How to Cope with Living

For most of my life I thought I would die at the age of 32. It would be a selfless act for selfish reasons, as strange as it sounds. I was depressed, I was lonely, and I always ran away from heartbreak. In other words, the best and most efficient way of running away forever was simply to die, a perpetual sleep, an escape, peace.

And you know, as dark as I am, the underlying truth is that I care too much. That I am an empath, sensitive to pain, even of inanimate objects. I am sensitive to everything that it's almost overwhelming. It's like autism, when too much information overloads into my brain, I just black out. And as a child I blacked out, or slept, a lot which ultimately led to my current social anxieties.

Sleeping to me meant entering a different, yet parallel dimension. And as much as I loved to sleep, I loved staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning in the silence of the world and write. I wrote in my easyjournal about nothing and everything of those times.

And what distracted me while I was writing was my sexual addictions. I was a sex addict. Actually, I was a love addict who thought sex was my only way of gaining true intimacy. Though i was aware of the risks, I risked anything to feel loved, to feel like someone. This time of my life felt like a different world I went to school during the day and did my thing--a social butterfly that had no true friends, a great student in class, and an active student leader. But in the silence of the night, a recognition of loneliness woke and drove me to websites like wouldyouhitthis.com and chatrooms where I prowled, lurked, advertised my self, flirted, and engaged in sexual encounters.

I became an expert in manipulating, lying about fingering myself while these men cyber sexed me, faking orgasms in phone sex, faking orgasms in real sex. Pretty much I acted like I wanted them so that they could petend that they really wanted me. I was not aware that their sexual love didn't equate to love love, like the kind in the movies. (Come to think of it, the kind in the movies aren't real either!) Even though there was a consciousness somewhere that said, "No. This is your last time," I didn't listen and kept doing what I did because I was good at it, because no one had the guts to stop me, because i couldn't stop myself. The saddest thing about it is that i didn't remember, or couldn't remember, what I had done. I was so emotionally detached from these exchanges that they didn't stay in memories. It was like astroprojection; i left my body and watched from above in third-person perspective. you can imagine how hard it was for me to be honest with calvin when i couldn't even remember. it was amnesia; it was repressed.


May 27th, 2008--
When I found ecstasy, I found redemption. I thought I was going to die that morning. I hit a peak so high that the drop was far scarier than I ever imagined. I sobbed when everyone left; I sobbed harder when I made peace with the fact that I was going to die. I wanted to live an honest life, live an honest death. And obviously, i survived from such an intense experience by choosing to live.

I re-gained spirit, that was once traumatized by molestation, abuse, and neglect. With this new spirit, I wanted to be different. I wanted to seek help and love the people around me who supported me. And I did; I do seek help from the resources I have.

Recently I broke up with calvin because we have issues (we are currently working things out). I didn't cry, I didn't feel anything but numb; I was comfortable being with my friends, being alone, being back in the space where I had been for so long. and nothing changed about me. I still sought out imaginations of a man to love me yet i couldn't really think about having sex with any of them. as the days wore on, so did my hard shell i put up. i was hurting, i wanted someone to come home to, someone to wake up to, someone to share my life with, someone to give me an affection that friends just can't. and i ran to poetry. i tried writing a poem but everything led back to memories of calvin. memories of middle school, high school...things we did when we were in love. nothing to do with the present, nothing to do with our issues; i just longed to be in the place with him, to be in love.

during our relationship, I stopped working to be better. i stopped listening to myself.



tonight, i cried because something was lost in me. a child was lost because men damaged me. i don't have a fear of the world. i have a fear of men. i want love from men. calvin is starting to realize how important it is to be a parent. and as much as i am challenging men to become allies, i am also implying the role of the mother. my mother was absent. my mother didn't defend me; she defended the laws of males, enforced it. and i think back to the days when i was in highschool. i snuck out, ignored my mother;s calls, didn't tell her where i was. she waited up for me until i came home; she knew. and there is something karmically linked between us women, mother and child, sister, this biological understanding of labor, this womanhood, this struggle to prove to men that we are worth looking at.

calvin and i both have a disease--codependency. it streamed from our past and into our current relationship. we are both working to get out of it. i just read that the problem with codependency is resisting fun, so maybe the key to living is just to let it all go and to live.

(note: i need to go bungee jumping soon.)

It's crazy to realize that I have no idea how to live. I don't know HOW to be in a relationship, how to be in a friendship, how to BE. i never learned the standards. i just woke up one day and said this is how i'm going to live my life. since college i've been discovering that there are norms and i'm trying to learn them. I really do wake up and no matter how sad I feel, I think about how lucky I am to be here in the present but i'm working toward a better future, toward a better me.

i'm trying to purify my soul. my therapist said to me: of course you feel sad. it's okay to feel sad, you've gone through so much that it's okay. and for the first time in my life, i have accepted my sadness, mourning, grieving it. it's hard though, to find enough tears in a day to wash away the last 21 years of my life. there's just not enough in me.