How to Perform an Exorcism in 7 Days
Callie S. Blackstone
I have explored all available treatments. Mainstream: talk therapy, medication. Alternative: meditation, yoga, spirituality, herbal supplements. Yet, the problem still persists. I am an empty vessel. Emotions crash over me like waves, natural forces outside of my control or understanding. I am often overcome with a rage so heavy I cannot verbalize it. One therapist observed this and suggested I explore other means of communication, like punching pillows or breaking plates on abandoned roads. I couldn’t bring myself to try. I knew these methods would not express the betrayal and violation I had experienced. I knew I would freeze even if I tried, unable to move or speak.
But it comes out in other ways, it has to, I can’t carry all this anger. As I drive I become so incensed I honk at anyone who dares cut me off. One woman turned around and followed me until I pulled into a local business’ parking lot. She began recording me on her phone. I noticed the CCDL sticker on the back of her car. If I’m honest, I noticed it while I was driving behind her. If I’m honest, I may have honked to provoke her. I may have honked so she would be provoked into shooting me.
Any honest mental health professional will tell you that they entered this field because of their own issues, or issues within their family; it’s a large toxic clan of its own. When I entered the field I had already become disillusioned by several unethical therapeutic relationships. One therapist breached the confidentiality agreement. One provided financial advice while I was buying a home. One refused to respect my boundaries and continued to assert that I have the characteristics of a woman who was sexually abused as a child, that vague memories I have are evidence of this abuse. She continued to push and push and her words violated me more than any penis ever has.
I tried a variety of medications. No provider explained side effects; no provider explained that I could become addicted. Luckily, I did not. I became even more hollow. I took more and more pills trying to achieve the expected results, trying to feel normal. Sometimes I took so many I became disoriented and lost count. I felt nothing but I was used to that and it bored me
No one really provided me with instructions on how to take a specific sleeping pill. So I would take it, stay awake for a while, and enter a bizarre altered state. I solicited roommates for food I didn’t even like, wrote poems comparing human genitals to green peppers, sent humiliating Facebook messages to men who would eventually reject me. I would go on dates and hide my pills in a plastic bag in my pocket. I took the doses while they left the room. Once I was caught and tried to be flirtatious about it. Men stick their dicks in crazy for a reason, right?
There was the medication that destabilized me. It gave me enough energy to finally have the courage to act on my suicidal ideations. Unfortunately the pills I took to kill myself were not strong enough. I woke up on a hospital gurney and suddenly understood that I hated myself. I had never had that insight before despite years of suffering. This was worsened when I learned that emergency rooms offer no vegetarian options except egg salad sandwiches. One thing I hate more than being alive is an egg salad sandwich.
The food on the psychiatric ward was better. I got my fill of grilled cheese sandwiches and frequently ate two in one sitting. I ballooned although no one would ever notice. I have always gravitated towards oversized clothing so no one has to see the repugnancy of my flesh, so no one can see my curves, my breasts. I do not want anyone to look at me, to see anything. I want to disappear. That’s the whole point of suicide, after all. Unfortunately they kept me on the problematic medication although I continued to advocate, to shout that I wasn’t normally like this. Although I ran up and down the halls yelling, although I cursed out some poor underpaid social worker. They kept shoving it in my mouth over and over.
Another thing mental health professionals will tell you is that a psych ward is not a place of healing, but a place of safekeeping. They can’t fix you during the brief stay insurance is willing to pay for; their sole purpose is to make sure you aren’t going to kill yourself. And kill myself I did not.
I did, however, run down the hall screaming that my father was a rapist after he visited me against my will. Nothing was done about that. I did, however, wake up with agonizing vaginal pain one morning. I was unsure if I had roughly fucked myself during my medication-induced mania; I was unsure if one of the young orderlies had done it in my sleep. I have never been able to determine who has put what inside of me, and when.
This is the information I seek when I approach mental health treatment. This, or something like it. I know my father hurt me. I know I have daddy issues written all over me. I joke about it, even. But this is no joke. Living is so incredibly difficult. Sometimes the only thing I want to stick in any of my orifices is a gun.
I become the star of my own western, a cowgirl seeking her own form of justice. I cut my father out of my life long ago. And yet, he still haunts me. The ghost of his cock still haunts me. He still rattles around inside my body. I want him out. I seek various forms of exorcism: St. John’s Wort, herbal tinctures, meditation. I learn to quiet my mind, to let thoughts go. And on good days, they do.
And yet, I still feel him inside of me. He will not let go. The source of the problem cannot be extracted. I explore my own spirituality. I connect to ancient Goddesses, chant chants that are supposed to banish him from me. Yet he still sits and watches from the corner. Sometimes he takes the shape of my old therapist, the orderly I most suspected on the ward, one of many clients who has threatened to rape me. Always there, always watching.
Yoga is good. Focusing on my body makes me feel things I can’t express. There is something so vulnerable, so hurt inside me. Sometimes when I enter a new pose I sense it so much that it brings me to tears. I use yoga on and off. It is sometimes the most grounded I have ever been, down on the mat on my dusty floor. Yet the routine becomes routine and the glimmer of authenticity doesn’t always appear and I’m too fat to fully enter challenging positions and I don’t want to roll a mat out next to my boyfriend’s hoarded belongings.
My father is all I know. I selected a series of men who remind me of him to date. One looked so much like him that it made other people uncomfortable: big and tall, big beard, dull blue eyes. He told me early on that his personality reminded him of my father’s. I denied this, denied that I wasn’t physically attracted to him, and allowed a pattern to emerge.
I allowed men to become placebos when none of the mental health treatments seemed to work. I allowed myself to be hurt and degraded because it was what I knew, it was comfortable, and on some deep level, I knew it was all I deserved. I allowed them to hurt me, and I let each one do more than the last. And let’s not play games here. I was not a victim. I asked them to. I begged them to, and even when they resisted, they all eventually gave in. And they eventually loved it, too: wrapping their hands around my neck, cramming their cocks so roughly inside me I needed to seek out medical treatment afterwards. And my doctor prescribed lotion for the irritation caused when a cock is shoved in a dry vagina, and she said, don’t insert anything into your vagina for the seven days as you take this, and I almost laughed.
What would it be like if I truly let everything quiet down, if that glimmer fostered by yoga woke up? I want this and yet I’m terrified so I let men shove their cocks so deep in my throat the back of it is bruised for weeks and it hurts to breathe. I have reduced myself to a cocksleeve and when they tell me I am a whore and they only keep me around for fucking, I accept this. Because I have taught myself that all that I am is nothing. Because he taught me that all I am is nothing. If I allowed myself to be more than nothing I would have to ride waves and waves of emotions. I would have to start admitting to myself that maybe I don’t like when men hit me, even if I beg them. Maybe I don’t like men at all.
What would it be like to give myself seven days? No binging, no cock, no guns. Seven days of peace and quiet. What, exactly, would emerge? What would happen when I allowed myself to ride the wave, break the plate, scream until my throat became even more sore? What would be left after the floods? Who would stare back at me from the mirror?
Like the moon orbiting the earth, my life has orbited this unknown space, both seeking and resisting it. Each year I grow more tired. Self loathing takes so much of my energy; so does opening my legs to phantoms.
One Friday night I sighed and started looking at therapists on Psychology Today. My boyfriend sat on the other side of the couch, mindlessly watching television. I could still feel his hands around my throat, on my sternum, days after we fucked. I had to wear a turtleneck to hide the bruises. One of the providers responded to my request for more information fifteen minutes later. She offered me an appointment the next week. Perhaps this one won’t reach inside of me. Perhaps this one has the key to the exorcism ritual. The glimmer of hope reemerges and I count down the days.
CALLIE S. BLACKSTONE writes both poetry and prose. Her debut chapbook sing eternal is available through Bottlecap Press. Her online home is calliesblackstone.com.