scarred wounds made fresh

Sangram Majumdar, Eclipsed, 2009

I interviewed for a job on Tuesday, and I was offered and accepted the position on Wednesday. What ensued in my psyche was a spiral reminiscent of my days at UCLA before I had to withdraw. Reminiscent of my first month at Columbia when I lost my appetite completely. Reminiscent of when a good man was kind enough to tell me he liked me and I ended things abruptly. My mind can hijack all my systems, tunnel me down into a hole deep enough that reality is no longer visible from the bottom. I begin my descent into dissociation, loosing chunks of time. And if I’m not dissociated, my thoughts are constant streams of what feels like mania. My heart palpitates and entire body is frenetic. In these moments, I often feel it necessary to do something drastic. Like withdraw from college (this one was necessary) or make plans to move across the country or tell a kind guy that this will not work.

In the interview, one of the women said to me, “We need someone who can commit to this position.” A.k.a. stay here for a while. And as you know by now, words like that feel like entrapment to me. It is being in a room with no doors or windows. I worry others will think I’m dramatic to compare accepting a job offer (one that does not have a contracted end date and is in Minnesota) to being back in my seven, eleven or fourteen year old body stuck in a home with chaotic adults who were not always equipped to be a parent - but dramatic or not, my brain believes that entering into a no-end-in-sight job is like being locked again in a home of chaos. It leaves me without an accessible escape route. As someone who habitually has one foot out the door, this is deeply unsettling.

There was an awareness that I wasn’t being rational, but I still could not find my way back to rationality. Fleeting moments of consciousness were washed over by tsunamis of anxiety, intrusive thoughts and genuine panic. That night I wrote, can a disorganized attachment style also pertain to jobs? Because I haven’t felt this crazy since I kissed that nice guy or since I turned down that job in Maine. I feel like I finally get a shot at what I want and then I shoot myself in the foot, freak out and run down another avenue. I don’t know. I’m spiraling. I’m confused. I’m tired of myself and these cycles. I want someone to tell me how to fix myself so I can stop running in these circles.

I was relieved to go to bed because I knew it would be eight hours where I could go offline. I could not exist for a while. I dreamt I was living off grid and was eaten by a polar bear. Perhaps, this was some sign telling me that my usual escape route of cutting all ties and going somewhere new was not going to work this time. When I woke up, I immediately called my mom. She’s out of town and I wanted to hear her voice. She did not say anything profound, but her words were enough to shake me from the grips of my panic. You can try it and quit. You can always quit. Maybe just try it and see. Simple phrases. Nothing earth shattering. But my nervous system found space in her cadence. In that newly granted space, I understood I truly can quit if I want to. Meaning, I can leave. I can leave. I can leave. The ability to authority over my life - to make my own choices of where I am and who I am with and what I am doing - was not always a possibility for me. Like a new pair of jeans I have not broken in, this new ability to choose does not feel natural. In therapy that day, we talked about how our brains use outdated roadmaps and sometimes, we need to consciously bring in a new one to get to where we want to go.

I went to dinner with my friends after therapy. They asked me about the job, and I told them I don’t want to even talk about it because I was so scared of starting a spiral that was as intense as last night’s. Now, looking back on my experience, it is like I am watching an intense part of a movie. Or like there is a film over the memory. Better yet, it is like a scene in a snow-globe, existing in its own world. It was the most intense tunnel-vision I have had in some time. Physiologically, my body was back to being a kid. Stuck. My usual tricks were not helping. I felt like I had no control. I was on a ride, but I wanted off. I had thoughts of self harm, just to find a way out of that wormhole back to the present moment. That night was intense and lonely and terrifying. It lasted for hours, but panic has a way of collapsing and expanding time to feel like seconds and days all at once. I do not wish to have that experience again. I do not enjoy the feeling of believing I am losing my mind. I was scared of myself, of how long this panic would last this time.

Sylvia Plath has this beautiful passage in The Bell Jar where she writes, “But I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure at all. How did I know that someday - at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere - the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?” Seven years ago, I read that book after I had essentially a mental breakdown during my first week in college in California and I had to move home. That description felt like one of the most accurate depictions of the terror I felt towards myself, knowing how bad my mind could get. Moments like the one I had this past week pick at that now scarred over fear until little droplets of blood make their way to the surface, bright red and real and tangible.