Suicide Awareness Day

Yesterday was National Suicide Awareness Day. I’m sure my mother didn’t know that when she tried to kill herself Saturday. Yesterday, when I got the news, I was numb and detached. Today, I was teary-eyed and felt like fighting. I guess that’s why I’m still here. I’m a fighter.

I’m sad for my mother, who’s as much a victim of her generation as she is mental illness. I’m proud of young people today for speaking openly and truthfully about their struggles, and I’m proud of Generation X (and myself!) for screaming, “Fuck no!” to the status quo and demanding the right to care, to change, to de-stigmatization. I saved my own life. You better believe I feel like fighting. You have to be a warrior not to crumble up and die under the suffering of mental illness.

I think my mother will crumble up and die. She is. If not by suicide, she’ll shrivel up and waste away until she’s gone. I just hope she outlives her mother. I don’t want my grandma to be hurt by any of this.

If she outlives my stepdad – sick with unregulated diabetes and related, respectable illnesses – we’ll eventually have to put my mom in a home. I won’t have anything to do with it. I’m still blocked and unable to attend family functions where she’s in attendance.

I’m so glad I got the help I needed. I get to enjoy the second half of my life! My poor mother never got a break. Her little train jumped the rails in an unforgiving era, and survival since then has killed her. She’s a ghost of the robust woman I knew. She tried so hard. She did so much! She’s strong in ways I’m not and accomplished things I couldn’t imagine. I’m just so sad for her.

Mental illness is real. Treat it.

1.21.21

I was so hoping to post on 1.21.21 that the inauguration was a celebration of a kind of palindrome of U.S. leadership, into a four-year morass of an amoral ass, and back out to restore what Obama accomplished. I hoped to write about the participants, the feelings they inspired in me, to add my voice to a chorus of hope, relief, gratitude, and healing, to share in what is felt right now by so many in our shredded homeland. I hoped to record how the ceremony answered and exceeded every cry for restoration, purpose, and change the nation has been bleeding for.

Well, half of us. God, that’s overwhelming. However! If Biden is known for anything, it’s for bipartisan labor and success. He is the person for this day and time. Never in my life did I think I would rejoice in a man so disinclined to impassioned oratory. Thank god he’s an old hat at doing the job and getting things done.

I wanted to write of the joy and relief of finally seeing a woman in high office. “I may be the first but I will not be the last.” Finally. Finally. Thank god, finally.

We watched it in school. I cried. I looked around and found another assistant silently sobbing and we both started laughing. Such a difference from the last five years of terror and division.

I was prepared to come home and write from a heart released from psychic assault and honor the quiet solace of reliable tradition. Of humble, plain spoken address, of exalted expression in music and poetry, of a celebration like none before for a weary nation.

Then afternoon came. Afternoons are harder; it’s scholastic fact. English is my 6th graders’ hardest class and the one I am tasked to lead. Alone. It’s day after day of battery and failure and rebellion and varying levels of verbal, threatened, and actual violence.

I gave my notice before Christmas break. Our teacher had been promising, since I started in October, that she would alternate teaching assignments. She promised this to me individually and in meetings with all of us.

It’s the only thing that could come close to working. When these kids attach the same face to the same dreaded class, they set their teeth against it (the face and the class), and we’ve lost them. No learning can occur in a power struggle.

I’ve learned so much about power struggle, and acquired so many new skills. In many ways I’m proud of myself for trying the hardest thing I’ve ever done, knowing it would be so, and never phoning it in. I’m so grateful for the joy and company of young people. And I’m delighted by irony. I attended a parenting webinar last weekend! (“I opted out!”)

For all my resistance, I turned into a teacher and, honestly, I feel born to it. In childhood, people told me to be a teacher. (It was always a put down for being demanding or bossy.) I got this from more than one teacher, by the way, and countless other adults.

In my adult life, nascent to now, people have continued to ask if I’m a teacher.

I am not predictable!

Yes, dear Taurus, you are.

How lovely to enjoy the joke! It’s been so rewarding to feel like my blood, sweat, and tears are worth it. It matters to me what these children experience at school. I do my very best, every day. I can’t say that about anything before this.

When my teacher failed to keep the promise she made – or even do it once – I stopped asking to take turns. I knew she’d never alternate us. Instead, I asked not to go it alone every day. More empty promises.

She waits until it’s fallen part apart completely, and the damage is done. I honestly don’t care if they learn anything. I only care that they leave with a positive experience at school. All they learn on my watch is I HATE SCHOOL. And school hates me. Especially that. Imagine how that feels every day of your life. I cannot witness educational trauma every day of my life. This is not something I can hold.

I can say that I’ve done my best, but I don’t believe it. I don’t feel it. I certainly can’t process it. I bring it home. I store it in my body, in my psyche. I’m not rattled, or even triggered anymore. I’m destroyed. I’m dead inside. I’m not capable of this job, and everyone else is doing it just fine. It’s hard not to compare and impossible not to feel like shit. I’m doing stupid fucking breathing and stupid fucking salts like it does stupid fucking anything. I’m an idiot. “Your best is good enough” is a stupid fucking platitude that fucking enrages me.

I hate to hear myself blaming her, but she let me down. She threw me in the lion’s den with no skills and no support. And who cares about that? I don’t even care about that. THESE KIDS! All they’re experiencing is trauma. Again. All that happens for them is confirmation that they’re bad and wrong and incapable and hated. All she had to do was sit with us!

It’s always the same. I start with clear instructions for the hour, the last 20 minutes of which are individual computer exercises. They know my expectations, but I invite them to participate every day. I acknowledge that afternoons are harder, “and that’s just a thing. Not good or bad. Just a thing about school.” I tell them it’s okay that they don’t like Language Arts. “I don’t like Math.”

I promise them that I don’t want perfect, because there’s no such thing. “Our best is different every day, but let’s try for it together. I believe in you. You have my permission to roll your eyes now…. And let us begin!”

Every day enthusiastic, ready, willing. On my own we’ve had two good days. Two. Since October. My teacher knows exactly how this will go. Their shut-down-break-down will escalate until they yell, threaten violence, or commit violence. And every day, she leaves me alone to get them there, to that place of rage, loss of control, fear, shame, and self-loathing. Then she removes one or both of them, to study with her, after harsh reprimand, in the naughty room. The room set aside for misfits. The stupid kids and bad ones, which is absolutely how they see themselves and believe that we see them. All this after they’ve lost the ability to regulate their emotions.

We’re all being traumatized while she works at her desk or helps the 5th graders, whose emotional age difference is more like three years than one and makes them easier.

I have cPTSD. I’ve descended as far down the rabbit hole of mental illness as I go. For fucks sake, yesterday I Googled, “I want to die,” just to see what would pop up. Fucking suicide hotline. Ugh. I don’t know what I thought I’d find. I don’t remember thinking at all. I am absolutely numb right now. Thinking about it today, I imagine perhaps I thought I’d find other people saying the shit I’m writing now, but I’m glad I didn’t. I would have denigrated their pain and hated on people, just like I’m doing now to this writer.

So there it is. I’m fucking insane, and I’m stupid for thinking I could do this. I understand these kids, because I am these kids. Except I test well.

I have to leave. It would have been devastating in any case, but now I’m at the lowest and worse state of my health. I have to leave now, disappear from boys who’ll believe in every cell, with the whole essence of their spirits, that I left because of them. That they are stupid and bad and wrong and rejected. They’re failures. And I did that.

I really thought I could do this. Why the fuck did I give up my unemployment? I had until April but I wanted to work. Obviously, I’m not fit to work. I just take up space and resources.

Before you go panicking, I’m not going to kill myself. I speak the unabashed truth, because it’s the reality of many people. I’m old enough to know exactly what’s happening to me and I’ll get through it. I always do. But I’m not trying to recover anymore. I’m closing doors and walls, and disappearing into half-living hibernation. I’m waiting out my cat, whose love I’m currently rejecting because I’m dead inside. I AM MY MOTHER.

Oh, great. Family. Did you know my perfect sister has done this job for 16 years, with excellence, equanimity, and promotion? (I swear to you that’s not why I did it! It was a random listing on jobs.utah.gov. I became interested in this field three years ago when my best friend’s daughter was born with special needs, but I took the job because a global pandemic caused mass job loss and no one would hire a middle-aged woman except for an administrative population of them.)

I know my sister and I are different. I know that I came out of our childhood with an illness and she didn’t, but my family doesn’t. “It wasn’t that bad,” is the attitude – and words – of those who erase my lived experience.

FOR YOU! It wasn’t that damaging to you. I got sick.

I say I did my best in this job but I don’t believe it. I give up. I let go. It’s a relief to stop trying, to erase myself and my dreams, to see myself in the future through no lens other than that of my animal babies. I crave a small life in a tiny home, refuge in a place where no one will look. I’m broken and incapable of interaction. Deep inside I’ve died, and my students pay the price. I pay the price. My cat pays the price.

Penny’s freaking out. She’s almost 17 years-old and following me around the house meowing, instead of sleeping. I have no affect, no chatter, no response, other than to push her off. I actually did that. She’s desperate, begging me to come back.

When I cry, she comforts me. She licks my tears! She kneads my chest and belly. She attends me. Now, I’m not here. An empty, dead, Christie-shaped thing is here. She’s never seen me like this. Neither have I.

I’m really sad to relinquish hope. Admitting defeat is not natural to me. It’s a greatest strength/ greatest weakness situation (and a Taurus thing). I’m alive because I’ll be goddamned before I admit defeat. But I’m killing myself trying to be something I’m not. I hope to forgive myself for not becoming my vision board. I hope to forgive the Christie that emerges. I hope she’s happy with the choice I’m making today.

Right now I can’t imagine that, because I’m not even giving two weeks. I’m disgusted and filled with regret. It’s unprofessional, disrespectful, and so damaging to our vulnerable classroom community, but I gave notice in December when I confessed that I was unable to return for the coming semester and nothing changed. Again.

I was given personal assurance (with tears and begging) and I gave my trust to a teacher who had shown me already that she would not follow through with her commitments. I deserve to do what’s right for myself, but I did it all wrong.

I shouldn’t have accepted the position. What was I thinking? I crumble at hard things.

I’m devastated to lose faith in tomorrow. In spite of a filthy mouth and mental defect, I’m an optimist. Enthusiasm was the one thing I considered essentially characteristic of my nature. Enthusiastic is my first adjective. It was the only thing I had faith in.

When I left my family’s religion, I felt betrayed by the institution, but I gained an opportunity to grow beyond that one perspective, the freedom to explore and arrive at my own unique truth. This is losing my religion. I don’t who I am anymore. I want annihilation. I’ve never wanted that before. I’ve wanted change. I’ve wanted anything else, but never to disappear from everything I was and ever hope to be. I don’t want a future. I want to stop.

Since I can’t, I’m powering down. When the immediate crisis has passed, I’ll cultivate that picture of a small, cozy, quiet future. I might feel the truth of it for the first time. I’ve never explored it. I’m not too worried about that right this minute. Right now, I just want out of the screaming Fibromyalgia flare this stress has caused me.

I rarely take my prescription. I hate it. I’m high as a kite right now and still in pain. It’s relented enough that I can breathe, but only that much, and I have a backwards reaction. Most people get loopy and drowsy. I get jittery and grind my teeth. My jaw hurts SO BAD. (Plus, it’s dehydrating and you pay for that later, in pain! No matter how much water you drink.) Last night in bed, I was moaning from pain. At least it distracted from emotional pain. Nothing exists but pain when you’re in that deep. Good god, woman, admit defeat and manage it like your doctor told you to! This is what PRN means.

So there it is. I’ll be deleting this soon, but I’m glad I got it out of me. (?)

I’m glad the inauguration was so beautiful. The class enjoyed it, too. One of my students said, “I hope Joe Biden likes Cinnamon Toast Crunch. That would make my whole life.” So we wrote letters to the President.

“P.S. This will surprise you,” my student closed his letter, adding a second page and attaching an image of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Made my whole life.

I’m grateful to hold that memory along with the rest. I love my kids. I will miss them.

I was very grateful to be given priority for Covid vaccinations through work.

It’s Over

I’m back at work – and online – for the first time since the move on Sunday.

Saturday was the culmination of all their efforts to make me pay. Officers had advised me to film them whenever they attacked me, but I didn’t know when that would be. Mostly, it was just mockery, gloating, and name-calling as I passed from room to room, if I left mine. I didn’t want to aggravate them further by recording every time I walked out, so I did my best not to, which was always their goal, to impede my ability to move freely and to make this as stressful and agonizing for me as possible.

Jax knew my work and rehearsal schedules. Both are set. He knew I only had Fridays and Sundays to pack. So there they were. Every weekend.

I packed the house after rehearsals and Fridays before they came “home” after the workweek, and worked in my room weekends. They spent both nights only once – that wasted weekend of late summer lightning, trashing my dishes, and box theft (#4f) – but they were there Fridays ’til late, all day and overnight Saturday, and throughout Sunday.

Every weekend.

Only twice did they “prep the house.” They were there to eat, drink, and dry hump. On the couch, in front of me. Once, when I passed to use the restroom, Jax moaned loudly, “You’re making me hard!”

Ew! (The kid was there!!!)

For their honeymoon, they chose to spend 3 weeks sharing a house with his ex.

?????????????

GO HOME!!!!!

The final push was a campaign nearly as brutal as the first, and I fucked up. That woman literally blocked my movement in and out of the kitchen WITH HER BODY, twice, the night before my movers arrive and I have no choice but to get this done; I cannot hide in my room tonight. That makes 3 times she’s hindered me in some part of the home. Admittedly, it was far more egregious when she had me pinned against a table, captive in my bedroom – unwell, triggered, terrified, BEGGING – with her hand jabbing in my face and her husband blocking my exit behind her, but here she was again, obstructing unfettered movement through the home I legally occupy!

Jax had really been working me, every time I walked through any room, with every tedious little thing, like, “Did you take the garbage can?”

“I bought it when I moved in, stored the lid in the garage to keep it clean.”

“Did you take the tray with the ‘H’ on it?”

“It had been donated and was never mine to give you.”

“Just taking back another gift,” he snarked.

“I’ve given it back to the charity from whom I had no right to take it.” (I left a beautiful  mirrored tray – same size – in its place. He was getting rid of it when I moved in. I cleaned it up and loved it, but I want nothing from that house.)

*giggle giggle, “She’s pathetic, darling.” giggle giggle*

At one point, Talking Heads were playing when Carrie crowed loudly. “Darling, this is my faaaavorite love song, ever,” then sang along: “Home… is where I want to be…”

*giggle giggle, slurpy slurpy, giggle giggle*

Just the most unclever woman I’ve ever, heard. (And pitchy.) Be more obvious.

(I celebrate imperfect expressions of art. For god’s sake, I do community theatre. I champion people! But she’s just so fucking fake, I can’t help but enjoy that she’s also not that talented. Or smart. So I can be petty. When you’re hateful, I get a kick out of it.)

I do have to say, I did enjoy her gratuitous displays of domestic bliss for showing me something. Girl can’t belly laugh. Her forced guffaw is creepy. Hey, not everyone laughs with their whole body. That’s fine. But she so desperately needs to lord her triumph over me that her exultant attempts fail. It actually does help that she’s so stupid, she thinks she has something I want.

I WANT TO BE LEFT ALONE, YOU IDIOT!

The other thing she did that amused me… I’m not kidding when I tell you, the woman is nothing but an eye-roll to me. Like, why do you need me so badly? She is desperate for my attention, puffs herself up whenever I’m near. It’s weird. Who cares? You will never see or hear from this bitch again. And I’m “pitiful,” remember? “Irrational.” What does my opinion matter? Why do you need the envy of a pathetic woman?

So… this made my night: Jax was bottling beer in the kitchen. She’s oohing and ahh-ing over this craft and that. “Oh, darling! I love this one.”

“It has a note of cherry.”

“I can taste it, darling!”

I get fleeting sound bytes as I’m in and out from my bedroom to the growing pile of boxes outside my door. Conversation shifted the moment she realized I was fixed for a time within earshot. Her volume increased and, out of the blue, she says to her new husband, who’s enjoying a hobby, “Maybe you could come to my work and see what I do.”

What?

There’d been no discussion of employment or anything having to do with adulting. Jax was teaching her son how to sterilize bottle caps, and Carrie was sitting at the table, “darling” and drinking. Apropos of nothing, she boasts about her job.

“Oh!” he asked, interested. “Do they have an observation area?”

“Well… no.” (Why then, one might wonder, did you invite him to watch what he can’t see?) “But,” she bragged, “I have to suit up to be in a 60-degree operatory…”

I walked on, rolling my eyes. Always, always rolling my eyes. She’s so dumb and obvious!

I know you have an education. I admired you once as a single mother who earned her degree and built a career. Then I got to know you. Now all I see is desperation and hate, and fake fake fake fake fake.

So back to her blocking me.

At one point, Carrie was climbing the kitchen entryway – just playing and larking about – but I approached and she didn’t come down. I don’t make eye-contact with her, ever. I don’t say a word. But I waited, and she remained there, suspended.

Whatever. I ducked beneath her, changed my laundry, ducked back, and walked on.

About an hour later, same thing, only this time, she’s sitting in the archway, legs up. I approached and asked neutrally, “May I?”

“Oh!” she paused, feigning surprise. “Yeah,” she answered poisonously.

She bent her knees, lowering her feet three inches max, forcing me to climb over her and drop into a sunken kitchen. I waited. Those feet weren’t moving further.

Grow the fuck up! What is wrong with these people!?

It’s non-stop degradation, sarcasm, and show-boating every time I pass, and now this? Again? I mean, I know it’s not the same as imprisoning me in my bedroom while you thrust your finger in my face and yell at me to get out of your house, and I am closer to stable on my meds, but it’s just so disrespectful. They’re RUDE!

I don’t understand how they’re not embarrassed to accuse me of everything they’re guilty of. Unnecessarily, to boot! At the end of the day, what are you doing here? You have an apartment. I live here until October 1st, because YOU designated my move-out date, and I found a home accordingly. I cannot believe they think I’m in the wrong, when just showing up every weekend has proven my point.

So I rolled my eyes and plunked over, muttering a fuck you.

Oh, fuck. Oh, Christie. Oh fuck!

I avoided it all month. It’s what they were gunning for, and I walked into the shootout. They were ON ME. Stupidly, I proceeded to the laundry room, which is just a tiny utility closet off the kitchen, when Jax roared, “Whoa, whoa, whoa!”

I about-faced and booked it past him to my room. Carrie was up immediately and, just like the first weekend, chasing me. “FUCK YOU!”

“Fuck you, you bitch!” I yelled back and locked the door. Oh, Christie! Goddammit!

I stayed put for as long as I could, then figured, well, hell, I’ve done it now. I have to finish this. The only way to stay safe is to leave the room with the video recording, so I did. They followed me to the laundry room, where I got something that could be counted as evidence – although what it proves to me is just how very calculated this has all really been. I knew it, but, wow. The difference in their behavior was marked when they knew it could be used against them.

I got emotional and heated when Jax accused me of pushing his bride that first weekend. She had me pinned in a backbend over a table in a room with one exit, and a husband blocking the door behind her! All I remember is ducking under his armpit and running for my life. He intentionally filled that space, hands shoulder-height on the door frame, for maximum effect. Carrie not only followed me down the sidewalk, but took a left turn to continue the chase down a dead-end alley!

To this day, I consider it a miracle that my phone was right there. I don’t even remember grabbing it. And still I didn’t call the police! Still, I tried not to make trouble! I called my mother. “HANG UP AND CALL THE POLICE.”

Only when I heard her voice did I perceive the urgency. I was blind with panic, simply reacting and begging for relief.

On video, Carrie called me vindictive and evil, repeatedly, and expressed her pity. Every time Jax started up, she “soothed him” quick! She could keep herself from screaming and swearing on record, but not him. And she knew it. That woman is all an act.

I have negative energy, she informed me, telling me more than once than I’m hateful.

“This? is not loving, dear.” (Christie, just don’t.) In truth, I’m pleased with how well I ignored them. I responded to very little over the last four weeks. (But she’s just so dumb!)

“You don’t know me!” she shot back, “But I’ve seen your behavior!” With not one thought to her own. I stood there mostly silent, recording her refusal to leave her worldview long enough to see herself yelling and gesticulating at a woman pinned in a closet.

“We’re both guilty,” I confessed, “but you fail to see your reflection. And that just amazes me.” She had no rejoinder and retreated to their room, inviting me to “grow some balls,” still yelling and “not dealing with it anymore.”

You never had to! You brought it. Go HOME.

First, no enlightened modern woman says that. (Trust me when I tell you that 90% of her show has been full-on 1950s Stepford.) Second, why would I need balls if you’re not attacking me? Is that a confession?

Finally, you have no idea the courage the last month, summer, and year have required of me. You have no idea who I am, or the power, daring, and strength in my toolkit. I’ve seen your behavior, too, and I’m strong enough to take responsibility for my part, get better, and never get here again.

Since meeting that woman, I’ve had to dig deeper than ever before. It’s done.
I survived.

****

The next morning, Jax was up with me – 6:30am – to govern and meddle. My colleagues arrived at 7:00. I thought he’d be civil for show, as he has been whenever a witness was present, but I suppose now that I had the footage of the previous night, it made no difference if there was an audience. ???

My co-worker had pulled up on the park strip in our work truck. Sure enough, Jax starts sniping about it. Then Joe comes out of the cab and recognizes Jax. (He’d helped move me in two years ago.) Joe knew nothing of the drama and, friendly man that he is, reached out a hand and a Good-Morning-Hey!-How are you?

“Don’t bother,” I warned him. “He’s pissed you’re on the lawn.”

Joe began to apologize.

“Don’t worry about it,” I cut him short. “Let’s just get it done. Don’t talk to him. He’s not a friend. Just, let’s go!”

I had no expectation that Jax would start in on my movers, and I was nervous now.

When I rushed into the house, Jax asked my colleague if I had instructed him to pull up on the lawn. Give me an ever-loving break!

Later, he followed me out to the truck again, needling me about contact info for the upcoming utility bills. “Oh, Jax.” (Come on.) “You know my email address.”

Ridiculous, these people! Tiresome, punitive, juvenile, CRUEL, and not the tiniest bit aware. Just petty. How are they not embarrassed?

And what do I care now?

With three men and me darting in, out and about like a blur, we had my kit-and-caboodle packed in no time, and on the road! I was close to tears several times, feeling their love and support. I’ve been so alone in this experience. Their kindness and generosity gave me courage when I lacked it, and faith in the world and my ability to reintegrate into a decent population of everyday folk just going about their lives. Soon!

I’m so grateful. Those good men saved me Sunday. (In honor of Carrie’s advice to grow balls, I bought nut sacks to feed my crew… and water and granola bars.)

When we finished unloading at the new place, I asked my boss to come back with me to collect the kitties. I knew it would be an ordeal to gather Penny, who is wily and hard to catch. And under their bed, I knew it. I was terrified to be alone.

Mark took my hand, put his arm around me and squeezed me tight. “Of course I will. Whatever you need.”

I guess I needed to cry then, because they rolled, those tears.

I’m blessed.

****

So… about the bills. I do have a question for the blogosphere. Mostly, I’m just free-writing here – especially now, to survive this month – for the purpose of workshopping my experience aloud, as it were. Helps me to sort through emotions, plans, patterns. But I really don’t know what to do with this idea.

I know Jax is planning to scan and email the bills. At this point, I think I should also scan and email my bill for at least one crisis visit to the ER. We got me there together. I think it’s right to deduct half of that from whatever I’ll owe on utilities. It never occurred to me until this last push, but… yeah. I didn’t do it alone.

There was another visit to the ER, but it was for pain. Turns out, I was having a panic attack and all I could think to do was drink water. I was pissing clear, as they say, but I legitimately felt parched, and as the pain increased, I believed that water would flush my system and help me somehow. When I got to the ER, they pushed 2 liters of saline, telling me my sodium was “impressively low.” The doctor told me, too, that I had almost no potassium in my blood, and low electrolytes generally. He literally prescribed olives and bananas for the next week(s), and ordered me to drink Gatorade.

He also recommended I permit a social worker to talk to me about anxiety. I may have written about this already, but I can’t believe it took me ’til 44 to realize that I get rolling panic attacks! I mean, I try to take responsibility for myself and I think I have a modicum of self-awareness, but I had no idea! Shocking, to be so… yeah, unaware.

I declined the “crisis visit” designation, because I just wanted to go home at that point. It had been hours. I was out of pain, but cold and exhausted. So I couldn’t sue Jax for his half of that, although it was definitely a result of the choice we made together to go off my medication.

I’ve talked to my nurse practitioner. As soon as I close my show, we’re adding another smidge of pharma to get a better handle on yet more tiny pieces flying loose from my psyche. Til then, I can’t risk not knowing what another psychotropic drug will do to my ability to memorize. Or balance.

So here’s the question. Do I pay him, or not? Part of me wants to ignore it. I owe him nothing. That is my belief. They terrorized me, and you can’t put a price tag on that. Except you can. I figure, worst case scenario is they’ll sue me in small claims. They’ll have me served at work, and I can counter-sue for the cost of my medical bills – and full punitive under the law, $2000. I feel like that would be fair compensation for what they did to me. I see them as people who tried to help kill a suicidal woman.

I pleaded for my life that first day. I was humiliated to reveal such vulnerable truths to a woman with no care for me, for the access to cruelty it might give her down the line – and just the stigma, in general – but I was terrified as she chased me down the street. I reminded her of her own connection to mental illness, her personal knowledge of its deadliness. “You are scaring me,” I begged that day. “PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE!”

And they kept at it for a month, delighted with themselves and their power to persecute. I think they’re murderers. “Grow some balls”? Woman, you have no idea how strong I am. Had I killed myself in September, the note could well have named you.

On the other hand, blowing off bills will be seen as confirmation, the slap-in-the-face they crave to abdicate shared guilt. I don’t care what they think of me, but it would drag out our disgusting alliance.

I could simply sever the connection, pay, and put them on the road behind me. But I think what they did was deadly, damn-near-criminal, and I am PAID IN FULL.

What would you do?

Four For Four

I had really hoped – and moderately anticipated – that, knowing I’m leaving Sunday, they’d leave me alone-ish this weekend. Instead, Jax’s behavior is second in brutality only to the 1st weekend, when this long assault began. He’s relentless.

This morning, I had a friend coming over to pick up and store some large items I hope to sell, or move to a roomier place in the future. Jax decided I had done property damage to a cheap door with an even cheaper coat of paint. I damaged a chair, too, which belongs to him, he yelled, and I’m “not to remove any property from the premises.”

“You wanted to donate that chair when I moved in, and I gave you $20 for it.”

I don’t have a receipt. It never happened. Fine, keep your chair. Fewer reminders.

But he wasn’t done screaming. I should have just paid him when he offered a “deal” on future utility bills, because now the heat is going to be ridiculous. “You leave it running at [blanking] 80 degrees when you’re not even home!”

“I had the heat below 70 all night and turned it to 76,” I answered calmly, “so it would stay on during my shower and get a jump on the house temp.”

He knows how low I run it overnight, even in winter. I had gone for 5 minutes to get coffee for my friend and me, and forgotten to turn it down. He was home when I got back, and he’d found something “real” to fault.

I took the bait. I lost it. I told him to go ahead and sue me for the utilities. I’d counter-sue for half my medical costs when I was sick, and full civil punitive for pain and suffering. I screamed at him all over again for intentionally inflicting mental duress. I don’t know that I’ve ever screamed like that. I wish I hadn’t, but I just lost it!

LEAVE ME ALONE.

He knew how sick I was. The look in his eyes at every confrontation over the last 4 weekends haunts me. He loves it!

The thing is, he knew I was suicidal, wrestled a pill bottle out of my hands this spring. It’s much worse, in my heart, than kicking a woman when she’s down. It’s getting her down, and then dealing the death blow while she’s down there. That’s how this has felt to me. And he just keeps doing it, weekend after weekend.

He knew his behavior could kill me. He could see, that first attack, that I was more frantic and terrified than I’d ever been before, even more than when I started swallowing a handful of pills that day in April and went to the hospital.

And he keeps at it. Every weekend. Cursing, mocking, utter hatred. Delight.

He loves it! His face, the sadistic delight. I can’t unsee it. And I just lost it.

I screamed today. I don’t remember yelling like that, ever. Even in my violent childhood.

He laughed and laughed. I’ve been in my room bawling. I haven’t eaten all day.

I tried so hard to stay above this. I cannot believe what a sick, cruel, petty man he is.

Jax spent the rest of a beautiful late season day to… stick around and keep me stuck in my room? Every time I walk out, he starts again. Last year, this was his busiest time.

I threw some things in my car and drove to work to donate them, just to get out of the house. I thought about grabbing fast food, but it’s making me sick again. I was excited on my day off to make a yummy, healthy dish – and hoping he’d have gone home to his loving family by the time I returned. Instead, she had joined him here. With the kid.

I’m starving, and terrified that they’re going to spend the night tonight AND tomorrow, just to stick it to me as hard as they can before I go.

I’ll never be the same. I know I’ll be alright. The biggest improvement will come on Sunday, just getting away from the fear of “What/When/How bad/How long…?” The rest will be continued healing, but I’ll never be the same. I’m changed.

Something broke this time, deep inside. I’m not the same.

I never thought I could feel regret like this again. After each relationship – good or bad – I’ve been able to appreciate and enjoy them, able to remember the love or the learning. Except one, who nearly killed me when I was 22. (My only physically abusive relationship since childhood.) 22 years later, Jax has proven worse than the man half my life ago. (Same is true of childhood. Bruises heal. Mental abuse sticks.)

Two men. At 22, and 22 years later.

When I realized it, I cried and cried. “Please don’t take my beloved 222!” I begged the angels. “Please, I can’t! Don’t poison my 222. I love my 222! I need my 222.”

Near suicide after each relationship.

The scary difference is that suicide is sad when a person is young. “She had so much promise, intelligence, beauty, talent. If only she’d held on. It gets better…”

When mental illness kills a middle-aged woman, it was a tragic, noble effort (at best). I tried. I found out. I have an illness that kills people.

Why is it okay when a person dies of diabetes, heart disease, or cancer, but not mental illness? We all have something. With my disease, I might decide someday when I’m done, and it’s still just an illness. We all die.

Not today, but I don’t have delusions about the danger. Neither do I believe anymore that my condition improves over time. I’m worse now than I was 22 years ago, with no hope, fewer options, less money, faded beauty, and now serious, chronic physical pain.

I joke that I’m far too spiteful to kill myself. “I’ll die before suicide kills me!”

It’s probably still true. I am a Taurus, and there simply isn’t stubbornness like that in another sign. “I’ll be damned if…” is a very Taurean motivation. Little can threaten my determination to get through it, by god, but I don’t know the future.

I don’t want to kill myself. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But I don’t want this pain.

It took time but I was able, at last, to put my spin on that devastating perversion of my beloved 222. Now, I see it a wake up call to appreciate my vulnerability, and understand that I must always take care. It’s not enough to coast along in moderate health, or delude myself that I’m fine because “I’m not a tortured kid anymore.”

I have an illness that requires maintenance and vigilance, all my life. Okay is no longer good enough. The Universal Smackdown came to tell me: The time is now to choose optimum, and do the work to achieve it.

First, I have to get out of here.

I really believe the angels are telling me that it’s now or never. For years, I’ve been feeling the shift, the urgency of the work. DO IT, CHRISTIE. That’s what I started this blog for. What I’ve done instead is catalog years of repeating the dynamic of my childhood in nearly every relationship and experience. It isn’t up to me what happened in my youth. It’s only up to me what happens now.

I must figure out how to flip that switch, and stop attracting and creating such ugliness.

I’m in so much pain.

I just can’t believe what Jax can do and say to a woman whose health is so precarious, when he shares 50/50 responsibility for risking that health, and 100% responsibility for abandoning her when she got sick.

Worse, he brutalized me before my meds could take full effect, knowing exactly where I was on that timeline. We were still “friends.” I thought he cared about my recovery. He helped me fall; It followed logic and love to lean on him.

Jax has known all along that his behavior had more power to do damage, precisely because of where I am mentally and emotionally. Further, he knows the layers of family trauma that coat every nerve he’s pounced on.

He knows what he’s doing. My meds might have kicked in by now, if not for constant abuse. He knows I’ve been having panic attacks, and crying for months. He enjoys it.

I just don’t understand.

Four For Four … 444 … 44  … Sturdy and built-to-last, solid, strong … 2×22 … 2222222222222222 … The first angelic hello I heard. “We’ve got you.”

Oh fucking kay.

Today Is A Bad Day

Unfortunately, it was not a little to-do about Tenants Rights. It was a bloody mess that included an ambush by 2 people emboldened by their union and united in their desire to make me pay for not being easy and sweet when my heart is ripped out of my body during a deep, deep Depression.

They came to my room and stood 2-deep side by side to tell me how it was going to be now that she’s the property owner. The exit was fully blocked. I told Jax we had a contract and I found a place accordingly, available on Oct. 1. They both began to fight me and I shot back immediately, “I’m not emotionally equipped to discuss this with you. The law is the law. Please leave me alone.”

They did not.

I told them, “I’m back on my medication, but not yet stable. I’m very emotional and vulnerable. I feel threatened. Please leave me alone.”

They didn’t.

I begged them, “Please STOP! I’m starting to panic! Please leave me alone!”

When I tried to shut the bedroom door, his wife pushed it back in on me and stepped inside. I started yelling, “Get OUT of my room! You are not my landlord!”

“She’s my wife,” Jax gloated. “This is her house.”

“Your name’s not on the mortgage,” I informed her. “I’ve never payed you rent. I don’t even know your last name. Get out of my space!”

Carried rushed through another threshold door to my sunroom, where there’s only 2 or 3 feet for me to back away. I was pinned. And now I was triggered. “You are violating my privacy! I am not equipped to discuss highly-charged issues with you! You are scaring me! PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE!”

She had her hands in my face, telling me how this is gonna happen now. I covered my ears and screamed, “I AM AFRAID OF YOU! GET OUT OF MY ROOM! YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW! YOU CANNOT PREVENT MY EXIT! LEAVE ME ALONE LEAVE ME ALONE LEAVE ME ALONE! GET OUT!!!!!”

I paused to hear her still telling me what’s what and see her still wagging her hands in my face. “I’m calling the cops if you don’t leave my personal space. You are violating my sacred space. I don’t have to listen to you. Get OUT!”

I heard her say, “I don’t mean you harm.” (Her finger was still in my face.)

“You’re doing harm! This has nothing to do with you! It’s a contract. You can’t change that. I’m doing the best I can. GET OUT!”

They didn’t.

“I’m calling the cops! LEAVE!”

She continued. The derision and delight on Jax’s face behind her terrified me. He was so satisfied to show her the shitshow produced by clinical Anxiety. See? 

So I pushed past them both and ran outside. I didn’t want to make a scene. I’m so embarrassed that this is my life. I called my mom. I’m not thinking clearly. What do I do?

Carried followed me outside! Right when my mom answered, “Oh my gosh, MOM. Jax got married and they’re evicting me. She’s following me!”

I turned down an alley. She FOLLOWED. “What do I do? What do I do?”

“CALL THE COPS,” my mother instructed me.

The alley turns into dry grass and then an impass, so I turned and ran around Carrie, full run now, screaming, “I am begging! I am vulnerable! I am sick! I have an illness! I’m not currently stable! I can’t have this conversation! You are terrifying me!” Jax has told me things about her I should never know, so I begged. “You have a personal and tragic understanding of how deadly serious mental illness is! STOP HARRASSING ME!”

I called the cops. So did Jax.

(Her son’s father killed himself in April, and here she is 5 months later, chasing a sick, terrified, suicidal woman – begging to be left alone – down the street.)

They told them to stay out of my private room, and all of us to speak respectfully and give space in shared areas. Jax walked up while I was speaking to the officers to intimidate me and control the narrative! They just spent 20 minutes talking to them together, a couple united against a crazy woman. I mean, what a joke, eh, officer?

I’m still mad that the police let him stay and listen. I asked them to remove him. I told them he was there to intimidate. I had respected the newlywed’s time.

This woman. Jax’s wife. Evil. I had put my intention and blessings into the picture of a nice mid-western girl who’s been through some trauma. She escaped an abusive relationship and left the “scene of the crime,” as it were, got that boy out of the state where his Daddy – whatever that relationship might have been – ended it. I admired and respected her. I saw a woman who was starting over, and met a nice guy at a party.

True, it was painful for me and I didn’t handle it well all the time, but I never bore her ill will. I struggled with Jax, but ultimately loved him and wanted his happiness, too. Whenever I could, I pictured them successful, finding peace and joy together.

She actually took her hair out of her ponytail and was flipping it around from side to side like a teenager, for the cops. She never stopped playing with her hair, unless her hand was on her hip, to hip to hip to hip, and back while she threw her head back and laughed loud enough for me to hear. Repeatedly. I was agog. I mean, it was so shameless, I’d worry the police would see through it and dismiss me outright. Play the innocent, sure, but this! She beamed and wiggled, giggled and chatted it up like they were her first guests in the new home she owns. It was scary.

When I walked back into the house with the police’ reassurance that they understood they couldn’t get me out “tonight” – Are they stupid? – and they’d been instructed to leave me alone, I happened to accidentally catch her eye when I approached the front door. (Jax’s access is in back, which is really the side.) There she was smoking, foot up on a chair, looking jubilant and disgusted, shaking her head through the sneer. I was a piece of trash under her shoe, and it was ON.

A bad man will hit you. A bad woman will fuck your life.

She’s excited to play now.

Well, thanks for the boost? I tore it up packing! That’s some energy! Oh my god!

The show for me – Happy Homemaker Hour(s) – was as gratuitous as it had been for the cops. “Darling” everything. 

They decided they had to spend the night now, to watch the property. I have numerous texts over the last month, including 2 days prior, in which Jax thanks me for watching his home and loving his cat. But now it’s under threat?

Around 9 o’clock, they finished their dinner party, homemade pizzas with her 10 yr-old boy. Isn’t it fun playing house in our house? Darling.

They settled in to the family room, separated into 2 distinct living spaces, and pulled up Netflix. Jax told me to go in my room. “We’re watching a movie.”

“I’m packing.”

“Just shut your fucking door! We want some alone time.”

“Then go home. I have literally 4 days to get this done.”

“You have the whole month!” (There! The police didn’t give you your way. Now I pay.)

“With work and rehearsal, I have 4 days for this.”

“STAY IN YOUR ROOM.”

“I’m packing. That’s what I had planned today. This was my day to tear it out.”

“Go the fuck in your room! Have some fucking respect!”

“I’m not disrespecting you. I’m packing.”

“Why do you have to be such a pain in the ass!? You disgusting, fucking bitch!”

“Stop talking to me! I have a right to move about shared space, and you don’t have to be here!”

“I’m protecting my home from an irrational woman!” He’s up now and bringing it to me. I ran to my room.

“Leave me alone! You have to leave me alone!”

“You fucking coward! You are so fucking stupid!” This time he’s holding the top door jam with his fingertips, making himself big, filling the entire space. I’m trapped.

“GET OUT OF MY ROOM. I’ll call the police.”

“Call ’em!”

“I don’t want to. Just leave me alone!”

“Maybe I want the cops,” he taunts me.

“Then call them. Just get away from me.”

“Shut your fucking door and give us some god-damned space,” he growled.

“I live here!”

“This is our house! You have no right to be here! Have some fucking respect!”

“You’re wrong,” I held.

“You’re wrong!” he shot back.

“You’re right! And so am I. WE did this, and here we are. I’m leaving. Leave me alone.”

“Shut your fucking door!!!”

I just looked at him, defeated. “What, Jax, what?”

“SHUT YOUR DOOR.”

“Or what?” It wasn’t attitudinal, or mocking, just done. STOP. I’m tired.

And he shrugged. You know, the shrug guys do when they want you to see them as unsure of what their rage might produce? He was having so much fun! Like, whatever comes next might be out of my control. I can’t say.

(Jax knows what my sister’s husband did to me, the terror and trauma that reawakened and compounded in me, and what going off medication did to bring the pain of family abandonment and disregard back to the front of my thoughts. Frankly, his indifference as my boyfriend struck that nerve, too, I see now. That posture was no accident.)

“Jax.” … What are you doing?

He stood silent and relished that contemptuous smirk. Filling the entire door frame.

“Are you gonna hit me?” It was more incredulous than anything, not goading. Just, really? (I told the 2nd dispatcher repeatedly that I absolutely did not fear for my physical safety. I felt guilty that they might get that kind of a picture in their head of him. He’s an unconscionable dick but he’s not a danger to my person. Just my inner nugget.)

“Jax,” I sighed. “Come on.” I was just so done. I’m ridiculous? I’m irrational? Give me a break. This is beyond. Enough.

He lurched in further, and that was it. I was done. “You respect my space, NOW.”

He stepped inside my room, put his finger in my face, stared and shouted as loud as I’ve ever heard him, or anyone, “YOU HATEFUL FUCKING CUNT.”

“I don’t care what you think of me. I know what I think of you.”
I pushed him with my whole weight, shut and locked the door, and called the police.

When they arrived, he knocked to let me know and said, “You called the cops because I put one toe in your room? You’re a fucking joke.” They had by now stepped away from the door to wait for me on the porch. Jax taunted me unheard.

They did refuse to let him outside when he tried again to stand over me while I lodged my complaint. I waited on the porch while they talked to the happy couple. When she bid them farewell, thanking them for the work they do, she apologized that they had to bother again. “Tax dollars at work, right?” Boys…

The officers told them the same thing the first pair had. Leave her alone. But they were very indifferent and brief. Told me to make other arrangements and leave.

As if I haven’t thought of that! I have nowhere to go and no way to store my stuff and move it twice. I pleaded, “Can’t you see he doesn’t plan to obey your orders?”

“Tenant/landlord issues are civil.”

“A landlord is in breach of the law if he harrasses or threatens me! And we were domestic partners!”

Just, get another place and move sooner.

The rest of the night was spent unmolested. They put the kid in front of the TV, picked a movie for him, and went outside to smoke and drink. Now, if your property’s so at risk in my care, how is it safe to leave your child unattended with me? A woman who scares him that he hates. That’s okay with you? A kid won’t show or necessarily even know that anxiety, yet, but that is so sick, selfish, indifferent, and disgusting!

This woman is abhorrent.

They chose “Full Metal Jacket” for the 10 yr-old. When he got tired, he fought and begged and cried to go home. “Not here!” he argued, rightly. “I want to go home!” What a piece of shit mother she is. Shame on both of them.

Jax is a step-father of less than a week and that’s how he demonstrates adult conflict management, by terrorizing a woman he knows is sick and triggered. That he helped get there! That’s how a man talks to a woman? A little boy can make it safe by positing blame on the crazy woman, but deep down, could he do that to mommy? Will he?

That woman let her child witness at least one violent relationship for who-knows-how-long that doubtless occurred in a home they occupied together. She delivered her kid to this one! If something like that began in front of any child I had links to, I’d get them off property immediately. How could anything be more important to her? Shameful.

He cried to go home. “I don’t want to stay here!”

I wanted to die. I apologized to him. “These are adult issues that you shouldn’t have to see and I’m sorry for my part in it.” I don’t know if that was adult. I don’t care that a tired, whipped-around boy blames me. He’s supposed to. I just felt awful.

They came back the next night and had another play day/ cleaning party. Darling, darling, darling. The boy played on a hand-held something for hours. Jax’s girlfriend before me came over and didn’t they just laugh and laugh. She stared me down. Got it.

Every time Jax approached, I walked into my room. “Oh, grow up! I’m trying to talk to you.”

“I’m not talking to you. This is done.”

“I’m going to talk to you when I have something to say.”

“Anything that needs to be said can be communicated via text.”

“You really are insufferable.”
“Pathetic.” “Loser.” “Joke.” “Irrational.” All night.

At around 10, he handed me a generic online “3 days to Pay or Vacate.” I am paid.

Are they really that stupid? This time, having learned that they don’t even care what the cops tell them – She’s right. You have to have a judicial order to kick her out and she’ll be gone by then. Just be respectful – I really was scared.

Jax has a truck. They’re not going to put my stuff on the curb. They’re going to ruin me. It’s going to the dump. What about my cats? They’ll be prepared for me to break in the regular way, through his bedroom window, and close it. They’re going to destroy me.

I don’t qualify for Utah Legal Services. The officer I called said the same as last night. “This is civil. Call us when they violate the law.”

This is harrassement. It’s intentional, malicious torture of a woman too sick to survive it.

I was abusive first, and I apologized for it every time, even though the words were loathsome to me, so cheap and empty on my tongue. I had to. It was the truth. I fucked up again and again but every time I went low, I took responsibility.

He was abusive last, and better. Quality vs quantity, I suppose. He risked my life, but I bore down relentlessly for 2 weeks straight (plus another volley of hateful texts after the meth head tried to rob us). We’re even, but now that he’s all in with her, I’m in for it.

They’re going to empty my house on Wednesday. I am afraid of these people.

My cats are so traumatized. I hate that man.

I’m not putting the blog spin on that today. I want it out of me. This is the real journal your getting these days, and I give up. I don’t have an ounce left. I failed. I never did get there, to my best self in the context of intimacy and vulnerability. I’m done trying.

I have one job. Outlive my cats.
I admit defeat. I’m not getting up again. I say when I don’t have to anymore.