Sunday 27 November 2011

I am fine and I'll learn to take what's mine and live without guilt

I had my initial group assesment at FDL (personality disorder service) on Friday. It was... okay. They just talked a bit about the difference between personality disorders and other mental illness, which I already knew so it was a bit pointless, and then they explained a bit about what they do and had some current service users talk about how it's been for them. It seems pretty intense, one of the programmes is five days a week for a year, then there's a two day a week one,and it's all group work, there's no individual therapy at all, and I'm not sure about it, at all, but I filled in the form to go back for an individual assesment and I'm hoping they'll help me decide what's best for me then, or atleast give me a better idea of whether or not it will be worthwhile. I really don't know what my own thoughts on it are right now.

Then I had my last session at LRC. It went well, I feel like I've achieved something and she told me that I shouldn't feel stupid because I couldn't do much 'talking' and that maybe I did all I could do at the time and that I can always ring the helpline if I need them.I didn't do a lot of hard stuff, I did talk about what happened to me but I was awkward and difficult and I didn't seem to get very far with it. There is still so much I need to deal with, to talk about, it still effects my day to day life, I still get flashbacks and nightmares and the only way I know how to deal with them is to drink or self-harm, I still can't sit with myself, I still can't see myself in a relationship, I still can't see myself trusting a man enough to have sex with, I can't see myself ever having sex again, I am still severely Tokophobic, my skin still crawls... I don't know. I agree with her that maybe I talked as much as I could at the time, but I also know that it wasn't enough, that it isn't enough, that I need more help or therapy or support or whatever to get through this, to heal, because I don't feel healed. I feel like I've taken the first step, but that's about it...

Sunday 6 November 2011

Feeling close but keeping my distance

I haven't SI'ed and the urges have gone away. I'm not sure how long it's been since I last did it, it's over a month since I threw out my tools and I think I've only done it twice since then so it's been awhile, and it's been much longer than that I haven't had to seek medical treatment, so I guess I'm doing well on that front.

Eating is a bit all over the place, binging, throwing up a couple of times, hating my body, vague restriction plans that I know will never happen, I just want to get back to being a normal/healthy weight and not feel so disgusting.

Still shaken up from 'the sighting' as much I try to calm myself down and tell myself it wasn't keep the resemblance is just making it hard to really believe that I will never see him again, and that urge to get in touch and have it out with him is so strong, I don't know how I'm resisting it, I think it's fear, the fear of him denying it, because if he denied it then I would, too, but of course he would deny it because that's just what people do... How do I trust my own memories? How do I go back to that day? How do I move on? How do I make peace with myself? Do I try to forget? Do I go into every tiny little detail? Do I just... do nothing? What do I do?

I'm struggling with knowing I only have one counselling appointment left. I've only really just started talking about stuff and now it's going to be over. I'm meant to be keeping a thought diary and something has come up in it that I would like to talk about, about how I feel manipulated into feeling guilty about what happened to me because of his actions afterwards, with the voicemail and the disappearence and then the email about 'forgetting the past' over a year later, but it seems like such a huge thing to bring up in a last session. What happene afterwards affected me a Hell of a lot more than the actual rape did, for a long time I was caught up in the emotional side of it, the huge amount of guilt I felt, the feeling that he had killed himself and it was all my fault, trying to work out what that messege meant, was it a final apology, a kind of 'suicide note' because it felt like one, I felt like that was the corner I was backed into. I carried that guilt around, that responsibility for someone's suicide, that I was the cause of someone's suicide for over a year. That broke me.

I don't know what I'm going to do. I've only just started talking about what happened, let alone exploring the feelings around it, I just don't know what to do next...

Friday 4 November 2011

Still dancing with your demons

For the first time in weeks I have strong urges to SI. I am meant to be in London with friends but I cancelled on them and now have nothing to do but sit around and feel incredibly guilty and worthless. My mood is dropping, I hate to admit it but I can't deny it, the tiredness, the need to isolate, the fear of being awake for longer than I need to be. I just want it to stop. I want to be normal. I want to be happy.

I have one session left at crisis and I feel like I've barely even started to deal with it, but at the same time I feel like I want to leave, that maybe not going to a rape crisis centre will be a good thing because then I can go back to pretending it's not real. Maybe it isn't real. Maybe I'm an attention seeking liar. I don't trust myself or my memories at all. They seem false, or too much, or something out of nothing, and in these moments I crave a kind of certainty, I want bruises, I want violence, I want my life to be in danger. What I don't want is what I have. It doesn't seem serious enough. It doesn't seem real enough. It doesn't seem validated. I am still fighting with the urge to get back in touch with him, to see if he remembers, to see what the voice mail was all about, what he was really sorry about, does he know, did he know, will he remember, does he feel guilty, does he even know who I am anymore?

Sometimes I'm angry, sometimes I don't believe what happened, sometimes I'm scared, sometimes I feel like a liar, sometimes I feel like I'm making too much out of it, sometimes I think I think it worse than it was, sometimes I feel guilty, sometimes I feel ashamed, sometimes I hate myself, sometimes I hate him, sometimes... Sometimes I want it to happen again so I can feel validated. To say that it was violent. I was attacked. Sometimes I want it to be late at night. Outside. Some dodgy looking old man. I want to beaten up and my life threatened. Sometimes I want a real rape.