Relapse. For those of us in recovery from one mental health issue or another, it’s a filthy word. Who wants to relapse? There’s a classic meme showing the difference between reality and expectations when it comes to mental health recovery – expectation is a nice straight line on a consistent upward trajectory. Reality looks like a ball of wool under siege from a horde of rabid kittens.
The trouble with pendulums, is you never know where the highs, lows, and status quos are. Part of having mental health issues, is swinging wildly from one extreme to the other – eat too much, too little. Sleep too much, too little. Work too much, too little. But being kind?
Who would think you could have too much kindness.
People with eating disorders often talk about the eating disorder voice that natters away, telling us what to do. Or not. Undermining recovery. Making us doubt ourselves. But I wonder what that means to someone without an eating disorder voice? Or even what it means to other eating disordered people – I doubt we’re all the same.
Always reaching out for freedom.
Always chained.
Trapped.
My hands are tied and as lost as my soul is.
It seems like I’m always someone else – or pieces of other people put together. Somehow it’s always easier to be someone else.
I have wanted death I have cried for it I have sought the final oblivion of death for as long as I am able to remember. Yet, I am here, I am alive and I can not help but wonder why? Why did the rope not strangle me, or the pills stop my heart? Why when the trigger was pulled, the gun did not spark? Why, when my blood was flowing, did my pulse still beat? Why when the voices yelled death and murder was I not defeated?
When everything hurts. When everything is just to much. I hold my head and I hide. If I can not see the demons, maybe they can not see me?
Face off. The truth of the masks and the pain it hides.
I have consulted the technology fairies and the pixie dust has been waived, the credit card swiped, and I’m back in the land of the cyber living. Phew!
I’m also in the land of man flu so nothing of any significance will be gracing my page for a day or two, but I just wanted to say don’t give up on me. There are good things to come this year. Really good things. I can feel it in my waters!
It’s Christmas Eve. All the food preparation is done. The leaves swept up outside. The tree is decorated, santa hats unpacked and cheesy tunes uploaded to my playlist.
After spending three years working on mental health improvement, it really is very galling to accept a slip back into insanity Yet […]
Hypervigilance – it’s been around forever, of that I have no doubt. But it’s not a word I ever heard mentioned in all my many years of formal education. For a more thorough definition, have a look here, but whether or not it’s something you personally have experience with, doesn’t negate the fact there are a lot of people out there standing on guard, waiting for the next blow to fall. I’m one of those persons. It’s a bit unfun. For me personally, it’s not related to PTSD – I haven’t been subjected to military combat or sexual assault, and for that I’m very grateful. But for one reason or another my nature and nurture cooked up a little concoction that makes me hypervigilant – all the time. What does that mean? It means I’m always on guard.
It’s 35 days since I touched down on terra firma. Jet lag’s done and dusted, the big adventure receding into once upon a time status, and I’m settled back into normality – taking for granted the luxuries of my pillow, my car, and our pristine drinking water. Yet for most of those 35 days, my mental health has been really shit.
It’s a delusion to think anybody genuinely knows us, and when faced with evidence telling a tale different to the one we believe, the ramifications can be genuinely distressing.
There are moments – hours, days – when I feel overwhelmed with anxiety. Not nervousness. Not stress. Not worry. Not even depression. Just anxiety, with all its accompanying physical misery. Five years ago I didn’t have anxiety at all – so I believed. I certainly didn’t seem to experience the effects of anxiety. In fact I didn’t really experience emotions at all. Which is why, I realise, that girl is never coming back.
