I'm Alive

To get you up to speed with my current mental state, I'd like to share a Facebook post of mine from September 9th:

a selfie

CW: suicidal

First, I’m getting help, and am safe right now.

I’ve generally found that talking and being open about my shitty mental health helps, hence this post. (Apparently I feel the need to justify talking about my feelings.) My current situation has been going on for a few days and this feels like a good time to start talking openly about it, since I know talking openly will be part of recovering.

I have a long history of suicidal ideation (since I was twelve), but my relationship to suicidal ideation was always fear of suicide. On Friday I stopped being afraid, and was actually considering it. Fortunately, something convinced me to stick around for a bit longer. That’s when I took this photo; I kinda wanted to capture that “oh shit I have to deal with these emotions since I’m sticking around” feeling.

I went to a walk in clinic on Friday, and I went again today because the emotional pain hasn’t lessened and...I can’t convey how much it hurts. It just hurts so much. It’s so much pain that when I had flashbacks yesterday they were the same level of pain that I was already in, and am still experiencing today. It’s the equivalent of experiencing a flashback to trauma, but imagine that the flashback isn’t passing and I can’t get away form the pain.

I’m still working through what triggered this, and will talk to my therapist on Wednesday about it.

I experienced a paradigm shift on the night that I wanted to die and chose to stick around for a bit longer. (Now that's a sentence I never thought I would write.) This shift might be best described as "What's the worst that can happen, I already wanted to kill myself, fuck this bullshit." In many (good) ways I'm still the same person I was before, but this new attitude has also allowed certain changes that are allowing me to get closer to the person I want to be.

Most importantly, I know what it's like to completely trust myself now. It's somewhat ironic that I learned to trust myself in a moment when I was in such an irrational state of mind, but hey, at least I got something positive out of that experience.

My newly found self trust and "fuck it" attitude has allowed me to already start making positive changes in my life. I'm able to address old thoughts/beliefs with a fresher approach, so that I finally have a hope of moving on and healing. I feel like I've been able to shake some of the trauma that has been weighing me down and controlling me; certain trauma doesn't seem to have the same hold on me when my thoughts are "Yeah well I wanted to kill myself so how scary do you think you are?" I'm exploring new ways of self expression. And I'm finally having conversations about things that needed saying ages ago.

I'm still not ok. I'm still in an immense amount of emotional pain when I'm not numb. I'm still spending much of my time in bed, unable to do much. But I'm crocheting. I've managed to ask for help. I'm working on self care, which includes basic things like (ideally) eating when I need to. I've actually made myself a "care package" of sorts that I'll write another post about. I'm watching educational YouTube videos. I'm breaking down old ways of thinking and creating new thought patterns; which is a painful process that takes most of my energy, and brings me back around to the fact that I'm still not ok. But hey, I actively want to live again, and I can finally really see a way forward. That feels like a win to me.

semicolon henna tattoo

Part of why I stopped writing here is that I didn't want to make this blog all depressing by always talking about how depressed and anxious I am. Fuck that, this is my blog, and one of the things I've realized is that I can totally make this into a mental health blog. Hopefully the topics I explore will expand over time, but if my mental health is all I can find to write about for now, then that's ok. I've given myself permission to write about my fucked up head as much as I want to here.