Ouch!/Unemployment/R.I.P. "Erin"...Hi, Tristan.

2011-01-18T16:05:00.000-08:00

Oh noooo, I'm writing about my cramps. Ew, I know. I wouldn't write about it, if they weren't so fucking bad, I swear. I tremble, and vomit, and sweat, and cry... wow, it's great to be a woman. Seriously, shoot me in the face.

Go on, I'll wait.

I think it's a good thing that I'm unemployed right now, because it gets really old having to call out of work. Cramps just doesn't do it justice, AT ALL, and neither does dysmenorrhea. It should be called...I dunno..."AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH", maybe? Yeah, I'll go with that.

"Hi boss, I'm calling out of work today."

"Why, Erin?"

"Oh, I have the AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHs, today."

"Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear that. Yes, stay home, and get better soon."

"Why thank you, boss."

Yes. I think that is what I'll call it from now on.
-------------------------

Sooo, I don't have a job, anymore.

I used to work for a pet insurance company. I'll call it "BarkMeow" (BM for short). At BM, I'd sit at my little pod, and take calls all day, do some data entry, process renewals, print and mail policies, and the like. At first, I really enjoyed it. The policy holders were generally nice, and the people I worked with were cool.

Then it started to get a little more corporate. And I am not a corporate type, at all. The call volume started to get crazy, and the policy holders became more irate by the day. Oh, and I started to get really annoyed by the fact that I remained the only black person in the fucking office. It sounds silly, but after a year, it wears on a person. There was no one who could empathize with certain things, and it just started to break me down a little.

I know it sounds ridiculous. I know. The job doesn't sound that hard, but when your department is grossly understaffed, you kind of want to shoot yourself in the face.

So, after a few months, it really started to get to me. So much so, that one glass of wine a week turned into a glass a night. Then two glasses...then I found myself drinking every night, until I passed out. Falling asleep and passing out are two very different things. The job was literally killing me, and I couldn't tell anyone. I became withdrawn and depressed, and could only think about how exhausted I was all the time.

A year of that just broke me down to the point where I left without any job offers lined up. That's how desperate I was to get out. I've NEVER done that before. Never.

Anyway, I'm unemployed now. Do I feel like a bum? A little. Do I feel useless? Yup. Am I still so exhausted and traumatized from my previous job, that I can not fathom working in an office ever the fuck again? You bet. I would rather take my own life, then work in an office environment, full time, ever again.
....................................

I've become what I was before: a hermit. When I don't have a job to go to, I become a voluntary prisoner in my own home, and my mind. I revert back to the agoraphobic mammal I was after the home invasion/date rape/bulimia fiasco (umm, HDB, for brevity purposes), that happened four years ago (I'll go into that crap in a future blog, I'm sure).

People...oh, people. They have an interesting effect (affect?) on me. When I'm surrounded by strangers, I panic on the inside. I can't control them. I can't trust them. And I can't get away from them. I do not trust people. They scare me. So I consciously separate myself from them. When I do leave my house, I dress as blandly as I possibly can.

It makes me very angry, because I used to be a fireball of color and personality. I dressed a little flamboyantly, at times, but I pulled it off. It was MY personality. It was "Erin". I knew who "Erin" was. I miss her. After the HDB (the H and the D occurred within four months of eachother), "Erin" fucking died. I lost her. She's gone, and never coming back.

What I was left with, was this hollow humanoid thing. So, after a while, something interesting, scary, and straight-up weird happened: I developed another person. After reading books on PTSD, I learned that I was suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder). This is very embarrassing, but she had a different name, she looked completely different, and she had a different life, attitude, walk, talk, smile, etc. She was a completely developed separate person from myself.

And she had a name, that I don't like to mention, but it's in the title of today's blog. I just call her "she" and "her". That's it.

She was a supreme bitch. She was mean. She fought a lot. She got banned from a couple bars for fighting. She flirted with a lot of men. I (Erin), at that time, did not flirt with anyone. Men scared the shit out of me.

So, anyway, she's a dark subject for me. And, for a while, when she was gone I couldn't bring myself to leave my house. When I was forced to leave my house for social obligations, I would pray that she'd have the fucking decency to not show up. She did. For ALL of them. I lost a lot of friends that year.

It wasn't like a United States of Tara, sort of thing where I completely blacked out. I remember being present, when she was in control. I just don't really remember, and can't piece together, any of the memories of the nights when she was out. For the entire summer of '08, she was out, and I can't remember a darn thing. I can't remember an entire summer. That makes me angry.

Only my best friend knew, and my therapist knew a little later. My friend and she got along about as well as water and an electrical fire. I know she hated "her"-because she told me- and "she" HAAATED my friend. I remember that. That also makes me angry. I remember having a huge amount of false friends that summer. I remember being in the best shape of my life (pictures). I remember having shallow relationships with very beautiful, very cruel men, that lasted weeks at a time. I remember being incredibly depressed and suicidal.

Good times.

That was an awful digression, if I ever saw one. But it does speak to why I don't leave my house, these days. Before, when she was around, I had a personality (albeit a mean one) on tap. Now, it takes me days to build, from the ground up, a suitable-enough person to face the world. Because the one that I'm naturally working with, right now, won't get me anywhere. Trust me. My friends say they love me for me. But if they met the real me, I honestly believe they'd become depressed by osmosis. The real me is a sponge for the emotions of others, and a transmitter of my own emotional numbness.

Shit, I wouldn't want to be around the real me either.

On the surface, I'm sure this section of the blog is incredibly depressing and sad. But, to me, it's just what it is. I've separated myself from the actual sadness of it. I observe my life, and everyone else's from behind a glass wall, and with an almost scientific mindset. I'm just gathering all of the empirical evidence I can so that- in five years time- I can see if life is still worth it. I'm coming up to my first five years, next year.

And next year, when I sit down and look at all the evidence that I've gathered- even with all of the utterly horrible bullshit that's happened- I'll decide to give it another five years. Because it is what it is. It's just fucking life, and I live it (a bit differently than others), and I hate it (like everyone else), and I'm indifferent about it (like most), and I like it. And sometimes, I genuinely love it.

Till next time.

...Take Three

2011-01-18T15:44:00.000-08:00

Ok, this is my third attempt at a blog. The first (only one post) was going to be about entertainment stuff. The second was going to be about a character from my book. This one, I think, has to be about me. I feel as though the issues that plague me are keeping me from maintaining my other projects.

This blog isn't going to be a bunch of "wah, wah, I had a shitty childhood," or "sob, I'm a victim, sob." I've dealt with a majority of that with therapy and medication (a lot of it helped, and a lot of it didn't). This blog isn't going to be in any type of chronological order, regarding my life. My brain and memories bounce around, all the time, and so will this blog.

This blog will also not make a whole lot of sense, sometimes. It takes A LOT of effort to appear normal in the world, when I'm really just falling to pieces in my brain. I won't be a reliable narrator, either. My memory is shattered, due to the traumas I've gone through. Memories of my childhood are incredibly sparse, and only appear like fragmented reflections in an A-bombed mirror.

So, when I do talk about random parts of my childhood it might not be 100% accurate. If it isn't, I'll let you know with an asterisk, or something. Also, I'm not doing this blog to be funny. Yes, I am a funny person, when surrounded by people. When I'm alone (which is very often), my life is pretty sobering. I just want to be real, for once in my life. I want people to know that this is me. Some of it will be funny, a lot of it will make you sad or angry, and most of it might be boring to you.

If you read this, and find yourself bored, then this is not the place for you. This blog is for my friends to see who I really am. And this blog is for people who have gone through, or are still going through, some of the things I'll be talking about.

I wish I had something like this when I was younger. Maybe I wouldn't have felt so alone.

Oh, and some of the things I'll write about, are things that I've said to people in the past, and they just couldn't deal with it. So, unless I type something like, "I am going to seriously kill myself tonight," don't get all worried, and shit.

I hope this helps me air some of the things I've been holding onto for two decades. And I hope that , if anyone in the same situation reads this, they don't feel so isolated and alone anymore.

Ok, here goes.

Cracked Noggin

Ouch!/Unemployment/R.I.P. "Erin"...Hi, Tristan.

...Take Three