The Wooden House

I ran my fingers over the dry, splintering door frame and across the smooth glass panels. I ran my mind back in time and my eyes over every surface.

I twisted the key in the lock; once hidden out of sight. My heart twisted with it, as if I was tearing it out with my curiosity. As if opening that door was the best and worst thing to happen.

The carpets had been rolled up and the photographs hung lifelessly on the mahogany coloured walls. The dolls slept in chests and the video tapes slumbered in drawers and on side tables. The childhood I had known so fondly was carefully yet so ruthlessly leaving the house and manifesting in me once more.

I went into the bedroom; it was hot and sticky, it was the way I remembered it. It was like not a thing had been touched, not the dolls house nor the literature concerning fairies and magical creatures. I had believed so much in fairies. I had believed in guardian angels. Until the life of that house, the life holding it together was taken away.

I walked to the swingset, the dust path I rode my first bike down, the house who's owners children used to play with me. We didn't speak in tongues, but in childish ways. Not understanding each other wasn't an issue, because the beauty of being a child is that speech isn't necessarily the native tongue. Children speak in bodies. In ways to break barriers and social constructs. In ways I can only dream of understanding as fully again.

Then I braced before I broke the threshold again. This time, the house was still. A chill ran down my spine as I imagined the suffering that cursed the walls. That cursed the life of the house. The entrapment that eventually brought her to her demise. It felt altogether different and indescribable.

As I examined the place in which she died, I felt reconnected. I no longer felt distant and I was able to feel sadness. You wouldn't believe me if I told you i missed the sadness; the fullness of emotion, even if it wasn't happy. I felt in the middle. That's the way to put it; not better or worse, but in the middle. Not of something or anything or anyone. Just. In the middle.

It is for you to decide whether I speak of visiting my nanas home since her passing, or whether I simply fantasise about an eventuality that might allow me to feel again; a look inside my heart. My house with walls and now a lack of life.

Depression Awareness Week

This week is depression Awareness Week, a time devoted to removing the negative stigma surrounding mental illness and giving people the words to say when faced with difficult times.

I wish my friends had the words when I first fell down, so they could pick me up again. And I wish my mother had the words when she saw the scars on my arms, so she might support me and tell me exactly how she felt.

It really hit home last weekend, whilst I laid in bed with my best friend after a night out… She turned to me and told me she wishes it never happened, not to me. She told me she cried so many nights and she hoped she would feel the pain, so that the weight on my shoulders might be lifted.

It broke my heart to hear this after all the damage had been done.

In order to raise awareness, here is my story, so that someone else may be saved…

My depression began several years ago. It started just as feeling worthless, but slowly progressed into self loathing and suicidal tendencies. I began to look in the mirror less and care less about my appearance; I simply didn’t care.

Depression progressed into self harm, to bulimia and to suicide attempts. Thinking about it now, I could be dead and have never known that really, I was loved and cared about. I could be dead.

It was a hard, long road, deep into the heart of depression, like slowly descending a chasm, soon to hit rock bottom.

I spent many nights alone and I seldom left my bedroom. I slowly lost hope that I could ever recover, and left my extroverted persona behind.

However, a young man has become my blessing. He had been my best friend for years, knowing myself and my scars better than anyone could, and accepting and loving me nonetheless. Now, I am both happy and proud to have fallen head over heels for him, and him for I. He makes me the happiest I have ever been and inspires me to become a better person. For everything he gives me, I could never thank him enough.

Unfortunately, this does not mean I have left depression behind completely, but I am slowly becoming less weighed down by the overbearing sadness.

If I hadn’t know what I do now, and hadn’t failed, I would be dead and wouldn’t have all the opportunities and happiness.

Please pass on this message to everyone you love and care about, because depression is not always obvious. If you care about someone enough, words will provide the best healing.

The Truth

The truth is that I’ve told a lot of lies lately, too many to count on my fingers…

I lied to my therapist as to why I couldn’t make my last session. I lied to my mum as to where I was going that day. Simply, I had gotten to the point where I didn’t need her words telling me I smile when I’m nervous and I have issues because anyone that knows me well enough could’ve told me that. And I can’t tell mum I’m skipping my sessions because I know she knows I’m not better and she has to think I want to get better, or she’ll worry.

I lied to my best friend when I told him everything is fine. See he’s on holiday having a great two weeks away from me, except from the fact that he’s missing his girlfriend like crazy. She’s my other best friend. He ensured I’d cut things off with the boy who brought me pain and I wasn’t lying then, but I had to make out like I thought I was better off without him.

I lied to the boy I’m falling in love with when I told him I’m not scared or worried that he’s a psychopath. I love him all the same because nothing can change how far these feelings reach, but I’m scared of loving him, because of what he can be. Whether it’s the false charm, the manipulation or the lying, I will never know. I know I shouldn’t love him but I can’t help it. His dark hair and eyes on his tanned skin, his husky voice, his nicknames for me, his posh accent that slips a little when he uses slang, his arms wrapped tight around me, his lips on mine… These things all draw me closer. And he’s been away the last three weeks, but the longer he’s gone, the more helplessly I fall.

I lied to my friend when I told her I was happy to be alive again, that I was okay again. Maybe I’m okay but things aren’t all well or how they were before everything happens. I lied when I told her I was wearing all my bracelets because I felt summery and they didn’t rub on paper when I wrote. I lied when I told her they were only old scars and I wasn’t hiding any. But I didn’t lie when I smiled, because it was one of the best nights of my life and for once, I forgot about things for a little while.

The worst part is I lie to myself too much- I tell myself different stories in my head to cover up the appalling things I’ve done. The way I look up and down in the mirror, I pull at my arms and my stomach and tell myself I’m ugly but that evening I’ll tell myself I told myself I looked beautiful, to try and comfort the hardness of my heart. It’s probably compulsive and excessive, but now I can’t help it and I wonder if I too, am becoming a psychopath, just like him, and now we’re one of a kind.

I don’t know if that helps or makes it worse because people look down on people like him and I, but for once I can be at peace with myself because I am like him, and he likes me and he sees me as indifferent. And I don’t know how bad that’s going to get, or how scared I’ll be, or even how soon I’ll decline. But I know I won’t beg myself to stop or to be happy because that’s caused me way too much heartache for my liking.

Summer Break

So yesterday my summer break began…

School finished at 12:30 after the big assembly as usual and I’d even been nominated for one of my subject awards. Following “the big assembly”, I hung around for a few minutes, saw an old friend and then proceeded to leave for my friend’s house so we could begin to get ready for the evening.

I went to work with her for an hour, in which we cycled round the village hills delivering prescriptions for the pharmacy. Most of the hills were steep and large, but I told myself that this was simply another way which would contribute to my daily exercise; something that’s become very important lately in the way of changing my current body image. It was tiring and dragged out, and I wasn’t exactly wearing attire suited for the situation, but we made it, I had a shower and we left for the party.

Her mother remarked on the lack of clothing I was wearing, at which point she said “Did you forget to put on a skirt?”. I plastered on a fake smile, followed by a fake laugh, only to be followed by a judgemental look as I got into the car. Suddenly, my outfit wasn’t such a good idea such a good idea any more, and my heart was sinking fast towards my feet.

The night to follow was a good laugh, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, but something wasn’t right because my best friend wasn’t there. For the past week, myself alongside her boyfriend have had the task of telling everyone she’s too ill to be in, and it’s been tough- partly because I missed her and partly because I hated lying to my friends, but needs must.

However, now my summer can begin. The beginning of a peaceful, stress-free 6 weeks to be filled with partying, work and working out. I have to hope that everything will sorts itself out and come together in the coming weeks, or I don’t know how I’ll make it. I intend to make it the best it can be- going to festivals, going to parties, relaxing with friends…

But who knows whether that will happen. Everyone else can afford to go on holiday to beautiful places, leaving me here, only seeing them intermittently. So, this summer I’m going to have to find a way to make new friends so I’m not lonely

Stress

I’ve been stressing a lot lately, perhaps unnecessarily or perhaps because I’m too afraid. I won’t tell you I’m afraid, I’ll simply play with my hands, crack my knuckles, fidget in my chair and zone out because I don’t want to be deemed as weak and I don’t want you to see.

I don’t want you to see the pressing anxiety, or the panic attacks or the howling of my cries in the night as I press my head against my pillow or yell out the window. I don’t want you to see the dark, empty night reflecting in my eyes as the tears roll or the cold light of day as I close the door on a cupboard and hunch to the floor, quietly sobbing.

Because if you knew, you’d never look at me the same. You think you will, but I can’t prepare you enough for the words that with stick and slowly trickle from my mouth, with the back-stabbing feeling, with the disbelief. If you knew, you’d pretend we were fine and you wouldn’t tell other people so you’d bottle it up and later think to yourself “what has she become?” and not even in your thoughts would I be able to provide an explanation.

I’ve been stressing over exams, over failure, over disappointment, over being a drop-out, being a self-conscious person, being a worrier, being me. The exams determine the rest of my life- a single grade says whether I continue my education and whether I will go to university and therefore whether I’ll ultimately end up where I want to be.

And  I really thought that the distancing from social media and writing my blog could help, but apparently it doesn’t. When I don’t see all the bikini bodies on my news feed, I hear the mockery in the corridors and hold my head low. When I don’t see the notifications appear in the top right corner, I stare at my arms and I wonder why; why I let this begin and fall past me so quickly.

It clearly became obvious because now I’m being forced to see a counsellor once a week and it’s funny because they actually seem to think it might work. It might work to make me pry deep into myself and look for memories or a reason, but inevitably, it won’t because it won’t work to sit in that cold room for an hour, broken and falling apart. This woman thinks she can understand when she hears a solitary “yes” or “no” here or there, or the looks in my eyes because even when I tell her I’m empty, she pursues it anyway, showing hope she might magically unlock something, some feeling from somewhere in there, somewhere in the soul I’m doubting I have these days.

So my posts are gradually are becoming less and less frequent because I’m doing everything to keep myself as busy as I can, before I can start to think. I’m hoping it will work in my favour- that I’ll develop a more rounded outlook and a skinnier stomach. Maybe, just maybe I’ll make it happen.

But it’s slowly becoming more and more difficult to find the words for something so complex and dark.

What Keeps me Going

Too many times, I ask myself why I bother- really, what’s the point? And for too long, I couldn’t reply; I simply looked at myself, up and down in the mirror and put music on to drown out my howling, crying soul.

But for the first time, I’m starting to see why I gathered up the courage to go into that counsellors office, and although it offered me no respite, there were many reasons I carried on to return. There are reasons I cut, but there were reasons I never let the noose get too tight or the knife sink too deep, just like there are reasons I got out of bed, put on my long sleeve shirt and a half- hearted, weary smile.

Why? Because there’s there burning willingness or perhaps even desire in my heart to persevere somewhere inside a subconscious that seems to thrive while I sleep, as that’s when I’m at my happiest. There’s this hope that even when it was superlative, I was wrong. I was wrong to think I should be there not here, a hope that I would survive somehow, even when I hated life and its’ entirety and now there’s this hope that I will exceed, and I’m all too grateful that I stuck around.

I’m grateful to Sarah, because even though her scars were still burning and sore, she kept on giving. She kept on with her beautiful, courageous soul and somehow conjured up the time for someone so insecure and insufficient like me. I’d cry on the phone for hours and her voice would be trembling, as if she was on the edge too, but she’d bravely wipe her eyes and talk me down. She maintained a life of her own, full of unnecessary pain and hurt, and held mine up too; a life that needed constant nourishment and care.

I’m grateful to Olivia, because when she told me she loved me, she saved me that night. I had everything ready before me and had cut of all other conversations and those three little words came from someone who meant and still does mean everything to me and I couldn’t be so cruel. I couldn’t be cruel enough to leave my best friend to do this alone and I know I didn’t say it because I was selfish, but I love her so much, more than she knows. And I appreciate every thing, no matter how big or small, that she has done for me since day one.

And because of these people, I can now sit my AS level exams and proceed with my life. I can see where roads lead and search for my purpose. I can go for summer evening drives with my friends and have picnics by river and listen to the birds singing and the rush of the river between my toes. I can feel love and hope, rather than despair and fear.  I can take my life somewhere, knowing that I’ve been in the gutter but I have people that care about me enough to sacrifice everything.

And that, is what keeps me going.

Gone In The Morning

Every night before bed, I pray to God. I ask him to watch over my mother, and to send a guardian angel to guide her, as she’s gotten rather lost. She says things, she does things never used to and she doesn’t say the things or do the things that she used to. The only regularity in her life is waking at 5 am to walk the dog, feed him, sort the house and be gone around 7:30, as I do and in the evening, she returns around 6 pm by which time I’m either in the gym or at rowing and eats her dinner, studies and watches the television- we barely talk.

Most nights, I cry. I cry silently some nights, and others I scream out and howl, as if there’s a demon inside me being slowly freed, from the depths of my lungs, clearing my clouded conscience. I open the window in the dead of night and simply stare at the moon, allowing the moonlight to illuminate my pale face and make my red eyes sore and the cold to sink into my lungs, to tighten my chest and chill me thoroughly. My dog lays on the floor asleep and blissfully unaware on his pile of pillows and duvet; his legs move as if he’s running and he barks softly, under his breath. He looks so utterly peaceful and happy.

Then I draw the curtains shut and close the window in its’ hinge. In the darkness, I seek out the familiarity of my happy place; I don’t use my hands to feel and the moonlight has long since left my bedroom so I don’t use my eyes either. I know the room well enough to only need my fingers to gently pry open the drawer on my jewellery cabinet and to remove the razor from the third drawer down. My fingers gently trace the circular handle as I close it again, getting slower and my feet turn on the spot and I’m staring at my bedroom wall.

I reach out a hand to touch the wall which is braced with the cold of the night time breeze which hit it moments ago, and my fingers run between every photograph, every memory displayed before me and I apologise to every face I see, because I’m not the person they think I am; I’m not the person I wish I was, nor will I ever make them proud to have known me. So, I sit silently on my bed, as the springs creak to accommodate for my weight and I look my best friend in our favourite photo in the eye…

I tell her I love her, I tell her she gave me life like I never knew, I tell her she was the only thing keeping me alive. I apologise because I hurt her when I cut or burnt or scolded, I apologise because she gave more than I could ever give. I show her my arms and say to her:

“Look, honey. Look how clean they began to look. I started to look half normal. Remember the day when it was too hot and I forgot I was wearing a short sleeve t-shirt because it didn’t burn so much and I took off my jumper and you just looked at me? I felt your heart sink, as I let your fragile heart drop from my hands where I had kept it so safe for so long, as I sheltered you. I felt the despair welling in your heart and I felt it reach your eyes and I knew the pain of with holding the tears.

And after that, I stopped wearing short tops and you were the only one that noticed- I only saw you every six weeks or so, but you somehow knew I was different and when we hugged at Waterloo station, you’d rub my back like my mother did to soothe me when I was young, as if to tell me it’s alright, I’m safe once more.

But, tonight won’t be the night I stop cutting, and I’m sorry. You’ll think I’m not, but I am, I promise.

Because I don’t want to be here tomorrow… Can’t we run away? Anywhere except here, please.

But, that’s not going to happen. And  I’m sorry.

I wish I could show you Rome, or Greece, because it would have been perfect, and maybe I will. I just don’t know right now.

Sweet dreams.”

The tears bead and roll once more on my un-moisturised cheeks. I lift it to my skin, on my stomach or my legs, the tears subside and I let the blood run for a while, before squeezing a towel tight onto the cut.

I ask God if he’ll take me tonight, or maybe even tomorrow. If it’ll be quick and painless, or if I have to suffer to pay for giving up so soon. I ask if he’ll just let me think I fell asleep that night and never woke up, and whether he’ll allow my mother some peace. Whether he’ll keep her here a little longer to love my brother and see him into adulthood, and then let her drift away calmly when her time comes.

My head rests in my hands, as I rub my temples. A headache takes effect and I roll over to lay on my side, cuddling my teddy. I beg him that tonight was the last time and I read over the letter to my best friend and each one to every person I love and I sob gently as hopefully, tonight was the last time.

I fall asleep soon after.

It’s been a while

It’s been a while since I last wrote, months in fact.

If you have ever suffered with depression, you will understand the lack of feeling, or conversely, the numbing pain and sadness that manifests. And that manifestation is aloud to grow; whether it’s you drawing blood for the first time in days or weeks, or distancing yourself, or allowing yourself to consider life without you in the picture, it’s a brutal battle. Yet, an unpredictable one. One that can leave you with burns, scars or even nothing at all, except the suicidal thoughts among ‘small things’.

Over time, the small things grow, or accumulate like that of a cancerous tumour- it can be one that is allowed to cause mutations within one cell that was destined for doom, or it can be one that slowly overrides every cell cycle in every cell in the surrounding tissue. Eventually, that’s going to kill you if you don’t treat it, isn’t it? But that treatment will leave cannula scars, injection prints, scars from the whole procedure, and it’s all necessary to rid the problem, however there’s every likelihood it will return, and it chips away a little more each time.

The last few months have been the worst few yet, and I told my best friend how I’d been feeling over the past year. It was 8pm and I was having normal text message conversations with several friends, but I’d withdrawn my focus from our group chat. In turn, I said goodnight to each one, claiming I was too tired to see the screen any longer and naturally, they believed it.

At 9pm, there were two people I was talking to- Sam; a talented young man with spectacular eyes and a kind soul and Olivia; my best and only true friend. Sam and I were discussing a boy I had recently liked, and a few events that had occurred at a party a few nights before, and it was easy talking to him. Easy in the sort of way that I don’t type out my words to delete them and I don’t hesitate to tap the keys on my phone and easy in the sort of way that I knew that he really cared, but not so easy in the way that he couldn’t quite know, not tonight and not from me.

My conversation with Olivia was a little more complex, however. We had begun the night conversing over this boy and how I honestly wished I didn’t like him, how he had a tight grip on my throat and every time he got close to this girl, every time he looked as though he’d kiss her, he’d curl his fingers a little more and force his palm into my fragile neck. We talked for a while, but the burden of a million lies were wallowing in my head; lies that said “I’m fine” or “honestly, it’s fine” or “really, I don’t like him”.

The weight had now amassed to over 300 days of lies and hurt, over 600 days of suicidal thoughts, and around 400 days of suicidal tendencies, without any release or relief and without any truthful words.

That night, I was crumbling. And every day leading up to it, I was breaking the tiniest amount; it was barely visible unless you knew what to look for. And that night, I didn’t want to tell her, of course I didn’t, because no friend wants to hear that and she’s saved me so many times. She’s picked me up from step one more times than she should, and I shouldn’t be her problem.

Every day I tell myself “you’re not their bother, no one cares anymore”. And somehow it pushes me to the edge of the steepest cliff with crashing waves and a darkness beneath my feet, but at the same time, I’m somehow grounded with a new found strength.

But that night, I played the video that always sends me over the edge with my memory box open on my bed. In that box was, and still is, the knife, the old photographs, the brownie badges, the cards my Dad had sent me filled with money to compensate for his departure, the friendship bracelets and the memories I couldn’t quite put to bed. In my hand was my hand written note, pages long and a memoir to each friend I’d ever loved, and everyone that simply had no clue.

The tears were forming in my eyes as I told her “I just can’t, I don’t want to be here any more. It’s cruel keeping me here and I don’t care if it’s slow, if it takes hours, just as long as I won’t have to open my eyes after the pain passes”.

To which, she solely replied “But I love you.” And I couldn’t hold myself together any longer because I had let it come out, even when the words should have stuck deep in my throat, because I’d let down a girl that loved me.

I need not say that those words kept me alive, and for the coming hours they were all I could consider, for I, the needy, pathetic, ugly thing was loved by a girl with the most amazing soul, and beautiful eyes which captured an intelligence I can only dream of.

Over the last few months, I let myself fall into the trap of depression and anxiety, as well as emptiness. About the only time I am not empty is when I’m writing about my death wish, and that saddens me really, because I just can’t be happy. That need not dictate anyone elses happiness though, you this human reading this, you are beautiful and you can be happy.

And why? Because you are neither of those things. You are loved by someone who is blessed to have you, and you need to recognise that. You are not a burden or a waste- you are a character in your own right.

Depression is the worst state of mind because it doesn’t affect one part of your mind; it will take all of you down in one foul sweep. And it will feel like it’s endless and pointless, but that it’s kick- it wants you to give in, but you are not weak. You are most certainly not weak because you fell for a second, you are strong because you stand. You stand a living human, that has a wealth of gifts that you are denying this suffering world and it needs you.

WE need you, and you need us. But we, as a community will thrive and we will not settle for simple survival.

Dosing up

I haven’t been taking my meds lately, and maybe it’s why I’m starting to slowly go crazy again, back to who I used to be.

I haven’t been taking my meds because I want space, and I want freedom. I want to not be held down to some silly medication that’s barely helping anymore.

I look at girls leading happy lives, smiling all the time and being among a thousand friends. Then I wonder why. Just why. And why they’re doing this to themselves; why they’re trying to convince themselves their happy, rather than embracing who they are.

Then i realise, that like me, they create an alternative reality, inside their head to compensate for all the pain they endure in this world we’re doomed to live in. And ultimately, doomed to die in. The tell themselves that they can smile and if it’s convincing their friends, they’ll begin to be happy and feel the joy they’ve longer for; I tell myself to smile to rid my mind of my atelophobia and anhedonia.

Atelophobia is the fear of imperfection or not being enough- in my life I believe it stems from the low self esteem that originates in bullying and mockery. It’s got so bad I can’t look in the mirror and I can’t think about myself. Because in the mirror I see a girl with scars and horrid clothes and scraggly hair with an ugly face and in my mind I see her history.

Anhedonia is simply not finding joy in the things that once made you happy- a sad case but it happens to us all, and it hits some of us hard. For me it’s not finding joy in everyday that upsets me the most. I wish and I pray that I could, but I can’t. I can’t smile at birds singing or friends laughter or any form of wit. The only thing I seem to find any remote form of happiness is other people, and when you can change their lives for the better.

That is what spurs me on.

I guess I haven’t been taking my meds lately because I just want to be normal. I don’t want to be the girl popping pills in order to smile anymore. I don’t want to be the one who visits the nurse every lunch to dose up again.

But I guess I haven’t been taking my meds because I’m ready to give in. But somehow I’m not.

Somehow I’m falling in love. In love with this guy that makes me world complete and just holds me at night in his arms while his fingers wave through my hair and his hand rests on my stomach. In love with this guy when I look into his eyes, he returns the gazes and gives a cute little smile and tells me how beautiful I am.

All of this and somehow he doesn’t want a relationship. He’s never had one and he wants me to convince him. He’s scared of commitment, just like me but he just won’t do it. He’s scared of cheating but we’re so intimate.

Somehow it doesn’t make sense.

So i guess the real reason I’ve stopped taking my meds is because I want him to fall in love back, and this is the last resort.

How else do I make him fall in love with me too? I’m open to suggestion. Because I’m pretty sure I’m close, but not close enough.

And as to how to convince him this relationship will work and last? Please, I’m begging anyone out there to tell me.

A Page For My Community

https://www.facebook.com/polaroidprocrastination

This is the link to my page that will hopefully bring the world together. One day, we will spark a revolution and this is the start.