Coming to terms with my sexual identity, and other post-partum tantrums.
Okay so I’m going to take a nap. Or two.
And then I’m going to write out my story cause they said I should write about my family and what happened when I was at St. Edward’s.
And a list of people I think y’all should investigate related to the story.
FAMILY LIFE:
Okay so here are the events that prompted the nervous breakdown and inability to get it together in Summer of ‘10. Grandmother passed away, soon experimented with marijuana after with few problems except for decreased sociability. First bad trip occured when I tried pot brownies and then I went really really manic. But was able to come back down. Kept having flashbacks. Next big incident was at a birthday party for Rebekka Vera. All I really remember was running around the party acting crazy and smoking with Estelle on the balcony who warned me that the pot was a really strong strain called “purple urkel” and that I shouldn’t smoke a lot if it was my first time. I start smoking and start growing increasingly paranoid and move upstairs to the bedroom. I didn’t know the strain was an indica which is used to relax muscles and in the process causes them to twitch involuntarily. Well my legs begin to twitch and I’m soon joined by Rebekka and Jake who join me in the closet and start singing to me to calm me down because I’m hallucinating and disembodied (hallucinating my hands and watching them float). I start to seize uncontrollably. I mean matrix style. Full convulsions in the bed for about an hour, at which time they decide it’s best to leave me there. They then rejoin the party. The next day we go to lunch everyone wants to know what happened and I’m like yeah I had a really bad seizure, imagined I was dying, and they just kind of get me caught up.
More problems with marijuana follow that, I’m guessing because the seizure prompted a panic attack , a reaction I kept “reloading” every time I smoked. Around this time I pick up a heavier smoking habit with my asian acquaintance Connie. And I think the paranoia problems got really bad because her and her boyfriend were always having problems and bringing me in as the third wheel, who would then behave just as paranoidly and cause more drama. I was just way too out of it, always behaving erratically. Anyway, I start diagnosing myself and spending all my time on the computer reading about mental symptoms and thinking I’ve got schizophrenia or bipolar or something. I’m always paranoid, hypersexual, unable to focus, and then I realized I was unable to block out thoughts. So thoughts that would occur in the animalistic “flight or flight” portions of a persons mind keep getting pushed to the front. So.. normally I would probably react to unconscious aggression or violent thoughts about someone and block it out, because the mind would recognize that as a socially unacceptable impulse and redirect it. Or would recognize that the impulse was at odd’s with the persons self-image and strengthen the identity of the person so that they didn’t act that way. For example:
John don’t punch Jim, because John is a (good) person. Or some other positive egocentric quality.
I lost control of the ability to do this and decided it was best to be away from Connie because all of the thoughts were about her. But not before major league flipping out into a manic episode. So I showed up to her party one night and quickly found myself some marijuana and pretty soon was just a maniac. Super controlled, not able to block thoughts that occur really quickly. And then I went insane and went around singing at everyone and seemed to just be really lost in this cartoonish Peter-Pan image of myself. So everything really really hyper. Singing in public, walking around going nowhere, doing all sorts of crazy things around the city that just don’t make sense. My friends find out and they begin scrutinizing my behavior.One morning I wake up and all of sudden “I’m Jesus”. Every psychotic incident gets turned on itself, and so I’m always self-conscious of myself. But I’m always behaving that way so the paranoia just increases. I think they all start warning people about me then. Which is kind of good, because I had a lot of drama in my life around then and I was just plain freaking people out.
I keep researching the stuff and I find out that sometimes psychotic episodes are caused by a depletion in the minerals in a persons brain’s fatty deposits. Drugs deplete these rapidly causing a person to “dry out” the good stuff. Along with a diet lack in nutrients, which I definitely had at that time as a result of rapidly transitioning to my new “stoner” lifestyle I figured maybe something could help. So I picked up some magnesium and b-vitamins and it felt like my brain calmed down. I stopped bruxing and getting so many intrusive thoughts but I was definitely still “stuck” inside whatever psychotic experience the drugs had prompted. Just a really dumb idea. Anyway I start listening to some hypnosis tapes and I had another seizure one night when I was realizing I was turning into a complete neurotic, worrying myself to death. And somehow was able to “will” myself down because I think I was about to split. So too much psychosis pretty much pushing the person outside the realms of a normal identity, and they can’t snap back.
Go home that summer and I’m still really paranoid, especially since I’m sort of blocked out my social circle and I still stuck on the idea that the rumors were really bad. Don’t really hear from them except for the dramatic summer breakup so some mean text messages sent back and forth to everybody. And then the friends I had back home don’t like me anymore cause I went all conceited and am ungrateful or something. So… my family confronts me about the pot smoking. But they kind of take it overboard. And they’re like well what’s up with you going crazy and failing your classes. It’s embarrasing. And it pretty much is, especially since it’s so hard to snap out of this. My friends start questioning me about things because they say I’ve grown distant. And then one day one of them (Fabiola) gives me a phone call and I don’t remember what happened but I think I snapped on her and she’s like “do you need some help Davis?”. Kind of implying that I’m really crazy and I’m like well that’s obvious. So she invites me over one day and offers me some marijuana and I’m sort of suspicious because of her behavior and she seems to have been in contact with my brother which means she knew I was at risk for being thrown out of the house if I smoked, and I didn’t want word to get back to him. I don’t know if I turned it down. Well all night the bitch pretty much insults me on everything I ever knew and then finally drags me into the room and starts questioning me, asking if any smells or colors trigger memories in me. I don’t really think the conversation is appropriate. So she pulls out her cellphone and is pretty much reading questions off him like it’s a motherfucking teleprompter, and it’s obvious that the person who she’s communicating with is a family member and probably my brother who she’d lent a phone battery to. The questions are way intrusive so stuff like:
” Do you feel that your father choose your stepmom over you as children?”
” What sort of body piercings do you have?”
“Where are they located? Nipples, genitals, etc”.
Just really personal questions. I’m not really answering them and she snaps on me relaying the message that the person on the other end thinks I have “no common sense”. I return home and once again the family is concerned at how distant I’ve grown. And I notice that my personal information seems to have been passed along to my brothers friends, once again. So really embarrassing stuff. He took all the questions and then went in discussed in graphic detail very personal information about his sister. So body piercings, female anatomy, everything. Just openly discussing everything. Why does Randy need to know what your sisters vagina looks like and more importantly how do you know all this stuff unless you were like watching her in the shower, or change or something?
I go out to lunch with my dad and I tell him about the story, cause one again he’s bringing it up that I’m down and really just being a fucking wet blanket. So I’m like do you know that Undrae has been in contact with my friends, and asking all sorts of inappropriate questions? He’s been swiping contacts from my phone, I lost my best friend. And he just doesn’t seem to register anything except a brief emotion of sadness. And I’m like you don’t get it. I can’t trust that chick anymore and I’ve known her since 6th grade and it’s because you two are going behind my back and doing stuff.
Well once again he’s just very sad or spacey or something. And then I think… this about the time I found out when I came home that my brother and stepmom had begun some sort of intimate affair. But out in the open, so everyone can see them. And my dad doesn’t seem to care so I’m thinking he’s finally gotten smart and found himself a convenient way to admit that he’d like to get rid of her. Because he just isn’t doing anything to stop the affair and she’s like fucking his son, in the wide open. And the boy keeps telling all his friends stories of her doing innapropriate stuff to him like coming out of the shower naked and singing him Luther Vandross songs and he’s just torturing us all.
Well this affair takes over everything, I guess because everyone is watching. And I started having real problems because I was trying to get out of the situation by decreasing attention on myself so I became very withdrawn and distant. But instead of getting smart and cutting the affair off, my dad begins targeting me for all his sexual reactions forcing me to compete with my stepmom, trying to make her jealous. But I really can’t handle the situation because the woman is like fucking snapping on me, calling me all sorts of names and making fun of me all the time. I was supposed to go to France and I think they knew this, but the situation was postponed by misplaced paperwork, total lack of recall that I was even leaving the country (my flight ticket was purchased about 2 weeks before its departure). I haven’t done well with a job, only getting a callback at Rainforest cafe which I turned down on account of them asking for me to take my piercings out but I didn’t expect that I wouldn’t get hired anywhere all summer. So they’re kind of like well we don’t have the money. And I can’t really envision myself in another country without spending frivolous amounts of money and being really irresponsible so I tell my dad just co-sign on a loan. And that’s when my brother pops up with his new job as a risk assessment agent and starts telling me that if I can’t pay it back the burden of injury falls on my father.
So I think the flight was about 1750 (roundabout 2 grand) and I don’t know how much spending money I have but I’m thinking it’s about the same. But they don’t really front that much to my account because my stepmom is the one transferring the money. So not enough money for France. And I’ve been in the room all summer lying in bed, clearly not in good mental health. Well I don’t really know what hastened this process but I think it’s how psychotic everything is, on top of the manic episode. So theres:
1) Brother fucking stepmom
2) Dad turning me into stepmom
And every social situation starts to get very awkward because I can no longer tell where I’m being paranoid or anxious or whose really loading all the sexual tension into the situations. But they’re concerned about my mental health. So one day I’m in their room and the brother comes in and he’s like “got any of that white”.
And I’m thinking he’s been talking to Fabiola again. And I’m like what is he talking about? They kind of took it overboard because I’d only been smoking pot, not using cocaine. Later on my father comes back with the revelation that Undrae and Jenovia (his then fiancee) planned to put the cocaine into the baby bottle causing the baby to have a heart attack or something. But Undrae isn’t reprimanded for this, it’s just news. And he kind of gives him a slap on the wrist at the kitchen table for it. The next incident is when Undrae, Jenovia, and Leslie come home from track practice and start talking very excitedly about their newest scheme. And they’re dropping hints that they know certain details about my fathers medical condition, so something called “sleep apnea” where I guess he stops breathing during his sleep. And Leslie mentions something about his sleeping position and how it’s easy to stick a hose down a persons mouth while they’re asleep. And they’re going to get the house, get some insurance money, go to Vegas. Plan don’t make no sense.
So next time I go out with my father to Whataburger I’m like well I gotta tell you something. I heard Undrae and Leslie in there talking crazy about killing you. And then all of sudden I’m the sad one and he’s saying I’m crazy for believing it. I need to reevaluate how I think and why am I wasting all my time and energy on something I don’t want when all he tried to do is encourage me. Finally he confronts him, once again at the kitchen table. And his runner says something under his breath like “yeah you would’ve noticed that they hatched that plan, had you paid attention”. And then the brother drags my cousin into the picture who has some sort of gang affiliation and is threatening my father with all sorts of stuff and pointing out that I’ve only got guts in front of him. He’s targeting me, saying look she’s really not brave. And then they do something very quickly that gets my dad off, so then very quickly the situation turns around. And he says ” I don’t know her like that.. she just needs to get this shit out of her head”. So like not take it seriously. And then the brother tries to get himself off by threatening me, so he’s trying to find someone who wants to stuff me in the shed and the only one who seems to think that’s worth listening to is my father who just reprimands him again with a “boy don’t treat your sister like that”. Or ” I can’t believe both of you turned out to be so awful”.
He’s getting the Oprah treatment. At this time they all get really paranoid and the stepmom and Jenovia start to warn them again, that I’m going overseas and could possibly tell people.Sometime in between I have another really awkward social encounter with my father and brother and I don’t really know what prompted it but it happened after some situation where I was sitting at the kitchen table. And they both came up to me acting like they were my boyfriend or something saying socially akward stuff. And my dad’s been making comments that I want him to “take me now” and just really rude stuff. Well I guess they made me really paranoid and I just went back to my room and snapped. I started hearing voices that I’d been raped or something but they don’t subside with time. I don’t really tell anyone this because it happened so psychotically and quickly. It was like I just laid down and imagined it. But the problem was I couldn’t tell whether or not the voices were caused by psychosis, the social anxiety of the harrasment, or just flashing back to another poignant memory I had of my mom whose psychiatric case file I had found when I was very young. And the case file described the woman’s mental health as very poor and it described events in her life that led to her condition such as
1) Mental retardation in high school. I think it said she graduated or was labeled special ed very early.
2) Some sort of psychotic incident where the woman accused her father and brother of either raping or molesting her and trying to prove the woman insane wherein she reacted violently and tried to set her house on fire.
Very difficult to discern where the imagination begins and ends with that situation. But I do go to France still hearing voices and mostly hiding it throughout the entire trip.
So whatever I end up there. Well overseas (I’ll go into that seperately) I become an alcoholic and spend all my parents money and I talk to my family but not that often. I’m not even doing anything, I went straight into the program and just recreated my environment. So lying in the bed all day tearing up everything, not doing any work. I don’t really know what story I was feeding my parents. I do now that at first we got along, and that was probably before they found out I was wasting their money and doing really poorly in school.But my dad seems to have a totally different recollection of the trip and he’s asking me all sorts of questions and he’s like “did you ride the Autobahn” and what I did in Spain. And I’m kind of like we’ll there’s not enough money for that.. but I don’t think I really said that. I was just kind of like the dollar doesn’t convert to much.
And there’s not that much interaction with them in France except for hearing bad news and when they got in contact with the school. Well, I had pretty much ALWAYS had really bad learning problems and it was fairly obvious because as a young kid I was always getting lost and couldn’t tell directions very well. My father definitely KNEW this because by the time I was in elementary school my family had already labeled me off and lacking in common sense. So they just kind of corrected the problem by helping me until I was damn near retarded. It was like I had deficits in spacial orientation and when I would try and navigate it was like the image I was looking at was superimposed onto another one. So total confusion. Trouble telling left from right, I couldn’t really tell time, trouble with math and I never learned to drive because the processing speed of things in space literally took to long for me to process. So for instance say I was in the car and I had to look in my rear view mirror and steer the wheel to the right (which means I would turn the wheel the opposite) there would probably be some sort of disconnect between the instructions to:
1) Turn wheel opposite way
2) Look in mirror and not refract the image
So having to correct double vision and some type of processing gap. And I was literally way slow, when driving I’d just get really drowsy almost falling asleep behid the wheel. In France this problem just got worse. Not only was I psychotic but I couldn’t find my way around and was way too embarrased to ask for help because I was just way too behind. I couldn’t figure things out. And everyone’s making fun of me. Pretty badly. I wasn’t doing any work, wasn’t showing up to class or trying and the same basic problems I had as a kid have just carried over. So like basic math and stuff, still difficult. Comprehension totally off. Can’t even discern the meaning of basic signs and symbols. I remember in the airport looking at the signs and feeling like I was clueless, the professor pretty much had to act like a guide dog because I couldn’t make sense of anything.
So I’m acting out, and I start trying to get some medicine. And the professors write home to my family questioning about my mental health and what went on in that situation. I think they imply that their skeptical on account of a facebook note I’d written that summer describing the situation with Fabiola where she was questioning me about my childhood memories, which the professor (MacDermott) had previously warned me “could be used against me by someone”.
So they write home. I’m not sure what they say but in so many words ” your kid is fucked up”. MacDermott describes it as a “background check” even though I didn’t give her permission to ask such explicit questions about me. I am not sure what exchange occured but MacDermott shows back up to class on a warpath.
She says: “Everything is all about you. We already know everything about you. You don’t clean up after yourself… you’ve got Cinderella syndrome, they diagnosed you with borderline personality, your stepmom says you’ve been like that since childhood. You’re always the victim, the brother was the one who suffered more.. your mom lied in bed all day and acted like a cripple, so the most she ever had to do was pick up the remote” And then she screams “and then the mom confessed!” I’m like well what did she confess to? . Just going crazy.
And this is in front of the students. Totally going off with all my personal information. She even went so far as gossiping with the students about what they should write about me in exchanges with the parents.
Next thing I know I show up to class and my history professor, Dr. Nichols stands up in front of the class and announced that he doesn’t know what’s wrong with me, maybe I got radioactive poisioning or “maybe I got molested”.
Nobody reacts. I don’t know anything molestation and I’ve been hearing voices the entire time, so I’m just tripping out on how they got the authority to get up in front of a group of people and reveal something that rudely. It’s insane.
More reactions from the students and it seems like one of the suggestions for my behavior was a “mental hospital”. And everyone is having a field day with my personal information, revealing what they know. They say they know I’ve got ADHD which needs to be medicated, and they’re even characterizing my father.
One student comes to class with an impression of him yelling on the computer that “no one can tell him what to do with his daughter”. My problems could be solved if I learned how to think positively. Whatever, still not getting help.
I call home towards the end and I’m pretty much crying cause I’m so embarrased. Partially my fault. And my dad answers the phone and seems to be very sympathetic and then passes the phone to my brother who is then heard in the background relaying the conversation. You can hear him in the background making fun of me, saying oh she called home again needing someone to rescue her. What a baby.
I log onto the computer and they’re on facebook are a bunch of people writing mean comments, most importantly from my old group in San Antonio who very quickly post updates making fun of the same stuff my brother and father were discussing in the conversation. I’m very paranoid.
So fast forward home.. I get back and I don’t really talk much about the story and keep to myself, avoiding social contact which they see as very rude. They kind of leave me alone and then gradually start questioning. They mostly seem to want to know what occured with the guy in the picture because they know I met someone.
And I don’t really explain it that well except to say that I had a business offer with someone who didn’t really give me much choice in the deal and that the guy was rich and interested in marriage but I was way too slow to compete on the level he was asking me to. And they’re like what do you mean too slow? And I’m like yeah, it’s really complex stuff and you kind of have to be paying attention to detail or actually have the persona for that stuff and I was falling apart. You can’t just make up stuff in business. Plus a lot of that stuff is documented, so if you don’t have a strong background in just sitting and doing paperwork you’re just going to be very slow. And they’re like well we gotta get you up to speed. You’ve got a lot of potential. And I’m kind of happy that they weren’t pressuring me to marry the guy, which my step-mom sees as stupid and kind of berates me for missing my golden opportunity.
I then start questioning them about how embarrassing the emails were and what sort of exchanges they’d been having with my professors and neither of them want to answer any questions. They both deny having been in contact with my professors, and threaten to kick me out the house should I “bring it up with his wife again, as I am bringing detriment to her mental state”. Then the story changes and they’re saying my brother Undrae wrote the emails and it was because he was jealous, he’s already admitted it. Why don’t you get it? Still no one can produce any emails.
Someone reacts pre-emptively and starts spreading rumors around the neighborhood. So when I go into the grocery store or the hair shop there’s all these people talking about how they heard how psychotic and SCARY I was.
I confront them about that too. No one knows how that stuff got spread around.
PART TWO: ANGERS/ TORTURE INCIDENT
So as I already said before I really wasn’t doing much in Angers besides behaving obnoxiously and getting myself into trouble, or just being alone. It was pretty much out of control I was either at this bar falling all over myself, or off running off with whatever random person I met. Plus I found out I was slow, like way slow. The story in Angers is probably more well known because there was a lot of rumors about how dirty I was. I wasn’t really that aware of everything going on because of my mind state, but I do remember a lot of rumors and slander and harrasment from both the professors and students.
It wasn’t that they didn’t try to help me out, but they definitely took the “retard” jokes a little too far. Even after finding out from the professor that my mom was actually mentally retarded they still didn’t seem to get the hint. I wasn’t involved in much until I got drug into the middle of my business professors quickly budding friendship with her male student, Chris. From my impression of the situation the woman had somehow found out that he student’s family had a lot of wealth and was using her influence to kindle a romance with the student. This was about a week into the program, and a few of the female students wanted to repoert to the program coordinators back in the states that the relationship was inappropriate. I didn’t particularly care until Chris got up in front of the classroom and made a business proposal for what it seemed like was implied some type of business partnership for ideas and potentially marriage. I was described as a “luxury good” which I quickly shunned and the professor reminded him that I was weaker.
Well on account of being retarded and probably not up to his standards the relationship moved painfully slow. I never responded to the boys advances, acted like I couldn’t see him everything to discourage him from being delusional. And still I was fucking up majorly. I know he knew because all of my wild behavior was quickly reported back to MacDermott and circulated as rumors throughout the group. But the boy is like relentless. Can’t tell him nothing. And he isn’t quite buying the retarded story. Or that I don’t see him. This was all before the phone call home. The pressure for a relationship gets more intense and he starts offering me more stuff I don’t deserve. So like trips to Germany, gifts, everything.
I can’t keep up and just don’t have enough money. I never even made much of an effort for the relationship so it wasn’t like I could just pop up and ask to go to Prague. I have closer contact with the boy and I notice that his phone calls home make it sound suspiciously like he’s already told his family members that he’s met someone and is getting married. They don’t seem to agree with it and once again the professor reminds him that the relationship is embarrassing and he could ruin his family name. I’m like yup, I agree with you. He also neglects to mention that there’s a girl in the picture. So while he’s inviting me on this trips and asking his parents for money for two people, the girl shows up instead of me. So I figured out he’s telling them something different and just kind of imagines me along or something.
At this time the professor starts putting intense pressure on the student to almost fulfill the role of her husband. So knowing that I was his romantic interest and possible future fiancee, she shows up to the class talking about her desire to use him as her sperm donor for her next child and that the two share a common background due to their “German blood”. I have no idea what is occurring behind the scenes but it sounds like she was trying to get him on board for some type of investment in her next venture (some type of Martha Stewart idea) and he was trying to get her to frontload some cash for my career and marriage and that the common ground was that MacDermott would potentially benefit both monetarily and publicly from an invention that the boy and I would work on together.
I’ve never really invented anything. Once again the professor is putting intense pressure on me to perform, which was fairly ridiculous considering that I hadn’t shown any productivity or formal inclination to inventing anything on that level. It’s like she’s expecting aircrafts or something. At this time she starts to focus on me intensely and starts trying to direct my career. I didn’t have a particular career goal at the time but she seems to think I would make a good Oprah or even an industrious Martha Stewart type. She’s pretty much just throwing ideas out there. And she begins questioning me intensely about my ideas and taking what was once just informally accepted as my normal depressive behavior as signs of rejection.
Still not much performance. The other professor in the program, Dr. Nichols starts to get involved. All of a sudden everyone is on board for Chris and Tiffany’s fairytale romance and it has to happen and it has to happen quickly. And Tiffany is an undiscovered genius with untapped potential who may, if you treat her nicely, give everyone ideas. And Chris is going to foot the bill for all of your business projects. Right? The course of the relationship is intensely scrutinized making it almost impossible for either of us to get to know each other comfortably. Every mistake I make, every facial expression, every awkward date gets criticized and reported back to MacDermott. Dr. Nichols is doing the same. Just give the girl some money.
By this time I start to think that what was once supervision is just plain harassment. While waiting for Chris and I to fall in love both Nichols and MacDermott have hatched their own plans and they seem to involve me submitting to some very perverse sexual fantasies that the two of them both have- none of which I’ve submitted to. I also haven’t done much work in either of their classes, so that’s hanging over my head. MacDermott shows up the class screaming about me being the “sacrificial virgin” which I can imagine implied some sort of sexual fantasy of a threesome I was supposed to be involved in. And Nichols shows up to the class and in front of the students drops major hints about his sex life. He openly compares himself to the notoriously taboo Marquis de Sade and hints casually that he’s got brought bondage and torture sex devices into the country and would like to try them on me. No one says anything except for the one study who raises her hand, implying that she may enjoy such activities. This happened sometime around the same time as he showed up to the classroom announcing his suspicion that I had been molested.
So back to the students. They’d pretty much spread a lot of rumors by then. A lot of them, I saw stuff on facebook. It seemed like they just told anyone who’d listen even the other foreign students in our program such as the Notre Dame program. I’m just thinking “who does that?”. The girl is like not important anymore. MacDermott encourages them to calm down on the rumors but then stirs them back up again by advertising sensitive information such as my psychiatric issues, medical and family information. She also encourages the bullying by constantly making an example out of me. Everyday I show up to class to find that I am to blame for MacDermotts emotional state. She seems to find me very creepy (especially when I don’t respond to her insults) and she encourages everyone to keep up the witchunt by creating an atmosphere of suspicion and mysticizing everything. So for example there was one time when I showed up to class wearing a purple shirt. And I think Chris did too or something inane. Or he had offered to buy me a gift. And Macdermott just goes off about the shirt screaming “It’s the color of death”. I just sit there looking at her.. and she responds to the silence by saying that I don’t know how to communicate and “maybe we should get out the ouiji board”. I strongly suspect the woman has been dabbling in too many weird things and perhaps may be hearing stuff. Chris too is growing more paranoid.
Both of them have become increasingly interested in what I am doing in my room, which was mostly sleeping for days at a time, sitting on the computer diagnosing myself or playing the music. I don’t really know. Chris lives down the hall from me and in between our room is Anthony’s. My window is pretty much always open and I do a lot of stuff between the bathroom and the main room, sometimes without clothing. I start noticing at night that Chris’s actions in his room seem to be well timed with what is going on in mine. So if I went to the restroom at 6 pm I would very quickly hear Chris shuffling around in his restroom around the same time. I start showing up to class and realizing that everyone knows everything about what I’ve been doing in the restroom because someone has been spreading rumors. They know what I do, on the toilet whether or not I use toilet paper, whether I washed my hands. One girl loudly exclaims that she heard there was meth use occurring in my room, and another french student tells everyone that I have “pharmaceuticals strewn all about the counter”. MacDermott tells everyone there’s RATS in the room. So I suspect that it isn’t just Chris but the visitors to Anthony’s room as well. I can vividly remember a time when I was lying in the bed smoking and Annie walked out the door hacking and coughing as if she’d been listening to me smoke. Matt, Mely, Krystal all seem to have heard the same embarrasing stories about me.
Once again the environment is growing very paranoid. For me because I’m growing increasingly isolated by the time spent alone in the room and cut off from the group by the constant circulation of rumors. And because the group has grown cut off me because they’ve all disintegrated into their own business interests, and none of them seem to trust one another. So I guess the only pastime was watching me. Everyone seems to think I’m in the room making ideas and they constantly watch the room. They also blame it on the fact that my mental state was so poor so I’m guessing that Chris was told to watch the room closely because I was “falling apart” and may be suicidal. Everything is delerious. He waits until I fall asleep and then looks in the window and watches me. Almost every night. Until the point where I start waking up in the middle of the night at the same time he does, shuffling around the room. I start doing stuff, just leading him on. So one night I may get up and hear Chris moving and I may do something like get on to the computer and start playing the xylophone or something. And then Chris would come out screaming about how I had “ideas”.
I remember a few nights he was watching me he would freak out that I was following his mental state so closely and suddenly be in the hallway, or he would wake me up in the middle of the night and then go outside into the hallway and do it very loudly. Almost as if he wanted me to go into the hallway. And then he would loudly proclaim it was trippy. He would even do this in the morning, if I overslept. He would make some loud noise or shut the door really loud and force me to wake up. I guess he pushed it a little too far because they start witnessing uncomfortable things they don’t want to see. Sp I was starting to really get delerious and I would be in the room playing with the lighter (which I believe was reported back to MacDermott) or Chris would watch me using the shower and I would just do something he didn’t want to see like act like I was drowning and just lie underneath the water and not come back up. And I think they started to realize that I may be seriously suicidal.
One night I have no idea what happened but I think there were people in the next room. My sleep schedule had gotten way off to the point where I was often lucid lying in bed. I had even begin to experience convulsions in my sleep, which was not that odd.. Well one night I guess I just slammed back into awareness that I couldn’t sleep anymore with someone watching me like that and I woke up screaming. Like howling in the middle of night. I don’t even know where it came from it was just very animalistic. Everyone in the group hears it and the next day they all show up to the class very shaken up by the fact that there’s a “werewolf” on the loose. Once again the rumors fly and I’m on facebook being confronted by werewolf accusations. People making fun of me. We all heard you have dirty hair. And you’re disgusting.
I don’t really remember that much outside of the insults and that main incident but I do know that they’d all begun to cooperate with Chris a little too closely. Which was pretty much how they knew everything. ” We heard you wipe your ass with corncobs”. And it just sounded like he had self-imploded on his own disgust and went around torturing and incriminating everyone with the same disgusting images of Tiffany that no one wanted to hear about. Just too intense. I also do know that MacDermott had become very liberal with what she did with my schoolwork, which of course the quality was always poor. I started to turn in a few assignments at the end and it seemed that the papers were very quickly forwarded back to the students, especially Chris, for review. So once again I’m stuck in the same situation I’ve been trying to avoid with a whole lot of propositions for my ideas and I don’t really want in. They’d come to class raving about what great ideas MacDermott told them I’d had. Chris seemed to think they were good. She would also post my test answers and homework assignments that had received poor reviews up for the other students to see. So I’d come to class hearing about some test I’d failed because I “couldn’t do numbers” or wrote “stupid ass shit”. I’m like is that legal?
It’s almost time for the program to end and once again he gets up and proposes again this time for a relationship in Austin. He’s overheard me talking on the phone to my parents about possibly getting an apartment or a job which he sees as progress and once again he’s ready to give it a try. It sounds like he wants us to live together but the lifestlye he describes just sounds very conducive to the same problems I already had, like not knowing how to take care of myself. He just had it in his mind that Chris would do it but you could tell that I was never going to grow up under that deal. Well about two days after that his girlfriend shows up. And everyone is jealous of her and fronts him out about how much of a whore he’s been and how he’s been flirting with all the students in the program. And MacDermott is like insane. The girl comes with Chris to the classroom following a double date trip they’d gone on with MacDermott and the woman openly insults her. In so many words calling her stupid (the girl seemed to be a fairly passive person, just as I am) and going off on Chris about their spoiled business deal. Which for some reason, she has to have. Like has to have. I’m like I don’t even know what this bitch is talking about anymore, I’m just glad she found herself a new target.
Dr. Nichols think the students need closure. They’ve talked to my parents, they think I’m a good candidate for the mental hospital, they don’t want to end on a bad note. MacDermott is still very curious as to why I’m in the state I’m in and why I haven’t done any work. She invites me out for a drink and I don’t really know why or what but she just kind of described her life to me and asked me to be objective about my mental status. From her personal observations ” I just am not there sometimes and it surprises her that I’m so isolated”. Is there anything going at home? I’m like I thought you already talked to my parents.
So I’m not about to tell this woman I’ve been hearing voices from my childhood and all this nonsense. I pretty much dismiss it lightly saying that I thought I had problems stemming from a lack of social control by my parents. We were allowed very much to act out in public and that if she was offering help I thought my brother should get it too. In so many words there’s no discipline but yes I do think that there is something very wrong with my mental status. She asks me how I plan to adress these issues and tells me a little about her own issues in life, and I tell her that I don’t really know. I’m interested in travel, perhaps some other interests, I don’t know. She says “well are you indepently wealthy?”. And I’m like no, I’m not. And she’s like I heard about this great program in Israel where you can go milk cows for rupees and I’m like whatever bitch.
She then pretty much bribes me, for no reason to paint a more positive image of her by offering me white, or cocaine and then interrupts the thought very quickly and declares it a bad idea saying “I’m not going to stick that white shit up my nose”. I’m like why would she offer me cocaine knowing I was that psychotic?
So it’s time for the program to end and were riding the bus back to Paris. Once again I get a room to myself because no one wants to be around me and because of some intense conflict between my father and the school. I’m guessing he doesn’t want me around boys or something. I get ready to go to my room and I make some comment to Albert which he takes sarcastically and says “I guess it was all those sleepless nights” that are to blame for why no one wants to be around me. Or something. And my room was next to Brents, Anthonys, and Chris’s (I think) and I notice that as go up to my hotel room and struggle with the door Anthony kind of lends a helping hand and helps me open the door. But like a little too much, and his attention is very much directed towards the inside of the room. I don’t know why but I get a little suspicious of what Chris may have suggested to his friends may be up grabs. I’m like I think those guys are partying a little too loud.
And the rest of the group left before me. I got detained and like I said, had to have MacDermott pretty much guide me through the airport. And then made it back home after everyone else thanks to the help of an NYU student whose flight was also delayed. I think that was the last I saw of them in France.
