My last blog entry was a heavy one. I’m not sorry I wrote it in any way, because my assault is something I’ve been hanging on to for too long, but it’s gotten me thinking a lot about why I do the things that I do. It’s made me realize some things that I needed to, but now I’m left holding all of this anger. I wish I could tell you it’s all that I’m holding on to. I wish I could tell you that.
The truth is, what I’ve come to figure out, is that long before covid I went out of my way to keep myself busy on purpose. I worked as a nail technician for 17 years, starting out in a salon doing on-the-job training. From there I went to a spa where I spent six years building a clientele. I might have been the busiest nail tech in our town. I was working 11 hour days, squeezing 8 clients into a day with no lunch or breaks. I had a waiting list to get in to see me, and it wasn’t long before I couldn’t even take on new clients. I was good at what I did, and generally really enjoyed my job.
But, as time went on working for someone else on commission, I came to the conclusion there wasn’t really anywhere else for me to go where I was. I only had two hands, after all. And only so many hours in the day. I was working as much as was physically possible for me to do already, so there wasn’t any way for me to advance financially. So I decided to branch out on my own and start my own business, and rented a room out of a local chiropractor’s office. I was still working a lot of hours, but at least it was on my own terms. I made my own schedule, and the decisions were all mine. My clients followed, even though I left it up to them. For two years, it was a good solution, a transition period for what I ultimately wanted.
Eventually, my husband and I built a house. A room in the basement was designated as my office, and I wanted to work from home. The house we’d lived in before only had one bathroom, and there were health and safety rules that didn’t fit the guidelines. Once our house was built, I moved my business home. It was the ideal, and it worked very well. For a while, anyway. After a few years at home, the oil economy took a dive, and I started to slow down over time. Clients lost jobs, had husbands who lost jobs, some moved away. So for financial reasons, I took on second jobs.
At first I worked for a client/friend at her convenience store part time. That meant working until 11pm 3-4 nights a week as well as seeing my clients. After about a year and a half, I saw an ad come up one summer for school bus driving. I applied and had an interview and got hired. I did my training and got my Class 2 license, and I was ready to go by fall. My first route I was given was actually in a town a half hour away to start. I was up at 4:30am, back from my route around 9:30am, did clients until around 2pm, then headed back to the bus depot to do my afternoon route. Then home to see at least one client, sometimes two. After two years, I gave it up. It was a much more stressful job than I’d ever anticipated. And while there were things about it that I loved, the stress far outweighed the rest unfortunately. So I focused on the clients I had, and smaller side jobs I’d taken on. And then, the pandemic hit.
Covid has turned life upside down for everyone in so many different ways. It’s affected day to day life, the way we see the world. For me, I had time on my hands that I just didn’t before. I had no idea what that was going to mean. It brought new stressors and anxieties, like it did for everyone. What I didn’t expect, was the long-term emotional toll it was going to take. Suddenly I was living in my own head like never before, and that’s saying a lot. I’ve always been overly analytical, it’s how I’m wired. But this was a whole new level of mental gymnastics that I haven’t experienced before, because I was so busy for such a long time. I’m living it every day, with too much time to think.
The trash can of pain that I’ve absent-mindedly been piling things into and then climbing inside to step on, pack it down, was now looking like an endless landfill. Garbage as far as the eye can see, and here I am, void of a compactor. I’ve held on to so much, internalized so many things, that I’ve come to realize there’s no one person that knows everything. That’s by my design. You can only be so broken, and have someone still accept you as whole, right? At least that’s what I’ve told myself. I’ve tried so hard to appear strong, as though I can handle anything. In reality it couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, I wasn’t handling anything at all.
It’s not just the assault, either. That happened over 20 years ago, and I shoved that down so far, disassociated and compartmentalized as best I could just to get through it. I drifted through my 20’s, and then my 30’s were almost unbearable. In the span of the last decade, I’ve lost two of my best friends in the world. Two soul mates in life. Both of my grandmothers, who I grew up with in my life every day when I was young. I was close to them both, one more than the other, but they were both a huge influence in my life and still are. Two miscarriages, followed by a diagnosis of polycystic ovarian syndrome. By the time the diagnosis came and it was all figured out, my age was a factor and I knew that the ship had sailed on children. That…has not been easy for me to accept, but I’ve had no choice. All of that loss kept chipping away at me, and I kept stuffing it down. If I ignored it, maybe it wouldn’t be quite so real. The people that I love the most in the world, when they go, a piece of my heart goes with them.
My PCOS diagnosis had some other things make sense, like the fact that I don’t feel physically well most of the time. It affects women differently, it really just depends on the woman. It can wreak havoc on your hormones, though, and cause all kinds of problems with anxiety, depression, weight, skin issues, chronic fatigue. Later in life there are higher risks of things like diabetes and heart disease, among other things. So while there are much worse things to have, down the line there are some things that are potentially worrisome. I just need to keep on top of my annual physicals and ultrasounds to be safe.
There’s another big part of my story that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to write about. I would, it’s not that I don’t want to. It’s that I can’t. I can’t, because it’s not just my story to tell. It’s also someone else’s story, one of the people I love more than my own life. As long as I don’t have their permission to do it, I won’t. What I can say about it, is that it’s the part of the puzzle that is my life that’s left me far and away the most tormented. If I think about the things that have truly been parts of my construct up to now, other than the people that have shaped me into who I am, I can’t deny that this puzzle piece has been instrumental in some ways.
Now that I’ve had all this time over these however many months to live inside my head and evaluate, there’s a clarity of some things that I didn’t have before. And it’s funny, how storybook my life has looked from the outside. People assume things are perfect, when they’re anything but. Some aspects of my life have been amazing, this I know. Fantastic family. Parents that loved us, always putting us first. Both sets of grandparents where we lived growing up, who were all these larger than life people in their own ways. And my God, did they adore us. My parents made a very good living, and we lacked nothing. I’m the one, though. Living proof. I can sit here writing this, and I can tell you that money doesn’t buy you happy. Material things don’t mean that happiness is automatic, that life gets to be perfect all the time. But people assume, and sometimes even hold it against you. They just didn’t know.
They didn’t know that I developed an eating disorder in my early teens, and I’ve used food to punish myself ever since. They didn’t know I went to see the school counselor because a teacher took a special interest, my peers just thought I was weird for being so withdrawn. They didn’t know that my smile was pasted on my face, that most of the time it wasn’t real. They didn’t know how good an actress I became. They didn’t know that while the people closest to me I was so very lucky to have, that it seemed like any time I was left out in the world, there was something to tear me to shreds in one way or another. Or someone. They just didn’t know.
So here’s the thing. I’ve stuffed so many things down that I just never dealt with before the next thing came along, that I don’t even know where to begin. Abuse, loss, anguish, all of this that I don’t know what to do with, this tidal wave of agony. I can’t do it alone. I have a difficult time asking for help, but I’m so fucking exhausted I can barely see straight. I need to see my doctor soon anyway, so I’m going to ask about referrals. The first being either a gynecologist or endocrinologist for my PCOS. I haven’t seen a specialist yet, and I’d like to. The second, for a mental health referral. I’ve gone in the past, and it has helped. It’s time to revisit that option again, because some of what I’ve got clogging up my brain I never have talked to a professional about. I know I need to.
There’s too much darkness. I can’t help but feel like I deserve some light. If you’re reading this, and you can relate? Listen to me when I say this…you deserve light, too. I promise.