BROKEN, BEATEN, AND BULLIED

I can count on it.  I depend on it.  And it never lets me down.  The nighttime, from 6-10, is the graveyard where my pretenses  go to die.   

It’s kind of good in a way . . . to feel this despair, I mean.  Before I would try to steel myself against the pain, but now innocent tears plunge down well worn pathways, and my resolve is lost.  I become that bullied child again.  

I often think I should just get over it.  They were just kids, weren’t they?  Did they know better?  Does it matter?

Ask my insecurities.  They’ll tell you.  They’ll scream the truth if it were safe.  

Ask why we constantly need other’s approval or help in making decisions.  Ask why we can never trust ourselves.  Ask why our adult-self cannot make friends, trust others, and fears being social.  Ask, ask, ask away.  The answers agree and never disappoint.

Now, decades later, so many years have ticked off the calendar, but I still see that emotionally beaten and bullied child, 6th grade, head down on desk, tears bursting through failed attempts of constraint, embarrassed they caught her in their grasp again.

Sadly, I remember that girl.  She was me, and I was her.  And neither of us are okay tonight.   She still cries, and I still watch, helplessly.  We take turns when it gets to be too much . . . and tonight it’s too much . . . for both of us . . . and I want so badly for someone to listen.  

Are you there God? It's me.

My eyes are blurry and my head is fuzzy.  The tears keep breaking the ledge and blazing a trail down my face.  I have taken one too many meds.  The migraine has pounded consistently today, as it has the last week and longer. 

I really don’t know what is wrong with me, and I have no one to tell.  I have pushed Therapist away; we won’t see him for several weeks.  I didn’t mean to push him away, but I’ve been so dissociative this week that it just happened.  My members have been so active that it is beyond description and explanation.  I fail at words.

I’ve been student teaching the last 3 months.  The last three weeks seem to really be worse, and I haven’t been completely present for them.  I feel the switches take over me during the classes.  I notice that my brain dissolves and the content knowledge seeps away.  I ask a question but don’t remember what I’ve asked, much less the answer.  I am losing time.  I feel myself become someone different.  It is not safe for me to be in a classroom.  It’s not that the students are in danger; it’s that I am in danger.  I am finding myself becoming emotional and teary in front of them. 

Away from the classroom, my coping skills have revolved around alcohol, prescription meds, and more prescription meds. 

One of my classes is a remedial class, and they have been abusive to me.  One of the girls called me a “white n”, a derogatory word used for black people.  Irony is that she is black herself.  The day this happened ended I called my university supervisor sobbing.   I haven’t stopped crying since. I left school this particular day and got so drunk I believe I had alcohol poisoning.  I took sedative drugs and passed out after I made myself throw up.  I’ve done this twice.  Yesterday Husband and I went out on a date to a movie.  I had been bawling all day so badly and had a migraine so terrible that I took his prescription tranquilizers, some of mine, and my migraine meds.  I ended up bawling in the middle of the movie, then passing out.  Husband tried to rouse me, but to no avail.  I woke up five minutes after the movie ended and credits rolled.  After I got home, I went to bed and I didn’t wake up again until 12 hours later. 

I’ve been bawling today till my stomach hurts.  I can’t figure out what’s wrong with me.  It’s so bad I can’t catch my breath.  Something hurts my heart and my members so badly it can’t be named.  I keep having flashbacks of people hurting me.  The uncle.  The neighbor.  I’m having flashbacks of hiding in my closet, and I can see everything around me like I’m really sitting in there.  And I cry and cry and cry.  And it won’t go away.  And I don’t know what this has to do with student teaching.  I don’t know.  I don’t know.  I don’t know. 

The irony is that for a while, the tears felt good.  For weeks I’ve been numb and rock-like.  Cold and distant.  Just blank.  Once I started crying I felt better.  I could feel the refreshment of pain again, and it was a relief.  But I’m over it now.  The pain is too much.  I’m ready for the numbness.

I am really trapped.  I need help.  And I really don’t know where to go from here.  I am hiding during the most important semester of my life, and I don’t want to.  I really don’t want to.  God, help me.

Heroes needed. Apply here.

I’m decompensating.  I am fulfilling everything ever said about me.  

In my internship as a 6^th grade Language Arts teacher, my parts have been out and I’ve lost time.  My university supervisor has given me feedback regarding a comment he said I made to the students.  It was a very demeaning, destructive comment. I have no recollection of saying anything so hurtful to my students.

He said, along with my cooperating teacher, that I can not handle stress, and I break down emotionally.

I could have saved them the paperwork.  I already knew that.

It’s a hopeless situation.  I don’t know how to handle stress.  My reactions are reflexive.  Always has been.  Always will be..

And now, I’m facing my last semester of school.  I don’t want to fall short of graduation by just one semester, but I honestly think I don’t have the ability to be a teacher.   I don’t think there is any amount of cooperation I can establish among my parts to make teaching safe.  

What devastates us so much is that we try twice as hard as other people but are only half as successful.  We will never measure up.  We will always be deficient.  

I’m no longer a hero.  How pathetic.