Month: January 2018
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Psychotic Attack? Bring on the Healing
I’ve written enough, for now, about the past and its specific pains. These two weeks of blog posts have been grueling, but important, because this is the first time I’ve ever written about the toughest subjects in my life: child abuse and manic depression. Friends and family know. But I’ve never recorded, publicly, what it’s…
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My Demons Scream For Nutella
I got a little too close to the core yesterday, when I wrote here on The Writing Bull. The image of the little nude boy in a tight cage did it. I know I got too close, because I went on a mini-binge. Suddenly, my body craved, not carrots or apples, but peanut butter, which…
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Meet My Amygdala
For years, I’ve known that the chemicals in my head don’t always do what they should, that the synapses weren’t always clicking the way they ought. But I didn’t know why. Then I read about the amygdala, and its homeboys—the adrenal gland, hypothalamus, and pituitary. They control so much of us. They keep the plant…
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Why We Cut Ourselves
The memory of me sitting down at ten years old, digging a hole into my leg with a knife and a needle (see yesterday’s post), feels distinct from the times I pulled blades over my arms and legs. The childhood act seems premeditated: a kid in the middle of summer, bored and looking for something…
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My First Cutting
I was somewhere around ten or eleven years old. I was very methodical about it. It was summer. My parents were outside, working in the yard. No one else was in the house. I got a small bowl of ice cubes, a pocket knife, a needle and toilet paper, sat on the floor of my…