destined for disappointment based on our endless list of needs and expectations?  Hunter never takes me out to restaurants, makes me dinner or surprises me with treats or gifts.  In fact, the entire year and a half we have been together I have payed for my part of every meal we have ever had together.  Rather than courting me, he's simply my tag along.  In return, I have become critical and verbally abusive.  When I was with Narcissus, he took me out to dinner every week, bought me flowers and chocolate covered strawberries, showered me with gifts and surprises, but he was a terrible boyfriend.  He didn't respect me and there was a constant air of condescension about him that always left me feeling 2 inches tall.  Hunter loves me unconditionally.  He listens to and respects me.  I can talk to him about anything and he makes me laugh.  He is loyal and just as anxious to explore what the world has to offer as I am.  So why must I demolish one of the greatest relationships I've ever had simply because I am with a man that is poor and slightly thoughtless.  He is younger than me and, up until a year ago, was an active alcoholic and heroin addict.  Fuck, is patience from me really so much to ask?  Yes, I want it all, I want to bake, have and eat my cake all at the same time, but in regards to demands, when is enough, enough?  If I let myself cherish and love him the way he does me, I think we could be happy, but what if all I am doing is settling?  There seems to be a very thin line between gratitude and personal compromise.  If I appreciate what he has to offer and prioritize my needs in regards to this relationship, does that mean that I am not honoring what I am looking for in a man?  I want to love Hunter, half the time I think he is perfect for me, but the rest of the time I am focused on what I think I deserve.  Really, I'm just a selfish, ungrateful brat.  Honestly, I don't know what I would do with myself if we broke up.  He's just a part of me now and I can't believe I went 28 years not knowing him.

So why am I so unsatisfied?  I have a companion who will do anything with and for me.  Is it really all that bad that I have to plan everything and always pay for my part?  Dam this sucks.  My future is cloudy when I try to picture a life without him in it.  I just want a simple answer; a voice that will tell me what I should and should not do.  They say that's what God is for but She must be working with somebody elses ridiculous problems right now, or maybe there are just way too many people in the world with real, actual issues that need attending, not some stupid, alcoholic, bipolar female who can't seem to make a decision regarding her own love life.  I imagine if God had the time She would take a look at my life and say, "stop wasting your time in front of the computer, go do something fun with your boyfriend and come back to me when you want to cure cancer."

S.O.L.

I've been so strangely uninspired lately.  I would hate to believe I have to suffer in order to be creative.  Life hasn't been painful at all.  Hunter and I have been redecorating and I seem to do well when there is a project at hand.  Although writing itself has been stagnant.  I think Southern California tends to suck any artistic stimulation right out of you.  L.A. and Orange County are like a little, plastic, pink cockroach that feeds off of Mexican food and silicone, shitting out surf board shaped, white, stucco feces all over it's palm tree infested streets.  How can one be honest or interesting in a world where they stage everything from their homes to their alleged natural habitat?  Sometimes it feels as if I'm the only woman in all of Southern California that wears a B-Cup and has an actual bikini line.  Thank God Hunter's not from here.  He shares my distaste for "Bros" and BMWs.  For those of you who don't know, a Bro is a bronze asshole with jet, black hair, who lives in a beach town, surfs, drives an over-sized white pick-up truck, looks like a pin-up model standing in for one of the beach boys and lives under a much overly diluted notion that he crossed over his rite of passage upon exiting the womb.  I don't regret moving here but I can not wait to get out!  Eat my ass Hotel California, don't tell me I can never leave!

Anyways, I'm sorry if I offended anyone, but, if it makes you feel any better, they don't really like me either.  Well, other wise life has been really good.  Although, I hate my job.  I'm a waitress at SOL.  SOL High.  My boss reminds me of Bette Midler in Hocus Pocus. . .but worse.  We call her D.   D for Dragon Lady, Demonic Device, Degenerate, Depraved, Distressing.  D for Drag me naked through the gates of hell on a carpet of hot coal rather than to sustain her presence for more than 5 Dreadful seconds.  If D hates you, which she always does, at one point or another, she will follow you around, yelling at you for every decision you make, action you take, and expression you display.  If she makes you cry, she will yell at you further.  If you apologize she will put you down until you are 8 feet under (because just being good and dead isn't good enough) and then will still not be satisfied.  She has criticized me for the direction I've given someone to the bathroom and once told me off for not knowing what my customer wanted from me prior to my actually asking.  D wants you to suffer for any disappointments you might have caused, to show no fear but always feel threatened, and, at the same time, to constantly entertain her, make her laugh and be her pal.  On top of that she expects each of us to be the head cheerleader and student council president of SOL High.  I guess just being a hard worker and a good waitress is no longer enough in this world.

It really is so much like being in high school again, but worse because I'm an adult and therefore should know by now how to deal with bullying and pettiness.  I don't.  SOL continues to blow my mind in spite of the fact that I've been employed there for over two years.  I don't leave in tears everyday but there is definitely no place on earth that makes me hate myself the way SOL High seems to.  My goal every day is to A: not kill anybody, B: not lose my job and C: not kill myself.  I suppose I should be grateful because I could honestly say that for over two years straight I have managed to, consistently, achieve goals.   Nobody is dead or unemployed because of me, woo hoo!  Yesterday, one of my co-workers, Shrek, decided to ignore me when I had 5 hot plates of food in my hand-I kept calling her name to get her attention and she proceeded to talk to Eeyore and pretend like I wasn't right behind her, then, later on that day, she criticized my work ethic and made a joke about how I'm always standing around.  I stared at her wide eyed and she laughed and said, "I love fucking with you, I really do, it's so fun to see your reaction."  So much for the term "she's not doing it to purposely upset you."  SOL is the job I just can't seem to get away from, no matter how hard I try.  D and her cheer squad are like that bad acid trip in the movie Natural Born Killers, except the acid is 700 pounds of hash browns and the rattle snakes are my co-workers and instead of a shotgun I have 32 bottles of Tabasco and a tumbler full of dull, serrated steak knifes.  And, also, rather than all the annoying characters being brutally shot to death, they live, in good health, and I have to be nice to them and keep a shit eating grin on my face the whole time.

So that is my job and I hope one day not to have it anymore.  Until then, it pays my bills and, supposedly, is teaching me a very important life lesson.  I'm sure, 5 years from now, I will have a strong grip on what that life lesson is, but for now, I just have to keep looking in other directions for happiness and hang on to the hope that there is something better out there for me.

My Final Days at North West Community Hospital

My doctor finally moved me up to level 2 and I was able to participate in group activities again. The night I received the signature I had an unexpected visit from my parents.  I remember the strong sense of duality I felt that stemmed from my hope that they were going to check me out and my fear that they were going to transfer me to a residential home.  Neither of the two situations occurred.  Their visit was to inform me that they were going to separate.  I think, deep down, it didn't really surprise me, but like any stereotypical child who just learned that she had become a member of The Broken Home Society, I assumed it was my fault; had I not created so much stress in their lives, it wouldn't be happening.  I remember the kindness in Dr. M's eyes.  It was the first time I ever noticed that he was capable of something besides ageism and mockery.  He didn't laugh at me that night.

I recovered from that family meeting much easier than I thought I would; there was a new patient in the ward.  I don't remember his name, but, really, does it matter?  It was a he and he distracted me greatly. It might have been John but who really cares, for a brief moment I wasn't in the psych ward and my parents were not contemplating divorce.  For a brief moment I was a 13 year old girl with a crush on a 14 year old boy.  Unfortunately, that didn't last for very long because I discovered, 2 days later,that he had once taken a girlfriend to see The Lion King and, when the movie had ended, He got on one knee and sang The Circle of Life to her in front of the whole audience.  Sometime following that event, his girlfriend broke it off with him and he overdosed.  The mere thought of him putting me through that mortification was enough to bring me back to reality.  Although my life was jam-packed with unpleasantness, at least it was not yet corrupted by a combination of Elton John's downfall and a young romeo in an ugly hospital gown with very bad taste in movies.  Needless to say, it ended abruptly with my fallen opinion of his character and his immediate release.

There was one other that was admitted shortly before I was discharged.  He was not as attractive.  In fact, his first day was spent locked in a room with wall to wall padding and a camera in the corner.  The first hour he spent screaming obscenities and calling the staff a "bunch of fucking porn stars".  As a fairly sheltered 13 year old girl, I thought this was a peculiar insult seeing that porn stars usually had nice faces and large parts that those around them usually valued and enjoyed.  Anyways, he spent the night mooning the camera and giving them the finger.  I have standards and this gentlemen was not what I was looking for.  I don't know what happened to him.

There were a few other experiences that I had during my incarceration.  I had a budding eating disorder and was found exercising at odd hours of the day and night.  With this eating disorder came an ardent sense of perfectionism that had some of the staff a little concerned, I often discarded 3-4 pieces of paper at a time because each time I wrote my name at the top of it, I did not feel it was adequate and decided to start over.  On one occasion, we were asked to cut out magazines images, words and sayings that best described us and we were to put them in the brown paper bag that had been given to each of us to decorate.  I never finished mine because I did not feel any of the cut outs that I had done were suitable for the project and I couldn't seem to get past the decorating of the brown paper bag.  The doctors were unable to tie one symptom to the other, strangely enough, and therefor, my alleged eating disorder was not identified.  This would not be an addressed sickness for another 3 years, as it had not yet completely developed.

When I was eventually released from North West Community Hospital, my dad picked me up and lectured me on how embarrassed I should be for making an attempt on my life and suggested I not tell anybody about it-of course if I had known he would become the kind of man that would go to a beach wearing a neon speedo and a gold chain around his neck I probably wouldn't have taken that statement so seriously.  I spent the next 6 months grounded and was not allowed to make any phone calls.  Dr. G and Dr. M both thought that that would help to surmount any inclination towards manipulative and dishonest behaviors that I may still be entertaining.  I guess that's the way things were handled back then.  I don't blame my parents for their decision, I know they did it to protect me from myself because they loved me.  I do wish that, as a child with a mood disorder, there had been more support and more options available for us back then.  We were not molested or abused in that ward, but we were punished, condemned and chastised for feelings we did not even understand and for a mental illness a lot of us did not even know we had.  I still wonder which of those kids made it and which finally succeeded in ending their lives.  I wonder how many other patients with Bipolar Disorder were treated at NWCH and diagnosed as Manipulators and Narcissists; I wonder how many of them finally got the care that they deserved and how many went on thinking they were bad kids that should keep their feelings to themselves.  I wonder if Charlie finally found his missing chess piece.

I guess worse things could have happened; I could have died way back then and never gotten to watch my little sister grow up; to hear my baby brother speak his first words.  Maybe this is why people have children, to keep them moving, even when they don't want to.  I don't want to have kids because I'm afraid they would turn out like me.  But I don't always feel like there is something there to keep me moving forward today and that really puts a damper on things.  I guess, for this very moment, I get to write and I come home, every day, to Hunter and his sweet smile; I have an uncle and an old friend who inspired me to start this blog in the first place, and I know they are on my side, supporting me, and, for this moment, that makes the day a little easier.

North West Community Hospital Part 2

All of the patients in the adolescent ward were there for depression and for making attempts on their lives.  Charlie was the only one who was clinically out of his mind.  He was 17 years old, tall,thin, had glasses and sandy blond hair.  I believe he suffered from acute, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. . .among other things.  He was admitted for his continual quest for a missing chess piece.  It started when he was in junior high.  One day he wanted to play chess during an in-door recess and discovered that there was a missing piece to the chess board and decided that he was going to find it.  The next 5 years of his life were spent searching for the missing chess piece.  "It had to be somewhere, chess pieces don't just disappear, I knew that if I kept looking, it would turn up, eventually."  In spite of my inability to remember faces, I will never forget Charlie's.  He didn't look anybody in the eye and he smacked his lips together constantly, bobbing his neck back and forth as he sat.

Charlie's mother had him admitted when she felt he was a threat to his own life.  He had suddenly developed an immense regard for the sunlight and decided that, no matter what the circumstances might be, he needed to be beneath it at all times.  He developed a new behavior that involved getting out of the car when they were at a stop light just to sit in a patch of grass that was free of shade.  Around that time, Charlie also began exposing himself to people.  On a few occasions he would step out of the shower, significantly nude, and into the hallway of the ward, yelling "I can't open my shampoo!"  I did not like that.  He had really bad acne and he ate hot dogs provocatively, always bobbing the neck back and forth, in such a way that disturbed even the most innocent of young minds.  He ate them for lunch and dinner, every single day.  I grew up sitting next to my handicapped brother at the kitchen table, staring as his meal ran down his chin with a stream of drool and watching him shoot noodles out of his nose when he laughed, but those meals with my brother pale in comparison to watching Charlie eat those dam hot dogs.

Charlie spent a good portion of his time in the ward sitting in The Chair.  It was a punishment for, either, bad behavior or if a patient failed to get to another level at the the time they were expected to.  I spent 10 days in The Chair, not because of bad behavior, like Charlie, but because my doctor would not give me the signature I needed to move up to level 2.  He felt that my manipulative tactics were not yet subjugated and that as soon as I admitted that all my suicidal, depressive thoughts and behaviors were a direct result of my inability to be honest about my self-seeking motives, than my doctors would consider allowing me to move up to level 2.

North West Community Hospital Part 1

My father was ashamed of me.  I knew this because he told me at one of our family meetings.  He said he had thrown away my brand new roller blades they had bought me for my 13th birthday because I was ungrateful of everything they had given me and I had no value for human life.

This was the third time I had attempted suicide since depression hit me at the age of 9.  It wasn't anything glamorous.  I was 13 and was not yet educated on how to succeed in the art of self-destruction.  All I understood was that I was in pain and no one could help me.  I tried to tell my mom that I wanted to die and she told me that everyone goes through those feelings.  I tried to talk to my friends but they had little advice, being that they were all a bunch of 7th graders.  I tried to tell my therapist but nothing she told me made a lick of a difference.  I was alone and completely tired of it.  I remember feeling trapped, scared and very emotionally driven in an embarrassing way.  I felt like an alien.  I honestly didn't believe I had any other options, although I knew deep down, much like how I feel today,  that I was horribly afraid of death, which left me feeling suffocated.  What does a 13 year old girl do when she wants to die, hates her life, can't talk to anybody and is terrified of death? 

So there I was in our 2nd family meeting, locked up in a cold, hospital psych ward, miserable, afraid and facing a desolate state of persecution.  Juvenile hospitalizations back than (although I am not sure they've changed) did not regard children who were dealing with mental illnesses as vulnerable human beings who were sick and in pain; rather we were viewed as manipulative and unstable.

I had two doctors treating me that were tag teaming every depressed child in the ward.  Dr. G was good cop while Dr. M was bad cop.  Dr. M was Yugoslavian and appeared to view me as a member of a mass, social conspiracy, jumping on the conveyor belt of spoiled dis-ease and insoluble demand.  When he saw me the 2nd day I was admitted he asked me questions such as, "what do you hope to get out of your parents?  You tried to kill yourself, you want big TV or maybe new clothes?"  I tried to explain to him that I wanted nothing out of them but he just laughed at me and shook his head.  Dr. G appeared to be more friendly and willing to listen to where I was coming from, although I had never played these kind of games before.  But when I tried to explain to him why I tried to kill myself, he said to me, "so it appears that you have a very narcissistic and manipulative way about you, I mean, that is why you made an attempt on your life, correct?  To get something out of your parents?"  I said to him, "no sir, I really don't want to live anymore".   To which he responded, with a big smile, a shake of the head and a laugh, "so than you're unstable?  Have you ever considered long term residence, such as a juvenile delinquent center or a residential home, there are some perfect ones for people like you."

This was a no win situation and the beginning of one of the most awful experiences of my life.