i’m always here for you

• even if it kills me
• even if you always win
• even if it makes me feel bad about myself
• even if i’m hungry
• even if i’m sleepy
• even if i haven’t slept and i’m tired
• unable to think
• even if i’m crying
• even if i have my own pain
• which you barely notice
• even if i am in the middle of watching a film with someone else
• or doing something that gives me pleasure
• having a rest
• working
• i will skip work for you
• even if i’m angry at you
• even if i disapprove of you
• even if i despise you
• even if you treat me badly
• even if you show me disrespect
• even if you don’t see me
• even if i feel all alone in the world
• even if it tastes bitter
• even if other people need me more
• and love me more
• and show me more respect
• because they’ll forgive me
• but you won’t
• and i need you
• can’t be without you
• it would kill me
• it would lay me dead
• it would suck the life out of me
• it would drain my life of color
• and smells
• and taste
• and joy
• it would make it hard to tear myself from my bed in the morning
• and even harder to sleep at night
• you have my phone number
• you have my email
• you know where i live
• i’m here
• always
• even if it kills me
• even if i can’t

i know you will be tempted to think that this is about you. it isn’t. it isn’t about anyone in particular. except me. this is about me.

notes on a class on trauma

this semester i taught a class on trauma theory. i had a small group of eight students, four men and four women. from the first, the class was tremendously challenging. i must premise this by saying that i was coming from a difficult personal space. i had not taught anything the previous semester because numbing, paralyzing exhaustion had kept me nailed to the couch for months — all summer, all fall. in addition to that, in september i started seeing a new therapist and the intensity of the work has been draining me dry. therapy has proven not only incredibly exhausting for my already exhausted body (among other things, it’s totally altered my sleep cycle), but also mentally, intellectually, and psychologically disruptive. it has thrown me — hard — into a powerful psychic eddy. i’m not complaining. i consider myself lucky. everyone should be offered the opportunity to do deep work with someone who is profoundly competent and engaged. all i’m saying is that teaching this class was going to be demanding on me in a way in which no class has ever been demanding on me — even before the class started.

i think i underestimated the impact of the topic on me. when i prepared for the class in the summer i felt nothing special. i read the books with great passion and interest but without more emotional involvement than i expected and could comfortably handle. it’s one thing, though, to read these books in isolation, and another to share them with a classroom of young people. this story is about a class on trauma that turned out to be a semester-long, semi-controlled reenactment of traumatic and post-traumatic dynamics both for the students and for myself, albeit in different ways (shoshana felman describes a similar pedagogical experience in her book testimony).

i was really excited about this class, but the students immediately dampened my enthusiasm. after our first session, a sizeable number of students disappeared. those who remained proved stubbornly determined to misunderstand the texts. class discussions were like pulling teeth, not because, as often happens, the students were reluctant to talk, but because they talked too much. in fact, they talked about everything except what was in the texts we were reading. words and lines reminded them of other things, and soon the whole class was engaged in a full-out chat about a topic that was only marginally related and not infrequently entirely unrelated to the text we were discussing. even when the conversation was about the text, the students seemed unable to get, and engage with, the text’s point. there was a lot of personal sharing, little anecdotes the text had called to mind but were not pertinent, interesting, or deep. the students talked on top of each other. the stories they told suggested other stories. if i had not intervened, they would have chatted away the whole class.

more on suicidal “gestures”

fellow blogger and really cool person katrin left a, to me, thought-provoking comment to my post on incompleters, and as my reply to it was getting longer and more and more expressive of some thoughts i hold very dear, i decided to put it in a post.

speaking only for myself, i can say that the “gestures” you refer to are just about as much out of my control as, say, crying when i feel very sad or eating when i feel very hungry. one can be starving, have a plate of food in front of her, and still not eat it — but it’s very, very hard. there’s something heroic in such restraint, though of course heroism should be judged on motivation as well as willpower and execution. i think those of us who LIVE with a powerful urge to death are much more heroic than many highly touted “heroes.” one does get tired of being quietly heroic, though, and wants to be loudly unheroic, once in a while, once in a while. it is in fact very rare for people to commit suicidal gestures, complete or otherwise, and immensely more common to stand the pain quietly and with immense strength. this strength is, however, mostly invisible and almost invariably unrecognized. one doesn’t get credit for it, in other words, which is unfair, given the contempt one gets when he or she can’t stand the quiet courage any longer and gives in to unquiet despair.

it is, i think, in the nature of human pain to want to be shared — same as human joy. these are the things we communicate to each other: things that make us happy, things that make us sad. at the end of the day, what this is is language, except, for some reasons having nothing to do with bio-chemistry and all to do with the vicissitudes of one’s personal life and communal culture, these particular “linguistic” expressions come out not in words but in gestures.

how does one go, anyway, about saying “i am so entirely overwhelmed by the pain that fills my life that i want to extinguish this very life?” i mean, isn’t there something entirely appropriate in wanting to express this feeling through a partial (non-completed) or non-partial (completed) extinction of this life? how does language adequately convey a pain so deep that it pushes one to the very edge of nothingness? isn’t nothingness the very extinction of language? isn’t language an expression of life? how do you express your desire for your own extinction if not by extinguishing, first of all, that central manifestation of life, language?

this, and many other things besides (someone care to chime in?), is what is contained in those deep deep acts we dismissively package and toss on a shelf with the phrase “suicidal gestures.”

the paradoxical nature of a suicidal gesture is the stuff of deep analysis, not easy labeling. maybe the reaction of ER doctors and other labelers reflect as much their disinclination to think as it does their disinclination to feel, listen, be attentive, and care.

so this is my answer to you, katrin. thank you for making me articulate this stuff.

incompleters

there is an ER physician in the great pacific northwest i am in no hurry to meet. from his blog, he seems a decent enough guy. his political heart, for one, is in the right place. and he writes nicely. i have a soft spot for bloggers who write nicely. it gets me every time.

but i read a post he wrote a few weeks ago and it made me terribly sad and disturbed. according to this man, i am an incompleter. incompleters are people who commit suicidal gestures without really meaning to die. this is a difficult post for me to write, because such things should not need to be explained. the ER physician who wrote the post about incompleters (actually, the post is about completers, while incompleters function as a negative, puny contrast) has no sympathy whatsoever for imcompleters. this is how he describes us:

These patients are often a huge pain in the ass. They are usually intoxicated, often combative and agitated, may require extensive workups to ensure that no actual life threats exist, and wind up spending hours and hours in the ER, weeping and wailing, puking charcoal all over and annoying staff with their dramatic and manipulative behavior. Occasionally a non-serious gesture winds up being more dangerous than the patient intended. (”You mean tylenol is dangerous?”) Many a time an irritated nurse has approached me and grimly suggested that we publish an educational flier titled “Suicide: getting it right the first time.”

If this makes it sound like we don’t take suicide attempts awfully seriously, then you’re right. Mostly it’s due to the preponderance of minor suicidal gestures over real attempts. Don’t think we’re not professional about it — we know how to rule out the serious threats and make sure that a safe disposition is accomplished. But we are not overly impressed with the low-level stuff we usually see.

i know that when i end up in the ER after having overdosed or cut my wrists i am a huge pain in the ass. this has been made as clear to me as the light of day on a bright coastal morning. i was told in no uncertain terms that i had to be quiet because there were very sick people in other beds. i know i am not welcome and i know i get no sympathy. on a miraculous occasion i have found a nurse who was sweetness personified. when, clumsily (people who are intoxicated tend to be clumsy), i upset my bedpan, i was so grateful for her kindness that i cleaned it up myself, stealthily, without bothering anybody. when she realized what i had done she gave me a great big smile and said, “honey, this is what i’m here for.” i thought, when i get out of here i’ll send her flowers. but i never did. i’m sure she went home with a light and full heart, though.

i have always drunk my charcoal without making a fuss, even though charcoal is nasty. when i had my stomach pumped i took that, too, without complaint. but there are two occasions i remember vividly in which, alas, i did weep and wail. you see, i was absolutely desperate. maybe the ER physician who wrote that post doesn’t fully realize that both completers and incompleters come from a place of terrible pain. yet, his sympathy goes only to the completers:

When a would-be completer comes into the ER, it changes the whole tone of the evening. A pall settles over the department; the place is unusually quiet and staff uncommonly grave. This guy really meant it. It’s a weird feeling.

Like the guy I saw the other day. A classic completer: middle-aged male, rather heavy drinker, recently lost his job and losing his marriage. His wife came home to find him in the garage with the engine running, unconscious, with an empty vodka bottle and pill bottles in his lap. Only she came home earlier than he expected.

…

This was an uncommon case with a reasonably happy result; many serious-but-unsuccessful suicide attempts wind up causing devastating consequences, especially when the method is violent: handgun, hanging, and certain poisonings can cause permanent brain damage, spinal cord injuries, or other organ failures. It’s all very sad. I probably feel more empathy for these folks and their families than I do for almost any other patient. How terrible must their perceived suffering have been to drive them to actually pull that trigger?

I am glad we don’t see them too often, because it’s a hard thing to stare in the face:
This guy really meant it.

i am not sure why terrible suffering should be the prerogative of the completer. i can well imagine a case in which two people with an equal amount of devastating pain might choose to do a “complete” suicide attempt or simply, as this man calls it, a “gesture.”

what is it that keeps us, the incompleters, from calling it a day? maybe that there are others, too many others, too many loved others, whose life would be all but over if we were completers instead of incompleters. maybe that we see, in some bleeding corner of our bleeding hearts, a glimmer of hope, something resembling a future. maybe that there’s enough in life to keep us going — jobs to go to, children to raise, old parents to take care of.

the subtext of the ER doctor’s post is that the incompleters are the women and the completers are the men. handgun, hanging: we don’t do that. we down a bottles of pills or hack in the inside of our wrists. we weep and wail. sometimes we puke charcoal.

but the pain, mr. ER doctor, is real, and terrible, and devastating.

perhaps people have it all backwards. instead of celebrating our will to live, our determination to stick around in spite of the horrendous pain that compels us to attack and mangle our bodies, they scorn us as silly, pusillanimous, manipulative incompleters (if i never again see the word “manipulative” referring to a woman it will still be too fucking late). the completers, may god bless each and every one of them and grant them a peaceful and joyful afterlife, stare life in the face and decide they are done with it, sorry guys, it’s too much. it is a step i can barely fathom. but the incompleters, the incompleters go through the humiliation of the ER and the psych unit, sweep up the dirt and the pieces, put themselves together, and resume the awful job of living. if i hadn’t done it, i couldn’t fathom the courage of such a choice either.

(if you want to give a piece of your mind to the ER doc, do so at his site. i will delete abusive comments left here)

narrating therapy

the first time i had psychotherapy it was between my early and mid-twenties (i think that means i was exactly 24!). i was contending daily with serious suicidal thoughts; i didn’t know, then, how to translate suicidal thoughts into small performative moderately-safe token gestures, so it was all extremely real and extremely paralyzing. i was hanging tough, doing what i needed to do, which at the time consisted mostly of showing up for my university classes and studying or pretending to study for term exams, but it wasn’t going well. i lived in a two-story house of strange girls i had just met. i had been living at home, but things had gotten extremely rough with my mom and she had kicked me out.

so now i was living in this place in my university town a 100 mi. from my hometown, without a car, without anything, barely any furniture, barely any money. someone had given me a clunky black man’s bike on which i biked everywhere. but i had nowhere to go except class, and i don’t think i went to class much, really, at least i don’t remember going to class. i do remember taking myself once a day to the university cafeteria and eating the minimum necessary to stay alive. i would surreptitiously take some bread and an apple home with me and that would be my dinner.

my roommates were never there so, in fact, i had the house all to myself. at home, i shared a small bedroom with my two sisters and there was rarely a time when i would be in a room alone, so the empty house with no furniture felt terribly desolate to me. the landlord was an extremely creepy guy who lived with his elderly mother in a structure adjacent to ours and believed in entering our place unannounced with his own keys, so when i slept i locked my bedroom door and the french windows that gave onto a small balcony. there was no doubt in my mind that the creepy guy could get in if he wanted to, but i had to sleep sometime.

in fact, i was exhausted. i slept soundly at night. in the morning i would bathe, dress, and get down to studying. i have no idea how such studying went on. my desk was a door on two trestles which i kept immaculately neat. at lunchtime, i’d get on my bike and ride to the cafeteria. after lunch i came back and had a long, deep nap. when i think of it now, i am surprised i was able to sleep so deeply in spite of the psychic agony i was in. i spent the rest of the day in my room or roaming the streets of the beautiful medieval town where i lived.

witness

this is what i have been doing:

i have been subjecting myself to the onslaught of memories and feelings that therapy has brought upon me. i have gone willingly to the slaughterhouse. i have fully cooperated in the torture. i have not shirked or hesitated. i have looked the enemy in the eye and smiled a craven smile. i have done everything it told me to do. it has been murder blood grit under the teeth blows to the solar plexus starvation agonizing thirst sleep deprivation. i am surviving only because the enemy needs me alive. i have, apparently, precious information yet to give. i am a valuable witness.

i’ve had therapy before but it’s never been like this. maybe i’m a different space. i am reacting with words rather than pushback. i am not shouting in my therapist’s face. i am not resisting saying NO saying go away saying YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. i’m not fighting her with all i’ve got. maybe i’m in a different space.

these last six months have been been like seeing a movie with me in it that is totally recognizable and entirely unrecognizable at the same. the protagonist, me, plays me very well, although she is an impostor. the events portrayed took place though they never happened. i know the soundtrack really well: i’ve never heard it before. I AM BEING LIED TO BY THE TRUTH.

STOP IT!

but i’m chained to the seat and my eyelids have been cut away. i cannot not see. sometimes the actress who plays me (who is me) looks at me squirming in my seat and laughs. i wish she didn’t do that. her uproarious laughs shake me to the core. IT’S NOT FUNNY, i want to say. but words flow one way only. she can’t hear me. she’s been hearing me all of her life. she’s done with me. she wants her own movie. she’s determined to finish it.

i stopped writing about this because this space — this very public space — is open to people who understand, people who care, but also to people who have it all figured out and do not care to learn from others. i read an appalling post the other day by an ER doctor about victims of attempted suicide. he could not have been more contemptuous of them — us. he thought these people, people like me, are a waste of everyone’s time, including their own. i thought, “what eyes see the things i write?” i thought, “if i describe what i am experiencing in therapy, will there be people who think they know me even as i am working like a dog at getting to know myself?” i felt horrified at the way other people’s gaze can violate and destroy. i felt horrified of other people’s contempt.

but there is a place for those who tell the truth and testify to anguish and pain in spite of the scorn of others. i will be a witness.

happy easter (and wester, and norther, and souther)

i wake up on easter day and realize that the commercial world has failed to conquer easter. that’s why easter is so nice. that’s why i get up on easter morning and the horrible leaded cloud that weighs on me like the apocalypse on christmas morning is not here. it’s wet and cloudy this morning, but other than that, and other than the fact that life offers you as many helpings of sadness as it offers helpings of joy, i feel fine. the sodden leaves of the tree outside my window are brown like it’s fall instead of spring. there are only few cars swishing by on the road in front of my house. it’s easter morning. it’s a quiet day.

happy easter if you woke up this morning and there was a note on the kitchen table that said “gone for cigarettes”

happy easter if your child, your firstborn who used to be so sweet he was the apple of your eye the joy of your day, has gone vegan and radical and hasn’t washed himself his hair his clothes in more than six months (this is for you G)

happy easter if you don’t have a plan no plan no plan at all where do i take it from here

happy easter if you fell in love with another your husband your family you don’t want them any more you want to be with another (this is for you X even if you don’t know it don’t read english don’t know this blog exists this is for you)

happy easter if your therapist is out of town how can you explain the pain to anybody who doesn’t have a therapist whose very existence guarantees their continued survival you feel as if the source of life were frozen in suspended animation and it’s scary oh god is it scary

happy easter if you have banged your head against the same spot in the same wall for years decades and there still isn’t the slightest dent not a shadow of a shadow of a sign that skin and flesh and maybe a fragment or two of bone where left there

happy easter if you don’t have anywhere to go, you’re welcome to my place, please come

happy easter if you’re tired of the long-ass freezing winter, so so tired, it was hard this year, it got too cold, i don’t want to live here anymore (this is for you L)

happy easter if your sisters, all three of them, forgot to celebrate your birthday

happy easter if you got fired you weren’t doing so well if only someone had given you a chance that’s all you wanted a chance

happy easter if life used to be a lot better oh yeah oh my god you should have seen me when now you are only the shadow of a shadow of your former self (this is for all of us)
…

you will get it back a hundredfold

…
this easter, this holiday of against-all-odds comeback from abject abysmal failure intolerable pain trauma rejection despair, this festival of hope against reason tenacious hope superglue hang-in-there splendid hope, is for you.

correspondences

i have wanted to keep my thoughts to myself, as if to gather them close to my breast and keep them safe. they felt so fragile they felt flimsical, as if the tiniest breeze could scatter them.

so many blog posts are apologies for having neglected one’s blog. i find this marvelous and vaguely annoying — the need to be accountable to one’s reader (marvelous), the further, unnecessary delay of proper blogging those apologetic sentences effect (slightly annoying). yet, what is proper blogging? what do we do when we blog? should i not apologize or at least explain myself to a friend i haven’t called or written to in a long time?

my friends never hear from me. yesterday i picked up the phone on the second ring (i felt reckless) and my friend M sputtered in surprise. he fully expected to speak into a machine. he did not expect a call back. i hardly ever call back.

i don’t have caller id.

there are 9 messages now in my old-fashioned answering machine. when the previous machine broke J and i were surprised by how difficult it is to find a plain old answering machine in stores. they all seemed to come with a phone attached. we didn’t want a new phone. we had a perfectly functioning phone (which, however, died only a few months later). we finally found a lonely one on the shelves of best buys, a little gray digital one. the one that broke was analog. we have 6 brand-new little tapes we’ll never use. if you want them drop me a line and i’ll mail them to you.

those nine messages are from people i should call back, people i still have to identify, people who left information i need but am too scattered to write down, or people whose voice and words i want to keep and play again and again. one of the people i should call back left a message almost a year ago.

sometimes i don’t answer emails, either. i figure they’ll keep. J gets very upset when his emails go unanswered for longer than a day or two. i say, J, look at me, there are emails from people i love that i haven’t answered in months. he doesn’t object to the non-answer, you see. he feels unloved. people can love you without replying to your emails, i say.

one never knows whether the email got there, either. there is no confirmation. it could be languishing in a spam folder.

my friend M just found in his spam folder an email from a publisher that wanted to offer him a contract for his book on caribbean literature. all emails are deleted after a month. this email was two weeks old.

people often want more than they are willing to give. when you give them what they want they feel guilty, a little, because they know they won’t reciprocate. i have a friend who shuts down when i get too personal about myself. “i’m worried about mortality” counts as too personal. we used to be close but she decided it was better for us not to be. we used to talk about mortality, debt, and the horrors of the bush administration several times a day. now personal disclosures on my part (of the kind i just described) are enough to stop an email exchange dead. i encourage personal disclosures from her, and she offers them to me in response. maybe i shouldn’t. maybe i should honor her decision to stay aloof. but i want to know. at the very least, i have to remember not to reciprocate. it’s not like she asks, anyway.

people run from intimacy. they find intimacy extremely threatening. i am sure they have excellent reasons for it. i suck at the breast of intimacy for my antibodies against the Extreme Loneliness of life. i’m a sucker that way.

saving women

i think i’ve always struggled with believing what i felt. my feelings have always been suspect to me. “com’on really?” “no, you’re right, not really.”

i have never been really anything. my pain has always been not-really. lust: not-really. sadness: not-really. desire: not-really. love: not-really. joy: not-really. laughter: not-really.

especially love. not not not not not not r e a l l y sssss tttttt ooooo ppppp iiiiiii tttttttt.

(i stutter; especially in my native tongue. in my native tongue i stutter so much it significantly affects my life. there are things i cannot do because i stutter. in english, though, i can do almost anything. did i leave my home country to escape the shackles of aborted speech? did i lose a country a culture a people a language a way of life just so that i could talk? NOT REALLY STOP THINKING LIKE THAT JUST STOP).

i cannot shake the impression that i am a big phony.

the first book i read in english was the catcher in the rye. everyone is a phony in the catcher in the rye. i loved the damn book. still do. holden caulfied calling everyone a phony feeling a phony growing more and more insubstantial as the book progresses being barely there by the book’s end.

women make themselves disappear. people in pain make themselves disappear. we bleed ourselves make husks of ourselves desiccated shells onion-paper thin we fold upon ourselves

in toni morrison’s paradise there is a girl her name is seneca who cannot tolerate the pain of women. her sister/mother abandoned her when she was a little child left her alone in the house scribbled her a note with lipstick she couldn’t read. she was alone in the apartment for days ate everything she could find one day looked out of the window saw a woman crying that sealed it seared it she can’t stand the pain of women.

i didn’t know i existed till i read this. i didn’t know it was real, not not-really. being incapable of standing the pain of women. finding it intolerable. having to do something. making it a life job. becoming that. becoming someone who takes women’s pain upon herself.

how much love succor good work how many nobel prizes are born of pain so deep it becomes genetic.

that’s what my sister told me yesterday: it’s so deep it’s become genetic. i am stealing her word. i am giving her credit.

i have been surrounded by women for the whole of my life. in my home, i was the only male. holding my crotch. adjusting my pack. breasts period hips it’s a terrible mistake. i have been saving women since i was born. now i myself need saving and i can barely stand it it’s so painful it’s so against my genetic code it’s such an aberration. how can i ask a woman so in need of being saved by me (aren’t they all?!?) to save me. oh god oh god i can’t

airing the body

there are unmentionable things. the body is a big unmentionable. its decays. its flaws. its smells and emissions. its oozings. its cravings. its departures.

if we talked about the burps and ripples of the body with the same zealous dedication with which we talk about the burps and ripples of the mind we might be happier. but i’m fooling myself. do we really talk about the burps and ripples of the mind? no we don’t. we talk about ways of fixing the terrible deficiencies into which we have turned the burps and ripples of our minds. that’s what we talk about. we talk about remedies. cures. just the same as we do with the body.

i’ve started looking at people in the light of multiplicity rather than binarisms. not good bodies vs. bad bodies, tall bodies vs. short bodies, slim bodies vs. fat bodies, able bodies vs. disabled bodies, well-tended bodies vs. gone-to-seed bodies, but different bodies. i suppose it’s something an artist might do. you think, that’s an interesting body. you don’t automatically go and think, gosh she looks ugly/beautiful. you think, “she mills her arms very fast. her shoulders are narrow. her pants fit loosely on her butt. her under-chin is soft. she has large eyes.” you think, “his hair is gray. the scalp shines through. he has large nostrils. his calves are hairless. his butt protrudes.”

my body is talking to me a lot these days. it does strange things that draw attention to themselves. it forces me to notice. i think it wants me to disclose. i think it wants an airing.

how do you air that which has been buried for decades? it might disintegrate like a mummy taken hastily and carelessly out of the innermost chamber of a pyramid, turn to dust, turn to ash, vaporize. you air it carefully, that’s what you do.

bodies speak loudly. often we dismiss this loud talk as shrieking noise. bodies are people. the vestments of the soul and the mind. the congealing of mind and soul into touchable substance. i saw a large strangely-shaped man yesterday at the bagel store. at first he seemed to talk into his fist. his fist was shaking wildly. i thought, parkinson’s? tourette’s? schizophrenia? the man sat alone. when i looked again he was sitting quietly, still, calmly. i thought, maybe he was just talking excitedly. maybe he has one of those tiny cellphone thingies on his ear.

i was struck by this man. he looked very alone but maybe he just looked alone to me because he wasn’t beautiful. he was an ugly man. his body was large and strangely shaped.

the shape of his body talked to me and seemed to say, aloneness. but is it really what his body was saying to me, or was i hearing my own response to the to-me-undecipherable noises that came from his body? i went over the mental image of this man and thought, he’s sitting in the bagel store; he’s talking on his cell phone; he’s wearing shorts with white socks and tennis shoes. he’s all right. the man is all right. the man doesn’t need my compassion or my sympathy or my insufferable condescension.

but i am attracted to people who look different. i feel i have nothing to say to the cool and busy and beautiful. those who are different, maybe we have something in common. maybe they’ll talk to me. maybe they won’t look at me weirdly if i sit down and say, “mind if i sit with you? i’m alone today and i’d like to sit with someone. would it be okay?”

is this condescending? is this terrified? am i assuming too much? am i horribly prejudiced? am i grouping typecasting pigeonholing?

we live in a difficult world. in small communities people know each other. in our large anonymous non-communities we only have assumptions and generalizations to use as tools to navigate our interactions with strangers. we cannot do without assumptions. but we can work on those assumptions. maybe we can make them less noxious, less toxic, less destructive. and we can certainly be aware of them, make sure they stay flexible and fluid and wide open.

psychologists do not torture

if psychologists have such a hard time deciding not to aid the government in torturing prisoners in the “war on terror,” when can we hope that they’ll start tackling the issue of the torture that is regularly administered to their patients in psychiatric facilities of all kinds?

lovely letter of resignation by jeffrey s. kaye, ph.d., to the american psychological association over the torturing of prisoners in guantànamo and other “national security” sites:

Thursday 06 March 2008

Jeffrey Kaye left the APA over its complicity in torture by the U.S. government. This is his letter of resignation.

After two years of working to reform the position of the American Psychological Association, which supports psychologist participation in the interrogations of detainees at Guantanamo, CIA “black site” prisons, and elsewhere, I realized that I had been pursuing a utopian objective. On January 27th, I penned my resignation to APA. The rationale for my choice is outlined in the resignation letter, which is reproduced here.

- Jeffrey S. Kaye, Ph.D

January 27, 2008

Alan E. Kazdin, Ph.D.,
President, American Psychological Association
750 First Street, NE
Washington, DC 20002-4232

Dear Dr. Kazdin,

I hereby resign my membership in the American Psychological Association (APA). I have up until now been working with Psychologists for an Ethical APA for an overturn in APA policy on psychologist involvement in national security interrogations, and I greatly respect those who are fighting via a dues boycott to influence APA policy on this matter. I hope to still work with these principled and dedicated professionals, but I cannot do it anymore from a position within APA.

women’s shame

there are precious few spaces for women to express their pain. i’m talking about legitimate spaces in which the pain of women can be expressed candidly and unadornedly and be validated by others. precious few. almost none.

sometimes women have each other but not always. sometimes women overestimate how much they have each other and then discover that they didn’t, not really. i busted at least one friendship on a hasty assumption of an open safe space of shared intimacy. most people, men and women, run from intimacy.

blogs, we have blogs. thank god in heaven. but not really, you know? not when the pain of women is considered whiny pathetic overthetop manipulative small getoveritalready. we are bipolar depressed borderline outofcontrol deceptive lying selfindulgent selfabsorbed lashing psycho duplicitous irresponsible negligent. we exaggerate. we are fat badmothers badwives bitchy unfeminine obsessed detached cold clingy. we have a flighty sense of boundaries. we talk too much. we don’t take care of ourselves. forget to smile for the camera. we let ourselves go what’s the matter with you can’t you dye your hair shave your underarms buy something decent to wear put on some makeup pluck your eyebrows lose some weight gain some weight your boobs are sagging use night cream use sun screen you look so nice in that i love it you always look nice don’t get me wrong but this really brings you out.

the pain of women is smelly, suspicious, no big deal, like menstrual cramps. we don’t smell good. our bodies our minds are slightly tainted slightly unsavory slightly overripe. work on your bodymind keep it under control don’t let it get the better of you you you.

who am i? i hide in closets.

men celebrate their mental decay. have you noticed that? shelves and shelves entire archives of literature cinema pop art dedicated to the celebration of men’s degeneracy anguish identity crises irrepressible violence masturbatory indulgences oversexuality sexual impotence emasculations lossofcontrol madoutbursts murderousoutbursts crazyromps in cold blood on the road lolita the idiot don quixote howl the power and the glory native son seize the day have i mentioned vietnam stories desert storm stories iraq stories have i mentioned heart of darkness apocalypse now have i mentioned mengonecrazy taxi driver straw dogs scarface clockwork orange these are masterpieces you hear.

crazy out of control men are cool. crazy out of control women are a sad state of affairs. crazy out of control men are an expression of unease a cultural litmus test power gone amok righteous revenge. crazy out of control women are a sorry sight breaks your heart really.

on their third to last debate (who’s counting? i’m counting!) hillary had a smile sown on her face for the duration, what? three hours? barack could take breaks relax his facial muscles hillary had a smile on at all time can’t be seen as bitchy sour dour harsh unfeminine.

we are there for you. we are there for your children. we are there for your needs. we are there for each other. we are there. we don’t falter we don’t misstep we don’t have bad days we don’t get plastered hungover fucked up

i wrote a post the other day about overdosing in my therapist’s office being stoned for two days having to call in sick taking myself to the market shitting my pants. i thought of readers thinking whathefuckisshewritingthisforisntitwaytoomuchinformation?

it’s not unusual. i’ve done it before and if the past is any predictor i’ll do it again. i know dozens of women who piss shit themselves puke in their hands wipe shameful tears down pills down booze draw tracks on their arms make dinner. we hide. we wear long sleeves. we don’t get to feel proud of battle scars sports injuries busted knees dislocated shoulders broken ribs we hide.

i think i’m done hiding. FUCK YOU. I’M DONE HIDING.

_______________________________

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

tot’ly f%$&@ed up

time’s up. she tells me it’s time and i think, no no, that’s unfair, you stole some of my time. but that’s the way it is, it’s time to go, probably someone else is arriving in a few minutes, they are entitled to their hour of comfort/enlightenment/rage too, might have been waiting for it all week, might be very important to them. so i open the medicine bottle that for some reason is in my hands and take the full cup of water that for some reason is right there where i can reach it and down everything that’s in the bottle and chase it with all the water, i could chase with just a sip but i drink the whole glass it takes some time why the hell do i do that and leave. and then i immediately regret it. because i am no longer a stay at home woman, i am a working woman, people depend on me. people depend on me. people count on me. oh no.

but there’s no way to throw up right there and then, it would be laborious, it would be noisy, it would require things, ipecac or at least lots of warm water and salt and there’s none of it there. it’s over, it’s done, deal with it. so i go home, pass out, and then, when i come to, i start working. i’m a zombie but i need to work. i work and work and then i’m too tired to work and the rest of the day goes by and i have no idea what happens while the hours follow each other like rosary beads but it’s night i can go to sleep goodnight.

the following day i feel like shit. i go to the store to buy the things i destroyed the previous day because i was furious furious i destroyed all the makings of breakfast made sure there wasn’t a single thing left no tea no coffee nothing to have breakfast with and that would be okay with me what’s wrong with breakfasting on water but i don’t live alone. so i drag my wasted wasted ass to the store and manage of course manage to shit my pants it happens you know you fuck yourself up enough things in your body don’t work as they should. but i make it home with all the makings of breakfast so J can have the breakfast i destroyed and then clean myself up and then work. i work and work i do what needs to be done do everything well and right, but after hours of this i realize i can’t spend four more hours at work in front of people dealing with people no way no way i just can’t. so i find a sub and she’s sweet she takes care of everything i can go back to bed see you later.

but while i’m in bed falling asleep a swarm of bees, a whole damn beehive somehow makes it inside my head and i am the most paranoid person on earth i am chewed up by fear/anger/inexpressible rage will i ever be able to make her understand my words are silent she won’t ever understand there is no way i can get through to her aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

and then it’s okay, then i sleep to the sound of columbia invading ecuador and the still-president of the united states reassuring the world that columbia is our friend yadda yadda terror yadda yadda even though columbia just invaded another country what the fuck. the fact of columbia and venezuela and brazil and ecuador and chile being discussed in the news seems all right to me, a nice variation on iraq iran afghanistan pakistan lebanon so i sleep i sleep and i wake up a few hours later drenched in sweat but at least the bees have left my head maybe i’ll be all right i think i’ll be all right.

stuck

i would like to do another post called i can’t. i would like to say to the world that i feel stuck stuck stuck please get me unstuck (i read in a novel about a cop going on a raid and finding a baby stuck to its little mattress by its excrements and bed sores, and i felt a bit like that).

to all those who feel stuck: you will get unstuck. i will get unstuck. we are all going to get unstuck.

(maybe if we all tell the world that we feel stuck, the very act of screaming it together will operate a miracle and the glue that keeps us stuck will dissolve, scared by the sheer force of our combined decibels.)

out of time

there are friends i meet only in the interstices of time. they are always there. my online friends. suspended time. non-time time. time out of time.

i wonder about the nature of these friendships. online friendships are an entirely new phenomenon. humanity has never seen the likes of them before. we are on the cutting edge of a friendship revolution.

i have had friendships that rested solely on the exchange of mail. it wasn’t very different. if you write a letter every day and the other person writes a letter every day each one of you gets a letter every day. except mail moves slowly and replies are delayed. i remember waiting for the mailperson. i remember holding thin airmail paper as if it were a holy wafer. salvation. reading the words over and over. feeling the stab of distance with each punctuation mark.

long distance epistolary friendship is rife with longing. the physicality of the paper, the ink, the handwriting are a tease for that other physicality, the physicality of shared space and shared time. all i have of you is this fucking piece of paper.

my online friends are really close to me. they are always there. yet i long for the touch of their hands. i long for hugs, kisses, bodies, shared food, silences, silly moments, contretemps, awkwardness. i long for zits, bad hair, puffy eyes, tears, unseemly laughter, bad clothes, smells. fleshed out humanity.

this longing is not as intense as that of my epistolary friendships. my online friends are always there. they live in the interstices of time. real time is: getting out of bed, taking a shower, feeding the cat, doing the laundry, grading papers, shopping for things. outside time is: talking to my friends on email.

we are all in the same space: interstitial space. non-time time. a wholly new phenomenon. humanity has never seen it before. we are the cutting edge.

teaching on the cusp of nothing

i drag myself to school stunned by exhaustion. teaching takes a lot of energy. you are on all the time. class time, preparation time, grading time; but also at the supermarket, when you wake up in morning, while you are having dinner. you think about teaching. which chronic fatigue, you are well only if you avoid stressors. the body cannot absorb the shock waves of stress. the tiniest ripples on the surface of the water chafe the boat. being constantly preoccupied with work is a stressor.

it was a great and pleasant surprise to me when i discovered that not doing things increased my happiness level exponentially. i believe that are many unhappy people out there who need to give themselves serious breaks. listen, i’m not dumb. i know that the roots of psychic pain go deep (read my recent posts).* but when you come home from a supermarket run feeling cranky and miserable and feel better only after a day or two of rest, you are forced to admit that supermarket runs are not good for you in that moment. or long telephone calls. or more than one hour of movie-watching. or sitting in a noisy restaurant. or going to a restaurant at all. what i am saying is, there was some mental discomfort, some genuine unhappiness, some depression in my life that was taken care of simply by stopping doing things.

* i also know that a lot of people cannot afford to give themselves breaks. i’m lucky and privileged this way.

i used to be depressed. i haven’t been depressed since i stopped doing things. it’s been years.

this has nothing to do with deeply rooted psychic pain and the batterings of trauma. this is about the semidarkness, the clamminess of daily depression. that pain is gone.

except now i’m teaching, and sometimes that pain is back. i heal it by trying to do nothing except when i stand (sit, actually) at the front of the classroom. i can handle working at home. it’s the world that kills me. even the telephone is too much. email is my number one connection with the rest of humanity.

(in our doing-oriented society i get no comprehension at all when i say these things. people tell me, “i know teaching tires you, but it must be good to do something.” as if being at home, resting, reading, writing, thinking were nothing. “no, i was perfectly content,” i tell them. “whatever,” they say.)

the classroom, though, wow, it’s wonderful. i walk into class feeling entirely depleted (”i can’t do this”) and find the students immediately life-giving. the simple sight of them. i forget myself.

for a semester, we are joined in a common intellectual pursuit. classes are intense. we cover a lot of ground. difficult books. difficult ideas. interpersonal negotiations with a purpose that’s greater than the interpersonal relationship itself. are there many people who still do this? make friends, at least for a bit, over a demanding but exciting common purpose that involves the deep exchange of words and ideas? i don’t know how many work environments allow this kind of joy. again, i am lucky.

of course i don’t know that the students are really enjoying this. i don’t know that we are really making friends instead of its being just me, excited at what i do. how can i know this for sure? one makes educated guesses: a group lingers to discuss a point; a student comes to class with an extra book he’s checked out of the library; knitted eyebrows; the fumbling for words in an effort to nail a difficult point; ideas bouncing from one end of the classroom to the other and back; the intense, tight, concentrated electricity of intellectual pursuit. maybe it’s not just me. maybe we are all feeling it.

and then there’s the other stuff, the exquisitely human stuff. a student brought me a copy of the handwritten journal of her son, who died two years ago at 19 in a car accident. it’s a thick sheaf of paper. his last month. i gasped. what a privilege. maybe she gives it to everyone. what does it matter? she gave it to me. i also balked, a little. this is a lot of stuff to read. i am exhausted. i don’t have the time. i tell myself, “it’s a gift, not an obligation.” i say, “thank you.”

sophie’s choice

we carry dead children with us. some of them we have killed ourselves.

we have killed children because if those children had survived other children would have died. we chose to save some children at the expense of other children.

who will mourn the dead children only we know we killed? who will absolve us of our impunity?

the children i let live i don’t recognize anymore. the anguish i feel about their dead siblings makes me angry at them and, at the same time, fills me with overwhelming pity for them. they are undernourished, scrawny, ungainly children. they are not blossoming. i can no longer kill them — they are out of my control — but sometimes i wish i had killed them all when i still could.

powerful powerful words

hi.

hi.

will you hold me?

yes.

will you take my hand?

yes.

will you let me reach out and touch your knee?

sure.

will you shake my hand when i leave?

yes.

do you like me?

i do.

will you miss me when i’m not with you?

i will miss you.

are you happy to see me?

yes.

can i tell you a story?

please.

can i tell you what i’m feeling now?

i wish you would.

it’s terrible.

that’s fine.

it’s dark.

yes.

it’s dangerous.

i would like to hear it.

…

can you hear me?

i can hear you.

can you hear me well?

i can hear you very well.

…

thank you.

you’re very welcome.

goodbye.

goodbye.

the park

we walk to a green luscious park together. it must be a time of day at which people don’t come to the park because no one is here. maybe no one is ever here. or maybe you reserved it for us.

there’s a large field of beautiful soft very green grass, larger than a football field. in a corner there’s a copse of trees and in another a spread of simple but vibrant flowers. there are large bushes quivering in the breeze. it is a beautiful park.

you look at me and say, “go wherever you want.”

i say, “really?”

you say, “yes.”

i step on the grass and cannot believe how beautiful and alive everything is. i say, “will you play with me?” you say, “i’ll sit here on this bench and wait for you.”

you sit. the bench is wooden and well worn. it’s made out of unvarnished planks that sun and rain have discolored and made almost gray.

i take a few more steps onto the soft green field. “where shall i go?” i ask.

“anywhere you want,” you say.

“but should i stay where you can see me?”

“no, you can go wherever you want.”

“what will you do?” i ask.

“i’ll sit here waiting for you. i’ll be here when you come back. i’ll be waiting.”

i start running on the grass and toward the trees. i look behind me and sure enough you are sitting just the way you were sitting when i took off. you smile and wave at me. i wave back.

i run on the grass. once in a while i look at you and you are quietly looking at me. sometimes you smile, sometimes you wave. sometimes i’m too far to see whether you are smiling but i think perhaps you are. you are very quiet and still. maybe you are thinking your own thoughts. maybe you are enjoying the beautiful day and the smell of grass and flowers. maybe you are enjoying sharing this time with me.

i go into the copse and get lost in my play. i zigzag around the large bushes. they are taller than i am and their leaves are small, dark, and shiny. sometimes i peak. you are still there. you cannot see me but you do not look worried. you look perfectly content.

i play with the flowers. i pluck a few and make a bunch. i look to see if you are disapproving but you are not. you sit quietly. it looks as if you have hardly moved. i would be surprised to see you in a different position from the one in which you were the last time i looked.

i play all i want and when i am tired i come back to you.

no we can’t. huh?

beauty out of pain

i keep reading books that fashion tremendous overflowing beauty out of massive pain. they are everywhere. do writers write about anything else? i just read porochista khakpour sons and other flammable objects. it’s an incredibly exuberant book that, at points, will make you laugh out loud. the language is uncontainable. i felt seared by anguish. there is so much inexpressible pain in this book, it’s breathtaking. the protagonist, a first-generation iranian-american called xerxes (zercsis), spends much of the book drowning in pain so huge and all-powerful, he can only stand still and hope its blows will stop. the beauty (literary, perceptive, intellectual) of it all is that no clear, direct explanation is ever offered for the origin of this pain. there are hints, here and there, but they don’t add up. you know everything xerxes knows and yet (thus) know that this stifling, stunting pain is bigger than xerxes and his life and the life of his family. it’s generational pain, displacement pain, epochal pain, not-belonging-anywhere pain. it’s silent — it has no name and no words. it’s postmodern, or post-postmodern, 21st century pain.

i read aimee bender’s an invisible sign of my own, an entirely astounding book about self-inflicted pain, the pain of others, the terrors of death, the virtues of obsessiveness and compulsion (not a disorder but a way of coping), and the tremendous, possibly intolerable risks of love. the language is otherworldly. i don’t know how she does it. it’s light and breezy and sweet and yet it packs iron-fisted, brass-knuckled, guaranteed-to-bruise punches. its pain, too, is the pain of the cold intolerable mean post-modern world, of people alone in their houses and alone in their hearts and alone everywhere.

i read (reread, and taught) james baldwin’s the fire next time. i sat in the car fifteen minutes before class going over the last astonishing ten pages and cried. i cried for the pain and the love and the courage to fashion beautiful prose and preserve a large beautiful wise heart in the face of bitter grinding indignity and humiliation and quotidian brutality.

i’m reading sherman alexie’s flight and i think my heart will finally break and that i’ll never be able to put it together ever again.

i don’t know how people survive the things they survive. we must be amazing creatures. next time i am tempted to despise someone i’ll remember that they are surviving more than i can begin to imagine. i’m sure no one is spared the blows. what, did you think some people had it easier than some other people? don’t you dare, don’t you dare.

i wish i could fashion beauty out of soul-piercing pain. maybe i do, on occasion, on a good day. beauty, beauty: sometimes it’s more tender than love.

the construction of pain

rosemarie’s post on the new federal budget at roses on the moon would have kept me up last night if the massive, structural reality of poverty in our midst (not chad, not iraq, not haiti, though, yeah, those places too) didn’t keep me up every night.

but you see, that’s not true. what really keeps me up at night is my own personal anguish at my own personal problems. and my own personal problems have to do with Bad Things That Happened To Me. not bad bad thing. not things like having to choose between food and meds or watching my children go without dinner or working three jobs and still not being able to make rent. not bad bad things like not having a future because there is no future for the likes of me.

and yet, as i toss and turn and think what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck i realize that the Bad Things That Happened To Me are structural, too.

trauma is always structural.

this is what i’ve come to believe.

trauma is what happens to people when the boundaries of their communties are so pushed by an uncontainable yet unsilenceable urge to make sense that they give.

this is not clear.

trauma is the result of an explosion of meaninglessness. the community cannot contain That Which Does Not Make Sense Yet Refuses To Go Away and therefore turns to: violence.

trauma is an explosion of Meaningless Violence.

meaning is communal. meaning is never produced in isolation. it is a product of language.

so, the Bad Things That Happened To Me (and you, and you) are structural, too. they are not bad things that happened to happen to you because your life was fucked. they were bad things that happened to you within a system similar to the system that sends children to bed without dinner and makes adults work three jobs and still not make rent.

we are all part of the same fucked whole.

pain circulates freely through intercommunicating chambers that are part of the same large labyrinthine Building in which we are, all of us, housed.

redemption circulates freely through intercommunicating chambers, too.

there is no pain in isolation. there is no salvation in isolation. if you suffer, i suffer (really, concretely). if you get better, i get better (really, concretely).

this gives me some measure of hope.

apropos of “i can’t,” 2

whittaker chambers, as quoted by john leonard in the february, 2008 issue of harper’s, on our personal and collective worlds of “meaningless violence” (leonard’s words):

This reality cuts across our minds like a wound whose edges crave to heal, but cannot. Thus, one of the greatest sins, perhaps the greatest sin, is to say: it will heal; it has healed; there is no wound; there is something more important than this wound. There is nothing more important than this wound.

(the bold is mine)

apropos of “i can’t”

a quote by andrea dworkin i just found:

By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air; it is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it, and most of the time we do not even notice it. Instead of “I am afraid,” we say, “I don’t want to,” or “I don’t know how,” or “I can’t.”

does it fit? care to discuss?

i can’t

i can’t see people too often. i need a lot of down time for my thoughts to roam and slosh and bat around and ricochet off the walls of my skull, undisturbed.

i can’t say to my therapist things that are outside my Acceptable Statements and Acceptable Words sets. these sets get narrower each week. soon i will only be able to speak Silence. against common intuition, silence is Extremely Loud.

i can’t stay angry at people for very long.

i can’t show my anger even when i am still angry, except to people to whom i am Extremely Close.

i can’t make my english better than it is now. i have reached a plateau.

i can’t translate well from english into my native language, though i can translate fine from my native language into english. this defies Common Wisdom on the matter.

i can’t read long texts online. a medium-sized post counts as a long text.

i can’t decide whether i want barack or hillary to be my next president.

i can’t see certain people. i can’t even talk to them on the phone. they are perfectly decent people. i can’t stand them. they think i am very fond of them.

i can’t disabuse them of this belief.

these days, i can’t speak to my closest friend on the phone without shouting at her. i know i am Very Angry at her but i can’t tell her why because the reason has Nothing to Do with her (or maybe she Can Do Nothing about it, whichever comes first).

i can’t make do with “social” friendships. i need my friends to care about me. that they don’t, at least in a way i can appreciate and process, is an endless source of pain for me.

i can’t be less intense. i am not a light-hearted, easy-going person (though i do have a sense of humor).

i can’t do anything except in a half-baked way. i am not Very Good at anything.

i can’t stop feeling huge inner pain.

i can’t switch off my Social Consciousness. i can’t even stop it from becoming bigger and more intrusive with each passing day.

i can’t stop having long conversations in my head with my therapist.

i can’t stop loving women.

i can’t stop loving my husband.

i can’t stop believing in god.

i can’t stop wanting to live my life in accordance with the gospel.

i can’t be rude to people. even nasty people. even intolerable people.

i can’t let people go — even people who hurt me.

i can’t give up the food i like. if this food turned out to be poisonous for me, i’d rather be poisoned.

i can’t live decently if i don’t have a novel i love to go back to at night.

i can’t read poetry or nonfiction for any sustained periods of time.

i can’t pretend not to want to die.

i can’t believe god doesn’t love and approve of me exactly the way i am, regardless of what anyone says about the scripture’s pronouncements.

i can’t have the same certainty about The Other Life i used to have until not long ago. sometimes i fear Eternal Hopelessness awaits us. the moments when i feel this way are the only moments in which i do not want to die.

i can’t follow more than three or four blogs, max.

i can’t eat avocados.

i can’t be out of my bed or my couch for more than give or take four hours without becoming Extremely Tired and Extremely Distressed.

i can’t remember much, even Very Important Things. people get sometimes hurt by this, but mostly they don’t.