On March 20th, while at the gym I received a text message from my friend, Karen. I broke down crying on the elliptical machine as I troubled her, via text, with the running list of bullshit that was happening: a job that I hate, being unable to get into a PhD program, the 30 jobs that I wasn’t good enough for, and the car accident that I had been in. Everything about my conversation was about feeling not just failure, but a desire to become complacent and loathing the thought of complacency. I am better than that but I wanted to give up on improving myself as a person. It wasn’t just the fear of failing, but the fear that I had accomplished everything that I could. I had peaked at age 26 and after a maternal failure, my pregnancy, I was destined to wither away. I didn’t feel sorry for myself but those around me. I felt sorry for my parents who want another grandchild. I felt sorry for my friends who I didn’t want to see because I thought they wouldn’t want to be around me. I felt sorry for my boyfriend having to look at me and realize that I was no longer the person that wrote my online dating profile. I might have been at one point but two years later, I have been back to fighting depression. I was fighting humiliation. I am fighting alone.
l prefaced my conversation with Karen, “what I am about to say sounded crazy.” I felt my energy and my livelihood being sucked out of me. I wanted to spend most of my days in bed. I was also dizzy, nauseous, and with migraines. I spent so much for the first quarter of 2015 asleep or in pain. I told her that I felt haunted. This was the work of an entity because all of a sudden I was afraid of my own home, my own car. When I would leave Andrew’s home, I would obsessively check my rear-view mirror in the hopes that I might catch a glimpse of what I was afraid of. In my backyard, it was the same thing. I would scramble to find my keys and get inside my house only to have to navigate through the dark, crowded, and suffocating garage. Once home, I would sleep in my room facing the wall. I was afraid of facing the open room. I began to develop a pain in my left shoulder because I forced myself to stay in that position. I didn’t let my hands hang off my bed. I was afraid. I pictured myself stroking someone’s longish hair while I slept. That thing was on the floor and I didn’t want to touch it. I would wake up exhausted and go to work. I would really only sleep at Andrew’s house, during the day. Then, my self-hatred of a bad girlfriend would appear because I just wanted to fucking sleep and he wanted me active. How do you tell the person that you love that you can’t move, you don’t have the energy because it has been sucked out of you? I already know I sound fucking crazy I don’t need someone close to me affirming that. I doubt he can understand. I told all this Karen and she recommended I see a shaman. She asked me if I believed and I told her that I honestly didn’t know. I don’t believe in God. I don’t feel his warmth like some people tell me. Both my sister and mother are happy to wake up in the morning. They attribute that happiness to God. I just wake up, cold, exhausted and in pain. I just don’t understand. I want to. Trust me. I want to believe in a higher power and have the faith that everything will be okay but I don’t. I feel alone in this world. And very lost.
It took me a while to schedule a session with Jon. But I did it. Normally I would do the research, but this time I didn’t. I tried once, I wanted to know what he did but I was with Andrew and I didn’t want to be rude so I watched maybe two minutes of a video before I put it away. I still didn’t want to share what I would be doing because when I share something with him, I felt pressured to share with his friends or grandmother. I wish there was a way to just say HEY this is for you only. But he didn’t get that. This lack of intimacy has been a bit disconcerting. I hadn’t addressed it because I had more pressing matters such as my health and mental well-being. I kind of put my relationship on a shelf until I decided how to best address what was going to take place with the shaman. Working on my relationship with Andrew would just open another can of worms that I couldn’t address. One damn thing at a time.
To prepare myself for the energy cleansing, I visited my friend Crystal. At first, I didn’t let her know what I would be doing and instead decided to play catch up. Then over dinner, I let her know what I had been experiencing. She let me know that she was totally on board with it and was very supported. It was great. I needed that. I told her about feeling scared in my house and reminded her that two children have died there, my sister, Laura, and my child, Anya. My sister’s birthday was April 12th, the same day as my cleansing. I didn’t plan it that way. I told her that my child’s birthday would have been April 2nd (the day that I met up with Crystal) while her anniversary is November 10th and my sister’s December 17th. Both dates have kind of blended into one and it’s hard to cope when I am feeling alone and my mother is going through her own loss. I’ve been learning to deal with mine but I don’t think it’s enough. My sister’s ashes are kept at home while I have nothing except four ultrasound photos. I’m not afraid of my sister but that is not the presence that I felt in the mornings. I was scared of looking in the room where she is kept. I told Crystal that when I am angry I felt the aggression of a male inside me. I wanted to punch walls and hit things with a bat. Sometimes I wanted to hurt small animals. I didn’t have these feelings before. I’ve always had repressed feeling and these have been coming up for a while. On a side note: I never acted upon these feelings. I was scared when I am showering, even at Andrew’s. Something about restrooms had been scaring me. Before I peed I would I open up my shower curtain and I was unsure of why. Just new thoughts, feelings and behaviors for this year. I told Crystal that as a child I would tell everyone that I wanted to go home. I was in my house, the same house that I live in today, but that I would always tell my dad (never my mom) that I wanted to go home. I just wanted to go home. And that I wasn’t there. But even today I don’t understand what that means. But I do know that 26 years of living in the same house hasn’t brought me an close to “home.” I told her that I think of England often, almost as if in my past life, I was there. I can sometimes feel the cold stones of some ruin and the cobblestones. I often dream of being barefooted on the cobblestone. I told her about my sister, my mom, my aunt, my grandmother and my grandmother’s sister, and great-grandmothers. I hate being around my aunt. She looks at me like she is looking past me and that she will use me. She manipulates. My grandmother is too far involved with God to notice anyone being harmful. She hates my mother and obsesses over my aunt. Every time my grandmother comes all freaking day long it’s a sigh… and a “pobrecita.” If I could, I would punch my grandmother in the face and say “stop babying your 50+ year old daughter.” Again there is that weird violent aggressiveness. And it’s 99.99999% towards women and family. My great-grandmothers are the ones I find the most interesting. One very intuitive with nature: she would also peer into your very soul and tell you things; while the other very angry and blinded by the injustices in her life. I’m afraid of becoming like her. I don’t want to carry the boulders forever. Actually I don’t even want to pick up the boulders. How do I stop myself from picking them up? I told Crystal that my mom lost two daughters and was left with two, my aunt had two daughters, my grandmother had two daughters, and that my grandmother’s sister had two daughters and that my mom’s grandmother had a few daughters pass away and ended up with just the two daughters as well. I don’t believe in divine intervention or coincidence, but there must be something there but what?
I spoke to Karen, again, (but not to that extent!) and she recommended a few questions: What do I want to change about my life? What is your greatest wishes and desires with career, money, relationships, etc? So I began to write:
- I want direction, a clear purpose in my life.
- I want to know why I am still alive.
- I want to know why I can’t have children.
- I want to know why I never feel like a good daughter. No joke. I feel like a great Catholic and I don’t even step foot in a church. I’m riddled with guilt all the time. I never think I am good enough and that I could be doing more.
- I want to be selfish and embrace it. Not using other people but self-caring. I want to believe in the right of self-preservation. I deserve to take care of myself without someone questioning me. Or me not caring about their question. No. I don’t want them to question me at all. I don’t want their fucking opinion.
- I want to move forward in my relationship with Andrew but I don’t know if he wants to or not. At this point I am too afraid to ask. I don’t want to be stuck again for another eight years moving at a snail’s pace and turning 36 and have another failed relationship going absolutely no where. I feel really sad when I think about how my 20s were destroyed. A time of self-discovery lost to one relationship. I won’t do that with my 30s. I want to be able to lay in bed with the man I love and not being afraid of someone walking in on us. I want to speak my mind to him and not have to explain myself to people who don’t make up our relationship like his grandmother or my parents. I want to wake up with him next to me and have that companionship that I haven’t felt in months. I want to struggle as an adult with real adult problems and not feel like a freaking teenager.
- I need independence and the ability to grow as a person, as a woman instead of feeling like I am just going through puberty. I want to look in the mirror and smile. I want to feel happiness. What does that even mean? I don’t even know what happiness feels like. When was the last time I was happy? In Hawaii when I laughed so much it hurt. Happiness now just feels like a delirious feeling. Most of the time when others are happy and I should be happy, I just feel calm. Or I just fake it. I’m tired of faking everything in my life. I’m living a lie.
- I want to cry without having to explain myself or have someone try and fix me.
- I want to support a loving relationship and feel supported.
angiesadventuresinwonderland 