Happy(?) Mental Health Awareness Day!
Well, it’s the 10th of the 10th, which is apparently Mental Health Awareness Day. This is prime territory for my not-really-dyslexia to rename it “Metal Health Awareness Day” which is a very different issue.
On a personal note, I’m doing far better than last I posted, which is always good. Stress is still present, but my mentality has shifted more towards the “bring it on, bitch” way of thinking.
While trying to think of something to write about for this, I looked through the list of responses to my various mental problems that I sent to my ex and found this:
“I know it’s hard to see someone you care about in such distress and hurting themselves, but it makes me so much worse to know that you’re seeing that.”
I think this is a large part of the lives of people who self harm. You’re putting yourself through pain…but its more painful to know that people who care about you are worrying and wanting you to stop. Because in your mind in those moments, you deserve the pain. But they don’t. The thought of other people being caught in the crossfire of your self destructive ways forces your mind into bad little twisty turnies and inevitably makes your brain-space a whole lot worse for it.
So, in thinking about self harm on this joyous Awareness Day, I started a-thinking about Ismay’s Journey In The Land Of Self Harm.
Buckle up, friends! It’s going to be a bumpy ride!
First of all, it took me a long time to realise I was a self harmer. Television, movies, books, articles, friends, family; all of these sources had me believe that because I didn’t have neat blade cuts across my wrists, I didn’t self harm.
This is the part where I clarify that I’m not in any way trying to devalue those that self harm in this way. This is far more about how I went through most of my life thinking that I was mentally sound because I couldn’t realise my version of self harm. As far as I was concerned, I just got sad or afraid some times, and that was that.
My best friend was the one who pointed it out to me. We were in my dorm room at university, and had been having a good amount of vodka-cranberries (it tastes exactly like a Cosmo…provided you’re drunk enough to have lost your sense of taste.) This had always been the drink combination for us that got us to our “real talk”.
Our nights of vodka-cranberries often went as follows.
If she came over tomorrow with a bottle of Glenns in one hand and some Tesco Cranberry Juice in the other, the cycle would be the exact same today.
Anyway, we had reached our Deep Personal Shit section of the night when she tactfully (well… as tactfully as one can when they’ve been drinking what at that point was red-coloured vodka) asked me if I knew that I self harmed.
The question confused the shit out of me, to be honest. Because of course I didn’t. Look at my wrists! I’m fine!
But she talked it through with me. At some point she had been really worried about me, having seen one of my anxiety attacks (though, at the time, I didn’t know that that is what it was.) She’d been all around the internet seeing if there was any explanation for my behaviour.
She opened my eyes to the wider spectrum of self harm and… things from there just started making a lot more sense.
Personally, when my anxiety takes over, I start pulling out my hair and slapping myself to the point where huge welts cover me. It’s insane to me now that I didn’t know that those things would count as self harm. But in my mind, because I wasn’t trying to kill myself, I couldn’t have been self harming. I was just… harming myself?
One of the worst times was in the summer when my ex was essentially living with me for a month. Now for me, being around anyone for that amount of time in that close quarters is bound to bring on some mental problems. It’s only because that girl is crazy good at handling crazy me that I didn’t freak out a whole lot more in that time.
I wasn’t doing great that day anyway, and it all came to a head when I kept messing up the stitching on a costume I was making again and again and again. Eventually I flipped and threw everything down. She was sitting next to me in bed and knew that I wanted to be left alone.
But my brain was a ticking time bomb at that point. I wanted to slap myself so badly. Because I deserved it. Because I was a fuck-up. Because I wanted to stop thinking for a second. Because of a thousand reasons.
But the thought of her seeing me do that was too much for me to bear. So my ingenious solution was to discretely bite my arm. Hard. And, in my infinite wisdom, I left a perfect indent of my teeth that began to bruise and bleed almost instantly.
Knowing that the jig was up and my crazy had left a physical mark, I flipped again and slapped myself around while Elsa just had to sit there, not touching me, not stopping me, not saying anything. And knowing that she wanted me to stop but could do nothing about it made me even more mad at myself, making me slap harder.
I wore tights in the middle of a hot summer to cover up the red hand marks over my thighs.
I don’t know how my life would have improved to know earlier that these were not things that someone of sound mind did. Maybe I would be better at coping with them now. Maybe not.
In my present state, I fully believe I am a beautiful precious flower, and anyone who hurts me -including myself- is a giant turd who should be chucked in the trash.
Moral of this story: I’m a fucking delight. Fight me on this.
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Originally published at moreimpossiblegirl.wordpress.com on October 10, 2015.
