"You don't seem like your normal happy self."
Well, no shit.
Actually, I don't usually think of myself as either normal or happy, let alone both. But I guess the difference is that I haven't been wearing that mask of normalcy very well or consistently recently. It's just so damn exhausting. And unless you have to put on mental and emotional preparations everyday much like the average person gets dressed or does their hair and make-up, then you probably don't understand the energy that that preparation requires.
Good for you. Really.
But on the days that I can't even be bothered by showering let alone getting dressed or doing my hair, what makes you think I have the energy to mentally redress myself?
I actually rather miss myself.
I don't even know, anymore, if I miss the real me or simply miss the ease at which I could wear my mask of normalcy, but either way - I miss it. I miss being snarky and witty and irreverent and intellectual and even occasionally charming. I miss me. This moody and depressed and insecure and pissed-off person really doesn't sit well on my psyche. Like most of my clothes these days - it just doesn't fit.
(but please don't get me started on the clothes not fitting thing - I can't even get my mind around the shear circumference of my body right now)
I find myself in a constant push and pull as I try to figure out where I stand - with myself, mostly, but others as well. Medication changes are always hard too. You can't have as many meds flowing through you as I do and change them without expecting to have some moments of readjustment and loss of equilibrium. Some days I think things are improving. Some days I feel very disconnected. And some days I am just worried and scared that I'll never be able to find the right combination to keep me stable.
I meant to write this as some sort of update to the last entry but I really don't have an update to offer. Like I said, some times I think things are better, some days I don't. So I guess I'm just still existing.... and waiting to see where that goes.
Interestingly though, to me anyway, I gained a bit of reflective insight recently. (Not that it has managed to effect any change but it was still an interesting insight.) I was talking to a student recently about cutting. I've never been a cutter myself though there was a time in ninth grade when I thought it would be a good idea to scrape a large area of skin off my arm with a house key.
(Cause yeah, that made sense.)
Cutting doesn't make sense. Not to the cutter or the people around them, but the behavior persists. You see, sometimes the noise and the agitation gets so great - inside your head - that you can't silence or calm the chaos. In an attempt to focus the noise - to scream louder than the screaming in your head - you take that energy and turn it on yourself.
That? I do understand. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I tend towards self-destruction. I'm not suicidal - and most cutters are not either, in case you were curious - but I do tend towards self-destruction. I want to blow things up. I want to scream louder than the screaming in my head. But that rarely manifests in clear cut (pun unintended) self harm. Instead, I over eat. I binge eat, even. I drink too much - not even for the buzz, so much, cause that's hard to come by most days - but mostly because of the volume.
Yeah, I don't really understand it either.
I mean, I do understand it, but it doesn't make sense. It's not any healthier than cutting. But the mechanism is surprisingly similar. In addition, there's the "benefit" of the weight gain. (sidenote: some psychologist somewhere at some point decided that fat people are fat because they find some sort of benefit in being fat - otherwise they'd be thin. Not so much; I'd like to argue that sometimes the benefit is in the action, not the outcome.) Anyway, there is a part of me though - and likely always will be - that doesn't believe that I deserve to be thin. So maybe there is benefit in there somewhere.
It supports my warped self-conceptions and my need to live down to my expectations of never being good enough.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." ~Marianne Williamson
I'm not afraid that I'm inadequate. Part of me will always believe myself to be inadequate. I'm afraid that that part of me is wrong. And how do I reconcile that with the screaming?
