Notice

Someone who used to love me pointed out the other day that this blog has only one subject on which all the posts are written. This is true. I have tried many times to write what I think people want to read but you know what? Sod it.

It's my blog and I never say this stuff out loud. It's my therapy. I don't mind if no-one reads it, but I love it when people do.

Sorry, who?

I sat in my bedroom last night and decided to do my psych homework, which also tied in with Lou's suggestion of getting a bit creative. I spread out my huge throw thing on the floor and then laid down on it with packs of pens and crayons and a big white drawing pad. What was I trying to do? Identity. I was trying to discover what exactly it is that makes me what I see as this despicable creature placing these words before you. I went for the red pen and started to write and write; all of the phrases starting with 'I' and all of them representing how I feel about myself. Then I wrote my name in a black pen all over the page. It was a bit of a frenzied mess but it felt like therapy, I sat up and looked at it and cried, a lot.

Dr H suggested that a lot of my 'issues' lie in my perception of myself (no shit...it took him 12 years to study for that?!) so putting them all down on paper visually seemed like a good plan. I've stuck an equally large piece of white paper on my bedroom door so that anyone who comes to it can write or draw something that they think represents me, in a week I'll compare my drawing to theirs. See if anyone writes 'I hate you' like the vitriolic little bitch I abandoned at 11 would.

I was also discussing with the old oracle the concept of physical self harm; by that I mean hurting oneself instantly - not through the use of long-term 'fucking-up'. I myself maintain that self-harmers are not intrinsically insane, or mentally unstable as he would have me believe. I believe that the only common theme we have is self-hate, a deep-rooted and crushingly angry deploration for ourselves which leads us to believe that hurting ourselves is deserved and something 'we just have to do'. I also believe that there are differing degrees of self harm; I have talked to a friend of my sister's who is 13 years old and has been scratching herself for about three years now. I meet with her once a week and we talk; kind of like a mentoring scheme. I can see the stark differences between her and myself. This girl is not trying to grow up too quickly, this girl has no trauma, this girl is pressured by what it is to be living. She's lost and self harm to her is an expression of the frustration she feels, but it is a frustration which, she tells me, diminishes day by day as she makes choices and grows in herself. I firmly believe that if I were to visit her after I've finished University she would no longer feel the need to harm herself; I think that the idea of the health system hospitalising her and putting her on medication is sick. Then again you never can tell; often self harm blooms and becomes something which will never leave the victim and (I'm not denying it) often it is a symptom of mental illness; I just don't think that society itself should be so quick to say "Ugh self-inflicted injury! Freak! Lock them away..."

There have been times when I've been a danger to myself; right now I'm the only true enemy I have. There are going to be times in the future when I'll be sitting somewhere wondering where the fuck it went so wrong, so young. But I wouldn't exchange my mind for one which doesn't need to tear itself apart; not today, anyway.

Tonight

This morning, I was on top of the world and the world could do me no wrong. I got out of bed even though I didn't want to and I peered into the world with a sense of relief; this is something I can do. I can get up and go and do things; I'm not ill and not insane. I was lying; to myself, to everyone I could possibly hope to care. I feel so painfully reckless that right now, were I not at work, I think I could viably cut myself until there was nothing left to cut; I could extinguish myself, my soul.
Recently I have been told/diagnosed with a, condition; an end to all my wonderings. I have been granted an explanation and hope rather than the uncertainty and prozac I've been man-handled into for years. But does it help me? No, rather it makes me feel even more than ever than I am fundamentally flawed; I am told that how I appear to others is not my true self, what then is my true self? Have I a self?
If you are reading this it is probable at some point that I will have hurt you, or pushed you away, or made you wonder what kind of monster I am. I am sorry. I have realised that I have pushed away the friends I used to hold closest; I go to college and go to class, then I scuttle away again to hide. I know when I'm brushed off by a friend that it is because I am no longer the kind of company one wishes to keep.
Tonight I feel not only foolish for writing this and placing myself in such a painfully public domain but also for even trying to convince myself that in a big old world such as ours I could be desirable; it sounds to you all like I am a drunk madwoman but I promise you not a drop of alcohol has passed my lips. I know now that people befriend me, or are befriended by me, and then wish at some point in our relationship that they hadn't. They will avoid me, they'll be convinced I'm nothing but an attention-seeking fake. And maybe I am; I've been told now definitively that I am not, but for some reason it doesn't wash with me.
So tonight I am stuck. Without company I will surely go home to my room and cut myself. With company I'll be evasive, I'll hide myself because revealing would be too costly. Tonight it feels so explicitly painful to be living, and so foolish for saying so.

For Dana...

When I’m sailing I feel as though I am alive; sailing is the one part of my world where it seems none of my life has seeped in. When perched precariously on the edge of a boat, any boat, I feel that I could do anything; when I fall in it feels thrilling. If I’m ill, I sail just as though I were well; sailing is the thing that makes my heart ache when I stare into the distance from my bench above the harbour. I would leave tomorrow – or even today – if I was offered the chance to just sail away without any care. I think of a life without the sea and it’s bleak. I like to play music, I like to hold my friends close to me, I like to write and I like to drive; but I love, I love to sail. A writer knows they’ve found their passion when they cannot write about it but only stare into its shadow and dream.

I think my favourite place, is Paris. When I was a child my favourite film was ‘The Aristocats’ because, well I don’t really know. I wore out two copies of that tape, and then my sister was born and she ate the third copy – well chewed it and poured Heinz baby juice all over it. To a child, the portrayal in that film of Paris was just magical; the watercolour streets and American actors with French accents and when I first visited Paris every street looked as though Marie and Toulouse might have run through it whilst escaping the evil English butler, Edgar. I don’t own a copy anymore, they stopped making tapes of it and I’ve never gotten around to finding a DVD; plus I’m afraid that watching it now would ruin the unquestioned memories of a five year old romantic.

Music is like sailing, but for my ears. I always have music playing; when I get home I walk around the house and turn all the radios and stereos on, I don’t even park my car without putting on a CD and turning it up very loud. I don’t know if I have a specific piece which has touched me though; I have favourites of course but I’m hesitant to pinpoint a specific highlight. I could easily put together an ‘essential’ collection but as my mood changes from moment to moment, so do my musical needs.

I have so many dreams, for after university – really university is just borrowed time that I’ll use to dream some more. I want to work on a lifeboat and go out to sea; I want to be a part of that orange hope powering towards sailors in distress. I want to be an interpreter or translator in Paris and spend days in a café poring over beautiful French. I want to be a lifeguard in Cornwall and spend the summer guarding the beach. I want to be a park ranger in New Zealand. I want to sail around the world. I want to visit every country in the world. I know they’re only dreams and they’ll probably never happen but what’s a person without dreams?

Forever

Forever. I love that word, and at the same time I detest it; forever is how long people claim they will love you for, forever is how long you have to live with your past. It’s really just for and ever stuck together; conjugated to make a lovers word, a mourner’s word and a liar’s word. ‘I love you yesterday, today and tomorrow; I love you forever’; how many people have heard that and have believed it? It’s kept people going through their lives which bring them nothing but shit which they try to pass off as sacrifice for the ones they love; try to call it soul-making. Forever starts tomorrow but no-one knows when it began or when it will end, we have no reason to believe it will ever end and everyone’s forever began on a different day. Forever is like a promise which won’t necessarily be kept; it’s the type of promise which provokes the beast of cynicism who thrives at weddings and at engagements. If you have a bad memory; like the day someone you loved died, it feels like something inside of you has died when really something inside of you is being born; it is the ghost of forever that will haunt you from now on. Perhaps you have a trait, an addictive personality; that will be with you forever; forever will peer over an alcoholic’s shoulder as they order a glass of fruit juice, forever will taunt the drug addict as they walk past a forbidden alley. I have things that I will be forever, things that I will remember forever, and ghosts that I will try to erase from the grey shadow of my soul, forever. But forever isn’t something you can succeed at; you will stop being loved in quite the same way, your memories will never be forgotten, your lies will always be there in the mind of the person you cut down. Forever. Forever. Forever. Forever. It’s an eternal promise and an eternal curse; it’s inescapable and elusive at the same time. I will live with what I have done to people, forever; and they will live with what they have done to me. I will wish my past away, forever, and whatever I do tomorrow will be done not with this in mind, but with a will to make forever a better place in my mind; a place which is dark but with shining stars, rather than a place which is dark and absolute. Not everything is forever, of course; or else where would the lover and the liar be? I will have scars, and make scars, forever; just like you, but I won’t want them to get lost in the quagmire of forever – some days I’ll want them to be there forever, as a reminder, but some days I’ll curse the forever and curse my skin and my heart and my mind. I will love the sea forever, I will be afraid of the dark forever; I will love not only calm seas and I will be afraid not only of the darkness in my mind but the darkness all around, and the darkness in rough seas.