A New Voice In My Head Emerged This Morning.

Her name is Sheila and her favorite color is amethyst.

I tried to type this story up earlier, and had my husband read it. He got it, and I deleted it instead of publishing it because seven planets are in retrograde and my butt chakra hurts, or some shit.

I don’t know.

What I do know is, I’m sick of my angry voice.

The Rejection Sensitive Dysphoric Voice that bitches constantly at everyone she imagines doesn’t like her.

I call her Karen. She looks like this:

Last time someone I loved with all my pre-diagnosed heart rejected me, I let my Karen voice speak.

And wail, and rant, and scream, and everything I’d always held back or avoided as a person who wants to make the world a happier and safer place for everyone…and I couldn’t stop.

It wasn’t just being dumped by yet another “friend” who had used up all our resources and then decided I was bad and to smear my name in my community, which I’d invited her into and chauffeured her around in.

Until I understood that I was autistic, I could not see myself clearly.

And once I understood, forty years of hardships and abuse and mistakes and dear Gods, the misunderstandings!

I mourned my whole life for over a year, trying so hard to be happy for my kids. I was being treated for Major Depressive Disorder for years, because I refused to believe I was bipolar.

Antidepressants without mood stabilizers cause rapid cycling and mania in bipolar patients.

So everytime I sought treatment, I got worse, lost everything, and had to quit.

Now I’m on the mood stabilizer, and I can sleep…most nights. Some days I can barely get out of bed…but changing meds is hard on me for months at a time, and it’s hard for so many reasons…I don’t want to risk another manic episode that costs my family more.

Well, two months into mood stabilization brings me to this morning.

I was reading, and under my breath Karen was whispering things like, “You don’t want me in your life, fine. I don’t want you in mine.”

Then this new voice spoke up, out of my mouth, and I looked at my hand like it was Karen.

“Aren’t we done being mad yet? Can’t we let it go? Can’t we take all this creative energy we’ve been putting into come backs and conversations that will never happen, and put it into our dreams for the future, and the life we’re building now with our kids?”

And the Karen voice nodded, and went silent.

It’s been six hours, and my guts are turning themselves inside out for what I can hope is one of the last times in this body…but I feel peace in my head for the first time in forever.