This be the verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.
- This Be The Verse - Phillip Larkin

It feels like all kinds of wrong that I would rather be here alone for NYE than stick it out for another minute at home.

Okay, I should be truthful, I don't especially care that much about NYE. The friends that I usually go out with for drinks and such like all work the holidays, and now I don't even drink so friends - drink + a hopeless family = sitting in the dark on your own watching sci-fi, just to get further away from reality.

My parents are so fucking.... Well, hopeless, I guess, and it's a terrible thing to say but I'm certain that if I spend much more time around them I am going to end up hating them and getting to a point where we can't salvage anything of out relationship. Either they don't realise what the Hell they're saying or they're intentionally fucking cruel.

After all they crap they said yesterday, about being attention seeking/delibrately out to shock to people, I told them that I was go back to uni, to which they answered whether or not that meant I was going back to the gym because 'you could do with losing weight', I don't care that that's actually true, that I really have piled on weight in the last six months and could do with shifting some, and maybe it's hypocritical of me to say those things myself and to myself and expect other people to be different but as far as I'm concerned it's an invisible line that my own parents have crossed. To think that it's perfectly acceptable to say things like that to me. TO ME. When they know all about my anorexic past and this time five years ago they were coming to see me in hospital because of it. Don't get me wrong, I don't want people walking on eggshells around me, being ultra sensitive, I just think that there are some thing you shouldn't say, and you're fat or lose weight is pretty much above and beyond the top of my list.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't.

"Good breeding consists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."

- Mark Twain

My parents are out to destroy me. I am starting to think that they really, really deliberately set out to hurt and upset me, to push me backwards when I start to go forwards, to keep me in chains. We have grown apart. I am floating further and further away from them, maybe from everybody.

This is all about a haircut.

I got about an inch shaved off the side, it’s not even that drastic, it’s not my whole head, I’ve been shaving the back for months, and for fucks sake, its hair, IT WILL GROW BACK!

He had a massive row, they said some really fucked up and hurtful things. Apparently, I change my appearance because I want attention and I want to shock and offend them. That is not true, I change my appearance because I like to change my appearance, because I get bored, because I spend a long, long time looking the same and I grew to hate it. It’s good to experiment. How else are you going to find out what works for you?

According to them it is all because of ‘my illness’ and its controlling me and making me unaware of the how I really look and the things that I’m doing to myself. Seriously, that is such bollocks! Yes, my identity is a bit unstable, but to me that’s not illness, that’s just boredom, I’m a Gemini, I get bored easily, I like to change every now and then.

They said that I destroying my looks, that I used to be pretty but now I’m becoming ugly. Told me to look at old photos of myself and see what a mess I’ve made of myself. They want me to be meek and timid and quiet. They want me to be the person that I was when I was anorexic. Because that’s when I had long hair and wore ‘normal clothes’... They said that everyone laughs about me behind my back because they think that I look fucking ridiculous. I’ve only just started going out again, and now I never want to go out in public again. Fucking paranoia overload.

I tried to tell them that it’s not really what they think or what they find nice to look at. Sometimes I don’t think they realise how fucking low my self-esteem has been, and can still be sometimes, how I obviously hated the way that I used to look because if I liked it, I wouldn’t have changed it. I prefer being this way. Being weird. Alternative. I love tattoos, hair dye, piercings, boyish hair, funky hair... I am not a pretty girl, I don’t do pretty, I’m not cute... I try to make the best of what I’ve got, but according to them I am on some big fuck off mission to destroy myself and that deep down I want to feel ugly.

Why do they have to make EVERYTHING about fucking mental health? Why can I not change something about myself without it having some deep, fucked up meaning? I totally get that they may not like it andI would be completely okay if they just said that, but I don't get why they have to be so fucking cruel about it. I'm so sick of this so called loving family, how much they supposedly care yet at the same time how unbelivebly cruel they have always been to me (I just mean with words, nothing horrible...) I had it off my Grandad before he died, constant, relentless taunting about how fat I was. FAT. For years and years and years until my parents decided to get involved. My (eleven years older) sister was a total bitch towards me when I was growing up and my Dad ALWAYS took her side, even when you stole huge amounts of money from me and dragged me up the stairs by my hair, it was always my fault, I started it or whatever... My Dad never gave a shit about me until I got sick and everything he does know is a blatant effort for absolution, it's got nothing to do with how much he loves or cares about me... We are always falling out, they treat me like a child, I hate it, I want to move out properly and then they get all fucking pissy about it... They want me to be something, someone, that I'm not, the daughter they wished they had, but really I'm just the daughter they never wanted..

I want a family, I want my Mum and Dad, but I just want them to accept who I am instead of trying to destroy me, because that's what it feels like...

It's a fucking haircut
Hair grows back
I have not had plastic surgery
The world has not ended

Courage is the discovery that you may not win, and trying when you know you can lose

“If you wait to do everything until you're sure it's right, you'll probably never do much of anything.”
- Win Borden

I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to work things out, to figure out why the last couple of months have been so awful and where it all went wrong. I didn't realise how much had happened leading up to, and possibly to, contributing to this recent bout of blackness.

Since I finished my first year of university back in May things have been gradually going wrong.
I don’t like the summer and it is usually an incredibly crap time for me.

2004: bad relationship/rape
2005: height of my anorexia/low weight/physical crap/countless appointments/eventually IP Sept
2007: bad relapse but pulled myself out of it/consider it to be the start of my true recovery
2008: second rape/psychotic breakdown/depression/IP
2009: severe self-harm and ending up in a&e getting stitches every other night/crisis house

This year I was already going to the day hospital, because I took two pretty serious overdoses, dangerous amounts, and the fact that I washed them down with whole bottles of absinthe, and the latter one being on a train on my own – but they weren’t planned and they weren’t really suicide attempts. They were impulsive. The first one I just had a thought that completely took over me, that I had to take 30 pills, and I did it without thinking. It was like a task. But it came on in a minute and I didn’t plan to do it, or really even think that it would kill me, I just didn’t care if it did. The second one I really did want to die, but when you have BPD no-one ever believes that... and then end of July time I was assaulted by an old bloke on a bus, went home in a bit of a state, for the first time ever I started getting real flashbacks, got home and got told it was all my own fault because I was ‘dressed up and asking for it’, there was a physical fight between me and my parents, the crisis team came out with the fucking police, they wanted to arrest me and refused to take me into hospital, and I just fucking lost it and went to the bathroom to slash my arm up, so they couldn’t arrest me and I had to go to a&e in a fucking ambulance, when all I needed was so fucking steri-stripes, anxious as fuck because my Mum was threatening to kill herself, and I’m the one that gets fucking carted off in an ambulance... The next day I went to the crisis house again and the crisis team said that they didn’t think I can any mental health difficulties, my parents wouldn’t let me back home and I was virtually kicked out onto the street until I broke down completely and my psychiatrist stuck up for me. SERIOUSLY, THE CRISIS TEAM WERE GOING TO KICK ME OUT ONTO THE STREET, and then a bit after than I rang them up in a state with pills all counted out and they asked me what and how much and said ‘well, that won’t kill you’ and hung the fucking phone up on me.

So all in all I went back to university under a bit of a cloud, but I coped alright for a couple of weeks just before lectures started, then things went downhill all over again.

The first thing that happened was that one of my flatmates friends came over one night, apparently only drank a couple of beers, but was completely drunk, aggressive, and eventually unconscious. I think because I’m slightly older they look to me to sort things like that out, and at the time I did, called the ambulance, who refused to take him in, so we sat up all night with him. Cool. Calm. Collected. In the moment. Until it was all over. And then I wasn’t in the moment anymore but six years ago dealing with the same shit from my cunthead alcoholic rapist of an ex-boyfriend., and since then I got flashbacks pretty much every day until... well, it’s still ongoing... I’ve got support sessions at rape crisis starting next month so...

Then, I got sick, physically ill, constant headaches, not being able to stand light or sound, dizzy spells, blacking out, and I was terrified, I didn’t know what was going on, I lost all my social life because I couldn’t go out and do anything, I couldn’t make it into lectures, I started staying in, then staying in my room, then staying in bed... It turns out that I was only anaemic, easily solved, but the damage had already been done and the depression had kicked in. I quit university.

It’s been a while since I’ve known true, major depression, and it’s never been this bad before, or at least not for so long, barely speaking, not going out, locking myself in my room, ignoring the phone, ignoring people knocking, the only place that I went to was A&E to get stitched up, the last time I had to get sorted out my plastics and some of the sensations in my arm has gone so I’ve been too scared to do it again, flashbacks, nightmares, counting, checking, skin crawling anxiety, the only thing that I thought about was suicide, in every possible, conceivable way, it was like a fantasy, a lullaby that got me through those nights, the knowledge that there was a way out... and then I tried it, genuinely planned a night where I was alone and got a handful of a way through a box of painkillers before breaking down, I couldn’t do it, and the worst thing is I don’t even know why. I don’t even know what stopped me.

It’s been just over a month since that night and things have gradually got better, I changed meds from Cymbalta to Mirtazapine and its pulled me right back from that edge, of suicidal ideation and cutting and insomnia, I still have days where I don’t go out, or get up, but that’s a sort of safe depression, rather than a raging out of control hopelessness, and I know the value of life now, even if not the value of my own.

I’m still anxious as fuck a lot of time, the whole time I’ve been at home for Christmas I’ve been too scared to sleep at night, I am sure that it would be all too easy for someone to get through my window... Ah, see, anxious! If anything it’s worse since I changed meds so I don’t really know what to think about that, I try hard to not let it dictate what I can do but when you’re just sitting on your own at home and feel sick, or you try to go to sleep but you can’t because you can’t breathe right, it’s frustrating and pretty awful to feel.

I don't know what it means to be aware of all these things, these triggers, I don’t know if it makes me feel more or less in control. Knowledge isn't always power and understanding isn't the same as solving, it's definitely not the same as preventing. And if things outside of myself have caused my to crack up so completely, then what's to stop the same things, or more things, doing the same next month, or next year, or ten years from now. Or what if done of them caused it and it just happened for no reason other than my brain deciding to shoot out a whole load of crazy chemicals. Which is more frightening? The possibility that your brain can and will work from the inside to bring you down, or that the world is full of people and places and things that will do it for you.

I have no idea about 2011 in terms of what I’m doing, whether I’m going back to my degree, or any of that stuff. I just want to get... well, go the support sessions, maybe the counselling, and just... not get over, but at least cope better with all the trauma stuff, because I tried for year to deny it and just carry on like normal, but I think I’ve reached that point over the second half of this year where you just can’t do that anymore because it doesn’t work, and I can’t pretend that how unwell and fucked up i get over the summer is one big coincidence, because it’s probably not, it’s probably all related to what happened, and if I don’t deal with it in a different way, by actually dealing with it instead of denying it, then it’s just going to keep coming back, every summer, and like this year’s proved, it doesn’t even constrain itself to that time frame anymore, and if you let it take over like that then you’re only really letting them beat you in the end, letting them win, and frankly I’m fucking tired of letting them have that kind of power over me.

This is the right time to try and deal with it, not because I feel ready or brave or fearless or strong, but because if it's not now it's never, and I'm not prepared to wait that long.

You're too young to be this empty girl

"I think back on things that happened. I bet you think you can pinpoint where it started for her. It’s easy to think that, when you look back at something as a whole. But when you’re living it, day by day, it’s like you’re in the belly of something and you can’t see it’s whole shape from the inside."
- Skin by Adrienne Maria Vrettos

I had my induction thing at the gym, apparantly I weigh 13st 7lbs and have a BMI of over 33. How the Hell did I let that happen!? That is literally double the weight I was at my thinnest (okay, sickest). I feel like I've completely let myself down and become gross and disgusting, and a part of me thinks fuck it, you deserve to be fat and miserable because maybe you couldn't help being miserable but getting fat is.all.your.own.fault. For the first time in a really, really long time I cried in front of the mirror.

I need to make some changes. I can't keep going at this rate. Being obese is much worse for you than being underweight, right? And I'm not happy. Okay, I know I'm generelly sad and depressed at the minute, but I'm not happy being this weight, this size, the depression has made me comfort eat and become comfortable not liking the way I look, being apathetic towards my body. That is not me and I am completely kidding myself and everyone else if I pretend to be okay with being obese.

I have a six month membership and they give you your own fitness programme to follow and check you weight and body fat and everything every month, and I'm giving up eating crap that's no good for you and addictive, like sugar, and stop snacking, and obviously stop eating to try and make myself feel better, because that is clearly not working, throw out the scales, through out all the disordered thoughts that I don't need anymore, let other people in that are going to call me on ... And hopefully I will end up somewhere in the middle of such stupid extremes.

I don't want to weigh in at under 7st again, no way! I am so completely not anorexic anymore. Sure, I sometimes miss it as if I've lost a vital organ, I sometimes feel like nothing will ever fill the big, black hole that it's left. I sometimes crave the simplicity that it gave me. The sense of power and purpose. I didn't give a fuck about anything back then. Only losing weight and not eating. I never had a BMI of less than 15, I never had a tube shoved up my nose... I used to believe that those kinds of things mattered. That I obviously wasn't a real anorexic. That I was too fat. Now I believe the evidence to the contrary. That those things don't mean anything at all and that wanting them and fantasising about them is fucking ridiculous. That I most definately was ill, anorexic.. I was completely fucking insane. Thinking that I was more powerful than anyone else in the entire universe because I didn't eat for 28 days. For a long time that was my proudest moment. My biggest achievement ever. And now in the cold light of day it looks completely fucking pathetic. I look completely fucking pathetic.

Guess what. I did all those things to myself. I had power. I had control. I had a choice. It was all willpower. I have the power to turn things around and lose the weight again, in a healthy way. I don't even want to be 'thin'. I want to weight 9st 7lbs/10st. The weight that I was before I got seriously sick. I've said many times before that I would go about things in the right way, lose the weight in the right way, but I didn't really mean it. The thought of being thinner and thinner and thinner was always driving it, somewhere...

I don't want to be fat anymore, I don't want to skinny anymore, I just want to be healthy and happy and proud of my body. Okay, I will probably never, ever be proud of it, but I'm sure that we could learn to not try and destroy each other.

After the six months are up, it'll be around the same time that I first danced with an eating disorder, ten fucking years ago. I am only 23 years old. That's not right. If I'm fit and healthy by that time it will be my final fuck you and goodbye. This stops here. I have control. Power. Strength. I don't have to walk around in a fat suit because I'm too uncomfortable in my own skin. I don't need to faint around like a ghost because I'm too uncomfortable in my own skin. No more extremes. No more using food to regulate my emotions. Has it ever really worked? I don't think so. And if I can sit here in six months time, healthier, fitter, with a normal attitude towards food, with a healthy attitude towards exercise, then I will genuinely have tears in my eyes. I will have done something to be truly proud of.

I am so fucking scared though... Scared of the comfort and safety that being this heavy makes me feel. I am disgusting so no-one will want to touch me. I'm completely safe because the outside of me is so, so much bigger than the inside. Safe. Fat. I'm scared that I don't have the willpower to change. I'm scared that I iwll be obese for the rest of my life. I am scared of how close to the edge it's going to push me. I want to change, but I want to be healthy, and I want to feel...... Safe.

Winter must be cold for those with no warm memories

"Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind,
As man's ingratitude."
- William Shakespeare

I have the most vivid memory of winter. Back in 2005. I don't remember much of that year. I went to the EDU at the begining of November and wasn't allowed outside for over a month. I remember the first time that I went outside. It was freezing. Obviously, we had to wear as much clothing as possible. But it was still freezing. I can remember walking through the grounds. I can remember how it felt to have that little taste of freedom. Wanting more. I remember feeling completely alive and connected. In that one moment.

I wish I could experiance the world like that again.

There are no innocents

"Normally seven minutes of another person's company was enough to give her a headache so she set things up to live as a recluse. She was perfectly content as long as people left her in peace. Unfortunately society was not very smart or understanding."

- 'The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo', Stieg Larrson

I went to the psychiatrist on Thursday and told her about everything, she is surprisingly easy to talk to and be honest with, I don’t know whether it’s my own attitude towards her or just the way she is but with some people I just get a positive vibe and some I get a really negative one… Like with Carol I absolutely could not stand her because I didn’t feel like she was ‘on my side’, I can’t get on with DBT people for a similar reason, but with my psych I feel like we’re aiming for the same results, and I get a good vibe and find that she comes across as genuinely giving a shit (the fact that she gave me her phone number, or that she will always fit me in at the end of her clinic if I really need to see her whereas DBT and Carol (who got suspended so it definitely wasn’t just me who found her a waste of space…) I just feel like they’re constantly fighting me rather than trying to help me, and I have never even considered talking to them about the rape thing because I know that they couldn’t care less about anything I’ve gone through, they just care about making me not self-harm, they don’t realise that it’s something more than the behaviour… I guess that’s why the ‘B’ in DBT stands for behavioural - but fuck it, I haven’t been in a few weeks and I feel better because of it, and I don’t really cared if I sound like a textbook example of BPD, because surely when you feel like absolute shit and are just trying to stay alive, you don’t want to be dealing with people who just make you feel worse, no matter how much other people might tell you it’s for the best. Also, they seem to think that it’s the answer to everything that’s wrong in my life, when I genuinely don’t think it is, but anyways, that’s a bit off-topic, sorry, I tend to get carried away with myself whenever I bring the subject up!

So yeah, Dr S, I like her a lot and can talk to her about stuff, because she knows about everything and is the one that go me into the rape crisis centre, and she has said that if I wanted to use her to talk about things then she would do that, but that she also thinks that its good to have the two things separate and to use the people at the centre because they can meet me once a week and do practical support stuff that’s specific like dealing with flashbacks, and I can also get long-term counselling there if I want to, but I’m just going to do the support sessions first and see what it’s like because just doing that feels terrifying enough right now, and that she’ll deal with the medication side of things. She increased the Mirtazapine which I’m a bit apprehensive about because I don’t want my appetite to increase but I guess right now feeling better is more important than what I eat or weight, and I guess that is has always been more important, I was just too fucking stubborn to realise it and to let go of the eating disorder. I feel so completely free of it right now, not spending the whole time thinking of weight or food, and I guess that’s been a ‘positive’ aspect of feeling so depressed, and I’ll be honest that I’m kind of scared that when I feel better again and back to normal, I will start to care about what I weigh and I know that I have gained A LOT of weight over the last six months, over 40lbs and that was from a high end of healthy BMI so I’m technically obese (193lbs at 5”4) and I do worry that it’s become like a safety blanket to me, feeling all safe and protected in this ‘fat suit’, because I really can’t stand the idea of looking remotely attractive right now… And a little part of me feels like I’m in denial over my weight gain and pretending that I’m living in complete freedom, eating as much as I like, pigging out, when really I think I’ve been doing it for comfort. The comfort that I used to find in losing weight I seem to have found in being overweight. It doesn’t make any sense but then I guess disordered body image is disordered, no matter which way it swings. Anyway, gone off on a tangent again…

I like having it separate but working together at the same time, because I do feel that there are some parts of my mental health problems that aren’t solely down to trauma, but I also realise that they both have a knock on effect to each other (which, if you’d asked me a year ago, or even six months ago I would NEVER had admitted, so I guess that’s kind of a good thing…)

I’ve emailed my therapist to explain how things are and why I haven’t managed to make it to see her for the last month and asked her if it would be okay if she would keep a space open for me when I was feeling a little bit better about things and like I would actually be able to use her to talk things through because right now I just don’t feel like I can use her like that so I kind of feel like I’m wasting her time by keeping letting her down. She‘s been really great and understanding, I’ve got on with her since the first time she opened the door to me, I just knew that she was going to be good for me, so I really don’t want to not utilise her time, and she said that it was fine to leave it for awhile and that as soon as I wanted to see her again I just had to send her an email, which is something that I will most definitely do because of how good I found her before this thing got its teeth into me.

I got into a bit of a state earlier because I got a letter from uni saying that I had to pay back all of the student loan I’d had this term in 14 days, which there is no way I can because I just don’t have the money because my benefits haven’t come through yet.

It’s really knocked me off my feet, I got all ridiculous and suicidal just because I thought it would be the best way out. I know that it’s a stupid but right just normal, day to day life is hard enough, so when something ‘dramatic’ happens my brain reacts in a ‘dramatic’ way, daydreaming about just ending everything so I don’t have to deal with it. I hate how suicide has become this twisted daydream, I know that I’m not seeing it clearly for what it is, and I know that it’s terrible and everything, but the words ‘suicidal ideation’ feel so fucking true for me right now, the ideation part, because I’m building it up into some kind of far off fantasy, imagining all the different ways I could do it, and it’s become kind of fantastical, like a bedtime story, or a comfort blanket, that I cling to when I feel like I can’t cope with life anymore. Does that mean I’m not actually suicidal? Does that mean that I’m faking everything? Does it make me an attention-seeking idiot? Because it’s a fantasy not a reality…

This whole business has put me off ever going back to uni, which is a bad thing I know, but I don't think I could stand going through all this again because I tried so hard to get back into education, all the way through the ED it was what I wanted more than anything , the reason why I started to get well. But now it’s all uncertain and I already feel like it’s ran away from me. It was hard enough to get it back once. I don’t think I could do it again.

I don't even want to admit it but the last few nights.... it's been weird. It's like I'm tied up in rope, I can feel and see it, and when I look down there are all these... Holes? In the room. And neon thread wrapped around me, and when I go to touch it it's not there. The first time I thought that I was just overtired so ignored it. It's like part of my nightmares have come alive and climbed out of me... although I know that's not possible, but still... I'm also angry so much of the time, sometimes it's real fucking effort not to lash out, I feel like I constantly wanting to punch someone or something. There are certain people especially in my life right now who I want to scream at, tell them to fuck off, shout and rage... I hate this part of things. It genuinely terrifies me. Ever since I read/watched the Millenium trilogy I've been filled with images and fantasies of violent revenge. I have such a deep hatred towards the people that have hurt me, even if they were only really kids themselves at the time, even for the people that have protected them and stood by them, family members and friends that just point blank refuse the see that the person they love so much could be a maniuplative, alchoholic rapist. I hate the world and everybody in it so much right now. No-one and nowhere is safe. Everything's a threat. Everyone's a suspect.

The girl who kicked the cornet's nest

"I will never know myself until I do this on my own
And I will never feel anything else until my wounds are healed
I will never be anything till I break away from me
I will break away and find myself today"
- 'Somewhere I Belong' by Linkin Park

Sometimes I feel like nothing will ever fill the gap that the eating disorder has left. That nothing will ever make me feel so good, as strong, as in control, as accomplised, as free from the chaos in my head.

And then I see my friend, eating lettuce and gravy, and I feel completely liberated from those chains.

I'm not like that anymore, I don't believe in it anymore, I don't want it to be a part of my life (even by proxy) anymore.

So who am I instead? I have no fucking idea! And maybe that's why I still struggle so much with everything else that's going on inside. Why I am still 'ill', why I'm depressed, or anxious or self-harm or get suidical. Because I don't know what else to 'be'. But right now is one of those times when I'm not prepared to blame my body, or believe that losing weight will solve anything, because it won't. I don't know what will but I know that it won't.

My psychiatrist thinks that I've been feeling so shit because of everything that the rapes have left behind, and I have to admit that she has a point, and that a lot of what's going on right now is directly down to that, flashbacks, low mood, wanting to die, anxiety, it's all got so much worse since I started talking about it, and sometimes I wake up in a complete state just because I no longer have the ability to hide it all. I still don't understand why it's all come out now, what's been so special about now, why I suddenly realised that it was a big problem rather than a series of unrealted incidents that just happen to happen to me, and I just then happened to get on with things. I would never have even imagined that I would be in the position that I am right now, going to rape crisis, accepting that the way I feel isn't completely unrealted to it. I just wouldn't have thought I needed it. I genuinely thought that it would just go away on its own. That by not coping with it I had somehow tricked it enough to be able to cope with it, get on with things.

I feel so weak for not being able to get on with things, for talking, for feeling whatever the Hell it is I feel.

I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky

I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors anymore I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

I see a line of cars and they're all painted black
With flowers and my love both never to come back
I see people turn their heads and quickly look away
Like a new born baby it just happens every day

I look inside myself and see my heart is black
I see my red door and must have it painted black
Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts
It's not easy facin' up when your whole world is black

No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you

If I look hard enough into the settin' sun
My love will laugh with me before the mornin' comes

I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors anymore I want them to turn black
I see the girls go by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

Hmm, hmm, hmm,...

I wanna see it tainted, tainted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it tainted, tainted, tainted, tainted black
Yeah!

Hmm, hmm, hmm...

'Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones'

So I guess I should update...

Things have gone somewhat horrifically awful over the last couple of months. I don’t know what’s wrong really, depression I guess. I've had to quit university for the year, they didn't want me to continue because I was never making it in.

I never really had flashbacks before but I’ve spent the last few weeks in a near constant state of unreality, or dissociation, terrible memories. I’ve been self-harming badly, ended up in A&E the other night and had to get patched up by a plastic surgeon, missed my tendons by less than a millimetre, cut through so much muscle that my left hand has already lost some use, I got told pretty bluntly that I need to cut a different part of my body because my left arm is so full of scar tissue and muscle damage that it’s going to end up paralysed very easily. I’ve been suicidal a lot; I attempted to take a Paracetamol overdose on Friday night, it was planned, I knew that I would have an empty flat and no-one to find me, I got as fair as ten and broke down in tears. I looked it up on the internet and know that you have to take at least thirty... I guess I didn’t have the courage to do it. I’ve thought of everything. Jumping off a bridge. Jumping in front of a train. Covering myself in petrol and lighting a cigarette. Drowning. The OCD is coming back, for the first time really since I was sixteen, I’m carrying disinfectant around with me, the number three... It’s telling me to kill myself on 11/11/11, because then I will succeed, because the numbers are right...

I've been seeing the home treatment team for the last couple of weeks, since my psych changed my meds (Cymbalta to Mirtazapine) don't feel any better, except the fact that I now sleep solid through the night, but sleepng just makes the nightmares worse when you can't wake up from them.

Tomorrow I have my first appointment at the rape crisis centre. I don’t want to go. I don’t deserve it. They won’t believe me. There’s nothing to do. Nothing happened. It’s all in my fucking head. Driving me insane but just a fucked up nightmare, it didn’t happen.

I feel like I'm losing my shit, at the same time I feel like it's somehow not enough, that I'm not going through something real, I'm not really depressed at all, I definately don't have any kind of post traumatic whatever, all I have is the fucking borderline label, that just makes me out to be a liar, a manipulator, sure I say I'm suicidal, but I'm not really, I'm faking, I want attention or soemthing, I want to be 'validated'

Actually, I just want to fucking die, for everything to be other, or to wake up as a different person, in a different time, a different place, a different name, a different face...

I don't really have anything else to say.

Little Earthquakes

"Rape's not something where you just go, "Well, get over it" or "Believe in love and peace, my child, and it'll all be over." Well, fuck you, that isn't the answer. It's a great thought, OK, but you can go and stick crystals up your butt and get on with it. I'm all for love and peace, but that's not the side I work on. If somebody would talk about it, or worse, joke about it, I would be ready to kill. That's not healing. It was a very long time after that before I was able to be with anyone again. And it has never been the same as it was before"
- Tori Amos

A part of me would love to face you someday, as a survivor, with a life that’s more fulfilled and productive and successful than yours. I would desperately love to be like that. That’s what would count as justice to me; I would love for you to have no power over me, for the memories to have no power over me... I have so much work to do before I can to that point. Maybe it’s true that the first step is telling someone, admitting it and accepting that it does impact on your life that it’s not just something can file away in your mind to never be opened. Someone here, Martine I think, told me that it was like a splinter that hurts to take out but infects you as long as you keep it in. It’s not in anymore but it definitely hurts a lot more than it has ever done, a lot more than it did at the time. Deep down I know that it’s the right time to confront it, now I’ve made that first step I can’t take it back, even if I feel like complete crap to the point of suicidal ideation as a result of talking, I know that I can’t put it back in my finger and let it fester. Once it’s out, it’s out, and it changes how you relate to everything, everything is a threat or a memory trigger or a reason to lock yourself in your room and rot with the memories and the depression. I don’t want to do that, though, even if right now it feels like the only thing to do, even feels like the right thing to do or the only thing. I spent a long time thinking that it was you who needed to confess, to apologies, but I think now it’s more of a case of confessing and apologising to myself. Feeling like a have the right to hurt over it and to try and heal from it. I'm listening to this song a lot recently, I think because you feel so alone you connect to anything and then suddenly you can it opens things up, it opens yourself a little bit, and you feel a little bit stronger to stick two fingers up at the people who doubt and say that it's the girls fault, or what she wore, or how she acted, or how much she drank. Or that it's a fate worse than death and anyone would chose death over being raped. You start to understand how the myths work and how anyone who says such bullshit clearly doesn't get it., or get what it's about for the person commiting it, that they don't care really about killing you physically they just want to break your soul and have complete power and control over you. I still stand by what always thought, that it wasn't the reason why I got ill because I was ill before it happened, but it doesn't help and it stunts my recovery because I've left it there and let it fester.

5am friday morning
thursday night far from sleep
i'm still up and driving
can't go home obviously
so i'll just change direction
cause they'll soon know where i live
and i wanna live
got a full tank and some chips
it was me and a gun
and a man on my back
and i sang "holy holy"
as he buttoned down his pants

you can laugh
its kind of funny
things you think
times like these
like i haven't seen Barbados
so i must get out of this

yes i wore a slinky red thing
does that mean i should spread
for you, your friends
your father, mr ed

it was me and a gun
and a man on my back
but i haven't seen Barbados
so i must get out of this

and i know what this means
me and jesus a few years back
used to hang
and he said "it's your choice babe
just remember
i don't think you'll be back
in 3 days time so you choose well"
tell me whats right
is it my right to be on my stomach
of fred's seville

it was me and a gun
and a man on my back
but i haven't seen Barbados
so i must get out of this

and do you know Carolina
where the biscuits
are soft and sweet
these things go through your head
when there's a man on your back
and you're pushed flat on your stomach
it's not a classic cadillac

it was me and a gun
and a man on my back
but i haven't seen Barbados
so i must get out of this
i haven't seen Barbados
so i must get out of this

Placebo Gigs

"I'm medicated, how are you?"

- Placebo

1. 3/3/04 Manchester Apollo
2. 29/8/04 Reading Festival
3. 5/11/04 Wembley Arena
4. 2/7/05 Live 8 Paris
5. 24/1/06 London Koko
6. 15/3/06 Virgin Megastores Oxford Street
7. 5/4/06 Blackpool Empress Ballroom
8. 6/4/06 Glasgow Academy
9. 8/4/06 Newcastle Academy
10. 9/4/06 Birmingham Academy
11. 11/4/06 London Alexandra Palace
12. 21/6/06 Friday Night Project
13. 19/7/06 Nimes Arena
14. 27/8/06 Reading Festival
15. 2/10/06 Bercy Paris
16. 3/10/06 Bercy Paris
17. 7/11/06 Nokia Theatre Times Sq New York
18. 6/12/06 Glasgow SECC
19. 7/12/06 Nottingham Arena
20. 9/12/06 Wembley Arena
21. 10/12/06 Manchester Evening News Arena
22. 17/12/06 Leipzig Arena
23. 19/12/06 Hannover AWD Hall
24. 6/3/07 Coronet Theatre
25. 7/3/07 Coronet Theatre
26. 1/6/07 Warsaw Torwar
27. 26/7/07 Dusseldorf Philipshalle
28. 28/7/07 Frankfurt Jahrhunderthalle
29. 9/5/09 Sheffield Academy
30. 10/5/09 Bournemouth Opera House
31. 12/5/09 Shepards Bush Empire
32. 14/7/09 iTunes Festival Camden Roundhouse
33. 15/8/09 Sziget Festival
34. 12/11/09 Copenhagen KB Hall
35. 13/11/09 Stockholm Annex
36. 8/12/09 Birmingham LG Arena
37. 9/12/09 London o2 Arena
38. 11/12/09 Bridlington Spa
39. 12a/12/09 Manchester Central
40. 15/12/09 Dublin Olympia Theatre
41. 31/07/10 Sonisphere Festival
42. 27/09/10 Brixton Academy
43. 28/09/10 Brixton Academy

Me and a gun with a man on my back

"I think that the nightmares are telling me things about myself that I need to know. And I try to understand what they mean, so I can get to know something more about my soul."

- Tori Amos

So much for feeling a little better. I've crashed so utterly and completely. I took my stitches out myself and made a right fucking mess. Got a full weeks prescription and just want to OD OD OD. I feel like the depression and the past just has complete fucking control over me. It's so hard to fight it off. I remember when I'm awake and I remember when I'm asleep. The only time I don't is when I'm concentrating on bleeding. There’s no escape. I've become convinced that I'm making everything up because my memories keep changing, sometimes they're all distorted then another time they're really vivid. How do I know which ones are true.

I have emailed the mental health advisor and asked if it would be possible to take the rest of this term off and restart after Christmas. I will have already failed anyway because I didn't do the assignment that was due in today (despite asking for an extension that I never got) I've emailed her a few times in the last couple of weeks without any reply so I'm kind of worried about the whole thing. Nothing that I have done so far counts to my overall degree, though, I am just worried about what will happen, and I feel so triggered to SI because I feel like such a failure. I know it's the right thing to do, simply because right now I'm not functioning and knowing that I am missing lessons just makes me feel worse because there's the fear of getting kicked out and then losing all my loan and being in deep shit from that side of things.... And if I do get different anti-depressants or whatever then it's going to take a couple of weeks to work at least. I'm sure that I could get some work to do away from uni to sort of do at my own pace rather than being pressured and having to actually go in.

They do have emergency appointments but the GP that I see specifically for my repeat meds and general crazy doesn't have any left for this week. I don't even have the consultants phone number but I'm going to see if I can find it alone and maybe ring the secretary to see where my appointment is as it's been three weeks since I last saw her and she said that I could see her once a month which would be next Thursday but as she's only in on that one day it's nearly impossible to get in as it is.

If I get to leave uni I still think I am going to stay here instead of go home because I think going back would be worse for me. At least here there are people around even if I don't or can't socialise with them and it's less isolating. Also, when I'm ill at home it always leads to falling out which just makes everything worse.

There's nothing here worth saving

“He would say, 'How funny it will all seem, all you've gone through, when I'm not here anymore, when you no longer feel my arms around your shoulders, nor my heart beneath you, nor this mouth on your eyes, because I will have to go away someday, far away...' And in that instant I could feel myself with him gone, dizzy with fear, sinking down into the most horrible blackness: into death.”

- Arthur Rimbaud

I feel so completely undeserving of love, support and friendship right now. I feel like I've worked my ass off getting to this point and now I just want it to stop. 50 days without self-harming and 26 days sober. What is the point?

My mood swings have vanished and been replaced with a depression unlike anything I've experianced in years. It's persistant, it won't budge, I'm having thoughts of suicide, making vague plans, everytime I speak to someone I wonder if it'll be the last time. I wonder why I am still alive. I wonder why I've overdosed so many times and been sent back home. I don't feel better, I just feel empty and hollow and vacant. I don't go a day without anxiety preventing me from doing something, the kind of anxiety that gets under your skin and makes you want to rip it all off. I'm getting migraines all the time. I have to go for a heart trace and epilepsy test in a couple of days, they still don't know what's wrong with me.

I'm already behind with uni, I want to quit, change course, run away, anything but stick it out. I just don't have the strength.

I feel like I have nothing left to give.

Tokophobia

"Life is tough enough without having someone kick you from the inside."
- Rita Rudner

I had a God awful night last night. Hurt, constantly crying about everything, paranoid that people are talking about me behind my back and spreading rumours about me. I'm convinced that if I go outside then I'm going to get raped and become pregnant. I'm going through an episode of Tokophobia and I'm not sure what's triggered it as no-one I know is pregnant at the minute but it's such a strong fear.

Primary tokophobia is the fear and deep-seated dread of childbirth which pre-dates pregnancy and can start in adolescence. This often relates back to their own mother's experience or something they learned in school.

- my Mum was in hospital for most of her pregnency with me because she was really ill and needed constant medical supervision
- I was born ten weeks early and had a mass of medical problems, collapsed lung, life support
- my sister has had four miscarriages
- the feeling of being completely out of control over my body is terrifying
- I am convinced that I would get pyschotic post natel depression and kill myself and the baby
- I'm not good enough to be a mother
- the idea of some alien like creature growing inside of me, taking me over, is terrifying

The sight of pregnant woman makes me feel physically sick, as do the sight of pregnancy tests and any images however 'mild' of sex. I know that I am NOT pregnant, I haven't slept with anyone in over a year, and I've taken 10 different tests over the last couple of days, but a part of my brain isn't work right and is telling me that I am. I've got fatter because I'm pregnant. I'm depressed because I'm pregnant. I feel sick and keep blacking out because I'm pregnant. My head keeps going back to being raped but this time I am pregnent, it's like some kind of rewritten flashback. I get raped by the same person, same day, same time, same place, but then I'm pregnent and no-one will let me terminate and I have to give birth and it's horrific and I have to kill my baby and then myself...... This didn't happen but somehow my brain has latched onto it and added it to the memory of what did.

I want to take a knife to my stomach and see that there's nothing in there. The urge is so strong, the fear is so strong, that there is something growing inside of me that I'm supposed to love but all I do is hate it.

There is only so many times I can say THIS IS NOT REAL before I have to prove it or just cut to get rid of the terrible urges because I don't believe that they will dissappear this time.

I feel like I've lost the plot in the blink of an eye.

Reality's almost always wrong

"I was deluded into thinking I might be crazy."
- House, Season 6

A while back, I gave myself a shot of serious honesty up my arse, and came to some pretty nasty conclusions. Most of the fucked up things I've done in my life, or the painful things that I've gone through myself, have been down to drugs and/or alcohol.

I have hurt people and let people down, lost people's respect and friendship. I have self-medicated and hid anxiety, depression, insecurity and my intense fear of not being 'good enough' or 'fun enough' to be in other people's company by drinking too much, smoking too much, but in the end it all fell apart and stopped being a good move, an easy way of being around people. It just made them hate me. I have taken acid to escape realities I've been too scared to face and only become more paranoid and caged by those realites. I took cocaine to move time along, to stop the big blackness between waking up and going to sleep. I smoked weed because I thought it would chill me out, just like it did for everybody else. I'd dome the whole teenage getting high sniffing clue and aerosols thing before I was 13.

The first time I drank I was 16 and going out with what I lately realised was an alcoholic, encouraged to drink all the time, take drugs all the time, if he could make someone else drink as much as he was then he didn't have a problem. Simple, easy maths. At first it was just watching him shout at people, then it was shouting at me. Then he started getting violent with people, then he was hitting me. He loved driving drunk, loved it even more if he could force me to go with him, taking me to houses of friends I didn't know and places I didn't know how to get home from, being forced to stay and sleep in a house full of drunk, drugged up strangers. A couple of months after I was 17, in a house with another set of strangers, blind drunk, he raped me.

I kept drinking all the time (except for the year that I didn't, because I was more concerned with starving myself to death) I would go out and drink, stay in a drink, couldn't be around people unless I was drunk, didn't think they'd like me if I was sober, didn't know how to BE sober anymore anyway. Then I got raped again, different person, same story. Still drank and drank, wrecked a lot of good things in my life, lost a lot of good things in my life, then came uni and more drinking then ever before, painkillers, drugs, drama...

I'd had enough.

I've been sober for 15 days. I am still having a rough time. I don't know how long the detox thing is supposed to last but I'm pretty sure it should have been over my now. My stomach hurts all the time, I'm tired all the time, my limbs jerk, salt and sugar cravings are through the roof, I've gained 10lbs, I'm shaking most of the time and I am incredibly unhappy and depressed. For the first time in a long time my mood and self-esteem are on the floor. It's hard not to isolate. Hard to get out of bed. Hard to go out unless it's to walk around aimlessly or to buy food to binge on. Feeling on the edge of a huge depressive pit.

The way people see me has probably changed, too, or they don't understand. I've gone from being the 'life and soul' to being this quiet, frightened thing that locks herself away in her room for hours at a time, doesn't want to go out, doesn't turn up for uni half the time... I am sure that they won' take much more from me yet I can't explain myself.

I must have been so stupid in just thinking it was as simple as not drinking. It's so much more than that and I'm not quite sure how to get through that bit.

Recovery is a journey not a destination

"The same way I came down, I went back up ... gradually, and suddenly."

Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel

Right now there is no dark attraction or inclination to relapse in my eating disorder.

I'm not exactly happy about my weight or size, but I can go out and feel okay about myself, do my hair, paint my face, tattoos, piercings, and I feel content in my own skin. I don't feel the hatred towards it that was so constant for so many years.

Today I brought size 14 clothes and didn't think twice about it. I went out with my mum for hot chocolate and whipped cream. I ate pizza and tasted it, enjoyed it, I wasn't even tempted to drink wine with my friends.

I know that people love and accept me for who I am and I am trying damn hard to do the same.

Love is a strong word and maybe I'll never get there, never shout from the rooftops or dance naken in the moonlight. But being able to enjoy food, not think about it and look in the mirror without feeling an intense hatred and anger and failure.

It is something that I genuinely never thought I would have. Relapsing doesn't even feel like an option anymore. I have my good body image days and I have my bad ones, but they don't ruin and consume me like they once did.

I can see the reality of eating disorders, I can see and realise what I did to myself and accept that I was desprately sick. I lost myself for so long but in the process I became so much stronger on the way out.

Elsewhere things are better than they have been in a really long time. The current cocktail of meds I'm on actually feel like they are doing something (120mg Duloxetine, 100mg Seroquel, 300mg Seroquel XR, 200mg Lamictal, 7.5mg Zopiclone) my mood is fairly stable, my anxiety and depression are lifting, flashbacks and nightmares and pyschotic symptoms are under control and my impulsive and self-harming behaviours have improved drastically - no SI for over a month, no reckless spending, binge eating, generally self-destructive. I'm aware of how many chemicals are going through my brain and changing the way my brain works but if I feel better then surely it's got to be worth it?

Therapy is... completely fucking draining to be honest but I am gritting my teeth and getting through it. I have more of a connection with S that I have ever had with a professional before and she just 'gets' me and I find myself opening up to her more than I have ever been able to before. She gets me to think and talk about stuff that I have never even admitted to myself. We talked about the rape last time, the how/when/where/who's of it more than on an emotional level aand she became genuinely angry on my behalf, firmly telling me that all the things I have ever thought or said to make it okay and blame myself are false and that it absoluely WAS NOT MY FAULT.

I needed that so much and even though I don't believe it fully I think that I've gone from 99% certain I was to blame to about 80%... Which is more than an improvement. This shit is gonna be hard but this time I'm not quitting when it gets tough, I'm sticking it out, for as long as it takes, every little thought or feeling that's going on, all the little things that add up and increase just through life, various abuse/bullying, a violent and ultimately sexual abusive relation, the aftermath, the way I feel now, the consequences, the guilt, the flashbacks and dissociations that make me feel like I am back there all over again, the fear of summer, how it affects my relationships, how the child on child abuse is a terrifying thing to think, let alone speak...

Through all these years of treatment, I finally have someone that I feel actually gives a shit about me and who will listen and believe and help me challenge and ultimately 'get over it'.

I'm determinded to get through it, however long it takes and however painful it is. I'm in.

Not Afraid

I had 2 b/p's on Sunday - my first in ages and for a moment I remembered all the reasons why I used to do it regularly and none of the reasons as to why I made such a huge effort to stop. The stress and anxiety of becoming flat mates with someone with active ED'ed behaviours is something I'm not coping with as well as I would have wanted... I feel so incredibly vulnerable. Doing a bit better now, though.. Back to ED's... I sort of feel like relapse is not an option - there is too many good things in my life that I wouldn't risk for anything, especially an ED. I have so much more self-esteem and confidence now than I ever had losing weight. I feel like I'm starting to fit and fill my own skin, sometimes it feels incredibly uncomfortable and I panic, but the times that it feels good and like I'm becoming a person in my own right and building my own identity away from mental health and ED's are worth it.

Food aside I got discharged from non-ED day treatment after being there since July... I feel quite emotional about it, I met some really nice people and it helped through a really rough summer. I'm still getting up tothe theraputic dosage of Lamictal but so far I'm finding it one of the best meds I've tried, taking Cymbalta and Seroquel (XR and normal) alongside it (and sometimes Zopiclone) and I'm still in DBT and had a couple of sessions with the pychotherapist whom I'm paying to see and who has nothing to do with the NHS or my CMHT... Still waiting to be allocated a new CPN and the pyschiatrist I've been seeing since 2007 (and who I got the BPD diagnosis from) is leaving so I'll probably never see him again which feels a bit weird after being under his care for so long (even if sometimes I felt like he was hopeless) but I've seen one in Leicester a couple of times so it's not like I'll be starting completely afresh... It feels like the end of an era in a way.

It also feels like a lot to be taking and doing from the system but I'm tying to come to grips with that and accept that I deserve it and that I'm doing the right thing.

smoke. drink. eat. love. life

"We can live like Jack and Sally if we want
Where you can always find me
And we'll have Halloween on Christmas
And in the night we'll wish this never ends
We'll wish this never end"
- 'I Miss You' by Blink 182

So, what's been happening? Lots and lots, really, nearly all of it pretty damn fabulous! I've actually noticed a real difference being on the Lamictal, I'm far less impulsive than I was and my moods are better although still swinging a bit but they feel alot more withing the 'normal range' if that makes any sense. I got put on 50mg at ward round so hopefully it'll be even better this time next week. I don't want to move back to uni still getting medication sorted but I'm sure I could get an appointment or something with a GP over there to sort it out, It's a bit of an intense time mental HELLeath wise, right now. Three days of day hospital, DBT individual and group, therapy (although I didn't go last week because the friggin taxi never turned up!) and more meds than I've been on before (100mg Seroquel, 300 mg Seroquel XL, 50mg Lamictal, 120mg Cymbalta and 7.5mg Zopiclone)

But all in all I think I'm getting there... Have really got my lust for life back over the last week or so, looking forward to second year and living with some of my best friends and all the great gigs that I've got lined up and just generelly having a blast!

Oh, and I have a wonderful girlfriend, too.

<3

It ain't me, babe

I went to my first Pride on Saturday which was nowhere near as exciting as I thought it would be but still a day of rainbow love is fab!

Things that I hate

- how I go from happy, chatty drunk t0 stupid, irrationally, far too drunk without noticing until it's too late.
- how everyone in Leicester seems to be in a couple.
- when I'm at home I want to be at uni and when I'm at uni I want to be at home
- doctors that don't care
- being fatter than I have ever been and not being able to get it together to eat less and loes
- being patr0nised by people at least two years younger than me yet feeling a lot younger than I really am
- being so fucking vulnerable
- fucking up so many friendships
- sitting awake at 5AM with only day hospital to get up for
- feeling safe and relaxed in the smoking garden at said day hotspital and not really wanting to leave
- myself. intensley.

White rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits

"It's like a whirlwind inside of my head
It's like i can't stop what i'm hearing within
It's like the voice inside is right beneath my skin
Right beneath my skin"
- Papercut by Linkin Park

My Mum went into the hospital but the consultant decided not to operate because he didn't think it would be worthwhile and wanted to wait until he had no choice to prevent having to do the operation again.

At the time I felt complete relief but after a few hours I came down and started to feel horrible and guilty and angry and so much random emotion and I ended up cutting, not badly, only scratches really, and then today I got into a bit of an argument with my DBT therapist because she insists on telling me that SI'ing is going to kill me yet that just triggers me back to the times I have done real damage to myself and needed internal stitching and overnight observation because I'd lost so much blood and I just get angry because even though, yes I self harmed, I feel like I am slowly getting to a place where I can control the amount of damage and use it as a release instead of a drastic self-punishment. My head is so fucking messed up I don't really know what to think.

The nights are still terrible for nightmares and flashbacks and my grounding skills are crap because I've never really learnt how to do it properly, I'm hoping that I can try and talk about it if I see the shrink on Friday at the day hospital and hoping that I will get my days cut down or discharged and then get on with this new CPN and consultant (if it ever happens) I'm not sure what I want from them, a different point of view? Answers? Fuck!

I don't know. I feel really confused right now.

Just gonna stand here and watch me burn but that's alright because I love the way it hurts

I feel so torn between losing the plot completely and fighting like Hell to get myself as far away from all this crap before going back to uni....

And then I feel even worse because it's like I have that choice and I desperately feel like a fraud who just 'acts at being crazy' and invalid....

Then I start to feel crap about even questioning it and I feel so stupidily unsafe that I want to kill myself just to make the choice stop and I get angry that nobody seems to be listening which reinforces the idea that I am merely seeking attention or something...

The I think about the next couple of weeks and the anxiety and paraonia that threatens to cloud over me and how much I don't want to walk through that fire and to just duck out early...

Then, eventually, I think about uni and my new flat and my new friends and how much I can't wait to be back there and to achieve something and be something other than a mental health patient, or a borderline, or a former anorexic...

I just wish I didn't have to go through that whole cycle over and over and over again constantly. It's so easy to lose faith in the middle of it and not get to the 'eventually' phases.

When the first cup of coffee tastes like washing up

Everything still feels so fucking useless
Feel desperate and paranoid and anxious and unsafe but no-one gives a fuck
I can't stop my head filling with violent and terrifying images
Talked to a doctor today and it was a waste of time, didn't give me any medication or anything or even seem to give a shit about anything I had to say
Calling the crisis team is a waste of time
Feel so fucking lost
I saw Sylthia (the private pyschotherapist) and she is a completely gorgeous person and I'm definately going to see her again but she's just someone to talk to and work things out with
And the rest of it just seems like a huge pile of crap
That they're all plotting against me and telling lies behind my back and they want me to kill myself
I feel like I'm the verge of something awful

Everything feels like the movies

And again there is more on the news and in the papers as to the age of 'knowing what you're doing' and whether a child can abuse another child or whether or not they don't understand
And it makes my brain hurt and my heart hurt and then I get angry and don't want to think anymore because it's stupid and pointless
The whole thing is stupid and pointless
But if that was really the case then why do I feel so terribly tainted by things that happened 10/15 years ago
Nothing is simple
I wish that I could be a true 'victim', a clear cut case in the eyes of the law
But that's never going to happen
So many people's reactions tell me enough to know that
Friends that believed other friends and called me a liar
People who said I was asking for it by the way that I look
Or drinking
Or taking drugs
Or else otherwise being incapacitated to fight them all off
It's wrong to envy another person's Hell but I do
I would willingly be beaten and raped by a stranger in a park than this mismatched memory maze of accountability
A child can't hurt another child
It's just harmless fun
All kids experiment
I suppose they do
But kids are clever and cunning
And if they're knowing enough to plan ahead
And make sure that no-one sees what they're doing
Then surely they must know that it's wrong
But that's not what the letters say and that's not what my brain says
And then today they say that I cut because of my mum and anxiety
And I almost cry and say it's so much more than that
So much more than I will ever be able to articulate
And then it feels like a list I have invented in my head
Too much chaos, too many crappy hands, for it to be real
I don't feel real anymore
I feel like an actress
Playing myself in a movie
Because life feels like a disaster movie
Or a tragic life story made for tv afternoon
Except there's not happy ending
Just more pain and memoires and this desperate isolation from help
That no-one will help me
Everyone assumes that I can control it
I can't control it
I want to buy razor blades and hack away at all these stories
All these bits of myself that don't feel like they belong to me
And be a good person again
A person that they see as worth saving
But they won't me dead, don't they?
They are all against me
They won't help
And I don't know how to help myself
And i despreately want out

Tried to give you warning but everyone ignores me

Last night I completely freaked out
Became convinced that my care-co and doctor want me dead and that the reason the crisis team never help is because they all want me to kill myself
They said they would call me this morning and they didn't
They are next door to the day hospital and they couldn't even be bothered to come over and see if I was okay
I literally broke my heart on the phone to them
I have a weeks worth of medication lined up
What is it?
Well that won't kill you
All I can say is I advise you not to do it
All the time I am saying
I AM NOT FUCKING SAFE
I'm agitated and delusional and I need someone to come and be with me
They say that they can't come out to me
I ring my Dad and he finds me sitting on the side of the road and takes me home
Home is safer than here
Home I have people around me through the night
Here I am on my own
I was begging for them to help and they didn't do anything
I tried to talk it through with my nurse at the day hospital but she just says that I have capacity and choice which okay, fair enough, but I get no advise on how to deal with all these thoughts and urges
And the fact that they feel to me to just be leaving me to get worse increases all the paranoid thoughts I have about them not wanting me to get better and spreading lies about me
The crisis team have let me down too many times
I don't trust them or anyone else involved in my 'care'
I hate having this fucking borderline label
Before I got diagnonsed and I got all hysterical and pyschotic they put be in the hospital within two days
Now they do bugger all
I am just left to sit it out on my own
Anxiety that feels like a snake rearing up inside of me
Pushing it's way up through my throat
Out of my mouth
I should see a doctor tomorrow
I should go back home
I am terrified
Of what I might do in desperation not to feel
My Mum is gonna die
I see her dead all the time
I hear the news in my head all the time
I can't think straight or rationalise anything
Noody's listening

You said you read me like a book, but the pages all are torn and frayed

"Well if you wanted honesty, that's all you had to say.
I never want to let you down or have you go, it's better off this way.
For all the dirty looks, the photographs your boyfriend took,
Remember when you broke your foot from jumping out the second floor?"

'I'm Not Okay (I Promise) by My Chemical Romance

I just got an email from Sylthia (pyschotherapist) to tell me that I've been booked in for Friday.

That's okay though, right? I have enough time to figure out what I want to say and maybe write it down or something.

Triggered badly to SI, the only thing stopping me is the thought of having to go home early because I 'broke the rules', I think that would just about finish my relationship with my parents and that's the last thing I want to do right now.

Gotta put them first and me second...

But then I go into thinking too much about everything and having no outlet.

If the doctor doesn't give me a couple week supply of some kind of benzo/sedative then it's all going to go to shit and the anxiety will actually take on a life of it's own and I'll just get all delusional and crap like before and the thought of going through that again is making me more anxious than ever...

People think I'm fine

I talk, laugh, smoke, eat, drink, go out, buy things, engage, blah blah blah

I am behaving myself

I am not self harming

Inside I am screaming

I am convinced I am going to kill myself the moment I get home

Not because I want to die, because I don't, I fucking love life so badly, even when it's shitty I know that there are good things out there for me, gigs and friends and fun, I never lose sight of that

But I am so desperate not to feel over the next few weeks

To not live through the agony of waiting to hear that my Mum has died

Gone

It is a lose I am more afraid of than anything, the thing I fear more than anything and at times I feel delusional about it, like it's all in my head, but I know that my head only makes it worse, there is a little bit of truth in all the anxiety and fear

I'm becoming increasingly irrational

Somehow I can convince myself that my ex will find me out and beat me, rape me, kill me and part of me wants him to come, a bigger part of me wishes he'd just fucking killed me all those years ago and then I wouldn't be around now to feel so fucking much

Everything is so intense, colours and sounds and darkness

But I am fine

Fine fine fine

Completely fine

Because they say so

Maybe they actually want me to die

That makes so much sense

That's why they haven't ever listened to me properly

This is what they want

Well fuck them!

Pinkie

Show your wounds I'm bored with mine

And the tears fall like rain
Down my face again
All the words you wouldn't say
And the games you played
With my unfoolish heart
Oh I should have known this from the start

Oh the winter and spring
Going hand in hand
Just like my love and pain
How the thought of you cuts deep within the vein
Brand new skin stretched across scared terrain

I don't wanna be let down
I don't wanna live that life again
Don't wanna be lead down the same old road
So I don't wanna be let down
I don't wanna live my lies again
Don't wanna be lead down the same old road

Oh..

All those years down the drain
Love was not enough when you want everything
What I gave to you and now the end must start
Oh I should have listened to my heart

'Cause I don't wanna be let down
I don't wanna live that life again
Don't wanna be lead down the same old road
So I don't wanna be let down
I don't wanna live my lies again
Don't wanna be lead down the same old road

Oh...

I don't wanna be let down
I don't wanna live that life again
Don't wanna be lead down the same old road
So I don't wanna be let down
I don't wanna live my lies again
Don't wanna be lead down the same old road

"Let Down" by Linkin Park

I am still at the crisis house but I have to leave on Wednesday, on the same day my Mum goes in hospital for an operation.

It's these sudden and random impulses to die that I can't understand. In all honesty, I am not suicidal, but at the same time something in my head whispers die in my ear, jump in front of a train, sit in the road, run away... Moments when getting from here to then feels like such an unbearable amount of time that I can't see a way of moving through it...

I keep losing minutes of time, blanking in the middle of conversations, reading the same page of a book five times...

At times the anxiety feels like a living, breathing thing that lives inside of me that is desperate to get out. I can literally feel hands reaching up my throat and at times I gag and retch...

Sometimes I feel like I'm dreaming when I'm awake, sometimes I feel like I'm awake when I'm dreaming...

My anger terrifies me. It is too much. I hate the knowledge that I can lash out, that I can go from having a chat with someone to climbing the walls and screaming and shouting at them so easily...

I want to stop seeing my Mum dead everytime I close my eyes or hearing the news that she's dead in my ears...

I want to get back to uni. I want to write again, be surronded by people, have a place and a purpose...

I want time to go backwards...

I don't want to deal...

I want to get on with the rest of my fucking life...

I am all of these things all of the time and it's making my brain burn.

In the last couple of days I have made contact with a counseller in Leicester that is experianced in a lot of the area's I would like support in (trauma/rape/self-harm/anxiety/depression/eating disorders) I really feel like having access to something that isn't to do with the mental health/crisis teams/BPD and something that I've chosen to do for myself.

The only thing is now I've mentioned about things in the emails to this woman I am scared that I will freeze up when I meet her. Or that the mental health teams will somehow get wind of what I am doing and I'll get into trouble. I'm also worried about paying £40 a session whilst being on a student loan.

I am so close to going and sitting in the middle of the road or from jumping off a bridge or in front of a train.

A girl who I was close with last year has been admitted to the crisis house, we went out for a few beers and she started telling the person that she was talking to her that I'd 'also been raped.'

I can't fucking cope.

I have twice gone into the bathroom with the intention of cutting myself to bits but resisted. I can't ring the crisis team because they make everything worse.

I don't want to fucking life anymore but that means jack shit because I am a maniuplative borderline.

I just want to die.

I'm feeling really low right now. I keep crying everytime I'm left on my own for five minutes. This is the longest I haven't talked to my Mum in forever, literally. Yeah, I've done a lot of travelling and stuff but I always talked to my parents every couple of days, they called every day when I was at uni, and even though I am speaking with my Dad all the time and even meeting up with him I can't handle being 'seperated' from my Mum.

She's scared of me because I lashed out at her, she doesn't want to talk to me, she will only agree to see me at all if someone from the MH team go with me and supervise which should hopefully happen on Monday. I just wish I could make her see how sorry I am and how much I didn't mean it and how much I hate myself for the whole situation. But yet, I am still hurt by her reaction to the assault, still hurting and dwelling on what she said about me 'asking for it', whenever I even think about ringing the police back to tell them whevever I'm going to go for it or not, I hear her voice inside my head.

The past week I've been so upset over this fall out that the whole 'anniversary' thing hasn't had much time to torment me but now I feel like it's creeped up on my slowly and is there, waiting to hit me hard as soon as there's room in my head for it.

I feel like such a fundamentally bad person, like I deserve pain and suffering and abuse. It's just always been there ever since I was a baby, I had so much physically pain and hospital visits and operations and then when that was all over I had a crap time at school for being chubby, I had a torrent of verbal abuse from my Grandad about being fat and things between me and my Dad were so bad back then, then the eating disorder which triggered all the other mental health crap and then being in love with someone who hated me so much, of course he did, because if he loved me he would never have done it, and then all the random other times of horrific drug trips or stitches or overdoses or drunken chaos, losing friends I truly loved, fucking everything up...

What if I'm just not a good person? What if there isn't anything else out there for me...

I know that I don't HAVE to press charges but I've been made to feel guilty about the consequences for others if I let it go. But then, that doesn't really mean much because I know that I could give a name and address and a full description and it would still never come to anything because no-one would believe ME...

I can't move into my place at Leicester till 1st Sept...

Things between me and my Dad have got violent before, but it's okay and we sort of burn ourselves out. I am terrified of talking even here because I don't want to be judged and hated, a certain someone has already accused me of being rude to my parents... But basically, the crisis team, the police and my parents were trying to pyhsically restrain me and I lashed out. I hate myself for it truly but I was already in such a fucking state with everything that went on...

It's alright here but it's not like being in a hospital or something where you simply don't have the option to do bad shit to yourself... I could do bad shit but if I get caught I get kicked out so it's all about me resisting the urges (which are immense since I got my sttiches out this morning)

I'm finding it so hard to stay in the present, everytime I stop concentrating my head floats around all over the place, I'm back to being a kid and all the shit that went down with my Grandad and * and it's hard to just stay focused on what's going on now, especially as that in itself is such a fucking mess and really painful...

I can't seem to find my voice at all right now.

Hey guys, just thought I'd pop in and say hi.
I'm at the crisis house at the minute and probably will be here till 17th August when my three weeks are up.
Things got really shit at home, violent and all that crap, the police came and made me take an ambulance to the hospital to get stiched up, then I had to stay the night there and then I came here...
I'm alright I guess, feeling like shit about everything being fucked at home and the police want me to press charges about the assault which I don't want to do...
Anyway, just thought I would let everyone know that I am alive and okay and explain why I've disappeared

xxx

FUCK THIS

Fuck everything.

I was on the bus and an old Indian guy sat next to me, fine. He started brushing my leg with his, okay that could be just the reality of a packed bus. I moved as close to the window as I could get and he started stroking my leg with his finger, underneath my bag, not fucking fine.

I get off the bus in the city that I truly despise, because he lives there, lived there, all those fucked up nights of booze and beatings, I am back there again. It hurts again. Bruises, blood, puke, booze, name calling, taunting, hands all over me, drink drink drink.

I go and get a massive tattoo that took a couple of hours, it hurts like a motherfucker but I don't care. I need the pain. I deserve the pain. The pain in my head is too much to bear without some kind of physical at the same time.

I get home and tell my parents. They couldn't give a shit. My Mum said 'well, what do you expect if you wear shorts like that!"

I was getting an ankle tattoo for fucks sake, and I am wearing tights, it's not exactly like I have slut written over my boobs. Maybe I just have it writen over my face.

SLUT SLUT SLUT.

I want to drink. I want to cut. I want to take all the tablets I have.

I can't cope.

I am so angry and hurt and livid and messed up and chaotic.

I probably won't do anything, because I am a coward, too much of a coward to go jump off a bridge or in front of a car and fucking end it once and for all.

No, I will just sit and stew and hurt and cry and drink myself to oblivion.

Because that's what he taught me and by fuck did I learn well.

Spiteful words can hurt your feelings but silence breaks your heart.

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love.”
- Neil Gaiman

I am trying so hard to forgive you, to understand you even, but I think a little part of me will always be upset and angry about what you did. The fact that you didn't tell me personally was low. I know that I am probably naive in thinking that friendship should be unconditional, especially friendship that occurs from a support network. I know that sometimes people have to get out before they drown, I understand that completely, I just don't understand why you kicked me in the teeth at my lowest point.

But most of all, I miss you terribly. I miss our bitching and rambling and just having you as a presence in my life.

I am desperate to walk through the door you have left open, but at the same time I feel more than a little hurt that you can't take me as I am.

Marilyn Monroe's quote that I use everything is coming into my head;

'I'm selfish, inpatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle, but if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as Hell don't deserve me at my best.'

But if my worst is too much for the people I love to handle, then something has to give. But how do you give up sickness? It's not a choice, atleast feeling terrible isn't a choice, I get that whether you self-harm or not, or puke or not, or eat or not, get drunk or not, they are all choices... But lying awake at night terrified to sleep because of the memories, feeling physical pain everytime you think about it, fear and doubt and shame and disgust and anger and betrayel and silence and lies and secrets. Where is the choice there?

I cannot escape what he did and I can't stop my head from going back to it, over and over and over again, and tearing me apart in the process.