Wednesday 27 October 2010

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.

Tuesday 19 October 2010

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.

Monday 18 October 2010

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.

Thursday 7 October 2010

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.