Morning in the Loony Bin – Part two

March 23, 2016

8:30am

I don’t think there is much I wouldn’t do for a couple pieces of bacon or a thick slice of ham right now. Despite their knowledge of my allergies I have been served two boiled eggs and a biscuit of some sort. The nurses can’t tell me one way or another if there are eggs in it. At least the tea is hot. I’m hoping to scam a fellow patient of two out of their fruit cups so I can get more than a kiddie sized box of milk for my breakfast.

The TV is tuned to the news this morning, perhaps not the greatest choice considering the state of the world right now. The refugee situation in Europe has brought out the worst in some people resulting in three bombings in Brussels last night. At least 31 are dead and over a hundred are injured. I’m hoping they change the channel soon so that I don’t have to watch those numbers tick up, like a telethon’s tote board. They will rise. They always do. This is the earth after all and the human ability to hate and attack each other seems boundless.

The news is talking to people jumping to assign blame to the refugees themselves, not even considering the possibility that it was right wing radicals trying to make their point, and this brings to mind two thoughts.

The 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by sixteen non-refugee men. In the fifteen subsequent years, how many attacks have been on American soil have been carried out by Muslim extremists? One, perhaps two (what I wouldn’t give for access to the internet right now so I could find out for sure) and neither of those were carried out by refugees. Instead, it was men and women living in the country by completely legal means.

I am trying to focus on something of consequence rather than the minutiae of life but my brain has other ideas. Did the Canucks win last night? #teamtank My blood pressure was way down this morning. 131/81 is almost normal and far less terrifying than the artery bursting 171/104 reading that I got last night while being admitted. It makes me wonder what meds they gave me last night. While my heart beats are better, I have heart burn. I really do need more than milk. Dry toast is even appealing at this point.

I know I had a second point to make about the bombings but it has left my mind. My brain is often like this and it’s why Dr Jahmeel tried me on Ritalin when I first got my depression diagnosis. Even as a small child, I remember my mind being four or five steps ahead of where I was. Every possibility opened before me like a branching tree, reaching skyward for the sun. Early in grade school, this meant that I was not only ahead of where the class was in whatever lesson we were doing, I was often ahead of the teacher. When we were doing addition, I could already see how subtraction worked. I was reading at t third or fourth grade level while the concept of “sun”, “fun”, and “bun” rhyming was just becoming apparent to the rest of the class.

This skill had its advantages but, while I didn’t know it at the time, it had far more disadvantages. I was so far ahead in my assignments that I was often extremely bored and would get myself in trouble while trying to occupy my mind. I often found something in my bag to surreptitiously damage my desk, just to see what was under the next layer of fake wood. I got good at it. In the third grade, I drilled a hole into the front edge of my desk that was deep enough to fit an entire crayon in it, lengthwise. My chairs were a monument to scratching with makeshift shivs and extreme boredom. It’s hard to convince an 8 year old to do the lessons being assigned when he’s read six chapters ahead in the textbook and could teach the class if necessary, so the habit of not bothering with homework was well established, following me into high school. It was never that I was lazy but rather I was quite bored with most of school and what few topics and subjects which interested me never challenged me in any way. I really don’t like this about myself and it is something I have fought against nearly constantly since my diagnoses.

It is why going back to school and getting my high school diploma meant so much to me. It was the first time in decades then I had set a goal and followed through on it. It’s also why writing down these thoughts are important to me right now. I don’t know if they’ll be useful in the future but, at least for now, they are something I’m working on which has no specific purpose and is also a means to try and slow my mind down. Right now, in this place it doesn’t seem to be working.

My bed is in a specified area, my very own five by five space, separated from the person on my right by a curtain and a wall to my left. Halfway up the wall are stains in the paint looking suspiciously like a splatter of some bodily fluid. There are five or six of these of these spaces in a row, making privacy flexible and important but a complete illusion at the same time. However intrinsic and flawed the uncomfortableness of this situation is to me, I am one of the lucky ones. Just outside this are three gurneys lined up along the wall with no privacy whatsoever. I wonder if I get a curtain because I am not likely to need emergent care or if it’s because I just happened to get here first. There are also patients to whom a bed is an unattainable luxury for they await a better situation sitting in a hospital style recliner chair. About a half a dozen people have been in those all night. For them, I’m sure a goodnight’s sleep must have been a fantasy, unless of course the nurses were able to knock them out with a cocktail of meds. The only one I’m sure slept well in those chairs is the young man with the mark on his face. He seems to have been comfortably asleep throughout the night, his hat pulled over his eyes as a shade from the pulsating fluorescent lights above that I doubt are ever turned off.

There is one thing about the curtain beside me that I have not mentioned. I have been reluctant to do so for it is a reminder of why I’m here, more than the bed situation, or the bracelet on my right wrist. I could have easily deluded myself, created a delusion as to why those things are present. The curtain is of a cheap artificial fabric of some source, although I doubt it’s nylon as it has a tendency to go up in flames like a flamethrower. It must be thirty or forty years old, perhaps even the surplus from Super 8 motels from across North America bathrooms. I am in a section of the hospital where clean, new and soothing is not a concern because those states are reached through the use of Thorazine, Xanax and Valium. I am not meant to be comfortable. I am meant to be alive.

The nurse has taken pity on my empty stomach and found me a fruit cup and grabbed me a tea from her private stash. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I wish it was decaf.  It makes me feel completely uncomfortable because I feel like I’m getting special treatment as it is so to but in a special request is completely out of the question.

The mental image of me being on a fat camp reality TV show has jumped into my brain. I feel like I’m getting ready to do my last-chance-workout, all the contestants sleeping in the same room but I won my bed and curtain space in this week’s reward challenge. The state of curtain betrays that thought.

As I turn and lean on my left shoulder to hide these thoughts, I am faced by the discoloured wall. Twisting to keep my legs on the bed I am face to face with the one foot square section of wall which is now clearly a stain from arterial spray. I am currently both glad and upset at having seen so many episodes of CSI over the years. I can falsely speculate on speed and directionality based on the size and shape of the droplets. I think I can discern a void in the stain, as if there used to be something in the way; a person perhaps.

This is the beginning of page twelve in my notebook, which means I’ve written more in the last 16 hours than I have in a very long time, perhaps ever. Doing it curled up on a hospital gurney is very uncomfortable and my back is beginning to get sore. I only hope that, if not today, it helps me at some point. Otherwise, I’m just spinning my wheels again, distracted by my seething mind, destined to end up in the same place I began.

Morning in the Loony Bin - part one

March 23, 2016

7:30am

Morning has come, far too early for my liking. While snoring is rampant here, my little corner is full of people very much awake and yet somehow making less noise than those sleeping. In the hall are two people sleeping on the thinly mattressed gurneys they put you on in here. Presumably, mobility can become unexpectedly important, even in the psych ward. I'm curious if there are leather straps stowed under these but I'm just too nervous about the truth to try and find out. The small size could explain why I am curled into a ball, hugging my chest, trying to keep my bulky front from spilling over the side of the gurney. It's more likely that my extreme mental discomfort has me craving the fetal position. It also explains why my back and hip are killing me, although not literally. A large, vocal part of me is sad about that literally thing.

Close to me is a new recruit to our little encampment. Sitting up, he is talking to himself, embodying the lostness I feel inside. He is mumbling in Punjab or Farsi, I can't tell the difference. His face is frozen in a mask of concentration, as if spending all his energy trying to comprehend what is happening to him. In this matter he is a kindred spirit and I feel a little less alone.

Two curtains over is a young girl talking in her sleep. Her words alternate between those expressing terror and bliss, like a scene from Fifty Shades of Grey, unable even in her sleep to escape whatever it is that put her in this place. Before I had realized she was asleep, I found myself wondering if she was masturbating but although I am quite sure that is not uncommon thing to happen here, I am now leaning to her being a scared little girl trapped in a no longer naive young woman's body. She's in pain, likely both physical and mental, her dreams desperate to understand anything that is going on, whether that be out here or in her mind. I doubt her perception of reality can tell the difference anymore. After all, they are both prisons.

I haven't eaten in over 14 hours, getting down only water and extremely unconcentrated orange juice. I don't find myself overly hungry but the bottle of Ensure I was offered a couple of hours ago is beginning to sound appealing, despite my distaste for them. I know a headache from not eating will be coming on soon, along with the stress and mindlessness which will accompany it. I am the person in the Snickers candy bar commercial who is "not himself" when he's hangry.

Mindlessness. In a world that seems to be pushing the concept of mindfulness on everyone, the idea of existing in an exact opposite manner sounds appealing right now. It is the premise behind self-medication, which I have done many times. The tears live just below the surface, held back now only by the paper I am writing on. They are a pressure bomb in my chest and I'm terrified of looking weak in here. I'm terrified of the meds the nurse will give me. I'm terrified of the others here seeing me as a target. I'm terrified of having to acknowledge that right now, this is where I belong.

~

The Ensure is like a mouthful of Buckley's Mixture cough syrup mixed with a pound of chalk dust. Buckley's was my mother's go to cough treatment and I half suspected that it's terrible flavour was her way of determining if we were truly sick and deserving of a day off from school. Over the years I had learned to tolerate it, even looking forward to the soothing feel of it running down my throat. I find it exceedingly doubtful that I should ever expect to get to the point of respect with Ensure like I am with Buckley's.

"What am I going to do now?" has popped into my mind and the tears I have been holding back are moistening the pillow beneath my head. I am reminded of the scene from Terminator 2, when right before leaving the group to kill the engineer Dyson, Sarah Connors carved the words "No future" into the top of the picnic table where she had been sleeping. I am that lost as to what will become of me. Do I have a future? What niche will I fill in the world if I even find an opportunity for another chance and a new direction? People have told me to be like Dory, the fish Ellen DeGeneres voiced in Finding Nemo. "Just keep swimming" they would tell me but keep swimming in what? If you drop a fish into a vat of Sulfuric acid should it just keep swimming or is it logical for it to panic? Where can it go? Even if it ends up in plain water, what would swimming accomplish? Is a life of simply being enough? Existence for the sake of existence? Without a destination, there is no journey to learn from unless you account for a final destination.

It's hardly a new idea or question. Is life's journey towards death a sufficient reason for continuing life? Is life for its own sake reason enough to keep moving from one moment to the next? While I don't have an answer for that question it is something worthy of further exploration.

As a bit of a hobby, I dabble in religious counter-apologetics; the examination and refutation of religious reasoning and justifications of believers' views. There is a concept within this sphere of study which deals with the sufficient and necessary. Specifically, is the concept of a god sufficient to account, not only for the universe we experience, but the entire universe we could ever experience? Can god completely explain the 5% of matter and energy we have an understanding of as well as the other 95% which we know is there but have virtually no understanding of, AND any materialistic or non-materialistic reality of which we may have no concept, imagination or ability to experience.

Further, it must also be shown that god is a necessity, that there is and could never be any other proposition which would account for existence. If anyone can propose a logically and rational concept which would account for our local presentation of the universe, then the idea of necessity is immediately falsified.

While I have opinions on these questions, I have neither the intelligence nor the education to take them on when dealing with the massiveness of our universe, let alone the possibility of the multiverse which has popped out of current attempts at super-unification. I can, however, apply these ideas to the question, "Do I have an obligation to live? “As I am an experimental materialist, I have no belief in a god, an afterlife or an immortal soul so the question of necessity can only apply to the universe I can experience and account for. To whom or what would a necessity of life be related to? When it comes to the nonliving world, it couldn't care less if I was alive. Further, when my eventual end comes, microbes and insects will likely be very glad to fulfill their destiny and consume my non-animated flesh. When considering the living world, I have no pets, no children, and no dependents of any kind. I hold no financial obligation to anyone. No one will end up on the street starving if I cease to be.

The emotional stability of those in my life, as far as I can see, is the only consideration which may satisfy necessity. I have few close friends, most of whom struggle with these same thoughts. Those who do not understand from experience have done well to understand by talking to me and have come to accept how hard my struggle has been. So, if my life were to end, by any means, it is safe to say that my friends would be able to move on with an understanding, and while it would in no way completely relieve the resulting emotions, they would be minimized with the knowledge that I had likely struggled as much as I possibly could. Their lives would move on without me.

Obviously my family adds another level of thought which must be considered. My brother and sister have attempted to help me in the best way they can. Both of them being in the medical field give them an uncommon perspective on how my thoughts work and I have been very lucky to have them around. My Nephew has struggled with depression as well, including stints on anti-depressants over the years. My nieces are teens and have been brought up in the social media age where open discussion of topics once taboo are now commonplace. LGBTQ rights are a comfortable topic for them. So is personal sexual responsibility. Mental health is also a topic of which they are well versed and although I'm sure they want the best for me, they understand that the best for me may be ending my life someday.

My mother is, perhaps, the only trump card which I have to deal with. We have lived together since my first collapse in late 2012 and it has become obvious that she is uncomfortable with my illnesses in every way. She wants to listen, to be the one I can talk to but it is awkward and distressing for her, so I try to keep it to a minimum such as when things directly affect her or our relationship. I suspect that the anxiety issues hit far too close to home and that she's been dealing with many of the same relationship problems and thoughts as I do throughout her life. It just hasn't been acceptable acknowledge them personally, let alone discus them with others, until very recently. I'm guessing that watching so many people discuss so many personal issues without shame is off-putting, to say the least. While it is the one final thing that saved my life, is it necessary to remain alive because of the emotional turmoil that my suicide would cause to my mother.

I know she would do almost anything to want my suffering to end but does that list include accepting my death. I simply don't know.

Night One

March 23, 2016

3:30am

Surrey Memorial Hospital

Emergency Room

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services

Despite only getting forty-five minutes of sleep the previous night, I sit here this morning wide awake on only four hours of sleep, forced upon me by a double dose of Ativan and Trazodone last night. As I laid here, awaiting for the meds to put me to sleep, a woman began shouting at the top of her lungs. Her screams of terror were having an effect on me unlike anything I had ever felt before. I have heard screams of a person in horrific pain, form a broken leg or torn knee ligament. I have heard the screams of a person dealing with the loss of a person close to them, unable to control the overwhelming emotions of fear and loss. This was beyond terror, beyond pain and beyond any level of rationality.

Shouting at the top of her lungs, she was expressing her unbridled horror and panic of a mother who believed they're young child was going to be harmed at the hands of another, and there was nothing she could do to protect them. I use the word believed on purpose, for in this place, a person's perception of reality is just as likely to be false as it is true and the health care staff must take every claim seriously but cautiously.

The woman's claims came fast, loud and furious.

"I know this is a prison!" Not an untrue statement but also an altered description of where we really are. While the appearance here surely evokes that thought, at a quick, closer look, it is obvious it is something different.

"I need to see my baby! You left him with a child beater! He's with an abuser! You have to save my son!"

Her cries were akin to that of a banshee, cutting through every other sound in the room like a katana blade, through the air and also, somehow through ourselves. Every logical bone in my body told me that I needed to remain to myself, in the corner bed I was lucky enough to receive. The other patients only had curtains or nothing at all, waiting in the hallways and chairs, to give them the separation I now needed. More isolated from the furor in the center of the room by the two walls half surrounding me, I still felt the need to curl into a ball as I lay on my bed, a hand over my ear, eyes closed and begging for the Ativan to finally kick in.

But, as upset as I was from the woman's pleading outburst, there was a deep down need to put aside all of my discomfort to try and help her. Watching a person in pain is something I had great difficulty in ignoring and soon I found myself opening my eyes to look through the curtain hanging near my feet. Her tears were not slowing, smeared makeup covering her entire face. Her breaths were so shallow and laboured, they reminded me of an overheated dog on a hot summer afternoon, panting to try and cool itself. I felt my brow furrow as my empathetic side began to take over, glad it wasn't me but also wanting, needing to absorb some of that uncontrolled emotion into myself. Like the character John Coffey from the movie The Green Mile, I wanted to take her pain and worry into myself, cleansing it from her to create her a new reality. I needed to help her, and knowing that this was completely illogical made no difference whatsoever.

This was the thought I had when my medication kicked in and I fell asleep, to the sound of her softly crying, responding finally to the injection they had given her to calm her down.

March 22, 2016 - Not an option

March 22, 2016

10 PM

Surrey Memorial Hospital

Emergency Room

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services

It is surreal here. Four security guards and two nurses just went through a door, into a room at the same time. It's an unassuming door, other than its size, at first glance. A sign on the door labels the room Anteroom 6-7. A closer look at the door reveals how unique it truly is. It's solid steel, with no door handle. It's long, thin window with mirrored safety glass shows just how "not normal" this normal door is. It is a prison door, not the ones you see in old movies but, instead, is the ones they use in supermax prisons, in solitary confinement. I have watched many documentaries about modern prisons and know there are only two reasons to have a door like that; to protect the person inside, from others or themselves, or to protect others from the person inside. I'm thinking it's a combination of both in this case.

I have just seen the psychiatrist on call and it did not go well. We talked about how low I have been feeling and how I ended up in this place. We also talked about where I would end up and the options are limited. I could wait for a room upstairs, which may take days or weeks. I could go to a place called CRESST for about two weeks, to give me a chance to sort some things out and start the journey of recovery a second time. He wanted me there but the spot that was open has already been filled.

There are two other options, be released into the general public once again, with no action being taken to ensure my safety. Although I am behind a large, locked door, it seems I am here on a voluntary basis and if I decide I want to leave, all I must do is fill out a couple forms and go. This thought disturbs me greatly. Being able to walk out the door any time I choose and facing things on my own is not something I would have chosen but it is infinitely better than my final option.

While waiting for a room upstairs, I would likely be transferred to Langley Memorial Hospital, the hospital closest to my home. While there, there would be a chance that I would fall under the care of Dr. Kogan, my former psychiatrist. This possibility terrified me, far more than I thought possible. Just the mention of it triggered an all-out panic attack, the likes of which I have not felt in many years. I'd had smaller, milder attacks but this was unexplainable to those that have never felt one personally. The closest I can get is to ask you to think of a scene from a horror movie, where a diminutive female is trapped in a corner by an overwhelming figure standing over her. Begging for her life, she loses all control, no longer to stop from shaking, from raising her voice, from being who she was moments before.

That was me, reduced to the eight year old boy who sat on the floor of the Museum of Anthropology, quivering and so afraid he couldn't explain what was wrong, not understanding what was happening to him.

"I can't go there. I can't do that. Do you see what you've done to me?"

"No, you did this to yourself," replied the psychiatrist.

I can't go to Langley. Ending up on the street is a better option than that but if I go out of here without a place to go, without having gotten some help, I will die; Either by my own hand or by simply not caring anymore. I have to get into CRESST because I simply don't see myself surviving without it.

March 22, 2016 - A locked door

March 22, 2016
7 PM

Surrey Memorial Hospital
Emergency Room
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services
I have worked hard in the past four years to break these habits, these protective behaviors that have kept me in my own private dungeon. For a while I could see the outside world, the possibilities, a future that even I may have been able to find but right now, tonight, in this place I must face the fact that I have failed. I am once again in a dungeon but this one is far more literal than the one I once built from fear. 
There is a door beside me I am not allowed to go through.

Twenty feet away from me is a man strapped to a bed. The police were just in here with him taking a deposition, ensuring his safety or any number of other reasons. All I know is that he is not well.

Neither is the man sitting beside me. He seems off, something within him is making him act a little different: not quite right. He is not at ease.

Neither am I.

Across the room is another young man, a cut or sore on his face. In his hand is a Tim Horton's coffee, a traditional double-double no doubt. He is reclined in his chair, half covered by a blanket. His demeanor is that of nearly any twenty year old man lounging on a Sunday afternoon watching his favorite football team play. He is at ease and as much as I can his level of comfort rather than this anxiety I am feeling, there is an underlying thought.

I don't want to be that comfortable here.

I am in the mental health and substance abuse zone of the Surrey Memorial Hospital.Dr Khan, my psychiatrist sent me here after three minutes in my session with him. I broke down immediately after starting to talk to him and he saw I needed more help than a fifteen minute session could provide. The first thing I realized when I asked for help during my first breakdown was that if you are no longer thinking rationally, then you need to let someone else do the thinking for a while. You have to make the decision to hand off all your choices, all your responsibilities and trust the people around you. 

But it doesn't mean I have to like what they decide. I despise asking for help. It makes me feel weak. It makes me feel pathetic, deserving of the ridicule I hear from myself everyday. It makes me feel inhuman, reduced to a specimen in a lab experiment or a virtual creature in one of those Tamagotchies that the kids used to play with.

I feel like I'm in a ten year old's palm, as they feed, train and clean up after me, to see how long they can keep me alive, deserving of no more happiness of respect than the cursor blinking before me as I write this.

I can think of a thousand places I'd rather be, finding comfort. I can also think of another thousand places I'd rather be that would make me very uncomfortable. Think of the worst, grossest most disgusting they made contestants do on the TV show Fear Factor and I'd rather do that. OK, maybe not having to drink the donkey semen, but just a maybe.

March 22, 2016 - A beer or two

March 22, 2016

1 PM

Central City Brew Pub

I am sitting in the local brew-pub admiring the eyes of the waitress. The seats at the bar are very good for this. I don't mean ogling the waitress, far too young and completely out of my league, but instead I am participating in one of my favorite pastimes; people watching. Behind me, jovially humming to himself sits a man; obviously a regular but not so well known that the staff yells his name when he comes through the door. Fifty years old and quite overweight, he has, probably even to him, a full head of hair which minimizes the effects of the crow's feet that surrender the secret of his age to those paying attention.

The beer before me is quite citrusy, quite a smack to the palate from a pale ale. It reminds me of the vapours that fill the air when you cut into a fresh grapefruit, essential oils exploding from the fruit and settling up on everything like a soft, spring dawn mist.

I'm not supposed to be drinking. I'm not an alcoholic but I am medicated and those prescribed drugs do not retain their effectiveness when they encounter alcohol in their travels around my blood stream. I am trying to numb myself today, and this one beer will not do the trick. In matter of fact, I doubt any amount of beer will accomplish my goal but I have to try something because existing with a functioning brain that malfunctions is something I am unable to bear today. Another beer is on its way.

The chubby man behind me has stepped up the level of his musical game making his love for the classic Star Wars theme quite apparent. He has also added chatting to his repertoire, although his audience is a mystery as I am the nearest to him, and nothing coming out of his mouth is being directed in my vicinity. While it may be true that he has a secret earpiece in his right ear, currently facing away from me, I am guessing not.

On the TV is a baseball game. This in itself is hardly a remarkable occurrence. However, the history being made today will not be determined in any part by the numbers on the scoreboard in left field or even by the teams playing when the day is done. But, the political ramifications are lost on no one that is taking the time to watch and I suspect even a great many who are not watching. In the stands sits American President Barack Obama. Again, not normally a surprise but it is the location of this game and the person sitting beside him that make it a remarkable occurrence and even the most important sporting event in the last half century.

Raul Castro, brother of the once dictator of the island of Cuba Fidel Castro sits in the stands beside the American President as the Tampa Devil Rays take on the Cuban National team, in Cuba. This is the first time in nearly 90 years that an American President has visited Cuba and today we finally have some tangible evidence that the animosity of the Cold War is beginning to subside. Over fifty years of distrust is being pushed aside in an attempt to move forward from one of the most petulant intra-country relationships in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Once on the brink of nuclear war, these two countries have decided to open up a dialogue and, rather than focus on the hostility, errors, and tragedies of the past, they are beginning anew. Like the second game of a double header, the past will only effect the present if they chose to allow it.

If only we could do that with our own pasts. Another beer has arrived.

The martinis being served to the chubby man have not lived up to his standards. Not that I can blame him. A gin martini with a lemon twist should not be served on the rocks with a lemon wedge dropped into it. Rather than get angry, the man drank what was served and upon ordering the next round, specified instructions were sent to the bartender through the waitress. After all, a bartender working the day shift in a brew pub would have very little training and had never been taught to prepare such a refined drink. With a little patience on one end and an openness to education on the other, martinis will have a proper twist in them when ordered and everyone is just a little better off.

It's a nice idea. It's the idea we try to tell our children is important. It's the idea we tell our teens when they are being bullied. It's the idea behind every union negotiated contract in the last 100 years. It's the idea that our politicians should be striving to achieve. In each of these situations the price of the alternatives is just too high.

Teaching our children to talk through their problems prevents them from using violence as they mature as and complex problems arise. Teaching this to our teens prepares them for their upcoming lives in the business world, where conflict resolution has become a more important job skill with every passing day.

Frustration. Fear. Anger. Hopelessness. Despair.

I don't write about these things because I know how to solve them. I write about them because I wish I did, especially within myself.

I've spent my life trying to figure these emotions out and why they seem to affect me more than others around me. I've needed this not only for my own sanity (yes, I see the irony of using that word today) but also in hopes that someone, anyone will understand a fraction of the way my mind works. This feeling, whether it turns out to be true or false, has been the driving influence of my need to build the facade of lies. The wall that both protected me and provided me with the attention and approval I have craved but seldom found in my life.

I once had a friend tell me that everyone around me both liked and didn't like me: that the two people I existed as was far more known than I had ever realized. I thought I had done a good job of hiding it, but they knew. He said that the person I presented myself to be was the person everyone liked; the nice, giving funny person I always wished I could be. He also told me that the person beneath was detested by people. This was the terrified, emotional aggressive person I was trying to hide. He didn't know what was going on with me and how my internal conflict was tearing me apart but what he had done was confirmed what I had always feared.

People didn't like who I was. People liked who I pretended to be.

This was the person that knew me best in the world, even better than my mother knew me in most ways, telling me I wasn't worth knowing because he told me these things the last time we ever communicated. I had tried to be honest with him, to tell him of the turmoil in my mind. It was me begging for help, and he turned his back on me, never speaking to me again. In three and a half years, the pain he caused me has never subsided.

Now I have to go to my psychiatrist appointment and try to explain all of this. How am I going to do that when I can't even explain it to myself?