Except it doesn’t control any other variables…

Oh fuck, I never claimed to know anything about science.

The last dream involving water was all in a soft sepia tone.  No beautiful blue of ocean water or green of a forest floor babbling brook.  Simply sepia.  There was a large group of us going to a river to go rafting.  The “group,” it seemed, consisted of friends and fun… I was there, too… just not really THERE.  As usual, I felt like I was just along for the ride – witnessing what I wanted yet not being a true component of the clique.  I sat a safe distance away from the rest so that I wouldn’t be reminded of how very left out I was in their banter and colloquy.  Hovering over the life I longed for.

At some point, we arrived at the anticipated spot.  We began floating the flowing sepia stream.  To one side, I remember a nice sandy shore that led to grayish grassland.  To the other, a wall of hole-filled, craggy rock that stretched so far to the sky it seemed it may have been the end place of the “world” I was in.  A wall that allowed no passage.

Eventually, we arrived at what would appear to be a local swimming hole.  And here is where the dream actually embarrasses me.  There were perfectly tanned and toned people running around the deck that encircled the swimming hole.  They wore life jackets and giggled as they dripped with the cool, blue water.  Blue!  Color was back.  The life jackets turned red, and there were yellow canoes and brightly colored swim suits.  And then I realized… the “group” I had been with suddenly turned into the cast of Glee!  Yes – the silly sing-songy sit-com!  (Embarrassed)  And gleeful they were – chasing, splashing, jumping, playing, laughing, living.  Every now and again, however, they would glance my way and lose their gleeful grin.  Their brow would droop and they would look away quickly so as to not catch my illness.  One by one, they began to gather on the deck.  Whispering, glancing, gesturing, noticing that I was not a gleeful puzzle piece, and I certainly DID NOT fit in.

That’s when I began to drown… in my lagoon of lonely.

What the fuck is that about?  Is all the bullshit about journaling true?  Did my commitment to doing this one small, selfish thing everyday make a difference?

My concentration still sucks, I’m still anxious, I still suck at sleeping, and I still hate every disgusting thing (which is everything) about myself, but I am not obsessing about death.  Which of course makes me feel guilty, as if I am betraying a faithful companion, but the cumulative effect is still generally positive.

And now that I have put it to words instead of nebulous thoughts circling in my head…

I don’t know.

Dread.

There was silence when she was born.  The nurse aspirated the baby’s nose, murmuring to the stunned room, “It happens sometimes.”  She was breathing.

In every other way, she was perfect.  Slightly plump around the middle, with scrawny legs and arms.  Her head was large and heavy and gently adorned with feathery white hair.  They counted in utter sincerity:  five fingers, five fingers, ten toes, two saucer ears, one tiny nose, and two deep navy eyes lazily opening as she searched for her mother’s breast with her chin.  No one took a photo.

A feeding tube was placed into her soft belly.  X-rays were taken.  The doctors said that everything was normal behind her quiet, solid face.  There was a jaw, a palate, a cavity.  A tongue, a throat.  One day teeth would grow.

A specialist explained how they would cut open her smooth face.  He touched each of the baby’s soft cheeks, saying that he would slice from here to here; the hole would learn to become a mouth.

“Will she be able to speak like other children when she gets older?”

“No,” the doctor casually replied. “The lips.”

The father shook his head and refused to hear another word.

They took her home.  No scalpels were allowed to touch her perfect, still face.  Social services arrived at the door; they looked the child over, but seeing no obvious frown, hearing no pained cries, they set the file aside.  Everyone forgot.  It happens sometimes.

She grew up speechless.  Swallowed her baby teeth as new ones grew in to replace them.  Never stole her mother’s lipstick, tasted birthday cake, or kissed a boy.

Until one day, she stood in the kitchen alone.  Her eyes searched until she found the knife her mother had been using to slice an apple earlier in the day.  She closed her eyes, plunging the sticky blade into her face.  As it slid between her teeth and into her tongue, she cried out with her first bloody, gasping breath.

Love a good pro-rumination article…

“The alternative, of course, is that depression has a secret purpose and our medical interventions are making a bad situation even worse. Like a fever that helps the immune system fight off infection — increased body temperature sends white blood cells into overdrive — depression might be an unpleasant yet adaptive response to affliction. Maybe Darwin was right. We suffer — we suffer terribly — but we don’t suffer in vain.”

Awhile back, when I was looking at street drugs to help with depression — ketamine, marijuana, etc — R suggested psilocybin as something that would probably be more helpful for depression than pot.  I guess he keeps up with research or something and isn’t just a closet hippie.  That’s probably good, right?

Anyway, it still seems counterintuitive that I would need to slow down my brain to feel normal when it already seems thick and lazy.  But, what do I know?

R:  So, what have you been writing lately?

K:  Oh, you know, I just started blogging about wanting to give you head.  Here, let me give you the address…

Ok, so it wasn’t exactly like that.  But he did ask me what I had been writing lately.  And, for God knows what reason, when he didn’t seem satisfied with what I was writing in another sphere of my life, I told him that I had started writing a blog with some friends… and that it was about therapy.  And, uhh, him.  Sort of.

While trying to push down the panic I was feeling at my ill-advised confession, and determining if there was some way to swallow the words back out of the air — “Just kidding!  That would be funny, right?” — he said it was good that what was happening in therapy was having enough of an impact that I would feel compelled to write about it.

So, yeah.

Embarrassing.

I don’t even know what else to say, but I hope he doesn’t ditch me now for being so freaking weird.

Let’s see… Day 2 of therapy went ok.  I felt like I was in school with my workbook and pencil.  Well, I felt like an idiot mostly.  My brain is broken in pretty much every way possible, so this whole teaching it new tricks thing is tough.  More than one time I caught myself staring at the power outlet,  listening to the clock tick.  Completely zoning out and not listening to a god damn thing the woman was saying.  I bet it was important stuff too… fuck it all to hell.

Anyways… the whole introduction to DBT session made my head spin.   My brain felt all foggy and muddy trying to understand what she was saying… so trying to think back and remember things is not going well.  What I DO remember is being asked to observe something in the room.

Me:  “Uh… observe something??  Like what?”

Therapist:  “Anything… just observe something and tell me about it.”

Ok, so I observed the power outlet with about 5 fucking cords sticking out of it.  Then I thought what dumbass people they have here that would put that many cords in an outlet.  Then I thought about how dangerous that outlet would be if there were little kids in the room.   Then I thought about my own little kids at home.  I thought about how I hope my baby didn’t wake up while I was gone because I didn’t leave any pumped milk for her to have.  I started panicking thinking about my hungry baby crying because I wasn’t there to feed her.

So… Mindfulness!!  I was only supposed to focus on that outlet.   Observe how it looked, felt, smelt, sounded or tasted… nothing else.  Well, shit… I failed my first test in therapy.

Homework for this week.  Observe objects.  Ok, I can do that.  However,  I can only think about that object and that object only.  Anytime another thought pops into my head, I’m supposed to let it “slide out” of my mind and refocus.  Not sure how I am going to focus on anything in this house for longer than 5 seconds without having to yell… “Get your brother out of the dryer!!”… but I’m going to try.

And so it was, the beings were split in two — a face for each, two arms, two legs; Apollo was tasked to finish sewing them up.  But as Zeus saw the despair of these broken beings, how they longed to be one with their other half, he rearranged their bodies to allow them to join together, becoming whole for brief, fleeting moments.

Now what girl wouldn’t be aflutter at the thought?  The perfect half to make you whole.  Another person you were made to be a part, to be a complete being.  A soulmate.

But from the moment I heard the story, I knew there was more to it for me.  My longing and emptiness could never be filled by another half.  In fact, I was so deficient, I knew a half would never be enough.  It was obvious:  I wasn’t split evenly.  The knife slipped, and too much of the soul was given to my mate.  I wasn’t a half; on a good day I was maybe 40%, but in the depths of loneliness, I figured I was a quarter at best.

So I longed to be with men who were more than half, who were loud and present, selfish and determined.  Cruel.  And it confirmed my suspicions, because the more I was with them, the more less-than I felt.

It was the wrong tactic.  I get that.  And I figured it out with time to spare; I married a man with little desire to take over my space.

But I still can’t shake the feeling there was a cosmic mistake, leaving me less of a person than everyone else.  But if that extra part isn’t with someone else, I don’t know where to find it.