Thursday 29 October 2015

Addicted

Shortly after getting my tooth removed, my weight loss plateaued. Purging and laxatives will only get you so far, as neither is very effective in terms of calorie control. The latter has absolutely no affect, by the time the laxative takes effect, what you have eaten has already been digested. There was a treadmill in the house, so I decided it was time to bring exercise into the equation. I was never into sports; I even managed to avoid PE class for most of secondary school. I was incredibly unfit, and a smoker(the more you smoke, the less you eat!) so in the beginning I struggled with a fast paced walk. Logically, I can see that this was to be expected: a smoker who lead a sedentary lifestyle and wouldn't even jog for a bus. But in my head, my laboured breathing and aching thighs were proof that I was still overweight. So I walked, then jogged and finally managed to run for 5 minute intervals.

Nothing happened, other than an increase in my lung capacity. But who really cares about lungs when your thighs touch? I needed to take it up a notch. I joined the gym and started doing weights, in addition to increased cardio exercises. I rowed, crunched, lifted and stepped until I was weak at the knees. I hated every second of it, I cried more than once in the locker room as I sat there heaving and sweating. My sole motivation for going was weight loss; to quiet the voice in my head that constantly remind me how disgusting I was; how weak I was; how pathetic. Unfortunately, my years of exercise avoidance meant that I knew nothing about it. I had assumed working out would equate to weight loss, it was basic physiology as far as I was concerned. I don't think I can really convey the devastation I felt when the number on the scale barely dropped. All of that effort, all of the pain and the early mornings has been for nothing. I was clearly eating far too much, I wasn't being strict enough when I was purging. It never crossed my mind that perhaps there was another reason I hadn't lost much weight. For the first time in my life I had toned and ever so slightly muscular arms. My calves and thighs were like rocks, and I could run at a steady pace without gasping for breath. Looking back, it's possible that the reason I didn't loose weight was because I had converted some of my body mass into muscle. Possible. But I couldn't see that at that time; it was just more proof that I was a failure.

I immediately quit the gym, if it wasn't going to help me loose weight I wasn't interested. Around the same time, I was experiencing some difficulties in work. I won't bore you with the details, but the situation was causing me a great deal of anxiety and stress. I knew of only two ways to cope with distress - self harm or weight loss. I chose the later. Within a few months I was purging up to 15 times a day, mostly in work. The saddest part is, I wasn't even indulging in delectable delights. My idea of a 'binge' was 4 rice cakes. By now my eating disorder had become my primary focus; what to eat and what to purge; what I could eat and when I could eat it; what lies I needed to tell to keep my secret; which pharmacy was next on the laxative rotation. I was like an addict, jonesing for my next fix and using my ED behaviours as a crutch when anything difficult or distressing happened. Focusing all my attention on food and weight also meant I could disconnect from my disintegrating emotional state.

As I have said before, I have struggled with depression for more than half of my life. It should therefore come as no surprise to you that as my ED spun out of control, my BPD characteristics reared their ugly heads again. Mood swings, irritability, depressive episodes, insecurities, impulsivity...not to mention the long list of dysfunctional thinking styles. For good measure, my body decided to join the party and began protesting my treatment of it. I'm not going to sugar-coat anything, so prepare for the ugly truth. My bowels no longer functioned on their own, I was completely reliant on laxatives and enemas. My teeth and gums ached constantly, and part of one of my front teeth broke off. Despite being on the pill, my periods became irregular. The skin on the knuckles of my right hand were so raw from rubbing against my teeth that they developed scar tissue - if I get too hot or cold my knuckles turn red and angry. My concentration waned and I was constantly irritable. My lows dropped even lower and my interest in all other aspects of my life dwindled. The acne I had suffered as a teenager flared up. I was permanently tired, and when I wasn't in work I was lying on the bed.

But what about the rest of my life? My boyfriend, family and friends? They were all secondary to my eating disorder, I no longer hesitated if I needed to lie to them to keep my secret. I had enough experience with mental health problems and knew myself well enough to know I was in trouble. But I couldn't risk losing the ED, it had become more than just a way to change my body, it was my best friend. And I wasn't willing to give it up for anything, or anyone. Even myself.

Wednesday 21 October 2015

Lies

When I moved in with my boyfriend and his family I knew I would have to stop throwing up, the privacy I needed to purge was gone so I had no choice. For a few weeks I managed to resist the urges, but as often happens when you're in the honeymoon period of a relationship, I put on some weight. Not much, I know that now, but at the time I felt like Violet Beauregarde after she eats the gum in the Wonka Factory. My self loathing was at an all time high; I alternated between mournful resignation and complete denial of my size. In the end, the ceaseless self degradation became too much to bear, and I gave in.

Knowing I couldn't escape dinner, I focused my attention on my daytime eating habits. Not eating at all wasn't an option for me, I lacked the willpower to restrict and I couldn't do my job properly if I was tired and dizzy all day. So I began to 'diet' during the day, eating foods that were low in calories and fat. After a week, I started running for the bathroom once I had finished my lunch. After a month I was throwing up lunch and the apple I ate in the afternoon. This still wasn't enough, I wasn't trying hard enough. I was pathetic; I was weak; If I really wanted to loose weight I should work harder. One day, I stood in front of the mirror and surveyed the disgusting blob I called home. Lumps and bumps in all the wrong places, flesh soft and doughy from my chin to my ankles. I was neither waif-like or curvaceous. I wasn't lean and athletic, or carrying the right amount of 'junk in my trunk'.

Unless you have experienced it, I don't think there is anyway for me to convey exactly what it's like to look at yourself and be truly horrified and repulsed by what you see. To constantly criticise and despise every inch of your body. That's not to say that being insecure about one's appearance only happens to people with eating disorders. I think most people have or have had some part(s)of their body they don't like, or wished they could change. I doubt you could walk more than 2 feet down a busy street without passing someone who is insecure about how they look. People of all shapes and sizes disike their bodies, it's not just those of us who have eating disorders; in fact we are probably the minority group in the body hating category. But in my experience, if you have an eating disorder, you fucking hate your body. You hate it to such a degree that you would rather destroy it than live in it anymore. Whether you are bulimic, anorexic, a binge eater, orthorexic or EDNOS(Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified *eyeroll*), your behaviours can and will kill you. But death is not as terrifying as letting go of your ED.

A couple of months after I moved in with my boyfriend I cracked, and two or three times a week I would make a beeline for the toilet after dinner. I didn't even notice when it became an everyday ritual. I did everything I could to hide what I was doing, which is to say, I lied my ass off. For me that's the worst part of the ED, the lying. But as much as the guilt tore at me, I couldn't tell the truth. If I did, people might try and take it away from me, they wanted to steal my best friend. That's what my ED was then, it was the one thing I knew wouldn't let me down. Purging for me was just like self harming; it dulled whatever overwhelming emotions I felt, it gave me control when I felt powerless; and if I did it right, it would help me loose some weight. It was, and still is, my safety blanket. People will come and go(there's that abandonment issue again), but the ED will never leave you.

Not every moment of my life at that time was marred with sadness, I have plenty of good memories, more good than bad. I considered myself to be 'well'; I refused to see the ED as anything other than a diet, and a companion. When things became difficult in work I just upped my game, soon I was throwing up anywhere from 3-15 times a day. Not even rice-cakes escaped, everything was on the clearance aisle in my stomach.

Other than suffering with IBS, at this point my overall health was unaffected. This was proof that I was fine, and if that changed I would immediately stop. Then my right back molar had to be extracted - the stomach acid had started to erode my teeth. The dentist assumed I drank a lot of fizzy drinks and suitably chastised me. I knew better, and as I walked out of the dentist office, crying, I told myself I was done. I had gone too far, and I believed that for about an hour. It was only a back molar, and it had probably been eroding for some time. Just like that, my promises to quit were gone. The crumbled in the face of the ED

Wednesday 14 October 2015

Phase Two

In 2012 I was 27 and I found myself single for the first time since I was 19. I also found myself in need of a new place to live as the apartment I shared with my sister was being sold. Happily, a casual friend of mine was also seeking a roommate so we rented a house together for a year. Before I get to the boring serious stuff I just want to say that I loved living in that house. Other than the fact that it was colder than the North Pole for the entire year, and that the shower mostly just dribbled water on you, it was a pretty fun year. I laughed all the time, made brownies in mugs, drank far too much wine and definitely ate too much Chinese food. But the best part was my roommate, who went from someone I saw on nights out, to one of my closest friends. Also one of my most understanding and patient friends, who never gave up on our friendship, even when I was so lost in my illness that I couldn't even be counted on to meet for coffee. Hell, she is still tolerating my unreliability while I struggle with my compulsion to be anti-social. So despite what I am about to divulge, that year of my life was a pretty good one.

At the beginning I struggled with my new single status. I was a serial monogamist, because without a boyfriend I had nobody to validate me, or make me feel loved. Even when my relationships were breaking down, and both parties were miserable, it was better than being alone. Even though I knew I could never be good enough for the other person, knowing they had picked me meant there must be something acceptable about me. So when I found myself without that emotional crutch, I floundered, desperate to find some way to avoid falling back down into that black hole. For the first few months I was single I threw myself into the dating game, or more accurately, the one night stand game. Just as I had done in college, I used sex to make myself feel wanted. I tried to tell myself it was all fun and games, the single life, but it started to eat away at me. The short term feeling of being wanted by someone paled in comparison to the self loathing and remorse that lingered for days afterwards. I needed something else, anything that would separate me from the emptiness and sorrow.

I had at this point been making myself sick on and off for 5 years. I knew that purging could lower the intensity of my emotions; I also hated my body and still felt massively overweight so the most logical step in my mind was to throw up more often. At first it was once a day, after my dinner. It was perfectly reasonable and safe in my mind, like being on a diet. Then I turned my attention to what I was eating during the day, low calorie soups and rice cakes entered my life. I started walking to and from work, just to get fitter. Weekends were different, because by Friday I was so miserable I turned to the one thing I knew would comfort me, food. You might be wondering why I kept on throwing up and dieting if I was still so unhappy. Immediately after purging I would get a burst of pleasure, many bulimics experience a 'high' after throwing up, which is one of the reasons relapse is so common. That high is addictive, it's like taking ecstasy, but the effects wear off much faster. The other reason is that in that moment, choosing to make myself throw up, I felt in control. For most of my life I had always felt somewhat powerless, bulimia made me feel like I was finally in charge of something, I wanted to loose weight so I was choosing to do this to achieve my goals. That feeling of being in control is just as addictive as the high. No matter what is happening in your life, you know you can do this one thing of your on volition. So I kept throwing up, and then I would binge on sweets and take away at the weekends, and throw it all back up of course.

The bingeing and purging unsurprisingly started to affect my digestive system, so I started taking OTC laxatives once a week. Very quickly I started taking the laxatives everyday, convinced that they would aid my weight loss. When the laxatives stopped working, I turned to micro-enemas instead. One a week turned into twice a week and then before I knew it I was using them every second day. I never worried about what I was doing,In my mind I was completely in control of the situation and I told myself that once I reached the right weight, I would stop.

I had always been insecure about my body, but suddenly my weight and size were all I could think about. All day, everyday, I would pull at the softer parts of me; stare wistfully at other women and their perfect figures; stare for an eternity at the millimeter gap between my thighs. IF I wasn't thinking about my weight, I was obsessing over food. What I had eaten, what I wished I could eat, how many calories were in that apple, what was eating later before I purged, what would I binge on at the weekend...It never stopped.

When I moved out of the house at the end of the year, I couldn't go a day without throwing up. As often happens with bulimia, my weight had stabilised, but I kept telling myself if I just stuck with it, it would start dropping again. At this point, other than a sluggish digestive system, my health wasn't being affected by my behaviour. Which, as I repeatedly told myself, meant I wasn't bulimic. So it was fine, according to Wikipedia, and we all know Wikipedia is the most reliable source of information on the internet. So in April 2013 I moved in with my boyfriends family, and I was 100% fine, other than being too fat.

Monday 12 October 2015

Food Equals Soothe

As I said previously, I had always believed my problems with food began when I self-induced vomiting for the first time. IT was only during my last hospital stay that I realised my distorted relationship with food started when I was a child.

According to compassion focused therapy (yes that's a real thing, and harder than it sounds), we have three main regulation systems for our emotions and thoughts: Threat, Drive and Soothe. Threat(Anxiety/Anger/Fear) is basically your fight/flight system, when we feel a threatened in some way this system kicks in for protection. Drive(Excitement/Motivation/Achieving) is when you are trying to obtain a resource or incentive, and Soothe(Happy/Safe/Kindness) is when you feel content, protected and cared for. We move between the different systems as we go about our lives, and we can quickly jump from one to the other.

For example, imagine you have to prepare a group presentation in work, and whichever team has the best presentation wins €100 each. You will most likely be fully in drive, focusing on the task at hand and the end goal - the €100 prize money. But what if Larry, who you've never really liked, starts to take over the project, refusing to listen to any ideas but his own. And Larry's ideas are terrible, really terrible. So not only will you not win the cash, your boss will probably think you had something to do with that sorry excise for a presentation. So your brain goes into threat mode, your self-preservation kicks in and you snap at Larry to let other people talk. Assuming Larry concedes, you will flip back into drive and start firing off counter ideas. Although you may keep one toe dipped in threat, just in case that damn Larry doesn't tow the line. So, Drive->Threat->Drive.

There are plenty of online resources about CMA, which explain it a lot better and more accurately than I just did. But hopefully you get the basic concept. How is this relevant to my ED? Excellent question Cyberspace, so I'll get back to the matter at hand.

My earliest memory took place when I was three. I was running down my grandmother's garden, being chased by her dog Daisy. I don't remember running headfirst into an apple tree during said chase, and splitting my forehead open. I definitely don't remember being brought to hospital and getting 8 catgut sutures, while bawling my eyes out(understandably). However I do remember being handed a Cadbury Flake bar. So I have fear of the dog(threat) followed by yummy chocolate(soothe). You're probably rolling your eyes at me, its just a dog and a Flake, although Freud could probably have a field day with it. As far reaching as it may seem, that moment was pivotal in my life.

When I was a child my house was a very scary place to be, my parents nasty separation being just one example. At all times I had a certain level of anxiety and fear, just waiting for the next attack, constantly in threat mode. Luckily, I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother, Joan. From the moment I was born she looked after me when my parents couldn't, and even as a teenager I stayed in her house regularly. My grandmother was the one person in my life who made me feel safe, her house was my safe haven, it was the one place my soothe system was activated. And like most grandmothers back then, she spoiled me rotten, in the form of sugar. My grandmothers house meant red lemonade and 10p bags of jellies, it meant 20p coins to spend in the newsagents. It was sitting up late with her watching Coronation Street, eating pink wafers. Tiny Mars bars or ice cream between wafers if I was good. Homemade jams, stewed apple and rhubarb with custard...Food meant I was wanted and that I was being rewarded. When she got older, and couldn't get up to make breakfast, she would leave out cereal bowls filled with pink and white marshmallows for me and my sister. Nothing could make a seven year old and ten year old happier than watching cartoons while eating a bowl of marshmallows.

When my dad left home my mother would sometimes bring us with her to the pub at the weekend. In exchange for our good behaviour my sister and I would be gifted with a £5 note to spend in the shop next door. We would sit quietly in the corner, surrounded by inebriated strangers, safe in our little sugar bubble. When I was eight or nine I started stealing money from my house. It started out with 5p from my mum's purse, or if the man she was seeing was over, I would rob every coin from his coat pockets. I also got pocket money from my dad, £1 every second week I think. If something particularly bad happened at home, I would take my money to the sweet shop near my school and buy flying saucers and red licorice whips to cheer myself up. I'd buy 100 cola bottles and eat them until I felt sick, because with every jelly I thought less and less about whatever had happened. Because in my little mind, I subconsciously associated sweets with the one person who made me feel unconditionally loved - my grandmother. So if I couldn't be with her, I would try and replicate that feeling of safety and contentment with food.

When I moved to a new house and school at eleven things got even worse. My shy, bookish and slightly weird personality did not fit in with my new classmates, or my family. Now I was miserable in school and at home, so almost everyday I would spend my bus fare in the nearest shop and walk home. The combination of a long walk and the limited amount of food I could buy with my bus fare meant my weight stayed the same. At home, it was toast. I would sit in the kitchen alone every evening, watching TV and secretly munching away. Food was not just something I needed to live, it was a way to push down any thoughts or feelings that were too intense, or a way to try and fill up the growing emptiness inside of me. At the time I didn't think that there was anything wrong with my relationship with food, but I deliberately used it to comfort myself.

By my mid-teens I had, for the most part replaced food with self harm. A slice of cake had nothing on the sting from a fresh cut, in terms of dealing with distress that is. The cake obviously wins the taste test. Using food as a coping mechanism is not specific to people with eating disorders, or personality disorders. I would go so far as to say that most people have turned to food for comfort at some point in their lives. Whenever there is a break-up scene in a chick flick, ice cream and/or chocolate will inevitably appear. It's perfectly normal to eat Nutella off of a spoon after a really shitty day at work. The problem occurs when you think the only way to feel better after that shitty day is a spoonful of Nutella. It's when you realise you're standing in your kitchen holding an empty jar and panicking, because now you have to feel emotions. It's when you never think of food in terms of nourishment, or family, or celebration, that's when it's a problem.

So while my eating disorder first manifested when I was twenty two, my maladaptive relationship with food started about 19 years earlier. Which makes changing my beliefs around food and eating even more fun. Rather predictably, I now have an overwhelming urge to go and buy cake, in order to block out the memories I recalled for this post. But I'd probably just throw it up, so why waste good cake?

Tuesday 6 October 2015

Bulimia

You might be wondering why, after writing so many posts about my mental health between the ages of 12 and 19, I gave brushed over the next 10 years of my life. From 2004 to 2014 I lived the same life over and over again. I would have a period of being well, then the depression and mood swings would return. I would self harm until eventually I ended up in A&E; be referred back to a psychiatrist; take more medication...round and round and round. Some of the characteristics attributed to my personality disorder were always, and will always be, active. There were however, three significant events during that time that I want to talk about. The next few posts will focus on one of them - the beginning of my eating disorder.

Whenever I have been asked when I started engaging in eating disorder behaviours, my answer is always: when I was 22. At the time I was in a stable relationship, working full time and through a combination of therapy and new medication I had been stable for a few months. I was also very overweight, and that is not an exaggeration or my eating disorder talking. The medication I was taking increased my appetite, and I doubled my portion sizes for every meal. Then my moods started fluctuating again, and instead of facing it I tried to pretend it wasn't happening. Then I started eating whenever my mood would dip to cheer myself up. I have always loved food, so in the short term this strategy was effective. I was filling that hole inside my heart with cake...and chocolate, and sausage rolls and...well you get the picture. As a result, I started gaining weight. But again, instead of facing it, I ignored it, and my weight skyrocketed.

I only have one picture of myself at my heaviest; in it I am wearing an outfit I'd had for a number of years but, as I had almost doubled in size, the flowing baby-doll top was now skintight and bursting at the seams. I don't know how I managed to ignore what was quite literally right in front of my face, but until the day I saw that picture, that's what I did. When I saw that photo, I was horrified and repulsed. My mood plummeted. I became depressed, my mood swings worsened and my fingers were itching to pick up something cold and sharp. I made half-hearted attempts to exercise, but after a few days I would always give up. I just didn't see the point in trying.

I was in the toiler in work one day, hiding in a stall trying to get control over a sudden onset of tears. I had just finished lunch, all I could think about was cutting, and out of nowhere I decided to stick my fingers down my throat. After several minutes my throat was burning, my knuckles raw from my front teeth and my stomach ached from the violent retching. It felt wonderful, that addictive combination of a silent mind and pain. So I started throwing up every lunchtime to help me get through the afternoon. All too quickly, once a day wasn't enough to quiet the tirade of abuse I lashed myself with every waking moment. As I ate breakfast at work it was easy to add it to the purge schedule. I quickly learned the tricks of the trade - ways to ensure I emptied more of my stomach. I didn't see the harm in what I was doing; I had plenty of extra fat to keep me going and really, it was just like taking a Xanax. More importantly, I wasn't self harming right?

I couldn't, or wouldn't, see any connection between making myself sick and self harming. They were completely different, the vomiting wasn't doing any harm. In fact, the vomiting was helping me. My clothes slowly started to become looser, I was actually loosing weight. It was just a diet, and like any diet you had to stick with it. So I started throwing up dinner, as much as I could without alerting my boyfriend. I never questioned why my 'diet' had to be so secretive, but it did. I knew I had to keep it to myself, or it might be taken away. By this point I couldn't go one day without throwing up, I was completely addicted to it. Even when my boyfriend discovered what I was doing, I wouldn't stop. I finally had a way to manage my emotions, to block out my thoughts, and nobody was taking it away from me.

Over the next few years, until about 2012, I would go a week or two without throwing up, but I always went back to it. I had lost a lot of the weight I had gained, and as often happens with bulimia, I hit a certain number on the scales and stayed there. It didn't matter though, the weight loss had always been a bonus. The purging gave me control; it was the only thing in my life I felt like I had any control over. But more on control later.

So that's how it started. Or at least that's what I thought. The thing about eating disorders is, they don't normally spring up out of nowhere in your twenties. The behaviour, the purging, started in my twenties. But I have come to realise that my relationship with food had been distorted long before that.

Friday 2 October 2015

Don't Leave Me

I attended the day hospital for six weeks in 2004, attending the same groups and covering the same topics as before. While the day hospital gave structure and routine, I came out feeling just as lost and directionless. I returned to work, took a room with a family my dad knew and attended saw my psychiatrist monthly. The appointments were just 15 minutes long and served only to review my medication, and check the box next to 'No suicidal intent'. Still, I took my pills and tried my best to get on with daily life, fake it 'till you make it. Over the years I have spent long periods pretended to be happy; smiled when I wanted to cry; laughed when I was picturing razors and rivers of blood; kissed when I felt dead inside. I worked so hard at faking it that sometimes I can't take the mask off, sliding it into place is as natural to me as breathing. Not once has faking it improved my mood(despite what countless therapists have said), but it makes other people feel better. If you know me, you've probably only seen my real expression because I've had way too much to drink, or you've had the joy of bringing me to or from A&E. Other than that, what you're seeing is probably an act.

Between 2004 and 2014 I continued to battle depression and self harm. I have no idea how many times I had to go to hospital for stitches over the course of those ten years; how many psychiatrists I saw; how many therapists I spoke to; how many suicide attempts I made. If someone else told me that they couldn't count all the times they tried to end their life, my heart would break for them. But the rules are different for me. On my good days, if I think about it, I chastise myself for being such a nuisance. On my bad days, I berate myself for being so utterly useless, for failing so many times.

I had periods of being 'well', months where I was not self harming or in need of medication. But self harm wasn't the only aspect of my personality that was problematic. I frequently drank until I passed out; I racked up mountains of debt through impulse spending; I hurt people I loved and I allowed others to hurt me. I had no control over my emotions, I could go from one extreme to the other in minutes. Nothing was ever bad, it was terrible; I wasn't just happy, I was delirious. Everything I felt, I felt it with an intensity that never matched the situation. I didn't just love you, I loved you and would die if you left me. And I mean that literally. I don't remember ever saying 'If you go I will kill myself', although it's possible I did, but I know that it was definitely implied on multiple occasions. I know how awful that sounds, and there is no justification for such blatant emotional blackmail. My fear of losing the one person who I couldn't live without far outweighed my morals. That would be yet another characteristic of BPD - tendency to form intense and unstable interpersonal relationships.

If you grow up in an environment where love is not always given, or is expressed in negative ways, the one thing you want most in the world is to be loved unconditionally. All you want is for someone to choose to love you, to fill that need inside to be accepted and wanted. As a child I often felt there was something wrong with me, that when bad things happened it was my fault, always. I remember being 7 or 8, sitting at the top of the stairs one night listening to the noise below, and feeling so very cold and unwanted. Once that feeling takes hold, that shard of icy doubt in your heart, it won't let go. We learn to love by being loved, and if your own parents don't love you, there is no way you can love yourself. To this day, age 30, I still can't name one thing I like about myself, let alone love.

So when someone comes along and loves you, not because they have to, but because they want to, it's terrifying. Yes, terrifying. Imagine yourself balanced on a tight rope, arms outstretched, high above the ground. You're halfway across and the air is still, the only sound is your own heartbeat. You're smiling, you know this is your moment to dazzle the world below. You slowly lift your right leg up and forward, and as you lower it back down there is a sudden gust of wind. You wobble, desperately trying to right yourself. Your arms are stiff, moving up and down to counter the motion of the rope. The rope stills, your arms once again stretched out straight on either side, the terror subsides. You mentally shake it off, maybe laugh at yourself to dispel any lingering fear. You refocus on the rope, on that right leg still poised in the air. Then you notice it. Somehow, during the commotion, you arched your left foot upwards. You are now balancing solely on your toes, your right foot is in the air. If you put the right foot down first you risk pitching forward. Equally, if you put down your left heel first you could fall back. You look down at the ground, down, down, down. The fall will most likely kill you, and if not the pain will make you wish you were dead. You freeze right there in the middle, one false move and it's all over.

Being loved when you don't think you deserve it is like being on that wire. One false move and it will be taken away, the one thing you want more than anything else is the one thing that can destroy you. Everyday you are afraid, of loosing your balance, of loosing love. You let the fear have control, you torment your partner with your insecurities. With baseless accusations. With your insatiable need for reassurance. The more they try to reason with you, to affirm their feelings, the worse it gets. You get smaller and smaller, as the relationship consumes you. You can no longer see yourself outside of the pair; you just want to make them love you every second of the day, even if you drive them crazy in the process.

It took me a long time to figure out who I was on my own, including a small relapse into the land of promiscuity. I still don't like who I am, but I know that I'll still be the same person alone. I know I can be alone, I don't need someone else to survive. Depression does not care what your relationship status is on Facebook, but neither does happiness.