There's a lot to say here, and even if I tell myself to start at the beginning, that doesn't exactly narrow anything down. Do I back up on a calendar and start from November 3rd? Or do I lay this out in an 'as I discovered it' fashion?
So if this ends up a bit hodge-podgy, I'm sorry.
A handful of people understand the significance of "November the 5th" to me. A fewer number know enough of the real story of why. I wasn't even sure until very recently. I apologize if what I say here oversteps a few cultural boundaries, but I see no other way.
I have very low tolerance to a lot of things: cold; stress; pain; medicine. I take medicine so rarely that when I do, it hits me hard. Unfortunately, I have a five- or seven-year reoccuring physical issue for which avenues of remedy are becoming less and less beneign. The doctor, in October, gave me a prescription for Yasmin, a "hormonal regulation suppliment", also known as a birth control pill. I began taking it on the morning of Monday, November 3rd.
That evening, about 12 hours later, I was talking with Kiztent while making quivers in the bazaar, and from what I could tell, I sounded hyper, or like I had eaten too much sugar. At one point, he asked me if I was on drugs; he meant it only as a joke, and I took it as such at the time.
Forty-eight hours later, Wednesday, November 5th, SOE patched in 200 Sense Heading, and I snapped. I remember almost everything, even now, with a rather creepy clarity, especially considering the asinine fickleness my memory has adopted in the past couple of years. It was like being on a roller-coaster while watching a movie; super-intense emotions and an air of unreality about the whole thing. I meant what I said, but that doesn't make my manner of delivery appropriate.
The next day, the whole thing felt like a wierd, horrible nightmare; creepy that I remembered actions like that, and sickening that I had actually done them. I was conversing with Quartic about the previous day, and then looked at the clock and said, 'Oh yeah, gotta take the medicine.' And he looked at me, and pointedly said, 'The medicine? The medicine that jacks around with your hormones?' I felt like I had been slammed into a brick wall face first. I desperately wanted him to be wrong in that; if indeed the medicine had dictated my actions the day before, was I, the 'real me', to be absolved of them? After all, I didn't 'really' do it, 'it was the medicine'. My standing could be replaced, everything could go forwards as it would/should have, and I could finally be /really useful/, which is all I ever wanted in the first place, to help. But that's a cop-out, and I knew it. My fingers typed and posted those words under my name, and I had to pay for the infraction.
"Accepting punishment is a sign of strength. Accepting responsibility is a sign of maturity." Just over a week later, I had talked myself into accepting responsibility as best I knew how. I apologized, it was accepted by Ngreth Sir, and I tried to go about re-finding where I fit in, how I could still help EQTC, and getting all my homework done and still play EQ. November proceeded to kick my ass and PK me (and then camp my corpse), but it always does, has for the last eight years. I didn't perceive anything reaaaally wrong with me; I thought I was just under inordinate stress. (Hey, a 15 page paper for Japanese Linguistical Anthropology, and only 4 days to write it, and that was the 4th of 5 papers this semester. Can you blame me? ^_^) Four of the five papers were due in November, and I think I had 3 or 4 tests too. Computing (Dis)Services did their part to hack all of us off, especially over Thanksgiving break, and I only mention that agian to lead into the next point.
The breakdowns. The crying fits. The uncontrollable severe mood swings, and generally spending most of my time feeling like a : | face, with half-lidded eyes. The 'Gray mood', it is termed in my head. If Nov 5th was the initial explosion, the rest of November was filled with little crunchy fallouts. I know there were at least three instances of note; the one I remember well happened the night of Thanksgiving, when I returned to the dorm to find that Internet had been cut (after they had said that my dorm et al would not be affected). I went up to my room, hoping against, I dunno, /some/thing that it wasn't true, but it was. And I stood in my 10x12 cinderblock room, my roommate had gone home out of state, my BF was with his family, I had no Internet... I felt, very suddenly, very alone. Trapped in a cage with no way out. And I snapped. I screamed, I cried, I punched the bed and kicked the door and determined I hated them all, a lot. When I calmed down, the mood still wasn't really gone, I just wasn't screaming and crying.
The whole month, I tried to tell myself that I had operated my whole life at an imbalance, that the medicine would help me be right, correct, normal. I tried to tell myself the moods were only due to stress. Finals came, finals went, I got 4 A's and a C (in Dance???), I hung out with Quartic for like 5 solid days, and then... someone opens a thread about Gates. And I post. And Lilosh totally blows past what I'm saying, then he starts nitpicking. Gna. So 'of course', I have to clarify what I'm saying. 'Because I know my position makes sense, I just must not have stated it clearly enough.' So I try to clarify, and a bit of anger seeps in, but I tried to keep it under control, and thought I had. Then, Sunday morning, the thread gets locked. See where this is going?
I snapped again. In a Christmas-break-empty dorm, I felt like my heart had been ripped out. What was I doing? Why did I care? Why did I bother? What was the point? Did it even matter? Why did I even ever try? Why did I ever open my mouth, why did I start this game? The whole gamut. Then I looked at the clock, and realized I hadn't taken the medicine yet. Words cannot describe the swell of searing hate I felt. I looked in the mirror and saw what I was, what I had become, what I was doing right now, and knew what little it had taken to make me like this (IE, 'just' the locking of the Gates thread, as well as the underlying reasons for why). I was not stable anymore. I was not sane, and I was not safe to myself. And that **** pill was the reason why.
I don't want pity. I don't even want sympathy. I don't want any /hugs for this. I can even deal with getting no replies at all. This is not necessarily here for 'discussion'. The Sanna you have been interacting with over the past two months has not always been the real Sanna (whoever that even is anyway), especially if you had the misfortune to find me in a bad mood (which you probably did). Part of this is here as a warning; certain individuals informed me of the relative psychoses that the various brands of birth control have been known to cause. I add this story to the mix. Do all brands do this? No, I hope not. I'll need a working brand someday.
I find myself continually apologizing for a two month old 'sin', even though I should know I've been 'forgiven'. I find myself rehashing buried history, but in a new light. I find myself realizing that I'm a bit more broken than I gave myself credit for, and that I'm going to need some time to make sure I even /can/ reach a point of relative stability again.
I need to let the drug (I cannot call it medicine anymore >_<) drain out from my system. I need to let my body process it through, and I need to not put any more in it for a while. I want to smile again, I want to stop crying. I want to laugh like I used to. If I'm going to keep playing EQ, I want it to be fun again. If I'm going to work at it, I want to enjoy my rewards. But mostly, and most importantly, I want to be stable enough again to help. I've missed two chances at it now; at least I was ever told about the second. Maybe that's all I get, I don't know. I don't know a lot of things anymore, and I wish I did.
I need to take a small vacation from the boards. I hate reality, I always have, and that is evidenced in so much of what I've said and done here, but i need to find a working balance with it. Something narrowly missed killing me this past November, and that something was me. I don't know who I am. I can't be sure what I am and am not capable of. And until I am, I have a responsibility to try to excercise what's left of my so-called self-control and go away from the people I've hurt, to stop hurting them, and myself.
I have only one other thing to post, I will do so on Monday (visiting relatives in the meantime), regarding Kiztent's Christmas gift to me. Then I will disappear until I am more certain of myself. It's the least I can do anymore.
Fear is a horrible thing. Being afraid of yourself is the worst.
-- Sanna
So if this ends up a bit hodge-podgy, I'm sorry.
A handful of people understand the significance of "November the 5th" to me. A fewer number know enough of the real story of why. I wasn't even sure until very recently. I apologize if what I say here oversteps a few cultural boundaries, but I see no other way.
I have very low tolerance to a lot of things: cold; stress; pain; medicine. I take medicine so rarely that when I do, it hits me hard. Unfortunately, I have a five- or seven-year reoccuring physical issue for which avenues of remedy are becoming less and less beneign. The doctor, in October, gave me a prescription for Yasmin, a "hormonal regulation suppliment", also known as a birth control pill. I began taking it on the morning of Monday, November 3rd.
That evening, about 12 hours later, I was talking with Kiztent while making quivers in the bazaar, and from what I could tell, I sounded hyper, or like I had eaten too much sugar. At one point, he asked me if I was on drugs; he meant it only as a joke, and I took it as such at the time.
Forty-eight hours later, Wednesday, November 5th, SOE patched in 200 Sense Heading, and I snapped. I remember almost everything, even now, with a rather creepy clarity, especially considering the asinine fickleness my memory has adopted in the past couple of years. It was like being on a roller-coaster while watching a movie; super-intense emotions and an air of unreality about the whole thing. I meant what I said, but that doesn't make my manner of delivery appropriate.
The next day, the whole thing felt like a wierd, horrible nightmare; creepy that I remembered actions like that, and sickening that I had actually done them. I was conversing with Quartic about the previous day, and then looked at the clock and said, 'Oh yeah, gotta take the medicine.' And he looked at me, and pointedly said, 'The medicine? The medicine that jacks around with your hormones?' I felt like I had been slammed into a brick wall face first. I desperately wanted him to be wrong in that; if indeed the medicine had dictated my actions the day before, was I, the 'real me', to be absolved of them? After all, I didn't 'really' do it, 'it was the medicine'. My standing could be replaced, everything could go forwards as it would/should have, and I could finally be /really useful/, which is all I ever wanted in the first place, to help. But that's a cop-out, and I knew it. My fingers typed and posted those words under my name, and I had to pay for the infraction.
"Accepting punishment is a sign of strength. Accepting responsibility is a sign of maturity." Just over a week later, I had talked myself into accepting responsibility as best I knew how. I apologized, it was accepted by Ngreth Sir, and I tried to go about re-finding where I fit in, how I could still help EQTC, and getting all my homework done and still play EQ. November proceeded to kick my ass and PK me (and then camp my corpse), but it always does, has for the last eight years. I didn't perceive anything reaaaally wrong with me; I thought I was just under inordinate stress. (Hey, a 15 page paper for Japanese Linguistical Anthropology, and only 4 days to write it, and that was the 4th of 5 papers this semester. Can you blame me? ^_^) Four of the five papers were due in November, and I think I had 3 or 4 tests too. Computing (Dis)Services did their part to hack all of us off, especially over Thanksgiving break, and I only mention that agian to lead into the next point.
The breakdowns. The crying fits. The uncontrollable severe mood swings, and generally spending most of my time feeling like a : | face, with half-lidded eyes. The 'Gray mood', it is termed in my head. If Nov 5th was the initial explosion, the rest of November was filled with little crunchy fallouts. I know there were at least three instances of note; the one I remember well happened the night of Thanksgiving, when I returned to the dorm to find that Internet had been cut (after they had said that my dorm et al would not be affected). I went up to my room, hoping against, I dunno, /some/thing that it wasn't true, but it was. And I stood in my 10x12 cinderblock room, my roommate had gone home out of state, my BF was with his family, I had no Internet... I felt, very suddenly, very alone. Trapped in a cage with no way out. And I snapped. I screamed, I cried, I punched the bed and kicked the door and determined I hated them all, a lot. When I calmed down, the mood still wasn't really gone, I just wasn't screaming and crying.
The whole month, I tried to tell myself that I had operated my whole life at an imbalance, that the medicine would help me be right, correct, normal. I tried to tell myself the moods were only due to stress. Finals came, finals went, I got 4 A's and a C (in Dance???), I hung out with Quartic for like 5 solid days, and then... someone opens a thread about Gates. And I post. And Lilosh totally blows past what I'm saying, then he starts nitpicking. Gna. So 'of course', I have to clarify what I'm saying. 'Because I know my position makes sense, I just must not have stated it clearly enough.' So I try to clarify, and a bit of anger seeps in, but I tried to keep it under control, and thought I had. Then, Sunday morning, the thread gets locked. See where this is going?
I snapped again. In a Christmas-break-empty dorm, I felt like my heart had been ripped out. What was I doing? Why did I care? Why did I bother? What was the point? Did it even matter? Why did I even ever try? Why did I ever open my mouth, why did I start this game? The whole gamut. Then I looked at the clock, and realized I hadn't taken the medicine yet. Words cannot describe the swell of searing hate I felt. I looked in the mirror and saw what I was, what I had become, what I was doing right now, and knew what little it had taken to make me like this (IE, 'just' the locking of the Gates thread, as well as the underlying reasons for why). I was not stable anymore. I was not sane, and I was not safe to myself. And that **** pill was the reason why.
I don't want pity. I don't even want sympathy. I don't want any /hugs for this. I can even deal with getting no replies at all. This is not necessarily here for 'discussion'. The Sanna you have been interacting with over the past two months has not always been the real Sanna (whoever that even is anyway), especially if you had the misfortune to find me in a bad mood (which you probably did). Part of this is here as a warning; certain individuals informed me of the relative psychoses that the various brands of birth control have been known to cause. I add this story to the mix. Do all brands do this? No, I hope not. I'll need a working brand someday.
I find myself continually apologizing for a two month old 'sin', even though I should know I've been 'forgiven'. I find myself rehashing buried history, but in a new light. I find myself realizing that I'm a bit more broken than I gave myself credit for, and that I'm going to need some time to make sure I even /can/ reach a point of relative stability again.
I need to let the drug (I cannot call it medicine anymore >_<) drain out from my system. I need to let my body process it through, and I need to not put any more in it for a while. I want to smile again, I want to stop crying. I want to laugh like I used to. If I'm going to keep playing EQ, I want it to be fun again. If I'm going to work at it, I want to enjoy my rewards. But mostly, and most importantly, I want to be stable enough again to help. I've missed two chances at it now; at least I was ever told about the second. Maybe that's all I get, I don't know. I don't know a lot of things anymore, and I wish I did.
I need to take a small vacation from the boards. I hate reality, I always have, and that is evidenced in so much of what I've said and done here, but i need to find a working balance with it. Something narrowly missed killing me this past November, and that something was me. I don't know who I am. I can't be sure what I am and am not capable of. And until I am, I have a responsibility to try to excercise what's left of my so-called self-control and go away from the people I've hurt, to stop hurting them, and myself.
I have only one other thing to post, I will do so on Monday (visiting relatives in the meantime), regarding Kiztent's Christmas gift to me. Then I will disappear until I am more certain of myself. It's the least I can do anymore.
Fear is a horrible thing. Being afraid of yourself is the worst.
-- Sanna
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