There’s Hope.

Starting Over

I’ve always seen the New Year as something that people blow far out of proportion. Our lives are not suddenly altered because we have to write out a new number at the end a year when writing out the date. We make plans that we for the most part do not carry out on. As for me? I’ve always done things as I’ve wanted to. I don’t want a new year to be the reason I decide to get in shape. I don’t want a new year to be the deciding factor for anything that I do. It’s always been overrated to me. This year, I get it.

This year has been the first year to legitimately kick my ass. Looking back, it’s blurry and I can’t recall large chunks of time…but that’s probably for the best. This has been the first year that I have planned a suicide. This has been the first year that I’ve gone without alcohol to make socialization easier (this one’s still worth it, black outs with crippling anxiety is a whole different ballgame). This was the first year that I forced myself to get help, and I didn’t always like what I realized about myself. For the first half of this year, I wasn’t expecting for there to be a next year.

I run relationships into the ground. I hurt people so that I can’t be attacked. I worry about myself and my feelings to the point where I not only don’t ask others about theirs, but I don’t even care about theirs. My entire existence has been a fight to protect my fragile emotional state and feelings. The few people who have been in my life for this entire year have been my safe place.

to be a friend

I have been working on myself for the better part of eight months now, as this is the amount of time that I have gone without friendship. I have realized my short comings, my unapologetic and unaccountable actions. Before, things were never my fault. Why can’t she just understand where I’m coming from? Why is she arguing with me? These situations ended my friendships, and my hypersensitivity kept me angry.

I’m not one for brutal honesty or “tough love”. I can’t tolerate having someone else see my deepest flaws, and I would consistently blame them for exposing those flaws. I’m not one for trying to work things out, I would rather drop someone I’ve known for twelve years than to have to risk being hurt again.

And, now I’m here.

These eight months have taught me so much. I have been left with solely my own thoughts, and it’s pushed me damn well near insanity. I have realized that if I continue to be unforgiving, my life will be empty. If I can not handle being called out when I am wrong, that is an issue of my own. If I fail to communicate how hurt I get by someone only helping me to see where I may be at fault, then I could never expect them to know.

Today I reached out to my ex-best friend. Since our friendship ended, she posts a lot about self-care being letting go of toxic friendships, and how she has left people behind in attempt to better herself. I’m happy for her, and I hope that it’s working. Perhaps I should’ve never reached out.

Our boyfriend’s have the same birthday and we used to always celebrate before our falling out. They miss each other, and my boyfriend continues to talk about them all the time. I asked her today if she would be interested in surprising them with a fun day together, and told her that I have had time to become aware of my short comings and that I realized how much accountability on my end could have changed everything.

I was left without a response, and feel worse than before.

To anyone struggling with trust issues, who is fearful of getting hurt, who feels a bit too sensitive to become close with anyone…I am with you. We are not bad people who deserve the consequences. We are eligible for growth, we just have to be willing to dive deep into ourselves.

Maybe this is the closure that I didn’t know I’d be getting but needed. Maybe, I can be a better friend through this all.

A hard day

It’s all a cycle anymore. Wake up, frantically get ready and head to work in five minutes because I’ve slept through all of the alarms. Work at just the right medium between doing nothing and seeming productive. Go home, maybe have dinner. Sleep. Wake up, frantically…

I never considered myself suicidal, though I also can not recall ever feeling content in my stay this far. Life can have a way of feeling so programed. I have tried to override my fate and have dug myself into the ground. Even if I were to find what truly makes me happy, wouldn’t that eventually just become the norm and a new cycle would replace the existing?

Of course there are moments, we all have them. Coming home to my dogs that act like they haven’t seen me in years, every single day. It never gets old. Having a significant other that calls me beautiful when I can’t even look at myself in the mirror most days. Family that encourages me with my courses. I’ll even admit, having no friends has become a blessing. There is no one judging me, or getting mad that I don’t respond in a timely manner, or making me feel selfish for being flaky and enjoying solitude. Honestly, I’m not sure if I truly enjoy solitude or if I just enjoy the fact that I can’t let anyone down.

Again with the honesty, I have no idea who I am anymore.

Hopeless

We’re told we can be anything

this can’t be what was meant.

I cashed my hope in long ago,

more than I could afford to spend.

I feel myself drifting

though I know I’m sitting still.

I’ve lost sight of everything,

what’s wrong what’s right what’s even real?
 

I see myself ending up exactly like the state I’m in:

A place to go solely for convenience

A place that has it’s moments, if you could just get through the winter

An endless sea of potential that no one will ever invest in

A place best known for never truly being known at all.

fifty milligram

Big Pharma is corrupt. We have been turned into profit by a trillion dollar industry. Their goal is not to help us, but to benefit financially from our suffering and to control our population.

These are the opinions that I have kept through the past few years. When I am sick, I deny antibiotics. After gruesome surgeries I deny painkillers. I preferred having a portion of my leg cut out of my body with only local anesthesia than to give Big Pharma my business and to live comfortably for the days after.

So what brought me here, on a fifty milligram daily dose of Zoloft that I am willingly taking?

I admit, my health has been on a steady decline since my last melanoma diagnosis. I started believing that Big Pharma was out to get me, targeting me and forcing all of my health problems into me. Paranoid? Absolutely. I was not seeing any of my doctors, not even for a check up. I ran myself into the ground for two years straight.

My mental heath has been concerning since age thirteen. I was diagnosed with anorexia in ninth grade, and bulemia until age twenty. I still have slip-ups, but I am trying. I have gone through depression, random spurts of social anxiety that make me terrified of communication. I push people away so that I can not be hurt. I am extremely sensitive to what people think of me. I have gone through brief dissociation periods, where I feel extraterrestrial in my own world.

My overall health is not much better. My teeth hurt, my knees give out in cold weather, and a brutal car accident in 2014 has kept my neck stiff and in pain ever since.

I need to get myself together. 

Coincidentally, my horoscope yesterday told me that I would be concerned with my health. Yesterday was my first scheduled doctor’s appointment in almost two years. It was time to stop worrying over what Big Pharma was planning for me. I received blood work and an MRI for the threat of thyroid cancer, since I have several masses throughout my neck. I mentioned my depression and how I felt empty, stuck in a cycle that I couldn’t afford to break.

“Let’s get you back on Zoloft. You took it for two months in 2013, it’s time to get you feeling better.”

Here I am, taking my second little pill in four years. I am afraid, but mainly excited. I can’t imagine feeling like a regular person, whatever that means. I picture myself asking people to hang out without fear of getting hurt. I imagine not blatantly ruining friendships so that I didn’t have to be the one to feel the pain. Not having my boyfriend ask me where I am several times a week, as I zone out into the nothingness of our white walls.

I am ready for my rebirth, as my Scorpio horoscope told me to prepare for in the new year to come. I am looking forward to new emotions and am hopeful for a happier life with my new little orange medication holder in my purse.

 Photo Source

bright

“What is to give light must endure burning.” -Viktor Frankl

Several years ago I attended a two year community college, but for me it turned into three years with no degree. Becoming a counselor was never something I stopped wanting to do (wow, something I didn’t lose interest in).

I spent a semester learning about different theorists, and Viktor Frankl was one whose name I will never forget. Frankl founded Logotherapy, a form of existential analysis. Learning his technique and philosophy felt a lot like therapy for me, and it worked. I quickly bought one of his best known books, Man’s Search for Meaning. I remember being lost in this book, as he recounts losing everything he loved in Auschwitz. How does a boy so badly ruined rise to become such an imperative part of our history of understanding psychology and the mind?

I desperately wanted to save everyone from a disease that held them captive inside of their own bodies. I have seen loved ones become distant strangers, I have witnessed the darkest moments of their lives, and I have stood in awe at recovery and the demolition and reconstruction of their existence.

After seeing numerous overdoses I found myself in a rut that would change my life forever. I was no longer able to fight for those who are hurting, I was traumatized. The first several overdoses, my family would come-to after just a few seconds of my finding them. This was scarring, but I came back more and more passionate. The last overdose I witnessed replays in my mind daily.

I had just come home from work. I frantically walked in the door as I always did back then, to check on everyone. This time, there was a body propped up against a bed. His head was back, cutting off all oxygen. He was clammy and purple, with hiccup-like breaths spread moments apart. The most haunting detail of all was his eyes. Staring into the whites of his eyes; open but turned all of the way back inside of his head. Breathing spread more apart. Hardly breathing. I dial 911, where I am told paramedics will not be there in time to save his life. His breaths are nearly diminished. I hold him in my arms, supporting his neck and opening his mouth to help promote the flow of oxygen. I nearly manually closed his eyes, as I couldn’t focus on anything else. If I did that, it’d become too real. He was dying. After about three minutes that felt like a lifetime, he was alive. The color came back to his face almost as quickly as he could reach for another fucking baggy of heroin.

After this day, everything hurt. His continued use hurt. My head hurt from pressing rewind and replay so many times of those exact moments. I lost a part of myself. I lost the fight. Hearing about opioid overdose wrecked me, because I imagined those who found them. Even now, his recovery hurts. Relapse is now considered a part of recovery. I hope every day that he will stay without, but anxiously wait for a phone call instead. His happiness to this day hurts, as I attempt to analyze whether he is forcing a smile and swallowing any ounce of pain that remains with him.

Frankl experienced trauma and went on to dedicate the rest of his life to helping others. He went through what most could never come back from. I try so hard to convince myself that I, too am capable of such a comeback. We go through things and over time we become stronger. I am hoping that I just need to give myself a little more time.

 

I don’t think I want to die

“There is a light somewhere. It may not be much light, but it beats the darkness.” -Charles Bukowski

 

This is a portion of the poem The Laughing Heart, and about six years ago I got these words tattooed on my leg. Every single day I remind myself that there is good out there, I may have to search far and wide; but it exists. Even the shortest amount of happiness beats depression.

Over the course of the past few weeks I would say that I’ve probably been living in “rock bottom”. There’s emptiness here, and when there isn’t, that empty is filled with sadness. Every day my mind attempts to convince me that I shouldn’t still be here. Why am I here? What am I accomplishing? Why put everything I have into this life for it to just be taken away from me one day? I’m useless. I have failed more than I have succeeded. There is a place to escape, and my mind is fully aware.

Each day I figure out a new reason to stay alive. I haven’t helped anyone yet. I haven’t volunteered my time to make someone’s life a little easier, and that is so important to me. I saved a life once, someone is alive instead of dead from an overdose. How was I so quick to bring someone back to life if I am so quick to contemplate ending my own? I want to watch my niece grow up. I would hate for her to think that her aunt didn’t love her enough to keep going for her. The future terrifies me, but I’m kind of interested in seeing what’s to come for me and my boyfriend. We don’t catch breaks a whole lot, but I’ll never know if I’m not here. Lastly, how would my mother feel? “Hey mom, thanks for my life but I ain’t feelin’ it…sorry!”.

I’m not comfortable with not knowing what my purpose is, and I will never find it if I give myself the boot. I have so many passions, I just need to find the energy. What if hundreds of lives could’ve been saved by not ending my own? Even if only one more life, I’d be content.

Brain: “But you’re supposed to want to die, I’ve worked so hard to make sure you want to.”

Brain: “You’re stronger than this! Get some help, you’ll be better in no time.”

Brain: “Remember how embarrassed you’ve been, how hurt you’ve been, everyone who’s left. Think about what people think about you. There’s probably a reason why you never feel great about yourself.”

Brain: “It could all be over, really quickly.”

Brain: “Don’t worry so much, try to have fun. Relax. You are doing fine.”

I am forever conflicted. There are days when I smile in pain, and cry when nothing is wrong. I have felt joy and numbness at the exact same time. I obsess over my own thoughts to the point of confusion about what I was thinking in the first place. I forget what I am feeling because my brain is running through thoughts too fast for me to stay in control. I don’t think that I want to die. I am not going down without a fight.