Snickers

Forgive me for the lack of posts recently, I have been struggling over the last two weeks and the keyboard was too daunting to face. Ironically, blogging is one of the coping strategies that help me stay on track when I'm struggling. Keep up the good work brain, god forbid you made sense for even a minute.

I'll stop the self-flagellation there lest I scare you away. If you are even there, perhaps I am just sending my thoughts out into cyber space, to drift unseen as 1s and 0s. Maybe I should throw in some flagged words so some analyst in a bunker somewhere in Idaho has to read my blog... Anthrax are a band I like; I also like to watch The Strain, which is about a scientist from the CDC caught up in an outbreak of an unknown virus which causes strange mutations. Heroin is a narcotic, according to the news it is regularly smuggled out of Mexico by drug cartels. Tijuana is a city in Mexico, I don't think they get much snow or ice there.

Okay I'm done annoying Tim from Homeland Security, sorry Tim.

North Korea.

Sorry, last one, I promise.

But seriously, a ridiculous number of those words are allegedly flagged. I mean have there been viable threats involving ice? Angry Eskimos? Hoards of ice cube wielding Yetis? *Gasp* Is Winter coming?

Back to the matter at hand, me being nuttier than a Snickers. After being kicked out of my college dorm I stayed in a hotel until I ran out of money. Then I slept on a friends couch for a while, trying to make it to the end of the semester before facing my parents. I had no hope of passing any exams so I didn't even bother opening a book. Instead I continued to self medicate with drugs and alcohol and slice my arms and thighs open whenever I could. As you can imagine my memories of that time are hazy, but there is one moment that stands out among all the chaos.

I was outside with a group of 1st year students I knew. If I'm honest, part of the reason I had initially befriended them was because most of my existing friends had come to a point where coursework was given priority over the more hedonistic aspects of college life. This approach did not fit in with my self-destructive lifestyle, so I needed new playmates. As a happy coincidence they were all interesting, smart and funny people.

So we were outside one day, sitting under a tree on campus. Everyone was laughing, joking, making plans for the weekend and I was sitting slightly back from them, enjoying the speed I had just sucked up my nostrils. As I looked at them I was struck by this overwhelming sense of loss, there was a sudden wrenching in the pit of my stomach and I had to close my eyes to hold back the tears. I realised that I was looking at something I would never have. This group in front of me represented everything that was lost to me - the future, possibilities, happiness. That was the first time I really believed that my suicide was a foregone conclusion. That it wasn't something that might happen, something to dream about when my thoughts grew to heavy. It was my destiny, the only mystery was when. It's a strange thing to accept your own death as fact, terrifying and liberating at the same time. After that day I no longer needed others to give me an excuse to misbehave, I threw myself head first into being as stupid as possible. It was a wonder I had any friends left, so many of them had to carry me, hold my hair or patch me up. Or just generally be in my obnoxious presence.

Luckily (or unluckily depending on how I'm feeling) I hit a speed bump on my way out of life. I had taken to smashing pint glasses and self harming in toilets on nights out. One night, unsatisfied with my attempts to cut my wrist, I decided to stab myself in the stomach. I won't go into the gory details, but it was pretty disgusting. At this point I was self harming nearly every day, I knew what I was doing. But every so often, you make a mistake. You press too deep, or whatever you're using was too sharp or you just got a bit too enthusiastic. Whatever the cause, there's a split second where you realise you've messed up and time actually stops. Everything freezes. And then it happens, before you can even blink its like the elevator doors opening in The Shining. If anyone reading this has ever self harmed, you'll most likely know exactly what I'm talking about. Well this was one of those times, I knew immediately I had gone too far. I was drunk, in a dingy pub on a night out and there were at least two hours of drinking left. So I did what any rational person would do, i wrapped toilet roll around myself and pulled back down my top and wandered off into the night. I lasted about 5 minutes before the toilet paper failed and I was rumbled.

I eventually allowed myself to be brought to A&E the next morning, where I was stitched up and referred for a psych evaluation. My mother was called, and after she spoke to the psychiatrist she told me that if I didn't sign myself into the nearest psychiatric hospital I would be sectioned. This was a lie, but one told with good intentions (I've only come to terms with that lie in the last year, it was a serious point of contention for many years. When we arrived at the hospital I was put on the closed ward, intended for acutely ill patients, including those who are a danger to themselves or others. As I was considered a suicide risk I stayed on the ward for five nights for assessment. My first time as an inpatient was both frightening, and enlightening. Fortunately my doctor decided to release me and refer me back to the day hospital programme I had attended the previous summer. It felt like I had come full circle and was back at the beginning, or the end.

The Idiots Guide to Making Things Worse

From the moment I started my second year in college, I knew I was in trouble. From the outside it appeared that I was back on track after my 'difficulties' the previous year. I had passed my repeat exams and made it into second year; I was living on campus, which gave the illusion of being more suitable for academic success than rented accommodation; I had a part time job at a pharmacy to pay for day to day living expenses and I was medicated and seeing a psychiatrist monthly. I was now ready to move forward with the next stage of my life, a healthier and happier person.

If only life was so straight forward.

Six weeks of group therapy and some pills were never going to undo six years of using self harm to cope with emotional turmoil and distress. More importantly, they weren't going to erase the childhood problems that had led me to start self harming in the first place. Your past experiences are an integral part of who you are, and when I returned to college I was the same person. My fear of abandonment was now a reality. I had, in my mind, been banished by my family. I felt unwanted and this feeling fueled the cacophony of self-abusing thoughts in my head. Coward, damaged, disgusting, disappointment, failure, freak, lazy, liar, obnoxious, stupid, selfish, ugly, useless, unkind, uncaring, unlovable...unwanted. The self-loathing I felt was so intense that at times I felt it would burn me up from the inside. I knew that there was something fundamentally wrong with me, and no amount of medication would fix it. I was trapped in a loop; on one hand I understood that I was a bad person, and therefore couldn't to be loved or accepted. Yet I craved validation and love from others so much, that I hid how broken I still was, because people knew the truth they would rightly reject me. Please love me, even though I know you can't.

The mental pain I felt only intensified when I began living on my own. Almost immediately I began self harming again. Despite my six weeks in group therapy, I didn't know any other way to quiet the war in my head. Cutting myself became a way to survive my own thoughts, while also punishing myself for my imperfection. The problem with self harm, and most maladaptive coping strategies, is that over time they become less effective. You have to up your game, so to speak. Cut more often, cut deeper... eventually you need some other way to numb the pain. So I went looking for new ways to self destruct.

Let me be clear, the choices I made at that time were entirely mine. I in no way believe that my depression or personality disorder excuse my behaviour. BPD doesn't rob you of your ability to see right from wrong, and more often that not it will cause you to see things as good or bad in the extreme, there is no grey area.

As discussed in a previous post, I used casual sex to try and feel like I was wanted. Looking back I can see that one night stands, by their very definition, would probably make me feel unwanted. But I persevered, not linking my diminishing self esteem to what I was doing. And then there was the drugs. I started out smoking hash, although I rather quickly lost interest in it. It didn't stop the din between my ears and tended to make me nauseous. Ecstasy on nights out was a frequent indulgence, changing me from self conscious and melancholy to a happy, dancing twat. The drawback was the come down the next day, I always seemed to fall down much further than I had climbed. But speed, oh how I loved speed. I would snort a line anytime of the day. It made my head spin, gave me energy, made me forget why I was sad five minutes ago. I was in love with a narcotic, it blocked out all the pain and fear. It blocked out most feelings, other than the feeling that I needed more speed.

The problem with using drugs as an emotional crutch (other than the fact that they can kill you) is that they aren't actually fixing the core issue. In the short term they were the answer to my problems, but it was like putting a plaster over a gaping wound. It stemmed the flow temporarily, but eventually everything would start seeping out. You keep sticking more and more plasters over it, but eventually the whole thing is going to fall away, revealing the festering hole underneath.

I became more and more reckless, acting on any impulse without pause. I self medicated with drugs and alcohol, I abused my body through self harm and empty encounters, I tore away at the last vestiges of self respect I had and became a hollow, parody of myself. I was so busy self-destructing there was no time for academic endeavors, I attended three lectures over the entire year - the first one for each subject. I fumbled my way through the mandatory practicals, relying heavily on my lab partner to pull me through them.

Then, somehow, I managed to make things even worse. There are many versions of this story, several from my own mouth, but what follows is the truth. I was lying on the couch in the living room one night, smoking and watching television when I was supposed to be studying a years worth of printed lecture slides on the floor beside me. I wasn't completely sober, having stopped off at the student bar after printing said notes. As I lay there, alone, I looked down at the reams of paper and knew that I had no hope of passing my exams. It simply wasn't possible to cram a years worth of information into ones head in a week, and even if it was, I didn't understand half of them. I was going to fail second year, I would have to endure my parents disappointment again, and I had no-one to blame but myself. I pushed back the wave of panic that hit me, what was the point in panicking? This was just one more bit of evidence to back up what I already knew, that I was a failure. I felt nothing then, empty, but I was comfortable with empty. I stretched my hand out and very slowly pressed my lit cigarette onto the top of the pile. I didn't need the pages, they were better suited as an ashtray. I felt the last threads holding me to the world, pulling me toward a future life, slip away. I wish that was how the movie ended, a dark and foreboding final scene, the camera slowly closing in on my lifeless eyes before fading to black....

But a crazy thing happened, the pile of paper started to smoulder. I know, flammable paper, who could have foreseen such a thing? Interesting fact, a large block of printing paper won't burst into flames, but it will create a lot of smoke in a very short space of time. Queue me jumping up to grab the fire blanket(Don't ask, lets just blame the alcohol, flinging it dramatically over the paper, which just created even more smoke. My brain finally decided to join the party, I replaced the blanket with a pint of water, crisis averted. Or at least it would have been, if my flat mates hadn't come home at that exact moment to a hallway full of smoke. They were strangely not at all reassured by my attempts to explain the situation, and swiftly fled the scene screaming about carbon monoxide. And possibly something about me trying to burn the building down. Stranger still, when the accommodation manager arrived he refused to accept the explanations of the drunk, weird girl in the dog collar over the well mannered, pleasant girls from the country, and also decided I had tried to burn the building down. Should you ever find yourself in a similar situation, I don't recommend trying to defend yourself by starting any sentence with 'If I really wanted to burn the building down, I would have...'.

So, in less than a year I went from being 'back on track' to being evicted from my dorm under suspicion of arson, a guaranteed failing grade in every subject and my mental health was worse than ever, thanks to my brilliant attempts to escape life with mood altering substances. In short, I had destroyed what was left of my life in spectacular fashion. Looking back, I try and find some humour in what occurred back then. It does me no good to lambaste myself for something long since passed. But if you read this, and are struggling, numbing the pain will only work in the short term. Eventually whatever method you are using will stop working, and the sorrow and desolation will still remain, darker and hungrier than before.