The Hair Dryer is Full of Souls & Other Facts in Lists

The Basics:

Courtney Leigh Cook
‘Leigh’ pronounced like ‘Lee,’ not ‘lay’
Nicknamed: Bonker, CC, Coco
MFA candidate, studying nonfiction
24 years old
Blonde hair
Blue eyes
5’2
12 tattoos, mostly on my arms

Who I am according to:

The Myers-Briggs Test: INFP
Astrology: a Libra (Leo rising, Libra moon)
The year I was born: a millennial
Spotify: a listener of Midwest Emo
Buzzfeed: a contemplative introvert (as determined by my choices in salad toppings)
Instagram ads: an admirer of Scandinavian home design

What I enjoy:

Writing (poetry, nonfiction, lists)
Drawing (digitally)
Painting (gouache or watercolor)
Reading (nonfiction)
Binge watching TV (Hulu > Netflix)
Napping
- Being constantly tired is a side effect of my medication

Why I am on medication:

I was diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder when I was thirteen

Definition of Depression:

According to Merriam Webster: (1) a state of feeling sad, (2) a serious medical condition in which a person feels very sad, hopeless, and unimportant and often is unable to live in a normal way
According to the National Institute of Mental Health: a common but serious mood disorder. It causes severe symptoms that affect how you feel, think, and handle daily activities, such as sleeping, eating, or working

Definition of Generalized Anxiety Disorder:

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America: persistent and excessive worry about a number of different things

What are the symptoms of *my* depression and anxiety?

I can turn anything into something terrifying
Everything feels heavy and like I'm swimming through molasses
I can cry at anything
- By *anything* I mean *everything*
I'm convinced most things are trying to kill me

Things that have tried to kill me:

The blue stuff they use to stop you from bleeding when they accidentally cut you at the nail salon
Like half of a half of a half of a bump of cocaine
A weird string in my sock that keeps annoying my toes
The dark because it makes the air look like flies
The blow-dryer because it feels like souls are coming out of it
My bathroom mirror because Bloody Mary lives in there and I’ve probably accidentally summoned her with my fear
Paper cuts because I might bleed to death
The sound of the ocean because there is an incoming tsunami and I don’t have an escape plan

When I say "things that have tried to kill me," I mean:

Things that have given me a panic attack
Things my brain works really hard to convince me are murderous

How I cope with the things that are trying to kill me:

Lexapro (bae forever #1 ✨✨✨)
Beta-Blockers (not as good as Lexapro but better than nothing)
Therapy
Singing a song to conjur a different Mary instead of Blood Mary, such as Mary from "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (this makes sense in my head)
Putting my back against a wall while blow-drying my hair so the souls cannot get to me (also makes a lot of sense in my head)
Using DBT skills
Yelling at myself

Yelling at myself example:

My brain: Bloody Mary Lives in the mirror. Don't close your eyes; just let soap get in them. Tears are better than death and this is life or death (even though you're definitely going to die).
Me, to my brain: Shut up, you pussy. It's probably just the cocktail. Summon the cocktail. You don't even like Bloody Marys. You're embarrassing and more lame than your vision of Bloody Mary, which is the evil witch from Snow White. Shut up. Shut the fuck up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

How often this works:

What I do when yelling doesn't work, in order of how often I utilize each strategy:

Nap
Call my mom
Cry
Pluck my eyebrows
Get a new tattoo
Ask my friends to take me to the hospital
Consult a psychic
Spontaneously adopt a dog

Why I ask my friends to take me to the hospital:

I am scared
I want to be sedated
I understand being sedated would be better than feeling this scared

How many times I've asked to be taken to the hospital:

Five

How many times my friends have agreed:

Zero

What they do instead:

Listen to me cry
Give me half a bar of Xanax and tell me to chill
Let me nap while I make them wake me up every half hour to see if I am still alive
Force me to journal

Example of a journal entry from one of these moments:

The world is yelling at me. It feels like I’m underwater and everything is far away and hazy. When people speak to me, it’s in slow motion, comically low in pitch and drawn out, but I’m the only one who hears it that way. I’m stuck, spinning in place, sinking deeper, about to hurl from the sickness of it all and explode from the pressure. There’s no air left in the universe. I want to die so this feeling stops, but the whole reason I’m feeling this way is because I’m worried I’m dying and I desperately don’t want to. The world keeps moving on.

A typical day's moods:

Things that have made me track my emotions as blue (depressed) or purple (sad):

My friends running into each other at CVS without me
My boyfriend having to go to his niece's birthday party instead of getting coffee with me
Being kicked out of a group chat that I actually removed myself from because I sensed I was going to be kicked out
- I had no proof for this
- It just seemed true
My high school boyfriend getting a new girlfriend like three years after we broke up because he should love me forever even though I never think about him
The fact that I didn't get a bid from any of the thirteen sororities I rushed even though I had previously stated that I thought sororities were sexist and racist institutions

What I've done about these feelings:

Wanted to kill myself
Felt lame about them making me want to kill myself
Cried (a lot)
Pushed friends away before they could push me away first, or held on way too intensely so they couldn't leave

Dumb reasons why I've lost friendships:

I didn't pay my roommate for her broken bong, which she accused me of breaking, even though I didn't break the stupid bong
I moved out of a rat-infested co-op into an apartment which made my BFF call me an "elitist piece of shit"
I thought I wasn't being invited to a big sleepover when really they just hadn't invited me yet and I made such a scene I then actually wasn't invited
I said that I didn't know that a snakeskin skirt could match differently patterned snakeskin boots
I felt like they just *didn't get me*
- I also don't *get* myself

Why these things are so upsetting:

When I first meet someone, I think *this is it*
- I picture them being my maid of honor or my wife or my husband
  1. within like 3 minutes of us meeting
- I think they are The One™️
When they are not The One™️, I feel like I'm starting all over
Even if we didn't make it that far in the first place

Why I feel these things at all:

...
- I am afraid to tell you

Why am I afraid?

There is a lot of stigma surrounding my Actual Problem™️

Please?

Fine.
I have Borderline Personality Disorder
- Diagnosed at 23, speculated about since 13
  - BPD isn't diagnosed under the age of 18
    - A lot of the symptoms are attributed to "growing up" before this age

Borderline Personality Disorder symptoms:

Unstable relationships with other people
Unstable emotions
Unstable sense of self
Feeling of emptiness
Extreme fear of abandonment

What symptoms I have:

The up and down emotions
And the unstable sense of self
And the feelings of emptiness
And the extreme fear of abandonment
Ok, fine
Literally all of them
- Especially the fear of abandonment though

In my own words?

When I look back at myself, I feel like I was in a dressing room, trying different versions of myself on
I don't understand what makes me *me*
- Is it my interests?
- What I dislike?
- How people perceive me?
My moods are tumultuous at best
- I feel hollow inside
- I feel like everyone probably hates me
- I also feel like I am maybe the best person ever

What causes Borderline?

No one really knows
But probably a combination of childhood trauma and familial predisposition

Definition of Trauma:

According to the Oxford Dictionary: “deeply distressing or disturbing experience,” or a “physical injury”
According to the DSM: “exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence”

Relevant trauma I've experienced:

When I was born, mismatching forceps were used to birth me. Instead of gently pulling me from the birth canal, they crushed my skull in five places, causing depressed fractures that had to be corrected with major neurosurgery

Key details:

Doctors didn’t collectively agree that babies had the capability to feel pain until 1999. They asserted that the neural pathways necessary for pain hadn’t been developed and wouldn’t be until twelve months old
- Because it was 1995, I wasn’t given Morphine or any pain medication that would be expected after neurosurgery
- I was given Tylenol for two days, then no medication thereafter
Michelle A. Fortier, PhD and licensed clinical psychologist, states that unmanaged pain can cause “prolonged changes to somatosensory function and hypersensitivity or decreased sensitivity to painful stimuli.”
- In layman’s terms, persistent, unmanaged pain fundamentally changes the way the body perceives stimuli, painful or not
- These changes can last long into adulthood rewiring the sufferer's brain

What happens when one is exposed to trauma as a child?

According to the article The Long Life of Early Pain, published by The Harvard Mahoney Neuroscience Institute’s letter On The Brain, “Early-life traumatic stress and untreated pain may seriously affect a child’s development,” which can contribute to “lifelong emotional disorders, including anxiety and depression, learning disabilities, and other problems.”
- One of these disorders is Borderline Personality Disorder

Do I believe my birth caused my Borderline?

Maybe
It's hard to say
Sort of
On some days,
- yes
On some days,
- no

Now that you know my deepest secret, do you feel like you know me? Check one.

Yes
No
Sort of

Do I feel like I know myself?

The answer is still no
But I do know all of the above!

Is that good enough?

It'll have to be

What's the plan for the rest of the day/week/month/year?

Survive

Courtney Cook (@c00kc0) is an MFA candidate at the University of California, Riverside, and a graduate of the University of Michigan. An essayist, poet, and illustrator, Courtney’s work has been seen in The Rumpus, Hobart, Lunch Ticket, Empty Mirror, and Maudlin House, among others. Her illustrated memoir, THE WAY SHE FEELS, is forthcoming from Tin House Books in Summer 2021. When not creating, Courtney enjoys napping with her senior dog, Francie.