Sweet Xanax

On my second emergency trip to the psychiatrist this week he finally gave me something that he SAYS will make my life feel less like I'm riding spread eagle on a moving train that is fast approaching a tunnel. I had a whole Xanax before bed and I think it helped me sleep. Took a half of one when I got to work this morning and have felt like a zombie all day.

The doctor offered to put me on disability leave. A sweep of relief washed over me when he said that until I realized that I would undoubtedly lose my job if I do that. Not that they will fire me, but that they will marginalize me (even more than now) and I will come back to find something so different and frightening I don't know if I can face it.

My ego won't let me be on mental disability leave though my head says "OH YEAH BABY THAT IS WHAT I WANT TO DO."

So instead I screamed for 90 minutes, straight, on the phone with someone I thought I loved. For 90 minutes. And he kept hanging up and I kept calling back and screaming some more. I truly don't know why he didn't just turn off his phone. (Not that I'm trying to make it his responsibility to get me to stop screaming, but because I'm actually incredibly curious as to why he'd listen that long ...)

Yeah, it's that bad

It must be trying to come off one antidepressant while going on the other. As the levels of the old ones drop, I find myself crying. Screaming. Wanting to climb the walls.

As the levels of the new one rise, I feel hope creeping up my throat, too, but only for an instant. Hope is a waste of an emotion. It won't make things good happen and it won't prevent the bad. It only causes pain, the pain of failure, the pain of having something good followed by something so bad.

Hopeless and depressed. Atypically depressed, I guess. That's how it is. Depressed.

Hello, EmSam

I've been depressed as long as I can remember. It's not just like "Oh this is so depressing" kind of depressed. It's the insidious kind, the kind that steals moments of my life and never gives them back. It's the kind that makes me want to close my eyes and sleep, all the time. The kind that makes it hard to give a damn about anything.

They call it "major depression," and in my case it's chronic -- which means it is there, always. My particular type is treatment resistant, which means that even if I'm lucky enough to find a drug or combination of drugs that help me for a time, they eventually poop out.

I visualize it as a cloudy figure, surrounding me with silvery fog. It's deceptively soothing, but really is much more like numbing. I care about things and people, but not about life. I'd rather just have a nap, thanks.

I don't realize how depressed I am until I get a flash of it lifting, when I see a color I haven't seen in a while or have an inspiration to actually pursue a hobby again. I take it as a good sign when I wander around inside a craft store, for example, and imagine all the things I'd like to make. If only. If only I had the energy, or the desire for more than a flash or two.

I have tried all the SSRIs, one by one, for the past 15 years. It started with Prozac, which was described after an especially acute episode of public rage. I was scared into taking a drug I knew would alter my brain chemistry in the bizarre and somewhat frightening ways that anti depressants do.

I've been on a rollercoaster ride of various drugs since then -- when a new SSRI comes out I was switched from Prozac to Paxil to Effexor to Zoloft to Cymbalta. Probably a few others in there, too. I tried Wellbutrin and had one notably frightening experience with lithium.

Nothing lifts my moods. I am somewhat resigned to living a life that is not worth living (considering the alternative is too costly). I have researched vagal nerve stimulation and transcranial magnets. I read Kitty Dukakis' book about electric shock therapy and have seriously considered it. Am seriously considering it. Would do it if given the chance without the red tape involved.

Instead, today, I'm on Emasam. It's a new antidepressant, named for the daughter Emily and son Sam of a marketing person somewhere. Well, hello there.

Some people out there say it works wonders. Others aren't so sure.

Right now I'm in the second category. I'm experiencing withdrawal from the Cymbalta and Wellbutrin (yeah, was taking both) and am off sleeping pills and anti-anxiety drugs as well. From being on all of it a few weeks ago to being on only this.

This morning I thought it was going to be the end of me. I was so light headed, so frightened, so frazzled. It's minuscule improvement in the past few hours, but probably because I succumbed to taking a Cymbalta I found rolling around in the bottom of my purse. I felt like someone had given me a gift or a sign so I popped it and I think that's relieving some of the pain of the withdrawal. Or I'm imagining it. Or something.

Anyone else taking Emsam? How does it work for you?

Don't call me a borderline

I have borderline personality disorder. I am a person who has a personality disorder.

However, I am not a personality disorder. I am a person.

I've always balked at the use of the term "she's a borderline." It feels wrong grammatically, but it also feels very invalidating. When therapists write they write about their "borderline clients." Would they also say "my depression clients"? Probably not -- they'd say "my depressed clients," which is a description.


A better term I read recently described people like me as PBB. I had to scope around and see if he meant "peanut butter babies," or "pure bullshit barometers" or "pushes buttons battalion," but what he was abbreviating is People with Borderline Behaviors, or as I like to think of it People with BPD behaviors, because we're actually people with behaviors that fit the definition of the diagnosis, but we are not the diagnosis.

I know a person who believes that everything -- life -- is "just a conversation." He says that our feelings are conversations with ourselves. It's all about the language we use to describe things, internally and externally. In my conversations about BPD, I think I will try to use the term PBB. It is the only descriptor that remembers that I'm a person.

It's about to happen

I have a chance this Saturday to either see or create my future. I'm not sure I'm willing to see it if it is not the direction I want to go, and I'm also not sure I have the ability to direct my life myself.

Last summer, on a hot day in July, I got angry at him for what still feels like a real, valid reason to me. Valid or not, though, I was furious and told him in no uncertain terms to get the fuck out of my life and "my" house. (We had moved into it together, the third house we'd rented together, about five years earlier. It was not "my" house, but that's how I referred to it when I was mad.)

I was serious. I wanted him out of my house and out of my life. My therapist and I had discussed this situation in incredible detail for four years. FOUR YEARS and the conclusion we had both drawn was that I needed to extricate myself from the situation.

I had tried to leave before. I had been staying home with our three kids, so didn't have a lot (any!) financial stability or way to move out. I went back to work soon thereafter and am completely financially independent now -- I make as much as he does. I got that financial independence and had my switch flipped when he made me so angry that hot, sticky July day. So I told him to leave.

Which he did. He went out of town on a three week business trip, and when he came home he packed up and moved into his own apartment.

The day he came home from the trip, I begged him not to move out. I had taken the previous 30 days to work through a lot of it, and I realized almost instantly what a remarkable mistake it had been to ask him to leave. I was also terrified, lonely and not at all convinced I wanted to live without him.

He would not budge. He said I had thrown him out a number of times before (true) and that he wasn't going to be a ping pong ball for me. He came clean about his feelings about me -- he was afraid of me and my anger, he hadn't really liked me for a very long time, he was only staying for the children, he had warned me not to say "get out" one more time or he would go (also true).

Look. I know how miserable it must be to live with me. I know my borderline personality disorder makes me into a total ball of fury in a matter of seconds, and that when I'm furious I take no prisoners. I know.

I can't really imagine he'd want to come home, but god I want him to come home. For me, for the kids, for him (ha!). I think there is a chance we could make a good life together. At least a chance.

A couple of months ago I stumbled across the website of a dialectical behavioral therapist who also does couples counseling. In my area!

I sent the URL to him and asked him if he'd be willing to go. He responded with "It depends. You paying? And what do you want out of it?"

I had no answer for that. The answer? I WANT YOU TO COME HOME. That's the honest answer, that's the motivation, that's why I'm very willing to pay the $250 session fee.

But I didn't answer immediately. I waited and spoke with my therapist who told me I had some choices:

-- Tell him the Real Deal and let the chips fall where they may. Maybe that would make him decide he doesn't want to go.
-- Be dishonest and say it is for some other semi-true reason -- like I want to improve our relationship for the times we have to be together, like around the kids.
-- Put my desire to get back together on the shelf -- lock it firmly away -- and go to improve the relationship in general. He caveatted this option with his opinion that he doesn't think I can do this.

It was nearly a month before I answered, and I chose option #1 -- I told him the real reason. I asked him if it's a possibility. He said he doesn't think so. He doesn't think so but he'll go anyway.

I grilled the poor man about it -- I wanted one straw of hope. One tiny little strand of hope, one sentence from him that he'd even CONSIDER coming home. Dear god let him come home. I need him home.

So the appointment is Saturday morning: 90 minutes about this. I have prepared myself the best I can. My goal will be to remain in a listening mode as much as possible, to express remorse for my hurtful behaviors and to over-repair the damage if possible. I am sure this is going to be so emotional for me that I will need a full box of Kleenex, but I don't want my tears to be the centerpiece of the discussion.

I want to know what he thinks. He as in my husband, and he as in the therapist.

I am ON FIRE. I can't sit still, I can't stop thinking about it, I can't stop crying. I can't stop crying now -- 45 hours or so before the appointment -- but I believe I can not cry during it. Yeah, right.

I don't want to manipulate. I don't want to guilt him into coming home. I want him to choose to come home. But I can't make him love me. As the song says, "I can't make your heart do what it won't."

I just so much want his heart to want to come home.

I need help. Tips, ideas, thoughts, prayers, hugs. How will I get through this? How will I convince him to come home? We were together nearly 13 years until I told him to get out. Until I threw away a chance at being together with our grandchildren, finally buying that house we can afford now. Please forgive me for throwing that away, I acted in anger and fear and I am so, so sorry. And I love you.

The bully writes back

A little history:

I was bullied by a group of people -- mostly girls -- on the school bus I rode from seventh to 12th grade. I very carefully never let them see me cry. But inside, that hazing and isolation burned a hole in my soul. I've never been willing to attribute much to it, but my therapist is now suggesting I suffer PTSD. Since I'm so desperately unhappy, and since nothing else is working, I agreed to start a course of PTSD treatment, which primarily involves desensitizing my very sensitive emotions to the effects of what happened to me.

So instead of blowing up when I feel rejected, I can conceivably say "oh, yeah, I feel like blowing up because this triggered some of the same feelings I had as a kid." Or that they simply won't trigger. Wouldn't that be lovely?

Anyway, one of the components of PTSD treatment is to re-live the situation.

About a month ago, coincidentally (it is eerie, really), one of the people who bullied me wrote me an email out of the blue, APOLOGIZING for what she did. I couldn't believe it.

After much thought and deliberation, I wrote her an email and asked her to tell me as much as she can remember about the situation, so I could use the information in my therapy sessions.

Here's what she wrote back:

Hmmm. I only remember one specific incident in particular. I don't even know particularly why I remember it. Probably because it was something I did all by myself just to be a bitch. You were sitting in the front seat. I sat behind you and I kept hitting the back of your seat the whole distance to school, just to be annoying.

I remember a lot of name calling on that bus. But it was directed at a lot of different people, not just you. The funny thing is that I dreaded that bus everyday for the same reasons you did. I think a lot of people did.

I can't speak for anyone else of course, but I always felt bad that I did to you what someone else did to me. Instead of standing up to MY bullies, I just became someone else's bully. I look back on it now and realize how chicken shit that was.

I think she's full of crap and told her so. This was my response to her:

You know, that isn't enough. You sought me out nearly 30 years later to offer a sincere apology. I doubt you wanted to apologize for one incident of kicking the back of my seat all the way to town.

You characterized me as a tough little girl to survive the hell you put me through. What do you mean by that? What made you say that? And why now -- so long afterward? My only conclusion is that it was pretty significant to you, too.

You said you hoped my life was great because I deserve that. Funny, but that's not how it is. My life is far from great.

If that's all you've got, so be it. But I sincerely doubt that or you would not have written to me in the first place.

I know just how you feel, Britney

Do you think Britney Spears has borderline personality disorder?

While, on one level, I am extremely annoyed at the woman's actions and the way she seems to be self destructing, another part of me says "Wow, that poor woman seems to be self destructing, I wish I knew how to help."

I don't follow the whole saga, but the act of going into a hair salon and grabbing the clippers to shave her head indicates to me a woman out of control, and someone very angry, full of self-hatred, someone who loathes the way things are and wants to shock herself out of it.

Do you remember her on David Letterman last fall? All sweetness and light. Such a polite, funny, fun person, so happy and clear-eyed. Contrast that with the tabloid images of her today.

I am usually really hesitant to talk about BPD and celebrity, movies, whatever. It seems that the portrayal of the disorder in popular media is one of deep ignorance. What I know about Britney is that the look in her eyes on that video, the way she looks at herself in the mirror, struck something in me. I saw something that clicked and I said "Oh my god, she's BPD." I think the difference in the way I mean it versus the way the popular media portrays such things (i.e. the way they called the astronaut who flipped out "borderline") is that they mean it pejoratively while I mean it as a recognition of something wrong that CAN BE FIXED.

Dear Bully, Take 4, the one I just sent

I am not sure how to respond to your note. It came out of the blue and raised some things I haven't wanted to think about for a very long time.

It also, coincidentally, came at a time when I am examining those things to see how they have affected my life. It's strange but true that a therapist and I have been working through my teenage years and that school bus for about six months now. We've actually talked about it off and on for the past four years but I have just been able to get around to wanting to work hard on it. He believes I suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of years of being bullied. He believes it accounts for a lot of unhappiness in my life, including issues that are still very relevant today.

One of the things I need to get past this is to desensitize to it. I have not been able to go on field trips with any of my kids because I can't step on a school bus. I'm 45 years old and I'm afraid of yellow buses.

The sight of them has brought me to tears hundreds of times in my life, but it hasn't been until the past five years that I have been able to accept that the traumatic experiences of being bullied and -- worse -- being purposely pushed out of a group are at least in part to blame for the trouble I have relating to people.

I have not had a close friend my entire life, I guess I never felt worthy of it. I have a hard time being in groups of people for fear they will hate me, so I avoid going very many places. I have a terrible temper and though I do my best to stuff all the anger I feel deep inside, it comes out at many inopportune times and has terrorized my family, made me lose jobs and has in general just given me the reputation of being someone to fear. I have been a bully for much of my adult life, punishing anyone who disagrees with me or threatens me. I am not someone to fuck with. Which is probably the worst effect it has had on me -- making me a bully is truly the worst thing I can imagine happening, and yet in many circumstances I can see how I use that as a defense mechanism.

I am not telling you this to ask for sympathy or more apology. I really don't even want that. And I can't offer forgiveness, either. I just don't have that in me. You obviously know how you treated me was so far out of line that it has stayed with you your whole life, too.

What you can do to help, if you're at all inclined, is to help me put this to rest by simply getting past it. I have not been able to come up with many solid examples of things that happened to me. I remember a lot of gum in my hair and being thwacked on the head and being taunted in many ways. I think I remember the loneliness the most, just sitting there and trying to figure out what the hell I had done to deserve this. Then, at some point, I stopped asking why or what I had done and simply accepted the fact that I deserved the treatment, that I really was a piece of shit that no one could ever like and that it was so obvious that I never had to question why any more. That is how I see myself -- deserving to be disliked, something disgusting, something useless and smelly.

So why don't you tell me what you remember of it. Give me some specific examples, as many as you can. I need them for my PTSD therapy -- we'll use them to evoke the emotions I felt then as a way of desensitizing myself to them. I can get very very sad about it all, but I have put details out of my mind, I guess. I do know that on the few occasions I have to return to Beryl, I am afraid to drive by Lynn Hartling's house or where Suzy Pedersen used to live.

It's not really relevant to me why it happened. I don't really care. I just want to put it behind me and hope the next 25 years are nothing like the past.

Dear Bully, Take 3

Dear Bully:

I was so pleased to get your note. It is obvious to me that you have some regrets about the way you treated me when we were kids. I hope you are not in too much pain over this and that it hasn't had a negative impact on your life. That school bus ride was one of the highlights of every day of my life from seventh to 12th grade. I think you know just how much fun it could be!

To put your mind at ease, I hardly even remember the things you did to
me. You were standoffish and never wanted to be my friend.
Ironically, we could probably have been friends since we lived near
each other.

I am so sorry you have been suffering about this. Don't you worry
about me. I am gloriously happy and wildly successful in everything I
do. If there were effects of my being bullied, they were good ones! In
fact, I am glad it happened.

Dear Bully, Take 2

Dear Bully:

You write to me more than 25 years after you tortured me for years and apologize?

You want my life to be successful -- why? To assuage your guilt? So you can think it didn't matter.

Well stick it up your fat ass. I don't remember much about you -- just have a vision of a twisted ugly face, lots of ratty dark hair and a big fat girl. How you must have hated yourself to feel the need to bully me. I never did a thing to any of you -- I never did anything except try to get along, get through it, and yet you made sport of tormenting me.

You don't deserve to know how my life has gone. You don't deserve to know whether you fucked me up or not. Go to hell.

Dear Bully ...

I was stunned to get your email on classmates.com. The one where you apologized for the years of bullying you handed out when we were in junior high and high school.

It's been decades since I've even thought of your name, and here you pop up in my mailbox, unannounced and unwelcome.

You want to know if I'm well, if I'm happy. You say I deserve to be after all the shit you handed out. You want me know know you think I was one tough kid.

Let me fill you in:

Scarcely a day has gone by when I haven't suffered the effects of poor self esteem. It turned my high school experience into a tightwire act, where I willed myself to present a solid front so no one would know what I failure I really was. I didn't question the fact that I had no friends -- you told me every day that I was not worthy of friends, that I stunk and that I looked and acted bizarre.

It made college tough. Tormented for years on the school bus, I guess I had come to believe no one would like me, so it didn't surprise me to feel left out at college, either. I remember one of the most pleasant feelings was of being hidden, alone, in the carrels at the back of the university library. I remember thinking, "No one in the world knows or cares where I am." It was an awesome realization -- no one would miss me if I didn't come home, but no one could find me to harass me, either.

I bristle like a porcupine every time I'm forced into a human interaction. Oh, I'm facile enough with strangers, I like to chitchat in the grocery store line, people think I'm outgoing and extroverted. What they don't know is that I'm fine when I'm on my own ground -- when I start the conversation or am sought out. It's when I'm alone in a crowd that I feel naked, without skin. I imagine everyone is laughing at what I am wearing, at how I look. I worry that I stink though I know my personal hygiene is better than most. I am conscious of where my hands are at all times -- I don't want people to think I pick my nose or touch my private parts, all things you whispered and yelled at me while we were on the bus. If I had my coat over me to protect me from the brutal cold, you insisted I was playing with myself under there. If I hid it over my head to cry, you said I must be digging for boogers.

I'm 45 years old right now and it still makes me cry.

My career has been both brilliant and disappointing. I am never confident of my work, or I'm overconfident and become a bully myself. I force people to see things my way, and when they don't I get devastated and disappointed. I've often been told that I can dish it out but I can't take it, and it's true. I like to tease other people -- tease, not taunt or torment -- and yet I can't bear it when I'm the brunt of the teasing.

I am successful by material measures, but feel no joy in what I do. For I know I'm a fake. I know you know the real me, the one who lives in near poverty out on a farm, the one who doesn't have new clothes, whose hair won't lie flat, whose shoes are old and who is constantly disorganized as she rushes for the bus, half hoping every day that she'll miss it. Knowing the consequence for missing the bus would be missing a day of school, the one place she felt competent. I had to force myself to take a deep breath and climb those bus steps, but I couldn't force myself not to do it, either.

I think you could say my relationship history is one that's a failure as well. I've been married, twice, and neither man really loved me. Or maybe they did and I didn't know it, because I have a very hard time accepting love. Every word of criticism or sideways look was like a cruel lash to me. They tried to be careful, but no one can be careful enough around a person who doesn't have skin. I walk around every day feeling like I have no skin. Even a drop of rain can sear me, because I have no protection.

So regardless of how sincere your apology is, or the reason you wrote it, I can't forgive you. I want to beat the living daylights out of you. I want to throw all those thousands of punches I held every time you put gum in my hair or flicked me hard on the head with a knuckle or taunted me or told someone who mistakenly sat near me that they'd get cooties if they didn't move.

I realize now that it wasn't that they didn't like me nearly as much as that they were thankful to me for being the brunt of your teasing. They were guilty on some level for not standing up for me, for not standing up to you, but they were also quite relieved that it was me -- not them -- that was your target.

As I got older, I came to see this as my role. I was the target for abuse, and this helped protect others from the same thing. I wouldn't tolerate you beating on anyone else -- I remember pulling you off someone. I couldn't protect myself, but I could protect the others. Bring it on, bitch, bring it on. I can take it.

And you will Never. See. Me. Cry. You will never see the rivers of tears and the canyons full of sobs you caused in my life. Your teasing, your constant and brutal bullying caused something to change in my brain. Being told enough times that I sucked made it true. I believed it, I knew it, but I had to hide that I knew from you. I became arrogant, pretended I was better than you, but ... we both knew the truth. I was a fake.

And I'm still a fake in much of my life. I wonder sometimes who I really am. Who was I before I started riding that bus? Who was I before I endured an hour or more every day of name calling and abuse? Who was I before I got sick at the idea that you MIGHT torment me, so sick that my stomach was in knots whether you did or not. Sometimes when you did hurt me it was a relief, because I didn't have to wait for you to do it.

You get nothing from me. No answer, no forgiveness, no understanding. You were old enough to know better. You were old enough to know better.

An ill wind

An ill wind blew into my email box. It was in the form of an apology from someone I haven't thought about for 30 years.

Subject: Yes, this is from your former bully

This is the apology I have owed you for many, many years. And it is sincere. I have thought of you more than any single person I went to school with. Mostly, because of my horrible behaviour towards you. I hope you are absolutely sucessful and happy. You were one very tough little girl who put up with a whole lot of bullshit from me and others on that godforsaken bus from hell. I hope you are doing well and are happy. You deserve a life of happiness for just surviving my attitude and abuse alone.
Good luck to you and your family.

She can kiss my ass.

It came 27 days ago, and not one day has gone by since then that I haven't wept about this. It validates my worst nightmare, it embarrasses me. And it frightens me. I am afraid of this.

It started in seventh grade. We lived 30 miles from town, and that meant a 45 minute bus ride every day, each way. From frigid early mornings to blizzards, we rode that bus. For me, each minute was torture. I was never comfortable. I could sleep or do homework, but I could never relax. I was hyper vigilant. I was ready to be tormented, and I vowed that no one would Ever. See. Me. Cry.

I have a hard time remembering what I went through. I know it was traumatic because I start shaking when I think about it. Tears well up in my eyes, all those tears I never shed as I sat on that bus, day after day, alone and lonely, listening to them make up taunts to toss my way.

No one ever sat by me. No one talked to me. No one dared like me. By some combination of factors, I became the pariah on that bus, and the target of all the bullying. Like the magnet or the scapegoat, I was the one who took it. I ignored it, I blocked it out, I pretended I didn't hear.

I heard every word.

Smarter than average, a better student than any of them, I thought myself above them and below them at the same time. Better than them? Certainly. I had much more going for me in every way -- opportunity, initiative, brains, intuition, drive. Abilities. Dreams. If asked, I would have told you I felt sorry for the rest of them, primarily the offspring of dirt poor desert dwellers who lived way out in nowhere for various reasons, all of which boiled down to: Couldn't make it in real society. Couldn't survive in town. Needed to be isolated on farms with the closest neighbors five miles away. Liked it that way. Survivalists and white trash. No one lived there by choice, it was usually a result of fate or a mistake or a disaster.

My family was there because of fate. A disaster. A gigantic mistake, in my young girl's opinion. I hated it there from the day we arrived and fled in the days after high school ended. I like to visit now, but only when I'm driving my own reliable car or if I have an airplane ticket out of there. I don't think I could survive there; I know I wouldn't make my children live there.

I haven't answered my former bully. I'm not sure what she wants. Forgiveness? Absolution? I imagine she's in a 12-step program or has found religion. I don't know why she searched Classmates.com to track me down. I am not sure I care.

I'm consumed with curiosity. I want to ask her to detail the bullying for me. I want her to describe what it is she's talking about. To be honest, I can't remember what she looked like except that I have this vision of lots of dark hair and a big, bulky girl. A sneer.

I think of two others as my primary bullies, and have a visceral reaction when I go near where they grew up. I drive miles out of my way to avoid their parents' homes, even though one girls' parents are dead and the others have long moved away.

But this one. This one, a little younger than the others. They were a few years ahead of me in school and so graduated and left me alone for a few blessed years. This one is a year older than me, which means she was with me until my senior year of high school.

And yet I can't see her face, I can't remember a single thing she did to me. I can't remember why she thinks she owes me a "sincere" apology.

Have I blocked her from my memory? There are other holes in my memories that make me nervous -- like the fact that I can't name my second grade teacher and can't get a minds-eye view of the classroom I was in. I have every other year of grade school firmly in my mind, including kindergarten, first grade and third. But second is missing somewhere.

I haven't examined any of this too deeply, and it's time. My therapist thinks I suffer post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the bullying I endured on that school bus. I minimize the events when I talk about them to him -- which is rarely -- and yet he still thinks it is of major significance. I have asked him to help me work through it, and we started last week.

One of my assignments is to figure out what I'd like to say to this bully. Do I blast her with my intellect and crush her insignificance? Do I lay out for her the struggles I've had with self-esteem, with trust, with a deep and overwhelming sense that I simply don't belong -- anywhere. Do I tell her to kiss my ass? Give her what she wants? Tell her I hope none of her children ever has to endure anything like I endured at her hands?

There's a spectrum of responses. Do I ask her what made her torment me? What was wrong with her life that made her such a bully? Do I give a shit? Does it matter? Does it change my response? Is there anything she could say that would make me feel differently?

She can kiss my ass.

It's all good

Sometimes I forget that I don't care about some things. That I can survive without being passionate about a simple issue at work. That I don't have to go to the wall with a co-worker over wording of something.

Sometimes I forget to let go of my ego.

It always gets me in trouble.

I am struggling now to find my place, my purpose, what I can contribute. If I can contribute. I wonder if I'll be fired. I can't be fired -- I need my job, my health insurance, the work. I need to be here and it doesn't matter if I'm a big wig or a little one. Right? Who cares, beyond me?

It's not like this is my career, it's just a job.

Oh, wait. This is my career. I always thought this was where I'd be climbing the rungs of the ladder about now in my life. I've steadily climbed higher in salary and title. I've worked hard and had my work praised. And then I got here, to this plateau, and I don't seem to be able to perform to the level one person (who happens to be important) sees as my obligation. I thought I could work harder -- I could work harder, OK? -- but I also think the quality of my work is such that it is still head and shoulders above the pack.

He came in my office today and asked if I need help with a project or two. Sure, I say, my ego floating away on a cloud of dust. Sure, take the heart of my job away and give it to someone else. Let that person do it, let them gossip about me, let him move me out of my office into a cube, let him cut my salary.

Or maybe I can float through this by letting go of my ego. Sure, I need help. Sure, I'd love it if you'd take that off my plate. Sure, I need more time to surf around the Web, can you please get someone to do my job for me?

Sure, I'm useless. Get me some help.

Distract yourself

Simple advice, and what I tell many people suffering varying levels of emotional distress.

Just don't think about it.

There is nothing to worry about.

You're making it worse by worrying about it.

Somehow, none of those 'truths' can get through to me when I need to hear them most. I suspect it is because I know there is something to worry about, dammit, I'm worried, aren't I?


How I think about something doesn't change its outcome 99% of the time. If I worry that he isn't home yet, that he's been in a wreck, that doesn't make it more or less likely to be true, does it?

Here are the two sides: I am having emotions about a subject. The emotions are unpleasant.

There is no basis for the emotion -- say fear -- that is evident. So why be afraid?

Both can be true but I find holding both to be difficult. Yes, there is no monster under the bed. Yes, I am terrified anyway.

Yes, I am terrified anyway, and feel weary of living in fear.

He pulled me close and said goodnight

He kissed me and called me by a sweet name. He helped me in the car and told me to drive safely, then checked to see if I made it home.

He emailed 30 minutes later to say he'd had a good time.

Laying there, with him for hours, he stroked my arm absently, mussed my hair and traced the shape of my ear. He warmed baby oil in his hands and rubbed my back, gently but with enough pressure so that I relaxed into the bed.

He cupped my ass in his hands as he pulled me toward him for a cuddle, kissed my cheek and then my mouth. He took my hand when we walked to the restaurant and pulled out my chair when we sat.

We talked and he paid attention to my opinions; we shared tales of our work and our favorite books. I teased him about things and he got to know about things I like and why I do the things I do. He looked into my eyes when we were making love.

I left him last night wrapped in a warm embrace; I took home the memory of being with him like a shawl and pulled it around my neck as I slipped into sleep. I woke with a smile on my lips.

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Why, then, just 18 hours later do I despise him? How could I wonder what I saw in him, think of all the things that I didn't like: the hair on his upper arms, the coolness of his sweat, the way I felt when I fumbled for a kiss, the comment he didn't explain. I've mined every single second for the explanation, for what I did wrong, for the reason he hates me. I've cried and I've been ready to throw things and I've trolled online for someone to replace him.

Why? You ask why?

Because he hasn't called. He didn't write a single message to me, not a word on a text note or a voicemail. "Hey how are you this morning?" "Missing you this morning." "Hi."

Afraid of being the aggressor, I refrained from sending anything myself until early afternoon when I realized that was dumb. I sent a light note, a hi.

Still nothing.

-----------
This is called splitting.

I can be completely taken by this man, go out to dinner with him last night and gaze into his eyes in a series of embraces. He is a prince.

Then he can ignore me for one minute too long -- even if there's a Very Good Reason like a work meeting or a sick kid. One minute more than my system can tolerate and, well, it's over. He is a toad.

Feeling better today

It's at night when I get morose. It's when I let myself think about what I don't have, and when I let myself get tired, hungry, stressed or cold. It's when there's too much noise, or I've had a hard day.

After a good night's sleep, I'm up and at work, feeling productive. It may surprise you to know that I've come a long way in my career. I was the golden girl when I was young, rose to the top of my peers at job after job. I never applied for a job, they were offered to me in a steady succession of upward mobility. I'm making ten times what I made in my first job out of college, four times as much as I was in the early 1990s, twice as much as I made at my last job. I've never actually asked for a raise.

And I think my work is adequate at best. I wonder how well I'd do if I actually tried. I know I'm smart, I come off as extremely competent and my reasoning and writing skills have taken me far. People pay me just to think (which is a good thing, because I can do that). It's when I have to actually do things that I fall into procrastination, have to do the old trick of forcing myself to work for two or three minutes diligently before moving on to another subject (more fun) for a few minutes, then back to forcing myself to work. I think 10 minutes is about my limit for actually working on one specific thing, though I can go for hours if I'm really engaged.

I think my skill set and way of working is commonly called "multi-tasking." Boy am I glad I work in this generation instead of one that requires attention to one task long term. I could never be a surgeon, I guess, or a heavy machine operator. I could probably enjoy being a 411 operator, though, getting to talk to different people all the time. (Though I'd grow bored after a week or two and would want to find ways to change the entire process just because it looked like a challenge.)

I'm a walking dichotomy, a split personality (but not in the psychological sense). It's like I play one character at work, then leave the office and leave that persona behind and become "Incompetent Woman." "Sad Woman." "Lost Woman." "Unloved."

The truth is that all those women live behind the mask of Competent Woman, too, and they peek out all the time. I fight constantly to deal with criticism of my work, and grow defensive on the inside though my goal is to Never Let Them See Me Sweat. Never.

I'm afraid if I start sweating I will start leaking from other body parts, like my eyes and my nose. And once I start crying, I will cry a puddle in this office, and salty water will seep under my door and stain the carpet, run down the hall seeking exit, flood the entry way and lead people to nod their heads and say "I knew she wasn't for real."

Tonight, I just want everything

It's a refrain I hear myself repeating: I wish he/she understood.

Most often I blame any failure to connect on some inability I have to articulate what I mean, or on my needs being too out of whack.

Tonight, I am lonely and sad. I want something I can't have, and I get that. But I still want it and still grieve its loss. What is it? Nothing less than happiness.

Out of whack. But I still wish someone could get it.

Do you think I'm scary?

I always kind of laugh nervously when I find out someone thinks I'm scary.

I mean when I'm not acting scary. Like when I'm just being who I am. Or when I'm not conscientiously trying to be someone who I'm not. Something like that.

Not when I'm shrieking.

I asked a trusted friend about this yesterday -- am I bizarre? I get these looks from people sometimes, as if I'm over the top. Oh, I know what it reminds me of ... that song, "Something To Talk About" by Bonnie Raitt.

The part where it says "Laugh just a little too loud, stand just a little too close." I feel like maybe I'm doing that now and again. I wonder if people want to, oh, back off a little.

My friend said absolutely not. I'm not bizarre. I talk normally. I am smart, quick, have a great vocabulary and love to use it. I love to talk and love the repartee. Oh yeah, and I'm powerful. I know what he means by that, but am uncomfortable about it. I am just powerful. In person, in email, on the phone. In my blog? You'll have to tell me. I know about this, and I can use it to my advantage in business. I can run right over people who get in my way.

I try not to do this in my personal life. You would see me roll over and hide my eyes at a PTA meeting, for example, if someone criticized me -- I wouldn't be fighting back. (Unless it was about one of my kids -- I stand up VERY WELL for anyone else in the world, especially those who can't ...)

I don't want to be scary. Bizarre. Would I trade powerful for powerlessness if it took away these effects, too? Probably not.

What my friend told me -- which is absolutely true -- is that I need to find more people like him, people who like me as I am, scariness, intelligence, powerfulness, silliness, sadness and all.

Boy is he right.

The Impostor Syndrome

I'm a fake. They made a mistake hiring me, and they'll fire me when they figure it out.

It's called "the impostor syndrome," and it's all about low self-esteem and not being able to internalize -- believe -- our successes while being all too willing to accept our failures.

This syndrome is common among bright women, especially gifted women who find themselves pushed to the head of the class, admitted to the best schools, hired to important positions. A feeling of panic can well up, a sense of dread, a paralyzing fear of "Oh my god, what have they done?" It's often possible to "fake it" for years. The dread never leaves, the fear of not being good enough is always there, but the work is usually done anyway. (And, ironically, it's usually brilliant work, but that's because we're lucky, or it's a fluke.)

It's time to get over it. A woman named Dr. Valerie Young has these tips to overcoming the syndrome on her site The Impostor Syndrome. There is a lot of information there on what the syndrome is, too.

Here are her ideas, in a nutshell. Read the full descriptions on her site:

1. Break the silence. We don't need to be ashamed of feeling this way. Many of us do.
   
2. Separate feelings from fact. Sometimes we all feel stupid, but just because we feel that way doesn't mean we are.
   
3. Recognize when you might tend to feel fraudulent. If you're one of the first or few women in your field it would be natural to feel like you don't fit in. Take your self-doubt for what it is: A normal response to being an outsider.
   
4. Accentuate the positive. We excel, in part, because we seek perfection. The trick is to stop obsessing. Do a good job when it matters most; forgive yourself when mistakes happen -- they will happen.
   
5. Develop a new response to failure and mistake making. Instead of beating yourself up for making a perfectly human mistake, see if you can learn from it and move on.
   
6. Right the rules. If you’ve been operating under misguided rules like, “I should always know the answer,” or “Never ask for help,” start asserting your rights. You have just as much right as the next person to be wrong, have an off-day, or ask for assistance.
   
7. Develop a new script. When you start something new, instead of automatically telling yourself, “Wait till they find out I have no idea what I’m doing,” try thinking, “Everyone who starts something new feels off-base in the beginning. I may not know all the answers but I’m smart enough to find them out.”
   
8. Visualize success. Do what professional athletes do. Spend time beforehand picturing yourself making a successful presentation or calmly posing your question in class. It sure beats picturing impending disaster and will help with performance-related stress.
   
9. Reward yourself. Break the cycle of continually seeking ­ and then dismissing ­ validation outside of yourself by learning to pat yourself on the back.
   
10. Fake it ‘til you make it. Now and then we all have to fly by the seat of our pants. Instead of considering “winging it” as proof of your ineptness learn to do what many high achievers do and view it as a skill. Courage comes from taking risks. Change your behavior first and allow your confidence to build.

I like that last one the best. It's one of my greatest weaknesses, err, skills.

Being nice when I least deserve it

One skill I am struggling with is "not making it worse."

There are a couple of ways I can make things worse. I can take a bad situation and make it significantly worse by yelling louder, throwing things, making threats, refusing to give up, oh I could describe some doozies.

Alternately, I can make things worse by taking a bad situation, or a mistake, and beating myself up about it. If I'm already upset, telling myself I'm an idiot really doesn't help anything. I can hear the dry voice of my therapist saying "Well, it really doesn't help anything to say that, you know," when I tell him so.

It doesn't help to deny myself access to friends, or to things that make me feel better. No, you can't go out to that movie, you made a fool of yourself at work today. Not only does it not help prevent me from making a fool of myself at work (if that even really happened vs. just being a huge fear of mine or a misrepresentation in my mind), but it makes me sadder and angrier and hate myself more.

In the first case, my goal is to walk away. Hang up the phone. Give up the fight. Don't have to win. Don't make things worse.

In the second case, my goal is to be realistic about how bad my screwup was, and to attempt to fix it. If it is something that can be fixed, apologized for or somehow changed, I should do that. If it is not (i.e. spilling food down my shirt), then I should not fixate on it, I should not make it bigger, I should not theorize that everyone in the office saw it or is giggling behind my back. I should be realistic.

I need to not make things worse.