h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As always, the refreshment stands are open and free of charge. (Please allow me to recommend the ‘Crunchy Frogs’ they’re quite fresh but do stay away from the “Spring Surprise’)

(I provide this service to apologize for not apologizing for the length of my postings.)
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The earliest 'memory' I have is of the time I fell out of the car on the way back from the grocery store as it came to a stop at an intersection. I was, maybe, two years old and the car door just popped open.

My father was driving and he immediately got out, picked me up, put me back in the car, made damn sure the door was closed this time, asked me if I was okay, and drove away.

All I actually ‘remember’ is seeing a wall of chrome auto bumpers in every direction I looked. I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t frightened, I wasn’t hurt, but a few blocks later I started to cry. My father immediately pulled over and asked me what was wrong.

I showed him the carton of chocolate milk which I had insisted in holding in my own hands. “My milk is leaking.”
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Please note, that this story is true. My father tells it very well and with charm and chagrin. I must have heard it a thousand times during my life. (I love listening to my father’s stories. He does them so well.) However, while my memory is vivid, I doubt that it is real. The bumpers are just hanging there against a predominately black background. The incident happened in broad daylight early in the morning. There is nothing about it that ties into any other part of my life. I suspect that I just wanted so much to share in the event that I used my ample imagination to visualize it as if it had happened.

But, if the memory isn’t real, and I know it isn’t real, then why am I mentioning it here and now?

Bear with me.
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When I was seven or eight, I brought a wonderful book I had inherited, from among about three hundred, from my Uncle, to school for ‘show and tell’. It had been published in 1887 and I thought it was rather interesting as an ‘ancient object.’ As the class went out to the playground, I was taunted for thinking a book could be interesting, particularly an old book. I still remember someone’s voice saying “Yeah, 300 Golden Books.”
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I’m skipping past the rest of my ‘wonderful’ school days except to say that I was unrepentantly intelligent (and wishing I were normal), continually round (and wishing I were normal), quietly unassertive (and wishing I were normal), madly in love with reading (and wishing I were normal), always picked last in team sports (and wishing, desperately, that I were normal, didn’t care so horribly much, and didn’t have to be there), perpetually unchallenged (though often fascinated), and horribly alone (of course, I knew I wasn’t normal.)
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When I was about thirteen, I was walking home from school with my sister, who was twelve. She was accosted by a boy about my age or perhaps a bit older. She asked him to leave her alone and he refused. She could, undoubtedly have handled the situation herself but I was there. I couldn’t allow her be taken advantage of. Thus began one of the few fights of my life.

He was average for his age; I was 6 foot 2 inches, perhaps more and much heavier. We tussled and he retired.

I usually say that I refuse to fight people because I remember breaking his arm without really meaning to -- I really can’t trust my own strength.

While I can remember being upset at having done that, I can also say that I still remember every confused moment of that fight. I flailed at him with arms that had never been able to lift me for even one push-up. I actually landed a couple of blows that might have done some damage if I had had some strength in my shoulders or knew what I now know about the mechanics of fighting. But, I had no strength, no understanding, and did no damage. He laughed as he ran away. (I can also ‘remember’ the ‘fear’ on his face when I looked at his ‘cast’ a few days later.)
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Somewhere in here I discovered that I was not my parent’s firstborn child. In fact, I they had lost five children due to my mother’s blood type being AB-. This, in turn, was the reason why they had five children after it became medically possible for them.

For some reason, best known to my internal mental workings, I felt that I was now obligated to live a life worthy of two people, one for myself and one for my still born sister.

I can’t begin to describe the nature of this revelation except to recall the comedy sketches where someone stands completely thunderstruck and says, “Gee, that changes everything.”

And it did.
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I eventually took up theatre studies (another story there, but later perhaps) and had worked my way through most of my course work for a Ph. D. I was in my room, at the University of Florida, finishing a take-home final exam in a course we fondly called American Theatre Trivia – largely because we were constantly tested on details that didn’t seem worth taking notes on in class. I finished the test and tried to stand up from my desk.

I could not do it. My legs would not lift me.

I rolled my chair to a doorway where I was able to use the door as a crutch and pull myself to a standing position. After which I found I could remain standing. But, if I sat, I couldn’t stand back up. Walking was … interesting.

After insisting on dropping the test off at the professor’s office, I had a friend drive me on to the University Hospital. They tested me for a week but did not come up with a diagnosis. (Once more I had proved I was ‘special.’)
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A few years later, at the University of Kansas, where I had moved on a teaching scholarship, I was presenting a paper on some arcane theatre topic to a small seminar class, meeting in the professor’s office. As I finished my presentation, I looked into someone’s eyes and saw absolutely nothing there but stark terror. The same was true as I scanned the faces of all the others there. (If you need more details, just ask. I can always see those eyes and faces in precise detail though I no longer remember most of their names.)

I thought back over what I had been saying and realized that I had been speaking gibberish for the last hour. While I knew what I had been trying to say, I also knew that I hadn’t been actually speaking the words that I had intended. My mind was racing along much faster than my mouth could keep up. Given the small size of the room and the large amount of space in it that I consumed, it must have been a time of panic for all the others.
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Now follows: doctors, hospitals, confusion, the wrong drugs, misdiagnoses, the abandonment of any hopes of finishing my degree or continuing with my career, the discovery that I could understand and program these new things called ‘personal computers,’ the dribble of income that this newly acquired skill brought me – given my continuing mental issues, and more of everything all over again.
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At one point I had a tentative diagnosis of myasthenia gravis and found myself ecstatic, not with hope but with a sense of potential closure. I failed that test, too, and was back on the wonderful thrill ride.
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I was arrested for shoplifting a computer toy, which I had the money in my pocket to pay for. The judge sent me to a class and to a psychiatrist and I was never formally charged.
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My parents were incredibly supportive. Still, I remember at one point having made a comment about something, which was confirmed by someone else. My mother said, “How about that? He was right!”
-----------------------------------------
Take a moment and imagine all these little vignettes in precisely that way. My life seen backward with blurs of this and that, with occasional freeze frames on moments of heightened significance glowing at the edges with some sort of light framing them and telling me that I have passed a point of importance, like a title in a silent movie or a label for that portion of my life -- articulation points in the graph of my existence.
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Time marches on, as does the state of medical science. I am now diagnosed as suffering from sleep deprivation. With lots and lots of sleep, most of the muddle in my mind subsides. But my short term memory is nearly useless (at least compared to what it was.)

Ultimately, more by chance than for any other reason, I have a ‘full’ diagnosis: probably a form of myotonic dystrophy. (Well, it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, smells like a duck, so it’s probably a duck even though it doesn’t seem to have any duck genes.)
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So, in case you haven’t quite figured it out, if I had my mind and didn’t know what I knew

And if I lost my mind and knew what I didn’t know but still thought I knew,

How do I, who prides himself on understanding, know even that I don’t know despite knowing that I know what most folks don’t seem to know and aren’t interested in knowing?
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Or, if I’m so darn recovered/in control,

Why am I still so messed up?

Don’t bother answering that one, that’s not the real question. That one has an answer that should be obvious to everyone who has been posting here.

The real question for someone of my generation is still the same taunt I heard in the second grade, “If you’re so smart, how come you aren’t ?”

If you can see what you can clearly see, why can’t you hold a job? Why can’t you ever finish a project? Why can’t you justify the promise you showed? Why can’t you do anything right? Why can’t you just look in your own mirror and put your finger on your own significant central issues and just ‘get over it’?
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You see, I’m very able. I can simply talk to you and by watching you react know more about you than you might wish to tell. If I gain your confidence and respect and you share details with me, I can take you so close to where you hurt that you can begin to gain control over the pain you’ve been hiding from. I am so empathetic that I can practically read your mind. I can even do this long distance, given a chance to pick up on the nature of your choices and fear of making them.

And all of this, as best I can tell, is simply my way of protecting myself from being hurt.

And as far as pain goes, I have learned how to turn it off or ignore it, while inside me somewhere there is a vast reservoir of suffering that I know about only by feeling the awesome vibrations of potential disaster should the barriers ever fail and the deluge come.

But, beyond all this, is the realization that if things take a tiny turn for the worst, I might not know it. You see, all I have to tell me anything is my mind’s understanding of what ‘is’ and my mind has already shown itself to be sometimes vulnerable and untrustworthy.

If I am going to survive, I must constantly test and retest. There is nothing that is solid and dependable.

Of course, I also know that isn’t true.

Which brings me to one of my favorite paradoxes, the title of a Firesign Theater/Proctor and Bergman album: “Everything You Know Is Wrong” to which I add, with a mischievous smile, “Yet it’s always right.”

This is the basis of the title of my home page and a phrase with which I sign my email. It’s not just something cute, it’s how I regulate my life: “If right is wrong, what’s left?”
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So, I have been fortunate not to have suffered the tortures that many of us here have survived. But when Richenda, my dear and insightful wife, said, “It’s not how much you suffered, but how much it hurt,” that’s when I realized that I should be writing this and posting it here.

The really odd part is that the pain so deeply buried that it’s hard to tell it’s there. Still, just as the princess could not sleep on the pea, my life (and, I suspect, our lives) is shaped by the contours it creates in my personal landscape.

On occasion, I can stand farther off and look at myself (much as I can much easily do for others) and see that, that pea has raised up a mountain to which I cling in desperation, using it’s prominence as the look out point from which I guard myself from the rest of the world.

Barton

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

- Anais Nin


Barton; "I can always see those eyes and faces in precise detail"

I can see the pleading eyes of dark bottomless pit of a soul,looking into my mothers eyes when she was lost ,afraid and empty. They were scary,the scariest image still. How is a child to feel? Isee them now plain as thenI have replaced it much as possible with the memory of her smile and giggles. It is imporatnt to me to never deny they both existed.

Barton: “If right is wrong, what’s left?”

Classic huh? When you have to deny ~ the worst part is you are not in control as much as you think. Denial has a life of it's own. You cnnot tell it when to come and go. Denial will let you believe that is so but it is not true. You cut off the good parts too,shut down the inlets.


Dare to Bloom Barton
It's already started and the energy needed to hold it back is tremendous. You CAN bloom. Trust yourself. Others do. You trust now, jump in with both feet. Although you'll have another oportunity , it's maybe......?..... as safe as it gets.

If it is possible to send you energy of encouraging strength,I do. You have all the will and strength you need you beautiful bud!
<<< they can help too!

Barton says from Richenda:
“It’s not how much you suffered, but how much it hurt,” that’s when I realized that I should be writing this and posting it here.

GeeWhiz I was gonna say this first. It was bugging me, I knew I forgot something! First of all Richenda IS insightful and you are lucky there. So is she it seems!

Absolutely ~~inner life is never a contest and the pain & struggle is the issue more than the why, although that is important also. No need to qualify or justify feelings.

Only ideas are debatable NOT feelings. Anyone that tells you different is verbally abusing you.

First off, I've just got to say how perturbed I am that this posting didn't pop up on my user space, and I didn't find it till now.

That said, let me try, in my pathetic way, to respond to Barton's wise words.

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"As I finished my presentation, I looked into someone’s eyes and saw absolutely nothing there but stark terror. The same was true as I scanned the faces of all the others there... I thought back over what I had been saying and realized that I had been speaking gibberish for the last hour. While I knew what I had been trying to say, I also knew that I hadn’t been actually speaking the words that I had intended"

I can relate to that... for most of my life I've seen that look of horror on people's faces on those rare occasions when I've bothered to say anything... it's become a sort of game to me, to see how much I can say before the listener runs away screaming...
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"If you can see what you can clearly see, why can’t you hold a job? Why can’t you ever finish a project? Why can’t you justify the promise you showed? Why can’t you do anything right? Why can’t you just look in your own mirror and put your finger on your own significant central issues and just ‘get over it’? "

I ask myself these same questions every minute of every day... if you ever find the answers, please let me in on the secret.

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"I can simply talk to you and by watching you react know more about you than you might wish to tell. If I gain your confidence and respect and you share details with me, I can take you so close to where you hurt that you can begin to gain control over the pain you’ve been hiding from. I am so empathetic that I can practically read your mind."

Indeed you can. And it scares the living sh*t out of me sometimes. But mostly, I think I like that about you.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"If I am going to survive, I must constantly test and retest. There is nothing that is solid and dependable. Of course, I also know that isn’t true."

Oh, but it is true. If I've learned anything at all in life, it's just exactly that.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

You and I may not have suffered the same tortures as many of the others here, Barton, but Richenda *was* right on when she said that it isn't how much you've suffered, but how badly it hurt. It's the hurt we carry with us every day, as a constant reminder never to slip up and trust anyone ever again. I'd also buried the pain deeply, to hide it away and pretend it didn't exist. Maybe it's that pea which has caused me so many sleepless nights... I don't know, and maybe I never will.

Abbi,

Thanks for your insight, advice, and encouragement.

I always take whatever I get with surprised gratitude. Of course, some of it simply goes into storage till I stumble over it and ask myself why I didn't remember it was there. (If you get to know me VERY well I might actually show you my garage -- and that's nothing compared to the inside of my head -- wherever that might be this week.)

Everyone,

I just reread what I wrote and I realize that I may have left the impression that the muscle issues in Florida continued more or less the same way that I first experienced them.

They did not. All of the sumptoms were completely gone by the time I walked easily, comfortably, and with a sense of having snuck out of the lions' den while they were busy devaouring someone else into the ridiculously cheerful Florida sunshine.

It is only in the last twelve years or so, that the physical symptoms again began to creep up on me. But, the current diagnosis was only arrived at during the last three or four years. The original attack occured in 1977. I'm fifty-six years old.

And for those who like such information. I stand 6'5" tall, weigh 300 pounds (but unless I'm naked I don't look an ounce over 260 ... okay, maybe 270 -- I've never had a professional weight guesser guess my weight.) Where I have hair, it is black or silver gray. Where I don't have hair, mostly the top of my head, it is skin colored. My eyes are some color -- I think my license says they are brown, but that was just the easy answer. I wear glasses or contacts and I've been known to make women swoon (or spontaneously grab my buns) without noticing it. (Candy tells me it happens -- though it is hard to not notice a strange hand on my buns.) However, much like PC mistakenly thinks she is, I am ugly as sin as any mirror can tell me. If you want to see how well I clean up when playing a part, you can see my picture on my website. (Visit my homepage then follow the link and click on my name).



You might also get some insight from some of my journal entries. I also invite your participation in my quest for interesting ways to kill people with marshmallows.

Barton
(not nearly so wierd as he wishes he were, "but 'twill do.")

Barton-

From the moment I met you, I never saw you as odd or wierd, but as a person with amazing insight, intellect, and humor.

I have no revelations to offer you that will make your life seem "normal", even thought I have yet to find out exactly what "normal" is. Is "normal" the ability to give laughter to someone who has none in them? Is "normal" one who can offer open arms to those who need it? Is "normal" someone who lives day by day just happy to have in their lives what they have been given? I think it is, and you do a very good job of all of these things.

I would never wish another personality onto you, for I do love the way you are. You are the one who can make the longest, hottest day at Bristol seem like a spring morning by offering something to smile about. You are the one who offers help to those of us who are Historically-Challenged. (Yep, I hate history & know little about it...but I can always ask you.)

Richenda obviously thinks you are the cat's meow, and though the world does not think of you as "sexy", there are those of us who find you to be a very warm, loving, kind, gentle, and even handsome. (And if you really want your backside squeezed, I am sure the wenches will oblige you next time. )

I am proud to call you my friend.

The whole talking gibberish for an hour also happened to Stephen Fry! Do you know why it happened?

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Fry

His website is

http://www.stephenfry.com and very entertaining.

Honoured and grateful to be your friend aswell, B.

Oh, Barton.

As far as killing people with marshmallows... I'm sure you could practice by having me put them into my mouth and then making me laugh... And by the way, you *do* give laughter where there was none, or it had at least been forgotten about. I, too, love giving the give of laughter, which makes me appreciate your doing it for me all the more. If it weren't for laughter, there'd be nothing in this world but tears.

You're by no means ugly, Barton (and I did catch how you snuck *that* in there where you knew I'd be sure to see it, you sneaky devil you), you're just one of a rare breed whose inner beauty far surpasses the outer. That doesn't mean, however, that you're not handsome and steadfast and a pillar of strength for others on the outside as well.

If H'venlee's definition of "normal" is accurate, then I think you and the rest of us are the normal ones, and it's the rest of the world that's all f***ed up. I, too, have striven constantly to find a way to be "normal", but I suspect I've been confusing normal all these years with "acceptable" or perhaps "perfect". That sort of goal is completely unattainable, so achieving "normalcy" becomes an excercise i futiity and one eventually gives up. I most certainly had. And then you came into my life, accompanied by a couple of others, and saw a huge rock with something crushed beneath it, struggling to get out, and turned the rock over. Sometimes when you look under rocks, you discover something worth finding, huh?

I value your friendship and love very highly, Barton, I found you and Candy and Chris when I needed you the most. As I told you on Sunday night on the way back to my place, I'd grown so desperately lonely that I'd begun reaching out for "something", uncosnciously at first, and then full out, knowing well what I was doing. I'm grateful that I chose you (and the others I've reachd out to as well) to reach out to, you have taken my hand and are helping to pull me out from under the weight of all this sh*t that's had me crushed and immobilised. I'm so very grateful to you for seeing something in me worth saving, and that you've persisted in loving me despite my efforts to prevent it, and I love you back.

Have visited your page more than once, am trying very hard to read past the first few sentences of your poem. You write lovely things, Barton, but they're too bloody true to handle at times. Keep writing these things, the world needs to hear them.

Just know that the world, and mine in particular, is a better place, and one of greater wonder and beauty, for having you in it. How fortunate I am to have not one, but two knights in shining armor come to my rescue, and such beautiful ones at that. I'll never need to look over my shoulder again now that I have faith in the fact that you'll always be standing behind me.

Thank you.

Chris,

Thanks for the Fry links. They made my "hunh?" go away. And you aint so shabby yourself.

Kaz,

I couldn't presume to guess what his problem was. It could have ranged from something similar to mine, where my mouth was simply moving a lot slower than my brain, to functional disorders where the speech center is actually malfunctioning, to something on the order of speaking in tongues, to any one of the various forms of aphasia, to a schizophrenic episode where he lapsed into some internal symbology, to who knows.

If my case is any indication, the theft he went to prison for might have indicated some severe depression, but I'm assuming his actions went well beyond that sort of impulsive asocial behavior to have received so heavy a sentence.

I *could* speculate, but since he has a website, the simplest way to find out would be to ask him.

In my situation, when I say that my mind was running too fast to speak properly, I probably sounded like I was speaking disjointed key words but without the necessary thoughts and connections that would allow them to make sense. "Situation mind fast speak like disjointed without connection make sense." -- more or less like Yoda-speak from a malfunctioning translator or like listening to a shortwave transmission through bad weather with the pops, clicks, squawks, and silences edited out as if the result were intentional. (How about having a conversation with a dj who will only speak by scratching his way through a recording of "Richard III" -- Well, maybe "Little Women"?) I just had a lot to say and started saying it while listening to my internal voice and simply trusting that my vocal apparatus would keep up.

I will say, it was a wonderful presentation and it's too bad that no one heard it. I know, I enjoyed it.

Barton

H'venlee and PC,

Awwwwww, shucks!

As far as turning over rocks goes, it doesn't hurt to remember that even if you find something long, slender, and legless with fangs (I won't say that nasty word since Richenda will read this, but then she's already shivvering), that creature, too, was just looking for a place of safety in a dangerous world.

Try to think of my humor as testing to see if those around me can still laugh -- no matter how difficult it may be for them -- because when they've lost their sense of humor they might be dangerous.

Being a pretty good survior, I'm also a pretty good commedian.

Still, it's really a great feeling to help people feel good while getting them to tell me that they aren't attacking, yet.

Barton

In Stephens frys case it was that he tried to speak as fast as he could think, eventually speech therapy calmed it down, I guess hes a fast thinker!

Fast speech happens a lot when giving speeches though, it is one of the first things you are taught in public speaking!

It seems to me that the first thing I was taught in public speaking was that my seat was back with the 'R's. Not much of an inspiring speaker, himself, the teacher seemed to treat the class as something to do when he wasn't working with his debaters on organizing their card files.

Oh well, I only took the class to meet the pre-reqs for the theatre classes in high school. (They were largely a waste as well. Not much of a program at old Southwest H.S. in the '60s.)

Barton

First off, I lied. I have been trying to write a response since you posted this. But, as usual, I am at a loss for words. I’m going to need to post in segments. I am too unfocused to address everything at once. Much of what is in your post I knew, but not all of it. How strange to find out things about the man you have been married to for the past 12 years by reading it on line. (Well, given the way we met, maybe not so strange).

My first thought, and as usual, totally unrelated to what you wrote, is I wonder what you could do with the good highpoints of your life. They, too, made you what you are today.

And, again something totally off the topic, why does it appear that we have ‘stock’ answers to why I am the way I am? By telling it by rote, does it let us not really address the issues? What I have heard off line is reproduced here almost verbatim. Are we simply memorizing our lines?

***************************
“But, if the memory isn’t real, and I know it isn’t real, then why am I mentioning it here and now?”

You answer your own question… You see, all I have to tell me anything is my mind’s understanding of what ‘is’ and my mind has already shown itself to be sometimes vulnerable and untrustworthy.

This IS the central issue. But, before addressing it, I need to get my head on straighter. Waiting is.

******************************
School days? Children are the cruelest beings on earth.

“I’m skipping past the rest of my ‘wonderful’ school days except to say that I was unrepentantly intelligent (and wishing I were normal), continually round (and wishing I were normal), quietly unassertive (and wishing I were normal), madly in love with reading (and wishing I were normal), always picked last in team sports (and wishing, desperately, that I were normal, didn’t care so horribly much, and didn’t have to be there), perpetually unchallenged (though often fascinated), and horribly alone (of course, I knew I wasn’t normal.)”

Hey, which one of us wrote this? GMTA (sigh). Well, at least I had a friend, one.

*********************************
“For some reason, best known to my internal mental workings, I felt that I was now obligated to live a life worthy of two people, one for myself and one for my still born sister.”

Didn’t know you were leading a double life. It’s hard enough living for one, let alone two. Sometimes we try so hard to accomplish something that we wind up accomplishing nothing. Too much ‘stuff’ gets in the way. Please, just for a little while, put down the burden for your still born sister. Make your life worthy for you. Then you can make it worthy for her.

*********************************
"My parents were incredibly supportive. Still, I remember at one point having made a comment about something, which was confirmed by someone else. My mother said, “How about that? He was right!”

The irony here is not lost on me. Your mother wrote you off after the incident in Kansas. You obviously had ‘lost it’. She never missed a chance to put you down (which, by the way, irked the h*ll out of me). You were her son and she was stuck with you. No matter what you did, it wouldn’t be right because you weren’t right. I remember three instances where, had I not been raised to be a lady, I might have punched her out physically rather than engaging in the verbal ‘conversations’ we did have.

I still remember what she told me on our wedding day, “He’s your problem now”. What she didn’t realize was that her loss was most definitely my gain.

**************

"As I finished my presentation, I looked into someone’s eyes and saw absolutely nothing there but stark terror. The same was true as I scanned the faces of all the others there. (If you need more details, just ask. I can always see those eyes and faces in precise detail though I no longer remember most of their names.)

I thought back over what I had been saying and realized that I had been speaking gibberish for the last hour. While I knew what I had been trying to say, I also knew that I hadn’t been actually speaking the words that I had intended. My mind was racing along much faster than my mouth could keep up. Given the small size of the room and the large amount of space in it that I consumed, it must have been a time of panic for all the others."

Clarification please. Apparently I have interpreted this way differently then the other out here. When I think of gibberish, I think of it as unintelligible or nonsensical talk rather than the brain working faster than the mouth. Rather rambling, free association rather than connected thoughts. This way, it is ever so much scarier.

*****************************

"I was arrested for shoplifting a computer toy, which I had the money in my pocket to pay for. The judge sent me to a class and to a psychiatrist and I was never formally charged."

Negative attention is better than no attention at all? Thrill seeking? I don’t know…the only two times I was caught, the store owners let me off with a warning. I, too, had the money to pay for the items.

****************************

"Why am I still so messed up?

Don’t bother answering that one, that’s not the real question. That one has an answer that should be obvious to everyone who has been posting here."

Welcome to the club!

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"So, I have been fortunate not to have suffered the tortures that many of us here have survived. But when Richenda, my dear and insightful wife, said, “It’s not how much you suffered, but how much it hurt,” that’s when I realized that I should be writing this and posting it here."

Tortures come in all forms, both physical and psychological. When I was writing my article on pain evaluation and suggested that the scale was geared to physical pain but probably could be applied to psychological pain as well, you reminded me that there is no difference between physical and psychological pain….they both hurt! The body is damaged by physical pain…the mind is damaged and scarred by both.

You are a very mental (involving the mind or an intellectual process) person. You are very intelligent and soak up knowledge like a sponge. Your greatest enjoyment is learning something new. You ache to be with people on your own level and yearn to find people to challenge you. Your mind is precious to you. Violating it hurts. It is no different than my physical abuse, mental abuse or rape. It all hurts.

As I said, PTS is not about how bad something was but how much it hurt.


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"And all of this, as best I can tell, is simply my way of protecting myself from being hurt."

And as far as pain goes, I have learned how to turn it off or ignore it, while inside me somewhere there is a vast reservoir of suffering that I know about only by feeling the awesome vibrations of potential disaster should the barriers ever fail and the deluge come.

You have to open the glass tower and let someone in (or for that matter, someone out). By shutting out the pain, you are turning off a part of life and denying the rest. You are protecting yourself from being hurt. But, equally importantly, you are not allowing yourself to be helped. What is that saying you use with other people? The only way out is through?

You can’t keep living in that glass tower (or your office, either). There are people out here who want to help. You have helped many of us out here (and many who are no longer actively out here). Now let us help you.

Please?

I'd missed responding to one or two things you'd said, Barton, because they made my mind swim too much to think about them at the time. I *think* I'm feeling grounded enough to speak of them now, so I'll have a go at it.

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“For some reason, best known to my internal mental workings, I felt that I was now obligated to live a life worthy of two people, one for myself and one for my still born sister.”


Richenda's right about it being too hard to try to live for two. Sometimes I guess I'm trying to live for three. The weight of the dead is a heavy burden to carry, as is the omnipresent guilt at being the one who lived (and believing you don't deserve it). We can't live vicariously *for* others any more than we can *through* others. Eventually you've got to let them go find their peace, so you can find your own.

It's funny you should speak of this now, as I've recently realised, and am beginning to accept, that I've got to let Tom and Rachael go, and make room in my heart for love which is alive and close enough to touch. I think they'd understand.
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I also interpreted what you'd said about speaking gibberish in the same way as Richenda did, and not as the brain working faster than the mouth (although I also agree yours must, your brain seems to run like a hamster inside a wheel... except the hamster's on meth or something ). I also understood it to mean rambling, unconnected thoughts, which is something I'm guilty of and would love to understand, because it is scary.

Is it a dissociative reaction, the mouth is moving but the actual person isn't in control any more? Is it that some things are just too scary to say, and aren't processed properly? Is it an unconscious effort to scare people off? Is it all of these things, to some degree? And at times, I think it's also just making noise... silence can be so terrifying and lonely at times, especially when it happens during a conversation. Not getting a response feels like rejection, and there's a need to overcompensate and seem more interesting I guess.

I'm rambling now, come to think of it. So sorry...
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I've never tried shoplifting, never had the urge. But I, too, have done things which could only be explained as either thrill-seeking, or attracting negative attention. Those of us who've been abused and neglected for much of our lives do begin to believe that negative attention is better than none at all. Sometimes our behavior just screams out to the rest of the world, "I'm here, please, somebody take notice of me!"
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I'd learned, too, how to turn pain off and ignore it, my physical pain is so closely tied to my emotions and my mental state it isn't even funny. But you guys are right, the only way out *is* through. It is impossible to numb the pain, I've learned, without numbing everything else as well. Isn't it possible to feel both passionate and secure? I don't know, but I think it's worth a try.

I've said this to one or two of you already, and I'll say it to you, too, Barton. Whatever you do, please don't shut me out or push me away, I need you. Don't make me come and *get* you... because I'll d**n well do it.

I certainly agree. It is *memorized* but true.

Pain is pain no matter the type.
Same for joy.
Measured or not, it exists and must be honored.
There's no way to get over it or around it,only through it.

It helps to have a bright light, sometimes a spouse or friend, or professional can hold the light steady. Although.... as a good friend of mine says "you cannot stare into the sun all the time". You need a day off occaissionally

Barton,there are resources available (on web) to help you recognize or identify your own speech-thought-behavior patterns.

I am sure we all interpet what we read through our own shaded glasses. Where are those rose colored glasses people speak of? That phrase fascinated me as a kid

When *I spoke of the eyes they were of one person. The dark chasm of need that I thought had the power to suck me in. The spiral nightmares I had were about falling into her eyes and getting lost. Until I saw her as a person...totally seperate. Existing in the same state with or without my presence.

Public speaking I backed out of 3 times-nevr did pass it. Still disturbs me a bit. Facing a large group of eyes like that.....

I had that spiral nightmares with each relationships, Maybe I will write an entry about my serial dreams. They are quite wonderful when the serial comes to an endwhen I decide to commit to the marriage I am in now.

Gibberish:

As I described was, to the best of my understanding, the nature of my 'gibberish' at that time. However, the English language, being as imprecise and flexible as it is, essentially defines gibberish as speech which while apparently intended to be coherent and understandable which is, nonetheless, not. Please note, that given the subjective nature of such a perception, there might be no fault in the speaker at all with the problem lying soley with the listener. That is why we can often criticize our own lack of understanding with the phrase from Shakespeare, "That sounds like Greek to me." But, of course, coming from an English or American mouth, that often means, "You're intelligent enough to speak English, aren't you." (Since a three year old can do it, and the speaker evidently cannot.)

I call what I spoke, gibberish, because there was no way that anyone, even myself, could have udnerstood what I had been saying.

On the other hand, I do currently still suffer from following strange tangents in pursuit of an idea fleeting through my head, such that I can easily become incomprehensible and have no idea where I had been originally going or what point I had intended to make. This is apparently more an issue of a failure to descriminate importance and inability to avoid following an interesting thought, child-like, through the maze of my mind while attempting to express an idea or connection I know I have had before but which no longer exists in my mind as more than a vague vector through the brambles.

For instance, I have a large and very precise vocabulary. However, I sometime run up against a construct which I intend to express using a particular word. I speak up to that point and wait for the word to come and it does not. My mind begins to fling up words of similar sounds or similar meanings but none of them are the exact word. Being a precisionist, I reject them and soon find myself with nothing left to say, knowing that I'll know the word, if I can just speak it to myself but having let all the sand run out of my glass. How can I know I know it, without knowing it? And, moreover, how can I suddenly know it again five minutes later but can no longer remember what it was I was trying to say with it.

Over the last thirty years, I have learned to let myself simply ramble and to trust that the paths through my thinking are well established even if I have lost the maps that let me know what is around the next turn of thought.

But, I am never quite sure, though I have arrived at a place that seems a good place to stop to wait for a reply, that I have actually arrived at the destination I set out for. Thus, one of my newest expressions is, "Does that make sense?" Which no longer means, "Do you understand what I said," but rather asks. "Have I said anything understandable?" And, always, there is that search for a sense of terror in the person I'm speaking to.

As far as negative attention goes, let me make another suggestion in addition to what you were saying, PC. Since we have become convinced, on some level, of our lack of worth and since we have a certain amound of trouble accepting when people contradict our acknowlegment of that personal failure, walling ourselves off is is not only a defense mechanism but is also a test for the rest of the world. "If I am really worth it, as you say, then I must be worth the modest effort on your part to find a way around my wall, which has no door -- open or otherwise, through my thorn hedge which has no break, and past my fire-breathing dragon which has never known how to back off, give up, nor to fail to satisfy it's insatiable hunger -- not to mention the moats filled with filth and the pits filled with rusty razor blades. All you need to do is prove that I am wrong, and I might consider thinking about the possibility that there could be a chance that this is not just a clever ruse to crack my shell and suck out my tender juices."

This follows because, as we all shout in unison, I HAVE BEEN HURT AND I DON'T DESERVE TO BE HURT AGAIN!!!!

We are shouting that all the time and what draws us together here is the perception of the distant echoes of our own voices and our own words, which perversely enough, makes us feel all the more secure, knowing that others agree with us that the only safe way to deal with the world is to continually question, "Who is there?" while simultaneously shouting, "Go away!" and lighting the fires under the boiling oil on the battlements.

Are we at fault for having walled up our doors and windows? Given the circumstances, probably not. Are we at fault for feeling that the world needs to prove itself worthy of continued contact? Same circumstances, same answer. Aren't we foolish to still have hope that someone out there will will still find us worthy of the effort? Of course, we are, but we can't help it, We're tired of just surviving and want to go back to what we remember of living.

For some of us, that memory is as vague and fleeting as a long ago glimpse of a mother's breast which in our simplicity we could only label as 'comfort' or 'security' and now know only as something lost, never regained, but still hoped for.

So, here we all are within our battlements, the very same ones that account for our still being intact and however whole, and we hear a voice outside saying, "My! You're certainly lovely/attractive/interesting/intelligent." What do we do? Well, we'd like to beleive it but, we know we can't possible be seen behind all that self-emplaced stone. (No, my love, not glass. Please, don't say glass! You can't possibly see me quaking here in the precise center of the refuse cluttered courtyard on the top of the tallest tower, clutching the rags of my disguise against my near naked body.) "Hey, you!" We shout. "Get away from here! This is my wall! Go storm some other place. Go find someone who likes to be hurt. (G-d help their soul!)"

"But, I want to be your friend"

What can we say but, "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!"

I know that the poster on my wall that reads "Big Bad Wolf" is so faded that it can no longer be used to describe anything and that I never was really sure what a wolf looked like anyway except for a distant memory which keeps getting confused with a mother's breast and happiness.

And also, for most of us, we can remember when there used to be doorways and windows, when we even opened them on occasion, but somehow that never seemed to work.

So, if we're feeling compassionate, we may throw a few coins off the top of the wall while stoking the fires higher and we shout loudly as if encouraging our 'legions of defenders', "Stand by your guns men! We have lots of ammo so don't take a chance, shoot first! Reinforcements are on the way! They'll never get past the lions and tigers and bears!"

And downward we cry again, "Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!"

Inside our heads, we quake. We know! "Shi'll huff and puff and ..." And, inside our hearts, we wonder, "Will no one save me? Ever?"

So, how can we possibly go 'through' any of this. Can't you all still hear that terifying judgement, that terrible chorus, "Tear down the wall!" Can't you just picture the mobs of villagers with their pitchforks and torches. Can't you just feel the bullets from the biplanes as you cling to the skyscraper in confusion. Can't you just hear those terrifying words, "'Twas beauty killed the beast."

Let's try an experiment. Let's roar out our defiance at the villagers. Now let's listen for them to roar back and clatter their farm tools. I heard you all roar, but I'm only hearing a small weak angry man downstairs calling back, "Shut up! I'm trying to sleep"

Let's set down our precious handful of hope, beat our chests, and wait for the bullets and buzz of the planes. I hear you all pounding but I don't feel the stings or hear the engines.

That person down there, huffing and puffing, could it just be because it's such a g-d awful climb up the hill, past the thorns, across the moat? Where is that da*n dragon anyway? Is this it's day off?

What I am doing right now, is looking for a piece of chalk. I'm going to draw a tiny little window shutter, way over here away from that stranger, and I'm going to take a quick peek out -- with my eraser in my hand and my foot in the loop of rope from the boiling oil kettles. Maybe, I won't feel a breeze at all.

Barton

Hello Barton, & all the others.

I haven't been able to read all of this; I am in a state of having to be very careful at the moment; The fact that you all know what I mean & I don't, for once, have to explain, justify myself, or pretend is a testament to how much we all need this space.

I can relate to what you are saying; just about every bit of it, except being 6ft 5" & able to fight!

*sigh*

Don't know what to say.

You are not alone.

It helps.

to you all,

Terri.

ps: *ahem* Yoda would like to know where "Yoda speak" came from in post 10. She is getting somewhat paranoid, since this is the second time her secretarial assistant has come across her name tonight. She is beginning to wonder if you have actually realised her secret.

*waves to Terri & Yoda*