Don't Touch

This morning I write to you frustrated, I am out of my numb and ponderous stage and have now moved to being highly annoyed and ridiculously jumpy.
Why? Well to be honest if I knew anything I'd not be asking that stupid question now would I? I'd be basking in my own glory wearing something suitably divine and looking like heaven. Which I do not.
I am fed up with therapy. It's too much like hard work - there's a reason I blocked all those shitty things out and to be honest talking about them with a middle aged man who's now annoyingly like a friend while he sits there getting angry about things I am not is doing nothing for my temper. I am reducing my medication also because I would rather like to go to University without being under the care of some CAMHS team or another - I would like that particular part of my life to be scrubbed from my UCAS application and just for once I want to see whether I can do it on my own.
Y'see that was the whole point of going to Uni far away; to start again. Who the hell am I kidding? It was to run away. And that's what I'm damn well going to do; I am going to run away without a diary or a prescription or a blade or a tear.
For the summer I am working in a Hotel, a Bank and a Hostel.
I am not able to join the Sail4Cancer team at Cowes because the parentals think I should be working on my long summer; not making use of possibly the last one I'll ever have without debts.
I am spending money like there's no tomorrow and damn it, it's not making it any better.
I am lonely and I'm damn well glad of it.
I'm going sleeve-free and I don't give a damn because the scars won't get any better without sun exposure so everyone else will just have to deal with it; people at the gym have been ignoring it for years. Apart from the old people - they don't like it at all.
This mood, I know, marks the beginning of a manic time. And you know what? Damned if I'm going to stop it.

I am aware of how many times I said damn.

Ah

I've no idea what the hell I'm doing here. I just needed to connect, I think. Spiritbear, who dropped by the last post - which was very kind of him, noted that I pour my heart out here.

This struck me.

I am very honest here, yes. Possibly even too honest.

But this is by no means an account of my life. There are a lot of things I cannot say here, wouldn't say even if I could.

I don't know. Ignore me. Keep sparkling.

The big H

That 'H' of course being hiding, or hidden.

All this week I have been being supported and guided and damnit downright cajoled into being around people at school and in the evenings in the probably correct thought that 'it'll be good for me'. So I did it. I stayed for all my classes, I did all my assignments and I gratefully accepted at least 10 hugs a day to keep me together, literally.

Until Friday. Friday I woke up and couldn't do it. Friday was a day no matter how many hugs I was going to get I couldn't be with people; couldn't be me, couldn't be who I am for them. So I stayed at home all day until I went to my psych appointment, which I have also been avoiding.

We talked, for the first time since we met three years ago in A&E, about my Dad. About his violence and his abuse and his alcoholism and his friends and...things I cann't write down even now. I sat and I spoke to my hands and cried into my skirt for an entire hour. I poured out every bad memory which had been plaguing me at night for weeks. I talked; not about my mood over the past week as I've spent every other session doing, or about whichever medication he thinks would be good for me. I talked. I don't know if it's wise but I asked to stop medication, so I'm now working on that.

I went to Dr H on Friday with a view to get myself withdrawn from his care (ironically he said I wouldn't have been allowed anyway) and came out from what was the first useful therapy ever. It made me sad and it made me cry but it made me stare in the face exactly one of the biggest things I've ever had to come to terms with.

And the ending never comes

I am struggling with some thoughts at the moment, some thoughts and images which I really hoped I would never see again. They are plaguing me and really they're quite difficult to come to terms with, to bear even.

I had such an optimistic week planned; and it fell through each day as my hopes and expectations were dashed; it was a fate I have trained myself to withstand yet this week I cannot decipher exactly what is going on inside my mind. I had lunches with friends but one way or another my daring and somewhat dangerously formed hopes provided no rewards. I let myself get into a position where I was at the mercy of others; and that's not something I like to do. Obviously I accept that I sometimes need help but I have not for a long time put my fate in another's hands. Until this week when I was reminded exactly why such barriers were created.

I wonder what's happening sometimes; I hate to drag age in again but I'm only seventeen - very nearly eighteen; should these thoughts and analysis even be coming from someone who as my mother so expertly put it; "hasn't even lived"? I think I've experienced a few misfortunes in the short amount of life I've had, but perhaps I am merely being melodramatic? I've never claimed that I have it tougher than anyone else, but perhaps I have it better than I think? I know that my entire life story is not told through these pages; some of it is too painful for me to type, let alone to put in public domain - so afraid that I am of rejection. I have found myself talking; via e-mail or MSN about things I wished I could forget, but am slowly realising that I won't. I've received a lot of beautiful words via e-mail from equally beautiful readers - but through reading this page alone my life-story is not apparent. I often wondered about writing it down, but who on earth would read it?

It's times like these when my mind is flooded and I've no idea what day it is that I wish it would just all end; but I am not suicidal - those thoughts come later when I begin to realise that it's just another day and those thoughts in my head are just there, all is calm in my mind when thoughts of taking my life arise. I have cancelled doctors appointments and all sorts this week; for I feel that I'm not worthy of the help I supposedly *need*. Maybe you think this is just the apathetic nonsense of a teenager. I don't know.

Mini-Golf and Monsters

Don't you just love sarky and somewhat pretentious titles which you assume will have nothing to do with the actual content of the post? Well I do.

However that particular title is relevant; it is the brief description of my saviour.

You can't have failed to notice that I've been drowning in my own self-pity for a fair while now; I write to you today with my spirits somewhat lifted.

On Thursday my best friend in the entire world and her boyfriend got me round to their house and we watched 'Monster House' - which believe it or not I found funny. They taught me how to cook and her boyfriend who's in a similar state to me talked to me, at length, about how we could help each other. At the end of the evening/early morning I hugged both of them and drove home ever so slightly more cheerful.

The next day however I decided they were humouring me and didn't really like me; I hid in bed until 2pm. Then they called me and invited me to play Mini Golf, which I accepted. It was the best afternoon I've had in a very long time. The game was amazing and we had a real laugh - it was hot and I rolled my sleeves up and we were all comfortable with it.

No-one ever say that girl-friends are just there for shopping

My demons have a date with me

So; it's not been brilliant around here recently. I'll not go into all the details - mainly because I'm in a messed-up kind of way and only writing this to save myself from impending insanity.

It seems that years of winging it and doing pretty well without trying have come to an end; I got my report card yesterday and for the first time in my life I was sorry that my parents were getting a copy of it. I knew how those kids felt when they hid it in their bags and intercepted the post for years. Finally I'm seeing what the school have been telling me for years; I can't cope. I can't just turn up - that's not enough. By the time I get there I'm exhausted from just making it out of bed and into the car, intellectual thought is not high in my mind and this is not a great time for that to be the case.

I've tried to carry on these past few weeks - do whatever it took to survive, usually that gets me through the other side but now? Now I don't know what else to do. I've tried to write and to run and to draw and to scribble and to shout. I took the pills, I didn't take the pills. Neither made any difference. I cut, I didn't cut - I couldn't feel fuck-all anyway.

I let myself get the shit beaten out of; just because it's easier. Less fuss. I let myself. Nothing to do with him at all. So now I'm in bed; under strict orders not to move unless I want myself in an even worse state - which to be honest is looking attractive just now.

It's Easter holidays though, so at least I can reasonably stay in bed all day without being interrogated...

Just a quick thing though I want to say thank you to my best friend Saff; she called me last night and spent hours listening to me cry and trying to sort me out. She's invaluable and I love her.

Anger

The very first time I was sat in front of my GP regarding my *lack* of apparent mental health he told me that he saw a very angry young girl. This, perplexed me somewhat, I'd never thought of myself as angry before - and up until this past month or so I've never understood what he meant.
Last session with Dr H he noted how angry I appeared to him; as though my demeanour was forced because it was hiding anger. This, of course, was my cue to throw a fit. Luckily he didn't bring out the straightjacket...

Just recently I've begun to understand anger; I am usually stuck in periods of self-loathing - anger directed purely at myself. But now I find myself in a new world of anger. I can feel it rising up inside me; it takes so much strength not to shout and scream and just throw things. What scares me the most is the urge I've had to be violent; this is not good. I am not my father, I know; I would never act on these urges. But what if one day I did? Maybe that's what it's like to be my dad - anger that he just can't surpress. Even if I'm not being attacked or aggrivated by anyone I just find myself in angry tears willing pain upon myself and anyone who ever hurt me.

I am angry and it scares me. I've felt things very strongly in the past but predominantly sadness or ecstasy - this anger is like a whole new form of energy. It drives me to speed along the coast not paying attention; it drives me to go to the gym even though I'm not physically up to it (I passed out on the treadmill today; luckily no more harm was done to my poor ribs apart from further pain!), the anger drives me to do things I know are not rational but I can't stop myself from doing them. I HAVE to drive fast. I HAVE to exercise. I HAVE to write an essay.

I'm sorry for glossing over the car crash; I have a lot of shit in my head about it.

'Abuse Culture'

I've stolen that phrase from somewhere; I'm sorry I can't remember where.

Before I start I better point out that I'm sort of low and pretty fucking angry so be prepared to take my rambling with a pinch of salt.

SO I was looking through the book review listing table thing in the paper this morning and what are about 50% of the books about? Abuse; surviving abuse, childhood abuse, domestic abuse... Are you noticing a trend? I know that people like to feel loved and wanted; maybe we even want sympathy - you know how many times I've come on here pretty much broken and needed picking up. But why the sudden increase in the publication of people's survival stories?

Does it really make the survivors feel any better? Do they gain anything from it? I understand, of course, that therapeutic techniques such as talking and writing are invaluable to discover how we feel about our past (and present) trauma; but publication?

I guess I was just wondering. Feeling alone and angry. Needed to write.

Respond how you will, if you will.

Baby it hurts so bad

Evnin

I'm in Leeds.

I was in a car crash on the M1. I survived. Obviously.

But it hurts. It hurts so much.

*deep breath*

That hurts too...

Right now I can put my hand on my heart and swear I wish I weren't here.

Things have gotten bad.

17; that's all I am.

I've been through fuck knows what but has it made me stronger? No. Hell no.

I am a wreck.

I don't want to be this.

Forget you're broken and you might get fixed...

Last night whilst talking to the oracle who is Spencer at work, I had a sort of epiphany, if you could call it that. I was rambling on about something to do with the French assistant who left us each a bit of life advice; mine was as follows "You're irreparably broken, Nikita, but if you forget you're broken maybe you can be fixed" - or something along those lines. Me in my childish naivety didn't get it at first; well it is a little contradictory... But perhaps she meant that the past will always be with me, but I don't have to be with the past. It will always be in the past; I need to learn to keep it there, because right now I'm living that past everyday I wake up - and it hurts, a lot.

When I go to University (or should I say if) I will make a start at getting better; I cannot do it here where I so frequently 'walk into doors' or into four or five other people who've already hurt me when I walk down the High Street. I need to learn to be brave and go to groups; I need harsher therapy because as much as I love sitting talking to Dr H every week it's not getting me anywhere except to make sure I at least talk once a week, and deprive the health system of Kleenex.

So I send this to you, my loving void, as a fucked young lady; that is my truth. Who would I be if I weren't? Pointless question; I am me and whilst I am hurting so deeply right now, perhaps one day I can live with it.

Perdre

The french verb 'to lose'.

Well it's Thursday and I'm in that dark quagmire once more; this is getting tedious, I know.
I am 17 years and nine months old, today; roughly.

It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah...

I thought I was done with all this; didn't I promise you guys that I was? Didn't I say I would never let myself get this far down again? Truth be told I should be used to this; should be well-rehearsed in the art of hiding away, should know when to stop reaching out to people so they wish they had their phones off... But I don't. I never did do very well on my own...

When I'm happy it's almost as though I seek reassurance that I really am happy; when I'm sad I seek solace in someone else's kind words or embrace. I fear I may be co-dependent...infact I'm pretty sure of it.

The song which gives this post its name has been on a loop in my car; turned up so loud the poor thing vibrates and when I start to cry in queues of traffic women look down their noses, men leer and children grin on; unaware as yet of what it is to be depressed.
Many people have been telling me for many a year that depression is an illness; I simply see it (in myself only) as a weakness; as something I should get over.

Before this turns into yet another self-pitying rant, I shall leave. X

Je ne suis pas sur

Quite by accident I haven’t written in a while, a while by my standards anyway; I thought I’d give you all a rest from the junk sprouted so regularly…

Last weekend I did a mini indoor triathlon; it was only a few km and involved rowing rather than swimming but for some obscure reason it meant something to me. I’ve had a gym membership since I was twelve and at one point just before I was thirteen I was going everyday and neglecting to eat much. Classic teenage scenario. Anyway once that was rather forcefully put a stop to I didn’t go again until I was about fifteen and only every now and again. These past two weeks I’ve been going everyday in my free period, I’ve been eating just one meal a day and eating cereals and drinking water in between. I went this morning only to find I’d forgotten my trainers so I went home thinking it didn’t matter if I didn’t go; I sat down and got a drink. I got up and went back to the gym. I had to go; I felt too guilty if I didn’t. Just like the other day when I ate chocolate…but we won’t go into that.

I haven’t cut since I’ve been going to the gym and it would appear to the more fastidious readers that I’ve replaced one obsession with another; which I freely recognise. My question is which is worse? Is one more detrimental than the other? Millions of people go to the gym everyday because they want to keep in shape, or get fit; I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with that. Am I right? Some people might argue that anything which exercises control over us is something to be wary of; as with anything which forces us to do things we may not want to. Surely going to the gym everyday and eating healthily is advantageous over taking a blade to ones arm.

On a less surprising note; I have no English ability whatsoever to speak of. Since everybody was far too kind to tell me that my poems were shite and my prose laughable I suppose the grade E on my poetry/drama English re-sit might just serve as confirmation of my fears. Reassure all the Universities that I shan’t be massacring their literature programs as previously planned.

This afternoon I have been to lunch with my father; I graciously ate a tuna sandwich while he polished off the biggest lunch I have ever seen, complete with a dessert and three pints of lager – even though he was driving. I’m not going on another drink-driving rant, I promise. On leaving the bar we went out to the car park and first my car; it was too dirty, not parked straight enough and messy…apparently. Then he saw it. The Scratch. Some bastard either at work or college took a chunk of paint out of my Fifi and he saw it; needless to say I was given my due disapproval from His Lordship for not ‘taking care of it’ before he skulked off and I went to get checked out. I did receive an apology text and a voicemail saying if I called my insurance he’d get the guys at work to take a look at it.

Still it was a large enough blow to penetrate the damn black fog tugging at my heels and enough for me to shirk all invitations for the weekend to write this in bed. I shall, of course, go to work and the gym; this gives me more motivation to push my body further, because I am stubborn and always out to prove myself; you’d think after seventeen and a half years of him not noticing I’d take the hint.

So now it’s the evening and I’m just here thinking, about the E in English, the C in French, the three Bs I need… Plus the insurance for the car which will go up if I make a claim, to add insult to the already serious injury of £700 for a teenage driver. Plus I’m hurting through my own fault and others. Plus I feel sick from a mistake I made earlier (I’m ok). Plus it’s that time of the month. So don’t annoy me, ok?

x

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.

On that note...which was definitely an E Minor chord

Meaning that if the last post were to have its very own chordI suspect it would be E Minor; favoured by violinists the world over...

Anyway someone's, thankfully, put down the violin and it's time for a bit of sax I think. A bit of reflection; a bit of Jazz. Not too upbeat, but not down in the gallows either.

In these times of blog identity crisis I would be thankful of any ideas/thoughts/suggestions/roses thrown in my direction.

aloha

Not forgetting...

This is just a quick revelation to chuck out there. It seems that this blog has fallen into a sort of inescapable pit; by that I mean that my life is no longer being documented whilst my mental health, or lack of it, seems to have taken precidence. It struck me, therefore, that I should stop being such a self-centered 'ikkle gurl' and perhaps focus on some more open topics that mean more to some of you. So I call a rest to documenting depression and self harm, because they are only part of me; not ME alone, and because someone once told me to never write what I know... Although he was drunk...and an Irish sailor...