Where Were You? A Cry for Those Who Feel Forgotten.

In the months following my 'release' from inpatient treatment, I've joined a writing group. 
I joined on the premise that it seemed to be a very relaxed, sociable, light hearted group which, whilst keeping 'writing' at its core, didn't take it all too seriously.
As it happens, my impressions of it were correct. We meet on Tuesday evenings in a pub. A good situation (although, for those of us with Anorexia, the calories in alcohol are enough to send us running for the Diet Coke).
The group is made up of characters who are intriguing, inspiring and... talent wise, fairly intimidating! Although I can only recall one person who is remotely self important, most of the regulars (around fifteen or so) are published; some are even fairly prolific writers. 
Tonight there was a 'showcase' evening. where folk were invited to read something they'd written in the past.
It would have been too revealing, too personal, but a poem I wrote (and posted here years ago) has been in my mind, (called forth in a very roundabout sort of way) by a poem I read on someone else's blog. An honest poem about desperation and despair.

This poem was written in the aftermath of my own depression, and is not without its own, very potent, sense of anger. I apologise in advance if readers find it offensive. I post it here as a kind of offering to those who have suffered in silence, or have been unheard.
It's for those untouched by comfort, not necessarily because it wasn't there, but because the pain was in a hidden place.
It's a bitter cry, best cried alone, but until it's been cried, it can't fall away.

Where were you when I needed you?
When darkness cast death into me?
I bled black for years
Tears turned to stone and I screamed
each time I passed a tear through ducts
too small for stones.

Where were you when I had words,
to spill and spout and squander?
And my arms ached and ached
from holding the binding skeins apart.
And I retched unseen as they tangled
and strangled deep in my gut.

Where were you when I was fighting?
Punching holes into a silent wall,
Spitting truth bullets into denial’s flesh,
Kicking the dust and biting angry hands
that levered my bitten swelling lips apart,
and rammed words back down my throat.

Where were you when the salt burned like sulphur?
My beaten pillow, wet with censored pain
And twisting, I writhed with the knowing
Of things yet unknown.
And my cheeks smarted with their rage
Truth- shy handprints scorched my skin

Where were you when nothing was left
When slivers of cold metal comfort
Whispered sweet numbing into flesh
And I bled silent pools of hidden screams
On shiny, hard bathroom floors

Where were you when sweat and tears
Plastered matted hair to my face?
Smothering silent screams,
I twisted and turned and gasped,
As I aborted myself
and bled secret shame
onto my sheets

And it’s too late now
For your saving reach
My cold corpse
Can’t feel your comfort
And it’s too late now
To breathe life
Into the bloodless womb

“I want to understand”
Echoes in the hollow
And I am filled with sickness.
And grief swells like thunder

In my head
I spit on your floor
And walk away.
You can pay your respects
But don’t fuck with the dead.

Blue Monday

Incredible. 
It's nothing short of incredible.
And I, the biggest cynic regarding all things 'Pseudo Science', am pushed towards AWE by the fact that, until I overheard a conversation in a local supermarket, I had no idea it was 'Blue Monday', or that such a phenomena existed.


It's practically against my religion to expand on such things, such is the level of distrust (and possibly even... disgust) of anything vaguely pseudo scientific. In this case however, I'll make an exception.


I woke early on Monday morning to find Anorexia squatting at my bedside bed, waiting patiently for a clamour of stupefying chants to fully penetrate every square centimetre of my being. 


Flatly refusing to succumb to the temptations offered, I ran through my normal routine and ate my porridge and apple, pleasantly distracted by Chris Evans and a large general knowledge crossword.


By midday however, the Anorexia had stepped up it's game and I, like a swatted-at wasp, zipped from cupboard to fridge to freezer to cupboard to fridge to freezer, unable to make a decision about food, furious at myself for being hungry and confused by the sums and figures coursing through my head.
And so I have nothing.
Or bits of food.
Or nothing.
Or bits.
And I don't know anymore.


I end up kneeling against my bed, hands pressed against my eyes, thinking of nothing at all.
Because that's the only way I can find comfort in a pain that is almost physical.
Ripped apart. Visceral pain.


Later, in a paler shade of darkness,  I forced myself to drive down to the supermarket, where I stumbled round in a malnourished daze.


"They say it's the worst day of the year today", the man said to the woman as he patted her back sympathetically.


Hopeful for something, ANYTHING, to explain the day, I googled it.
To find this.

The date for ‘the most depressing day of the year’ was first identified by Cliff Arnall, formerly of Cardiff University, marking the symbolic time in January when people suffer from a series of combined depressive effects.

His date was devised using the following mathematical formula:

The model was broken down using six immediately identifiable factors; weather (W), debt (d), time since Christmas (T), time since failing our new year’s resolutions (Q), low motivational levels (M) and the feeling of a need to take action (Na).

The formula calculates that Monday 16th January 2012 is the worst day of the year, when the Christmas glow has faded away, New Year’s resolutions have been broken, cold Winter weather has set in and credit card bills will be landing on doormats across the land – whilst the January pay-cheque is still some way away.

The formula started a chain of events which led to the designation of ‘Blue Monday’ – the third monday of January.

Believe it or not... But it was certainly my worst day in a very long time.

I want...

I want my life back.
No matter how bad things were, nothing, NOTHING can be as bad as Anorexia.


My weight remains in limbo, my mind in hell.
I am unable to complete tasks I attempt as my brain is just too addled.


I have started taking Pregabalin, despite the fear that its most common side effect is weight gain. 
I don't care anymore.
I just want the illness to go.


I wish that I could be put to sleep whilst my weight is restored.


It occurs to me that I haven't written about The Woman lately.
I have so much to say. 
So many words in a swirling vortex - half formed ideas dance purple shadows in front of my closed eyelids in the early hours.
I resolve to write posts about the nature of Anorexia and my understanding of its relationship with anxiety and depression.
I swear I'll reply to friends, blog friends and world friends, whose words and caring constantly brush soft against my bruises.
And yet, come the morning, I haven't got the mental energy.
It's all I can do just to force the bran through my lips.


I want to go back to work.
I want to live again.
I want to eat without feeling like I'm sinning.
I want to live outside of hell.


I want to ignore the old parental adage that whispers that 'I want doesn't get'.

Halt

It never fails to shock when you wake up in the morning to find death sitting on the side of your bed, waiting for its subliminal whisperings to wake you.

Refusing to so much as glance at the intruder, I got up and went through my Sunday 'to do' list.

Number one, buy salad stuff for lunches... Number two, bake brownies for colleagues' birthdays tomorrow... Number three, mark kids' work... Number four, gym... Number five...

Still ignoring the cloak of darkness, I shower and find my way downstairs, chattering about Jamie Oliver and brightly listing ingredients, envisioning birthday brownies in cheery homemade boxes, red with white polka dots.

It'll be alright, I tell myself. Just keep moving. It'll pass.

Two days later, as I sit in the doctors' surgery, I wonder if it would have somehow all been okay if I'd made it to Tescos to buy what I needed.

"Back in a bit", I said, trying to ignore the back breaking heaviness and the winter chill as I grab my bag.

I never made it to the front door.

Instead, I half crawled up the stairs into my bedroom, where I sank down against the radiator, slumped in a dazed stupor wondering if there was anyone in the world who I could call to for help.

I didn't realise I couldn't move until I tried when I heard mum coming upstairs. neither did I realise that I was crying quite uncontrollably.

I've since been signed off work for a month (which I won't take) and had a week off work.

Unusually (for me), rather than the time off being detrimental, it has actually helped and I am feeling better than I did.

My folks (my poor folks) have been amazingly supportive, desperately worried and willing support me in almost anything that I think might help.

In desperate depression, I scoured the web looking for a hotel I could stay in just to get a break. The darkness worsened as my inability to make any decisions left me feeling increasingly despondent and hopeless. I figured that I would probably just spend the whole time binging and purging anyway.

I've ended up booking a week in a sort of retreat centre that I stumbled upon.

I have no idea how it will be, or whether I'll last the week. I leave tomorrow.

Certainly, last week, I was far too unwell to go anywhere.

There's no internet where I'm going so I will have to rely on my phone to check here or to post anything.

It's a risk, in some ways... I don't feel as though I am 'safe' with myself at the moment. Tonight's TWO binge and purge sessions show that.

The Woman was very concerned when I saw her last Monday.

She made me go to the doctor (saying that if I didn't, SHE would). She also gave me her mobile and made me communicate things during the week.

I was terrified by this new step.

This morning’s appointment with the Eating Disorders team was terrifying but I won't go into it at the moment. Suffice to say, they expect me to start full time treatment with them when they get up and running at the end of February.

I fought a surge of hysteria as they told me about eating two meals a day under their supervision.

I can't imagine being able to.

After this, The Woman was a warm blanket.

Halt

Alanis Eat Yer Heart Out

"Isn't it ironic"...

...Alanis appears to state rather than question, which is probably just as well given that her definition of 'irony' sometimes (some lines) seems to be a little dubious (at best).

Semantic inaccuracies aside, she has an incredible voice (and tons of attitude) but the reason why I quote h

er right now, is

that I hear that line playing in my mind as I contemplate posting that today, the mind - cloaking darkness that has more or less disabled me since Saturday, was shot through with a narrow laser beam somewhere high above me.

And I've been like a drowning body who, in the last swelling, slipping moments, finds an air hole in the thick ceiling of ice above.

I haven't even been to work.

Can you imagine? Because I can't.

Today I walked around Ikea buying plates and bowls and other pointless porcelain vessels.

I want to move to my own place.

And all the time the Alanis song was playing.

My ray of light beamed from the numbers on the scales.

Isn't it ironic.

The lower I go, the higher I get.

And, I'm walking around Ikea investing in a future that I am doing my damnedest to end before it has the chance to begin.

Now, Alanis?

THAT'S irony

Things I Haven't Said

• I'm on half term, which I have been dreading because I don't operate well outside of my routine, particularly at the moment.
• In desperation, I recently phoned the local eating disorders consultant (who has had dealings with my sister for years). I have an appointment on Wednesday.
• I'm petrified that I won't be taken seriously if I attend on Wednesday, and I'm petrified that I will.
• I ended up in hospital on Thursday after a complete physical and mental meltdown. I'm ok but still very frightnened. 'Anxiety' isn't a satisfactory explanation for the crazy heart stuff I've had going on.
• Old friends I am staying with say I look very ill. I am perplexed by this as I have put on a couple of pounds over the last few days. I feel ridiculously big.
• I want to get better but I am desperate to lose weight. The two things are directly contrary to each other.
• I'm tired and feel a bit hopeless, despite looking forward to tomorrow's lone sojourn to St Ives.

All Time Low

Sometimes song lyrics filter into our awareness and hook into something that we feel or think.
I guess I'm not alone in this experience as I know it's something that has, in itself, been sung about in the "strumming my pain with his fingers" song... Y'know the one... (Frustratingly, I can only think of The Fugees - with their irritating 'one time' spin on it- though I first knew the original version by __________fill in the blank_____).
THAT song tells of someone's shock and disbelief at hearing a young boy singing their "whole life with his words". The narrator (do songs HAVE narrators?) feels that his or her secret pain has been exposed, as though the boy has opened up her letters and "read each one aloud".
Interesting that the song expresses a sense of the agony that can come from being 'known' in an intimate way, of being revealed. The narrator prays that the boy will finish, suggesting that it is absolutely unbearable.
I wonder if the agony was in being known or in being faced with his/her own pain.
Perhaps a mixture.

I digress. I actually wanted to write about the very opposite reaction to the one I've just discussed.

I wasn't listening to the radio I had on as I was driving today but somehow the words of a song I've never heard, pushed their way into my head.
As lyrics sometimes do (and despite the fact I'm not completely sold on the song as a whole) they made something in me feel a little bit heard and understood and realised.
It's odd how a part of you can suddenly and unexpectedly be given a voice through a medium which has no knowledge of your existence, let alone experience.
I guess it's a testimony to the human condition and to the fact that in ways we don't necessarily ever get to experience wholly, we are never quite alone.

Praying won't do it
Hating won't do it
Drinking won't do it
Fighting won't knock you out
Of my head

Hiding won't hide it
Smiling won't hide it
Like I ain't tried it
Everyone's tried it now
And failed somehow

So when you gonna let me
When you gonna let me out - Out

And if you know
How do you get up from an all time low
I'm in pieces
Seems like peace is
The only thing I'll never know
How do you get up
Get up

‘Cos driving won't do it
Flying won't do it
Denying won't do it
Crying won't drown it out

Not really a song of hope or anything, but there may be something ever so slightly comforting in hearing another pose the questions that you have so often asked in the dead of night.

Writing About Therapy.

Aside from the obvious prerequisite that one can actually recall something about a therapy session, I've discovered that writing about therapy makes at least two demands on a person.
The first is that the victim (did I just say 'victim'? Obviously, I meant 'client') is able to find words for what he or she is experiencing or has, in the past, experienced, and the second is that he or she has the guts to engage with some of the things that are being looked at.
Suffice to say, I've not really had much of either lately. More to the point, as a previous post explained, dissociation has made the act of recalling sessions somewhat impossible.

Today I was grateful not to be continuing in the same vein as last Monday's session, which, predictably (some might even say, conveniently) , my little chicken mind can't remember at this very moment in time.
We did however, end up talking about school days and white knuckle bus journeys and terror and little girls who cried in the mirror because they held so much hatred for the image that stared back at them.

We've been talking lately about the parts and, she has also thrown in the term, 'splits'.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of 'splits' (gleaned from a friend and a little bit of surf power) is that they are very similar to parts except that they are formed at a younger age and have to do with the inability to recognise that good and bad can exist alongside each other. So for instance, in my case, I may glorify someone, unable to see the 'bad' that they may have done because a part of me that contains memories of anyhing negative about the person is split off.
I might be SO wrong here. In all honesty, the woman may have explained but I can't remember, let alone get my head around the concept so...

Sometimes I wonder whether therapy is actually unhealthy...

I remember the days when a "split" was a spliced banana draped in velvet chocolate with sprinkles that were bad for my eczema; when "parts" were things like arms and legs and ears, and "dissociation" meant 'to quit hanging about with'... or... actually, a word that wouldn't even have been in my vocabulary.

Okay. I know I would still have been terrified that the mind thing is early onset Alzheimer's, and I know that I would still have been in pain... I know it's not a simple as all that... But still...

Still.

Summoning up the Energy

Although I would ideally like to be a little more disciplined, very often, writing this blog seems to demand a far greater degree of energy than I am capable of finding in me.

It feels hard to summon the courage to write some of the things I am afraid of commiting to anything more than the very floaty space somewhere in the haziest recesses of my mind.

Often, the depression I live with day to day, lies in me, appearing dormant to all but the part of me that is a desire for self expression.

The black dog lies heavy on my chest. Always with one eye open.



"Should" isn't a great word.

I know that.

It's one of those words that most counselling types love to pounce on before suggesting 'healthier words like "would like to" or "could".

Nonetheless, as a blog about therapy, I feel that I should be making more of an effort to muster the energy, reach into the haze, muzzle the black dog and write more about it.


And so I tred lightly over the trepidation and pledge to try, even when the words are hard.

Delights of Duloxetine

I don't even want to think how long I have been taking the anti depressant, 'Citalopram' for. Perhaps a decade?

I guess that the efficacy of most medications decreases after long periods of time, although I have never heard this theory in relation to anti d's so cannot claim that this is the case.

However, last week, suffocated by a thickening black fog, I stumbled into the doctor's surgery (not a place I frequent unless death feels imminent) and admitted I had no desire to be alive anymore.

I sat hollowed and empty, crying without feeling the sensation of tears on my cheeks.
I answered questions that I can't remember, without being able to form coherent sentences.

A change in medication has been suggested before but I have always felt too anxious about the upheaval of such change. This time, I simply no longer cared.

I didn't care much about anything actually.

Didn't care when a man who had been staring at me in his car got out and followed me to a secluded area of woodland.

Didn't even care when he tried to make a move on me.

Nothing happened and I suppose I was lucky.

Either way, I find myself, a week into stopping Citalopram, a week into weaning onto Duloxetine (more famously, Cymbalta).

The effects have been good in terms of my mood, though at this point, it could well be a combination of factors, not least of which would be my return to work after the fraught Easter "Holiday" where I lived two weeks as a fugitive. Alternating between hideouts in the gym, supermarket car parks, retail outlets and coffee shops... Anywhere to avoid the pressure of food.

The downside is the side effects.
I haven't slept a full night for two weeks.
The pressure in my right ear is, at times, immense. My eardrum seems to oscillate constantly, and I am drive crazy by the fruitless attempts at yawning.
My stomach is bloated and rock solid. I am almost bent double from the acid pain that spreads from one end of my diaphragm to the other.
That kind of thing.

I have a huge amount going on in my mind but I feel unable to express any of it.

So what's new? I ask myself.

Dumbing Depression Down

Goodness knows that dignity is not an attribute one could ever ascribe to depression. However, in my experience, and it is just in my experience, the word 'depression' has been bandied around so liberally over the last decade, that it has lost any real gravitas that it may have had if perhaps, it had been reserved for the debilitating condition that it is, rather than using it to describe feeling a little bit low.



The increase in depression could well be a sign of our times:

Recession.
Political and economic instability.
Threats of terrorism and nuclear attacks.
Less focus on family life.
An erosion of moral values.
Little emphasis on spirituality.
Normalising addictive behaviours.

None of it helps...

Equally though, the increase in depression could be the fact that we live in a society which, for whatever reason, has taken this word and diluted its meaning by applying it clumsily to anything which bears even the slightest resemblance to it.
Much like a person who has flu when their nose is running.
I suppose colds are dismissed, whereas flu is taken seriously.
Most people tend to want to be taken seriously.

I'm not having a rant. It sounds like it, I know.
In fact, I don't give a monkeys about whether or not people overuse or misuse the word. I would never, ever deny someone's need to be taken seriously.
I suppose that I'm just making the rather muddy point, that when the thief of depression comes and steals an entire part of your mind, your reasoning, your spirit and a huge part of your temporal and spatial awareness... it's different from 'getting out of the wrong side of the bed'.

This post isn't really what I wanted to write about at all.

I wanted to write about some of the things in my head and yet, to even attempt to go near them makes my whole body ache.

I started taking duloxetine (Cymbalta) two days ago, having resorted to my GP in desperation.
It would seem that eight year reign of Citalopram has left me feeling bankrupt and hopeless.
I suppose it's withdrawal but I am sore all over and unable to stay awake. That being said, I am also unable to stay asleep.

Moan, moan, moan. I know.

I still haven't written what I'd like to.
All my moaning, all my theorising, all my despair... They're all just bricks around floating fragments and words that I can't pick up.

An Observation

Depression
rarely lends itself
to words

Words Don't Come Easily

Somewhere in me there is a very very deep, dark space where my voice can't reach.
Pressed against the walls of that space are fragments of words, feathered, dried and bound like wheat sheaves.

For days, I've been sitting with these bundles pulsing painfully, making my chest hurt if I so much as dare to throw a glance inside... Causing a dry ache in my gut if, even for a second, I allow myself to try and pick through the rubble of broken sentences and separated syllables.

The number of times I have sat down to try to write something out of me... only to find that my brain slides, unable to even begin sorting through the pile of death that leaves me feeling so full and yet, so achingly empty.

I've wanted to come here and scream onto the screen. I've wanted to let words fall out on the virtual page with virtual thudding and crashing noise.

If only type could howl.

It all sounds a bit much, I daresay, and yet, melodrama makes me nauseous.

I think it is probably fairly bad depression.
That and the eating problem, disorder even. (Chaos, more like).

So.


A list seems a good approach.

(Can I just say, I never wanted this blog to be like this.
I wanted it to be dispassionate, cynical even.
I wanted it to have the gall to be a little wise sometimes.
I wanted to offer insight into mental health problems, without actually sounding like I really had any...)

On with the list...

• I realised something about my emetophobia that I'm not read to write about. And it may be nothing anyway, but it's been on my mind so it's going on the list.


• I'm most of the way through a two week therapy break, which I thought I really didn't care about.


• My eating 'problem' has been like an instrument of torture. It feels relentless and desperate.


• I am genuinely questioning how long my heart will tolerate the hammering from hours of intense cardio exercise with no food in me.


• I am just no sure how to make all this end
  

There's a lot more but it is pressed flat against walls and squeezed tight into corners that I can't reach.

Tying it Up - The Need to Starve.

There is a twisted irony in the fact that whilst I have worked so damn hard to eliminate 'need' (a word not in my vocabulary, remember?) I have developed a need strong enough to kill me.

In my first post I wrote about the concept of needing, and how it causes such pain and such disgust in me, and I realise, in many others.
I later realised that without thinking, I had not acknowledged that not all needs inspire such a strong reaction in me, and I got to thinking that not all needs are equal.
In the last post then, I wrote about Maslow... about the fact that his hierarchical structure identifies and prioritises five different needs which, when met, culminate in self actualisation.
(Others have added an additional layer to the triangle, a top section which identifies the need, once self actualised, to trascend oneself, but I would argue that the notion of self actualisation somehow incorporates a degree of transcendance. That, or it completely nullifies the need to transcend.
It's not my intention to debate the neccessity of adding tiers to Maslow's work but it provides a (somewhat welcome) avoidance.

I have this thing where I start out trying to write something and I encounter such a magnetic resistance to it that my brain actually starts to disconnect (dissocation, I realise).


So.

Forcing the wires to connect...


At some point in the last two years, a tiny bomb went off inside me.

Looking back now, I think it had been in me for a long time and though Iknow I searched for it, the search was hampered by the fact that I couldn't always hear it ticking, and I didn't really know what it looked like, this thing I was blindly trying to locate.


In keeping with either the contained nature of the bomb itself, or the steely numbness of the container it was in, I didn't even really notice when it went off.

A controlled exposion perhaps.

It was only later that I realised something had changed. I still can't find a moment.


What had changed was my way of managing feelings. (Okay... okay... I learned that was what it was about in therapy).


I had, unwittingly I think, walked straight into the easily stretched jaws of an eating problem which may or may not be defined as Anorexia (and you can't hear me but I am wailing, "I'm too old to be Anorexic! I'm too old!")

My sister (who I intend to leave out of this post, honestly I do) was born right at the entrance of that gaping mouth. Now, God knows how many years later, I seem to have landed there.


Actually, as I type, I am aware that I have been tiptoeing up to that cavernous mouth for years on and off. I have run in and out like a child testing its bravery, testing whether mum and dad will still be there if they dare to go into the cave.

It was when I stopped smoking that I suddenly found myself inside.
Which is weird, isn't it?



So. This is my figuring. And I'm no expert.


I think that when I stopped smoking a big thing happened in me.


And this is where it somehow gets tied together but bear wth me because my brain is tryingto slide.

Years of depression wasted certain parts of my insides. Even killed a part of me (and for all the 'oh but I want to believe the world is ultimately a sunny place' people out there, that will be a line that they will want to jump on and slap dismissively as they shake their critical heads).

It is impossible to write about the depths of the depression, or to say just what it stole from me - again, a topic that my brain goes to great lengths to stop me articulating -

Part of the darkness was an inherent knowledge that I would die before I gave up smoking. I never, ever really believed that I had any willpower... I had repeatedly chanted to myself that I couldn't do it, that I was hopeless at self denial and that I was weak and needy.

Ashamed and disgusted by the inability to say "no" to myself, a spiral of need and denial, self harm and self hatred took over.


I stopped smoking in February 2008.

With that came the realisation that I could execise self discipline and that it was possible to have power over my self. To CONTROL.
I could control the shameful needs I had.
I could control everything if I could just teach myself not to need anything.
(Insert inner child theories in here. I can't).


So. If I can deny myself food I can teach myself not to need anything.

I will train myself to be grateful for the absolute minimum.

I will silence the need, whatever it is, by starving it.




This was a part of it.



I'm wondering whether I should slit this post in two.

It's very long.
But then, so is the history behind all this.

Oh for the gift of writing succinctly.


When I had spent a fair amount of time just tucked between the lip and the sharp teeth of this mouth, and I was reassured that the mouth wasn't moving/shutting etc, I moved further in.

What I didn't quite notice was that at some point, the mouth swallowed.


It's hard to describe the fear and desperation in here but it is perhaps true to say that those feelings exist in completely overwhelming proportions on the outside of this prison.

Difficulty and Disgust

Even a master of understatement would struggle to say that therapy had been anything less than "extremely difficult" this week.

Difficult.

Difficult to find words to write about it.
Difficult to find anything concrete to hang the words on.
Difficult to be in my body right now.
Difficult to feel anything other than utter disgust for myself.

On Friday night I sat in her room and tried my best to stay still as my insides curled and contorted and twisted at the touch of her words.

It's hard to remember what she said.
My despair was so great and she pounded on with her search for meaning... the whys. The effing whys.
My only why is often, 'why does it matter?'
Why does it matter why my parents transfer things onto me?
Why does it matter if Dad's doing this or that ?
Why does it matter if .........

At times, her questions and her wondering lead me to a place where I no longer exist. Where nothing matters and I doubt that anything I have ever felt is real.

On Friday, she told me I had been silently furious in the previous session.
I think she may have been right but I can't recall feeling anything at all.
She had 'threatened' to call my doctor.
I told her she wouldn't see me for dust if she ever did that.
And I mean it.

I was angry on Friday too.
She didn't understand how hard it is for a single person (who doesn't even know whether or not "the future" is a possibility) to buy a house and live with the pressure of being solely responsible for mortgage repayments.
To be fair, she did admit that she hadn't really thought about how hard it might be.

I felt she was disgusted by me.
I heard her mind screaming at me underneath her carefully restrained words.

"Pathetic.
Weak.
Pull yourself together.
Stop being so lame.
Don't be such a wuss.
For fucks sake, get over it.
You are wasting my time.
Grow up.
I want to slap you.
You disgust me.
You're revolting.
You pathetic little victim.
Stop your whining.
I can't deal with your ridiculous feelings.
You are irrational and absurd.
Stop being so complicated.
Don' be so negative.
I could wring your neck.
You need a good smack."

That's what I heard.

I asked her if she was disgusted.

No. She SAID.
Quite categorically.
No.
(But then she would wouldn't she)
Instead she reeled off some disgusting, pity laden bull about how I was wretched and suffering. She took advantage of my choked inability to argue to tell me that no matter how much I didn't want to know it, my parents had not "cloaked me" enough (go figure).
And I cried out of the sheer anger at her, the utter exhaustion and pointlessness of it all.

So what?

So what if this happened, or that didn't happen? So what?
It still leaves me where I am now.
I need to change that.
Not look at why or how or when.

My middle sister is in hospital again and my youngest sister doesn't want to be anywhere near me because she can't bear to see me losing weight.

I feel like I have somehow lost everyone.

My skin screams that it is almost unbearable.

Isn't It Ironic.

Eyes fixed, head down, her rage and bitterness fueled a pace close to a run as she walked away from my desperate calls in town today. My eyes burned as I watched the dark dufflecoat hanging off a painfully thin frame, grow smaller and smaller.

She is angry with the unfairness of it all (as she sees it).

Much of my life (over half) has been spent embroiled in her destruction.
Forced to watch her desperate attempts to starve herself to death.
Forced to listen to the cries of my family, as they witness her withering body, her protruding bones,
angular agony.
Forced to look into the inward turning eyes of a father, driven to weep, hollow, heavy sobs,
my eyes swim, and I shake.
Forced to watch the hand wringing desperation of a mother
a face broken, the smash of rejection clattering within,
and I writhe at night, tearing at my sheets
Forced to watch a beautiful little sister, rock on her bed
silent tears flooding the channels of her bitten lips,
and I, a pinball.

Forced to watch a sister
starve to death
I wanted to put
DNR on her bed
I wanted to hold her
until she was safe
I wanted to beat her
until she couldn't hurt us anymore
I wanted to make her suffer
as she had made us
I wanted to take her pain
and live it instead
I wanted to love her
I wanted to kill her
I wanted to protect her
I wanted to hear her
I wanted to be loved by her.

Now?

Nothing.

I believe that, at some point (and I know the point was somewhere during my second or third severe bout of clinical depression) a part of me died.
I no longer feel specifics.

Today she told me I was anorexic.
She told me I had a problem.
She told me it wasn't fair that I could lose weight while she had to go to hospital for five days a week and be forced to eat.

And I stood against the freezing cold in the city centre, trying to draw myself in, as I watched her disappear, willing her to look back, just once.
And I looked at the people circling my axis, and wondered if they would feel the black residue if they walked through the point where all the words had spilt; I wondered if an air space could hold a decade's pain for just a moment.

The agony of the irony is somewhere, and it is too much to bear. Too much to allow. Too much to deal with any other way than to put it on my skin and watch as it runs out.

Black Holes

Why do we travel?
Why do we go on journeys?

To get somewhere, right?

Yeah.

Most journeys we go on, we have a pretty good idea where we're headed and what it might look like when we get there. At least, we have some idea inasmuch as we have impressions of the world which allow us preconceived ideas, pre empt, imagine.

But the inner journey isn't like that.

For starters, speaking for myself, I have no idea where I'm heading, or if a destination even exists.
I can't even tell at the moment, whether I am suspended or falling, such is the density of the darkness and the numbness of my skin.
I have no assurance that gravity is still operating in this space. I don't know if there is any ground.
I need ground.
Ever been in a lift when you don't know if it is moving or not?
I just don't know.

It's all too much of nothing at all.

Those blueprints we have of how things might look when we reach the place we are journeying too..?
They're not there and I've lost the only image I had that I was sure of.

Another thing is that everything is in shadow. It's black or grey and every shade in between, but things are more indistinct than ever.

It's so dark and so disorientating that I don't understand how I will ever know where I am, let alone where to go.

I am even doubting the existence of myself at points.

On The Rack

Tortured by his enemies, a film I once watched showed a man tied between two posts which were then gradually pulled apart, thus ripping his whole body in half.

Nice start huh?

Thought I'd jump in headfirst before I got cold and ran out on the balls of my feet.

Medieval England practised "Stretching" as a form of torture on a hideous frame known as 'the rack'. It was often used to punish or to extract information from a victim.

I'm not great at history, but even the narcoleptic kid wakes up for the part of the lesson where the teacher tells about torture methods.

It's that morbid fascination thing.

Not to sound too melodramatic, but the image of someone being pulled apart has floated around my head over the past couple of days.

I feel as though parts of me are engaged in a game of "tug of war", and while that conjures up images of happily exhausted, muddy heaps of people who have engaged in the battle of the rope, for me, it feels as though my two teams, who are unfortunately, both inside me, are actually going to rip me in half.

It's a tug of war with a hell of a lot at stake and another part of me watches with some degree of horror as the stubborn struggle between me and me reaches a ridiculous intensity.

On one end of the rope, Desperation pulls me towards the gym to work my body into a frenzied, sweating, mechanical state where I no longer feel anything except a physical exhaustion and a terrible desperation to deplete my body in a any which way.

On the other end, Depression pushes me down, won't let me move, pulls my energy away from me so I have to step further back to retrieve it.

And as they pull, I am torn.

Desperation to lose weight is screaming in my ears.

"You must be in control".

"You only have this".

"If you allow yourself an inch, you'll be sure to take miles and miles and it'll be unstoppable".

Depression whispers,

"Don't bother".

"What's the point?"

"Nothing matters".

Yet another part, cries at the pain of being torn so violently. It feels as though I am on a rack.

I end up in the gym but the inside is weary and tired from the fight.

It would seem that I am able to cope when depression is not begging me to stop and when I am winning what I know is an unhealthy battle against my weight. Which is absurd!

This is not how it's meant to go, surely?

I suppose that when you are on a rack, if the force is only pulling you in one direction, it ceases to be torture.

The lesser of the two evils (in terms of short term outcomes) is the force which drives me to starve and exercise.

It's when that force is opposed by the dreadful weight of depression that it becomes so painful.

My Cage.

I'm so tired.
Not just lack-of-sleep tired.

Soul tired.


Sometimes depression feels like an extra limb growing out of me; grotesque and oversized. Not something that could escape my notice.
More often though, depression becomes so innate that it is barely distinguishable.
It coats my insides in a death mist that slows my senses, blots my feelings and leaves me feeling little more than an empty shell.
I am a container of a hidden fog of gas so noxious, so insidious, that I can no longer recognise my edges. Perhaps then, that is partly why I need to be able to see and feel each rib; why I need to be small enough for me to hold.


A sense of desperation claws at the arid valleys of emptiness inside me.

On my 33rd birthday, I weighed 6 stone 8 pounds.
Less than I weighed when I was 13.


I'm trapped in a wire cage and, when I dare to look at the space inviting the unknown, I become so afraid and feel so broken, I dare not fly through it.
I'm left clinging to the perch, with an energy I can't sustain, in a very foggy, very frightening cage.



I'm so so so upset that I have let panic win today.

I'm sad enough to taste salt tonight.