beautiful monsters

Vices

I was doing really well yesterday. I ate healthy food all morning, good wholesome organic fare. But I was so tired that I kept dozing off, even when people were talking to me. So I had to resort to extreme measures and ingest several cans of V to help me get through my exam.

And then, I totally meant to get up this morning and do yoga and eat fresh fruit and organic muesli...

But actually, I just feel like shit, and I can’t be bothered, so I’m scoffing chocolate biscuits and toasted sandwiches with white bread and spaghetti and cheese. Leave me alone, I don’t care.

Warning

Most of the time I try and write blog entries that I think other people, one or two at least, might find interesting, amusing, or challenging.

Not today though.

I am going to rant. About how much life sucks sometimes. I’m going to be self-indulgent and self-pitying. And I can do that, you know. Cos it’s my blog.

Contains details about sexual abuse and about self-harm.

You have been warned.

Even hope

Like an overripe fruit
suddenly finds its skin too fragile
to contain the swollen flesh
of summer

even hope
is an agony
that splits
me.

Things that upset me

Coming home and my clothes stink of smoke and my hair stinks of smoke and my life stinks of smoke and I feel like shit.

Knowing that even people I love and care about smoke. That they are hurting themselves. That they are hurting me. I worry about them. Maybe they’re too stressed, they’re doing enough for about six people. Maybe they’re tired. Maybe they’re depressed. Why isn’t there anything I can do to help?

Knowing I really don’t have any right to say any of this, after the shit I’ve put my body through recently.

People getting angry. Everyone reacts to things in different ways. Some people get angry. I tend to withdraw, feel guilty, hate myself, assume that everyone hates me, blame myself for everything. Especially when people get angry. I hate feeling caught between two people who are angry. I get scared. Most of all I get scared that people I love might get angry at me, I get scared that I won’t be able to bear it. A couple of my friends get angry around me a lot. Not usually at me, but I still feel really shaken, as though it was directed at me. I think that one of them is an alcoholic and she gets like this when she’s been drinking. The other person... I think she has been hurt a lot. I think she gets scared. I think she defends herself by getting angry. Sometimes it feels almost violent. I don’t know why it scares me so much. I can’t remember any events in my past that might have caused me to feel scared of anger. I feel as though the world is closing in around me. I start shaking. I feel sick. I feel dizzy. I feel like I am breaking apart. I want to curl up and disappear. I want never to have existed. I want someone to hug me. I want everything to be ok.

People being tired and stressed and having and awful day. Not being able to cheer them up. Feeling afraid I might be making things worse.

Feeling out of control. Feeling like my life is always precarious and even if I’m ok now, at any moment I might fall. At any moment there might be darkness. At any moment it might start to hurt.

People telling me I didn’t see something, I can’t say anything, nothing happened. That scares me too. Maybe I’m just overreacting, maybe it just triggers stuff for me.

I think I’ve remembered a way to forget.

What it’s like

It’s bad enough dealing with these feelings... the intensity of my emotions, the despair I sink into... but when, on top of that, it ruins my friendships, and limits my abilities and potential... I can’t bear it! I hate myself so much, for being so screwed up, for destroying everything I love, everything that gives my life meaning. I don’t want to be such a mess! But I get into these vicious cycles. I am so scared of losing people... that is my biggest fear, that I will push people away because I am so messed up. But because I am so afraid, I feel so desperate, and I act desperately, and increase the chances that people will get freaked out and abandon me.

I feel everything so intensely, emotions overwhelm me, flood me... I can’t remember ever feeling anything else. It’s hard to believe that I will feel anything else in the future. Sometimes even the good feelings feel dangerous. Sometimes it feels great, like flying, but scary, like everything so intense, so bright that it hurts.

I remember so many times in my life I have been overwhelmed by waves of black despair... it’s so intense, it hurts so much. I feel hopeless, I feel like I’m trapped in this awful nightmarish cycle, and I can’t keep going. I cry and cry, and I feel like I am drowning... more than anything I want someone to reach out to me, to reach down and catch hold of my hand, because I feel as though I am slipping under the surface of this terrible blackness... I feel scared that I may not be able to get out again. I bang my head against walls, hoping that if I push hard enough I’ll disappear, if I hurt enough I’ll stop feeling anything. I can’t stop crying because I feel so hopeless, and I feel as though I can’t keep going unless something changes... and I feel so alone. God, I feel so lonely, it feels as though I am breaking open. And then... eventually, I get so exhausted that I can’t cry any more. I feel numb. No one has reached out to help me out of the hole, so I know I have to pull myself out of it. So I do. Bit by bit I put the pieces together and drag myself through it. But it’s so hard – and every time it feels as though I have less strength to do it.

One day, somewhere between my tenth birthday and my fourteenth, a guy from my church youth group came over. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, how it fits in, before or after any of the other events in my life. I do remember the shirt he was wearing. It was pale, not quite white, not quite cream, not quite gray. I remember how coarse it felt between my fingers. He had cotton trousers that tied up with a drawstring. It was raining outside. We were listening to Cat Stevens. We were mucking around, tickling each other, laughing. Back then, I wasn’t that interested in sex, lest of all with a guy. I had a crush on a girl from my orchestra, I used to daydream about kissing her, that’s all I wanted, to spend all night kissing her. Back then, I didn’t know that tickling could lead to other things. I didn’t know that tickling could turn people on. He made me give him a hand job, and he pushed his fingers inside me. He didn’t say a word, moved my hand where he wanted it, unbuttoned my jeans, my baggy levis with flowers painted around the bottom. I tried to push his hand away, but he was much stronger than I was. I remember staring at his shirt. I remember feeling as though part of me had split away from my body, part of me was spinning out of control. Maybe it doesn’t sound like a big deal. Maybe I’m overly sensitive, overreacting. I almost wish he’d been violent, attacked me, raped me. Maybe then I would have screamed. Maybe then I could have said no. Maybe I would feel like I had a reason for feeling so messed up. It happened so quickly, it was so unexpected. I thought it must be my fault, I must have done something, I must have led him on. There must have been something I did that made him do that to me. I’ve never told anyone what happened before. I was too scared. I’m still scared, that people will think that I’m making a big fuss about nothing, that people will be angry with me...

Stuff happened with loads of guys after that. It was like I was incapable of saying no. I thought everything was my fault, even if a guy was flirting with me, I thought that somehow it was my fault, and from that point on I felt I had no right to say no to anything. I’ve completely lost track of the number of guys I slept with, completely frozen, terrified, going through the motions on the outside but terrified on the inside. At the time I think I was convinced that what happened was normal, or that it just happened because I was fucked up. In retrospect a lot of those guys used me, made assumptions about what I wanted. Not one of them bothered to check that what was happening was ok. I got real good at blowjobs, because I knew if I could make them cum like that I wouldn’t have to have sex with them. Sometimes it didn’t work. One guy was so rough, it really hurt, and I started to cry. Didn’t make any difference, he just ignored me. I was bleeding for a couple of days afterwards. I thought that was only supposed to happen the first time. I remember two guys, taking turns, making me give them both blowjobs. I remember thinking that I couldn’t breath cos my nose was blocked, thinking that I was going to choke, that I was going to die. Thinking about the things that happened still makes me feel so sick... I can’t get the images out of my mind and this ghastly sick feeling inside my stomach. I used to try and squeeze the feeling out, but I could never escape from it.

I hate being alone. When I am alone, often the feelings of despair and self hatred overwhelm me. Often I will want to talk to people... but when I really think about it, this doesn’t really help a lot. I will call someone, and feel comforted while I talk to them, but then as soon as they hang up I will feel so alone, and I’ll want to call someone else straight away. It’s the same with hugs. I never want someone to let go, because as soon as they do I feel alone.

I do things to try and feel less lonely... I read letters from friends and look at photos. But I don’t think this is totally healthy either – I think I hold onto the past too much. I spend so much time looking at letters and photos, trying to hold onto the feelings from that time, trying to recreate the love that someone has expressed... I think I need to learn to let go of the past, and live in this present moment. A couple of times I have lost a treasured letter, or a photo... and I feel devastated! I am still beating myself up about a letter I lost about five years ago. I need to learn that I am an ok person, and that people care about me, even if I don’t have it in writing. I need to find that acceptance inside myself, rather than trying to find it in words and pictures.

I feel like... I don’t feel like I’m totally real. I feel like I could be blown away in the wind, or crumble away. I feel like I am wearing so many different masks, but there is nothing underneath them all, just this awful blackness. I feel as though my experiences are unconnected fragments. I constantly have to prove who I am to people... When I meet someone and I want to be friends with them, I feel as though they have to know everything about me... all of my talents, and interests, and everything I’ve been through, the difficult stuff as well as the good stuff. I feel as though I need to show them all this stuff, or I’ll disappear. It’s as though I am things I do and the books I read and the music I listen too... I feel as though I have to display my life in my room... so that if someone comes in they will look around and they will see that I care about the environment, and that I go tramping, and that I do art, and that I read poetry... and then they will like me.

I crave affection. I guess it is part of not wanting to be alone. Touch makes me feel ok... being held, being hugged. Sometimes this has got me into trouble... Some people haven’t respected that it is not necessarily a sexual craving. I have learned that sex is the price I have to pay to be held.

Sometimes I descend into these dark patches that last for weeks. I feel so miserable all the time... everything seems hard. Even getting out of bed in the mornings seems impossible. I don’t bother to eat properly, take my medications or brush my teeth. I just want to lie in bed and cry. Sometimes I sleep all day, but then when I wake up I feel guilty about all the things I haven’t done. I think really negatively about everything. I think that everyone is sick of me, that I am useless, hopeless, that I have messed everything up. I become convinced that I will always feel so awful, that I will never get better. I eat a lot of junk food for the brief comfort it brings. I feel tired... god, I feel so tired, all the time! Everything seems to take so much effort! I just want to die, because I feel like I can’t keep going. I feel as though things will never get better. I feel as though I’ve ruined everything beyond repair, I’m a hopeless failure. I hate myself!

I have pretty high expectations on myself. I used to be a high-achiever, all round. At various times I have been top of the school for subjects, everything from art to maths to woodwork to physics. I got the top average in my school for school certificate, and I won competitions, from swimming races to music, art, and design and speech competitions. Once these problems started in high school, I achieved less and less. I couldn’t cope with schoolwork, I did poorly and dropped out of subjects. I stopped doing art and playing music. I felt as though I was useless, I just screwed everything up. I was a perfectionist I guess. When something didn’t work out I would throw a huge tantrum. I still do sometimes... when I have a difficult assignment, I will just get stuck, I’ll get a mental block, and I’ll end up screaming and crying to my parents over the phone. Anyway... I set these expectations on myself... and when I am having an up day, I can do it all! I can paint pictures and make posters and organise meetings and whatever else. But when I am having a bad day, I can’t cope at all. It all seems to hard... and I can’t cope, but I feel guilty because I feel as though there are all these things I should be doing.

Sometimes when I’m really bad I seem to shut down. Everything seems so far away, and if feels as though I’m dragging myself through thick liquid. It feels hard to speak... I feel as though I have slowed down, but everything else speeds up. I feel as though speaking is almost impossible... sometimes I freeze up, and I feel like I’ll never be able to move or talk... and I’m willing someone to ask me a question so that will break through. A friend once observed me when I was like this and said that I curled up so tight she thought I would disappear. My voice was very quiet and high pitched. I remember feeling dizzy and shaky.

Sometimes when things get too much, I walk off. It’s not a totally conscious decision, I think I just get to the point where I can’t keep an eye on myself any more, and I just wander off, often in the middle of the night, I’ll walk for kilometers, but I won’t remember much of it. Sometimes I’ll get paranoid. I’ll be scared that people are after me, and I’ll dive into the bushes to hide when cars come past. Sometimes I get scared that I’ll wander off like that, and not quite be conscious of what I’m doing, and just go completely mad and never come back! Sometimes I think that people can read my thoughts. Often I believe that everyone hates me, that I’ve done something terrible, unforgivable, and everyone is angry.

I find it hard to judge where boundaries are in relationships – with friends, counselors, tutors, just about anyone. I tend to find the boundaries by tripping over them and breaking things, and then it is too late. I need people to be very clear about what is ok and what is not ok, otherwise I push too far.

Everything is just so intense! I think that is the scariest thing. Even going to a movie can be scary, it can trigger a huge high, or a crisis... I can get so caught up in the story that I loose touch with reality.

People often get fixated with the fact I cut myself. They see my arms, and they say oh, you poor thing, what’s going on, can I do anything to help? For me though, the cutting isn’t the point. It’s the feelings that lead me to cut myself that are the problem. I cut myself for lots of reasons. Because I feel so awful, and it calms me down, or gets me through it somehow. Because I hate myself, and I want to hurt myself. Because it seems like the only way to get people to take me seriously. Because sometimes I feel so bad, and there doesn’t seem to be a reason for it, so I feel like my feelings aren’t valid... but if I cut myself, then there is something that is wrong – I’m hurt! Because sometimes I feel completely numb, I feel like everything is so far away, and cutting myself makes me feel alive again.

Sometimes it feels like its all too much. Sometimes I don’t think I can keep living like this.

And sometimes, like right now, I just feel so unbearably tired.

Posted by Fionnaigh at February 21, 2003 08:20 PM