a moment of weakness

 on some days are harder to get out of bed than others. today was one of those days, where i physically could not get up.

i have spent the last two months at one of the lowest points i’ve been with and i cannot even pin why. i keep thinking i’m okay but i think my brain has other ideas.

it’s hard to ask for help when you don’t know what you need help with. i cannot pinpoint a feeling or moment that is keeping me here but i feel like my head is barely staying above water. most days it is not, but i get moments of air that are keeping me from completing drowning.

i hate the metaphors but drowning is the only way i can even slightly express how i am doing. and it isn’t getting easier, if anything with every passing second i am falling deeper without even knowing it.

and i don’t know the way up from here. how could i when absolutely nothing feels wrong, but i cannot get out of bed most days and the days i can the basic things in my life feel overwhelming. just the other day i burst into tears when i simply opened the cupboard to get a plate for some food and just today i had an anxiety attack because i made a fucking tiktok wrong. 

i am so tired and i cannot say it again. i don’t know how else to comprehend and express my feelings than to mindlessly write it down and even with that i can barely do it. some days i just don’t. i just lay in my room with the lights off or, like i did today, i sleep and sleep and sleep until i can just about muster the emotional and physical energy to stay awake.

and relapse is really hard, especially after so long. when you think you are so far away from the person who was hurting so much, but in reality you never stopped being that person. it is hard to come to terms with the fact that  recovery isn’t linear, but more that recovery doesn’t seem to get easier the further along you are. 

everyday just seems to get harder. and it’s getting harder to believe that it’s getting better any time soon.

365

 today, march 17th, marks me being one year clean from self harm. 

i've been struggling with self harm since i was 12, and now i am 23 and just hitting a year clean. a life time ago i never thought i could make it to my 18th birthday. not long ago i was convinced i would be trapped in a cycle of self harm forever, because it was the only way i knew how to cope. and whilst in recent years relapses were far and few between, i still was unable to fight it or redirect it. it felt like a build up of the need to relapse that one day when i was weak was too strong to fight off. but i'm getting better at it everyday, trying other outlets or simply just stopping myself and here i am, at the one year mark.

i thought this feeling was going to be only overwhelming happiness, but instead of happiness it just feels, nothing? i thought i was going to feel like the weight of the world was gone, i was finally taking contol back from this thing that had been controlling my life for so long but instead i feel like i have replaced self harm urges with overwhelming anxiety and instrusive thoughts instead. it's hard. i am happy. i should be happy. but i can't stop thinking about how this moment was supposed to be happy, but it just doesn't feel it. and maybe that is reflective of how i'm doing. maybe i'm not happy simply because i am in a really bad mental health state and i still think about relapse. maybe i thought by one year i would simply be so far away from relapse that i would really considered myself recovered. maybe i thought it would be easier than this. 

i think i always had this view that once i stopped, if i could stop, that all the feelings associated would just go away. i used to think that self harm was a huge cause in the anxiety and the sadness, and in some ways it was. i would be sad that i hurt myself and i would be anxious about people finding out. but i think now that i used it to simply rechannel the anxiety especially. and i know that sounds like something i should've known this whole time, but it is easier to think back now when i'm in a clearer mind. 

all i used to know was hurting, and i was hurting in so many ways that thinking about it just makes me too sad. if it wasn't anxiety or depressive moods, it was a war with eating, or it was my inability to process emotions, or it was my struggle to focus and pay attention or it was thinking i was not worthy of the life i had or it was pushing everyone away because i did not want them to know the "real" person. i was hiding my entire life and it simply was too much, and it outpoured in disordered eating and self harm.  eventually i managed to cope with it a little better, but i still could not stop self harm. not until now.

i do not know if this is the be all or end all. recovery has not been the easy process i thought it would be. it's been losing important people in my life and learning from my mistakes, it's been learning to manage my own feelings and how i process and present them. it's been going 1 step forward and back 10. it's been admitting that i am the problem. it's been admitting alcohol for a while was the problem. it's been not doing things because i mentally couldn't do it. it's been opening up and talking about how i'm feeling and doing things that absolutely terrify me. 

and whilst this feeling may not have been the complete overwhelming happiness i thought, it is still there. i am still proud of myself. there was a long time in my life where i was hurting myself on a daily then weekly basis. i was wearing long clothing in 30 degrees, learning the best ways to keep it covered or lying about how i scratched my arm. i used to think i was alone. i didn't even know what mental health was for half of my teenage years. i saw my friends struggling too, i was helping friends through it without asking for help myself. i handled things well, i handled things badly. but i made it. and i will continue to have my ups and downs, and if i relapse again i know it will be okay. i know i can come out fighting like i have many times before.

it gets easier. i know it's hard to believe but it gets easier. it might take time, but with help, it gets easier.

the burden of honesty

 

i feel like i’m stuck in a rut. i’ve felt off all year, and i kept thinking it was going away but it wasn’t, not permanently or temporarily long enough to make it feel like i was doing something to make it better. i’m just sat at rock bottom and i cannot find a way out, any time i think i do it’s a dead end.

my mental health has been up and down all my life and i’m aware that i probably just sound like a broken record with every post i write but it’s just so hard to understand what is wrong because i don’t even know myself. most of my teen years old were just pure, overwhelming sadness and just wanting to not be alive. i was at war with everyone but mostly with myself, and every day was a success just because i survived. 

that feeling went away in my 20s, but it exchanged the overwhelming sadness with feeling emotionally nothing mixed in with constant anxiety. it is impossible for me to interpet and talk about how i am feeling and why because i just simply do not know and i don’t think i ever will. how do you answer the question whats wrong when absolutely nothing is wrong but all you want to do is sit in bed all day and do just that. just sit or lay there. 

i have lost the ability to do, or want to do, anything. i don’t have the motivation to do absolutely anything and it is absolutely exhausting just trying to do something and just not being able to. if i manage to do it, i can’t without getting distracted within 10 minutes and stopping again. i spend all my day on tiktok because i just can’t do anything else. talking to most of my friends seeps too much energy so i just don’t and i convince myself that they hate me so i don’t talk to them even more. i’m in a cycle of unhappiness and isolation that i cannot pull myself out of.

and i’m lonely. 

i feel like i have nobody. i feel like most of my friends hates me or will just leave me and i know that’s probably just past experience talking but i don’t know how to accept it. when all you see in yourself if the flaws, how could in your eyes anyone get past them either? i feel like i need constant validation and even that isn’t enough. 

i feel like a burden. i am a burden. and i mean it. i can’t be the happy, at minimum okay person that i should be. i feel selfish all the time. a small thing feels like everything and nobody that i love deserves to have to hear it. and i know i shouldn’t feel this way but i can’t not. i don’t know how to cope with anything, i don’t know how to do anything and i feel like i don’t even know how to exist like a person. being honest about how i’m doing is a burden. i’m sad today and i will be tomorrow. everyone is, most people are feeling down at the moment and i feel too guilty to talk about it in any truth. so i don’t. i avoid the question and if i don’t then i don’t say what i really want to say, just what i think the person wants to hear. i leave out that every night recently i’ve been thinking about relapse again because i’m supposed to be doing better in recovery and i don’t want anyone to think otherwise. i don’t want anyone else to hold the burden and the worry about me when there is so many more important things to be worried about.

i’m overwhelmed. i’m so fucking tired and i don’t know what to do anymore. i feel just nothing and i hate it. i wish i just didn’t care about anything but it’s all i can do. and i know i need to get help but i can’t bring myself to get it, mainly because i don’t think i deserve it. i’m not sad enough to get it. maybe one day i can persuade myself but if not now, when?

i just don’t feel like i was made to belong here.

the loudest noise in the room

 

i have always been a firm believer in everything will get better but tonight i'm not sure i do.

i am having one of the worst days i've had in a while. i find myself saying it alot but this time i mean it. anxiety is debhilitating me, earlier i cried just getting out of bed after sleeping all day because that is all i can do. i feel on the verge of tears whilst simulatneously feeling nothing all the time and i don't see a way to move past it.

recovery was supposed to make it easier but sometimes it makes it worse. the bad times are just amplified and i haven't found a better way of coping with it. i thought the idea of relapse would by now not even cross my mind but it's still sometimes all i can think about. i find other distractions but it's still at the forefront of my mind and even though i manage to fight it some days it's just rarely. these thoughts weren't supposed to be so intrusive, especially not now. how do i win what is a constant battle? how long until it is too powerful and i'm too tired to stop it?

my mind just doesn't stop. and when i run out of good things to think about it turns into negative things. it turns into being scared to sometimes even breathe and i don't know how to make it stop. how do you make it stop bringing up bad memories and worries about things you could've done differently 10 years ago? how do you think of things that don't make you hurt? 

i just don't know where to go from here. i don't feel like i deserve help, i don't feel like i'm hurting enough. but each day is getting harder, each breath getting more painful, each night gets a little longer. how do you stop the panic when all you are is the panic?

how do you stop feeling alone in a crowded room? how do you take some time for yourself without it feeling like you're just being a bad friend when all you want to do is get better? i can't even open the curtain, the lightswitch feels kilometres away and my flickering lamp is the only light i see both physically and metaphorically.

maybe if i say it out loud it will help. i don't know how but maybe writing it down will help me understand myself that lil better.

it was supposed to get better as i stayed clean, but sometimes it's hard to believe that i'm better without it. i know thats just my anxiety and sadness talking, but it is the loudest noise in the room.