Yesterday, I saw that I wrote 22 days in a row, and I freaked. Today is 23!
In order to make (or remake) a habit – you have to do it 21 days. Just 3 weeks, and you’ve made a new habit. I’ve spent 7/8 years trying to get to this point. It’s amazing that something so simple as doing something for 21 days can be so hard, but I can tell you. It’s a long story. It’s like when you tell someone who is depressed to just feel better or whatever. It’s like, more often than not the simplest things are the hardest. And knowing that makes you feel worse for it. And generally, the people who want to help hurt the most. Life with mental illness, y’all. But I am forced to always ask: why the fuck am I the only one with the fucking problem here? I don’t even know if this is going to make sense, and I’m honestly going to try to edit very little as possible. I have to get this out for myself foremost. If you can take the journey with me, I thank you. Maybe if others read it, I’ll remember it better somehow. At the end of the day, this story is truly about a person being driven crazy over and over. And I think if you can make it through, you might find it’s not just me. I don’t think any of my shit is unique, we all just have so much stupid shit in our lives.
This story and blog, really, continues to be me desperately trying to remind myself that the only truly crazy thing about me is that I allow other people to convince me I am crazy/the problem/sick/etc.
At some point in December 2016, people found my original blog, and I got a lot of shit for it. It was really distressing because I wasn’t writing in some sort of salacious tell-all fashion. I was really just writing and processing my life. Like, back in July 2016, I realized I really had a problem with eating disorders. It’s not that I didn’t know per se, I just didn’t want to know. I was at my hairdresser and I was telling her how my hair kept falling out. As I was talking, a random visualization of me throwing up in the bathroom at dinner the night before flashed in my head. That was the night I saw blood in my vomit, and it was the first time I felt scared – maybe I was really hurting myself.
Until that point, I was just tired of being fat. For years and years, I would binge and purge, then purge, then stop eating (or eat very very little) altogether. So I started writing about it after my hairdresser appointment and I started working on not killing myself. One of the points I mentioned was people calling me fat all the fucking time since I was a kid, and I think bulimia started back around 14/15, and so on. Just shit that happened that I’m realizing is causing dumb shit I’m doing. I understood what was up from writing about it, and I stopped hurting myself. Wooo.
I talked about how shit came to be. One thing I mentioned was how people can get drunk, and they can say terrible things to me that they wouldn’t remember upon sobering up. I talked about my kid feeling suicidal because of my separation from his father and his confusion over everything. I wasn’t vague-booking, I just talked about shit going on in my life with people in my life. And, I guess, maybe I shouldn’t have been so direct with roles or whatever, but I don’t know.
Ever since all the shit went down with my first blog, it kept taking these like… massive efforts to stop being afraid long enough to write, and a lot of time it just… it wasn’t this. This is like it was. I started typing and I went away and whatever came out came out and who gives a shit? I have literally written TMI about my life on the internet since Xanga was a thing. MySpace, LiveJournal, Facebook, whatever – I have just written about my life online. When I was pregnant? going through the adoption process? I posted everything on Xanga. There is so much TMI all over my LiveJournal, and I don’t care. Why would I? Like bad shit happened to me, I’m getting it off my chest. “Better out than in” amirite? I’ll never get why this blog, why now, except that I had connected with something so deep, true, wonderful, pure, and I was fucking happy. Going through shit, figuring out shit, but I was fucking happy.
It was obvious to me at least that I was just trying to write shit out because writing is my shit. I was working with a therapist and really being open and honest, I had started taking some meds to help me deal with all of the panic I was going through trying to process my life properly. She thought it was great I was writing, ya know? The point is I was trying to heal, not create harm. I was sharing shit I was learning, it was cool. I was writing instead of drinking or fucking my problems ya know?
I will never understand why a sense of embarrassment always outranks my sanity or happiness.
But the whole thing blew up, it caused me to stop talking to a lot of people, and the worst part of it: I deleted my entire blog from guilt and shame. My blog was starting to gain a lot of followers and traction because let’s be honest, I write well, and I’m a real, authentic person writing about real, authentic shit. And I’m occasionally funny. I was close to 1k followers with only a few months of really blogging – like this – every day. And people were commenting on shit I was writing like this telling me I was helping them, and damn that felt nice. I’ve never cared about counts and all, if anything I get scared when I start getting followers. But I love it when I can help somebody else out there feel better or give somebody something to think about with my weird ramblings. I don’t really care where it goes, I just love when shit connects, ya know?
I felt something break in my brain when I realized I couldn’t even recover the blog. I didn’t save anything I wrote offline, it was all on the blog. Not only the posts but all the poetry I wrote. Gone. Gone because people got offended that I talked about their behavior and how it affected me. Within a few weeks of that decision and all these people giving me hella shit when I was insanely vulnerable…I had my first psychotic episode. This became the proof needed that it’s me, I’m the problem, I’m the sick one. Identified Patient Confirmed, Diagnosed, Medicated.
And the irony is, in all of that, it’s like I learned and understood so much from my writing that I learned forgiveness and all this good shit. Like anybody, I did the victim/blame thing at first, but then I realized simply: hurt people hurt people, and that’s what I was focused on. Because I think this shit happens to a lot of folks and it’s generally too difficult or maybe even embarrassing to talk about. SO I talk about it. I know how much keeping everything in has harmed me, and I know reading other people doing this same shit has helped me. Pretty straightforward, eh?
There was a lot in there – my mind I mean – and it exploded very quickly. All my fears around going to hell/being damned, all the pain and confusion catholicism caused me, all of the stress of everything, but most of all, I think… my brain was trying to get the biggest thing that had been messing with me for so long up and out – the rapes. When I deleted my blog, I had been writing about and starting to touch the surface that I didn’t remember things correctly, and that my brain can’t handle it. I was starting to write that there’s something in there that I don’t understand. I had been put on Xanax to stop the panic attacks that had started, etc. But the psychosis I guess really started when I couldn’t sleep. I was terrified to sleep. If I did fall asleep, it would feel like a few moments until I would wake screaming and covered in sweat. It was called mania because everybody calls me bipolar except the professionals who get to know me. I didn’t have excess energy, I was exhausted and desperate to sleep. I was trying to write it out, but I was so terrified of writing because of everything that just happened, it was like…pouring gasoline on myself trying to put the fire out. I did not think I was god, rather I thought god was punishing me. I heard demons on the radio making fun of me. I saw a lady’s face melt.
Pretty much since I created this new blog, I was terrified to write because I didn’t want to deal with any more armchair diagnosticians.
In order to write anything that means anything to me, I had to get to this space of not giving a fuck, but that’s really tough when you are imprisoned by all of the fucks you really shouldn’t be giving. So every so often, I’d peek out and write a bit, but the majority of the past few years felt like watching my soul die all over again after I had just fucking found her. Psychosis was bad, but this shit was so much worse.
You see, apparently, I am manic whenever I write too long on Facebook, text messages, or wherever. Which is weird, cause I write too long everywhere, regardless of any situation. Have you seen my blog? In 7th grade, I was told that I write like Dean Koontz, and I get that. I try to not babble, but I’m a babbling person. So I try to be entertaining while I babble. I just….fucking…love to write. And I’m a super fast typer, I get shit out quick. What could probably take a “normal” person 2 days to type, I can do it in like 15 – on my phone or on my laptop. I have to type insanely fast in order to keep up with my brain. Or, actually more importantly: I have finally gotten to the point I can type faster than I can think, which means when I write, I’m not thinking. It’s just whatever, whoever coming outta my fingertips. I merely become an editor after the fact. That’s kinda that not giving a fuck zone. You type faster than you can give fucks and you publish before you think about it. I think some people call it flow. All I know is it’s fucking heaven. It’s where I’m free. It’s where I breathe.
It’s so fucking hurtful. Every fucking time I get too uppity with my feelings, I get diagnosed by people who have no degrees and haven’t spent a fraction of the time I have studying everything about me and everything I’ve ever been labeled with.
And I don’t want to write that because I feel like I’m being mean, but I know there are so many people that have this shit going on in their lives too. This is stigma too, and it’s really, really painful. I get anybody could say they just wanted to help, but goddamn man – people need to learn how to fucking help. Step one: If someone is sick, it may not just be chemicals misfiring in their brain – they’re probably in a lot of fucking pain. Stop focusing on the illness, stop focusing on the label, stop focusing on the fucking diagnosis. It’s a person, you idiot. I write that in anger for anybody who has ever felt this shit like me, because this shit isn’t unique, it’s just not acceptable to talk about. Because other people’s comfort is more important than somebody’s sanity.
I am not the type of person to demurely anything. If I am pissed, if something is bothering me, you name it, I speak as I write. I’ve been told that’s actually what makes my writing so special, people feel like they are sitting next to me and I am conversing with them. That’s been the hardest fucking part is dropping this fake bullshit whatever and writing with my speaking voice again. Most of my writing has felt like customer service voice with occasionally good shit. AKA being me.
I have been suffocating under so many fucking bullshit masks and lately it’s just like Breaaaaaathe bitch, breathe and write like your ass is on fire, cause it is.
So, last summer, I had a second psychotic break. Much like the first, I was under a fuckton of stress. Much like the first, I was writing about it – angrily. I have vaguebooked or curated a perfect pretend life for long enough. I was again being completely honest, yet somehow kept getting diagnostic texts from people who say they care but don’t care to understand. I want to censor that too because I feel like I’m being hurtful, but facts do not care about feelings. Way too many people care far too much about my diagnoses than my fucking feelings. Like, anybody gets sick in an unhealthy environment, so if I’m sick….hello! I don’t understand how a psychotic break doesn’t prove my point, and somehow… nevermind.
Here’s the deal, and here’s what I was talking about: my husband is addicted to video games. And I suppose, in order to prevent any meltdowns, I’ve told him that I am writing about this shit now/again because I know there are women out there just like me with husbands addicted to video games. They’re probably embarrassed like I was, they probably get harasssed to just “throw the shit away”. They get told how this woman wouldn’t put up with that shit, or how they need to just make it stop. Or whatever, because nobody believes it’s an addiction. “Throw the consoles away” is no different than “Flush the heroin down the drain”. Unless an addict wants to stop, I can’t do a motherfucking thing. And he has never had a problem with video games, it is me, and sometimes my mental illnesses that have the problem. It is somehow irrational, unreasonable, whatever of me to expect that video games shouldn’t be played all day and night, screens shouldn’t be hours and hours on end for anybody. AAAAAAAAAAANd guess what? Eventually, anybody goes fucking bananas. I just last longer than others because I have a stupidly high pain tolerance and I will make it work!
Yes, I was exhibiting a LOT of shit, rightfully fucking so. I was exhibiting signs of a woman losing her fucking mind – I suppose you could say my alphabet soups were triggered by these issues, but these issues – my husband playing video games 24/7, were the trigger, not the illnesses. You see?
But nobody was listening to the fact that I’m sick bc the dude won’t stop with video games. It’s literally that simple. I’m like a single mom of “4” kids, 3 of which are taking all their anger at their situations out on me, and I’m just alone doing everything alone while he plays video games nonstop and argues with me if I tell him to stop or do shit more often than not. And of course, there are times where it wasn’t as bad, and that becomes justification that the bad behavior is okay, right?
I don’t care what my fucking diagnoses are, I was rightfully losing my fucking mind. I was screaming in caps telling people to help me and stop assuming my life is okay because my facebook seems okay because my husband won’t stop playing video games and I literally cannot take it anymore. And oh yes, I’m airing dirty laundry and I will continue to not understand why you would not want to air out dirty laundry?
All this shit proliferates in shame and silence. It’s shame and silence that has been killing me, keeping me off this blog, and destroying me, but don’t do that you might embarrass somebody.
I’d reached my limit, and I was going to leave, and I was saying as such to everyone online and in person. Had my shit packed, was taking cash out of the account, and I was staying at a friends. I was going to just leave, go on a road trip, something for me to heal me because I couldn’t take anymore. I could feel the cracks in my foundation getting bigger, and up until I exploded like a psycho hose beast online, I couldn’t/wouldn’t write.
I was like a fucking firehose of every fucking thing that has been destroying my soul for however fucking long. And I get asked about my fucking meds. So what fucking happened? I snapped. Again. The fucking stress of all this shit again. Fighting desperately to remember that it’s not crazy to be upset as I am, but eventually: I get convinced I’m crazy. It’s me. Always fucking me, always fucking crazy.
Finally, after 21 years of begging, the consoles have gone into the gun safe and out of my fucking family room. This after a series of catastrophes in our lives…this after even last summer I know I said put those fucking consoles away or I’m leaving, etc. I stayed because I have kids and they need me. I stayed because of guilt. And I had a fucking psychotic break because of it. And then what the fuck am I going to do? I can’t go on a road trip, I can’t move. I am now trying to cobble my sanity back together while the video games continued to be played.
After all of it, he still doesn’t seem convinced it is a problem. I’m genuinely terrified this will only last a period of time and we will go back to the hell I’ve been struggling in for what feels like forever. Over the summer, he was logging anywhere from 8 to 16 hours of video games.
But I’m gonna write. I don’t give a fuck. I’m not swirling other people’s drains anymore.
I have no support network here in Nevada. As per usual, everybody distanced and disappeared after psychosis because psychotic people are confusing and scary. Ya know what’s worse? Being a psychotic person, it’s really confusing and scary. But again, comfort is more important than sanity. I’m soooo embarrassing for losing my fucking mind in this fucking batshit crazy situation.
I have 3 kids, and at the time I had been homeschooling them and then it was summer break. 3 kids, nonstop, who didn’t want to do school, who refused to listen to anything I said, etc. And a present-yet-absent father who ignored all of us to play whatever video game he was playing. He would claim he was paying attention or whatever, but if you’ve ever tried to converse with someone playing a video game or staring at their phone – which is what he’d do if he wasn’t playing video games – it’s not a conversation. It’s one-word answers at best, and more often than not, they act like they’re being interrupted by “stupid shit” like your kids wanting to talk to you or play with you or spend any modicum of time with you. And what happens then? They take it out on me. ‘Cause that’s what kids do right?
Fuck, I lost the plot again. Last summer, I’m leavin’, I’m out. I am every woman who has had e-fucking-nough. My therapist, when I told her my plans diagnosed me not as bipolar, not as manic, but – with tears running down her fucking face, “The Most Desperate Woman I Have Ever Seen in My Life. Just fucking go, Daina.”
But I was writing about all this shit on Facebook, and I was fucking pissed. Because so many people – and I mean this sweepingly as a society – fucking think they know shit about somebody because they look at their facebook. I think that’s why I’ve always been this way, I’m like Contrarian, Devil’s Advocate to the motherfucking core. I don’t give a shit about perfectly poised and posed, I want real actual shit. Was your mother’s day really blissful or did you wake up to a sink full of dishes that you swore to yourself you weren’t going to touch today, knowing full well it just really means double duty tomorrow?
I just call bullshit on everything, so I was calling bullshit on everyone. Nobody checks in on the husband, I’ve told people a lot he plays video games too much, I was saying I’m worried about his fucking health, he’s like up til 2/3 AM playing video games and then wakes up at 5 or 6 for work. Like… that’s not safe. I’m ranting about all this shit. Ranting. And I’m writing a fucking lot, a) because I’m deeply fucked – as I said, this is not okay. I’m not running on anything anymore, like my only fuel was the gasoline I was burning in my writing. b) I was saying somebody anybody had to help. and I was clear that I needed help, but not for me. Like I have a mental health team, I needed help for my screen-addicted family. All of them. I was saying my mental health team is telling me I gotta go, so somebody fucking step in here. like, stop liking my stupid fucking photos on facebook and call my husband and ask him why he’s playing video games 24/7? anyfucking thing. My therapist was dead ass right: I was the most desperate woman she’s ever met, and I was very clearly expressing this via my writing.
Anyway, long story long, the diagnostic texts started coming in and that shit fucks with you, man. You know that you’re right, like this shit is not okay, but I’m manic, and I’m this. Why wouldn’t I be? The actual words – since the people that do this shit are never actually doctors – are desperate, frenetic and frantic. Like a caged animal backed into a corner fighting her fucking way out because this shit is RIGHTFULLY driving her fucking insane. This is not a chemical thing here. My bipolar or whatever fucking disorder does not cause me to have an addict husband basically abusing us because he’s severely addicted to video games. Like, that’s the truth, uncomfortable as fuck – especially for those of us experiencing it! and that includes him, I’m not a dick, I know he’s fucking hurting so he’s hurting us, like I said before. But I don’t see how me whitewashing his fucking addiction is cool for anyone, so I fucking stopped.
But what happens when enough people act like you are the problem or you are the crazy one?
This – this was the crux of my first blog before I deleted it. This is the point my brain fucking snapped. This is the point my psychosis started over the summer.
Why the fuck am I so crazy for not being okay with being treated like shit? And if what I’m saying is making you uncomfortable, why is that a sign of my mental illness?
Somebody said to me once, “Daina, Jesus Christ girl, fuck everybody. If they don’t like how you’re talking, they shoulda thought about how they acted.”
I’m not the fucking crazy one. I’m not saying I’ve got a full picnic basket by any means. But it is patently insane to play video games for any amount of hours in the double digits. It is a problem, and it’s not mine except for the fact that ya know, then my kids take everything out on me, refuse to listen or respect me, and like… it becomes basically getting abused by 4 people nonstop 24/7.
Over Christmas break, when we went home, I got so many questions about my meds and doctors, but nobody asked about video games.
And there, I feel mean again, but goddammit that’s truth. Is that my bipolar speaking or bad behavior that has fucking nothing to do with me? I’m an asshole, and so are you. All I’m asking is that you leave my life to the professional. Me. I’ve gotten myself through all this shit, like, the psychotic breaks don’t show I don’t know what I’m doing, they show I’m letting people fucking drive me crazy. Otherwise, I am a fucking excellent patient. You should hear my doctor, she fucking loves me. I fucking love her too, she fucking cried when I told her what happened, and she fucking knew it wasn’t mania. You know all she really said? Daina, I’m so sorry sweetie. You just don’t deserve this. I don’t. And these aren’t even my problems, dammit.
21 days makes a habit. I re-established my writing habit, and I gave up the bad habit of giving a fuck what anybody has to say about anything that has to do with my life. 7 or 8 fucking years to write for 3 weeks straight. Because it was too hard to be honest about how fucked all of this shit is, and what is the fucking point of writing if you can’t be honest? Who gives a shit, then you’re just another fucking asshole on the internet.
I’ve talked about her a lot – the homeless lady from the mental hospital. She stood there, butt ass naked, and she said Daina (this woman had no way of knowing my name) you are gonna spend so many years trying to write about this, then you’re gonna remember what comedy is, how the funny ones they hurt most, and you’re going to find it. Daina, when you find it, you will be unstoppable”
Just like that wise woman’s words and wrinkle ass have echoed in my mind for however many fucking years… I found it. I am unstoppable. I told my therapist before I broke, “I am the most dangerous woman in the world because I have literally nothing left to lose” and didn’t I have to fucking jinx my ass – because I did – I lost my fucking mind. But I don’t even have that anymore, I have fucking nothing to lose. I’ve been told by my brain, my mental health professionals, and every fucking sign of the universe that I write or I lose. I am not playing this game anymore.
They say trauma – your body doesn’t discriminate, ya know?
A jumpscare in a video game is no different than a bear attack. Or like somebody yelling at you is just as traumatic as fighting in a war. Our system just… it’s either OMG we’re gonna die or shit’s cool.
I say this because the shit that happened in my psychoses: my kids have died, my husband murdered my kids and me, I saw a nuclear bomb drop, I believed if I didn’t kill myself “they” were going to kill my kids and I couldn’t pull my hoodie strings tight enough in the mental hospital bathroom to strangle myself and save them, and on a lighter note, I saw a completely different (and I gotta say I think better) version of Thor in the theatres. I know this because when I watched it at home I was shocked. Literally saw a totally different movie. Same actors, totally different plotline. Way different. But just like I remember that alternate Thor, I remember the horror and fear and terror and pain I was in. I survived. Obviously like, nobody did actually die, but in my brain? The one that gives me a panic attack and I genuinely have to ask “Am I anxious or just like, thirsty?” In my brain, I’ve lived through so many of the worst imaginable scenarios. I saw the fucking mushroom clouds, I heard the fucking screams. I literally sat (psychotic) on my back porch watching the apocalypse.
She said unstoppable. I’ve survived an apocalypse in my fucking head and somehow I’m afraid to write on my own fucking blog that I pay good money to register this domain? I’m afraid about what any asshole has to say about me? I’m afraid to put myself out there completely and just do the one fucking thing that makes me feel alive? O my fucking god, so many fucking years on such stupid fucking fears.
I’m gonna figure out a fucking way to get somebody to give me money bc I write good. I’m gonna figure out a fucking way to do anything besides be fucking miserable. I have had lifetimes of fucking misery, I will now see if I can just…redirect that shit. Transmute that shit.
Oh fuck yeah, I truly believe that I can turn shit into gold. Anybody can, everybody can. Alchemists were not nearly immature enough with all their lead nonsense. Look at how many lyrics or whatever are just like here is my terrible shit, pay me bitch. Not precisely like that, but yeah. Before I snapped, that’s what I was doing – turning shit into gold. And I was getting followers and successful again. And I snapped because of the stress because I couldn’t take it anymore, because I couldn’t handle the guilt of actually running away from my kids, etc. and it sucks ’cause I was doing really well, I was TikTok’ing and shit. Then I just stopped again because of fucking people. I stopped helping people with my babbling because somebody’s fucking opinion or whatever. And then have the audacity to wonder “Why does it feel like I am in hell again?”
God – if you’ve stopped by my blog again today, Hi, how are you? Listen, message received big guy, and I’m sorry it took me so long, but you clearly knew it would because you sent a naked homeless lady to tell me so. So I’m gonna assume this means I’m right where I should be, I’m sucking air in my head, I think this is good. I know yesterday I was a little bitchy about the circumstances, but I knew from the minute he got fired it meant we were fucked until I got paid to write. I have no idea how you’re gonna do it, but I am listening for once. That’s not too shabby eh? And don’t forget about the wawa thing, seriously. That could be very lucrative for both of us.
I really agree with Dolores on Westworld, it’s like the ones you love really do hold you back the most. Unlike Westworld, I don’t think it’s intentional, I donno. I don’t think anybody set out to drive me crazy, but they still did. I’m really angry right now because I’m concerned as I keep ramping this up, the bullshit is going to start again. I’m like prefacing anything I write on Facebook with how many drugs I’m currently taking. Just to be an asshole really. I know it’s coming. Every mother fucking time I try to get healthy, a buncha assholes tell me how sick I am. But, i will ask one final very fucking good question: If what I’m saying is bothering you, what does that say about you? Everybody can learn way more when they stop looking at other people and look at themselves. Projection is very, very real, and there are some fucking craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaazy ass motherfuckers out there man. I am not one. I’m just fucking nuts. I write under the name Mahbuttitches, I just… what the fuck do you want from me here?
This is why mah butt itches, man. Thanks (or I’m sorry!) for stopping by and letting me get a good, deep scratch in today. I feel fucking amazing.
Mah Butt Itches 