self-destruction

Rage

~ KJ ~ 8 Comments

In more ways than one, I am approaching rock bottom. Physically, psychologically, emotionally, financially. I am a disaster.

I left the hospital, but the truth is that I should still be there. And they all told me that. Every doctor I had to see. I don’t even know how many, because they all looked the same to me. Covered by masks and gowns, all I could decipher were voices, all saying the same thing. You are very sick.

I was not prepared. I thought I was just having trouble breathing. I shrugged it off until the coughing got worse, enough that I started coughing up blood on my way home from work. I took a detour to the ER, expecting a breathing treatment and a discharge. Instead I ended up with an admission to isolation with the avian flu, suspected pneumonia, and a COPD exacerbation.

I fought to get out. I left them with little choice; if they didn’t discharge me, I was leaving AMA, and they knew if I left without medication, I could get sicker and die. I still endured their lectures, their voices of concern. You’re very sick, they said. And all I could say to them was I’ve been through a lot worse.

I don’t know how much more my body can take. It’s been through hell, and I just keep making it worse. You would think I’d be doing my best to stay healthy, but I’m just pushing myself closer and closer to pain and death. I walked around aimlessly yesterday, in the cold, smoking cigarette after cigarette, cycling through fits of crying and fits of rage.

I had such an intense urge to die. I ran through the street as cars were turning in, but none of them hit me. Why can’t I just get that one distracted driver to do me in? I tried to cut my wrists, but I couldn’t get my hands to stop shaking. Why can’t I just be strong enough to do it myself?

I think about getting high almost every day. I miss it. I miss not having to think about shit for awhile. I miss the feeling, the feeling that nothing else matters because you can stop giving a fuck about everything for awhile. Poverty is probably the only thing that has been saving me from that right now. I can’t even afford to live, let alone afford coke. But that’s my fault, too. I let people walk all over me, I let them take advantage of me because I’m just so afraid to say no, so worried about hurting people’s feelings at the expense of hurting myself and my own. I paid their bills when I should have just been paying my own. So now they are sitting with their new phones and tablets, and I’m selling mine just so I can afford one more week of therapy and another bag of rice. But it’s my fault. I can’t be mad at anyone else, so I hold it inside, just like I’ve held everything else for so long.

I’ve been thinking about calling my mother. To say what, I don’t know. Maybe to say I’m sorry for being such a horrible daughter. Maybe to hear her voice, to sense her familiar anger. Maybe to ask her why, why she had to do the things she did, the things that have led me where I am today.

Or maybe to let out my rage on her because the rage I’ve been unleashing on myself hasn’t been working. It just keeps building and building and I don’t know what else to do. But I know if I go on like this much longer, the rage will destroy me before anything else does.

1994

~ KJ ~ 7 Comments

I needed to destroy something.

The feeling would not go away. I had been struggling with it since yesterday afternoon, when I sat in therapy and imagined ripping my own skin off. The thoughts continued to play in my mind, and it took everything in me not to comply.

But I still needed to hurt, I needed to destroy, I needed to do something to get this feeling to go away.

I sat in the break room at work, too weak from throwing up all morning to make my way home, but too lost in my feelings to trust myself to go anywhere else. I wanted it all to go away, but sitting in silence just made it come on stronger.

I started looking through my folder. I keep my notes from therapy there, as well the letters I’ve written to people, and important papers I need to work through. I was looking for one of my grounding reminders when I came across the envelope of religious crap my mother had sent me. I kept it because I wasn’t sure of what to do with it. I was waiting for the right time to set it all on fire, but in that moment, I didn’t think I could wait. I needed to destroy something, so I chose that.

I tore each card into pieces. I cut the plastic stained glass window with a knife. First into strips, then into squares, then into tiny flecks. It was relieving. All of my focus shifted from destroying myself to destroying these things that my mother used to help destroy me. I took the pieces I tore and tore them up again and again, until the pieces were so small that I could not tear them anymore. I became so immersed in this pointless destruction that I completely forgot about my own need to self-destruct.

Three hours later, I was done. I threw it all in the trash like confetti. All except for one thing: a picture from 1994, which had been pasted on a religious announcement. I peeled the photo off, quite easily, before tearing the rest of the card to pieces. Pieces of my childhood, completely destroyed. But they weren’t really pieces of anything, except the lies my mother used to tell me. The only true piece of my childhood was in that photo.


I sat there and looked at it Curly blond hair. I know I had curly blond hair. Big glasses. I knew my vision was poor. My name and date on the back. This photograph is of 8 year-old me.

But why was I having so much trouble realizing this? It was like I was looking at a picture of a stranger. I know this is me, but not inherently. I can rarely look at a picture and recognize my self looking back at me. I’m so disconnected with those parts of my life that I don’t even realize those parts are me.

And then the realization hits. This is me.

I sat there and cried. Seemingly over a picture, but it wasn’t really the picture at all. I was crying for that little girl. That little girl I couldn’t connect with. That little girl who was holding in so much, at just eight years old.  I tried to look in her eyes. I tried to look for a sign that someone else could have seen. But I couldn’t see anything. Just a girl in a dress, forced to crack a smile for a school picture. No one could see the pain she was in. No one could see the fear she felt. No one could see the shame she was already carrying with her, in this picture, and every day before and after. No one could see. No one wanted to see.

I cry for that little girl. I cry for the horrible things I know she went through.  I cry for how confused she must have felt — to be told that mommies love their children, but not knowing that love is not supposed to hurt like it did, not knowing that her mother never really loved her. I cry for how strong and brave she had to be. I cry for the childhood she lost, the childhood she never got to have.

I cry for 8 year-old KJ. But I don’t want to cry for me. We’re different people, aren’t we?