Reaction to Polley Book

Reaction to Polley Book

Thursday, January 4, 2024

Preamble

After working really hard for years to recover from a concussion, I was feeling hopeless and seriously depressed.  When Sarah Polley wrote her book Run Towards the Danger, people started suggesting that I read it. I read it right around the time that two doctors had told me that I wasn’t going to get any better than I was. One was overseeing the vision therapist and the other was the doctor overseeing the physiotherapist that had been treating me for ongoing neck and shoulder pain. After years of exercises and some medical interventions I had worked hard and gained many benefits but that was as good as it was going to get and I was still in chronic pain and unable to get my two eyes to work together effectively. Part time work was recommended.  I was not in a good place, to say the least. 

The existence of Polley’s book gave me some hope that there might be something I hadn’t tried that would make things better. I really needed to get back to work full time. Work was my escape from life, a place where I felt competent and useful and happy, even on the bad days. 

Here is my reaction to Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations With a Body of Memory, (which is excellent and I highly recommend), written moments after I finished reading it. I hope that people with chronic health issues will relate to this and realize that sometimes the only thing you can do is to accept things as they are, something that is clearly not my forte. I have spent six years working hard to recover from this car accident, and when the physio and concussion therapy weren’t working I assumed it was due to something inherently wrong with me and i just needed to try harder. It is a raw and unedited thought dump journal entry with far more profanity than I usually use when writing blog posts. I am only marginally sorry about that.  

Monday, May 15, 2023

HOLY FUCKING FUCK. This fucking Sarah Polley book. UGH. So much about it. I’ll start with the concussion stuff. FUCK! I’m so upset. 

Mainly because her whole program of RUN TOWARDS THE DANGER is exactly what I did! She was better in six weeks after three years of suffering! I have basically been in this fucking trauma therapy trying to figure out what is WRONG WITH ME when the stuff I did because I HAD TO is what cures other people! What if there’s nothing inherently wrong with me as a human being and something happened to me that I can’t fix and it just REALLY FUCKING SUCKS?!

I have done all the things. ALL THE FUCKING THINGS!!! I want to SCREAM and CRY and have a huge fucking tantrum. But I don’t allow myself to do shit like that. 

What in the ACTUAL FUCK?! Here’s the critical voice: “Suck it up bitch, don’t be negative, get a fucking grip, this is not happening you’re just CRAZY, bad things happen because you’re a shitty person and you deserve them.”

FUCK EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE!!! FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK! She talks about the effect it all had on her family, that she was out of commission for so long.  Realizing the effect that me “going down” has had on my child hit me a bit too hard. I know it’s not the only thing causing it to struggle, but basically it lost its mom at a pretty critical point. I haven’t been able to be present for my child the way I would have liked to and that is causing me a ton of grief. My kid is not OK and I feel like a ghost of myself. 

I’m so sick of people, and I’m sick of being so hard on myself thinking it will fix me. I’m sick of it affecting my life now. I WANT TO BE HAPPY AND NOT FUCKING HATE MYSELF ANYMORE. As R says, I’m a total bully to myself. He’s right, and that makes me really sad. 

I am not doing my relationship with R any favors by carrying around the shame and guilt and self-hatred that came from my early experiences. I don’t want them to have power over me any longer. I actually wished I could experience a suicidal thought earlier just for the relief of feeling like there was some potential escape, but I don’t even have that now. 

I WANT TO BE HAPPY. I want to be able to get things done without having to constantly scold or berate myself. I’ve done enough introspection and therapy for a fucking lifetime. I’m exhausted. 

It’s somewhat ironic that I broke my foot in a frenzy of “I have to get out of here, I’m too vulnerable. I’m out of here.” That’s exactly what I was thinking as I went down. WRONG. I don’t want to run from someone I love. He’s far from perfect, which makes him more perfect, and I do love him. 

So, that. I love someone. It’s been nearly a year and I still don’t believe that he likes me. I know it makes no sense to think that, but my view of myself doesn’t allow for anyone to actually like me. That makes me really fucking sad. I constantly feel like a nuisance and a bullshit annoyance who can’t bring anything positive to anyone’s life. That also makes me sad. 

So, what if I make a lot of sense as a person, given the life experiences I have had? What if my negative experiences didn’t happen because I am a horrible person who deserves to be punished? What if there isn’t some big thing I have yet to learn that will make all of my problems go away? 

I said to R via text the other night: “I answered my own question. If my thinking that there was no point being with anyone was due to past negative experiences, then the only way to change that is to have new experiences. You’re the first person I have wanted to do that with. And I don’t feel pessimistic about you. I didn’t expect to be able to love someone like this.”

But then in the course of daily life, I get “triggered” (barf) and end up berating myself or feeling extremely vulnerable and I go back to the automatic response of insane stress in response to what should be positive things. Like when R is nice to me and it causes panic attacks. Like when I should be feeling safe, connected, and happy in a lovely moment and instead I am terrified that it’s not real. Nothing good can stay. I have to constantly prepare for the bad. Life has got to be more than just a constant state of sensing impending doom when I experience moments of happiness. I want joy. I want to feel loved without feeling like a shit imposter who doesn’t deserve to be treated well. 

What if the only thing I can do is live my life and do things that I enjoy? I don’t even know what I actually enjoy. Most of my life has been an attempt to escape from the feeling that I am defective. Do I actually enjoy reading? Studying? Learning? Teaching? Running? I remember when I first started running after school in grade nine, it was to try and quell the insane levels of anxiety that I was experiencing. Not once did I ever mention this anxiety to an adult, I don’t even think I knew the word for it. The adults seemed to have way too much on their plates, but I suspect that I only think that in retrospect. The truth is that it never once occurred to me to mention it to anyone. THAT makes me sad.            

So how do I get to know myself at age 47? How do I know what I actually care about or enjoy, and what is nothing but a bullshit trauma response? Counterattack, escape, and surrender. I counterattack feeling stupid, that’s for sure. I escape a LOT, reading compulsively, booze, weed, sex, etc… What do I surrender to? Feeling defective and inadequate. 

I’m not really sure what to do next. I’m not sure how to live this life of mine without resorting to the use of self-cruelty to get anything done. Sometimes I feel like a non-entity. Invisible. Not known to anyone, myself included. Even just writing that, the critical voice chimes in with “Oh shut up, that’s stupid self-pitying bullshit. There are people with real problems out there.” Finding the next thing I can DO has always been my go to, but maybe living my life without this compulsive need to find the most reasonable next thing to DO is the answer. Or not. I don’t fucking know.