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My Shadow Biography, Part I

Okay, I confess. I already have a real biography on my website www.janicearenofsky.com, but I also have what you might call a "shadow" biography. It details my emotional/spiritual/psychological events, in short, my mental state. I think it's only fair that if you're here to follow my daily blogging on various aspects of my person and what I think about other persons (like my sister, parents, and Donald Trump) that you know just what kind of a mind I really have. The web biography tells you that I'm an educated female who's written  a lot of stuff over the years in some prestigious publications. That's all true, but it hides the real me who wakes up each day with so many warts and all that no one actually wants to hear the details, which can involve anything including my first blankie and a certain walking/talking doll in a pink net evening gown. No one wants to hear juvenilia like that, and when I say "no one," I mean parents, friends, space cadets, even distant relatives with psych problems of their own.

I'm emotionally unstable, at least that's what the 10 psychiatrists and psychologists have told me over the years, but I think that accusation might be a bit too calculating and sinister. Call me phobic, but I'm pretty sure these nut cases (factually speaking, a great percentage of psychiatrists also are in need of therapy and enter the profession because they want to help others with the same laundry list of problems but also because they can get discount rates on Freudian analysis). They also work hand in glove with CVS, Walgreen's and all those pharmaceutical corporations that are overcharging retirees and poor homeless folk. I'm not poor or homeless but I might just get to be a pain-in-the-ass retiree if those meds keep spiraling in price. On the positive side, though, the pills seem to be doing their thing  because I rarely obsess any more over suicidal ideations like jumping into the Grand Canyon, preparing an arsenic souffle, or signing up for a tour of duty in one of those Middle Eastern countries that shelter terrorists.

Not only have I been diagnosed as emotionally unstable by some very questionable physicians, I also have been incarcerated for short times at mental hospitals where I met a lot of nice people while I was being threatened with ECT (electroconvulsive therapy for you newbies who haven't seen Winona Ryder in "Girl Interrupted" or Jack Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"). I look back on those periods as R&R for my PTSD that I developed reading the newspapers during the Gulf Wars. Of course I also have depression and anxiety, but most people I know wrestle with these challenges. And personally speaking I don't much trust people who say they are mentally 100 percent fine. Those types are usually pathological liars who one day walk into a Walmart and buy an UZI for "home use." Those people really need to be locked up in the old-time "snake pits" like in the movie Olivia DeHaviland or some such old actress starred in during a Late Late Show movie I watched during one of my good days.

But back to my bio. I think I had mental problems as soon as I left the womb. According to my mother, I cried for a solid six months. She said it was colic, but she--wink, winked--at me when she said that and I have a feeling my hysterical screaming was really a reaction to watching my parents get undressed every evening. It was either that or too much time being with big sister (who I covered in an earlier blog and will probably come back to eventually). Suffice it to say that my sister was perfectly content to stick with her previous only-child status and I messed up her plans. I remember how she loved to take me along with her and "play" with the other kids on the block, but her idea of "play" always was binding me to a tree with electrical cords and letting me stew until my mother finally remembered she had two kids, not just one, and asked my sister where the baby was.

Sister: What baby?
Mother: You know, the one who hangs out in the crib and tosses her dirty diapers on the floor (Fact: this never ever happened.)
Sister: She either got run over by a car or met up with an unfriendly dog with large incisors.
Mother: Oh, what a joker you are!

Okay, my sister liked to joke about the death and maiming thing, but she still could be charged with kidnapping and assault, crimes she liked to refer to as "adventures." Later her babysitting duties smacked of brainwashing and waterboarding. She'd draw a nice warm bubble bath, put my rubber ducky and assorted toys in, and then dunk me viciously every time I farted. It--the farting, that is-- wasn't  too smart on my part, but let's remember, she had me by four years so if there was anyone who should have known about bath etiquette it would have been her.

Eventually the depression and anxiety turned into OCD, but it was never the kind you could brag about. All the wackos (and I say that in the most loving way) on Dr. Phil and Merv Griffin always boasted that they had to check the front door x number of times before they could leave the house or they had to masturbate x number of times before they could go to sleep, but me, I tabled the compulsive component of OCD in favor of obsessions. If I made a mistake during the daily routines of even an average day, I'd have to relive it in my mind while carrying on with my other duties. For instance, if I made a left turn and nearly collided head-on with a BMW, I'd have to relive this event and correct it inside my mind until my nervousness abated. That meant mentally imaging the mistake while driving 65 mph on the Garden State Parkway. It might sound easy, but it wasn't. It felt pretty much like multi-tasking while doing heart surgery, and you know how that can turn out. (See episodes of "ER" and "Chicago Hope" for reference points.)

Still reading? Well, stop now and catch your breath before going on to Part II, which I haven't written yet, but will when I stop procrastinating and googling the Net for old boyfriends.

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