msstabby

June 31, 2005 was the day that I left 90% of my old life behind. That old life consisted of getting the shit beat out of me on a near-daily basis by my mother between the ages of maybe 3 to 16. I left home at 17 and lived with friends for about 18 months, then moved to London for 5.5 years. I was a wacky drug-addled punk rock chick. Eventually I was sort of thrown out by Inland Revenue because of that whole Poll Tax debacle; not directly because of but I was part of the spill over effect. Oh yeah, I worked illegally for 5 of those years. It was fantastic.

I moved back to Sandy Eggo and knocked around for a couple more years. I applied to colleges, got into Brown and Hampshire and made the really bad choice to go to Hampshire. Mass. is not a state where one can get ahead unless one is already ahead, so I was stuck. Quit school cuz it sucked and gravitated toward the "mental health" field. It's a natural landing spot for trauma survivors. One can take the focus off ones self while rationalizing that one is helping others.

I discovered that i was frighteningly good at working with chronically mentally ill fire-setters and sexual offenders. So I went back to school and eventually got my Masters in Psych. Now I was a Sex Offender Therapist. Yeah fucking me. I decided I wanted to be a doctor so I started a PhD in Forensic Psychology. I lectured throughout New England about a specific intervention within the residential treatment model, I trained psychiatrists, psychologists, heads of assorted state agencies, etc. I was able to charge $150 an hour, which was pretty cool. I wrote and published 4 treatment workbooks. I was charming and funny and deadly serious when I lectured, and people loved me.

I hated me. I was miserable. I was fat. I went from a normal weight of 125 to 165. I hated everyone. I went through long phases of not being sexual because of the field I was working in. I know things about men that no one should know. I was suspicious of anyone and everyone in authority. I hated my PhD program. I hated myself. I was drowning in trauma. Every choice I made in my life was rooted in trying to remaster the trauma, trying to fix it. Every interaction with every person I met was, in my mind, about how I was being threatened in some way. My soul was nothing but anger and grief and true suffering.

I woke up one morning in spring of 2004, got out of bed, picked up the phone, called school and quit my PhD. I was done with it. I felt so good that day I went out and had 8 inches of dead hair cut off. I was starting to liberate myself. I figured out what I really really really wanted to do with my life. I decided on law, cuz I really had always wanted to do that. I checked around, and enrolled in the program I am now in for Fall 2004. In the meantime I cut back my hours at work.

I planned to keep doing clinical work at least part time while I went through school, cuz $85 and hour ain't bad for part time work. And it was easy for me. But I found over time that it made me sick, literally. I hated my clients and wished they would die in horrible violent ways. I decided in March 2005 that I could not go on. I gave my letter of resignation in April making my last date June 31, 2005. The end of the fiscal year, right before Independence Day.

June 31 came and went and I was done. I had no job, no health, no real friends, no marketable skills outside the therapy field. I didn't care. I would have rather worked at McDonald's then gone back.

I did not leave my house for the first 8 days. Literally. I am not lying. I kept the curtains closed, and the tv on. I watched 20 hours of tv a day. I was in mourning. My dogs were pissed. They only went out to pee; no rompies for them in that week. I only left the house because I actually ran out of food. I grieved every choice that I ever made that was based on desperation and sadness and grief and rage and the violence that lived in my heart and my soul. I was a mess. Then one day I opened the curtains and it was sunny and warm, so I took the dogs out. It was like walking out of a cave into the sun, but I didn't know till that point that I was living in a cave, or that there was sun outside. I lived my whole life that way.

I got rid of every single thing that I acquired during those 8 years. Furniture, friends, fatty clothes. I was left with some shorts and t-shirts, two chairs, and a kitchen table. Oh, and my bikes. Those aren't going anywhere. I shed every single thing that I did not need.

Then I started to run each day with the dogs. And I slept a lot. I was unemployed but I had a bit of $ so I didn't have to work all summer or during fall semester last year. I found an internship and just went to school, ran, hung with my dogs and made new friends.

I found out that when I got rid of what I didn't need I was left with what I really do need: the things, activities, and people that I love. That's it. Just stuff that I love. If it's not love it's superflous. And every day I am liberated by that love again and again.


Wow, that was long. ok, I am going for a run with the dogs. I wish you all love, esp. those of you who are suffering.