‘things weren’t as bad as my mind was so good at making them seem’

and i’m doing my best   PART 4

I didn’t al­ways know that the char­ac­ters from my fa­vorite movies and shows were look­ing out for me, and help­ing me work out the trau­mat­ic events I’d ex­pe­ri­enced while grow­ing up. It ac­tu­al­ly wasn’t un­til my sec­ond dog Sun­ny passed away that I start­ed to re­al­ize just how big of a role these char­ac­ters played in my life.

29 Jan­u­ary 2019 is the day we had to say good­bye to one of the best dogs I’ve ever known. Just over a year af­ter we had to put down our oth­er amaz­ing dog named Mocha.

The two of them were broth­ers, and I’d had them since I was sev­en­teen. So, not long af­ter my rape. But I don’t re­al­ly want to talk about that event any­more. I think I’ve giv­en that enough pow­er over my life.

 

I want to talk about my dogs for a mo­ment, be­cause those two guys were se­ri­ous­ly two of my clos­est, most trust­wor­thy and loy­al friends that I think I’ll ever have. We got them as pup­pies when our par­ents sur­prised us with them, and I spent al­most every sin­gle day with them since then, un­til their pass­ing.

 

They were the best dogs. Al­ways there when you need­ed them. Even some­times when you didn’t, they were al­ways there. Ready to jump up and lick you right in the face while you were car­ry­ing a bag of gro­ceries or when you just did your make­up and your hair. But I nev­er mind­ed.

I miss their dog­gie kiss­es now.

It’s fun­ny. It’s tak­en me a long time to be able to even re­al­ly talk about them in de­tail. Some­times I still come home and ex­pect them to greet me at the door, or I’ll look out­side and just be re­mind­ed of when they would play with each oth­er in the back­yard. I even stopped go­ing to the riv­er for a long time af­ter they passed, be­cause I couldn’t bare to go to the spot where I’d let them off the leash so they could run around and I could ex­plore.

Life just wasn’t the same af­ter they died. It lit­er­al­ly felt like a huge se­cu­ri­ty blan­ket had been ripped away from me, and I was left there all alone again, frag­ile and vul­ner­a­ble.

Sim­i­lar to how I’ve felt when oth­er peo­ple in my past have left me sud­den­ly.

It was then that I start­ed to re­al­ize just how im­por­tant my fa­vorite char­ac­ters were. Main­ly Goku, in par­tic­u­lar. You see, I had got­ten so used to the dogs sleep­ing in my room at night, that the hol­low empti­ness that haunt­ed me in the dark­ness af­ter they were gone felt like it was sur­round­ing me, watch­ing me … suf­fo­cat­ing me. Or wait­ing un­til I closed my eyes to fi­nal­ly un­leash it’s dead­ly at­tack. I felt like a fright­ened young child again.

One that was trapped in a room with no way out, hav­ing noth­ing but an ever­last­ing deaf­en­ing si­lence that seemed more to me like all of the mon­sters of my child­hood dreams com­bined into one gi­ant fore­bod­ing crea­ture that was feast­ing on my lone­li­ness and fear. I couldn’t sleep very well for fear of giv­ing in to its pow­er and suc­cumb­ing to the black hole of empti­ness that swelled in my room where my dogs used to be.

But he­roes al­ways have a way of sav­ing us, even if it’s only in our imag­i­na­tions.

 

You see, I’d start­ed watch­ing Drag­onball Z again most nights when I couldn’t find the courage to close my eyes and fall asleep.

That’s when I re­al­ized that Goku’s cheer­ful, up­beat, ever so con­fi­dent per­son­al­i­ty re­al­ly helped bring a smile to my face. It helped re­mind me that things weren’t as bad as my mind was so good at mak­ing them seem. He’s al­ways been known to nev­er give up, even when it seems like there’s no hope left. And I think I learned that from him, hav­ing grown up with him through my life. Be­cause I al­ways feel that way, too. Even when I’m at my worst pos­si­ble mo­ment, when I’m in pure agony, and all I want is for it to be over, I think to my­self about how much left I have to live for. How many peo­ple I have that are count­ing on me, just like Goku does.

Now, I’m ob­vi­ous­ly not try­ing to com­pare my­self to the strongest Saiyan in the uni­verse. At least, not by pow­er lev­el. But I’d like to think that a lot of my kind­ness and hope has come from him. Be­cause I tru­ly don’t know what I would have done with­out him when I was go­ing through such a hard time in my life.

 

He’s not the only char­ac­ter that’s helped me though. There have def­i­nite­ly been a few, but the most re­cent one might come as a shock to some peo­ple. At least, those peo­ple that don’t know me and haven’t heard me ram­ble on about how much I love the lat­est Jok­er (2019) movie.

 

And yes. I mean it. Jok­er has helped me in my most re­cent iden­ti­ty cri­sis.

Well, Arthur Fleck, to be more spe­cif­ic. (spoil­er alert to any­one who hasn’t seen the movie yet:) You see, I was adopt­ed at a very young age, and I nev­er knew who my fa­ther was. I’ve also suf­fered from men­tal ill­ness, the stig­ma that goes with it, and trau­ma.

Any­who, I think it’s pret­ty fun­ny that I start­ed talk­ing to my birth dad a cou­ple weeks be­fore I saw this movie. Be­fore that, I didn’t know any­thing about him ex­cept that his name was Steve. Oh, and ap­par­ent­ly that he had aban­doned me when he learned that my birth moth­er was preg­nant. So the scene where Arthur reads his mother’s psy­chi­atric pa­pers and learns that he was aban­doned be­fore be­ing adopt­ed by his moth­er re­al­ly af­fect­ed me. In fact, the whole movie af­fect­ed me. I al­most felt like I was watch­ing an al­ter­nate ver­sion of my­self in the parts lead­ing up to his first mur­der. (I haven’t done that, thank­ful­ly. And I don’t plan to.)

But watch­ing him strug­gle through the men­tal health care sys­tem and get beat­en down over and over again just seemed all too real. All too per­son­al. For a while af­ter the movie it even had me wor­ried. Ques­tion­ing whether or not I was ac­tu­al­ly ca­pa­ble of do­ing some­thing like he did, some­thing so vi­o­lent. I’ve nev­er been a vi­o­lent per­son be­fore but … could I be? If I was pushed to the edge like that? If I lost all sup­port from my med­ical care sys­tem and my fam­i­ly? If so­ci­ety treat­ed me like com­plete trash like it had done to him? Would I even­tu­al­ly snap and ‘go were­wolf’ on some­one?

 

These ques­tions cloud­ed my mind for weeks, and I was ac­tu­al­ly scared that some­thing like that was a pos­si­bil­i­ty. I mean, there was just SO much I had in com­mon with that char­ac­ter. The men­tal ill­ness, head trau­ma, adop­tion, nev­er know­ing who my birth fa­ther was, the day­dream­ing, star­ing at my face in the mir­ror and feel­ing like some­one else was look­ing back, laugh­ing when I got un­com­fort­able, or when I didn’t know how to re­act to some­thing.

So many oth­er things … ex­cept the stalk­ing. That’s one thing I can proud­ly say I haven’t tried. But all jokes aside (heh heh) I re­al­ly won­dered if I could lose all san­i­ty and be­come a mur­der­er like he was. If I could lose con­trol and hurt some­one like that.

And you know what I re­al­ized? I al­ready had. Not the mur­der part. Calm down every­one, I’m not con­fess­ing to a crime here.

 

But the part about hurt­ing some­one … that part is true. And the per­son I was hurt­ing was …

Me. I had been do­ing it for years. By self harm­ing, like cut­ting or burn­ing my wrists. Or once, when I was a teenag­er, I slammed my head against the wall when I was over­whelmed (and also very wast­ed.)

Or most re­cent­ly, by drug abuse and ad­dic­tion. Some­thing I’ve strug­gled with for over a decade. Some­thing I’ve quit and then re­lapsed over and over again. And I hon­est­ly nev­er re­al­ly knew why I did it.

I mean, I knew it was con­nect­ed to my men­tal health. That I was self med­icat­ing. But I didn’t know ex­act­ly what my trig­gers were or why I did it at any giv­en time.

Not un­til I watched Jok­er, and start­ed look­ing into my adop­tion. Start­ed to process my feel­ings to­wards every­thing and ask my­self why it still af­fect­ed me so much. And I think I’ve fig­ured out why. I would do it when I felt lone­ly. Or de­pressed (which was of­ten a re­sult of the lone­li­ness.)

 

I know it sounds stu­pid to some peo­ple, but my drug of choice was Dex­tromethor­phan, or DXM. In oth­er words, the stuff in cough med­i­cine that gets you high. It’s a dis­so­cia­tive, which is the rea­son why I loved it. You see, when I took it, it would make me feel like I was in a dream like state. An al­ter­nate re­al­i­ty. A world of my own. It al­lowed me to feel like the un­re­al­is­tic ideas I cre­at­ed from my imag­i­na­tion were achiev­able, or at least, not as in­sane as they would seem when I was sober. It made me slip into my own di­men­sion where any­thing and every­thing seemed pos­si­ble, to an ex­tent. Most things were still bound by the physics of this world. But it would make my imag­i­na­tion and cre­ativ­i­ty come to life in ways that I’ve nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore. This al­lowed me to be­lieve that my fa­vorite char­ac­ters were real, and I was able to in­ter­act with them. And it was amaz­ing. Tru­ly, ut­ter­ly amaz­ing.

That is, un­til I start­ed tak­ing way too much of it, and be­came ad­dict­ed to the feel­ing of be­ing high. Like most oth­er drugs, its neg­a­tive side ef­fects vast­ly out­weighed the pos­i­tive, and it wasn’t long be­fore I was wreck­ing my real life in or­der to try and chase the dream world I had cre­at­ed. The highs also be­came less en­joy­able and more fright­en­ing, as my mind slipped fur­ther into psy­chosis. And for a while… I al­most want­ed that to hap­pen. For a while, I was will­ing to risk every­thing just to have one more fun trip, that nev­er ac­tu­al­ly was the last.

You see, one big rea­son I didn’t want to quit is be­cause I was afraid of los­ing the in­ter­ac­tions with my fa­vorite char­ac­ters. I felt like I need­ed those. That those were more im­por­tant than my fam­i­ly, or my friends.

 

It didn’t take long to re­al­ize how ut­ter­ly fool­ish that was though. Not to men­tion un­for­giv­ably self­ish. But I think a big rea­son why I didn’t want to stop was also be­cause I was afraid of liv­ing life sober again. Of hav­ing ac­tu­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties again. Also, of re­laps­ing and feel­ing like I failed… again.

But I even­tu­al­ly re­al­ized that I couldn’t live my life like that any­more. My health was rapid­ly de­clin­ing, and I’d had one too many run ins with death. I re­al­ized that I didn’t want to die like that. I didn’t want to leave my fam­i­ly be­hind. I couldn’t. I also didn’t want to be re­mem­bered as a drug ad­dict, or a fail­ure.

No, I want­ed to do some­thing with my life. Even if I still didn’t know what that some­thing was. I knew I had a pur­pose here, and I hadn’t ful­filled it yet. So I’ve start­ed work­ing on stay­ing clean. It’s prob­a­bly the hard­est in­ner bat­tle I’ve ever had to deal with, but it’s worth it.

It’s worth it be­cause I know I’ll be here for my fam­i­ly. For my par­ents and sib­lings. For my adorable nieces and nephews. I do it for them, es­pe­cial­ly. I want them to be proud of their Aun­tie Kate, and re­mem­ber me as a strong, pas­sion­ate, kind, cre­ative woman. I want to watch them grow up, and to be able to re­mem­ber the times I spend with them. I want to make my par­ents hap­py and my sib­lings proud of me. I want to spend more time with them, and the rest of my fam­i­ly.

I want to be an in­spi­ra­tion for oth­er peo­ple. Not just with ad­dic­tion, but with trau­ma and men­tal ill­ness as well. And I know I can’t do that if I’m not sober.

 

So that’s my res­o­lu­tion for 2020.

A brand new me.

And I’m gonna be fuck­ing awe­some.

 

—kait­lyn­jane

Flom­mist KAiT­LYN­jane has been draw­ing and writ­ing sto­ries ever since she knew how to scrib­ble on a piece of pa­per, or her sister’s fore­head when she was just two weeks old. Copy­right © 2020 KAiT­LYN­jane.

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