Charles Bivona

Health Interests

Meditation

Drugs I am Taking

lexapro

About Me

I hit rock bottom. Everything in my life failed: too many girlfriends lost, so many jobs lost, friends and family estranged, trapped in a marriage of emotional convenience--with no money, no pleasure, no passion, and no creativity or poems. I stayed in bed, weeping, for days. I finally understood what was happening to me. I hit the concrete floor of my psyche and scraped off a layer of skin. It hurt from my center out. I had never been so scared, but I still wanted to fight. I needed to remember what had happened to me. I started talking it out with my few true friends and my family. I worked with a few great therapists and -- for one surreal month -- a sagely psychiatrist at the end of his practice. Slowly, very slowly, I started scraping away at my shell of repression. I gradually started remembering. Today, I experience sudden and overwhelming emotional connections. I realize why I made certain past choices. I feel stupid and ashamed and worthless. I cry. I shake. I curl in a ball. I remember. I remember. I remember. I suddenly started writing. The pain is so old it smells dusty, it bursts from my pores. I hurt in the old ways. I taste the adrenaline of the original fear in my mouth. I feel the old clench of terror in my entire body. Every muscles braces for more punishment. It seize me up sometimes. I'm at the kitchen sink, doing the dishes, and I freeze. I remember in my body, as much as my mind. I shake. I flash back. I feel waves of terror and confusion wash over me. It’s all coming out, at last. All I can think to do is write it all out, so I do. It helps. It's healing. I am forgiving the past for its failings. I am forgiving myself, slowly, for my own. I am finally speaking, repeating it all -- one horrifying flash at a time -- remembering and working through.