My name is marybeth. Hi.
I don’t think people like saying my name. Most everybody just calls me MB, though I’ve never asked them to. Sometimes people ask if they can call me “Mary” and it’s always awkward when I have to say no, but it just isn’t my name. It’s like that scene in Next Generation where Pulaski tries to call Data “dah-tah” and not “day-tah,” and Data has to tell her “One is my name. The other is not.” Which I believe translates into “Bish! You don’t get to rename me!”
I never cared for Pulaski.
Over the course of this blog, some people aren’t going to come off looking so hot. Mostly me, but I never want anyone to think I’m trying to place blame. That’s why I will often be deliberately vague and I won’t use specific names or places. Yes, people made mistakes, but they were all human. And let’s face it, humans aren’t great. I used to think that people were mostly good and rational with a few bad apples in the bunch. Over the past few years, I’ve come to believe that human nature makes us think about ourselves before we think of others, making a whole lot more bad apples than I originally thought. It’s a sort of survival of the fittest. We just can’t help ourselves. If we could, we would. And I know we can’t help ourselves because the horrible shit JUST. KEEPS. HAPPENING. I used to think that one day humans would evolve to a point of being able to achieve Star Trek levels of space travel and exploration. I had such high hopes and expectations for humankind, but that keeps getting dumped in my lap like a plate of cold gagh. I don’t think that anymore. We’re too stupid to get off this rock. If you want to fight me on this, go watch Chernobyl. Or just search for “injury” on YouTube.
And you should know, I never mean to elicit any kind of pity. I’m just trying to tell you that shit was hard for me and that made ME hard for everyone else. In fact, if we’ve ever met IRL, I almost certainly owe you at least one apology for being a jackass. Sorry.
My memory sucks. When I was eighteen or nineteen, I had this terrible fever that wiped good chunks of my memories. It’s like someone wrote the story of my life on one very long piece of parchment, but rolled it up before the ink had a chance to dry- some parts are fine, some are blurry and others are completely illegible. There’s a lot of flat out guesswork involved because some of it is just. not. there. It makes it hard to tell a story, but I assure you that I am always doing my best.
It’s totally okay to laugh at all of this. I am cringing myself into implosion, but if there’s one thing I know it’s that mortification paves the way for hilarity. There’s nothing I love more than laughter, so I find it everywhere I can. I encourage you to do the same.
I am mentally ill, and like a goddamn clown car, more and more keep spilling out. So, I have a LOT, but these are MY BIG THREE-
-My first diagnosis was anxiety. I am constantly worried. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that every time I’m sitting in a public place, I’m terrified that I’ve accidentally sat in a space somebody has already claimed, and they’ll make their presence known any minute and, I don’t know, kick my ass or something. I don’t think this has ever happened to me. I don’t think I’ve even witnessed this. I just feel like I need to be ready should it come to pass, because if I’m not, it’s just as much my fault as the asskicker’s, right? So, I take pills so I can better concentrate on things that are far more likely to happen, like leaving my phone in a public restroom again. I have done this in three countries. (Fumble brag.)
The worst thing about anxiety is that it makes me so painfully shy that I become a real asshole. So, sorry for reading a book at your birthday party. I wish I could say I have only done that once. And I really wish I could say I’d only done it twice.
–Post Traumatic Stress Disorder really sucks. I don’t remember much from my first five years, but I remember being afraid. (Oh, it wasn’t all bad. I have some very fond memories of a Cookie Monster calculator). Then, when I was twelve, I was physically attacked by another kid and I lost consciousness for a couple of seconds. It was the 90’s. It was cool to be mean back then. In fact, the incident was treated as a joke, which greatly misinformed me on what was funny. So, sorry that I laughed my head off when you stepped barefoot onto a scorpion, and then you had to listen to my receding laughter as I ran to get help.
–Depression makes me feel like I shouldn’t exist. This is going to sound awful, but I’m thirty-eight and I honestly thought I would be dead by now. In order to make it through high school, I dissociated HARD and I never figured out how to get back. To me, dissociation feels like being the excess glitter that doesn’t get to be a part of a glitter portrait or a hastily assembled birthday card. I’m the glitter that didn’t stick, the glitter that comes right off when you shake your project. I’m the garbage glitter.
Mental illness means a lot of different things for a lot of different people. People want to pretend it doesn’t exist, but trying to pretend that my mental illnesses weren’t there brought me to the brink of suicide. I felt like a failure for letting my emotions get the best of me, like a bad Vulcan. I still have panic attacks. I still have flashbacks. I am always sad. Medication helps, so those things are fewer and farther between. Isolating myself keeps these things from happening in public where it will make people uneasy. Learning how to navigate through all of this is constant effort.
Oh, you’ve probably guessed this already, but I really love Star Trek. Like, I would lay down my life for it. Proudly. But since I can’t, I have to settle for writing this blog.
The Timid Trekkie 