Oh man. I am Struggling today. Struggling with a capital S and so incredibly tempted to give up. Give up on ever finding any type of recovery. Give up on therapy and just accept binging, purging and restricting as my normal. I am my own worst enemy. I’ve learned all the keys and steps and lifestyle changes. The insanity remains. I know all the buzzwords and metaphors:
We’re born to be nurtured.
Unlike most of the animal kingdom, little humans begin life utterly dependent on their caregivers. In a perfect world, we’re raised by loving and caring parents supported by their whole community – it takes a village to raise a child. Perfection is a rare commodity.
Food tastes like failure.
I don’t savour beautiful textures and flavours. I never mindfully and sensuously nibble delicacies, inhaling aromas and luxuriating in the tantalising sensations on my tastebuds. When I eat, I scoff food down like a starving woman fighting a horde of ravenous dogs, scratching around for the last morsel on a carcass. Washed down with guilt and loathing and fear, and an overwhelming sense of failure – I’ve done it again. I’ve eaten food I didn’t want, in a manner I didn’t like. I’ve failed myself. Food tastes like failure. Day in and day out – I eat failure or I don’t eat at all.
And that failure is an emotion so powerful it’s almost tangible – I could reach out and touch it. Food tastes like failure and failure is a feeling.
But that’s a lie.
I don’t know who I am…
I know the core values I embrace. I know the person I’d like to be. But I don’t know who I really am.
Does that sound absurd? It does to me…
Anyone who has never experienced mental health issues, probably finds this to be a staggering question – why wouldn’t you want to recover?! Who would want to stay “sick”? Well – I am struggling to heal – and I don’t want to stay sick – but I also can’t seem to recover. Don’t worry – it makes no sense to me either!
There’s a war in my head. Some days it gets so loud in there, it gives me a headache. A real one.
The voice nattering incessantly in my ear is not a healthy voice. It’s a familiar one. It feels like a safe one. But that voice is an expert manipulator, liar and thief.
There’s another little voice in the dark – the voice of reason and wisdom, sense and sensibility – but that voice is weak and timid. It has never learned to stand up to the manipulator.
Today I want to sleep.
I want to go to sleep and never wake up. To luxuriate in the endless bliss of nothingness. I want to be free from physical pain. Free from exhaustion. I don’t want to feel worried or anxious or guilty or afraid. I don’t want to be fat and old and lost and weary. I just want to rest. To slip into eternal, blissful rest.
I can’t know for sure how anxiety manifests for other people – and to be honest, it’s only in recent months I acknowledged I have my own manifestations – but apparently, I have anxiety. With a capital A. As I’m currently feeling extremely anxious, now is a good time to put thoughts and observations down on “paper” …
And if as a society, we nurtured those in the earlier stages of illness, perhaps those “high functioning” addicts and depressives, those people with hidden and invisible mental illness, would feel okay about acknowledging their issues much earlier on. Because the earlier the problem is tackled, the better the outcome.
My psychologist talked about recovery, and I said (amongst other things), what’s in it for me? Which sounds appallingly self-interested – because it is! But it is the crux of my recovery issue. Everything I do in my life, is for other people – even my recovery. And without having intrinsic reasons to travel this rocky road, it is nigh on impossible to keep trudging along.
What my body didn’t know when it was born, was that it wasn’t the “right” shape. It wasn’t the “right” size. It wasn’t the “right” colour. That while it functioned in a beautiful, healthy and practical manner, aesthetically it didn’t conform to the ideal of beauty, espoused by those who raised me and the society in which they lived.
I may be living in a minefield and the recovery process feels thick, viscous and horrifyingly distressing, but that unknown fog is more terrifying. I know where the pitfalls in my minefield are – it feels better to live with the devil you know…
For many decades, I wondered why on earth anybody would, or could, run a blade across their unscarred skin, and inflict pain, misery and permanent damage. Just why would somebody do that?! Then my life fell apart – and I learned why.
Today was a pretty good day all things considered. But tomorrow, I’ll try to eat nothing at all. Because this attempt to eat like a “normal” person, is a miserable failure.
Suicide: It’s a dirty word… People are afraid of it. They don’t want to hear it. Or talk about it. We judge it – we judge ourselves for contemplating it, we judge others for talking about it. And those that go through with it? They receive the most judgement of all. Those most in need of our love and compassion, kindness and understanding – are the ones most likely to be criticised, judged and condemned.
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