I Am Terrified

I am terrified for this conference. It is going to be a professional writing conference. I don't belong there! I'm just some girl that wrote a book. That doesn't automatically mean that my work is fit for such scrutiny. I'm not sure that I can handle it, honestly.

I have been chasing acknowledgement for my book since I released it. I thought that, surely, my vulnerability was potent enough to put you into my head. My heart. Surely that was worth something, right? Surely that was captivating?

The thought of someone not liking my work eats me up inside. I shouldn't care, but I do.

I'm considering bailing on the conference altogether and just exploring the area instead. I'm not sure.

I am the one that organized this thing. I should see it through. Besides, I set the boundary of only doing one day of the actual conference. I realized that doing the entire thing may prove to be intimidating and overstimulating for me. I was looking for literary things that I could do and just generally enjoying the area. I have had a lot of success in my research and I am genuinely excited for this trip. I just hope that it goes to plan, you know?

Being in a new city so far away from home is intimidating. Exploring by myself and taking public transportation by myself is scary. I am terrified that something awful might happen. I could hate the conference. I could hate my (very haunted) hotel. My luggage could get misplaced or stolen. Someone could try and hurt me. There are so many opportunities for catastrophe.

Where was this fear when I went on my national park solo trip? Where is this girl who hiked 34 miles and nearly 8,000 feet in elevation on her own? Who hiked up a river? Who did it all in less than two weeks? Where in the world did she go, this girl?

I did all of that on my own, but I forget how. I went on a travel contract for three months half way across the country while I was fresh into my psychosis recovery.

Still, too, there was that strong girl.

I drove dozens of hours to see Yellowstone National Park, Craters of the Moon National Preserve, Grand Teton National Park, and Mount Rainier National Park all on my own. There were also natural hot springs, prolifically, in the part of the country that I was in. Silver Falls State Park in Oregon is also fabulous. You hike behind like 10 waterfalls in a lush environment. Also, in Oregon, is Wallowa Lake. That was my first time seeing mountains in years.

I also explored Bogus Basin (near Boise) and the surrounding mountains.

I came out of psychosis and, somehow, was also able to do all of that.

I didn't yet understand what I was experiencing the post-psychosis depression.

It's like... I couldn't enjoy anything. True anhedonia. I didn't know where it was coming from.

(If you're curious about the summation of my episode and the chemical makeup of psychosis, I have other blog posts that describe this in detail)

It's still like that, but now it is paralyzing.

When I went on my recent solo trip, it was hard. It was still so hard to manage, even though it had been a year since my episode. My brain still felt like it was thinking in slow motion. It still does, honestly.

When I'm not obsessively doom scrolling, I am paralyzed because of the new reality of my life. I have never felt shame like this before, or such a profound fear of trusting my own mind. It has completely killed my self esteem. For a couple of years there, before the episode, I was confident.

I'm just not anymore.

It still feels like thinking through syrup sometimes.

I would very much like to shake this off.

I took a big step today. I flipped through my journal that I wrote in during my episode. It was very triggering to see how nonsensical I was. Like, here is this staggering physical evidence of the worst period of my life. My utter loss of touch with reality, splayed for me to see.

I will say that my handwriting was impeccable, so I suppose that is something.

Nevertheless, it is a cruel reminder that it's possible that that could happen to me again.

I live in fear of that every day.

Even now, I am dissecting the trigger(s) of my episode. It is an agonizingly long and slow process. I had bottled up so much of my trauma that I, for all intents and purposes, lost my fucking mind. I buried such horrible things in my mind. It's like experiencing it for the first time again. I have suffered so much abuse and genuinely didn't realize it. It just... came rushing back to me all at once.

It feels like my brain is betraying me again. Like, fuck, what else is there? Clearly I can't be trusted with my own recollection of history. Something that should be so objective just isn't to me anymore.

Is this just how it is now?

I have to be a wave breaker against ever-evolving waves of trauma? Realizations have come hurdling into me. I am so disgusted and ashamed of myself. I am angry at myself for being so impressionable about the way that things should be instead of remembering the truth as it was. It's hard for me to think of myself as intelligent when I couldn't even discern my own trauma, and in many ways, my reality.

Fuck, am I angry at these abusers too. I went all of this time thinking that I am the problem. I wasn't. I suffered actual, tangible violations perpetrated by a consecutive group of men. I have been the victim to sexual violence, grooming, and gaslighting. I knew that I had experienced this before, but I suppressed so much of it. I genuinely buried it in my mind. I knew that I had experienced abuse, but I am coming to realize that it is so much more than I originally thought. I am burning with fucking rage. How is it that they just... get to be out in the world? They are free to terrorize other people. They are free to outright abuse anyone that they want to. Nothing will happen to them. They will never even touch adequate recourse for their actions. They get to just be, their ego choking every room that they're ever in.

Is justice even real?

All I can do about it is write poems sometimes. Even that, for some reason, is difficult for me to do right now. The words just aren't flowing to me like they normally do.

I feel woefully insecure about my work.

It's painful to be perceived.

I don't want anyone to have an opinion of me. I want to not exist in people's minds. I don't want any presence whatsoever. I don't want anything. I just want to be an NPC. Negligible.

I also, however, want to share my writing under my own name.

These things cannot coexist. I have decided to share my work with the world. The very fabric of my soul. It is an intimate look into who I am.

It's Pandora'x box. It cannot be undone.

It's hard to be nonchalant about that.

I recently had an old coworker reach out to me about my book. I recently had another current colleague reach out to me.

They had lovely things to say, but it still made me feel self-conscious.

Fuck, what really broke me was book club.

It was time for nominations for the next six months or so of our reading schedule. At that point, I was at a place where I was proud of myself. I felt confident and excited for this conference.

At book club, I talked a lot about my author journey. I don't have a lot of friends these days, so I guess I am prone to oversharing and being startlingly honest with who I do have left. I... Suppose that could be off-putting. I can see how it would come across as self-absorbed. It can be intense in a way that people aren't ordinarily comfortable with. Psychosis is taboo. Of course people judge me.

I offered my book, in a fit of arrogance, as one of the options for my month to pick. I had also given them physical copies of my book at this point, as well as one of my custom bookmarks. I was overly confident because I had dropped off my books at an indie bookstore for the first time. A local library also offered to hold my book in their local authors section (and sent me a cute letter about it). It was a good day.

I figured that I would gamble on myself. I almost never do.

They didn't want to read my book. They didn't vote for it.

I told them that I wouldn't take it personally, but I didn't realize how much it would hurt once it actually happened. I subliminally expected them to pick my book. I expected them to be enthusiastic about it. I didn't think that I had expectations, and really, that's not fair to them. Still, I expected them to be as excited as I am about the prospects of my book.

They just weren't.

What if that's how everyone feels?

My writing is actually atrocious and everyone except for me knows it. I feel rejected.

My publisher also has this bracket contest for some of their authors. I was knocked out on the first round. Here I was, thinking that my work is some profound thing. It's not. It's just cadenced rubbish that nobody actually enjoys.

I had a good couple-week streak of confidence before it was inevitably dashed again. It really was nice while it lasted. It's nice to know that such a thing can be possible for me.

I hope that I'm wrong about this conference. I hope that this trip is every bit of fun as I secretly, rebelliously, hope that it is. I have to be prepared if it isn't though. I have to survive it, no matter what happens. I can still be devastated and do hard things. I've done it before, I just have to remember how to do it now.

I have been working a lot lately between my two jobs. I have regularly been putting in 45+ hour weeks for the last couple of months.

Well, it's finally happened.

I've burnt myself out.

I picked up yesterday and barely made it through. I have hit such a paralyzing point of exhaustion.

So, I called in today.

I have to be up at the asscrack of dawn tomorrow for an early flight and I still have to pack. I called in. I decided that it was very important to take time to prepare, physically and otherwise, for this trip. I am glad that I gave myself this time, but I still detest calling in. I always feel so ashamed and guilty. I have worked through all kinds of sickness before, but even I can recognize when I need a mental health day. I am trying to prioritize that as best I can. I'm doing a pretty mediocre job of it, but I am trying. I am proud of myself for doing what I need to do in order to take care of myself.

I obviously have a very many problems, but the two most prominent are rumination and a social media addiction. I am haunted by anything even remotely related to my episode. I am starting to have days where it doesn't entirely consume me, but the bad days are definitely still the majority. Bipolar disorder, unfortunately, is neurodegenerative. From here on out, it will only ever get worse. I don't know how much of this to attribute to that, my CPTSD, or the neurotoxicity from my episode. It's probably some kind of ratio for all three, I'm sure of it. It definitely feels like they triple-teamed me with this episode. Fully triple fucking dipped.

It's paralyzing. I feel too heavy to move a lot of the time. So, now, I doom scroll. I don't get out of bed if I can help it. I try to find something to alleviate the regular, all-fucking-consuming, shame spiral that I find myself in most of the time.

It doesn't work.

I just get even more discouraged. I feel like I should post any damn thing that I write to keep up with the content and expectations that I've set with myself. My writing hasn't been up to par lately, and believe me, I know that. I will try to do a better job of letting the writing come to me organically. I can't force it.

Sometimes I get terrified that I won't ever be able to write again. Like the inspiration will just dry up for me like it did before.

I detail this in other posts, but a symptom of my episode was writing poetry prolifically. For awhile, I was scared to write at all. I have been working very hard to have a healthy relationship with writing and to not regard it as a litmus test for psychosis.

Prior to my episode, I hadn't written in years. With the help of therapy, I have been able to discern why this is. The last thing that I wrote (prior to my episode) was a love poem to someone that had raped me. I associated writing with him, so I didn't write at all for a number of years. I also hadn't realized his abuses of me until very recently. My relationship with writing is strained right now because of this.

I don't feel as uninhibited anymore with my writing. I feel scrutinized, but I guess I was the one who chose this for myself

I chose to publish a book and start a public poetry account. I chose to be perceived.

I just need to find a way to balance that, internally.

I do think that I will get there. It will be, just like this whole fucking thing, agonizingly slow and painful.

I am going to try to use this blog more frequently. Yes, I know, I've said that before.

I really mean it this time!

maybe

I have learned that I need to start very, very small with my goals since my episode. I can't jump into anything, try as I might.

So I really will try to write here more often. It's cathartic. It's good for me.

Besides, if I hate this conference and the area, I'll be cooped up in my (very haunted) hotel room. Plenty of time to be tortured and write. I think that I need to embrace writing as a whole instead of an entire focus on poetry. The ability to articulate your thoughts is also a superpower. It helps one to digest their human experience and make some kind of sense of it. I need to lean into that. It's very healthy, especially because I am lacking in friendship. I don't get to talk about these things, in this way, and in this much detail.

Of course, I do have my loving husband. He has such a golden heart and always supports me. It's just important to me that I also be able to articulate my thoughts on my own. It's also not quite the same as talking to a friend about it. I could use another perspective and I just don't have that. I've got to do it on my own.

Holding everything inside nearly killed me once with this episode. I will try my hardest to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

Writing is obviously very important to me. I should keep doing it, you know?

It's also supposed to rain nearly the whole time that I'm in Maryland.

Truly moody weather.

If this whole convoluted, ambitious idea goes to shit, then at least I can write.

Anyways... As always, this is all over the place.

It probably doesn't make sense, but whatever.

I'll see you next time.