![[dr. bob]](/dr-bob-sm.gif)
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 10 of 10. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by smokeymadison on December 23, 2004, at 17:29:14
to all you writers out there, i am weighing the consequences of trying to get my "journal" published. it is entitled "Displacement of a Solitary Life: An Intimate Look at Borderline Personality Disorder" it is a mixture of narrative, poems, and general musings on issues i have and that i continue to deal with. its publication would mean total loss of privacy. i am thinking about going for it because as a student of psychology, i know how helpful it can be to read first hand accounts when trying to understand mental disorders.
i am starting on a second draft right now. i started writing last spring. sometimes i think that is is great writing and that it should be published and sometimes i think that it sucks. i am having trouble finding good editors. the English profs i have had read it just hand it back and say that it is amazing, that the depth of honesty and clarity of writing is very good but they don't give me much feedback on how to make it better. i really need someone to tear it apart. any suggestions? should i just give up on this idea?
SM
Posted by alexandra_k on December 23, 2004, at 18:05:53
In reply to getting published?, posted by smokeymadison on December 23, 2004, at 17:29:14
Hrm. I don't know.
How about putting bits of it up here?
It would probably be helpful to me
(selfish motives here)
Don't know if I could be of any help to you
(not being a literary type really)
But I would indeed be willing to read it
And to try to help you as best I can.
But other people here may have suggestions...
Posted by smokeymadison on December 23, 2004, at 20:57:35
In reply to Re: getting published? » smokeymadison, posted by alexandra_k on December 23, 2004, at 18:05:53
Foreword
Life, as I know it, is beautiful in is terribleness. The only way out of the terribleness is through. This journal is an account of getting through Borderline Personality Disorder. Writing for me is cathartic. I share it with you because I sense that my memories are not mine alone. I possess the same emotions and experiences that many feel and have experienced. But because of Borderline Personality Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, my emotions tend to be more intense than they are for most people. I ask the same questions as others, but demand to find answers all the more harder because of my disorders. This search has resulted in my being a student of psychology.
The question of the value of a solitary life and its displacement has been with me for a long time. While I no longer consider suicide an option, I still question the meaning of a life filled with emptiness and suffering. It has taken many years for me to realize that these symptoms are not intrinsic to who I am. They are patterns of feelings, thoughts, and behaviors that I have picked up along the way as I struggled to deal with life’s complexities.
I hope that in ten years I can look back at this part of my life and see closure. This journal does not provide closure. It does not gloss over or glamorize the horrors of life or the wish to end life. It merely states events and thoughts. At least, that is what I tried to do in writing this. I tried to write as the thoughts flowed through my mind. Nevertheless, I found it impossible not to pick and choose between some and others. It is edited in this sense. I begin with a song by Alanis Morissette.The only way out is through
The faster we’re in the better
The only way out is through ultimately
The only way out is through
The only way we’ll feel better
The only way out is through ultimately
~Alanis Morissette, from This So-Called Chaos
Posted by smokeymadison on December 23, 2004, at 21:02:25
After the hospital:
What is left after the storm?
A few fragments of a former reputation, fragments of former friendships are all that are left. After the storm the gray dawn finds me drifting along the shore in the thick mist of consciousness. The fog is heavy and smothering. But the cold does not let you forget that you are awake, even for an instant. I am painfully aware. But I still see nothing distinct. Nothing can relieve my inner torment. Staring into the languid waters, I stare straight into myself. What has my life been? Is it just a lie, or a game that fools play? It must be. There I was, staring self-destruction in the face and what do I do? Revert to revenge on the male species. I am supposed to call Ryan at the hospital today, my first day out. Maybe I will just tell him to go to hell. It is where he belongs. Anyone who would go under a girl’s clothes in a psych ward deserves to go to hell. He took advantage of the fact that I had a manic reaction to the Zoloft. He was willing to play the game that is killing me. He does not care. The counselor at the hospital, Dwight, was right. So very right. He told me to stay away from Ryan. I still marvel at his skill in getting me reigned in, letting me pace around and around that courtyard, keeping step with me, refusing to let me lie to myself, to say that I have no idea what happened to me to mess me up so badly.
The air is humid. My paper is wrinkly. It is first period. I am just sitting here. What a waste of time. I cannot concentrate on anything. I told my friend, Liz, everything, all about the rape and the abuse in my past. What did she expect? She came very close to crying. There is nothing for her to say. The pieces have fallen down. My image lies scattered in the dust of former aspirations. I am only a ghost of my former self. I am still drifting in the mist. But now there seem to be ropes tying me to an indistinguishable shore. I do not know if the people there even care to pull me in. They tried for so long, when I was still fighting the storm. The gray dawn persists. I am so tired. There is no cure for this.
Just let the white face bleed. Why the hell does it matter? How else will it all pour out? Just let the pain drip steadily until it stops, and I am white. Completeness. Total nonexistence. The days are long and hard. I want to close unto myself. Cocoon. Wrap me in the white fibers of silk and let me slowly dry out. Let all the moisture escape until there is nothing but a husk. The husk of the bumblebee is golden.
I know how the story ends. I know how every story ever written ends. I know how it begins and what conspires and how everything all comes out. There are no stories left untold. Everything has been done. Everything has been imagined and written and painted and spoken. That is what all of this is. It is everything in the past and everything that will be in the future and it is all right now. On the brink, what is left but to fall into eternity? It does not matter how or when we die, we all do, and we all will. In the spectrum of eternity, what matters? Our morals are our sense of self. Our rules are comfort in the chaos of the universe. We are but packets of order that fight entropy to no avail. The elements that sustain life are life. The snake is swallowing itself. I have nothing left to write.Displacement
Measures the worth of a solitary life
Among the atoms of existence
Swells the potential
For the high shrill at the rim
Around the wet mouth
The lips suck in air
Gulping reason in defense against the onslaught
Of self destruction
Overflowing
The crystal liquid pours incessantly
Priceless.I cut both of my wrists. I watched the bottom of the bathtub fill with blood. Then the blood stopped flowing and I fell asleep on the bathroom floor. The next morning I awoke.
Posted by smokeymadison on December 23, 2004, at 21:14:33
In reply to Re:meant to post above oops (nm), posted by smokeymadison on December 23, 2004, at 21:06:08
Midnight Flight:
As the week wore on, I became more and more impulsive. I bought a three hundred-dollar camera, which I was convinced would cure me by giving me a new view of the world, allowing me to see the Truth behind the façade. After buying the camera my friends and I sat down to watch a movie. But I could not sit down. I twirled around the room, excited and agitated.
By the end of the week, I could not take any more. When Jenny and my friends left to attend a service project in Appalachia and I was shipped to my grandparents, I found a chance to escape. My grandparents had gone to bed, and I was alone downstairs. I felt I had two choices—either to open my wrists again or to run away. I choose to run. First I emptied my pockets of all my money. I wanted to out into the world with nothing. I chose to wear my new jean jacket and new tennis shoes. Walking quickly and quietly down the street I felt a sense of freedom come over me. I passed the noisy bars where shouts and hollers and dirty people kept the night alive with their antics. I left them behind me and followed the railroad tracks into the darkness of the countryside. I knew that the railroad tracks would become a bike path that led out of Celina, through the countryside, and to the neighboring town of Coldwater about 15 miles away. I planned to walk to Coldwater that night. The sky was a brilliant ink wash studded with pointed stars. The fresh country air invigorated me and I found my own darkness to be a mere shadow of the night’s poignant darkness. I found the bike path, a narrow stretch of asphalt bordered on either side by huge bushes and trees. Inside the enclave formed by the foliage, the air on the bike path was still and heavy. The moon and the stars’ light could not reach into the enclave. And so there I walked, in pitch-black darkness, breathing heavily and becoming more and more freaked out by the second.
About a mile and a half down the path, I stopped short and held my breath. Directly in front of me about a yard away there was panting in the bushes. I moved to the other side of the path and to my horror the animal in the bushes rustled through the bushes toward me. I knew that it had to be a wild dog. They had been spotted in this area before. So I slowly turned and crept back the direction I had come. I knew better than to run that to do so would provoke the dog into chasing me down. The rustling in the bushes continued behind me for the next half a mile. And then, suddenly I heard growling in the bushes directly in front of me. Another wild dog.
I ran. I ran as hard as I could off the path and into a field of corn. Once out of the enclave, the light of the moon shined upon my face and guided me to the edge of the field. The wild dogs followed close behind, tearing through the corn in pursuit. After a while I could hear them slow down and then give up on the chase. I, however, kept running as hard as I could to the edge of the field, where I had to jump across a small stream. I managed to get one foot soaked in the stream, stepping directly in it. I continued to run across another field with small soy plants until I reached a road. I collapsed upon the road, my lungs burning and my heart beating ferociously.
As I lay on the road, I thought about what it would have been like to die at their mouths, to be torn apart bit by bit until I bled to death. I found the image terrifying. But I had been so ready to kill myself just a few hours earlier at my grandparent’s house. I realized, lying on the cold asphalt that I did not want to die. My tears flowed for the first time since the date rape.
Pulling myself up off the ground, I continued on my way toward Coldwater. I stuck to the back roads, where small vermin scampered away into the ditches as I passed by. A large badger sat on the opposite side of the road and watched with no little interest as I passed by. I felt light and free, exhilarated to be out on such a beautiful night full of adventure. A large bird of prey swooped down right in front of my face to snatch a small critter at my feet. I reached the outer limits of Coldwater just as the sun was rising, turning the world soft shades of hazy orange. I could hear the bells of the church ringing, calling parishioners to the early morning service. I am sure that I looked quite a sight with my muddy tennis shoes and pants and my disheveled hair. I slipped in the back of the church and sat at a pew at the back.
My body ached, but my mind was on fire. I wanted to attend church because I was grateful I was alive, and I was convinced that there was some higher power responsible for it. Jenny had not planned on coming home the day I swallowed 60 pills, but she had out of a feeling that something was not quite right. Had the Remeron not kicked in just when it did I would have bled myself to death instead of falling asleep a few days earlier. I should not have been able to outrun two wild dogs and for some unknown reason they had lost interest in me. So I was grateful to some higher power that I was alive. But the church service, like any other service, was a ritualized program run by human beings that claim to know God and what God would want of his people. As the service started, past hurts surfaced in my mind and I became resentful of the church and of the parishioners. Anger swelled. The church had taken so much from me. My dad, a pastor, had devoted his life to the church and its people, leaving little time for me. I remembered begging him to spend time with me, to even acknowledge my presence in his home office as he poured over seminary work. So much time and money spent helping others; so much pain caused me by living in the inner city of Fort Wayne.
I crept out of the church. I was so hungry. I walked around the parking lot in a daze and leaned against the side of a car for support. Opening my eyes, I saw change in a cup between the seats inside of the car. I yanked open the car door and grabbed the change. Holding it in my hand, an idea was born. These people owed me. I spent the next half an hour rummaging through the vehicles in the church parking lot. In one car I found a twenty-dollar bill tucked in an envelope in the glove compartment. In another I found several dollars worth of quarters. At the end of my rampage, I had about 32 dollars heavy in my pockets. I ran out of the parking lot, guilt seizing me. I walked to a nearby Subway and ordered food. My stomach could only hold a little; so I saved the rest in the plastic bag it had come in and headed to Dollar General. Ideas were stirring in my mind. I wanted to spend a few days in the local park, before heading out of town. I could hitchhike across the state, avoiding the cops who would surely be looking for me once my grandparents filed a missing person report. I was free. I could go anywhere I chose. I could start over and leave all the terrible events of the past behind me.
I bought a colorful kite and a notebook and a pen. I would record my journeys. I bought a travel size shampoo and conditioner and soap. Checking out, I anxiously watched the cashier’s face for signs that she would suspect something. She gave me a quizzical look, and I quickly left the store with my bounty. I walked to the park, a sprawling landscape of playgrounds, baseball fields, and a neighborhood pool. Feeling tired, I lay under a tree with my jacket under my head. The day was growing warm, and the sound of a mower grew louder and louder. Suddenly it stopped, and I opened my eyes to find a large man in overalls walking towards me. I jerked awake and jumped up from the ground. He asked me if I was all right. I responded that I was fine, that I was just out for a walk in the park. Looking at my bag on the ground next to me, he asked if I had any place to go. I said that I was staying with a friend a few blocks away from the park, and had just brought some art supplies with me. He told me that I would not be allowed to stay in the park after dark and asked if I was sure that I was all right. I assured him that I was fine, and grabbed my bag and walked away. He returned to his mower after a few moments and I found another place in the park to sleep.
Hours later I awoke and wrote and drew in my notebook. The day grew hotter and hotter and the park filled with people. The baseball fields filled with little league players and screaming parents. The pool crowded with swimmers and the playgrounds with toddlers climbing polka-a-dotted dinosaurs and jungle gyms. The smell of cooking food drifted from a picnic house overrun with a family reunion. I retreated to a shelter house to wash my face and hair. Shutting myself in a bathroom stall, I curled in a corner in terror. The cement floor and walls cool to the touch, felt comforting against my hot skin. Someone banged on the stall door, asking if I was all right, and I yelled back that I was fine. Finally, feeling dopey from whatever chemicals are released in the brain during a panic attack, I stumbled out of the shelter house, The sun was low in the sky. I wanted nothing but to go home, to curl up in my cool sheets and go to sleep. But I was scared of being caught out on the bike path after dark. I judged that I would have just enough time to make it home if I hurried.
I was worried that the police, having been notified of the theft of money from vehicles in the church parking lot, would be looking for someone with a lot of change in his or her pockets, so I dumped a bag full of change in a trashcan at the edge of the park. On the bike path I passed bikers and runners, all apparently oblivious to the dangers of the path after dark. As I hurried home, my head cleared and my thoughts became dense. I spun elaborate theories of wild dog behavior as compared to tame dog behavior. I reasoned that wild dogs are really better to encounter than domesticated dogs, because they have not been exposed to human cruelty. You know what to expect with a wild dog. You follow their rules, spelled out by eons of evolution, and you make it out of the encounter alive. On the other hand, domesticated dogs have lost their sense of dignity and may have been mistreated at the hand of humans. They may attack for no apparent reason. As I walked, I talked out loud in a rushed voice. People running down the path turned to stare at me as they passed.
I reached Celina as the sun brilliantly faded beyond the horizon. I circled the lake on my way to the apartment Jenny and I shared. The lighthouses around the lake lit up as the sky darkened, casting their beacons across the calm waters. Specks of white, seagulls, fluttered across the sky. By the time I reached the island, and walked across the bridge, the night had taken hold. The first thing I did when I got to the apartment was fix a big plate of steaming Alfredo pasta. Then I called my dad. I could hear the panic in his voice, even though, like always, he tried to appear nonchalant. He informed me that the sheriff had been called, that my grandparents were sick with worry, and that my therapist wanted me to call her immediately. And of course, he asked me where the hell I had been. Obviously nobody had thought to look in Coldwater. I passed out that night and slept until the next afternoon, when I had an emergency appointment with my therapist, at her demand.
Posted by alexandra_k on December 25, 2004, at 17:53:06
In reply to another excerpt--long, posted by smokeymadison on December 23, 2004, at 21:14:33
That was great! I'm hooked.
(So can we start from the beginning? Well - after the preface?)
Hey I don't know much about getting stuff published, but if you find someone willing to publish it then don't they assign you an editor? I mean the publishers are thinking of sales and cost effective length etc etc and so sometimes they cry CULL! CULL! or whatever.
I think this is really good.
I see so much of myself.
It is scairey.Thankyou for sharing.
Posted by Jai Narayan on December 25, 2004, at 21:35:17
your story is raw and vibrant.
Funny how it's so full of life.
even though you cut yourself and questioned existence.
Life...raw emotion and riveting.
I too am interested in seeing more.
Ja*
Posted by Jai Narayan on December 26, 2004, at 7:38:15
In reply to Very powerful writing, posted by Jai Narayan on December 25, 2004, at 21:35:17
Posted by smokeymadison on December 26, 2004, at 13:23:16
In reply to Smokey, posted by alexandra_k on December 25, 2004, at 17:53:06
i have decided to set up a web page through angelfire.com so that those of you who want to read and give feedback for the entire thing can. i will let you know when i get it done and give you the link. thanks for your support and feedback!
Posted by alexandra_k on December 27, 2004, at 16:26:48
In reply to Re: Smokey, posted by smokeymadison on December 26, 2004, at 13:23:16
This is the end of the thread.
Psycho-Babble Writing | Extras | FAQ
Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.org
Script revised: February 4, 2008
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/cgi-bin/pb/mget.pl
Copyright 2006-17 Robert Hsiung.
Owned and operated by Dr. Bob LLC and not the University of Chicago.