Christmas party

I had the best time, I really did.  I am glad I hang out with the bleacher creatures!

"There's nothing wrong with you" sez the therapist, "You're just depressed."

The kids noticed before I did. So did my teachers, so did the school pyschologists.

Quiet, very quiet with fits of rage.

-Third Grade-

I stabbed Florence Sanford with a safety pin, I don’t even know why. I was angry. Kids picked on me at school. I didn’t lash out at them. I lashed out at the one that was nicest to me.

-At Twelve-

I ripped my shirt, my favorite shirt. My sister looked on with puzzled amusement. I was angry. My foster mom drank, she beat me constantly. She was always angry as well.

I still thought nothing was amiss

One day, the kids said, "How come you’re so cool outside of school?" Inside of school, I was cowardly, bashful and shy. Outside of school, I was fucking WILD. I reveled in it.

I stole, broke things, and was always one of the first to sneak on Private property.

And I daydreamed, I lived in my daydreams. Sometimes its hard now to tell what was my dream life and what was reality. I read books on insanity like I never promised you a Rose Garden. I wished that I was truly insane because then I wouldn’t care.

 

-At Fifteen-

I picked up a piece of glass on the way home. I was fucking Vito, my second time ever fucking. It was after school and I way late getting home. I needed an excuse. I know, I’ll say that I got caught in a fight and they tried to slash me. Weird thing is that I started to like the self inflicted slashing that I was giving myself. I wrote my first morbid poem while sitting in the doorway, waiting for my mother to open the door, my arm throbbing in pain.

That afternoon started a long history of self inflicted lacerations on my left arm. Why did I keep doing it? I only know that once the wound opens and the blood flows, I feel peace, a numb piece.

So smart am I but I can’t figure out how to love myself.

-At Sixteen-

DADDY TRIED TO HAVE SEX WITH ME!!!!!

Daddy wasn’t the first man to molest me. It first happened when I was twelve and trying to run away. Daddy wasn’t the last, I was raped by a neighborhood lunatic only scant months after Dad molested me.

 

 

 

I’m evil now or so I say. I run to the streets, sleeping in unlocked cars, in apartment basements, anywhere, I went feral.

I am running, running, running away to nowhere and I don’t know, I just don’t know.

Alcohol, sex, drugs, alcohol, sex, drugs, alcohol, sex, drugs, alcohol, sex, drugs, alcohol, sex, drugs, alcohol.

-At Eighteen-

I was lucky, I was taken in by some really loving people, taken away from that place called hell over on 93 Elizabeth avenue in Hempstead. The weird thing is that once I was living in a place where people were nice to me, I really went crazy.

 

-19 going on twenty-

Guess where I am? My first mental hospital, Yay!!!!!!

I got into a good college but spent my time doing good drugs, not sleeping, not caring and whoops, gosh darn, I tried to commit suicide a few times in the span of a couple of weeks.

So, here I am at Long Island Jewish – Hillside Hospital. Just a reminder people, don’t get hospitalized in a Jewish Hospital during passover. Ohhh, my gosh, the food sucked!

My doctors were none to pleased when they found out that I was bringing pot onto hospital grounds and getting high with my fellow crazies.

Alice was there, paranoid chick. We met months before in Washington Square Park. She was selling Thai sticks there. We did acid that night and she left me with this crazy hillbilly at some apartment by the 59th street bridge in Manhattan.

Anyways, it was weird to see her in the hospital and she blamed me for her being there.

Back to me:

I supposedly have a personality disorder. The Good Dr. Goldstein puts me on mellaril. I stop smoking pot and even alcohol. It doesn’t stop though. A few months later, I’m in the locked unit because I sliced myself again.

My very last doctor at the hospital begs me to stay in therapy but I want to be ‘normal’.

So, its back to normal life. I get a job, I go to college, I cheat on my boyfriend, I do lots of drugs. I slash my arm……back to normal.

 

 

-I’m in my twenties-

Things don’t change except locales. Suddenly I’m 28, homeless, shooting heroin and cocaine. I love heroin. I feel NOTHING. I’m a Cheshire cat smiling knowingly, flicking my tail and purring in my numbness. Even that doesn’t last and I’m in a windowless hell with no escape from my brain. I escape to Bellevue.

In succession, I stop using dope, I stop using cocaine, I stop slashing my arms.

 

-Thirties-

ANGER, DRINKING, ANGER, DRINKING, FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!!!!

I am out of control but its okay because as long as I do what other people do and its not illegal then why should I change? Getting arrested for assault changes all of that and slapping some girl in a drunken blind rage makes me see differently. So, I start doing the AA thing.

-Forties, at this moment-

I actually stopped drinking for two years but I’m bored, I abuse sex and the computers until I meet another lost soul that I destroy myself with. I start drinking, smoking grass, hating myself. Letting myself be abused, wanting to be abused. It culminates in a mad catastrophe of me punching him, getting him in trouble with Child Welfare because I can’t handle my anger.

My doctor tries to get me hospitalized but to no avail. The psych ward that I went to thinks I’m fine, just stressed out. My psychiatrist, thwarted by the hospital, decides to keep me heavily sedated just enough to function and work.

I cry and want to go back to the madness.

And that is where I am now. Years of therapy, of being literaly used as a guinea pig by my shrink. His philosophy is evidently "Lets try all these drugs on you. Fuck repercussions. It’s all about numbing yourself but doing it legally. Whats that, its not working right? Well then, my dear, try another pill."

I stopped seeing him. I barely go to my therapist any longer. I’ve been going lately. I stopped taking the pills. I’ve been going back and forth with the sobriety thing.

I want to sleep lately but I never have time. I want to kill myself but I’m afraid what would happen to my cats.

I still day dream, I still hate myself and I wonder when I will stop this bullshit.

Barbara R. Lee Thursday, December 09, 2004