Inmyhead

Come with me as I find myself

recent posts

  • Memories…


    There’s something strange about childhood events you don’t remember until someone reminds you they happened. They feel dreamlike and almost transplanted, like you feel it and remember it but not being able to trust the memory because you forgot it in the first place or your mind forced you to.

    The feeling of this innate sense of responsibility has loomed for the entirety of my life, now whether that be that I am the eldest daughter of the eldest son or one of the many other dynamics in play or a combination of it all… we are here to find out.

    Five years old was the first time, I felt that need to jump into the responsible role. It wasn’t until much later in life, probably around my late twenties, I was reminded that even at a young age I had to jump in and be the responsible one.

    Now, existing through a traumatic event at a young age can be life altering but somehow I never realized that it could be life altering while also never remembering that the event actually even happened. I mean, I’ve understood that as a concept but I have never applied it to myself and what I have experienced.

    Now that I can remember it’s one of the things I bring myself back to constantly. A manic episode that brought my mother to the conclusion that the only way to protect our family was to store the threat away. She began to grab the phones from the walls and grabbed the ladder to the center of the living room. She looked at me and I looked at her said,

    “ I don’t think that’s a very good idea mommy”

    That was the end of the cheerful “story” of her overprotective overbearing daughter who has always been this way and that’s unfortunately the end of the memory as I can not remember what came next.

    Being told this story as an adult and going through years of self -reflection, it’s truly incredible that while our memory can bury something so impactful, so altering, while still allowing it to structure the way we live and has really created this blind type of foundation.

    It’s weird now because I can see it, I can feel it and I only remember a handful of things from this period of my childhood, but this is different.

    This one feels pivotal to understanding myself.

  • Why the Rage

    Anger was something I recognized early, I saw it around me growing up. But I never matched what I was seeing to what I was feeling inside. What I was carrying was something deeper than just anger. It was rage. A full body sensation that I couldn’t name until my late teens when my mom was diagnosed with cancer.

    I was truly enraged with everything

    But exhausted all at the same time. I remember sleeping nearly the entire end of my Junior year leading into Senior year when I wasn’t doing anything else. Overwhelmed with my emotions and overwhelmed with life and the lack of what seemed control of everything.

    The cancer was an entirely different obstacle in our family dynamic; let’s just say that my parents were not the happiest of couples. They have now since divorced.

    With that being said; I was the default. While I think my mother’s choice to keep me from the actual appointments was her way of trying to save me from it; It didn’t. I helped her get dressed, and was there when her hair was falling out, I slept in the living room with her every night ensuring that if she needed anything I was there.

    That was a different kind of rage I learned then. I had to be silent because everyone had much more important feelings to feel at the moment and I had to take care of it. Silently.

    That was my whole life, cancer. Looking back on it now I dedicated my entire Senior year to cancer. I joined, co-created a Cancer group in school in which we participated in a walk in which I spoke at. I based my entire portfolio to cancer. Cancer had crept into every pore of my life and expression at that point of time.

    The decision to leave or stay for school came with a very clear benefit on one side; staying home meant being close just in case. What if I left and something happened?

    And something did. The cancer came back.

    A year later but that confirmed it, I’m glad I stayed I was telling my self.

    I was right.

    And it kept coming back.

    Every time a text. When you have a chance can you give me a call. I remember where I was each time those calls took place.

    The beach. School. Work. Work Again. Work Again. Work Again.

    Every time Its the immediate heart drop and then racing needing to know exactly what is happening right that moment. The urgency, and all else goes out the window.

    Then the rage. The internalized rage towards her, why does she keep doing this to me this way? The rage back towards myself for feeling that way in the first place.

  • My voice, Not the Noise

    Something my soul has been craving but didn’t realize was writing. Writing has been an escape throughout my life. A way to dig a bit deeper and put my thoughts down on paper. Throughout the hardest times I have found myself searching for different ways to make me feel better, to quiet the noise, the never ending what if running through my mind, many of them less than productive but writing has always been cathartic for me but I’ve held back due to what people may think of what I have to say.

    Years ago when I would write blogs about whatever would come to mind, the internet wasn’t what it was. It was easier to be open, to what felt like a smaller audience, it felt safer then. Everything is so accessible but something is different this time. This time, writing seems necessary. Separating my voice from the noise. Sitting with my thoughts, my fears, my obsessions and getting through it rather than escaping.

    Recovery isn’t purging and never looking back. It’s sitting with the feeling and understanding that we can handle whatever imperfection, obsession, traumatic thought or urge comes our way without running the other direction. Instead it makes us powerful, it makes us alert and aware, it forces us to know ourselves if we want to.

  • That’s never been the problem

    Daily writing prompt
    Write about a time when you didn’t take action but wish you had. What would you do differently?
    View all responses

    That’s never been the problem. My problem is the exact opposite.

    I have a tendency to take action. To speak exactly what I am feeling, exactly what I believe whether I or anyone around me would like me to or not. I wasn’t always this way. Over the last maybe a decade or so, I have found it impossible to stay quiet when I see something wrong. Something wrong. A small injustice. A big injustice. They all infuriate me and everyone around me knows it.

    My body fills with heat and I obsess. I can not stop thinking about it and then I move.

    Fight or Flight and for me it tends to always be fight.

    Which leads me back to my whole thing lately. The OCD diagnosis. The needing everything to be just right. The being compelled to take action the second I see something wrong. It’s an interesting thing to sit with. Am I fighting because it’s right, or because my brain won’t tolerate the feeling of not fighting? And what happens when those two things overlap? When the compulsion and the correct thing to do are the same?

    Maybe that’s one strange benefit of the doubting disorder. Because I will always suspect I might be the bad one, I overcorrect. i think through every possible situation, every outcome, every angle. I make sure, I check.

    But lately I am learning something new.

    Taking a breath. Not responding immediately. Look around to make sure the space I am taking up isn’t taking up someone else’s.

    That one is harder than any fight I have ever picked.

  • At least 64 countries

    Daily writing prompt
    What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
    View all responses

    To be completely honest, anywhere its illegal for me to exist. At least exist “out” with my wife. In so many places, just that could warrant our arrest. It’s a foreign concept to some but is the underlying question of every travel destination my wife and I even start to consider. Even within our own country, visiting certain towns or cities, it can be scary traveling as an openly lesbian couple.

    Never knowing with certainty if we are able to be ourselves or if we have to settle with giving our tiny handshake to each other if we are looking to get affection in public.

    Sixty four countries, roughly, it’s still illegal to be gay. So my answer would be sixty four countries.

  • Look up

    Describe something you learned in high school.

    In fourth grade, my teacher asked the class on the first day something that has stuck with me. Not a direct quote but something like

    “You can tell a lot about how prepared someone is by how they walk, if they walk with their head down they’re distracted. If there head is up they’re naturally more prepared for what’s to come”

    He proceeded to say something along the lines of preparedness and being ready for what is to come. Throughout the years, I’ve found myself trying to disprove this when I find myself walking with my head down and every time I find he was right.

    It’s not necessarily about being prepared but being in the moment away from distractions. Now this was way before social media, I think we were making xzangas at the time and cell phones still were monotone but it’s something that has held true.

  • I hate it in here

    Thank you, Jenny Baker.

    For years I’ve been in and out of therapy. Literally, like a decade. Most of the time it was talk therapy, which would be great for a couple of sessions until it wouldn’t. It really wasn’t until I was joking with a friend about my “OCD traits” that it started to feel like something more than just a quirky personality trait.

    I started searching, like I do, for music that could explain what I was feeling. I stumbled upon Jenny Baker’s I Hate it in here and What’s that like? and i cried. And I am not a crier.

    It took a couple of weeks but I started looking for help and got the diagnosis.

    OCD is so weird. Even as I was recieving the diagnoses I was doubting myself. Like ,am I really this, or did I create these situations in my mind to get the diagnosis? And then my therapist pointed out that the doubting is literally part of it….which makes sense as the doubting disease.

    So. Hi. A decade of therapy and here we are. Obsessing over whether the diagnosis was even real turned out to be diagnoses all along.

  • Everything is exhausting

    Not in the way people mean they say they’ve had a long day or week. In the way where your brain never actually stops. Where rest isn’t really rest because even when your body is supposed to rest your mind is ten places else, checking, looping, managing, controlling. Always in my head.

    I did not have the exact words for what it was like until I heard them in Jenny’s song

    What’s that like?

    I know that sounds so small but within seconds of her singing everything clicked. Not because I didn’t think other people like us existed, logically I knew other people MUST feel how I have been feeling. I knew. But knowing and feeling it and hearing it exactly how I’ve experienced it are completely different things. The song wasn’t just relatable, it felt like it was made for me. Like someone had gotten in here, looked around and decided to write it all down.

    Her music truly encompasses all of it. Not in a way that feels like a coincidence. In a way that feels intentional, like she has been able to… at nearly a decade younger, be able to verbalize my deepest fears.

    Once Upon a Time does just about the same. The why is what haunts me. Near the end she keeps coming back to it, the desperate question that keeps being asked and never answered. When do I get to know why. When do I get to know why. When.

    And that’s the entire thing.

    That’s what exhaustion is at the core of it. It’s not the constant checking, and rituals, or the impossible standards. It’s the never knowing. Doing all the work, carrying all the weight, managing all those spaces, and not having the most basic answer.

    Why. Why am I like this. Why does it feel like this. Why has it always felt like this. When did I not feel like this? Can I remember? Why didn’t I notice? Why did no one notice?

    So that’s what this is all about. This blog is me and Jenny Baker and the question I’ve been too busy managing to ask.

    WHY? And what the heck is gonna happen when I finally let myself find out.

  • Hi.

    Come with me inside my head as I do the one thing I haven’t checked off my list: get to know myself.