A Life through a Window

 My name is Catherine ---- --------, which is too long to write on a Scantron.  I was born yellow, and I’m the youngest, oldest, and middle child.  Most people tell me I have a pretty twisted view of life, to put it in a nice way.  I lead a twisted life, in a way; everything twists and turns and continues in a confusing and sometimes quite turmoiling pattern.  I live in a pretty solid, nonporous box where I’m married to my biggest fears (including my extensive list of phobias) and roommates with my harshest criticisms.  I think the best way to reflect upon my extremely short life is through a psychological window, as most everything that has made an impact on me has either been entirely psychological or has created some sort of psychological footprint.

 

“A poet can survive anything but a misprint.” – Oscar Wilde

 

Maybe it all went upside-down from birth when I had to be put in an incubator like a chicken egg, or maybe it all flipped when I was a baby and my parents got divorced.  That’s the first thing I can even remotely remember that caused me any sort of stress.  Even as a baby, I knew something wasn’t right with my parents.  I didn’t understand what a “divorce” was; I was not even two years old.  But I did understand how my parents fought, how controlling my father was.  I like to think of myself as intuitive, though some people would say I like to psycho-analyze them.  I may not have understood the language or what exactly was going on, but I knew what was happening, and I wasn’t happy about it.  From then on, I had the utmost fear of my father.  I didn’t want to go to his house, I would cry and scream and kick so I didn’t have to go.  When I had to go every other Thursday, I’d stress myself out to the point I’d be sick.  Unbeknownst to me at the time, this was a pattern that would continue for long after elementary school.  My dad wouldn’t let my brother and me call my mom when we were over at his house.  He wouldn’t let us talk about her, he said that when we were visiting him, it was “his time,” and he didn’t want “our mother” yelling at him.  Maybe that’s where my fear of men started.  I think my dad has played a tremendous role in shaping my life and personality, though none of it was direct.  I think Wilde was onto something.  I consider myself a poet, and I’ve obviously survived, though I have yet to have a misprint on a piece.

 

“Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.”

--Kurt Cobain 

I used to want to be someone else, anybody else.  I would have given everything to be the “normal” girl, not even the popular one, but just the plain jane-type that get by with As, Bs, and maybe a C here and there, but my mind would never let me.  All my life I’ve had psychological issues.  From childhood anxiety, the list grew on and on.  I personally don’t know if these are all separate things—maybe it’s just how I’m wired.  Going to doctors and having them diagnose me with insanity after insanity has given me a bit of iatrophobia, and with valid reason in my opinion.  When I got too much for my parents to handle, they sent me away.  Needless to say, this didn’t help me at all, but only made me senseless; after a few weeks, I’d completely lost myself.  There were times I had forgotten not only where I was, but who I was.  By the third place they sent me, I felt ruined, worthless.  I’d originally gotten sent away for depression.  They must have thought I was too much of a handful, and they’d send me off, I’d get fixed.  As soon as I got in the car for the first time, though, I knew it was only the beginning of a long struggle to free myself from myself.

 

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”

--William Shakespeare: Jacques, As You Like It Act 2, scene 7, 139–143

 

A few of my appearances on life’s stage have really affected the person I am today.  I can not begin to mention them all or even go into detail in a short essay such as this, however I feel it necessary, as I am looking through a psychological window, to explore some of the reasons as to why I am the way I am.  I am afraid.  Although my biggest fear is going to hell, I have many other fears.  I am afraid of men as well as people in general.  I am afraid of doctors, hospitals, and schools.  I am terrified of being touched, especially from behind.  My fear of men comes from the fact that they are, indeed, stronger than I am, bigger than I am, more powerful than I am.  I mean no belittlement to women when I say such things; it is how we are built by the hands of God.  I am afraid of being trapped.  I am afraid of people and society and social situations because of my fear of rejection, failure.  My social phobia started in middle school when things like cotillion started becoming the “cool thing” and you had to make a good impression or else you were a loser and couldn’t eat lunch with the “normal” kids.  Maybe that’s what drove me over the first edge, that time I first got sent away.  My parents drove me to a placement in the middle of the night to somewhere crawling with doctors, infested with medical staff; they were like termites eating away at my insides.  Doctors and hospitals both now give me goosebumps, and I avoid them as much as possible. 

In the beginning of my “treatment,” I was scared, I was depressed, I didn’t know what to do or to think.  As time went by, I began to develop rituals.  If I didn’t tie my shoes correctly four consecutive times, I was sure I’d be stuck there for another year.  If I didn’t read text verbatim more than twice but less than ten times, save for six, seven, and nine, I knew the world was doomed to come crushing down on me.  As time went by, everything changed.  When I saw my family, they cried.  I had never seen my sister cry before.  It was a little stressful, to say the least, to be the cause of the first tears of my sister I had ever seen.  I will never forget the times I had to ride in an ambulance, but one time especially.

I don’t remember the date, it was sometime late autumn.  I went two hours from Richmond to Staunton in an ambulance.   I remember perfectly what the men looked like who loaded me in the vehicle like a package in a UPS truck.  Is that what I was, a package, just waiting to be transported to its next destination?  I suppose I was, but I must not dwell on it now.  I remember the music that was playing: some sort of country mixed with rap that made me nauseous.  The two-hour ride was far too boring for my taste, so I entertained myself by holding my breath for periods of time and watching the line on the computer screen change its course.  When I finally arrived at this place in which I was to reside for four months, I had no idea what was ahead.

After the four months I spent there, after having not gotten any “better,” after having not “improved my condition,” I was sent to Second Nature Blue Ridge.  The idea didn’t seem so bad: my mother told me I’d be living in a cabin and would go out in a field to play games and what not.  I believed her.  The moment I got to Second Nature Blue Ridge, I stopped believing adults.

There were no cabins, but there were heavy tarps I had to tie to trees in thunderstorms in order to not get soaked by rain when I slept.  There was not a field of green grass, but a smoky-smelling campsite with a hole in lieu of a toilet.  I don’t think it would have been half as bad if they would have put me in a single-sex group.  Second Nature was basically the final determining factor for my intense and life-controlling androphobia.  However, I know that all of these events will make me a better person, and I will grow from them.  While I lived in the woods, I lived in constant fear of anything and everything to the point where I was actually glad to be leaving, even if it meant going to a boarding school for kids with “problems.”

When I graduated New Leaf Academy, I’d made great progress.  I had made a record time through all the levels, as well as earned respect and admiration from staff and students.  I was a role model, I was a favorite.  I was proud when I graduated, and I thought life would be daisies from then on, but I was wrong, life is never daisies.

Although I have had to come to terms with trauma, debilitating phobias and sometimes intense psychological tumult, I know that it will all turn out well, because if it’s not good, then it’s not over.  What does not kill us makes us stronger, and I have no objection to the strengthening of my mind, body, or soul.  I’ve got a good life and a good family, and I am only angry at the world as a result of my ignorance.  I know I must do something with my experiences, something great, because I did not go through my life just to be a nobody.  God has something great in store for all of us, including myself, and we all must take advantage of it, for:

They that sow in tears shall reap joy. [Psalms 126:5]

Reviews

[LoveAndDreams]

Wow.
This is so....
Just those first sentences were amazing....
For example, "I live in a pretty solid, nonporous box where I’m married to my biggest fears (including my extensive list of phobias) and roommates with my harshest criticisms."
Brilliant....
:)

[Chirpy!]

I forgot how much I like your writing...

[Magdelena]

OMG!!! This was one of the best writes I have had the good fortune to read in many a year! You made me feel like I was inside of your thoughts with this. Absolutly stunning! I was held captive from start, till the ending line..

Mag xx

[nostal]

Amazing
Intrigueing
Spell-binding
Mercilessly written
A great write.

[catherine]

THIS IS AMAZING. And you wrote this in less than an hour? Wow.

[deeps]

Whoa! Now this is what I call a write here.
I like this alot, Quite intriquing and inspirational in ways.
I like the quotes you used as well.
Wilde, Cobain, and Shakespeare! Awesome
Then at the end you use Psalms. excellent choice.
This is one amazing write.