After I was raped by three Middle Eastern men I had to listen to a lot of people blame Middle Eastern men, me or both. So the horrible things being said about what happened to Lara Logan are not only not shocking to me, but I expected them. As soon as I heard the news I imagined all the crap people would say about how Egyptians are savages or about how she should have known it would happen since she put herself in that dangerous situation. If you don't want to get raped, you should wear a full-body Burka and sit in the closet all day praying that the Lord make you a clean thing.

My mother made it perfectly clear that I was to blame for being viciously attacked because I got into a car with strange men. My shrink let me know that it was “okay to hate Middle Easterners” since I'd been through so much. “Especially after September 11th”. I didn't hate Middle Easterners. It never occurred to me to blame every single person in an entire region for the acts committed by a few who were born there. Especially since I'd been raped by plenty of American born. Nobody ever told me it was okay to hate people from The Americas.

All of this came to me when I was trying to figure out what I was feeling after hearing the news that a reporter was raped in Egypt. I was feeling something I couldn't exactly explain to myself. I dislike when that happens and so I will analyze everything until I have come to a conclusion that satisfies me. Emotions do not work for me the way they do for most people, I think. I have to use deductive reasoning and figure out which emotion I am feeling, then I can begin assessing why.

It was only in the past few years I became aware of how aware I am and that I have spent much of my life either running away from feeling anything or unable to understand what it is I am feeling. What's worse is I feel everything intensely. My anger is rage, my sadness is depression, my happiness is mania. And I am always in a state of heightened anxiety. In fact, it's gotten so bad that I no longer can leave my home. At all. The holy grail of figuring out what the hell I'm feeling and why would be the day I understand this constant, debilitating fear of nothing at all.

When I was a child I was terrified of bees. In my twenties I got stung for the first time. After experiencing being stung the mystery was gone, there was nothing left to fear. I am not afraid of anything. My current theory is that my body makes an excess amount of adrenaline which manifests as fear or anxiety. If I could leave my home I'd probably find out if there is a doctor that can check for some kind of adrenal disease. I have tried looking into such a disease, but never found anything that fit my symptoms. Of course my official diagnosis is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). On paper it makes every kind of sense, but in reality I don't feel it. Just like how being stung by a bee didn't make me more afraid of bees, I'm anything but afraid of being violently assaulted. Not that there's anything normal about that. Come to think of it, if I'd been stung by several bees I might be afraid of them. My analogy just died. Regardless, the fact remains that my fear and whatever is causing it cannot be connected in my mind. So when I am suffering a panic attack there is no thing or thought or memory or anything but the fear. It feels like my mind is totally empty in those moments. And now, since the Bournewood debacle, I have psychotic episodes where panic attacks used to be. Which is why I can't leave my house anymore.

It's been almost four years since I overdosed on Klonopin and was sent to the mental hospital called Bournewood. I've remembered things and figured a few things out. It might be time to write about it but just as I typed that I got the overwhelming urge to take a break from this. It feels like I just really want to go watch Parks and Recreations outside, but I can't ignore that it's an excuse stopping me from doing something I have found impossible to do now for almost four years just as I was about to attempt to do it. I underwent a week and a half of psychological torture. It doesn't sound like much, but what I experienced was worse than being beaten, having a gun held to my head by a sociopath and getting gang raped by three men while they laughed and mocked me in a language I didn't understand... put together. I just wish I could explain why.