Weeks later, I found a journal entry from my sophomore year of high school:
I think there’s something wrong with me. I’m jaded. Like…super jaded. I kind of wish I could feel again. I wish I could be genuinely happy, like I used to be. I don’t feel that anymore. I even wish that I could be depressed, scream-at-the-world-stab-myself-in-the-chest angry, like I used to be. But I can’t feel that either. When all of these terrible things keep happening, everything should have fallen apart, but it didn’t. It was like I was watching it all through a glass. It was a movie.
A movie. I had used the same exact phrasing Eleanor used when she’d questioned me from her worksheet, the same language clinicians and psychiatrists use to diagnose people with dissociation, the language I denied in her office. It was now clear that I had hung a veil up decades ago—a thick white sheet in the back of my mind to keep certain truths from myself.
The dread was a catchall. It was a colorless amalgamation of feeling because I did not have the tools to tease out the wild knot of my real emotions and needs. The dread was a sliver of light escaping from behind the veil.
When I used EMDR to move the veil aside, I found: My parents never loved me, and that’s not my fault.
What else was hiding behind the veil?
CHAPTER 19
Dissociation exists for a reason. For millennia, our brains and bodies have removed us from our pain so we can keep moving forward. A tiger just ate your wife? Bummer, but breaking down or freezing up is not an option. You better go out hunting today or your kids will starve. Your house was just destroyed in an air raid? Okay, but you have to pack up what’s left and find new shelter, now. Feelings are a privilege.
And oh boy was I privileged. I no longer had my old tools of dissociation: work, booze, forgetfulness—a comfortable suit of armor that allowed me to move forward blindly. Now I had nothing but time, the excruciating expanse of leisure. And without my armor, I was raw, the elements scraping against exposed muscle. What’s behind the veil? Pain. A lot of fucking pain.
* * *
—
One summer evening, as the mosquitoes started to emerge from the new warmth, my friend Joanna and I went out to drinks. The bar’s backyard was generally closed after nine, but the owners let us stay out there since Joanna always has a big smile and asks nicely. Maple branches sashayed along to the dim melodies of a jazz band playing inside. While Joanna told me stories about when she lived in South America, I listened and nodded, trying to ask questions. But when there were lulls in the conversation, when she asked how I was doing, I didn’t know what to say. I had been paralyzed by shame lately—shame over my failed career and my diagnosis—but I didn’t know how to share my feelings because I still didn’t know how to not be a burden.
Joanna is a midwesterner and exudes hay-fed Minnesotan warmth. She laughs easily, leans in and asks permission before gossiping, and then after she’s spilled some very mildly spiced tea, she apologizes and says, “That’s my alter ego Lit Joan talking. But what can I say? I just have to live my truth!”
So I didn’t tell her how I felt. Instead, I racked my brain in a panic for something to offer. Oh, I read a funny Onion headline yesterday. She chuckled pleasantly, a success. But then the conversation somehow segued into talking about a friend who dated a few jerks. I didn’t notice that we were gossiping until the words were out of my mouth, and in a flood of shame, I shut down. Crap—how could I be interesting and good at the same time? Another lull stretched on. I asked more questions about South America and let her fill in the blanks. At every point in the conversation, I tallied my fuckups. And then I realized that this was problematic because it meant I was not being totally present with my friend. Here I was worrying about every word coming out of my mouth while I should have been enjoying Joanna’s presence! But even her niceness seemed to be an indictment. I was jealous of Joanna’s intuitive ease, how she didn’t have to sit there and agonize over how to be decent because she was raised with love. How could I be more like her when I was never given the ingredients for it? Why was I a flinching, hissing animal, never safe or tame enough to sit quietly in someone’s lap? Would my inner beast always force me away from others—into a hovel, alone?
I spiraled, like a maple seed pod spinning down to the ground, unable to stop even hours later, long after Joanna and I said goodbye.
The next day, I canceled my friend plans for the rest of the week.
No matter what I do, no matter where I try to find joy, I instead find my trauma. And it whispers to me: “You will always be this way. It’s never going to change. I will follow you. I will make you miserable forever. And then I will kill you.”
The literature says this is normal for traumatized people. Experts say it’s all part of the three P’s: We think our sadness is personal, pervasive, and permanent. Personal, in that we have caused all the problems we face. Pervasive, in that our entire life is defined by our failings. And permanent, in that the sadness will last forever.
But, as usual, knowing that I am textbook doesn’t help me rise off the page.
CHAPTER 20
The books say that in order to stop being a burden, I must learn how to “self-soothe.” I need to learn how to calm my anxieties by myself, without immediately texting everyone in my phone. Therapy and EMDR might eventually work to heal my trauma on a longer timeline. But to ease the searing pain of the present moment, everyone says the first step should be meditation and mindfulness.
There is overwhelming evidence that meditation can increase focus and decrease anxiety, depression, and cortisol flooding.[1] There is evidence that it decreases activation in the amygdala, one epicenter of fear in the brain, and increases activity in the prefrontal cortex.[2] People who meditate are able to unstick themselves from cyclical, dangerous thinking and see things from a calmer, more positive perspective.