I've hit rock bottom and have started to dig.

Well, that's not exactly accurate, but I'm getting there.

I am sooooo tired, friends. Tired and need to sleep. The Horrible Hands make this impossible tonight. I've had a busy day, so there was a bit of hiatus on Day 7 of 30MIAC. It'll pop up soon, I promise.

I was trying to sleep when The Hands started up. I was being used. Strangely, after being used, I was rejected. My "Fantasy Man" (the current guy in the mental Rolodex my fantasies have fixated on), left me for dead. I couldn't stop the delusion. In the psychosis I was killed while pregnant with his child, and he didn't care.

Pencil sketch of Self, circa 2004

I keep having little loops of delusions (they're almost like .gif files that go horribly wrong inside my head). In them lately, I am almost always killed while pregnant. And it reminded me of the child I can never have because I am too sick. Too sick and unable to be so selfish as to bring a helpless being into my world of insanity and lethargy. I love my imaginary/potential child too much to have it. I hope that makes sense. Anyway, to plow on into the world I inhabit when no one is looking, I thought the child was a Me, a Self I was trying to form. But no. This one is so literal and so obvious I missed it.

I grieve for a motherhood I cannot have. And Fantasy Man? I grieve the impossibility of him, too. And then my thoughts connected in that strange way they do when one is almost asleep. It startled me awake. I have always been rejected by the guys I am attracted to. I was always put down by them as well. (I was that nerdy kid who brought a massive poster of the Millennium Falcon to summer camp, instead of photos of her family.) And then THAT thought connected to something else: my hatred for compliments, and why I have trouble accepting them.

Compliments hurt. Now I know why, and this is important: it's because I know they're TRUE. I can feel you shaking your heads across the ether in misunderstanding, so I'll clear it up. I know they're true deep inside, but I am still rejected by the people who I want to see all those "wonderful things" the most. If it's true that I'm nice and compassionate and funny and intelligent and fun to be around, why am I always teased and put down by men? Especially the ones I really like, and who I want to like me back? I may be all those incredible things people want to be, but -- here's the clincher -- most people don't give me a chance to show them how incredibly cool I can be. I'm dismissed and invisible.

Which brings me back to Fantasy Man. In my psychoses and delusions, he never never ever gives me even the slightest chance to prove myself. He assumes, and then leaves (but not before he kills the child I want so badly). And then I discovered what is so depressing about all of the baby-wanting thing: I would feel like my life meant something if I could pass on a piece of myself to a kid. (I know that's damn selfish, which is why I persist with rigid birth control. I do have a conscience.) It was a shock to discover in myself that I put so much massive meaning on motherhood. But I do, and that is why I had to type all this out. I had to so I wouldn't cry anymore tonight. I'm tired of hurting.