I'm not calling the Camp NaNoWriMo project done. It is about half finished. But the part where I was conducting an informal experiment is concluded. I wrote 37565 words with a single papermate sharpwriter no. 2 mechanical pencil. That equates to 120 pages in the Norcom wide ruled composition notebook. I'm going to grab another mechanical pencil and fill up the rest of the notebook. I still have no idea where I am going with this thing. It is just word vomit from page three onward. The first two pages I sort of stuck to my plan to write happy fun erotica. Then I got stuck, so I decided to just write what ever my brain came up with.
Cue a rambling exploration of my history and a recitation of trauma. It is basically yet more therapy writing. I'm so tired of therapy writing. At the same time, the more I do it, the less problems I have. I have times where I lose time. Sounds a little weird. One therapist said it is because I have mood dependent memory issues. Another therapist said it was because I was dissociating due to my complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet another therapist refused to believe me when I said I was having memory problems because I keep a journal. I have gone through a number of therapists trying to make sense of what is going on in my head. It's hard to process things, it's hard to keep track of things, and it is hard to express things because I have a head full of noise most of the time.
Losing time is something that I describe as brain fog but that's really inadequate for it. I just don't remember. I am terrified of losing time. I am terrified of the memories that I don't remember clearly because the vagueness of it suggests that something bad was going on. I write in a journal but I don't remember to do it daily. I'll have my good spells where I write in there on a daily basis, even if it is just a few lines. Then I have my bad periods where I don't write much of anything anywhere.
During the bad days, my thinking is disordered. I can't remember what the hell I'm doing. I basically live in the moment with heaps of anxiety and panic. I'm doing better than I was a few years back. A few years ago, I basically spent most of my time depressed, struggling to get anything done. Depression contributes to my struggle to remember things. It makes me feel bad because I don't remember things like my kids first track and field event unless I have visual cues to remind me. Even then, the memory is fuzzy and feels like it belongs to someone else or some kind of fiction.
On my really bad days, I am trapped in this cycle of depression and derealization. I sit there and reality test damn near everything because I can't tell what is going on with me. I struggle to tell if my life is real or if it is an escapist dream where the reality is I'm living with people who made my life a living hell. The only things I find I am comfortably sure of are things that I can handle and manipulate. Like yarn and stuff that I can say "Yep, gravity is functioning. Water is still wet." I reality test viciously because I was gaslighted so much as a kid. It just became a coping mechanism. If I'm told something that my gut says is contrary to reality, I test it (even if it is in secret) and question the thing I've been told until I get to the root of what's really going on.
Thankfully, I have been out of that emotionally abusive situation for almost fourteen years, I have a partner who is always forthright and honest, and I have made a point of removing people who engage in toxic behaviors from my sphere of influence. But that habit of reality testing is still strong. And the long term effects of being told through my formative years that reality wasn't real still echo today. I don't know what any of this has to do with my writing. It's just word vomit. I probably should have saved it for my therapy journal. First, however, I have to find where I put the damn thing when I was last cleaning on a hypomanic spree.
No comments:
Post a Comment