Messages By: annanut

All my grades are in: Bachelor of Arts for me. Yay. I feel like the last four years have been lived by someone else, some half-alive wraith. I feel as if four years have slipped out of my hands, and all I have is a computer printout. It is not compensation: it is a joke.

ENGL 202 (Departmental Survey 1): B
ENGL 331 (Poetics): B+
RELG 271 (Sexual Ethics): B
EDEC 301 (Special Topics in Education): A
ENGL 203 (Departmental Survey 2): B+
ENGL 305 (Renaissance Literature 1): B+
ENGL 228 (Canadian Literature 1): B
ENGL 307 (Renaissance Literature 2): A-
ENGL 317 (Literary Approaches 1): B+
WMST 200 (Introduction to Women’s Studies): A-
ENGL 339 (Contemporary Canadian Prose Fiction): A-
ENGL 303 (18th Century Literature 2): A
PHIL 237 (Contemporary Moral Issues): A
PSYC 213 (Cognition): A/94%
ENGL 424 (Irish Literature): B+
PHIL 306 (Philosophy of Mind): A
PSYC 215 (Social Psychology): A/90%
ENGL 360 (Literary Criticism): A-
PHIL 304 (Chomsky): B+
PHIL 474 (Phenomenology): B+
PSYC 471 (Human Motivation): A/87%
ENGL 391 (Special Topics in Cultural Studies): A
ENGL 338 (Poetics of Short Fiction): A-
ENGL 343 (Literature and Science 1): A-
PHIL 343 (Biomedical Ethics): A-
PSYC 403 (Modern Psychology in Historical Perspectives): A/95%
PHIL 336 (Aesthetics): A
PHIL 355 (Aristotle): b+
PSYC 331 (Inter-group Relations): A/89%
PSYC 332 (Introduction to Personality): A/90%

ENGL (Major) GPA: 3.5
PHIL (Minor) GPA: 3.66
PSYC (Minor) GPA: 4.0
electives: 3.57

CGPA: 3.64

Wow. I wish it made me happy, but, instead, I feel like I don’t care at all.

So, you tried to kill yourself.
What do you do now?
Obsess about the fact you swallowed 230 mg of zopiclone and headed for the alcohol, but didn’t quite make it? Hate the emergency techs for their supportive measures? Hate yourself because you didn’t succeed?
It’s funny how your family will make themselves believe you didn’t really want to die.
It’s funny how your mother can sign release forms and take you out of the hospital the day after when you’re still barely conscious.
It’s funny how life goes on, and on, and nothing changes.
Are you screaming? Is no one listening? Are you speaking a foreign language? Or maybe you aren’t saying anything at all, but only think you are. Maybe people are listening, but there isn’t anything to be done.
On the one hand, my psychiatrist told me he loved me. He touched my face and we held each other. It was interesting how trying to die could be a bonding moment for us.
On the other hand, it’s been just under a month, and here I am out in the world, sleepwalking through exams like everyone else, breathing like everyone else, and still hoping to die, still wanting to die.
People say you’re supposed to have a moment where you wake up when you feel relieved you’re still alive. I’ve never had that moment. I was devastated. People don’t understand how tragic it feels to know you’ve failed again, that you can’t even kill yourself properly, that all you wanted was to die and you haven’t. When I started to realize I was alive, I tried to untape my IV in the vague hope that I could use the thick needle to stab myself to death. The nurses took it away.
Maybe if I had that moment of relief, the moment everyone always talks about, things would be different for me. But they aren’t.

So very long have I been trying to forget myself...step out of writing, of thinking...I had concluded there was too much thinking going on in my head...

My life
like so much paper
written and rewritten on
worn thin and insubstantial
opaque
crumpled
an untidy inscription.

It feels like there isn't anything here, behind these words, underneath them. No vertical text to connect meanings to themselves. It feels like I'm trying to write myself into existence. It's terrifying, freezing you in place, afraid to move. Language is a very heavy thing.

And so you run away, retreat into silence, so many silences. Maybe hoping that when you start talking again no one will be there to listen. Maybe hoping you'll disappear, like the fairies in Never-Never Land. Maybe frightened that if you say the wrong thing you'll write yourself into someone different from who you really are, and that you won't be able to find your way back. Maybe paralyzed by the idea that instead of losing yourself you'll find her.

What does any of it mean? What does it mean that I went to his appartment? What does it mean that I drank his wine and felt namelessly nervous? What does it mean that when he backed me into the wall I didn't kick or scream, frozen in some horrible double moment? What does it mean that I'd spent the year in his office talking about Dante and exams and our lives, wishing he would like me, wishing he would pay attention to me, hoping I was special? What does it mean that I begged him to stop, that it hurt so badly, but I didn't move, only useless words, gestures? I still wonder if he heard me. Inside of me, over my voice, he says "wow, you really are tight! I can feel myself forcing my way through every inch of you." Why would someone say that? How could I not know him? How could I not know that when he asked me if I wanted to stay he'd already decided? How could I not try harder?

Why is everything so much the same? In my room growing up, the same soundlessness, the same nothingness, secrecy. Years of depression and bleeding, drugs and extremity, trying to silence myself, but also trying somehow to tell without telling.

I am not ready for this. I do not want to remember. It's not that there is forgetting; it's that, somehow, you can go days without thinking how the ground felt dusty that year, how the sun was so bright, how the tree stump felt under your feet. That the apple tree blooms pink every year and every year you watch the blossoms falling to the ground, lining the driveway. How the bees come and you're afraid. How every year a cycle, the thing that stays with you growing up, these images, pictures in your head. Fragile blossoms blown away so easily, fall so easily. You don't forget but the pictures don't assail you, every day doesn't hurt. There isn't a way to pick the flowers up off of the ground and put them back on the branches.

What am I reflecting? What is under this shifting collection of surfaces?

My psychiatrist said the weirdest thing today. I was talking with him about D***** and how I wasn’t sure what to do, and how the last time I had been with him things had just felt so...off somehow. He had written to me, and I said I couldn’t see him because I wasn’t feeling well, and he wrote back to me and left me a message that he really missed me and wanted to see me. I was telling him these things and saying I didn’t know how I felt anymore, but that I was afraid if I didn’t make myself have sex with him I’d never try again because it would be too hard. He said “Maybe it’s time to stop”. I guess this is what I already knew myself and couldn’t say, and was so relieved when he said it for me because it means I’m not being irrational and silly.

Then I told him about how it all started, which I’m sure I told him some of that already but probably not all. He said he was glad I was talking to him about these things.

Then he said something like “I’ll just have to restrain myself from going and punching him in the face”. Oh holy crap I was not expecting that, for him to be angry at D*****. He said “You know I’d never actually do that. I’d never do anything to hurt you, or expose you, or embarrass you. But I’m still allowed to feel angry at him.” It’s scary, to have him feel angry. I don’t feel angry. I guess I feel disappointed in myself for taking all this time to see...for not making the best decision. I guess a little disappointed in him too, because we both could have done better...mostly I don’t feel anything about him, just this sense that it’s over now and there isn’t anything left to feel.

Image right when I was about to fall back asleep at about 1:30:

People are being dragged under, enfolded, by some dark substance, the fabric of night itself, the moving, shifting, engulfing blackness. The figures form out of the night, the black canvas; strange half-finished forms. The night pulls them back in and smothers them, while they are crying silently for rescue, their vague faces twisted in pain and despair.

I saw my psychiatrist today. I always think I have more control over my expressions than I guess I actually do. I want to suppress physical betrayal. But he pointed out that I winced when he mentioned a certain topic. I sometimes wish my face was a smooth surface, unmoving. But it says things I desperately don’t want to say.

He asks me what I remember, what happened, images I think of when I think back, what I thought was happening at the time, how I felt. I feel so paralyzed, I can’t speak. He says he’s not trying to torment me. I know that. It just hurts a lot, and I go away inside myself to nowhere. I snap out of it when he touches my hand, or something interrupts me. Sometimes I feel like I can’t stop myself from sliding away, like I go away again right after I’ve snapped out of it, this chain of running away from the thing in front of you...

We talked about what it means when he touches me. I said that I’m afraid because I don’t usually like people touching me, but also that I like it when he holds my hand and I don’t really know what that means. He said it’s true that I am afraid that he might touch me in a way that feels bad, and also that if I let him touch me and he doesn't do that it might make me sad that that was missing before, and make me feel worse. I don’t really know what I feel anymore. He said he would never do anything to hurt me and he’d never do that to me.

I asked him for a note for my paper. He said he was glad I asked him. I asked him why. I don’t understand why it’s good that I’m such a loser I can’t do things on time. Everyone has shit in their life, but everyone else can deal with it. I’ve never had a note for this before. He said that I deserve a little understanding and that I’ve been working really hard lately but that I’m feeling really badly. Plenty of people come in here asking for notes for far less good reasons than you have. Today you get a break. He touched my cheek.

He said that we’re going to make it through this. G-d I want to believe that so badly! But there is so much pain, so much crushing darkness...I just want...I don’t know what I want. He says he thinks that I’m feeling so bad because I’m at a turning point. The things I do to push these feelings down aren’t working anymore, and that this is everything trying to come out. He says that the new pills (Wellbutrin) should give me enough energy to push those feelings down when I have to. I want so badly for things to get better. But sometimes I think there aren’t words, or images, to express what I want to say, what I need to say. There is something too real about trying to say things face-to-face with him, to have him knowing...



I did my presentation on Nabokov’s “Signs and Symbols” today for professor M***** [Poetics of Short Fiction]. I took this massive leap and used Lacan to frame my discussion of the story. I didn’t know if it would fly because he hates it when people apply critical discourse to text. But he really liked it. He said it was good because it ties together the meta-narrative and the narrative levels, which he’d thought was impossible. He said he’s never heard anyone say such good things about the story before. Even classmembers were congratulating me. It was really shocking. He said I should try and do something on this story for the next paper. So I was confused but glowing after class.

He had made sure my ‘This Zeitgeist Sucks’ t-shirt didn’t refer to his class. That was cute.

I met C***** after class. She was so sweet! She gave me this little stuffed hippo because she thought I needed some cheering up. I’m so lucky to have a friend like her! It kind of sucks that now I feel like crap again.

On the other hand, D***** wrote to me (and called my cell and my house) because he wanted to get together Tuesday. He wrote me on Tuesday. The minute I got that e-mail I was like ‘no way’. Then I stopped to think about that reaction. Well, I haven’t shaved my legs in a while, that’s true, I find it so exhausting to think about doing extra things lately. I wasn’t dressed up. I told my mother I’d be home on time. Lately I find myself taking a step back from this and going ‘what the hell am I doing?’ I question the wisdom of allowing this to continue...

Sometimes it feels like I’m being buried, like I’m in a box and the ground is closing up over me. There are people standing all around, so very near, and if I could just raise my hand and bang on the box they would hear me and let me out. But I can’t raise my arm, I can’t bang on the box. There just isn’t any energy there to do it.

I’m so tired. There is a response paper due tomorrow for Poetics of Short Fiction. I can’t do it tonight. Maybe tomorrow morning. I stand in the library to get the article for my History Of Psychology paper due on Tuesday that I have to read still, that I have to understand, that I have to write about, that I have to find a historical context for. I stand in the library on my way to look it up and I think of all that I have to do for it, and all the stairs I have to climb, and that I would have to use the photocopier, and I just leave without doing anything. Climbing the stairs seems so crushing. I don’t know why I can’t get myself to just GET THE ARTICLE!!! I don’t even care, I don’t even care that I will get 0 on the paper, I just can’t make myself go to the stacks, go to the damn photocopier. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

It’s like all that ground is pressing down on me and it’s so hard to breathe. But how do you know when the moment is when the air gets totally cut off? How can you tell when it’s unavoidable that you have to start digging yourself out with your hands, where is the moment where not banging on the box means you will suffocate? Once you’ve reached that moment, can you even do anything about it?

The saddest thing is that at the beginning of the semester I was actually really looking forward to writing this paper. I thought it sounded really fun, and I always liked writing papers better than writing exams. I was excited. But nothing at all is fun anymore, nothing. Sitting in bed and staring ahead blankly isn’t fun either, I just seem to do it so much because it’s like I get stuck in those drawn-out moments and can’t do anything, or won’t, or won’t tear myself away from just staring, aimless.

Sometimes I think the strangest things. It’s hard to reconstruct it, looking back; the whole structure of what I thought, and why I thought it. Last night, I was sitting on my bed pulling the scabs out of the wounds on my legs. I say ‘out’ because they’re kind of like gouges, as much as scratches sometimes. I took a bobby pin with the round end off to help me run it through and get all the scab out. I don’t know why I thought this, but I was desperate to get it all out, and quickly, because the army was coming, and if I didn’t do this the soldiers wouldn’t be able to get through. I wanted to help them, I needed to help them, to get all this stuff out of the way.

Now, I don’t understand why I would think that, and I feel like I’m missing some crucial part of what I thought and I can’t remember it and I can’t get it back. It’s ridiculous. There are no soldiers. It’s like when I don’t look at things properly and it seems like they’re not really touching the floor but hovering above it. I know that can’t be true. It’s not like being on drugs or drunk or anything, and anyway I’m not either. Maybe it’s just because I’m tired. That’s probably too why I feel something is wrong with my hand, because it’s bothering me.

My psychiatrist says seeing things that way is probably related to my sense of unreality about the world. The army is the sense that I’ve felt over my life that I need an army, or several armies, to protect me. It’s good that he can find meaning. It’s good when things make sense again.



I went to see D***** today. C***** couldn’t make it to the Dark Matter seminar, so I didn’t go either. When he saw my legs, he said, “Oh wow!” I had warned him in advance. He said he didn’t think he’d ever had a better fit with anyone while we were having sex. It was good. But something felt slightly off and strained the whole time. I hope it was okay for him. He has never seen my body like this before. I don’t know if he was prepared for, or expecting, this. I’ve done worse, way worse, but I don’t think that would comfort him if it was bothering him. He said he was okay with it. I just hope he really was, and not only just saying that to make me feel better, or because it is the educated thing to say...

Last week, on Monday night, I cut my arm while I was waiting for my sleeping pill to kick in. I don’t even really know why. I spent all weekend feeling rather ill and down, lying on my bed and staring at the wall, like I couldn’t get up the energy to move, to do the work I needed to do for the test that week and the paper that would be due. Nothing had really changed: I don’t know why I felt so much like I needed to hurt myself. It’s like all I wanted was one night of sleep where I wouldn’t feel anything at all.

It was bleeding quite a lot, and when I leaned over to get more tissues, I bed onto the bedsheet a little. That’s when I decided to stop. Once I had gotten the bleeding to stop, I slapped a Harry Potter bandaid on it so it wouldn’t rub against anything. I didn't cover the whole cut, though. I tried to get the blood off, but then my mother came in and I tried to tell her I spilled coffee but I don’t think she bought it. So she started telling me I’ll never be able to be a nurse and why don’t I just stop doing that? As if I wake up in the morning and do it one purpose. I wish for once she would just try and understand. Maybe then I wouldn’t spend so much time worrying that it was my fault, and I could use that time trying to learn something else to do.

On Tuesday, I gave my psychiatrist all of my pills (except my sleeping pills) just to be on the safe side. I really wanted to take them all on Friday, but E***** [my brother] had just had four impacted wisdom teeth removed and that wouldn’t have been fair to him. This is a first for me, giving up my medication stash. Usually I am so careful to have a mixture of pills on hand, just in case...

I let him see my arm for the first time ever. He said, “That’s actually quite deep. You might need stitches”. I was so afraid! I don’t know: it didn’t seem that deep to me, just wide. I’ve never thought I would hurt myself that bad. I don’t want stitches. What would that mean? I feel like I would be crossing this imaginary line and that everyone would look at me like I was sick, and I wouldn’t be able to brush off what I do so lightly anymore. But it was okay: he fixed my arm for me with steri strips. I was afraid, I guess, that if I ever let him see he would be mad, or disgusted, or freak out or something. But he was actually really calm. It was reassuring, although I don’t know why. But it makes me feel like he understands, and that he won’t make it worse or harder if I tell him.

It’s good he pasted it back together. Otherwise I would have a really wide scar. They often open - though not as much - like this on my legs, but I never thought of them as deep. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t have some of those scars. I’m actually having trouble healing my legs from when I cut them last Friday in the bathroom stall. It’s kind of worrying.

I haven’t been feeling well this past while. I feel almost like I’m disintegrating. Just clinging to that normality, that shred of normality, my routine, going to class even when I can’t really pay attention...I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t call my friends back, I haven’t spoken to D***** ever though I said I wanted to get together, I still don’t go to dancing, or the gym, and often skip Sunday mass, even once when we were singing...It’s like I don’t want to do any of those things, and I almost even don’t want to want to do them anymore. I just want to hide in my room by myself. I still want to paint my nails, though. I’m only really gone when I really let my nails go all to hell instead of painting them every weekend, when I stop even wanting to redo them in a different colour. Right now, they are sheer sparkly pink and I put two small holographic dots on my left pinky and thumb. You know, nail decal things. It makes me feel better to paint my nails, like I still care a little about myself, like it’s relaxing to do it while watching a movie, like I’m still keeping it enough together so the details still matter. It’s funny when all you have left is the details, though.

I feel like something is creeping up on me, getting closer. I often feel a little scared, in the way you feel when you suspect someone is sneaking up on you. Sometimes I feel like my edges are getting fuzzy, blurring out, and I can’t quite tell where my arm ends, like it’s fading into the background instead of being really separate. I don’t understand it. Everything else looks sharper. It’s like I’m seeing through a lens over my eyes, and it’s standing still right now but I know it could start tilting around and that’s what I’m scared of, that everything might start to look warped and I wouldn’t recognize it anymore.

I’m also afraid of doing badly at school. Every single paper has been written literally at the last minute this semester, and I keep pushing them back until later, and soon I don’t know if I’ll write them at all. I don’t study for exams. I have an exam this Thursday in History of Psychology, and I haven’t studied. I haven’t read the book since before the last exam. Everything he talks about keeps sliding out of my brain. I haven’t really been able to do any reading since before that first exam: I can’t get up the energy, and when I do I can’t remember anything, it just all slides away. I find myself reading the same sentence over and over and over again but not remembering and having no idea what they’re talking about. I’m behind in the reading for everything. I feel like I don’t even have anything intelligent to say. I used to write down a list of everything I had to do for a week and cross things out, but I haven’t even done that in weeks. No lists, no planning, no organization, no idea what’s coming. My room is a mess. It’s like I tried to organize everything but got confused partway through and stopped, so now everything looks like it just exploded. I don’t know what’s happening to me. Everything feels like it’s slightly different, a little changing, and I don’t trust the world to stay like it is anymore.

I bought my own bandages and tape to wrap up my arm because the tapes come off in water and I don’t want the wound to open up again. So then I didn’t have a lot of money for food. That’s okay: I haven’t been feeling very hungry anyway. But then I binge anyway to make myself feel even sicker.

I wish I could just have one day where everything feels okay, so that I could remember what it’s like, so that I remember there really is that better place I keep trying to get to, instead of running around going nowhere. I just want everything to stop.

My Psychiatrist seemed to know about something today I hadn’t told him. I was so careful that no one would ever know. Was I really that transparent? Did people just not care?