Secondary Self Loathing

 I am beginning to understand Rachel and her previous need for abusive relationships. This strange fixation with pain has taught me many things, one of which being that there is more than one way to look at hurting yourself. I still fantasize of burning, biting, and tearing, but I am learning that when one doesn't like themselves, they may very well wish for someone else to burning, biting, and tearing. This is especially true if you are trying incredibly hard not to hurt yourself anymore, but need some form of release.

Still, self-harm fantasies are a far more common occurrence for me, but occasionally I will imagine having someone else pull my hair, bite my legs, and call me disgusting. And, strangely enough, there is some sort of satisfaction in the scenario. Just like there is a sick satisfaction in taking a deep breath full of cigarette smoke in the city--No, I might not be the one smoking, yet I can find ways to do myself in. Everything in life is capable of hurting you, if you can manipulate it right.

My mental health has improved dramatically since last year---I know longer interact with the world in the same way I did then. I no longer have the need to 'baby-proof my air'; I can live comfortably and safely in my own skin again. I can breathe easy around most sharp objects, be left alone with only occasional repercussions, and look at the world through the eyes of a healthy and mentally stable person, albeit with a few exceptions. That being said, I still have my ups and downs--a panic attack I had six days ago had me seeing things again that I hadn't seen since I wore gloves, and even now nearly a week later I am unsteady on my feet and with my eyes. It takes a while to forget that mindset--it worms its way into your head. But I'll be okay. I'm in a fun, exciting environment, living with someone that keeps me taking care of myself, and I have my partner or even Rachel for whenever it gets too overwhelming.

I made the mistake last week of getting cocky, believing I had already fully recovered and that I was perfectly healthy. Recovery doesn't happen in less than a year. It may never fully heal me--I can never forget the things I've seen and thought. I still wear gloves to sleep, and I still have fantasies in various forms. But I'm improving. I just need to remember that I am a bit more fragile and a bit more sensitive than others, and keep myself at this slow and steady pace. I'll do my best to keep myself safe and not take risks. I don't want to break anymore--by my hand, nor anyone else's.

Life is good.

I can finally believe my motto again

 I think I'm finally getting better.

Therapy has been going well. But while the vast majority of it was me improving, there were times I slipped into bouts of biting. Anxiety sometimes crept up on me, bad thoughts sometimes took my breath, and I begged for death under my breath. I still haven't completely weaned myself off my gloves---I still need them when I'm sleeping. But most of my symptoms now feel very far away for me. I rarely if ever feel that bad anymore. I don't have self harm thoughts about the objects around me. I recovered far, far quicker than I was expecting, to the point where I may cancel therapy. And today, I really felt it. Safety.

Before, I was obsessed with reading stories--hours upon hours of stories each day---and it overwhelmed me with emotions. It was almost like the tears again; an addiction, a way for me to feel strong sensations and chemical releases that  couldn't otherwise. Maybe that's exactly what it was. But from the comfort of my bed, for hours on end, I could put myself through powerful waves of emotions and thrills that sent me on the edge of tears, and never have a moment of calm. It was overwhelming.

And I quickly realized that, like when I was in paramount stress, being overwhelmed with emotion made me want to hurt myself. It was nearly every time. Be it overwhelmed with euphoria or sorrow, I would always end up gnawing on my hands, or scratching at my face. When I was stressed, it was the same. I think that's why it began to carry over into everything else--I was so scared of being labeled and suffering self-harm, so scared of being a freak, and so anxious over my feelings over Rebbie, that I was always in a state of stress. The only relief was escape in my stories.

The therapist said that I felt emotions too strongly. That's true, I guess, though I hate to think it. I've always been like that. The smallest thing can fling me over the edge, into impossible hysterics. I feel every emotion so intensely. I guess it was my downfall. Hurting myself was always the conclusion.

Therapy has been attempting to teach me to distance myself from my emotions a bit, to a healthy level. 'Separate your thoughts from your emotions', he said. It never sat right with me. But by the third visit, I had talked over my feelings with Rebbie and we had found our love to be mutual. And since then, though not much changed, I felt incredibly less anxious. Bad thoughts plagued me less and less, and self-harm has been at an all time low. Now, it rarely happens. I guess that anxiety over them was really eating away at me and I was trying to hide it from myself. I can finally interact with my environment healthily again.

But I continued therapy, because I knew all of my dips had been because of my complete and utter inability to deal with stress. But today, I went back to the stories. And they crashed over me just like before, an amazing amount of intensity and inspiration. And at first, I felt a stronger urge to hurt again. I gritted my teeth until they were sore and bit down on a wound in my lip. But then, that faded. I was just desiring the urge to paint.

When did I get to the point where I could deal with stress at a healthy level? When was I able to sort through my feelings through harmless and progressive means? What was the tipping point where I stopped solving stress with pain and started using art? I don't know. But it's amazing. I'm far but perfectly emulating mental health, but I finally feel healthy. I feel like I'm free, a bit. Distanced from mental illness. I've recovered, I'm becoming a good person again. I can breathe.

I can finally say it again and mean it:

Life is good.

Brain Plasticity

 I just finished my second date with my therapist, and we are actually getting somewhere. I always assumed therapy was just talking about your dark secrets and inner fears until the quack tells me what is making my thoughts dark, but apparently there might be more (or even less) to it. My psychologist has an interest in neurology as well as simple empathy stuff, and brought up that topic of brain plasticity as a hypothesis for my self harming habits.

And when he mentioned it, it seemed to make almost too much sense. It would explain how I can constantly think about hurting myself while not being depressed. It explains how I recovered from my depression in ninth grade when I became fixated on Julie and forgot everything else. It explains why being alone with my thoughts was so hard, why I never felt quite as dramatic as I thought I should have been, how it was never quite consistent and how I sometimes didn't feel as mentally ill as I saw in my past self and in others with serious problems. It's friggin brain plasticity.

Basically, it's not that I'm really sad, but that during my depression I kept thinking of that mental self harm, and then Rachel told me what i was doing, and I started thinking about it constantly. The self harm got worse because it became all I could think about; and the more I dwelled on it, the more that that line of thinking became further ground into my brain. Suddenly all lines of thought led inevitably to self harm. But there is a way to get around it, just how I managed to get out of my depression--distraction. That fills the rut.

There is a chance that I could interact with the world in a healthy way again. I could look at the world and not see ways to hurt myself. I could handle sharp objects without panicking. I could feel noprmal around lighters again. I could finally feel like a normal, functioning human being again.

I am so overjoyed and filled with hope. Overcoming my thoughts is going to take time, but I am so incredibly enthusiastic for the results.

Life is good.

Lists

 I like lists. Organizing life into lists makes me feel a bit more... I don't know how to describe it. Settled, maybe? Either way, it is also a way to chronicle the things that happen to me, especially things that I can't otherwise bring up. I need t share things; I don't feel sane if there's something I can't share. So when there's some important life event in my life that I can't possibly share, I like to put it in a list. I've written numerous lists on this blog, and I've been making lists since I was little... But nothing this dark before. But I really want to write this down somewhere, because it is meaningful to me, it is important, I think about it all the time and it affects me and I will never stop thinking about it. It is important to who I am.

So this is my list of ways I have fantasied hurting myself (or, for a few, more than fantasies).

• I have dreamed of razors. This is probably the most obvious but one of the least frequent for me. It scares me too much. I have seen it far too often and it has traumatized me and I can't even get close to a razor because of it, much less try. I have seen craters and canyons in the walls of her skin and rivers so deep they have kissed the bone and in the darkest of moments I have envisioned those same things carved into my skin and it makes my skin quake. I have imagine gauging out my lips, scooping out my cheeks, tracing pools in the fat on my legs with the blades inside my disposable razors.... It is amazing how much skin we have.
• I have caressed my back while searching for scars, and have caught myself stroking my spinal cord fondly. I have dreamed of reaching in and ripping it out of my body. This, I could obviously not do. But I think of it.
• I've thought of drinking nail polish remover. About every time I use it. It would be quick and I'm guessing I would probably die. I don't usually think of ways to kill myself, only to cause minor injury (at least, that is most common). But if I were to ever be suicidal, I think I would probably drink nail polish remover. Jokes on me if it isn't lethal (though I doubt it isn't).
• Snow. Sticking my hands in snow was an easy transition when I got into burning during winter. Then my arms. I had always thought that the image of someone going into the snow without a coat to be romantic--I think somehow the image of keeping my limbs under the snow came off similarly. It never lasted long enough though, and I grew tired of it.
• Speaking of which: Burning. So many ways of burning. It started with boiling mugs of tea pressed into my skin. Then came my fear of lighters. Lighters plague my nightmares. Lighters haunt the halls of my home. Lighters keep my sneaking into the garage. It's become a sort of mania, burning. An obsession. Luckily, I have had no luck with lighters, since I have been blessed with an absolute inability to light them. Recently, my preference has been towards cigarettes. Everytime I smell smoke, I crave them. I want to smoke, but not just for the relaxing effects it is said to contain: I want the smoke to burn my eyes; I want the drags to burn my throat; I want the coughing and retching to burn my lungs; I want the ashes to burn my skin.
• Biting is another recent favorite that has been going on for months now. First it was just biting my knuckles to keep myself from thinking certain thoughts or actions... but then it became its own vice, and thus starting new fantasies. Like chewing my hands like gum. That tantalizing thought keeps me awake for hours. And by tantalizing I mean horrifying. And tantalizing.
• Pizza Cutter. Ha, I still laugh at that one. I friggin got triggered by a stupid pizza cutter. It was shiny and silver and not actually all that sharp but I thought it might be nice to roll it across the underside of my arm where the skin is thin. Goodness. I am stupid.
• Hot glue. This also has to do with burning. I'd like to get out my hot glue gun and make clear, burning trails over my arms and peel them off to expose red little rivers that sting. But I could only remove it once its dry. Not a long wait, but long enough when the substance is hot enough to melt. I wonder if my skin would melt as well. (I'm glad the hot glue gun is in a box, so that my laziness keeps me from grabbing it.)
• As of a few minutes ago: sticking my hand in the garbage disposal. 
• Have I mentioned boiling water? Burning is kind of a pattern.
• There was a time when I hit myself repeatedly with blunt objects. Such as can openers, and rocks of substantial weight.
• I have thin chains in the pocket of my jacket. Sometimes I wrap it around and around my fingers and hand, and then pull, very tightly. I also do this with ribbons. I hope that loss of circulation will make me feel better; I'm not quite sure where I came up with this logic.
• There is of course, scratching myself. Scratching my neck until it bleeds. Scratching my head until I feel potholes all over my skull. scratching into the scars until they enlarge, scratching into the open flesh, digging in. Thinking about this enough scares me tremendously.

 I think of little things, like pressing my finger to the rim of a can I opened and hoping for once that it's sharp; biting my tongue with my pointed teeth; thumbtacks and pins; even keeping my eyes open longer than I should to feel them sting. I have lost track of all the countless ideas that have entered my mind when it comes to hurting myself.

As I explained in the last entry, I often felt like I was afraid of everything. One can easily see anything. Practically anything found in ordinary life has some sort of value in terms of hurting me. How many days did I spend in Paula's house, putting my head through the loop in the shower head wire, where it hung just like I noose? I always thought of strangling myself with it, though I wasn't sure it was possible.

Now that I think about it, I have been having these fantasies since seventh grade: that's nearly five years. Five years of dreaming up different ways to damage myself. No wonder my mind is so messed up.

I am a psychological mess and it makes me feel miserable.

An Epiphany about Fear

 There was a time, a few months ago, when i made a list of all of the things I was afraid of. It went something like this:
Razors, sharp objects, thumbtacks, lighters, snow(occasionally), scissors, bruises, bite marks, bandages around my neck, open wounds, scratches, hot glue,  and my own hands and arms.

And really, I would still say that I am, by and large, afraid of these things, but on a deeper and more analytical level, I know that that's not true. I know because I have experiences irrational fear of inanimate objects before; I know phobias, and while some of these (such as razors) might have been very real in my past, I do not think they apply to me now.

Instead, I think it may be more accurate to say that I am scared of myself.

One big moment of realization for me was in Bri's car. Bri has two lighters in her car. A few months before, I had been at her house, and I had seen a lighter sitting in a remote area--I was afraid, deathly afraid, and actually asked her to hide it for me.  I could have grabbed it when no one was looking and done something bad, and I had been terrified of my own lack of self control and of the thoughts swirling about in my head.

In Bri's car a few months later, i saw two lighters in her car. At first I had a twang of nervousness, but it quickly passed; the lighters did not scare me. It was not because the lighters were any different than usual lighters. It was because Bri was right there in the car with me; there was absolutely no way I could get away with anything crazy, and with her right by my, I didn't have any dark thoughts.

So what I am actually afraid of is myself. I am scared of my lack of self control, and I am scared of what i will do if given the opportunity.  I am still awful at breaking habits. I do not seem to be getting much better.

On one hand, this is a good realization because it makes me realize that I am not a crazy person who is afraid of everything. It seemed as if I was able to somehow trigger myself with any ordinary object, and it felt as if I was practically afraid of everything. On the other hand, this makes it so much worse. I cannot escape from this fear. I cannot distance myself from it. Unlike lighters, I cannot have people hide them from me. Unlike my hands and arms, I cannot cover them with cloth. I can do nothing to save myself from me; I am always in the danger zone, and that is so, so terrifying.

And isn't it just typical of me, being afraid of myself. That is such an egotistical thing to do. It is always about me, huh?

But then, at the very least, I am getting help now. Soon I won't even have to fear myself.

(but can one live without an all encompassing fear to live with? I don't think I've ever known a life like that.)

Life is good.

Sexism and Fear

 

When I’m at my father’s house, I lock the bathroom door when I take a shower. This isn’t because I’m afraid of our male roommates coming in on me—I trust them fully. But I have been raised all my life to fear and hate men.

That is not to say that I hate men. I don’t. But I’ve been raised to. When I was little I was told to never go out at night, because I would be kidnapped by dangerous men prowling the streets. Of course, I was never told explicitly that it would be a man taking me, but it was heavily implied. I was shown videos as a kid, and all of the examples of rapists and kidnappers were men, always men. When I was young and asked my parents why we didn’t take the bus, they mentioned these ‘suspicious people’, which were of course characterized as men. The adults in the unmarked white vans were men. The homeless people with the cardboard signs on the street were men. The occasional passerby in the big, scary city I was hidden from were men, which meant I should fear them, even if they meant no harm. All the others, they were women, which meant they were like me: merely hapless would-be victims of men. We were all waiting to be attacked in an alley, snatched and harassed, kissed and abused. I was taught to fear the world from a young age, so that even boys in my class could be watched from my peripheral for signs of evil.

Now,  I like to call myself a humanitarian: I believe that people should be viewed as if they were moral human beings until judged otherwise. I’d like to believe the claims of the homeless with the cardboard signs, and trust the kindness of the occasional passerby in the city. I would want to talk to these people and learn their stories. I love the night air and want to go out at night any time I can. But I don’t.  

The ethics and warnings I was brought up with stick to me even when I try to resist them. They were meant to keep me safe as a child, but I fear they have made me judgmental and cruel as an adult. What have men done to me to make me fear and despise them? Absolutely nothing. I have been treated with care and honest kindness all my life. That is not to say that there aren’t horrible, terrible men out there prowling the streets, but there are also horrible, terrible women, and the vast majority of both parties are regular people with regular morals leading regular lives. But while I know and believe these things, it doesn’t stop those deeply rooted stigmas to disappear. I still can’t trust as openly as I’d like to. I still live fearfully of a large half of the population. Not in a way that I openly dislike them, but in a way that it is hard for me to coexist with them at an unconscious level. I hate that. I hate fearing people without reason. It is unfair, unfair to men and unfair to myself.

I lock my bathroom door when I’m at my father’s house, but at my mother’s house I do not, even though I live with an older man. But I don’t fear my step father walking in on me in the shower; I have no doubt that my body doesn’t interest him. Instead, I lock my bedroom door—I fear him talking to me and harassing me. I hide in my shower because I know he won’t bother me, because in the shower I can definitely avoid him, and because in the shower I can’t hear him argue with my mother about how terrible and narcissistic her children are.

I have realized there is a difference between a taught fear and true fear of a person.

Life is good.

Change is Strange

I have thought about what happened during my sophomore year when I started dating Rachel. I realize  in hindsight that while everyone saw us together, and both of us, in that way, came out together, Rachel was the only one to get teased and pushed around. I was not. She had harassment in class, was accused of messing around with all sorts of girls, made fun of, avoided, called names. I sat in my classes with my Bi Pride button and my incredibly blatant and loud talks about GLBTQIA+.

I think it was either because:
A) Honors students are a lot more open to stuff
Except for Rachel had a few of those classes and they still harassed her (although not as much, I believe). Also, on my bus most were non-honors students and all knew about me, but only two ever said anything, and while they made fun of her, they seemed to support me.

which means it is probably
B) I was liked and respected more.

And that is stupid. I hate how badly she was treated. It wasn't fair. It would be one thing if I was also getting talks. But it wasn't even that. They just hated her. And she was amazing. She IS amazing. I miss her. We haven't talked in forever.

Is the wedding still happening? Is everything okay? Is she out of the hospital? Is she okay? Is she happy? Is she still cutting? Is her workplace still terrible? Does she ever think about me? Will we ever talk again?

It used to be my meaning and way of life to take care of her and know everything about her and man I don't need that in my life anymore but I knew so much before and I still worry,

Sometimes I think about how after a while of being with Rachel, thinking and caring about her saved me from relapsing depressing that would have come after Julie and I felt emotionally stable enough to take off the finger ribbons I had been wearing for four years. That was a huge event for me, and I still remember it really fondly. She gave me new ribbons when I lost me special ones (I kept a few that I never used),  gave me our matching ductape rings after I had gotten rid of the ribbons, and then when the rings came off continued to support me until I didn't even rub my fingers anymore.

I want a day like that with my gloves. One day my gloves will come off and I will never need them again. I don't know how many years it will take this time. It hasn't even been one year yet. I'm taking them to college with me. I probably won't be able to get rid of them without someone to help me through again--I doubt it's something I can do alone. And so far I haven't gotten any comments on the gloves--not any mean ones, anyway--and that is only because I'm well liked still, probably, and I wonder if that will continue in college. I wonder if Rebbie will be the one to help me this time.

I wonder, will I lose track of my friends like I lost track of Rachel? It only took distance and time. Will I lose these people I love? Who will stay? They're a lot more connected to the internet, bit still. I've known these people since I began truly living. I don't want to lose them, even to make new friends. Losing Izzy already made me question so many things, and Kate and I have had so many ups and downs....

Change. things change. Things change differently for different people depending who they are and where they are and even how they are. That is weird. Change is weird.
Change takes away girlfriends and harasses them but change also takes away finger ribbons and heals wounds.

Change is strange.

Life is good.