I'm Not Giving a Trigger Warning
The first time I fell in love with a boy, I was fifteen years old.
I was going to church regularly then, and believed in God.
We met at a church retreat held on the grounds of University of San Diego.
He was a tall, hunched over mysterious type, sporting dark brown shoulder-length hair. His name was Mike Yu and he played bass guitar during singspirations. When we spoke (the very first time Kat-the-huntress pounced on one of the male species), I quickly learned he loved the Beatles. (I'm writing this while listening to "Here Comes the Sun" on a one-hour loop).
We did nothing more but walk around, talk, and at the height of my bliss we held hands while saying goodnight, on the last night of the retreat, while we were alone together in a dim courtyard.
He lived in Rancho Palos Verdes, and I lived in Anaheim. For someone without a car, the distance was insurmountable. Also two years older, he was getting ready to attend the University of Washington in Seattle the following year. I would be trapped in high school for another two years.
The first few days and weeks after saying our goodbyes was indescribably painful. The unknown (and I was pessimistic about a future together) reduced me to hard sobbing on the carpeted floor of my bedroom. My lifelong depression dipped down into a black, hollow emptiness. It felt then (and turned out to be) that we'd never see each other in person again. We did hear each other's voices over the telephone for several months though.
We had marathon conversations (upwards of 12+ hours) that spanned nights. Mostly, he loved to hear me talk. I thought then that it might have been the content of my speech. Now I wonder if it was also my voice (more on that in a future blog post).
I fell in love with his mystique, not who he really was, because I was just an immature teenager. To me he was a conglomeration of pleasing traits: quiet, standoffish, handsome, good aesthetic (grunge, okay? we were in the '90's - I'm pretty sure he picked UW because Seattle is where Kurt Cobain died). He let me do most of the talking, and gave very sparing crumbs of affection that had me riding cloud nine (only to collapse in brain chemical withdrawals later).
One night that painful first week, I was writhing around on the carpeted floor of my bedroom, beside my bookshelf, sobbing. The emotional pain felt so unbearable and insurmountable that I grasped a nearby letter opener (more on that in a future blog post), put it to my left wrist, and began to slash. Over and over in a swift fashion. Not using too much pressure so that I wouldn't penetrate too deeply. I slashed horizontally, because I knew nothing about veins back then, and this was the days before the Internet.
Beads of blood appeared, and I felt a rush of endorphins from the quick pricks of pain I repeated by ceaselessly slashing.
Over the course of the next month (and for many years after, alternating abstinence and relapses in the following two decades), I reopened the cuts on my wrist. One of them became quite deep, and I wore bandages and long sleeves and armbands to cover up and hide the marks from sight. Sometimes when I was really angry at my family for not understanding my emotional pain (by treating me in an unintentionally or intentionally callous manner), I would purposely let them see the bloody marks on my arm. In order to hurt them, and to prove my internal pain was real. My father and brother never said anything about it, and my mother only shame-whispered "stop doing that".
Self-harm, whether through cutting or drugs or sex, became a frequent pattern through my years at UC Berkeley and post-college living in Seattle. All of that culminated in my one and only major suicide attempt - an overdose during the summer of 2004. My father called me after that and for the first time ever attempted to emotionally connect with me. It almost felt too painful, as if it was too little too late. Or maybe it was too much.
I can't remember when I stopped believing in God. Probably that summer of 1995. The pain of that separation from the first boy I loved, the loss of hope, and the subsequent coldness of my family led me down a path of self-destruction. Don't get me wrong. I had so much fun during those days, and heaps of lessons that serve me well in my profession today, so no regrets. But I always thought the idea that God was a Him was utterly ridiculous and stupid. It wasn't until the last decade when I began understanding my father more, from afar (and from the few instances I've seen how good and kind he is underneath the hot temper and stoicism) that I'm willing to entertain the masculine aspect of "God".
It took understanding that I'm autistic to understand my father. Also in the last decade, the unveiling of my mother's true nature began, accelerating until I had no choice but to see the truth: that she has always been child-like. She has always been simultaneously admiring, jealous, possessive, and envious of me. As I've grown older, she's begun to appear younger and younger in age to me, someone I treat delicately because of her limited emotional and intellectual understanding. My mother can be prone to dramatic swings between passive-aggressive martyrdom ("I'm a terrible mother") and bountiful charity (she saved me financially when I crashed to zero in my 30's). Her sensitivity and innocence is what makes me continue to be patient with her. Her heart is almost always in the right place.
The traumas of my childhood and young adulthood took years to cry out. I endured years of tormenting recurring nightmares featuring each member of my family, during which I'd scream out in my sleep. Ex-boyfriends told me how scary it can be to sleep next to me. Once I punched the wall and woke myself up. I also woke up crying or yelling. I told myself that it was my way of processing all the trauma and rage, because I had to hold it together and perform well during the daytime.
Tonight just felt the right time to share all this on my Livejournal.
Daniel just "status updated" us on Facebook as "in a relationship", because social media is a big part of his life. And even though it's not in mine (he had to ask me to log into FB after I failed to see it for a day) - I accepted and gave him an "eeeee!" and heart-emoji. This is what it's like to want your partner to be happy, even if you aren't crazy about the same stuff.
This past Wednesday night, I might've hit one of my rock bottoms in terms of emotional pain. I could not stop crying for much of the day (due to recent trauma triggers). When Daniel came over in the evening, my sobbing spells seemed to intensify. It felt like I was barfing up raw emotional pain. I liked him rubbing my legs and arms and holding me tight. I liked being held.
At one point, I slightly-lashed out at him like I have been to my brother, and he got up and said he was too tired for this - he had come from a 10-hour day at the understaffed veterinary hospital he works at. He's always been the most charitable person when it comes to people or animals needing him, and here I was, telling him that what he was telling me wasn't helpful.
He got up to leave. I was in the dark lying in my bed. I scrambled up when he reached the hallway, and I choked out, "I can't do this." He came back and sat down on the bed. "I can't have you leave after I've just been this vulnerable". I was crying again, and saying sorry for having upset him.
He stayed. And talked. And gently explained I hadn't done anything wrong, that he was just exhausted, and that he will come over the following day to cook us dinner. I calmed instantly, and he stayed a bit longer to ensure I was okay, and then he left.
I cannot explain to you what I felt when he left. The feeling is the opposite of what I felt in July of 1995. I want to live now. I have hope. I am not alone. I can make it through this pain.
It's not just Daniel (don't worry, I'm not a hopeless romantic anymore). It's what happened the next day (an assurance that I am valuable to my profession and to my peers) - but I will save that for a future blog post. Let's just say the next day was like stepping through the looking glass, supersymmetry. Maybe I'll want to live more during the second half of my life. What is that going to be like? I'm so comfortable with pain and misery, darkness and destruction, death and harm, that it might be new and uncomfortable at first getting used to light and love, care and respect, growth and possibility.
This blog post is dedicated to Gabby Petito, who was so much like me. I wish she had received the chance to experience love and respect, joy and safety, later in her life. She will be a good catalyst for change. People need more training/knowledge about emotional pain, relationship dynamics, and what to look out for in order to protect loved ones.