Chicken Little the Harpy

Children have to go through a period of going crazy. I mean, of course, you don’t want it to end in DEATH (laughs). That’s kind of the limit, death. I don’t want it to go THAT far. ~ Mick Jagger

I read that when I was 13, in Seventeen magazine. I cut it out, still have it.

I felt like he was giving me permission. I was already crazy and trying to stifle it.
Moods swinging like an out of control wrecking ball in wide unpredictable arches, smashing into anything and everything and I couldn’t stop it.
‘Sorry about that so sorry’,
Erratic swing, smash.
‘Oh dear sorry about that’.
Except there were periods, mid swing when I wasn’t sorry, I was angry and viciously enjoying the free fall and destruction. Then the guilt set in and I was inconsolable, for a minute, and then back to being a vengeance demon.

Imagine Chicken Little, if Chicken Little was a mythical Screaming Harpy. 5’8”, 96-140 pounds of sharpened claws, deafening screeches, beating random villagers to death with her wings.
‘The sky is falling guys, can’t you see it.
Seriously, guys, the sky.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK ALL Y’ALL THE FUCKING SKY IS FUCKING FALLING’.
Cue the rage.

Then, as if by some monkey magic. It’s over. Almost like the selective amnesia nature provides after childbirth. Pain threshold breached and then some…then forgotten. My body and minds way of protecting me, knowing it was going to happen again and I would probably kill myself from the memory of what I had done and how I felt.

The devil, you know?

The ‘they’ thought I was crazy, fuck, I thought I was crazy. The ‘they’ thought I was bi-polar. I had no reason to believe otherwise, the only thing more horrifying than I when I get like that is that feeling of chemical induced numbness. I had a prescription, I pretended to take it. There but by the grace of Susan go I.

Basically for 3-7 days a month I lose my shit. I feel like I am in a “glass case of emotion”. I get paranoid and angry, I feel persecuted, like a huge failure and the negative thoughts just keep on coming, it snowballs. I have crippling panic attacks wherein I have no control over my body and huge feelings of sadness that crash into me like waves. I cannot get happy, I drown in it. I want to be alone, but I feel abandoned, I want a hug, but I can’t be touched. It is a nightmare. Angry outburst for NO reason, irrational behaviour, low self-esteem and insecurities caused by a lot of guilt over behaviour I cannot control. It was/is the most evil of conundrums.

The clincher? I sometimes go months between episodes. I never know when it’s gonna hit until I am drowning.

I reached out once in 2011, after 90 days of literally staying hidden. I put myself on lock down and rained down fire and brimstone on anyone who dared breach my sanctuary. I wrote a thing on Facebook basically claiming I was a total piece of shit and deserved none of the well wishes and encouragement people were giving me.

“If I don’t get some shelter oh ya I’m going to fade away” ~ Rolling Stones

This woman messaged me and said “hey Sarah, I have been watching you, keeping track and I think you have this thing”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premenstrual_dysphoric_disorder

I have the thing.

5/12 gets you a diagnosis. I have 11/12, my anorexia trumps the binge eating.

I now know too that certain things can keep it at bay, sunshine, B12 injections, swimming, dancing, laughing, sex and just knowing, you know?

“I’m-a make a deal with the bad wolf so the bad wolf don’t bite no more” ~ AWOL Nation

This devil, I know.

Oh, just for more funsies add to that crippling evil death actual PMS.

Cramps, what a mild and mediocre word for the sensation of being sawed in half. My ‘lady pains’ get so bad I recently fell to my knees in a thrift shop, there but by the grace of some second-hand curtains I avoided smashing my knees on the floor.

Oh, one more thing. I have always suffered from regular depression as well. ‘Regular’ depression? That came out wrong.
What I mean to say is I have always felt everything on a very deep level, I have always been withdrawn, insecure, unsure, scared, misunderstood and angry about it, but guilty about being angry. I feel a weight crushing my chest, keeping me from breathing and eating, sometimes even getting out of bed. ‘Normal’ activities terrify me to the point of non-involvement.

I make Mordor out of a molehill.

The last 4 years of my life have been this fucked up journey out. Starting with Susan reaching out from Tuscon Arizona and giving a shit about me. Culminating with St. Anthony’s insistence that I get my ass in therapy or he wouldn’t take me back.
(“How ‘bout them transcendent dangling carrots” ~ Alanis Morrisette.)

I went. I sat in a conference room, in a chair across from this earthy-horse girl who glowed with kindness, and I found myself saying things to this stranger, just letting the words come. And every time she answered ‘well that wasn’t right’ or ‘that is totally normal, its okay’, I believed her. 10 more sessions and the thing I remember the most is her saying…

“Everything you are is a house, any kind of house you want, you built it. Inside the house are all of these rooms filled with things you love and things that you are. What happens is, starting when you are little, you show rooms to people, they react negatively and you shut the door to that room.”

I was living in my foyer, all the other doors had been shut. She encouraged me to open them and explore.

“I am the key to the lock in my house” (Radiohead)

I opened the doors and let myself out.