Saturday 30 April 2011

I prefer winter and fall

I don't think I can get through another summer without turning to self-destruction. The anxiety is already high, frequently dissociating, hypersensitive to every person in the street, everyone is a threat, intrusive thoughts and memories and noice and images...

The fact that I've been going to crisis and the whole situation with being made aware of his situation with his kid and social servces investigation makes me more aware of things.

My head's already running away with itself and without all the ways I usual cope with it 'inactive' I just feel completely overwhelmed and fragile and that's the very last thing I want to be. I want to be tough and hard and cold and strong and numb.

I just want to fucking forget about it and every year that goes past only seems to make me remember it more clearly than ever.

Thursday 21 April 2011

A phantom to lead you in the summer

I don't know what's going on with me at the minute.

Things are pretty good in so many ways. I haven't self-harmed in months, I haven't drank to excess or self-medicated in even longer, probably over six months. I have a couple of pints occasionally when I'm out but I never drink on my own either out or indoors, I never do it more than twice a month (I actually keep pretty strict lists of dates...) and I don't get stupidly drunk. My mood is stable and generally upbeat. My impulse control is good, I work out the consequences of everything before I do it, even if I end up buying something or doing something 'impulsive' it isn't actually because I've take a couple of hours or days to figure it out. Yes, I still do the touring thing, I still can't help mysef from going to 'just one more show' but you know what, this is who I am and what I do, fundamentally. I love going to gigs. I love going to see the ame gig x amout of times. I love travelling from city to city. I love meeting fellow fans. I love music and I love touring. I don't want to change or moderate or reduce that part of my life.

I also never for a second thought that I'd be as far away from anorexia as I am today. That I would have days and weeks where I didn't think twice about what I was eating. That being overweight would be bearable. That I would appreciate and be grateful of the fact that I got put in hospital and force fed. That I would want to be better. That I would want to be alive and fat rather than thin and dead.

Underneath all those behaviours though there's some pretty awful feelings left over.

I am incredibly anxious pretty much all of the time and (because of that I'm assuming) dissociation is becoming more of an issue, mainly derealisation and feeling like I'm in a dream or a movie or that a part of my body isn't connected. It sounds pathetic but it feels fucking awful and I don't really have any way of predicting how or when or where. In trying to cope with it I've become obsessive-compulsive, counting and checking and repeating words in my head and the worst thing about is that as much as it just increases the anxiety, I can't quite convince myself that I should just stop, I'm too convinced that something even worst will happen if I don't complete the little rituals or stick to the rules.

The summer is always so awful and painful and blah and the thought of trying to deal with it with no behaviours to help soften it is pretty fucking terrifying. I am determinded not to go back and move on but how can I do that when my head is flooded with memories and images and thoughts....

I know that I'm in counselling and I know that talking about it is really the only way to move on, I 100% understand and accept that, but sometimes I don't feel like I have that time, I want to feel better NOW.

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Coz you're boring baby when you're straight

Dissociation has become a problem. If it is that. I don't know. Maybe I'm just fucked. Maybe I'm just being stupid. Weak. The constant thought and fear that I'm dreaming everything. That I don't exist. My life is a movie. People around me are actors. I haven't looked in the mirror for a few days. I'm scared that my reflection won't be the same. I find it so hard to explain. I feel childish. Trying to escape reality. It doesn't make any sense. I don't know how to make it stop. I try to get back in touch in with myself. Look at photos of me with people. Pinch myself. Count words. Repeat words. Check doors and plug sockets. But it just comes back.

Monday 11 April 2011

I cannot leave here. I cannot stay. Forever haunted. More than afraid

I've blocked everyone connected to him for Facebook and disabled all my old email accounts so I can't keep torturing myself and obbsessing over it. I did re-read the email he sent me and it really upset me a lot to hear him say 'the past is the past as you have to move on', it really cuts like a knive in my throat y'know, and I hate myself for getting upset about it because it's not worth it really. I had a really strong urge to get back in touch just one more time and ask all the questions that keep me up at night, to know once and for all what really happened, but I know that it's pointless because he either won't remember, or will lie about it. I guess I just have to settle for what I know and believe, how it still hurts and affects me, and move on from that. For counselling I need to make a plan of where I am now, where I want to be and how I can get there. I'm so desperate for it all to be over, to not have to think about it, I get so angry at myself for letting it bother me.

This time of year is so difficult.

The world around me seems unreal and alien, like a mist has descended and everything looks hazy and dreamlike; only I’m awake so I can’t be dreaming. But am I awake? I don't know. I freak out. I just can't shake the thought that I'm living in a dream, or a movie, that's going to end at any moment, or never end. I just can't explain it.

Sunday 3 April 2011

Wake up

I thought that I only had a month left of DBT but I've worked it out that it's actually more like three... I don't know why it made me so upset, it's all going quite well at the minute, but that's part of the problem in a way. It's so focused on reducing self-harming and other impulsive behaviours and because I haven't SI'ed in over three months, or done any other impulsive stuff even longer, I get a lot of 'praise' and it just makes me feel so uncomfortable. I don't want to be congratuated on it, I don't feel like it's a real acheivement...

I've been there since January '10 and it's just a really, really long time, and at times I've hated it so much, I still think that it made certain things a lot worse at times, and I thought I only had a few weeks left and now I've realised it's more like a few months and I just feel a bit deflated, like I've gout everything out of it I'm going to get, I have itchy feet that just want to walk on somewhere else. I truly believe that I'm well on the way to 'recovery' of BPD; I'm a million miles away from where I've been in the past. I don't self-harm, I don't self-medicate with drugs or drink, I have good impulse control, my moods are relatively stable, hardly any suicidal ideation and even the relationship side of things is improving - I still sometimes think people are going to leave me, or that they hate me, or that I don't deserve friendship, or that I have to be drunk to be around people - but they really are rare occasions these days, and I'm getting better at rationalising them when they do happen.

I guess the probelm is that I just find it hard to relate to people in the group now that I am no longer in the same place. It's hard to relate to people talking about getting arrested or sectioned for jumping in front of a train.

Is there such a thing as a recovered Borderline? I am really, really striving to become one.

I think the main issues I have left are anxiety/panic attacks and the blatant trauma related stuff like nightmares and dissociation and flashbacks, and I'm going to rape counselling and trying really hard to start talking - even though I'm still really struggling to get that going, going there seemed like the first step but it really isn't. If I took those things out of the equation I'd say that life was going quite well, although they are obviously effecting my day to day life, I try hard to not just give in to it though. I have a panic attack on the bus, I get back on the bus the next day, even if I get off again. I can't really do anymore than that.

I'm determinded to get back to university in October and for that to happen I know that I need to keep going to counselling and working through the past, or atleast it's impact on the present, and I'm also seriously consdering some kind of anxiety management group if there is anything like that on offer, I'm not sure how much more therapy I would be offered though, to be honest, I mean DBT has been an intense programme and maybe they think that's all I need. Who knows? I just want to move on and for a long time I assumed that taking time out to go over the past wasn't the way to achieve that, but I've done the opposite and ignored it and that hasn't got me very far.


Then there's the ED;

I don't really know why but for the last couple of months I've been reading through all my old ED related forum threads and journal entries. I feel so ashamed of myself, of the person I was back then, incoherent and Hell bent on my disorder. I didn't care about anything or anyone else and that still makes me feel so guilty. I feel guilty for hurting people, for letting them down, for making them worry...

Things are so different for me now, I feel older, more responsible, more mature, more articulate, less attracted to life in the skinny lane. I'm not sick and yet, I'm still so very far away from being 'normal', I'm very overweight and so I need to lose that extra weight to be healthy, and I'm trying so fucking hard to do that in a healthy way, to not beat myself up about eating something I shouldn't, taking it one day at a time.

A part of me is wondering why I have this attitude towards weight loss, why I'm not just throwing myself into a strict restriction and exercise plan to shift the stones as quickly as possible.

The change in my mindset is actually quite scary at times. The ED thoughts that used to be so 'normal' to be, day in day out, now feel completely alien on the occasions that they're there. All I want is to be healthy, to look healthy, feel healthy, have a body I can dress and style and feel okay about, and I want food to just be something that doesn't hold any power over me, that doesn't seem like a comfort. I want to eat to live.

I'll be 24 in a couple of months which means it will be just over 10 years since I first got sick. I can't go back and live my teenage years in the way they should have been lived, but I'm determinded to make the most of the rest of my twenties.