Tell Your Inner Harvey Dent to Go to Hell: dealing with your inner critic.

I am obsessed with productivity. I judge my entire merit, day, week, life, performance, moral fiber, everything on how productive I am, which is quite the complication since I have ADHD, PTSD, and Depression. In other words, I’m the Harvey Dent of my own life. One side of me is a fairly decent person who is generally benevolent and eager to do things that matter. The other is a scathing, aggressive, bitter, malevolent, irrationally intense, and relentless critic with a dogged determination to make every minute a line item on a budget to determine if I used my time efficiently or not. From that, I then determine if I am lazy, lacking self-discipline, a failure, a dreg on those I care about most, a bum, a loser… basically every bad thing I can think of in one breath (and then some). And the more I do it, which is constantly at this time, the more endurance that fucker seems to have. Except I’m the fucker. And I’m my own victim. Because in spite of the physical violence, emotional trauma, and other things I have experienced at the hands of others, my treatment of myself is the most persistent and pervasive.

fate3-1

I spend all day tallying up every second. And it’s automatic. I don’t even need to pay attention anymore. I can criticize myself without thinking about it and it is this poisonous habit that just beats me down every day and the problem is, it isn’t like you can outrun your own mind.

So I am going to do something incredibly counter-intuitive and list everything I did manage to do this weekend.

I….

  1. went to a group dinner when I normally would have hidden because I dread things like that as much as I want to go. I worry I will get there and freeze.
  2. got groceries and they were more on the healthy side.
  3. I made sliced, baked apple crisps for the first time with cinnamon and a dash of sugar as opposed to something like, say, ice cream.
  4. I started my mock portfolio I am going to take to my interview to show them what I can do with their branding materials. I also started and completed some of the bigger projects.
  5. I went for a two mile run.
  6. I went outside two times for two hours to get some sun because if I don’t make a point to do it, I pull a vampire and stay in the shadow that is my house all day and then begin the night depressed because I have cabin fever.
  7. I made peanut butter energy protein bites for when I impulsively want to reach for candy.
  8. I didn’t order takeout, at all.
  9. I purchased printer ink and a few other things I needed.
  10. I stocked up a bank of blog entries that will be posted at scheduled times in the next week or so in the event I don’t feel well enough to write.
  11. I called my mother and since she is a talker and I am more of a don’t talk, let’s listen to music and if you want to know how I am I will write you a manifesto kind of person, it can be pretty overwhelming for me.
  12. I booked a hotel room for my interview and looked at flight costs.
  13. I created a site page in my blog for fiction entries so they are all easily accessible (probably more for me than anything).
  14. I did three loads of laundry.
  15. I gave my dogs their medication consistently and had a lot of quality time with them.
  16. I worked on assignments, read, edited, and watched videos for a class I’m finishing up.
  17. I did my dishes nearly as soon as I made them, even the gross peanut butter ones that you always want to put off.
  18. I came up with an idea for another section of my site that shares foods I tried that are supposed to help with depression and anxiety, as well as exercises.
  19. I made this list without using the word “but” to negate whatever I tried to say to give myself credit.

If you haven’t yet, make your own list, short or long, and try not to use any of the following words: just, but, however, while, although, etc. At least for me, I can’t stop Two Face (my critic) from constantly weighing my value. I can however, talk back and that’s something I’m learning to do. When I let my inner critic monopolize the conversation, that becomes the truth because everything is defined by that one inner voice. I’m to this point where I need to make a more concerted effort to play devil’s advocate with my inner critic so I can at least keep her quiet fifty percent of the time.

The image used in this post is from Ron Wagner in The Book of Fate. I’m all about some Batman.

Oh Louis, Louis.

This is the third in a set of entries. You can read the previous entry here.

More walking. It makes me think of that time I read the Hobbit, well the dozens of times, because every time I sat down, I got through ten pages and felt compelled to nap. I’m not quite sure if it was from boredom or being tired for the characters. I suppose I’m a bit like Bilbo Baggins, whining and wishing for the comfort of home, a home to which I might never return. I hear that he becomes a hero in the end. Based on the beginning, I find that very unlikely but I suppose I will never know if I don’t read it. Surely nobody in this group is going to tell me. I begin to wonder if I will become a hero by the end of this, whatever this is, because I have never been told. Unlikely as well.

I do always carry that book with me, wherever I go in case I will finish it. Not finishing a book haunts me. Unfortunately, I left without any warning and left it behind on the stand. I picture it now, sitting there on the finely polished mahogany, the ink shining in the lamp light. I can feel the smooth edges of its cover at my finger tips and the rough edges of those dog-earred pages where I gave up on it so many times. I feel myself open the book and look at the title of its first page: “An Unexpected Party.” I think about my own unexpected party and the irritating silence of knowing nothing when I know my home so well I can walk through it a hundred miles away. I begin to stare at the map and to look at it. I hear steady, familiar footsteps in the hallway, the sturdy soles of my father’s boots as he walks in to change. I hear the joyful, warm, laugh of my mother from her study. She is probably reading one of my grandmother’s letters from Prague, lively letters about her days in the year before she got sick. Now and then when my mother begins to miss her or forget that thing she used to say (what was it?), she will read them and store them in a safe place for the next time.

I feel her hand on my shoulder now as a I read, only to realize that it is Louis’s soft paw. I pinch it and he licks me. I once read somewhere that to dogs, hugs are a sign of power and dominance and they don’t interpret them as an expression of love. That may be true but still I wonder, if all he has to judge from is my body language, if he knows from the way I put my cheek on his head as I carry him and stroke his paw that maybe he knows how much I love him, even now, already, because until further notice, he is all I have and I love him for that. All the same, I put him down for a bit to walk beside me. He prances and periodically runs into my leg, bouncing off my shoe.

We make four more turns and then hit a dead end. The old man just blankly stares at the red, wooden wall in front of him and the super-spy stands behind me, staring vigilantly back down the alley. The old man scratches his head and looks up. I vaguely begin to feel… exposed. I look above and see balconies on either side of the once lifeless alley. A calico sits on the balcony above me, her tail twitching slowly and confidently, as if she is conducting her latest masterpiece. She turns and walks through an open door. I pick up Louis. Within moments, the entire red, wooden wall swings backward from invisible hinges and in we walk. James Bond takes the horse by the reins and leads it into a stall. The old man walks straight through and beckons me with a wave over his shoulder. Louis and I follow. Bond puts an arm out in front of me and silently gestures for me to put Louis in with the horse. “I’m not leaving him in here.” I grip Louis and step around Get Smart, walking into a stone room before he can stop me.

There is a red table with benches and the old man is sitting at it alone. I sit down beside him and he rubs Louis behind the ears. Secret Service stands by a door with his hands at his sides. So much personality, that one. Then in steps the most fierce creature I have ever seen.

She steps up to the head of the table and puts her hands down upon it. Looking straight into the old man’s eyes. Her’s are a sharp, brilliant emerald green. Her jet black hair is tied back in a very tight, and seemingly painful, French-braid. Deep, fierce pieces of solid, unnaturally red, the color of blood, hairs weave throughout the darkness of the braid. Her features are all very sharp and her face very stoic. She wears black combat boots, black military pants, and a fascinating sort of fabric that shifts color as she moves in and out of what little light there is coming through holes in the slats of the wooden ceiling. I don’t know whether to avert my gaze or stare.

“I see you made it.” She has a surprisingly soft, patient voice.

The old man looks at me and nods. “Without much difficulty as well.”

“Wonderful. Are you hungry?”

“Starving.” The word is out of my mouth before I can consider whether I should speak.

“I highly doubt that but you must be very hungry. I’ll have dinner brought in.” She looks to the corner of the room, “Sit down, Peter, nobody is going to be coming through that door, I assure you.” Peter? I would have sooner expected Ivan the Terrible. Whether it was from the distraction of my thoughts or something else, he is seated before I have seen him move and the woman is gone. It’s very strange to me that they both have the same stealth of a jaguar, both quick and in some unspoken way, predatory.

Louis takes one look at Peter and crawls into my messenger bag. With those jet black eyes picking me apart, I don’t blame him.

Two men, a barefooted horse, and a Louis.

This is the second in a series of (currently) 3 entries. I’d recommend reading the first one.

I begin to search for a name. I want it to be profound, something that will prove my wisdom at so young an age. It’s a lot of pressure to pick a name. No wonder so many people name their children after themselves. It’s not honor. It’s cheating. I look at him again. He has a chubby black nose and soft eyes with which he could conquer the world. He’s calm and small. Napoleon. I’ll name him Napoleon because I want to prove that I am ironic and because, well, he is short. Perhaps he will prove to be feisty when he isn’t sleeping so much.

I look at him and smile as he flops on his side after relieving himself. Not a promising start for an ambitious, demanding conqueror. Louis. I will name him Louis because he will love the life of leisure I can give him as soon as we rid ourselves of this mess. I catch his eye and rub my finger against my index and middle fingers as if I have food, seeing if he will come to me. He takes a big breath and sighs. Not likely. It figures. Three others to give me companionship. One doesn’t speak and only observes, making you feel as if he is searching you, picking you apart for wounds if he should ever need to save, or worse, strike you. The other speaks with an accent that is grating to me ears. He is kind enough but I can’t bear much more of the twang. It’s like a bad Western– and I hate good Westerns. Besides, he likes to walk ahead with the horse. Whovever thought it was wise to feed a horse and then let him walk in front of the pack obviously didn’t think enough.

And last of all, a dog who is about as animated as a stuffed animal.

It seems as if there are three movies going on simultaneously. True Grit. Some sort of movie in which the president is in danger and has a body guard tailing him. And Homeward Bound. Make the any Lord of the Rings movie. Because all we seem to do is walk.

I groan just from the irritation of my own negative thoughts and feelings. I can’t stand even myself. I lean my head up against the wall and feel the rough bricks hang on to a few pieces of hair. The young man immediately reaches over and pushes the back of my head away from the wall. “Thanks.” I mouth. He only checks to make sure no hair is caught to the brick.

The older man is gently picking up crates and barrels down the alley. He finds one and retrieves a wad of papers. I was hoping for more. A key. Something that proved something. Anything at all. That we had a destination. He smiles at me and then spits.

The end of the crate digs into my thighs. I walk up to the horse and feel the leather saddle on his back. His tail swishes almost silently behind him. I grab a carrots about of my messenger bag and hand them to him. Beside me, the older man picks up the crate and pulls out a cap, like a newsboy cap and shoves it on my head roughly but with what I can assume is as much gentleness as he could muster. Then, without another word, he starts to saunter back down the alley and, though I want to stop, I want to scream “Where are we going?! I have a right to know!” I follow him. And Louis catches up, steps on the back of my pants and I pick him up. He licks my ear and we keep ambling, silent in our small convoy through this labyrinth of bricks.

Aiming for sport.

Sometimes I’m the lion, and sometimes I’m the doe. When you make me mad, when I’m passionate about something, when my blood is racing so fast it’s roaring like a hundred white rapids, I’m the lion. My curly hair rests, curl over curl, twenty rolling masses protecting my vulnerable neck and masking my exposed heart. But my hide won’t be thick forever, sometime I have to lay down in the sun. The heat wears on me and before I know it my lashes are caressing one another. My paws grow too heavy to pick up and I’m rooted where I stand. I’m tamed and I fall heavily, like a building drawn too far into the sky. Pride is strong and stubborn but it is short lived.

animal deer japan
Photo by Ghost Presenter on Pexels.com

And then I’m the doe, prancing around dead leaves and snow melting on my nose. All at once I’m intentional, nervous, and vulnerable. I look so innocent, standing there. I don’t make much noise but you watch me none the less. At first you enjoy it, you’re entranced. You want to draw closer and pet me, run your hands along my long back. You watch my every movement, the mucsles on my legs running smoothly like water in a shallow river. No sound, no rocks to hinder it.

But then it grows cold and that river turns to ice. The seasons change and you’re not a boy anymore. My grace doesn’t matter to you. You forget the fact that I mean no harm; it’s erased from your mind as if you never knew it. You forget that first snowfall and the joy of the first flurries settling on the ground. You pull out your gun and you shoot me, a bullet to the heart.

And all at once, you’ve taken everything I ever was, a proud yet vulnerable thing. And with one fatal blow, you turned both hearts into shrapnel. Because when you were a boy somebody let you play with a gun and pretend to shoot imaginary pigeons. And when you grew, you forgot who you were shooting at, who you were hurting. You drew me in because you loved me, because I loved you, because you made me feel wild and tame at the same time, and just when I walked into the clearing, you punctured me with lead.

 

This is a throwback, something I wrote nine years ago.

Stock photographed lives.

Sometimes when I close my eyes and dig my fingers ever so slightly into my scalp I have a moment of calm. You know the cliche, calm before the storm. I take a suppressed breath against the mountain sitting on my lungs and try to heave it up just to get a moment, a moment.

Then my eyes can stand the darkness no longer. My lungs can wait no longer and I exhale and a storm floods into my eyes and water fills my lungs and I choke.

I choke because I realize just how much I have to do, just how much I dread doing it, and that I am locked inside this hamster wheel. Where do they get the inspiration for all of those clothing and beauty ads where people are loving life, the sun always shines on a positive world that makes you feel like if you shelter yourself in American Eagle clothing that same sun will shine on you? If art is imitation as Plato claimed, where are they getting this imitation? Where is this happiness they are imitating? Because I’ve seen none of it.

The streets they walk down freely, in shorts that make their legs look long and form-flattering shirts, with free flowing hair, are dirty and filled with rude people rushing because their lunch hours are ending at which point they’ll be chained to a mediocre job they detest in order to pay a mortgage.

Where is this world they’re imitating? Because the only voices I hear are bill collectors and the only world I am seeing is one of demands.

People Like You

 

 

 

 

 

Although I have a mental illness and am aware of cultural misconceptions of what that means, I still hold those same stereotypes and stigma against myself, only making things worse. I was thinking about this last night and how much I worry people won’t see beyond my diagnosis if they find out. As humans, we are visual creatures so I came up with the idea of taking photos of people with mental illnesses which expand our understanding of what that means. I chose some photos of myself in moments where I am happy and active as a means of showing that anybody can have a mental illness despite appearances, we should not assume people aren’t struggling with things, and it is just another illness but because it happens mostly in the brain, it isn’t always visible.

I wanted to show that I am a person WITH a mental illness, not a mentally ill person. I am still myself and an entire person without it. Sometimes I need that reminder and I think others do too. I’m asking people who are comfortable and interested to submit their own photos so I can add them to the collage I want to put on social media and my blog. I’m not saying this is going to be a big thing at all but, if for anything, I think we deserve the right to represent and speak for ourselves.

If you are interested, please fill out this google form.

Thank you for your interest and I welcome any thoughts, questions, or suggestions you might have.

(I need both your pictures AND the form via Google. It is fairly easy to complete, like a survey. I won’t use your name without your permission and will have you approve the image first. If you can’t do it on google, email your pictures and these answers to me at atlasgriffin12@gmail.com

Name
Email Address
Are you 18 years of age or older? If you aren’t, I will just need to make sure there isn’t a legal issue with me sharing your photos but I don’t believe there is.
Any blog or social media accounts you wish to include
Diagnosis (if you are comfortable)
Anything you’d want to share or to have people know about you that goes beyond your diagnosis (completely optional and may be used in graphics)
I give permission for the aintnoatlas.com blog and associated social media accounts to use the photographs I am providing for the sake of this project. I understand they may be posted on social media and a blog. By sharing these photos, I am asserting I have the rights to the photographs and any necessary permissions of those involved in taking them or shown in the photos.
Questions and Comments

 

 

You were meant for me.

Heads up: if you have lost a child, particularly in pregnancy, you may want to consider whether or not you want to read this before starting as it is about that.

I lay on the bathroom floor until all the midnights for a month after you left me. Pushing my forehead into the cold, dingy white tile, I wondered why you’d gone, where the redeeming quality was, where the sun was hiding. I’d finger my pink baby blanket mom had wrapped me in as a child but took no comfort for it. There was no consolation prize for this and I didn’t really understand what God was trying to teach me when he closed the door behind you and locked all the windows. The only thing that worked when it was supposed to was the plumbing in that clammy bathroom. After I hugged the lid with frail fingers, the toilet, though it did so reluctantly, flushed. Though it came through rusted pipes, the water always found its way to my tired body. Those things worked, why couldn’t I?

It would be so much easier if there had been a “why” to go with a “what” but I suppose there are some questions that don’t have answers. It was a small but brutal jest that left me alone on that bathroom floor every night, pulling up my shirt and looking down at exposed ribs, following them down to a scarred stomach and pelvis. The worst part was there were scars but no you. My body had proof you’d been there, proof you’d existed, but my arms were and remain empty. Somewhere inside I knew it. But the world showed no record of you. You weren’t there in my apartment,waking me up in the middle of the night wailing like some sort of siren. You weren’t there. Instead I just had this scary, unaffected, silence in your place. I knew you were there somewhere, had been there somewhere. My body knew it. My scars proved it. But as far as the world was concerned you were just a pocket of silence, a blank silence that had never really been there.

I lay on that bathroom floor every night until midnight for a month, just trying to remember the honey brown locks that I’d never comb, the first words that would never be spoken, the kindergarten graduation I’d never attend, the milk that would never be spilled. Then I settled on the truth that hearts are broken every day and mine isn’t the only one chained to the bathroom floor, swaddled in a pink baby blanket where perhaps somebody else ought to be. So that thirty-first night, I got up and went into the bedroom and turned on Letterman. You had been in there somewhere once, tucked securely beneath my heart. I had the scars to prove it. Maybe the world forgets the lost too easily in its eagerness to pick up latenight talkshows and turn the channel to afternoon sitcoms. But all the same you can only swim against the stream for so long before your body fails and it sweeps you along with it. Wherever you’d gone I couldn’t follow and you can’t hold on to a hand that isn’t there. It wasn’t time to let you go. There is never a time or place for that sort of thing. But either way, at some point I had to do it. At some point I had to get lost in the television and let somebody else do the talking.

This is something I wrote at nineteen that has always stuck in the back of my mind. I’d never been pregnant and still haven’t so I forget exactly what led to me writing this. I think I was listening to “You were meant for me” by Jewel and thinking about an alternative meaning for it.

Journey between two walls.

There’s three of us. I don’t know where we’re travelling but I know we must do it urgently. There’s also the most adorable, chubby puppy I have ever seen, brown with a round face and even rounder eyes that melt you to the ground. We’re accompanied by a white horse with the most beautiful white hair I have ever seen.

We enter the city through a gate. I don’t know what city or even the general location of the city but it feels partly European with the narrow road between two sides of the street, on both of which sit lodging. The road is stone paved and there are some fires in lanterns just at the gate as it rolls downward behind us. Something in the deafening sound as it hits the ground unsettles me.

I shift a books of Irish folk tales in my satchel as it sticks out, pushing it down in the bag and putting the pup in there, letting it open so he can calmly look out, observing the street around him. He presses his cold nose against my hand thankfully. The horse walks gracefully beside me, his shoes making virtually no sound, almost as if they are lined with layers of cloth.

The old man, my escort, with the handlebar mustache and the kind brown eyes, smiles back at me, looking furtively to see if I’m still there. His dress reminds me of an American from the Midwest with his jeans and flannel button-up. His brown boots carry him steadily onward down the street.

Behind me, there is a young man, mid-20s with jet black hair and obsidian eyes that catch and swallow everything from a speck of dust to the wrinkles in a flag waving over one of the doorways. I start to walk under an awning and he sternly pushes me away, point to a minor, hardly visible tear in the red cover and then to a post bent outward. He turns to look about him and whistles the quietest, clearest whistle I have ever heard in my life. The older man doesn’t even turn to him. Instead, he immediately turns left and takes us down an even more narrow alley, one where I can touch the walls on both sides. I don’t like this. I begin to feel like a mouse with a hawk looming overhead, waiting on him to drop down and end my short existence. I have to clench my hands to keep from instinctively wincing and clenching my scrawny shoulder muscles to my ears. The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that I move like a mouse, in and out of the site of a calm, patient predator.

I stick my arms out and allow my fingertips to graze the walls, taking in their rough stone textures and the chiseled and weathered cracks among them. Another soft whistle. I turn around and the young man shakes his head, pointing to the pads of his fingertips and then pretending to place them on the walls. Fingerprints. I bite back a sigh and hold onto my lower lip with my teeth for a moment then drop my shoulders and my hands to my sides.

After a long and agonizing 15 minutes of claustrophobia, we emerge from the narrow passageway into yet another silent street, this one with a fire burning. I sit down on a wooden crate and let the puppy out to relieve himself. I don’t have a name for him. I suppose I didn’t think they would let me keep him long enough.

 

This is something I wrote sort of for the sake of writing about 5 to six years ago. I wrote several entries in a row but never finished it. This is the first and was something I thought would be a good fit for my blog to add a bit of variance.

Breathing in water.

I pull my head above water and shake it. Cold air stings the water droplets on my face. The waving water pushes my shoulders down. I sink below. I punch at the endless and suffocating cocoon of navy around me, effective as a child against a giant. Some wave is not going to wash over me. I’m not going to sink, all the rage rushing through my veins says I won’t.  Something catches my feet, wraps around an ankle and pulls. A last fleeting hope floats out into an air bubble in front of my face. I’m going to sink.

Water beats around me, waves hitting me from all directions. It’s just a flash of black after black wave. I don’t kick at it so much as flail and my ankle is freed. I scramble in the most desperate, least graceful attempt I have ever made, pulling at the water above me.  My mouth feels cold stinging air and I inhale like it is my first and last breath. I am shoved coldly and forcefully down by hands I can’t see.

Hopelessness gives way to frustration and ebbs back into hopelessness. My muscles relax and I sit there, suspended like a doll on a shelf. I cannot do a thing. My hair floats above me, reaching for the surface. It seems to be the only part of me that believes it should be above water. I try to follow it up only to feel the colliding crash of a wave into the surface of the water hit me in the stomach suddenly and brutally. The water beats me down, again, and again, and again, from all directions. Lactid acid burns in my muscles and once I do reach the cold air again it freezes in my lungs. Heat never burned as hot as that cold air, siphoning all the energy and hope left in my gut.

How do people swim? How do they surf, how do they wade in these currents? How do I get washed away under a thunderous wave while they flirt around in the sandbar? This and so many other questions I do not understand but it seems that preponderance doesn’t stop the sinking. Maybe I will just quit. Maybe I will just forget to breathe. What will the water do to me then? Who will the darkness wash over?

Those would all be things I would be thinking if I had enough oxygen left in my body. I stare out into what I can see, no sunshine breaking the surface to provide light past my own area. My body begins to feel so heavy I feel as if there is water in it, as if I have either become the cold and merciless water or have allowed it to fill my every extremity with boulders. I just drift there, batted back and forth by the waves like a lifeless toy being hungrily attacked by an overzealous dog.

The waves grow tired of me, they cease. Maybe I have enough to get to the surface. But whatever I might have left will be gone long before I am submerged again. For the first time, I cannot move towards the surface with the ignorant belief that I will be able to stay.

This is something I wrote maybe six years ago when I was about 23.

Contract Attempt II

So I didn’t accomplish all of my contract items yesterday but I managed several. Consistency. That’s the enemy of depression. At least for me. I need to keep doing this and building confidence in the idea that I can be consistent and can trust myself when I make promises to myself. My whole life, empirical evidence has forced into my head that you can’t trust people, even those who are supposed to love you the hardest. And with low self-esteem, I always had high aspirations but didn’t trust myself or believe in myself. I feel like as an adult, when all protections are removed and you take a hard look at yourself, if you can’t trust yourself you don’t really have any sort of footing in your life. At least I don’t. I think I get blown around my life by every single, small gust of wind because I don’t feel rooted in the idea that if nothing else, I can depend on myself and I really want to change that.

That likely starts with addressing my kryptonite, having eyes wayyyy too big for my appetite. I set goals way too high too fast and then rain down on myself hard when I don’t meet them so tomorrow, here is my contract for myself.

 

I promise, promise, promise myself that I will wake up by 8 am and go to bed by midnight.

I promise I will go to therapy tomorrow (I managed to make an appointment today and find a counselor, finally).

I promise I will do two hours of schoolwork tomorrow. (8 would be fantastic but let’s not overshoot and then I can be pleasantly surprised instead of unsurprisingly disappointed). 

I promise to go for a run. 

 

Let’s see how this one goes.