I AM GOING TO SHOW YOU! I WILL SHOW YOU ALL!!!

Have you ever felt like killing yourself and maybe taking out some other people with you? Some random people?

Have you ever felt like no one understands you, there is no place for you in this world, and the most you can hope for is to spread your own suffering to others?  To make them feel as awful as you feel?

I have.  It was just over twenty years ago.

I wanted to hurt other people because I felt hurt, and I felt like other people possessed a power that I did not-- the power to make me happy.  Just as my smile makes other people feel happy, and they therefore assume that I am happy, I thought that there was a set of instructions that I was not following.  Everyone else knew how to be happy, or possessed some knowledge or understanding that I lacked. They knew how to be happy and seemed to know how to love themselves.

Somehow, no matter how hard I tried, I could not love myself.  And no one could ever love me enough to make me feel better about myself.

I  did not shoot anyone, not myself or another person.  And even though it was a long journey since that night, I have made it to a place of unbelievable happiness.   I understand now the secret I thought everyone else possessed.   And I am in full possession and control of it. 

It is not the outer that has changed so much, either.  In fact, I think to most people the change is not visible. My life is really no better than it was twenty years ago.  In fact, many think it is worse-- I am still living on very little money, still trying to write something a major publisher will be interested in, single, alone, no health insurance, no savings, and still as strange, weird, bizarre and different as ever.

But I adore myself.  I still lose my temper, have bad days, and bad things still happen to me.  I can't seem to lose weight and in fact I am about 30 or 40 pounds heavier than I was then.

But I am happy now.  I love life and I love my life, even the parts that really fucked me up twenty years ago (or even two years ago). 

Sometimes well-meaning friends will try to shush me from admitting that these terrible murderous thoughts went through my head that night.  I will be marked, followed, watched, etc, they warn me.  Well, as the daughter of a woman that is mentally ill, and a former revolutionary political activist, I am already well-watched and documented by the authorities.

We are living in times where privacy is an illusion.  You can find out anything about anybody with a few clicks on your keyboard (accept what is in their hearts).  Law enforcement has the capability to follow your every move.  My suggestion? Have nothing to hide. (I actually feel sorry for the people that have to spy on me.  Can you imagine a FBI agent having to read all these esoteric ramblings lol?)

But it is more than that. I have had so many people tell me that my openness has helped them.  I know.  I wish there had been someone out there like me that I could have related to when I was so scared and alone.  The (imagined) ghosts of  Marilyn Monroe, Frida Kahlo, Virginia Woolf were as close as I could get. I had a few "Saints" that helped me through my longest, darkest nights.

This post and many others are my attempt to pay it forward.  To share myself the way others shared their stories.

I read a lot of books about madness and depression, and books like Man's Search For Meaning. But what helped the most was knowing that someone else had felt what I had felt, and in Frankl's case lived through much worse than I had, and somehow lived and found a way to be happy.

I wonder, whenever one of these mass shootings occurs, what would have happened to me that Tuesday night, if I had no attachments to people?  If there had been no one in my life that I had loved enough to feel their love for me? That would hurt for me more than I hurt for myself?

If I had been an overly-isolated only child, raised by a parent that was perfect in every exterior way but somehow had done nothing but nurture my hatred?  A parent that loved guns and taught me how to "respect" them? A child that for some reason could not form attachments to other people or socialise?

And instead of wanting to make mommy happy I wanted to ruin her life? Make her pay for loving her gun collection more than she loved me?  Show her just how evil her genes were?

I was lucky. I didn't know it yet, but it turns out the secret is to have something you love, not necessarily to be loved. Even if no one in your life right now loves you, you can still be happy.

Here is how:

Love something. Find something to love.

And hopefully, someone loves you back.  I hope that there is at least one person in your life that you care about, if you cannot care about yourself enough.  But you don't need anyone but yourself.

I hope that if you are feeling so hateful and hurt and unhappy and alone, you will read this and know there is a way out. I don't know what it is for you, but I know there is a way.  Maybe instead of finding the spirits the way I did, maybe you need to disavow them.  Maybe instead of counseling and psych meds you need to find another path-- meditation and healthy food.  I don't know.

I just know that there is a way for you, the same way there was for me.  I may not know you, but I care enough about you to write this and hope you will find your way to a better feeling place reading this.  I hope you will find a way to be truly happy.

Here is my story. 

 ***********

On the night of March 24th, 1992 I left school and went to pick up my check at work.  I had been feeling awful for a number of reasons, but later I would recognize that I was miserable, and had been for a good part of my life.

No one could love me enough.  I felt so isolated and alone.  I was busy all day, never giving myself time to stop and think-- busy the way only a young person can be busy: non-stop from early morning to late at night.  I was a student, political activist, aspiring singer, poet, and I held a full time job.

I had within the last year stopped working graveyard. For three years previous working graveyard (and living with my boyfriend) I had staved off the nightly panic attacks that at that point in my life I had just learned to live with. They were constant and overwhelming and I could not sleep in the dark, even with someone in bed with me.

I would spend nights pacing back and forth, my heart racing.  Sick to my stomach.  Terrified that I was going to die, feeling like I was about to die,  and scared of the "something" that I could  feel all around me- the spirits- even though I was an avowed atheist and empiricist.

But science and facts and politics had quickly become cold bedfellows, once I was living alone and on a day schedule.  I had rented a room at the beginning of February, but then  in March my roommate had moved out (I'd learn later he'd rented the room knowing that he was leaving in a month, so that he wouldn't have to pay the full rent himself or wait to get his security deposit.)

I was left to suffer the nights alone.  I was tired of picking men up for one night stands. Sick of begging previous lovers to come over and sleep with me.  Sick of being exhausted from staying awake all night.

I had been working with a lot of feminist groups I would go to conferences and rallies and talk about my experiences as first a rape "victim", and then later "survivor".   But changing the label didn't change that I was constantly reliving some of the worst experiences of my life.

And working days at my job put me in constant contact with the male owner that liked to come up behind the girls while we were on the switchboard and give us neck massages.  I'd mentioned it at an office meeting, when his wife, the other co-owner, assured me that she would handle it discreetly.

She told him, and he openly confronted me about it, when I came into work the day after the meeting.  Shouting insults and engaging some of the other girls that worked there to band up with him against me.  "See, Dawn doesn't complain when I give her a neck massage.  What is your problem?  What are you saying I am molesting you?" Etc.

It was not just the obvious harrassment, it was also my own personal issues with men coming up behind me like that, and touching me.  It was a constant echo of those rape memories.

And I had no self love.   I hated myself, but I was too afraid of death and dying to do anything about it and just kill myself.

I was terrified more than anything of being alone. Dying alone. It wasn't even hell or the afterlife, it was just the thought of being utterly and totally alone with no chance of ever finding anyone to love me and be with me.

And that made me feel like the worst failure of all, that I couldn't be there for myself.  I felt like every other person on the planet knew a secret to life that I didn't.  I hated how weak I was. It just made it worse that people were always telling me how strong I was. What was wrong with them? Couldn't they see I was dying inside?

Even to my closest friends I could not fully voice the horror I was living with.   I was ashamed of the "hallucinations" (spirits) and  also the constant reliving of past traumas.  I had no control over my thoughts.

It was my inability to let go of the pain in my past.   And also that I was so sensitive psychically. My mother is mentally ill and I was so afraid that I was like her.  Even though the feelings and whispers and flashes of intuition were often right, that scared me even more.  There was no explanation for it. 

I wanted to die that night.  I had never felt such despair and loss.  I was filled with such self-loathing I could barely concentrate on driving.  One reason the memory lingers is that I had to force myself to pay attention to the road and so recall exactly the length of time at the stoplight, and the slow seconds as I drove through the intersection, as these thoughts and feelings went through me.

The thought that nothing would be better than to turn my car around and drive it back through the doors of the place I worked. Take out that disgusting boss and his stupid wife. With those images of revenge and destruction that horrible sad, dead feeling began to be replaced by a feeling of power and anger.

It felt good.  Anger feels better than depression.  It was suddenly clear to me that I was in a world of selfish, greedy assholes that didn't care about anything but themselves and stuffing their fat faces.  Fuck them all. Why was I working so hard to change the world and make it a better place? It wasn't good for me and never would be.  People sucked and I hated them all.

I would teach them!  I'd show them who they were fucking with!  I'd show them all!  I'd take back every bit of good I'd put in the world and then some!

I was not fully through the intersection, the thoughts were running through my head so madly and at such top speed, spinning out of control.

I thought maybe I should take my paycheck and go to Vegas.  Blow the money and then kill myself.

Maybe kill myself in Vegas. Maybe take my gun and take out a whole bunch of these selfish motherfucking people that didn't care about me, and THEN kill myself

I was just through the intersection as this thought went through my head. The nose of my 1974  Datsun B210 just rolling over the crosswalk.

The part of myself that is so hyper-aware I can never escape her pretty much shut down all thoughts in my head at that point. I had shocked myself. I drove home soberly. Numb and horrified.

When I got home I called work and told them I could not come back in. That I was having some sort of breakdown. I was crying and hysterical.  I could not be calmed.

After I got off the phone with work  I called my closest friend, who lived across the street.  He offered to come over.  I said no and lay there all night staring at the window, watching myself the way I used to watch my mother until the sun came up and the psychiatrist would be at the hospital to admit her.

It was relief  in a way, to just say "yes, I am crazy. Something is wrong with me." I didn't have to hide or pretend anymore.  It was awful. But it was better.

It wasn't over, not by a long shot, though.

I worked for an answering service and we handled a lot of doctors and clinics.  I knew right where to go. The problem was I barely made enough to get by, and I had no money or savings at the time.  I had a few credit cards but the payments on them were already hard to manage.

By threatening my bosses with sexual harassment, they gave me disability and leave.  I didn't have the energy to fight them for worker's comp or a suit, even though many thought I should.  I was happy to just not have to go in there and deal with those hateful people.

I was paying out of pocket  for counseling at a place that had a psychiatrist sign on. I was put on anti-depressants.  I began smoking cigarettes again and took up drinking every night.  I'd get so drunk I'd just pass out at night.  A fifth a night I think, usually vodka. It shut out all the hateful voices in my head.  My whole mind was now united against me.  Something had to be done about me. I was an evil, sociopath that dreamt of murder.

I hung on from week to week. I kept going to school.  I wasn't doing very well in my classes, but I was not used to idleness.  Either right before or right after the Verdict in the Rodney King beating that would result in the riots, I went to the Free Clinic to seek long term care.  I know there was ash in the air on those days.

I was denied by the Free Clinic initially because of what I call my "Marilyn Monroe smile".  I had long learned that my smile made other people feel happy.  They mistook this for MY being happy.  More than once someone has said to me, "how could you be unhappy with a smile like that?"

I also happened to be organizing a huge demonstration regarding the verdict.  I suppose I did seem perfectly fine.  No one could have known that organizing a march, rally and demonstration was easier for me than lying in the dark at night by myself. (It didn't really even make sense to me.)

I didn't realise that I was so convincing as a sane and happy person that the young intern would think I was just trying to get some free disability and get our of work.  They rejected my application, informing me by telephone.

That night  I decided to kill myself.  I had no strength left to go on.  The pain was unbearable-- even with the drugs and drink.  I sat down and wrote a long letter about what I was feeling and how scared I was, and I how I could not afford treatment.  I couldn't seem to find another roommate and the landlord was breathing down on me for the rest of the security deposit and the other half of the rent. (Money has always been really overwhelming to me. It send me to despair faster than anything else, even love and violence.)

I could not afford to pay for the counseling every week.  This was making me anxious.  The alcohol and cigarettes were becoming expensive too. But the counseling was the only thing I had to hang onto.  I needed to have someone that at least once a week I could confess my fears too.

And I had to stay on at least once a month with the pay clinic anyhow, to get the anti-depressants which I had to be on in order to get the disability and worker's comp. (You aren't sick in this country unless you are on prescription drugs. Ironic, isn't it?  I should mention that at the time I did not smoke pot and actually hated it.  Weed heightens how I am already feeling, so if I am unhappy or paranoid, it just makes it worse.)  That monthly payment was even getting harder to manage.

I wrote the suicide letter, and then I went upstairs and I got out my gun, a handgun, and it was either the handgun that Bond uses, a Walther ppk, or a Colt .45, I think, I don't remember, I had more than one gun at the time.

It was heavy and cold. It was decisive and certain.

I loaded it with hollow point bullets and pointed it at myself, touching my forehead, nose, mouth and under my chin,  It felt partly reassuring.  Whatever was going to happen, it wouldn't be more of this awfulness, at least. New awfulness, but not anymore of this.

I was lucky that I had people I cared about and that cared about me.  My best friend lived across the street, and four year earlier another friend of his had killed himself by swallowing a shotgun.  One thing we had talked about a lot was how horrible it must have been for his father to find the body.

I thought about my friend being the most likely person to find my body.  I thought about him calling and calling until he would decide to use his key, to come check on me.  How awful it would be for him, and how sad he would be.

I put the gun down.  I could feel the presence of spirits around me, and I decided to not resist them.  If they were demons waiting to descend on me the moment I gave up the ghost I just decided to let them have me at that moment.

I admitted to myself that even if I was crazy, or worse, a hallucinating idiot that had to believe in bodiless spirits because she was so lame she could only find comfort in imaginary friends, that at least I was not alone anymore.

The next day the Free Clinic called back and told me to come back in.  They had discussed my situation after the phone call and an experienced psychiatrist had reviewed my file. I was assigned to a wonderful therapist named Elizabeth.  I was her patient for the next three years.  (Until my grandmother died and I moved back to St. Louis for a year.)

In the coming weeks I would be diagnosed with Post traumatic stress syndrome, or shell shock.  In the coming years I would learn that I had a dis-associative memory disorder as well.  I will not only block out things altogether, there are certain memories which I cannot hold simultaneously with other memories.  I will remember one set, or the other.  I remember being raped on A and B occasions, but not C and D, or C and D, but not A and B. Only because a counselour was recording everything I said did I ever find that out.

My life did not get instantly better.  For one thing, I am a really complex person, and I had a lot of damage to work through. I have actually been suicidal since then (in 2000).  Only in the last few years have I really come to resolve all my past issues ("I don't have issues, I have a subscription!") and I have a way of living in the world and dealing with life that works for me.

I am not afraid of the dark or spirits or the voices in my head or dying or death.  I don't believe that anyone has power over me without my consent.  I have faith that I will be guided to what is best for me and I have faith in myself to control my emotions and live a life that is fulfilling.

I am in control of the thoughts in my head, and even if something random and alarming runs through it every now and again I am able to discard it as something alien, and unwanted.  I choose what thoughts I entertain.  What thoughts I act on.

(And as a psychic I have to say, a big part of my problem was picking up the creepy thoughts of other people without realizing that was what was happening to me.  And there are evil spirits that go around and try to get spirits in bodies to do evil things. See the links below my signature. **)

I have survived. I have triumphed. I have "shown them" and "shown them all".  But more importantly I have shown myself.  Shown myself how to have a good life, no matter what.

I was lucky that whatever makes me so strong and self-aware, I was able to continually pick up the trail of finding my way to happiness, no matter how off course I would become.  My life is a series of trainwrecks, even post-breakdown.  I love myself now enough to love even my inabilities and limitations.  I love myself enough to enjoy my life.

I don't know that I could tell anyone that is in that pit of despair how to get out of it.  I can only share what happened to me.

I was lucky to have someone that when I finally confided the mass murder scenario that had driven me over the edge, my therapist did not condemn me.  She helped me to see how far down I had gone.  She showed me that I could not compare myself to other people, that I had to find my own way.

She taught me that I should never be afraid of the thoughts in my head.  They were just thoughts until I chose to act.  And far from condemning myself, I should congratulate myself on being so self-aware.  

And that no one had the key to my own happiness but me. Far from being distressing, this was empowering, even though it would take me another twenty years to figure out what being happy actually meant to me. 

Deep inside we all want to be happy, we just don't believe we can be for whatever reason.

You are not your thoughts.  Just because you are thinking about killing yourself or someone else, you can stop thinking those things now, and start thinking something else.

What you really want is to feel better.  It is not the death of yourself or other people that you really want.  What you really want is to feel loved, and happy, and whole, and connected.

You want to feel good about yourself.  You want to feel the way you imagine other people feel.

You want to be happy.

SO,

Start thinking about that, to the exclusion of all else.

Begin to plan and plot your strategy for happiness.

Instead of thinking about what a relief it will be to be dead (and that is a whole other post, about suicides and murderers, and what the after-life is like, and from what I know now, killing yourself and other people actually makes it worse, not better***), start thinking about how great it will be when you have worked through this.

EXPECT life to be great when you have worked through this.  One thing I have learned, that I wish I had known years ago, is that life will try to conform to your expectations.  Expect good and good will come. Expect bad and it will find you.

You can REALLY "show us all".  Show us how to triumph over the hate and hurt inside.  How to turn the tide of murderous thoughts.

Show yourself.

It starts with loving yourself enough to put that gun down.  It starts with putting the belief you have that pain and death will end your suffering, and applying it to your own self-love.

Find something that you love: eating fresh peaches, a colour, breathing, clouds, your toenails, a video game, a hobby, a movie, a song, a certain view, and don't let go of it.  Hold it in your head with the same strength you hold your vengeance plan.

Put on blinders to things you don't like until you can get away from them.

The dawn always comes. And it will get better.

Trust me.  I know.

Blessings,
Lady Rae

*** from my old blog, on bad spirits and demons
http://conjurings.blogspot.com/2007/03/understanding-psychic-visions-and.html 

And from this post
http://conjurings.blogspot.com/2008/03/your-psychic-awakening-4-prayer.html 

I pulled out this on suicides and also a note on the spirit of the suicide that "saved" me that night:

 One of the first spirits I encountered during my "I see dead people" upgrade was a man I used to know when he was alive. He had committed suicide and at one point he showed me how the suffering and despair that he had felt while he was alive had actually choked off the pipeline of good energy and helpful assistance from the Divine. It is not that angels and spirits were not trying to reach him and help him, but that he was so filled with negative energy nothing on the other side could reach him.

He also showed me how the continuing love of a friend of his (our mutual friend) had in fact "saved" him from the "hell" that suicides get stuck in on the other side. (It's actually the same hell they were trapped in here, but with nothing else at all, and no hope of escape.) The prayers that Catholics say for the souls in purgatory is not off the mark. Even an atheist who continues to feel strong loving thoughts for someone on the other side sends healing energy to a spirit (as is the case with my two friends, actually).

(I've said this before, but I am going to say it again: no matter how bad things get, suicide is not a way out. Someone who commits suicide basically traps themselves in exactly what they are trying to escape from. You can only make changes to this life from this side of life. Most of the spirits that are still "here" are trying to fix things that they failed to do when they were alive. That problem is multiplied times a million for the spirit that committed suicide. And in my personal experience, people who died in traumatic circumstances--suicide, murder, etc-- have so much negative energy around them it can be difficult to hear them. They have a kind of static surrounding them.)