Hoping Quietness Produces Greatness

Journal Entry
December 17, 2024
 
I don’t rush to the phone anymore when I hear a text coming through, I barely stop what I’m doing. And it’s not because Suzette said I had to have boundaries with myself and not rush to answer texts like I used to, it’s because the texts are usually meaningless. Not so long ago, when I was so desperate for company that any form of communication from any source would make me feel connected to the world, I would I grab my phone in a millisecond when I heard that tweet. I carried my phone on my person like it was an appendage. It was almost like that syndrome some people get when their arms or legs are amputated and they can still feel the pain, I felt my phone vibrate when it wasn’t on me because I was so lonely. Now I don’t expect to feel anything.
 
Today it’s close to me, within listening distance, but I usually just let it sit wherever it is and let ring or tweet (the chosen text sound) or do whatever it does when someone or something, because let’s face it, the world is run by computers now, wants to get a hold of me. And those calls, texts and emails that I’m letting go unanswered? Unimportant because it’s usually a doctor’s office with some sort of reminder, a delivery of some sort or the messages for the person in Arkansas who had this phone number before me. I gotta say, the texts for enhancement products were interesting at first, but now they’re annoying. Thank you, phone company, for giving me Darius’ number when I requested a new telephone number after my FB, IG, email and phone number were hacked. It would have been a lot easier had you used my zip code to find me a new number and someone less popular would have been nice. Now I’m just reminded of exactly how insignificant I am.
 
There are no more hours-long conversations with Maggie. Those stopped three years ago, before I moved here, and she went off her meds. I weaned myself off psych meds with the support of my medical team, it took seven months, and I slowly switched over to medical marijuana at the time. She took herself off psych meds in one day and used street drugs because she couldn’t get medical marijuana. Then blamed me and got into my personal space. I knew how to handle her, I’d been around people who were psychotic for decades, hell, there were times I was psychotic, so I wasn’t worried that she would get violent like most people would be. It’s a common misconception that schizophrenics get violent, especially when they are off their meds. We can thank the media for that. They love to publicize the low percentage of people who do become violent because the world loves gore and negativity. What they don’t publicize is the large percentage of mentally ill people, mostly schizophrenics, who are homeless because of their illness, who don’t get the proper help they need because people don’t understand their needs and they are left to fend for themselves when they end up in a position where they can’t help themselves. And whose fault is that? Usually not theirs. But nooooo. Let’s not publicize that. Let’s not publicize that we could be doing better by people, all of us.
 
Maggie’s whole personality changed; I watched her become someone else. She started holding her pinky in the air and referred to herself as “we.” Her mannerisms changed, her tone of voice changed, she even developed an accent I couldn’t place. She didn’t have DID (dissociative identity disorder, better known as multiple personality disorder) that I knew of and the change in her was remarkable. I had a friend who suffered from DID, and I knew a thing or two about “the switch,” but that’s not what was happening with Maggie. Maggie had PTSD along with schizophrenia, she was using street drugs, and without her medication, her symptoms went unchecked. She wasn’t the Maggie I knew anymore. The Maggie I knew was brilliant. She studied the Kabbalah and textbooks on every subject imaginable. She was Wiccan and introduced me to tarot cards. The last reading she gave me was on my birthday in 2021, after she stopped taking her meds. She laid the cards on the table and immediately said she had to leave. Every card was reversed, and it freaked her out. A reversed tarot card doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a “bad” thing, it just means that the meaning of the card is reversed. The position matters also. But she was freaked out because she said every single card was reversed and because it was my birthday, she felt uneasy. Un-medicated or not, I had always trusted her intuition. Tarot cards have never been my thing, but they were Maggie’s and everything she ever told me came to fruition. That’s how I met her, she gave me a free reading. She dropped out of my life two months later, when I moved here. She was homeless and looking for a place to stay. Ringo told me she trashed his place in December after she invited some other homeless guy to stay there with her without asking him. There was no way I was going to let her stay here, I couldn’t. Not with having new neighbors. I couldn’t risk getting kicked out of my new apartment if she went off the rails and trashed the place like she had done at Ringo's. I wonder all the time if she knows I ended up dating her ex and that we’re best friends now.  
 
There are no more conversations with Susan as she drives back and forth to school and then later again before she falls asleep on the phone while I listen to her soft snoring. She passed away on December 12th, 2021, ten minutes after she woke up. I found out twelve hours later after I got home from going out with a group of women from my EDA (Eating Disorders Anonymous) support group. It was the first time I went out in public with a group of people I didn’t know for years. It took three years and grief counseling for me to be able to say her name without breaking down. Susan was left a single mother after her husband committed suicide when her daughter was ten months old. She gave everything selflessly. Her kindness, love, gifts, anything she had or could afford. And she couldn’t afford much. But she always made sure I knew she was thinking about me. She was thoughtful AF. She’s the kindest person I ever knew. And she’s the only person who ever knew me. If she didn’t understand where I was coming from, she tried to break it down until she did. And she was a romantic at heart. Wuthering Heights romantic. Jane Eyre romantic. And she firmly believed that Xavier loved me.  
 
She contacted Xavier while he was in the Dominican Republic and I was in the hospital after my potassium levels tanked, the night I had a premonition that I was going to die. It was the first time I kicked him out of my life since he’d been back. I found out later that he sat in the airport researching my illness (schizoaffective disorder, a misdiagnosis now) and he was going to reach out to me but was concerned that my parents would call the police. Their racism was the reason I broke up with him in 1991 and with the current state of race relations (the police shooting of Breonna Taylor, the police beating of George Floyd, and the police shooting of Daunte Wright) he wasn’t comfortable being a Black man involved with a White woman who was angry with him and had parents who were racist and already didn’t care for him. But Susan reached out to him and told him what happened. Then he was back in my life by the end of July, and she was gone five months later.  
 
Xanthe took me to the funeral services and held me as I sobbed the entire time. Her parents used the photo I took of her for the funeral program. She would come over to my house, do her hair and makeup and sit in my kitchen while I walked around her and snapped pictures on my phone. I was learning how to take portraits, and I found it easier to get people to relax when I got them to talk about the things that made them happy. Her parents told me after the services that many people said they hadn’t seen her look that happy in years. By the time she passed away she was over five hundred pounds. After her husband killed himself and left a note blaming her, she ate her way to an early grave. A few weeks before she passed, she told me how worried she was that her daughter would be an orphan. The university opened for in-person classes that semester after holding virtual classes only due to COVID. I urged her to see a doctor when her breathing became labored, when she told me how difficult was to walk from her SUV to class. But she was determined to finish the last week of school before Christmas break. A professor accused her of plagiarizing, and she was working extra hard to prove that her work was authentic. She assured me that she would go to the doctor during the Christmas break. She died on a Sunday morning, two days after she told me that. She never finished that week of school before Christmas break. She didn’t get a chance to hear her professor say she didn’t plagiarize, her daughter became an orphan at thirteen years old, and I lost one of my best friends. I believe Susan was at the funeral services, and finally got to see that she was loved. After a lifetime of feeling like she was unlovable, I believe she was there and heard all of us tell each other how much we loved her. I was the first to stand up and speak about her, me, the woman who was afraid of her own shadow, who had only just started facing people in person days before, stood up and told the room she was my sunshine. I don’t know what I said after that. I slumped in the pew and cried as Xanthe held me and dozens of people talked about how Susan positively affected their lives. That was the last time I felt her presence. It took me years not to be angry with her and years to understand grief. Years to be able to say her name and years to say goodbye. I don’t break down when I think about her anymore, I celebrate our friendship and who she was. She taught me humility. She didn’t have to be the center of attention and she didn’t need praise. And she taught me to be kind regardless of how I’m feeling.  
 
The texts from Xanthe are infrequent. I can count on a birthday text and a text at Thanksgiving and Christmas, for sure. Emails when she runs across something significant on Facebook or something from our past. But I haven’t heard her voice in almost a year and a half. Not since shortly after my overdose last August when she took me to lunch, and I tried to explain my new diagnosis (BPD). Our friendship has survived a lot of turmoil since high school, all of it because of my life and my choices. When I chose to swing two years ago it nearly severed our bond. My choices, my illnesses, my behavior, have had an impact on our friendship. The walls I put up were too high for her to climb, the impossible expectations and miscommunications took their toll. She told me a few years ago that my “explanations only make it worse.” She was the first person to say that to me. After that, both my sister Elizabeth, my sister Rene and Xavier have told me the same thing. It took a few years to figure out why it was so confusing, but I finally got it. I may be late to the game, but I will get there…eventually. I know it sounds like an excuse but the way I was thinking when I was on psych meds is completely different than the way I think now. And even though I’m still working out the kinks, because I do believe that there are residual effects from decades of unnecessary psych meds, my thought process and the way I reason is much better than before, but I still have trouble with it sometimes. When I was on psych meds, I used to have these long-drawn-out explanations, much worse than I do now. They ended up not making sense most of the time because they went too deep. I was trying to get people to understand me. I was desperate for any kind of understanding. In my attempt to make things better, my explanations only made things worse. I’m not like that anymore. I have a tendency to over explain sometimes, okay, maybe more than sometimes, but I can stay on topic. It’s probably why I did so well in school and why I did so well at being a Paralegal for the short time that I was. I’m thorough to a fault. Xanthe and most people are not. It drove her crazy. My choices and my life became too much. But she stayed. I don’t know much about her life or who she is anymore. I’d like to, but I have to respect her boundaries. There may be a day when she decides that our friendship is worth more contact, that I’m worth more. Until then, I’ll wait. She needs distance, like the Victorian era she told me.
 
Lori was a champ a couple weeks ago after we went to the poetry reading on my birthday. I bought the tickets before I asked if she was available. It was her or Xanthe. I didn’t know anyone else willing to spend the night listening to poetry and I didn’t have anyone else to ask period. Ringo had to work, Malcolm doesn’t drive and wouldn’t go if his life depended on it. He’s got a past, he can handle himself, he’s not afraid of anything, but he will tell you, that if the good Lord wants you, he’ll snatch you, nothing you can do about it. So, there’s no reason to get a COVID vaccination, a flu shot, I could go on and on. But he’d rather stick his head inside a tiger’s mouth and take his chances than sit next to me at a poetry reading. He barely tolerates the rare occasions I send him a poem. Anyway, after I sat in silence during the ride home, humiliated because of the things I said, I called Lori as I was getting undressed. It’s a sixty-five-minute drive for her, I figured we’d have time.
 
“There’s no judgment here, Mary.” I didn’t cry once when I told Lori what I’ve been doing the last three years, since I moved here. I told her how I can’t look at myself in the mirror. That I get dressed in front of the full-length mirror now, concentrating on my body, never looking at my face, instead of the bathroom mirror. When I wash my face or brush my teeth I close my eyes. Doing my hair is interesting. I haven’t worn makeup in over a week. It ends up all over my face anyway, which looks worse than not wearing any at all, if that’s possible. I look traumatized. I’m the poster adult for C-PTSD. I wrote everything out the other day, all of it, right after my appointment with Dr. Peters. Then I lost it when I hit the cut tab instead of the copy tab. I can’t do that now, write it all down again. I don’t have the mental capacity to put myself there again, not now. I’ve got too much to say tonight anyway and it’s already late. Besides, I type slow AF. I might still be typing this in the morning.
 
Ringo is here twelve hours a week thankfully, because he’s my aide. People would probably be shocked to know I have an aide when I write about all the sex I have. It is astonishing. I can bend my body like a contortionist, but I can’t clean my house or do my laundry. I also can’t function for three days after having sex. Maybe it’s a good thing people don’t stay. None of my playmates knew about the toll sex takes on my body. They haven’t seen the fatigue either. They have no idea about the prep that goes into session or what takes place when nobody is around. They’ve all seen the boxes and pill bottles, bottles upon bottles of supplements and the never-ending supply of eye drops.
 
He texts me every morning when he gets up. I answer those texts happily. But we’re no longer dating, and he has a girlfriend now. And best friends or not, he has a life, a busy life, so there are no more daily texts or video calls just to ask me how my day is going or to talk. And she messages me once in a while, Ringo’s girlfriend. She’s got PTSD and needs a sounding board when Ringo is working. When I was on FB for that short time, before my account was hacked, she started following me because my account was dedicated to my trauma journey. It was a space for creative expression, blogging and education. She and a couple people told me that they sought therapy because of my posts. I had twenty-seven followers. I started out with two. Ringo and Malcolm. I know hardly anyone, and I didn’t care about the number of followers. I posted about my journey, and I figured the followers would come. A few women in my building started following me and when I passed them in the hallway, they would ask me when the next post would be. Trauma affects everyone, people who don’t look traumatized can be traumatized. After my account was hacked and I decided I wasn’t opening another FB account for a while the women in my building asked how they could get the information I posted. They also told me to let them know if I was going to open another FB account. Ringo’s girlfriend is one of those people who told me they sought out a therapist because of my blog posts. I have no problem listening to her since I know what it feels like to feel boxed in with nobody to talk to, but it’s a bit weird. She’s jealous of mine and Ringo’s relationship even though she’s known him for over twenty years, and I’ve only known him for four. She told me she used to crush on him when he was married, and she didn’t do anything about it then. Now that he’s widowed and they’re both single (she’s divorced) she’s ecstatic. I’m happy for them. I am happy for him. He needs someone who can give him their undivided attention. I didn’t. He supported my swinging just to make me happy. He was even going to have a threesome with me and Xavier to make me happy until I changed my mind. He was willing to do something like that so I could be comfortable with my first threesome experience, without ever having had one of his own, just to make me happy. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hurt him like that. He would see the connection Xavier and I had. It wasn’t the best sex, but when he was above me and we were looking into each other’s eyes...that’s what he would see. He would know for sure that we were having sex.  
 
Ringo knew when we started dating that I just kicked Xavier out of my life and I told him about our history, but I never told him that he came back. I never told him anything that happened, including why I started swinging. I eventually broke up with him after our trip to California, after I had already met Derrick, the playmate I just let go of that’s thirty years younger than me, that I met on the day Ringo and I left for California. I never told him that i cheated on him for close to a year and that Xavier and I had close to a year full of tempestuous interactions and broken promises, including the infamous massage that never happened. I told Ringo I wasn’t the woman for him. I’m not. He deserves much better.
 
Malcolm texts me every morning to see how I’m doing and if I ate breakfast, but the daily conversations aren’t what they used to be. He says he can handle me, but I’ve been overwhelming him lately. Malcolm’s gotten used to me calling him “my best girlfriend” even though he’s a fifty-eight-year-old Black man. He seems so much older than me. Other than Xavier and neighbor dude, who’s close to my age but still six years younger than me, I usually play with much younger guys. Malcolm is one of my best friends, we don’t play, but I’m usually around guys. The last couple of months I end up in tears, it’s sad that he’s gotten used to it. It’s pretty common for him to come downstairs to watch a movie and end up with it on pause while I’m recounting an event that I remember. Last June we were watching John Wick 4 and made it all the way to the end of the movie, then he sat on the couch waiting patiently, watching me with his eagle eyes, the eyes he gets when he’s concerned and he thinks I don’t know, as I grabbed my laptop and started furiously banging keys.
 
I had flashbacks during the nightclub scene at the end of the movie. I felt the beat of the music inside my chest as John Wick stealthily worked his way through the nightclub floor. The women dancing in cages above the crowd were the same women that were in the cages in the night club that I found out later was a strip club, in Niagara Falls that night with Xavier in 1990. The night I was drugged. Malcolm sat in the same spot he sat in that night I was banging the keys on my laptop a couple months ago and told me to think about what I was saying when I told him about the conversation I had with Xavier about that night in the summer of 2022 when I was prescribed Xyrem because my neurologist thought I had narcolepsy, another misdiagnosis.  
 
Xyrem, the prescription drug for narcolepsy is the sodium salt of GHB (gamma-hydroxybutyrate), better known as the date rape drug. It’s also known as Liquid Ecstasy, Easy Lay, Georgia Home Boy, Grievous Bodily Harm, Goop, G, Liquid X and Scoop. The side effects are drowsiness, decreased anxiety, memory impairment, and euphoria. It can also cause excited and aggressive behavior in some people, although that didn’t happen to me. At high doses it can cause unconsciousness, seizures, slowed heart rate, greatly slowed breathing, lower body temperature, vomiting, nausea, coma and death. Xyrem is a central nervous depressant prescribed to make you fall asleep because contrary to popular opinion, people with narcolepsy don’t sleep at night. Most people with narcolepsy have sleep apnea or some other sleep disorder along with narcolepsy that causes sleep disturbances at night therefore contributing to daytime sleepiness. If Xyrem doesn’t work, narcoleptics are prescribed a stimulant to keep them awake during the day, which is exactly what happened to me (that didn’t work either). The first night I took Xyrem, which you take in two doses, the first while in bed, because you can fall asleep within minutes and the second dose four hours later (you have to set an alarm to wake up), again while in bed, I laid there for hours waiting to fall asleep. I finally called Xavier and asked him the question that had been on my mind as soon as I found out that Xyrem was GHB. “What happened that night?” He told me the first night he came over, the first time I saw him in thirty years, about that night because for most of my life I only had glimpses, but the night I took Zyrem, the night I took GHB, I needed the full story.
 
I hadn’t seen Xavier for three decades and what is one of the first things I say to him when I finally see him? “I still love you and you’re the only man I’ve had an orgasm with.” I said that. There are a zillion things I could have said. We already talked on the phone, we already texted selfies and photos that meant something to us. I saw him in the flesh, and I said that. And I saw no problem with it. He didn’t say anything, of course. He leaned in to hear more. What do you say to something like that? Four years later and off psych meds (because the psych meds are what gave me the symptoms), I can look at that statement and see that no rational person would have said something like that. But I was far from rational. My thinking wasn’t clear, I was still isolated, I knew nothing about how the world was working, my communication skills were seriously lacking, my memories of him, us, and everything were gone, my moods and emotions were all over the place. I was a train wreck. But as soon as I saw him, all the feelings I had for him came rushing back at once, including desire, something that became foreign to me after enduring fifteen years of abusive behavior. I was overwhelmed. And instead of telling him it was good to see him or anything remotely close to that, I told him that I still loved him, and he was the only man I’ve had an orgasm with. The orgasm part was definitely true and the latter? I thought that was true also.
 
As he sat across from me, he said he remembered our night in Niagara Falls and my heart skipped a beat. I carried what little bit of that weekend I could remember in my heart for thirty years. I was dressed in black; I walked through a crowded night club holding Xavier’s hand as he walked in front of me, I was staring up at the women dancing in cages. I remember that I was euphoric, a feeling I’d never had before, and I desperately wanted to dance in one of those cages for him. I told him that the first night I saw him, and I watched those brown eyes of his twinkle as he laughed. My next memory is having sex and seeing darkness. I can’t see Xavier; I only know that I’m having sex and then I have a mind-blowing orgasm, and I pass out. That’s it. I have no memories of the next morning, just a flash of two memories the next afternoon: walking through an indoor garden in the mall in downtown Niagara Falls as we hold hands and there are tiny white lights in the foliage(I found out a year after he told me about the weekend, in the summer of 2021, that it was the fall of 1990 that we were in NF, so the garden was probably decorated for the holidays) and then Xavier and I standing at the tourist section of the falls as he turns around and tells me to smile. I carried the picture he took of me in my purse for decades. I threw it and almost all of my mementos, including my high school yearbooks, all my photo albums, most of my childhood memories, and my communion bible and veil, into the dumpsters at my brothers-in-law’s business in 2018 when I thought I was going to die. That’s it. Those are the only memories I have of that night. I turned those memories into a fantasy, a romantic fantasy. It wasn’t.
 
After I told Xavier what I remembered he told me we were in a strip club and my brain did a somersault. I couldn’t comprehend why we would be there. I don’t have memories of when we dated then, some have come back to me, but that night I knew in my core, just like I know now, that we didn’t go to strip clubs, we went to night clubs when we dated. Huge difference. To cover up my confusion I told him, “I would have danced for you anyway,” and we both laughed. He looked puzzled when I told him that I passed out and he said he didn’t remember that. Again, brain, somersault. How he could not know that floored me and still does, and to cover up being confused again, I asked him to tell me about that night.
 
Xavier said he was angry when we arrived at the hotel, and we were sitting on the floor between the two beds talking. As soon as he said this, I remembered that we had sex on the floor a lot and a few memories came back to me. Xavier told me that when he wouldn’t talk anymore, I asked him to give me his shirt and I left the room. I came back into the room wearing only the wifebeater. He said I straddled him and asked him if he was still angry, when he wouldn’t answer he said I kissed him then asked him again. When he wouldn’t answer, I pleasured him orally for a little bit then asked him again. When he wouldn’t answer, Xavier said I rode him until we both lost ourselves and he wasn’t angry anymore. He said that night I taught him that small gestures have great meaning, and he’s carried that lesson with him since.  
 
The night I took Xyrem and couldn’t sleep I needed more information. Things seemed like they were falling into place and I wasn’t too happy with what I was seeing. Dr. Peters told me not to tell anyone I was taking Zyrem and he’s the one who told me it was the date rape drug. Something clicked and prompted me to do some research. Research is my thing; I was a Paralegal. I was euphoric that night. I have always wondered why. I wasn’t high, I didn’t smoke marijuana then, when Xavier and I were together, and it was much more than being high. I didn’t do any other drugs either. I would drink when we went clubbing, I always had a seven-seven in my hand, but I wasn’t drunk, I was euphoric. I couldn’t see who was above me while I was having sex. I assume it was Xavier, but I don’t know. I see black, I see a deep, dark, black hole, I see darkness as if I’m blindfolded, and all I know is that I’m on my back having the most amazing sex of my life. One second, I’m walking through a night club gazing wide-eyed above me wanting to dance in a cage for my man in a sea of dancing people as the beat of the music reverberates through my chest a split second later, I’m having sex. And in anther second, I’m having an earth-shattering orgasm. Everything shattered, including my mind. It splintered into a thousand directions at once and then everything was extinguished. That was the last orgasm I had with Xavier and the last orgasm I had period, until May of 2021 when Xavier walked out after we had sex because he was angry and I had my next, by myself twenty minutes after he left.
 
The night Malcolm sat on my couch and asked me to think about what I was saying, I was telling him about the night I took Xyrem, ended up with insomnia, a rare side effect, and called Xavier. Malcolm has been concerned about my state of mind since I started trauma therapy six months ago and he was concerned that night. He knows most of my story, he’s one of the only people. I took a few minutes and sat with what I was thinking. He’s used to me by now and doesn’t mind when I do things like that. We have an understanding. He’s working on redemption, he does what ever he can, no matter what it does to him because he’s paying dues. I don’t take advantage of that, but if he ends up being here and I need to vent, I do. Plus, I cook for him. He doesn’t cook that much so when I do, I invite him over. It’s called friendship, it’s what we do for each other. He waited, watching me as I put my head down. I could feel his eagle eyes boring into my skull. I didn’t want to look at him because he’s always right.
 
“I asked him about that night, and he was angry. He said, ‘just because you can’t remember doesn’t mean something bad happened you.’ I was trying to get him to tell me, and he wouldn’t. I told him about the Xyrem and how it’s the date rape drug. That’s when GHB came on the scene as the date rape drug, the early 90’s. I didn’t think it was him, I thought someone probably slipped it in my drink at the bar or something even though I don’t remember being at the bar. He was so angry. He said, ‘do you think I would let something bad happen to you?’ He didn’t hear me, Malcolm.” Tears were making their way to my chin, and I was wiping my nose with my wrist. Malcolm didn’t say anything because he knew there was more.
 
“I whispered, ‘you didn’t know,’ because he didn’t, I really think he didn’t, and he was so angry. I can’t remember what he was saying. He doesn’t yell, but his voice, he’s so commanding. That’s how he is. I interrupted him and he hates when I do that. He went on and on about me interrupting him, but I still had questions. I was crying and he was frustrated with me, but I asked him why we were in a strip club. I couldn’t understand why were there in the first place. He was flip and said, ‘if we were there it was because you wanted to go there.’ That doesn’t make any sense to me. If we were there and my idea? What? I’ve never been in a strip club. I don’t want to go to strip clubs, never have. I know that. I could barely breathe but I asked him my next question anyway. ‘What happened the next morning? I have no memories of the next morning.’  He said, ‘We went back to the strip club to look for a stripper we liked.’ I think I went into shock. I sat on my bed and didn’t move. He had to be wrong. There’s no way we did that. I just started swinging, that was all new to me. I never did any of that before, I never thought about that stuff before and the only reason I did it in the first place was to get him to treat me like he used to. I knew nothing about that kind of life until he told me about it after we reconnected. I had just started swinging about a month before that phone call. Nothing made sense. None of it. He hung up and I had to try to convince myself that what he was saying was the truth and to let it go but I can’t.” Malcolm looked me in the eye and very calmly said, “when someone you care about comes to you upset about something they think happened to them, especially something like that, you don’t get angry unless you have something to hide.”  
 
I told Malcolm that I loved him tonight before I left his apartment. He was kicking me out so he could eat dinner and then he was going to take a walk and smoke his half of a cigarette. The guy with emphysema and half a lung that’s collapsed three times has two cigarettes a day, smoking half at a time. He knows how much I hate cigarettes, so he doesn’t ask me to go with him. My mother is terminally ill with lung cancer, her fifth time with cancer. We don’t speak but it’s affected me. Plus, I care about him. I don’t lecture him, but he doesn’t want to upset me. He likes to think his hardness is impenetrable. I’ll let him think that. “I love you, you know,” I said after I hugged him and walked toward the door. “I love you too, Red. Now git.” He’s coming to my place tomorrow so we can make an appointment with the surgeon at the brain and spine center. He’s finally going to let me go with him to see the surgeon for a consult for back surgery. This man who told me before we became friends, when he decided to tell me he wouldn’t date me because I had to experience more than him after I told him a little bit of my story, who also told me some of his and the reason he won’t let people close to him, is honoring me with the privilege to accompany him to the doctor so I can speak on his behalf because he said I “know doctors and can talk the way they do.” My friend is in pain and needs help. He has stayed when so many other people haven’t. He listens and doesn’t judge me when so many other people have. He knows and I will do whatever it takes to keep him.
 
Neighbor dude only texted in the middle of the night when he wanted sex and it’s been over two weeks since I’ve received a text from him. I miss his kisses but not him. Out of all the playmates I’ve had, he was the best kisser. I just wish those lips weren’t attached to an asshole. He didn’t respond to my last text, the text that said I was going to a trauma treatment center in Florida. I’m not going but he doesn’t know that. They can’t offer a full scholarship and it’s way too expensive. I told him everything, well, most everything about a month ago. He doesn’t know about Xavier specifically. I lumped Xavier into the C-PTSD category, and I didn’t tell him about being raped or my childhood. But he knows about the psych stuff, the isolation, the sex addiction. He knows my behavior has been erratic and I’m pretty sure that’s why he’s staying away. I don’t blame him. Sex addiction is like any other addiction it turns you into someone you don’t want to be just so you can get that high or numb out. I’ve used sex to do both, and I used him to do it. He uses women all the time. I figured that out the morning after we had sex. Two hours after I left his place, I saw him standing by the elevator with a woman who I figured out was his girlfriend. As I walked past him and then turned to look, they were both watching me. She with a curious look and he with the look that told me I would be seeing him again. That was a year and a half ago. She broke up with him this past May when she found out he was sleeping with someone because one of my neighbors heard him and called her. The other woman wasn’t me. I later found out she wasn’t his girlfriend. As he was lying next to me while we were taking a breather between sessions, he told me she gave back the ring when she broke up with him. He was going to marry her. I’d been having sex with him on and off, mostly on, for a year and he was planning on getting married in September and never said anything. It wasn’t the only reason I was upset. I contributed to the corruption of a relationship. She didn’t know about me, but I knew about her, and I slept with him anyway. What does that say about me as a person? Neighbor dude is aware that we’re similar now. I’ve used him for sex just like he’s used women to get what he wants. I understand why my phone is silent in the middle of the night now.
 
Derrick is gone. The young guy I met the day I left for California, who was here an hour before Ringo picked me up to go to the airport, that young guy. He turned out to be a lot of fun and a lot of heartache. I didn’t have feelings for him, but I had feelings, and he used them to his advantage. Malcolm used to say he was gonna find me in a playpen someday because my playmates are so young. We would laugh about it while we were walking outside. That was during the summer when the fatigue wasn’t kicking my ass as much as it is now. It was hot AF the day I met Derrick and it lasted two years. A lot of going back and forth, the same kicking him out of my life and letting him back in when he asked to come back, same pattern as Xavier. He was an excellent playmate though and the kissing, mm hmm. He was sexy as hell, adventurous, fun, nothing was off the table, including the threesome he finally talked me into right before I finally had enough. There’s no more sexting with him. There’s no more sending him poems and his sexy responses or the sexy texts I would get when he was on his way to visit me. There’s no more gaslighting either. It was a shock to find out that his real name isn’t even Derrick. I had to find out from someone else in the middle of fucking, it’s still hard to believe. Then I laid there, looking at her while he told me from the bathroom that he “uses that name on the swinger’s site and he told me his real name last year, but with my memory problems and all he's not surprised that I forgot.” I’m pretty sure I would remember a name change. Things like that you don’t forget. And even if he did, it would have been a year into our fuckship. A year. I spent two years having fun but wondering what was wrong and I couldn’t figure it out until right before I ended it. It’s sneaky, gaslighting. It can do some serious damage. The thing is, I know why he does it. We’re a lot alike even though he’s thirty years younger than me. He’s got PTSD for sure. I think it’s probably C-PTSD though, like me. He’s survived some horrific stuff, that guy, if it’s true. Our relationship was toxic, we bonded over trauma. It’s not how it started out but it’s how it ended. He begged me to come back just a few months before it got really bad. Then I told him most of my story. I thought we developed a level of intimacy deserving of trust. He was another reason I didn’t think I’d be able to trust again.
 
I really don’t know what to make of Jax. He doesn’t text me that much, he never really has, and since I told him I was finished with him a few weeks ago, he’s not texting me at all. But we’re not finished and for that I couldn’t be more grateful. I need people in my life, physically and not just for sex. I need a body count for support. I’m ashamed of my behavior and I’m embarrassed about the things I said. He’s not driving me to my medical appointments anymore, Ringo is. And for the times Ringo can’t I’ve found another cab company. When we started having sex Jax and I made the agreement that we wouldn’t let what we were doing interfere with our professional relationship. We never did. But when I was hurt and ended things I severed our professional relationship also. Then Jax told me that our friendship was deeper than all that. He listened as I apologized and then poured my heart out and when I asked for a do over, he was more than agreeable. But he hasn’t texted or called, he’s only responded. A week ago, he said he would text me the next day so we could catch up and he hasn’t. In the past I would have been impulsive and fired off some kind of text about being ignored or I’d send some texts here and there asking him if he was okay just so I could stay fresh in his mind. I did that with anyone who I thought treated me like I was irrelevant. I’ve learned not to do that because it’s usually not the case. It’s the C-PTSD talking or the BPD. I’m practicing holding back, not being impulsive with my words and emotions. It’s difficult. I know it’s because of abandonment issues and neglect and has nothing to do with Jax or anyone else thinking I’m a nonpriority, which my mind automatically tells me is the case. Being aware is half the battle, it’s the easy half. Jax stayed also, like Xanthe has. I have to practice trusting that. I have to learn to trust. Trusting that, trusting him, trusting someone, trusting a man… see? I’m going to get this if it kills me.
 
I can’t remember the last phone conversation I had on the phone with one of my sisters. We didn’t really do that, have conversations just to talk. I tried many times but gave up after my foot surgery in February. I was still full of rage then. All I could think about were the countless group texts I sent that went unanswered, the emails I sent them that went unanswered, the vacations I didn’t get invited to,  the times I ended up sitting in a corner at family gatherings, the surgeries they didn’t go to, the times I was hospitalized and they didn’t visit, how I listened to them tell me about their sick friends and the dinners they would make them or how they would visit them in the hospital or care for their family members. And when Rene was upset because her friend had panic attacks and had to take time off from work, she didn’t know how to help her, so I listened and then I told her. I watched her eyes pool with tears as she told me how much her friend struggled, and I watched her face soften as I gave her suggestions and encouraged her to be gentle with her. I told Rene what a panic attack felt like and gave her insight as to what type of help not to give. I didn’t tell her how it felt to have never been asked how she could have helped me when I had anxiety or a panic attack, how it felt to be ignored when I was feeling paranoid and symptomatic and I called her and she shut me down, how it felt two weeks after my foot surgery and I was still in a cast and not walking and she hadn’t visited me in the hospital or at home yet but was only dropping me off because I needed a ride home from the emergency room. I also didn’t tell her how upset I was the day I was discharged and sent home instead of rehab as planned and she had to drop off my pain medicine and she threw it in my lap then stormed out of my apartment because it made her late for her volunteer shift wherever it was that day, because when she said she would drop it off the next day I told her I needed it that day, the day I was coming home.  
 
I’ve tried countless times to talk to them since I’ve moved out of my parent’s house and especially since I’ve gotten of the psych meds and my thinking is clearer, but the damage has been done. It’s so bad that I’m worse than invisible, I’m a nuisance, that’s why it’s better that I keep them out of my life. I don’t like who I am when I’m around them. Every look, every inflection of their voice, everything they do and don’t say triggers me. I tried to talk to both of them at the beach house, but I didn’t last the weekend. I left the next morning after crying at the kitchen table for almost five hours. I began having flashbacks and couldn’t stop sobbing as my mother, now elderly and frail, stood in front of me and asked me what my problem was with her and my father kept repeating, “I don’t know how to talk to you.” Neither one of my sisters said a word to me. Neither of them asked me if I was okay, which I clearly wasn’t. There were no hugs, no hand on my shoulder even. Just an, “I’m glad you came,” as I walked out the door. Everyone knew I didn’t want to be there. I went for my father. They all told me if I could just go for at least an hour it would be appreciated, someone would make sure I got there and back home. Then they left me sitting there for five hours, crying like that, refusing to give me a ride until my brother-in-law offered to drive the hour and a half it would take to get me home.
 
Today, I can’t write about either of my parents. I can’t open that wound, I won’t. To start would open a can of worms I can’t look at yet and I will unravel. I’m in the process of putting my life together, unraveling isn’t part of the plan. It’s counterproductive. Talking about them will have to wait. I have a few people that I message with through email. The connection is lifesaving. Sometimes I word vomit my entire life in a few paragraphs after being asked how my day was. My friends are cool though. They understand, they let me be me. Funny thing is, they’re all new friends. New as in all from one source and I’ve never met them face to face. But I feel like we know each other. I read their innermost thoughts, and they read mine. Poetry is powerful, it’s more than words. It brought me home, to a place where I have found family. I know my life can be overwhelming. I’ve lost touch with a few people because after I unload, I get distracted and for as much as I long for friendship, I don’t know how to be a good friend. I’m not consistent with sending emails or with giving support. I get distracted because of the fatigue. I’m drowsy now as I type (I’ll be asleep in fifteen minutes, guarantee it.). It’s already the next day, it's been the next day for four hours. I've been typing this entry for five hours. the fatigue makes everything difficult.                                                                                      
 
Sometimes I ask myself why I clawed my way out of decades of isolation and psychosis. I had dreams of being with the man I thought I loved and being surrounded by people. Community meant something to me. Being connected to a world I longed to be in meant something. Now it doesn’t really matter as much. It’s not feeling sorry for myself. I’ve done that before, this is different. Maybe it’s apathy, I don’t know. Maybe not. Do people cry when they feel apathetic? Probably not. I spend a lot of time writing, trying to sort out what happened in the last four years and I take an honest look at the kind of woman I became. The kind of woman who would proposition a married man and the kind of woman who would consider prostitution because she didn’t have the money for the swinger’s site subscription when she didn’t even want to have sex. When it wasn’t for the sex. It was to be held and to feel the weight of another body. I finally told Dr. Peters that I have a sex addiction. After years of being told that I did and then I didn’t and then I did and then I didn’t again, I was the one who finally said that I did and i said it out loud. I never admitted it before because I didn’t want anyone telling me I couldn’t have sex. Because the problem isn’t my extraordinarily high sex drive that I keep complaining about, it’s what happens when sex doesn’t happen.
 
So, now the phone makes its noises, and I let it sit there. If it’s truly someone who wants to reach me, they will text, email or call again. I think this is the way it’s supposed to be for now. Maybe this time of quietness will produce greatness. Like a big lottery pay out. You know, like the person who never plays the lottery and then wins a gazillion dollars? I could be that person, paying my dues, taking chances, hoping, praying, waiting to win. Someday it will be my turn to win. It has to. I can’t have survived everything I have for there to be an empty pot at the end of the rainbow. But for now, I’m learning to tolerate the sounds of silence and to listen for clarity.