Addiction Seduction

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Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:00:10 -0400

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Tue, 03 Apr 2012 20:55:46 -0400

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Tue, 03 Apr 2012 20:55:07 -0400

"Depression”…….Damn I hate that word. It is no longer a word to me but a lifestyle...."

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:29:35 -0400

““Depression”…….Damn I hate that word. It is no longer a word to me but a lifestyle. A lifestyle defined by fear and avoidance, psychiatric appointments and complete blackness.”

- Me

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Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:23:58 -0400

"Depression is less about words, and more about a sense of detachment. Of fear. A racing heart. A..."

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:21:01 -0400

““Depression is less about words, and more about a sense of detachment. Of fear. A racing heart. A desire to escape life. Sometimes, in the midst of it, I wish I would not wake up. Sleeping forever, well, that feels like a heck of a deal. Throw me a rope, try to drag me out, but sometimes I get so goddamn tired.””

Demons, Memories and Choices....

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:13:00 -0400

I pride myself on being strong, capable and forward focussed, yet every year around that day a black, black mist descends reminding me there are still chains binding me to memories I just can’t seem to 100% break free from.

A simple date on the calendar, one more day to add to the 4,748 others since that night, why the heck should I still lie in the dark tossing, turning, unable to sleep with nothing but memories of yesteryear?

Maybe it is the chill in the air, the crispness of the nights, the smell of the autumn breeze, the still quiet atmosphere of cold nights drawing in, or any of the other subtle little reminders stuck in my subconscious mind never quite letting me be free from memory.

Well, on a very positive note, the black dog that briefly visited me for a few days (simply to remind me it is there) gave me the opportunity to react in a more mature way, another year on from the event.

Each anniversary I know where I was and what I did. The first anniversary was marked by me wanting to exact revenge, the second by a phone call, another call marked the third. Self harm, and sadness, coupled with fast driving and smashing things up lead the bill in the following years.

But now I am a mum. I am a wife. I have a whole present and future in my hands. I have more to lose than ever I had before. I have to make sure that my burning urges for self destruct are acknowledged but not succumbed to.

No fast cars, no self harm, no punches thrown.

One solitary tear rolled my cheek and hit the pillow.

I was grumpy. I was sensitive. I took things a bit too personally and snapped at those closest to me.

But then the 20th of October came, the sun came up. My family still beside me and 4,749 days had now passed since that night and I was still alive, still strong and sure as hell not going to give up now.

So if you are feeling this too, I just want to say: YES there will be bad days, YES you will go through anger, frustration and pain, you will act up, be awkward and difficult, but accept that the sun will rise tomorrow and you will be a day further away from it.

IT IS YOUR CHOICE where you will be and what you will be doing as that sun rises.

Choose well.

Time IS a healer, just maybe not as quick as we’d like sometimes!

In her own words as a cutter......

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 16:04:31 -0400

I ordered a coffee yesterday, and my order is a little confusing, even for Starbucks. I talk into the speaker while waiting in the drive through: I ask for a sugar free iced coffee, vanilla flavoured, with %2 milk, one Splenda and, “very easy on the ice”. Stress the latter. As usual, the person taking my order asks me to repeat it and I do. Two or three times depending on the person taking it. This is par for the course in my life: coffee is essential and it has to be made a certain way and certainly when I am paying $5.00 for espresso, milk, and ice.

Starbucks is an empire in its own right.

But this blog is not about coffee, the topic is certainly not vanilla in content, it is about self-injury.

I drove up to the window and handed the woman, rather, a girl around fourteen years old, my bank card. Her hand reached out through the small opening to take it, and I noticed her arms. First her wrists, and then her forearms as she handed me the receipt. They were covered in scars: some old enough to be healed and white in colour, some of them light pink and a few months old, the rest were red. Fresh and new. Frightening, perhaps, to people who do not understand self-injury.

I do.

As my hands gripped the steering wheel I looked down at my own arms: they are also scarred. Though the scars are white, some of them did not heal properly, and they are raised from my arms and ugly. Keloid scars which only respond to plastic surgery. Some of them are large, and some of them are small. They do not reside on only my arms. They trace my calves, my thighs and hipbones. They have become part of me, and something I try not dwell on. I certainly wish they were not there, and cannot help but notice the way people react when first noticing them.

When I am at the grocery store, dressed in a pretty paisley dress or jeans and dainty high heels, the cashier first smiles at me−and then her eyes settle on my arms. They are not pure: they are full of memories I have worked to forget. Just as I used eating disorders to numb myself from pain, so too did I injure myself. It is more prevalent than people think, if they think about it at all, particularly among young women.

Wikipedia describes the varying reasons people inflict pain on themselves:

“The motivations for self-harm vary and it may be used to fulfill a number of different functions. These functions include self-harm being used as a coping mechanism which provides temporary relief of intense feelings such as anxiety, depression, stress, emotional numbness and a sense of failure or self-loathing. Self-harm is often associated with a history of trauma and abuse, including emotional abuse, sexual abuse, drug dependence, eating disorders, or mental traits such as low self-esteem or perfectionism”

It is hard to explain to people why someone would want to hurt themselves. It is, in fact, impossible. In my experience, I utilized self-injury as a means to feel something other than the mental anguish I lived with on a daily basis. I self-injured when I was struggling with an early diagnosis of bipolar disorder at the age of twelve, eating disorders and, later in life, addiction and alcoholism. Those who self harm are focusing on the pain of the injury, the goal at hand, which effectively numbs you from feeling. Like abusing drugs and alcohol, this feeling is temporary and fleeting at best.

The scars are not.

I have worked at jobs in which I needed to look professional; I worked with lawyers every day and, ironically, therapists. I would walk into work each morning with a shirt which covered both my arms, despite the often sweltering heat. I was ashamed.

I would be lying if I wrote that I do not look at my body and picture myself as an older woman. A woman who will bear the same scars for the rest of her life. I imagine my body free of the scars; like a white canvas, I could paint freely. I push thoughts like this out of my head and have stopped hiding the scars. Most people are either ignorant to the idea that I could do this to myself or polite enough to look away quickly.

I cannot say I wear these scars with pride, a map of my life written sadly on my body, but I am not ashamed to talk about it anymore because it is a disease in its own right and it can be treated.

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Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:58:41 -0400

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