110 Fights or How I Learned to Let Go and Embrace My Wight Privilege

Depiction of a wight by Will O'Brien

I've been encouraged by my therapist to try to make this as close to stream-of-consciousness writing as possible. Sorry if it's a bit jumbled. Here we go:

I knew what I was doing. I had been told by several people that I should go for my wight trial, that I was ready. I started telling people I was going to do it, and then I told more people so that it would be less and less likely that I could just silently back out. I smiled and marched into camps the first weekend of Ragnarok and cheerfully asked people to "FITE ME please?" On Monday people kept trying to pump me up - both unit mates and friends from other units. They said that I was ready and a good fighter and of course I'd pass. I'd tear up every time because of the anxiety that bubbled in my chest. I didn't want to fail. I was so afraid of failing. People kept trying to give me advice and encouragement but it wasn't helping. A few people got the hint - they said they were specifically not going to say anything, or they gave me pointers about things to look for.

I got dressed and geared up and sat down, alternating between staring blankly at nothing and putting on a brave face when people would try to talk to me. Finally, I had had enough. With an hour to go, I went to my tent and tried to meditate. I just couldn't. The anxious thoughts came stabbing through repeatedly and clearly so after five minutes, I gave up. I went back to sitting in my camp with my back turned to the gate so I wouldn't see the people arriving. I thought about everything that could go wrong. I could choke. I could shame my unit and my gender by failing. I could get injured and endure the embarrassment of not being able to finish the trial. Maybe not enough people would show. I had only gone to a handful of camps.

My friend gave me an orange. He's really into martial arts and swears by having citrus 15 minutes before sparring for energy. I was just glad to have something to focus on. I rolled the orange on the table between my hands and checked the time, waiting for 7:45 PM when I could have my orange. I ate my orange and tried to focus on breathing. Finally, it was time. I got my gear and... my sword was missing. I have three of them, but the medium-length, stabby-tip I'd been practicing with leading up to the trial was just gone. My friends and I tore apart the camp looking for it as I choked down the panic that this would be the deciding factor in whether I failed or passed. Luckily, my primarch had the exact same weapon and I was able to borrow his.

I didn't notice how many people were there until I had the sword in my hand and the drums started. There were so many people. I learned later that any of my unit mates who wanted to partake in my trial were removed to fit more fighters, and still more had to be turned away. I had been worried not enough people would show up. That seemed ludicrous at that point.

This is where everything gets fuzzy. I don't remember a lot about the actual fighting and I'm not sure why - head injury, adrenaline, sheer exhaustion? Anyway, there were some highlights I can recall. I won my first bout with a long-time fighter that other wights had not been able to touch. I got clocked in the jaw by a shield-breaking weapon. I got hit in the ear to the point that I lost stereo for a bit. I screamed and charged and ran people into the dirt. I only grappled once, and I lost that bout. Between every couple of fights I sat and hydrated, had water poured on my head and back, and ate orange slices. I don't really remember anything people told me during the process. Every time I went back into the ring my corner people cried, "DEATHWISH!" and the drumming started up again.

I was halfway through the first round of fights when I started wondering if I could endure until the very last fights. I didn't know how I could muster up that kind of energy, especially given my lack of exercise and abandonment of my 15k training this year due to scheduling issues. I just kept going, a couple of fights at a time. When I felt wobbly, or gave illegal head shots, or my corner people told me to, I took a break. The whole process took 4 hours.

People who were watching said that I started out well in the first round, faded in the second, and came back hard in the third after getting clocked in the jaw. My primarch made it a point to tell me, "You're doing well" or "You're doing really good" any time he was near me as he kept track of the circle of fighters. "You only got two, tree more... rounds," said my other primarch, who was mostly drumming the whole time.

Finally, I somehow got to the final few fights. There were literally "two, tree more", and that's when my unit mates got a stab at me. Coxxyx, Boggs, my knight Ten Feets, and my primarch Hivemind all piled in toward the end. My most memorable kill was Hivemind. He probably hasn't taken the field with sword and board for years at this game. When he sauntered up I was exhausted, but I went for a quick stab to the chest and it was over before it could even start.

I hugged and thanked as many people as I could. I felt like crying at points, especially when people gave me encouragement, but I held back. It wasn't the time to lose it - not until I was done.

It felt like the decision came immediately after I was done. Primarch Dust-and-Bones called me into the circle and presented me as "Wight Deathwish" and I lost it. I cried and closed my eyes, like I couldn't keep them open any more. I felt people rushing in to crowd me, jumping and chanting. I think they must have kept me up because I felt like I was made completely of noodles at that point.

I somehow made it to a chair, and my unit mates stripped me of all of my gear and as much of my clothing as they could while still keeping me decent for public. I was escorted to my tent and then given space. I sat down on my bed and cried, hard. I couldn't believe I had passed. I didn't know how. I wasn't keeping track, or knowing what people were looking for, or really remembering a majority of the fights, but I did it.

It's been over a week and I've been thinking a lot about how this trial mirrors a lot of things about my fight with depression. I truly believe that it is my support and community that has gotten me through both fights. I've wanted to quit in both instances. I've been afraid of what people would think of me if I lost in both cases. I am victorious in both. Still, the wight test is a one-time thing and this fight with depression is likely a life-long battle but I've survived everything life has thrown at me up to this point, so that's a pretty good track record. I still have no idea how powerful I can be and what power I can tap into when the chips are down, but now I know that I will always fight until the very last - more fights than anyone before me has had to endure.

I did it.

I passed.

I have wight people problems.

Those Thoughts

I've been holding back a little, and I have my reasons: some to protect me, some to protect others, but I feel like I need to write about it at some point.

The first time I can remember thinking about wanting to kill myself or die was probably when I was around 13-15 years old. I spent a lot of time alone in my room in those days - countless hours awake in bed staring at the ceiling or wall and wishing it would all just cave in on me and put me out of my misery. At 15 years old, I sneaked out of my room as quietly as I could in our tiny apartment and went to the kitchen. I got a knife out of a drawer that squeaked so incredibly loudly. I sat down on the kitchen floor and looked at the knife and looked at my arms and cried, trying to work up the courage to do it - then my mom came out of her room to go to the bathroom. I was spooked, so I put the knife back quickly and just sat there in the kitchen floor, listening. I listened to her go back to her room and shut the door, then I got up and went back to my room. (Side note: I wonder if my mom had any idea. Probably not. She probably thought I was sneaking food in the middle of the night.)

That was the last time I can remember really wanting to kill myself until last year. Last year, my suicidal thoughts came on like a freight train. It had been so long, over a decade, since I had those thoughts. I thought they were gone forever, and then my boss told me that I didn't get a promotion because she felt my mental health was going to interfere with my ability to perform better than my co-worker. I wasn't so much upset at not getting the promotion than at the shattering of this delusion that my mental health was under control - that my mental health had stood in the way of anything I wanted. The devastation was slow-building, but when it reached a crescendo I was waiting at a stop sign and I thought, "I could drive off of the bridge. Wait, no. There are structural barriers in place. I can't do that. Maybe I could just accelerate right into oncoming traffic, right now. It'd be so easy." I drove straight to my husband's workplace, met him halfway across the lobby, and collapsed against his chest, crying and telling him exactly what I was thinking about. We got me help that day. I almost went inpatient. I wasn't safe. I had to give up my car keys for a couple of days because of those thoughts. My boss made me take a four-day weekend after I told her what was going on. Later, I thought about using pills and I hopped up and handed my husband every pill I could think of that I could potentially harm myself with. I had him hide them for me. It was not a good week or so.

Since then, the suicidal thoughts have been semi-regular... maybe every couple of weeks or months. I don't know. I'm not really keeping track. I know they came when I had that paperwork freak out at my new job. I know they came last week when I was so emotionally overwhelmed by that whole mess that I wrote about before. It's not frequent, but it's there and it's dangerous, so I tell people. I tell people every single time, mostly my husband since he's in the best position to do something about it immediately.

I just needed to say that. I needed to be real about it, for me as well as for others.

Because I'm Bad

I love intelligent, insightful clients. They typically have many years of experience in therapy and while most clients teach me something these clients teach me more. One of my very insightful clients talked about being raised by their parent who they believe had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. How they dealt with the abuse they identified coming from their parent was that as a child they eventually came to the conclusion, "I deserve it" and that brought them some measure of peace. This was the same thinking that led them into abusive relationships as an adult. I thought that was insightful and I told them so but it didn't resonate with me on a personal level until this morning.

I was feeling moody and had time to myself to just be by myself and for some reason I remembered a bad dream from maybe about 2 years ago. In this dream, Alex had found out I lied to him. He was leaving me. I cried and begged and pleaded with him to forgive me and stay with me, but his mind was made up. In the dream, I eventually accepted this and was ready to move on, and that's when I woke up, laying in bed beside him. I cried and moved closer to him and touched him just to reassure myself that he was real and he was still with me. I do this sometimes. I've done this all my life, back when I used to share a bed with my little brother. I'd put a hand on his back or chest to make sure he was still breathing, because just staring and watching for signs of breathing was never satisfactory enough. I wonder if my husband knows I do this. I wonder if I'll do this with our future children.

Anyway, on to my personal insight. I never questioned that I was guilty in my dream. I mean, it's normal to go along with whatever nonsense your subconscious comes up with in your dreams, but more than that, I'm a recovering compulsive liar. It's a common trait in alcoholic and abusive families. I'd lie about big things that mattered, like that one time a tutor thought the story I was telling my classmates about being beat up by random people in the community to explain away my bruises was suspect, or when my elementary school staff pulled me and my mom into a meeting to discuss things they had heard me say about being terrified of my mom because I got bad grades. I barely made it out of those situations without rousing further suspicion. I lied so well, and only learned to lie better, but soon it became about trivial stuff, things that didn't matter. Over time these lies would cost me friendships and make me incredibly lonely and confused. Lying like that, and the fallout this created, reinforced my own conclusion that I came to when I was beaten as a child, "This is because you're bad." What a relief. Now it all makes sense. I lied, so I'm bad. I stole, so I'm bad. I hit my brother, so I'm bad. I got bad grades, so I'm bad. I deserve to hurt, because I'm bad.

I don't know when I stopped lying. Probably some time around college, which makes sense. I was finally out of the house and away from my mother. I could finally heal and feel safe. Although she stopped beating me when I was about 13 years old, I flinched every time she raised her voice and moved towards me in anger and I didn't even bring up my hands to defend myself or back away. Why? Because I deserved it. Because I was bad. Bad people don't deserve to feel safe. Maybe that's part of why I get angry at abusers and want to hurt then, because of this toxic internal belief that bad people don't deserve to feel safe. I don't know.

I've had years of therapy since then. I've found love in the safety of a patient and kind man. I've created a perfectly safe home. I almost never lie, which sometimes causes problems for me, but when I do lie it's because I don't feel safe - and, perhaps, because I still believe I'm bad and bad people lie. I think this old belief is going away over time, but I wonder if it'll ever be fully gone. Last night, in the midst of a party at my house playing games with my friends I thought, "He's going to leave me. He's going to get fed up and hate me and leave me" and perhaps that's fed in part by this old belief that I am bad and deserve to have bad things happen to me.

Anyway, needed to get these thoughts out and process them. I'm listening, Dr. Mooney.

Pain, Anger, and Helplessness

I'm going to try my best here. Hope you can follow along. If you can't, I totally get it.

Anyway, my therapist tells me I should journal more when I have days like I had yesterday. I'm good at nurturing myself and doing my self-care, but not actually processing what's being brought up for me. Long story short, an abusive partner to one of my clients completely violated the therapeutic safety of my office through sneaky, borderline illegal means. I felt angry, powerless, and disappointed in myself for letting it happen (I know that's not true as I am not responsible for their actions, it's just where my feelings were).

I could barely contain my reactivity while my client was in session with me. I felt like I was going to explode afterwards as I wandered the hallways looking for a supervisor to resolve the professional end of the problem. After I did that, I vented and ugly cried with my very good friend and bridesmaid Lauren. Then I set up some home self-care with my husband, ate something, drank something, and did a "loving kindness" meditation (which gave me a lot of mixed feelings because it made me picture someone I dislike and direct loving kindness towards them.... grrrrr). I did the self-care thing as well as I possibly could.

What I didn't do, which my therapist pointed out to me, was process what the situation was bringing up for me - my painful childhood. I hate acknowledging it. I hate that it means anything about me. I hate this thing that's a part of me that I didn't do to myself. I like to ignore it, and my therapist says I actually do really good things while ignoring it, it's just that the central problem never gets resolved and so it makes it more likely that it'll get triggered again at a later date in a similar way.

Professionally, I know he's right. Emotionally, I don't want to go there. I'm a therapist and I see my clients do this all the time. In my last entry I talked about my reluctance to engage in further work if any more relational trauma should happen to me. Maybe that wasn't the most therapeutic way of thinking, but it was honest. Still, I think I want to do the work now. Let me begin:

Some of you know, but for those who don't I am a survivor of child abuse. It didn't happen every day, and it wasn't life-threatening, but it was insidious and there were times I truly thought my abuser was going to kill me. I had to lie about why I was sad. I had to lie about bruises and welts and scabs. As the title of this entry suggests I felt pain, anger, and helplessness because of what happened to me. As a child, I was unable to conceive of the fact that what was happening to me had nothing to do with me. I received the message that I'm bad, that I shouldn't do this, and I shouldn't do that, and it was important for me to know these things because it seemed like it was a matter of my survival.

I don't know if I'm doing this right. I think I'm not going to the feeling place enough. Anyway...

It wasn't until about 7 years ago I started to realize that the trauma I experienced actually made me forget about things that happened when I was a child. These memories have come back over the years and... it's not been pretty. I feel pain. I feel anger. I feel helpless. I feel frustrated because I feel these things. "You shouldn't feel that way," I've told myself. "You should be better after over 7 years of therapy. You should be better because you're a therapist and your clients deserve better. You shouldn't be so reactive."

Yeah, I'm pretty harsh on myself so it helps to turn it around and imagine I'm saying this to a 3-year-old. That's probably when the abuse started. Of course, that's absurd. I would never say those things to a 3-year-old, but that's the age I was when this started and it didn't end until I was around 13. I wouldn't expect any of my clients to get over a decade of abuse in less time than the abuse occurred - or ever. You don't really get over this stuff, really. You just build greater understanding and learn better self-care.

Where else does my mind go? "You're not good enough. You're certainly not good enough for men, so keep irrationally wanting their approval." I was surprised at my insight with my therapist here: my father was gone by the time I was three years old. Growing up with the abuse I did it I coped in part by projecting my desires for a safe, loving, approving parent who didn't exist. Had my father stayed he wouldn't have been that man for me. Even knowing this, I get angry and embarrassed. What is wrong with me? I shouldn't feel this way!

It's all the same. I'm tired. I feel like I've done enough for the day.

Oh, but in closing, that's why I had such a bad reaction to an abuser violating my therapeutic space I tried to provide for my client. I work hard to understand abusers and I know they can change (mine did) but when I'm triggered I just want abusers to stop breathing my air.

Yeah, that's it for now. Time for bed.