The writer of this blog...

... has been in hell for the past two months...

perhaps more.

My silence here has been down to the simple fact that my head is mostly a jumble of sounds which don't seem to translate into anything as neat and orderly as WORDS.

It even sounds far fetched to me, but it's one of those 'you just had to be there' things. 

Unless you've been in my shoes (and stomped round and around the same hospital building three times a day for twenty minutes 'fresh air') my ridiculously dramatic sounding excuse for silence just won't wash. 

(Cue Persil ad...)

No really. 

Prompted by a friend to describe what it's like to be restoring weight, I wrote that it's like...

...having your skin peeled off in long strips, and then your body being rolled around on a grater, with pressure being applied in varying degrees in different places

and sometimes

it makes you bleed purple rivers in hidden places

or mouth short 

breathless 

cat-screams

and other times

anger-fear juices inwardly curdle

with an inverted agony

that leaves me folded on the floor

pressing cold fists into my eyes

to stem the red pain seeping out of my sockets

and in me, a mighty snake twists

my colon, a strangled tree trunk 

and the more I eat

the more it turns and thrashes 

against the raw muscle tubing 

 ***

Okay. So every word is wringing with pubescent angst and perhaps the silence, if not golden, is at least preferable to the torture - jargon. 

But this is the truth of it.

This is how it feels for my anorexic head to be growing a body.

And no amount of Seroquel or Pregabalin or Duloxetine is going to make it okay. 

It's not supposed to be a joyride, this recovery lark... but six months in... it hasn't got easier... just...
... different. 

Apologia

Sometimes I have something I want to say but I can't find the energy to piece the words together. It's been like that for days now, and I'm now expending more energy on NOT writing than I would otherwise do in making the attempt.

So here goes.

My Blog...

When I first entered the blog sphere, it was as a teacher in search of colourful or comical images which I could use to liven up worksheets and teaching resources I was

creating.

A Google Image search for "mountain" may link to a post about somebody's holiday; somebody's love of climbing; advice on mountaineering equipment; an obsession with Everest;

somebody's personal obstacles or victories; the view from somebody's back garden...

I loved it that, just for one moment in time, I could dip into another world, culture, mind, heart. It felt like a privilege to glimpse the world through the eyes of someone I would never know and I loved the bizarre juxtaposition (and I'm sorry to use such a word but I can't think of another) of intimacy and anonymity offered by a blog.

I didn't realise that blogs could be 'followed' by strangers who may become friends in the virtual world. I didn't have a clue that there was a relational aspect to them, and I certainly never dreamed that anyone would sustain interest in anything I wrote.

The notion of blogging became attractive because so much of what I feel and experience feels as though it belongs to a part of me that couldn't be shown to others. A part of me that is too dark, too honest, too pained, too tired... too something.

A diary was too risky. I've kept them before. Dangerous things, diaries. You end up lying half the time... just in case...

I liked the idea that some random person, sitting, standing, lying anywhere on earth, in an office, classroom, lounge, hut, hospital, cafe, bedroom, could hear my voice.

Just for a moment in time.

And that's all this blog was.

A glimpse. A raised eyebrow every now and then. A sound bite.

I like it that I am not 'known' and yet can be heard

I admit to struggling with the fact that not only do some followers feel that they know me, but they have also come to 'care'.

Intimacy is an itchy jumper.

As I type, I am inwardly howling with frustration at sounding so ungrateful.

I have appreciated your words. I have come to care too.

*wince*

The split in me hurts. I am torn by wanting care and wanting to yell at everyone to stay away from me.

Before disappearing into sleep, I should probably conclude by saying that this blog is not about anyone apart from me (yes, it's a very selfish blog).

Anything posted here is an expression of something I am feeling or thinking about. It will have been posted either because of a drive to somehow put it 'outside' of me, or because of an urge to 'create' words for it.

I have no need to be understood or cared about here. I'm not looking for anything other than a little space, on a vast web, where I can be heard without being known.

Intimate and Anonymous.

I will remember, next time I need to exemplify an oxymoron.

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.

Beyond Friday.

After Friday's session, being the mature adult that I am, I drank myself stupid.

And what better way of dealing with the desperation I was feeling?

(OK. You may not hear the irony that question is heavily weighted with... You'll just have to take my word for it. It is).

Although it feels as though almost every cell in my body has been screaming, the cries have been largely unintelligible. Trying to translate has been like walking down the street past people's conversations, catching snippets, exclamations, disjointed and unrelated.

I seem to be in very separate parts.

One part has been in agony.

Some nights have seen me curled, clutching my bear against my stomach, pressing into the pain in a fruitless attempt to make it subside.

Applying pressure to the wound, is what springs to mind as I type.

The writhing and the breathless, empty pain, reminiscent of the twisting nights where my sister's illness was so new and the loss was so raw and immediate.

That same deep and desperate ache.

The ungroaned, churning and building in the middle of me.

So, one part agony... Another, disgust and hatred.

It started the following afternoon when, despite the alcohol - induced drum, beating in my head, I stood under the shower, my inside no more than a shell. Sans feeling.

Suddenly and unaccountably, a photograph appeared in my head.

Dad and three little girls wearing white spotted, cotton sundresses.

One little girl is standing slightly in front of the others three figures. She has her arms folded across her, clutching her arms as though cold; and her face is a picture of frowning discontent.

Perhaps I was cold. Perhaps sulking.

But in less than a second, I was flooded with a disgust and self hatred so strong it might have split me in half, my body the tower of Babel and my horror as powerful as God's own rage.

It's my fault. I was the sister from hell. If I hadn't existed, she would have been ok. It must have been cold there in my shadow, playing in my head.
And that little girl, THAT little girl, she needs to be starved to death.

And she is.
I'm at my lowest weight in a long time today. It feels good to be in control of her.

A third part experiences rage.

Monday's session, which I can't much recall, stoked a fire of anger at myself.

How dare I have this... How dare I?

Everyday I work with children who have suffered the most unimaginable trauma.

Torture, rape, abuse, terrible loss.

I go and see the woman, I tell her and she listens.

She talks about me. My pain. Things that may or may not have happened and I am so, so, so angry.

Like me, this woman hears the most awful things. Atrocities. People who have suffered beyond what I would consider to be bearable.

And here I am. And here she is listening.

I can't get past the fact she must be disgusted by me.

I am invalid. INvalid. There are no explanations or excuses that justify my pain.

My propensity for weakness is astounding.

On Monday my anger and my fear is too much, and I vow not to go back to her and I am absolutely certain that I won't, because I can't justify it.

I consider an email which will ensure I am too ashamed to ever return, just in case my will were to weaken.

And now, come Wednesday, I am not sure how I will cope with not having a place to take this pain. Because I can hate it, deny it, minimise it, rage and resent it all I like. But it's still there and

it still makes me fold in half.

And I hate myself with all the raw passion of an angst ridden teenager, and all the weary loneliness of a man at the end of an unfulfilled life.

Today has mostly been a series of blanks inside.

My Very Sad Case came into my room first thing. She wanted to talk about a shock she had had.

I listened and spoke carefully. I wanted her to feel the care.

I taught my lessons, I ate some lettuce and tomatoes, I wrote my plans and I came home and curled up and slept.

Writing this post, I am again struck by the wave of disgust at myself.

There is no end to it.

A Fortress Deep And Mighty

Hiding in my room, safe within my womb.
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.

And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries

Hiding Self Harm.

*****Content may be triggering******

I tried not to wince as I hauled my body onto the couch last Monday.

I had spent the day explaining to concerned colleagues that I had pulled a muscle at the gym.

In fact, I cut so badly that one of the wounds wouldn't stay sealed. Each time I showered, the steristrips peeled off and the cut was left gaping again.

When she asked where I had cut, I put my hand against it.

"The groin", she said, nodding knowingly.

(It might just be me, but therapists seem to have an extraordinarily irritating habit of nodding and 'yes'ing when you reveal something.
To my mind, this seems to be a smokescreen which hides the fact that the therapist is buying some figuring time, whilst simultaneously convincing the client that they are, in fact, omnipotent and had known the thing they had just revealed well before they said anything).

I digress.

Later in the session she announced that she was concerned I was cutting so close to a major artery.

Something in me froze.

My knowledge of anatomy not being as it could be, I had completely neglected to recall the fact that the area I cut is home to the femoral artery.

I'd only have about 3 minutes.
It's a horrible place to cut.

It only occurred to me after I left that her twisted therapists' mind probably decided that the fact that I cut there is because I have some sort of repressed sexual aggression towards my mother... or some such rubbish.

In fact, the reason I chose to cut near the groin is purely practical.
It will not be seen.
Even a (not too skimpy) bikini might hide the worst of the scarring.

Personally, I'd much rather use my feet (as I used to) or my arms.
But they are both so visible and I would probably rather die than have someone who knows me find out about self harm.
I couldn't ever go to hospital because I'd never cope with the horrible shame of someone seeing.

It has then, come as rather a shock to realise just how close I was when I cut the other night. And how close I must have been so many times before.

I looked up diagrams of the femoral artery in order to see where it is and it is hard to find something which specifically shows it in relation to the rest of the body. Suffice to say that I must have had some lucky escapes.

Ridiculously and somewhat inexplicably, I'm on a cutting spree at the moment.
It is desperate and painful and calming.

I am having to monitor the depth carefully and that is a real battle when a part of me wants to get right to the core of me.

A week later, the wound I refer to is, strikingly, a mouth.
No longer bleeding, but not properly sealed, it keeps emitting pus, despite my half hearted efforts to disinfect.
The pain from the cut is deep; which leaves me confused as to why I would find it necessary to cut again two days later, albeit far more times and far less deeply.

I suspect that even the most understanding of people might struggle to understand how on earth a person could inflict damage upon themselves in such a way.

The concept feels lip curlingly revolting to me... and I DO this!

I can well understand those who find it nauseating to imagine. I can understand the disgust and anger others may feel.

I myself have a part of me which identifies very strongly with those who may view the deliberate damage and mutilation of areas of the body as a terrible act of selfishness and hopeless self indulgence.

Ultimately, self harm is a silent, violent scream.

It is a way of putting something desperate on the outside.

It is a way of crying without heaving and sobbing and worrying about your eyes being red.

It's a way of safely taking the top layer off the toppling tower.

Warning.

If you could see beyond the iron,

the posion spikes, curling wires

the skin ripped red and white

gashed, gnashed, wept upon

in fury, in agony, in hatred

raw, numb nothing

numb

nothing



You think your kindness

your prayer, your touch

would soothe

would stay

would answer.



Ha!



If you saw beneath my skin

Your lip would curl in the corner

and then twist,

Your tongue screaming in surprise

expecting citrus sweetness

sucking, now curling,

rancid overflow of bitter scorn.

Your hand would scream

scaulded, scabbed, scarred

whipped away, withdrawn

revulsed, repulsed

spattered with acrid pus of greed,

of need.



Inside,

I am putrid

How can truth exist

in such decay?



Stay away

I will infect those

who refuse to stay

on the outside.

I am afraid

that if kindness doesn't kill me,

Me will kill kindness.

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.

Sadness

Careful crimson smile
Hiding sepia sadness
Hot tears streak my soul

The Child Part

Alright.
Now.
Bear with me.

I need to issue some kind of disclaimer which states that the information that follows and the fact that the concept has been mentioned at all, does not in any way imply that the author accepts or acknowledges the existence of such a thing.

Then, in one completely paradoxical swoop, I will contradict my own disclaimer by saying that I know perfectly well that this is a part of me somehow... I am just terrified by the disgust that I feel it may be met with.

Get on with it right?

Sorry.
Fear gets in the way.

So.
My therapist in all her glorious wisdom reminds me over and over again that I have a number of very seperate and very distinct 'selves'.
I am beginning to see how this is really quite true. The filing cabinet seems to have more than two drawers, or there are, at least, sub sections in each drawer.

This post is itself a child, tentatively and stumblingly clinging to the walker as it steps on soft, unused feet.
The ideas we talked about in therapy this week are little prisms, just about an arms length away from me and I tremble as I reach to just brush one with the very tips of my fingernails; hoping that the infintisimal fraction of contact will be just enough to edge the prism into a line of sunlight.

The title of the post acknowledges the topic I am not daring to comment on.
I'll come back to it if I can reach...

Razors and Release.

I have so many words but feel overwhelmed at the idea of trying to piece them together. They swell and tumble, a disparate wave of words and feeling. The wave itself a spectrum of sensation, utterly numb at the base, raw at the breaking crest.

If I could somehow figure out what is going on to cause this level of desperation I might have a hope in hell of controlling it.
These last few days, well... weeks really... I have been fighting (and, shamefully, frequently losing) a battle against the urges and the desires I have to hurt myself in whatever way I can.
Yes.
Self harm.
Controversial. Taboo. Disgusting. Shameful. Painful. Desperate.
And yet, comforting. Releasing. Soothing. Calming. Cleansing.

A paradox and a half.

There are so many different perspectives on self harm that it's hard to keep up.
"Attention seeking" is the label that is possibly the most damning and the most hurtful to those who have to exert such incredible control by resisting the urge to just let rip on themselves. Instead they have to confine the screaming of their stories to such small areas of the body, the most hidden parts.

Tonight, just as many nights this week and the week before that, I stand on the brink of my own desperation to destroy. I fight from a part whose objections I repeatedly overrule, even as it reminds me and warns me of the physical pain I will be faced with when I trample over its defeated form in the rush to reach the razor.

People self harm for a wide variety of reasons and certainly, nowadays with the youth heavily influenced by 'emo' culture and the like, it is quite common; a disturbing trend borne, it would seem, out of a search for identity. Whatever happened to clothing being the defining feature in "teen stereotypes"? It's no defined by the number and depth of the cuts on a wrist.
I digress.
For me as an adult, it's primarily either a release of anger, a punishment if I feel let down, a purging of feelings that I can't hold in, or a response to uncontainable self hatred.

True, I started cutting as a teenager. I was fourteen and unable to speak about the fact that my sister was starving herself to death. Faced with the reactionless faces of my parents, the point blank denials that anything was wrong, and the stinging discipline that met she who dared to contradict; the pain started to spill out in secret ways using a different language. A language of pain which doesn't need to be heard to bring relief, only to be spoken.

At first, it wasn't as good as being able to talk to a grown up, but it made the clamour inside me quieter, and came to be far more effective, and practical, than needing anyone.

Great, you think.
So...
That was THEN. This is NOW.
My past is not my present.

And yet, something died in me back then that I miss in my present.
It wasn't my sister, although I no longer know her, so in some ways, perhaps she was the greatest loss of all. But something in me died and I can't revive it.
Maybe that is what therapy is for. To resurrect what is dead.

I am ashamed to admit that my mind feels invaded with fantasies of what I will do to hurt myself.
Goodness knows if you knew me in real life you wouldn't see a shadow of a ghost of a trace of the truth that I am someone who would ever imagine such fantasies, let alone indulge them.

I sound vaguely like a psycho but you'll just have to take my word for it that I'm the smiley girl you pass on the way to work. I'm your kid's favourite teacher. I'm the one who you come to when you need someone to listen and understand. I'm the one who you can count on to write a list of your problems and work out how you can tackle them in a way that feels manageable and is realistic.

It defies my own understanding then, that that same smiley, logical, responsible empathic, problem solver who is relied on by so many can be so consumed by such a desperate desire to violate her own body.
I'll spare you the details.