#catharitic journal entry

[mir-katnip]

Me; A History

Feel free to ignore this, unless you want to gain insight into my madness. It is very long - but I need some catharsis. I think, over the years, I have honed what I like to refer to as "Diplomatic Indifference" My mother likes to call it sociopathy, I imagine she'd know. I was (allegedly) a wretched child with too many emotions, and my mother, after divorcing my brother's father, and dealing with mine almost dying, found childhood behaviors reprehensible. It did not help, that I was immensely charming with strangers, (A trait which I inhereted from both my parents) and a bit too clever for my own good... My dad read to me every single night, I could recognize words on sight at 16 months of age. I remember being so thrilled with myself, at that age, spelling "THE" with those stupid alphabet magnets. It thrilled my father too. I was reading children's books by age three, "chapter books" by four, by eight I had devoured The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and Hitch Hiker's Guide. I was fully aware of proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. I had thorough hatred for repetition in writing. At 9, I began my first novel. I remember almost everything about it even today. You see, because I was cleverer than most my age, it was expected, that I behave the part - without being a smart-ass. I look at it now an realize that I was never allowed to actually be a child. It was unacceptable, and every action that was in way child-like was looked at as a slight against nature. Yes I "got into things" as she put it, and yes, I would lie. But all kids do this... The family therapist did all the tests imaginable, and it was determined that I was intelligent, and maybe a little weird. "Weird" was my official diagnosis. I was bullied relentlessly by my peers... I had few friends, but I never cared until they started taking away my books because an 8 year old should not be reading anything more advance than Judy Bloom. My homeroom teacher for third grade was... well, lets just say we had direct access to an unused chem-lab, and he had a fucked up way of "punishing" the girls. I was easily bored with his class, and would frequently fail to turn in my homework... This was cause for "punishment" at least twice, that I fully recall. (FFS I was 8, it was horrid, and I didn't know it was unapproved methodology) That was the year the anxiety problems began oddly enough. I refused from then on to participate in any classroom activity that required me to be actively social with my teachers... The bullying sinched my dislike for my peers. I withdrew and found other ways of being mischivous at home. This led to my mother's tried and true discipline of restriction and copying the bible. Word for word... Needless to say, this only helped to spur my desire to write. I would steal pages out of the back of the notebook and use the tiny sliver of light that came into my bedroom from the street lamp, to write in the dead of night. Thus began the severe insomnia. I was over-protected. If I had friends, I was never to give them our phone number. I could never attend birthday parties, or other events. I was socially alienated from the world at an age when I should have been acquiring social skills. Until college, it is safe to say my only friend was my dad. High school, proved to be further traumatic. I was terrified of it before I even started. My older brother had taken up alcohol, weed, and self-harm in high school. But nobody bothered to notice until things went too far. Oddly enough, instead of screaming like a banshee at him, she sat on his bed and cried with him. Being asthmatic, I had simple triggers that would land me in the hospital, allergy, exercise, stress... High school was endlessly stressful. I had a math teacher (also the football coach) who thought that cussing in class made him cool, made the students like him. I found it to be stupid and distracting. But I mentioned it to the school councelor once, and he decided to single me out by name, as if I wasn't a social paraiah already. Then there was the history teacher, with whom I bantered in class. He seemed to appreciate my intellect, and a well formed debate. One day he kept me after class and I missed my bus home... he offered to drive me home. I was of course apprehensive, thankfully he asked me to take the roll sheet to the office, where I attempted to contact my mother. She didn't answer. So I tried my brother, but his room-mate and best friend (Who is now my only brother - the real one joined a cult and disowned us.) Answered, he offered to come get me. I went back to the classroom to retrieve my belongings. I told the teacher I had procured a ride home, to which he responded "Well then, I hope we don't find you chopped up in little bits in a ditch somewhere." This effectively drove me to making myself ill, I wound up in hospital for three weeks, being unable to breathe. I eventually wound up being on Independant Study for the remainder of my high school career. Which suited me well enough, I learned better on my own, and what I couldn't do alone, my father taught me. But this further secluded me from social norms. I was with my mother 24/7 which was never good, as neither of us could manage being in the other's company longer than 10 minutes without some sort of verbal sparring. I did graduate several months early, which wasof course lovely for me if not for anyone else. Now my psychiatric history, is far less telling about myself... I started therapy at age 11, and again the official diagnosis was simply that I was clever, creative, and weird. "Of course I hear voices in my head... They are the characters I put to paper." When my mother decided that my child-like behavior was psychosis, she took my to a psychiatrist... Clearly I needed to be drugged out of my skull. I was put on almost everything at one time or another, but nothing did anything except the anti-anxiety medications, which finally cornered my anxiety disorder. It was the antipsychotics which I should never have been on that really messed me up. I had been a wretchedly skinny child. Tall, but underweight. I was 5 foot 4 and only 86 pounds at point... But I was put on Welbutrin at 13 - in a matter of 9 months, I went from a size zero, to a size 12. In the next year between the drug, and puberty, I topped at a size 18. My own mother began to mock my weight, she attributed it all to my horrible eating habits alone. Eventually I began to refuse the medication, knowing full well that that was the cause of the weight gain. After several months of being off the drugs, I slimmed down to a size 9, for several years, and I was happy there. Unfortunatey, other things began to hit. I had begun to notice more that my mother mocked me at every turn, she freqently informed me that She might love me, but she doesn't like me. I was lonely, friendless, and sleep deprived. I became depressed, and more anxious than ever, but I still refused to be medicated. I followed in my brother's footsteps only as far as self-harm... when it was discovered my mother insisted I was doing it to get attention. She insisted, demanded and strong-armed me into being medicated again. (I never outgrew the self-harm "phase" I just got better at hiding it.) Eventually the norm became my masks and lies. There was nothing I hated more than being medicated. I attempted to be a social person, much to my own detriment. The only thing I managed to keep in check was my writing. My only solace. I joined a twitter RPG, and met a small circle of women, who became my chosen sisters. I was one of the youngest, but our youngest was only 18. Her name was Beth. Being as mine is Josephine, she and I formed an instant bond over the fact that we shared the names of the protagonist and her most beloved sister in Little Women. And truly that was our relationship. She was shy, and brilliant and perfect, and I would have done absolutely anything for her, as she kept my head on my shoulders. Beth's father died of cancer when she was only 5. Her mother physically and psychologically abused her until she finally left for University. I day I was only too happy to witness. We were as close as to people living on opposite sides of the world could be. She was my baby sister, and that was all there was too it. Unfortunately, just as in Little Women, I lost my Bess. IT hat been a bad year for her. First with her disappearance during the 2012 London Games. She had tickets and attended the opening ceremony, and suddenly dropped off the face of the planet for two weeks. We were naturally frantic. She eventually got back in touch once she "came too" she was somewhere well out of the UK, with no knowledge of how she got there, what had happened, or where she'd been. This episode managed to land her in a psychiatric hospital for three months. She hadn't been eating, thus diagnosed with an eating disorder, she told me, and I fully believed her, that she just forgot to eat most of the time because she was never hungry. She'd been drinking vodka like it was water, diagnosis - alcoholism. Eventually she went to a private psychiatrist who finally correctly diagnosed her with PTSD. Everything she'd gone through with her mother... even I had that diagnosis pegged, an that was before I adopted abnormal psychology and nursing as my major/minor. Her "boyfriend" at the time refused to research PTSD, and after the hospitalization, she was worse for wear. He had begun to treat her like a doormat, and eventually broke up with her because she wasn't feeling well enough to fuck him whenever he wanted it. The breakup was hard. She always wore her heart on her sleeve, and shared it openly with anyone who was kind to her. After that prick left, she became angry for a good while. Even she and I had a short falling out, because someone told her some lie about me. It eventually cleared up, when she started thinking straight again. Not long after, she met a nice young Scot named Thomas... he was good to her, he understood her illness, and he worshipped the ground she walked on. She was quite suddenly back to her sweet self. They weren't together long before he proposed, and she said yes. I was so pleased for her, just perfectly happy to see her FINALLY being loved the way she deserved. She went to his family's home in Scotland for Christmas, she said they were strange, but she loved them - and they her. On yule, she sent out her traditional Christmas emails. Regaling us with her adventures with her fiance. She sounded so joyous. On boxing day I recieved a message on facebook... Thomas told me she had passed away. I felt certain it was some sick joke, and ignored it for three days. I emailed, messaged, texted, called. To no avail... Finally I messaged Thomas back, asking if it was a joke, or if he had been hacked. He didn't respond. I rallied the forces, and we called around to her house-mates and got our answer. On the 23rd Tom and his parents went out, leaving Bess to relax a little. When they came home they found her on the floor, wrists slit. In February we managed to get all the details. Beth had decided to fogive her ex for treating her like shit while they were together, so she sent him a christmas email, like she did with all of us. He had written back to tell her that he never liked her, the only thing she had been good for was a quick shag, and a free meal. He told her he never wanted to speak to her again, and to stay out of his life. This pushed her over the edge... He killed her. Gods help me that BOY never wants to meet me in a dark alley, or a brightly lit police station. Because my reaction will be the same in either place. If his head remains on his shoulders, his own prick will be jammed down his throat... In one swift motion I lost my baby sister, my best friend, my editor, and my co-author. I was in hysterics. I could not be consoled. I was screaming and sobbing for days. They nearly had me committed (sectioned) I stopped writing, nothing that came out was any good. And I didn't have my sounding board anymore. It's taken me five years, to even get back to fan fiction - forget original work - I doubt I'll ever get back to that, heartbreaking though it is. Lately I've been more anxiety-ridden than I have been since I was a teenager. I've fallen to a desperate need for anti-anxiety and anti-depressants, my sleep is more erratic than I can ever remember it being, when I do sleep I'm generally plagued by nightmares. My body is failing me, I'm in constant pain, I can't seem to find any job locally, my medical licenses have lapsed, because I can't afford my CEU's and the renewal fees. I'm living with my parents, which makes the anxiety and depression worse. I have no friends - and gods help me I think I'm embracing my mother's diagnoses of me, because the only way to stay sane is to try not to care. I am a wreck. I'm miserable - and I have no one. Yet I keep on, because there are people who have it worse... there is always someone worse off. Despite the mask, I always care about everyone else. Whether they care about me or not.