February 28, 2018
I am supposed to go to the doctor and have an STD exam. I can't quite bring myself to do it. I am supposed to do an STD screen every three months now. I'm still engaging in high risk behavior. I had all the blood work done three weeks ago, all negative. And I've been using condoms.
Don't think I've always used condoms. I haven't. Particularly not with men my age. But I've become a real condom Nazi since I was date raped. I was date raped. Not officially raped, it won't hold up under prosecution. I was complicit, I was compliant, I was even appropriately responsive. I was afraid. He led me to believe he had a gun. So I didn't say NO. I lost my voice. I lost my adult woman voice, the one that I have been building and strengthening and using my entire adult life. My woman voice that can and will and does say NO. I lost her, I lost my NO voice. It devastated me. Who am I without my NO voice?
Since I got my neuro psych testing results, I've taken enough Klonipin to put a horse to sleep, so I'm not remembering much from the last two days. On a scale of one to ten, ten being I'm going to go ahead and off myself, I'm hovering around a six. That means I think about it a lot but have no plan. And I usually try to stop myself from thinking about it too much because it's a waste of time, I'm not going to do it, and it just makes me more anxious. Then I take more Klonipin. Then more of the Klonipin Hamster Wheel. Another way to run myself ragged emotionally. I want off the Klonipin Hamster Wheel. I want off all the hamster wheels in my life. I want off.
The most ridiculous thing I can't stop obsessing about is that my IQ dropped from 124 to 98. I'm normal. I'm in the normal range. For fuck's sake. I've NEVER been normal. I've always been smarter. Always always always always. I pinned my self-esteem, my self-worth on the fact that I'm smarter. It was the one thing I thought I could count on never changing my whole life.
The doctor explained that IQ is not a measure of intelligence. It is a measure of how well the brain is working together to process information. I did not know that. I thought IQ was how smart you are and that it doesn't change and if you're smart, you're born smart, and God bless you and God bless God for making you smart.
I understand intellectually what the doctor said, and it makes sense. But for someone to tell me "Your IQ falls within the normal range" is probably one of the most devastating things I could hear. It makes me want to just die, actually. With my high IQ, I believed I could accomplish things. Meaningful significant things. Now my high IQ is gone. What is my worth? I feel it is nothing.
I can't get my apartment in order, I can't keep my apartment in order. I'm overwhelmed by the simplest tasks. I'd say I'm 85% able to take care of myself and my home. But that 15% that I am unable to master becomes the sticking point for my self-esteem, for my ability to feel "OK" about my surroundings, about myself. For my ability to ward off deeper depression.
I don't shower, change my clothes, or leave the apartment for days. I'm not able to take the garbage out by myself because I'm afraid of rats. This is a new phobia I've developed since living here. I made it up in my own mind! I'm not afraid of rats! There is no basis for this phobia. Rats do not climb the fire escape to the seventh floor to find food. They likely stick to the first or second floor. There's a catering business on the second floor. Plenty of food there! They'd have no need to climb higher than the second floor.
I compare myself to who I was "before" and the difference is shocking. Horrifying. Then I feel as if I don't know who I am, who I've become. And my self-hate flourishes. My self-hate is like cancer that is growing rapidly, gorging on all the pieces inside me that make me Me, that make me Special Me, that woman I've always believed myself to be. Self-hate is eating up all my goodness and leaving behind just pain and emptiness and an overwhelming desire to cease. I'm terrified.
I’m losing all the things about me that made me proud of Me. My intelligence, my career, my income, my self-sufficiency, my ability to manage and control my own life. Those were the things upon which my self-esteem and my self-worth have been based my entire life.
When the rug made up of the fabric of who you are is pulled out from under you, what is left?
Photo by KHALIL MUSA on Unsplash