I have some very interesting contributions lined up for Razor Thoughts, and I will get around to posting them this week. However, I think that before posting anything from anyone else, I need to tell you a bit about my life—or the current state of my life. Mostly, I hope it will serve as an explanation to those of you who have sent contributions as to why I haven’t been able to get on track with the blog yet.
I’ve been having a hard time. No—that is an understatement. I’ve been having a hell of a time.
A few months ago, I started a new job. It is my first “real” job—the first job that has allowed me to be 100% economically independent. Thus, it is very important for me. This job, however, implies a lot of stress. In all honesty, I don’t think the stress is related so much to the job itself, but more with my inability to deal with pressure. I am too self-demanding (as my therapist reminds me repeatedly), and this has taken its toll.
About a month after I started this new job, I started getting sick. Basically, everything I ate made me sick. I went to several stomach specialists, and had about a million tests done, and nothing showed up. As the months went by, things got worse, and there was still no answer.
Finally, the doctors concluded it is all in my head. That is, it is all due to stress.
I usually would have denied such a notion except—well, the sickness isn’t my only symptom. About a couple of months ago I started having panic attacks. At first, I tried to ignore them, to force myself to realize it was all due to anxiety, but the truth is that they have gotten too bad to ignore.
I don’t know if any of you have ever had panic attacks, but, in a way, I think the feeling is very much like the need to self-harm, except in extreme. I mean… there is the idea that there is something WRONG and that you have to ESCAPE— or, in my case, hide at home.
I’ve called my old psychologist (she helped me with my self-injury a few years ago), and she suggested I go to the psychiatrist, though she believed I could get over it with therapy.
The thing is, my moods have been soo— so ANGSTY that the urge to self-harm has come in full force. Even when I’m not in the middle of a panic attack, I suddenly get afraid… and then, I feel guilty and start apologizing for no reason, and then I’m hyper and want to get “things done”, and then I’m in impatient and angry, and then I’m frightened and guilty all over again. Of course, my poor boyfriend has had to put up with this: from watching me become petrified at the mere thought of going to his birthday party, to hearing me apologize to him about 100 times a day, to having me yell at him because he couldn’t decide if he wanted to buy himself an ice-cream or not.
And then, I get sick again, and feel tired and depressed.
So, last week, it was all a bit much for me and I NEEDED to cut. It was—I don’t know. I had the logical notion that it wouldn’t help anything, but I felt TRAPPED- trapped in my sick body, trapped in this instability, trapped without being able to explain WHY I felt the things I was feeling.
I didn’t cut.
As much as I wanted to, I resisted. What did I do? I grabbed some paint and paintbrushes and started writing what I felt all over my body. I couldn’t put things into my own words- not yet- but I wrote bits of lyrics that I felt said what I wasn’t able to.
Then, I put on my clothes, and left for my first appointment with the psychiatrist.
The point is—I felt embarrassed I had done it. My boyfriend (who saw what I had done later that night) insisted that it was fine, that the fact that I had used paint instead of hurting myself was good. Yet, I felt like the stupidest person in the world. I kept trying to pull up my shirt so the psychiatrist wouldn’t see what I had done. What sort of grown woman does things like that? I’m almost 26 years old! I want to be independent, I want to marry, I want to be so many things! And then I go off and do something teenage and silly like this.
And I guess the reason I did it is because I’ve never been good at expressing what I feel. My psychiatrist asked if I had been having mood swings, and as much as my very loyal boyfriend and myself tried to minimize the situation, she saw right through me. She handed me some mood stabilizers, some anxiety pills, and told me to take a few weeks off work.
I haven’t yet started taking the pills. My psychologist had suggested that I consult her before taking anything, since psychiatrists tend to over-medicalize people. So, my intention is to go to my next therapy session and convince the psychologist that I do not need those pills.
Except—I keep feeling anxious. I keep feeling like tearing up my skin. And I HATE it, because I feel like I should be grown up enough to know better.
So this is my story, and my excuse. I apologize to everyone who has sent contributions that I haven’t posted. I’m very very sorry. I promise that I will do it soon.
-Dusty-
