spirituallyyellow

[spirituallyyellow]

29/8/24 pt 2

I feel like absolute shit. My head is killing me.

I fell asleep for a couple of hours and I don't feel better for it. I had almost decided that I was going to drive myself and borrow the car W offered to loan me, and I packed up my backpack and picked it up, and then literally just dropped it on the floor and got into bed, and cried until I fell asleep.

This is so fucking exhausting.

[spirituallyyellow]

29/8/24

I am so scared that I'm pregnant that it's hard to focus on anything else.

Logically, I really don't think that I am - N and I have had plenty of sex over the last couple of months, but we've been really careful about condom use, and the only time we might have had a slight slip was probably a little more than six weeks ago. And even then, N says he is certain that nothing got into the danger zone.

Meanwhile, I am on high alert every time I experience so much as a twinge in my abdominal region. I keep praying over and over, "please don't let me be pregnant, please, it would ruin my life" and I know that sounds dramatic but it honestly feels that way.

I'm staying at my Nashville friends' house and I'm just having the strangest feelings about it all. I am really glad to be here, I feel really welcomed and it's peaceful here in a way that my parents' house never is. Like I just don't really need to worry about anything.

But then also last night while everyone was sat at the table talking, I felt so incredibly overwhelmed and I just had this horrible feeling of like, you don't belong here, you should get out, you are not wanted here, you are a piece of shit and it was genuinely for no reason whatsoever. Nobody did anything to make me feel that way. And then I felt so hot and nauseated and immediately my brain went to, you're pregnant when it was honestly probably just sitting too close to too many people in a tucked in area with lit candles, combined with my anxiety about all those other feelings.

I had a great time yesterday and last night. I met some interesting people, made a good networking connection, played fun games and laughed a lot and loudly. There was no reason for me to wake up in the middle of the night, again, wishing I was dead, again. It's just fucking dumbshit garbage.

I don't even know what I need in these moments, much less how to ask for it. It really does feel like God is just letting me suffer, even though that is in no way a reasonable or logical belief, given how many good things happened yesterday.

I saw W the other day and spent like three hours just sitting and talking. It was really nice - we just always seem to connect really naturally and easily on a deep level. It just feels so easy with him - I ended up saying way more than I intended to say, but it didn't feel like it was the wrong thing to do.

There was one moment where he was kind of leaned back in his chair and I just instantly remembered that moment all those years ago where I climbed into his lap and kissed him, but it was just for a moment and then my brain released it. It wasn't even a mutual our eyes met kind of moment - just a sudden memory.

His wife tried to kill herself last year, and it turned out to be at least partly caused by the hormone crash that happened three months after getting her Mirena removed. My Mirena finished in January, and then I tried to kill myself at the end of March. I am wondering if that's related.

If it is - if all this suffering just because of a fucking hormonal imbalance - I don't know what I'll do. That somehow feels worse because it makes me feel like none of my emotions are real, none of them are valid, it's just wOmAn PrObLeMs.

Because even if it is "just" hormonal, I still actually feel like shit right now.

Oh, I don't know. I feel like depression actively punishes me for being happy. every time something good happens and I feel happy and good, I wake up the next day feeling like I should kill myself.

This is really unsustainable.

[spirituallyyellow]

21/8/24

I wish I were dead. I know things will never get better.

[spirituallyyellow]

18/8/24

I knew I'd run out of steam for writing eventually.

I'm visiting home now for the rest of the summer and it's a lot.

I'm still not really better. I'm doing a better job of acting like I am, though.

My supervisor knows something's up. I haven't told him anything, but he knows. He was checking in with me about things I'm looking forward to in the future and just, poking.

I just did the CORE-34 OM on myself. It's not good - I'm in the severe category, and I'm pretty high up there.

I know something has to change, but I'm at a complete loss. I'm just so tired.

[spirituallyyellow]

28/6/24

My new therapist suggested asking myself every day, "Do I want to be alive today?"

And then, "If yes, why? What feels good about being alive?"

Or "If no, what's making that feel difficult? How can I keep myself safe today?"

So I'm going to try that.

Do I want to be alive today?

Sure.

Because I guess it would be really good to finish making this blanket.

[spirituallyyellow]

18/6/24

I had a horrible panic attack today. It was so, so bad. I got lightheaded from it and had to ask N to come get me from work and take me home.

Things feel really hard again. E wants me to send texts and voice memos about things I'm grateful for and I'm trying to, and I am doing, but it feels like trying to talk while drowning in treacle. Yes, there is a part of me that is grateful for those things - but it's also very small and mostly drowned out by everything else.

I sent a list of seven things and he made a comment about some solid growth from me and I get what he meant by it but if I'm honest it just felt very pressured. Like now I can't say when things are bad because then he'll think I'm not growing anymore, Lauren isn't living up to her potential, and I don't think that what some dude I barely know thinks should matter to me but right now either everything matters or nothing matters and I don't have an in-between.

"Some dude I barely know" is probably a little harsh. We have messaged quite a lot over the last six months, and known each other for a year and a half.

My heart hurts.

It felt really good today and yesterday when N came home to be with me when I was feeling so, so bad. I didn't really need him to do anything, I just needed him to be near me for a little bit, and he was.

He picked me up from work today and took me home, and I changed into pajamas and laid down in bed and tried to calm down and I just could not. He got in bed next to me and I pressed myself right up against him and buried my face in his side and just sobbed and sobbed. I remember choking out, "I hate feeling like this, I know that nothing is wrong but it just doesn't feel that way at all. It makes me feel so incompetent." And I cried so hard.

I ended up falling asleep for the afternoon. It was my daughter's birthday today, and I knew I really needed to be well so we could go out for dinner. I woke up about twenty minutes before we needed to leave, and N asked me how I was feeling. "Fragile," I replied, and I closed my eyes for a moment, came up with some backup plans, and as I said them, I knew that come hell or high water, I would be going out for my daughter's birthday meal, and I got a shower, took more painkillers, got dressed, and acted fine. And I was okay, right up until after we'd ordered dessert, and then I could feel my heart clenching in my chest and I said we needed to leave, so we did, and I came home, got back into pajamas, laid down in bed, and I'm still here. Just surviving.

[spirituallyyellow]

17/6/24

Supervision was hard today.

I'm tired of everyone telling me I'm being too hard on myself.

I wish I could just talk to somebody. Not therapy, not supervision, not debriefing, not family stuff. Just talk normally.

Everyone thinks I need a break. Hell, I think I need a break. J suggested going to the commune for a month. I wish I could make that work, but I know I can't.

I want to self-harm so fucking badly that it's hard to think about anything else right now.

[spirituallyyellow]

11/6/24

I've been working on this blanket for feels like ages. I mean, the whole point is that it's slow crafting, but still. I've spun (most of) the yarn, plied it, woven three panels to be sewn together, woven a tablet band to go around the edge, and I'm now working on sewing in the fucking endless fringes.

I mean, I don't have to do any of this, I am choosing to do it, but I wish I could do it a little faster. I'll be so excited when it's finished though.

I'm getting ready to apply to university to do a psychology conversion degree. This whole experience has been bonkers - I found it, thought about it, gave up hope on it due to not having a bachelors, came back to it, asked the course lead if an exception could be made, got an exception granted after several days, found out I wouldn't be able to afford it, couldn't find my masters degree certificate anywhere, found it, N called his mom to ask for help about how to approach a relative who'd been hanging an undisclosed amount of money over our heads for awhile, and then bam, a lot of money appeared in our account, after five years of it being dangled in front of us. So now we can pay down a chunk of our mortgage and pay for me to do this course so that I can go on for a doctorate.

I am the kind of scared-excited that I usually find myself in for university-related stuff.

I haven't yet applied because I'm waiting for my uni supervisor to confirm that he would be willing to write a recommendation for me, but I am just praying that he will check his email while he's on annual leave. I really want to get this application in by the end of the week.

[spirituallyyellow]

7/6/14

Yesterday my day was 90% awesome, and 10% fine, so I came home and had intrusive thoughts for ages, cried, and wished I was dead.

Don't worry - it doesn't make any sense to me, either.

I woke up at 6:45 this morning to the kids fighting, asked N to stay home with me for the day, wasn't surprised when he said he couldn't, and then I looked up finance stuff for going back to uni, got bad news, tried to pray about it, thought about D&D last night, and then fell asleep until noon.

Got up and made spicy egg rice.

I have so many things I really need to do today but I already know that I will achieve none of them because I'm fucking useless and shit.

I can tell I'm starting to wear people down. I knew, I fucking knew, that people want to feel like they can rescue me from depression, so there's a big song and dance about let's talk, how are you really doing, I care about you, blah blah blah, it lasts for maybe two months tops and then people are done. They are ready for me to be better. And when I'm not, it becomes a problem I'm choosing to have. The blame starts, and it is subtle, and probably unintentional, but it starts. Are you trying this, have you done that, have you considered, if you don't want to get better you can't, ultimately it's down to you LIKE I DON'T FUCKING ALREADY KNOW THAT.

I am not choosing to wake up and feel like I and everyone around me would be better off if I was dead. I am not choosing to feel like a totally useless sack of shit. It just happens, and I have to choose my battles. I can battle through it for work, I can push it to the side when I have to parent, and then I AM DONE. I've used it all up. Any of the supposed strength people are always telling me I have, it is absolutely sapped by the time I've done what I have to do, so when I look at tasks like editing my dissertation, or cleaning my house, or thinking more than fifteen minutes into the future, there just isn't the energy there to do it. The only thing I can do is hate myself for feeling like this and when people start subtly shifting blame to me, all it does is reinforce the way I already felt.

I wish people would just leave me be. I wish I would stop reaching out, I wish I would stop being taken in by those lies that people will care and help and whatever fucking else. There is ALWAYS an expiration date. I should know better by now. Even my fucking therapist is jumping to, "well but you survived being so sick, that must mean you want to live" and I have rarely ever felt so completely alone as when she said that.

I don't even know what to fucking do anymore.

[spirituallyyellow]

5/6/24

I'm spending too much money.

I talked about this in therapy yesterday - for the first couple of years of private practice, I was really good about thinking medium- and long-term financially, and then 2022 happened and N got arrested and I think I've just been seeking out dopamine hits since. Like I'm choosing actively to live in a scarcity mindset.

And I just can't afford to do that now - I've got bills I'm behind on (thanks, week off sick), I've got a supervision course to pay for, I've got a holiday to Scotland to pay for, and I'm supposed to be the one making the car payments and I haven't been able to afford that for three weeks.

I just keep thinking about losing that money the week I was off sick. I keep thinking I should have just pushed through and carried on working even though I know that's not remotely sensible.

It makes me think of when N and I were both depressed at the same time years ago, and we wasted, just straight up wasted, so much fucking money on nothing. I can't even ask anyone to help me because, like, it's my fucking business, I have to handle the money.

I had a weird letter from my accountant as well, and that's stressing me out. I've sent an email to her I haven't had a reply to. I have a sinking feeling that I've fucked up really bad somewhere, and it makes me want to just crawl under the duvet and quit everything.

I'm starting a new D&D campaign tonight and I am looking forward to that, though. I'm nervous about it, but that seems like a pretty normal feeling. I'm excited, too - it's going to be a planewalking campaign, and I love planar stuff. I love the way you can interact with philosophies and ideas in a really mechanical way.

I hope it goes well. Everything in real life feels very chaotic right now, but I've missed running a game, and I've missed exploring the planes.

[spirituallyyellow]

30/5/24

I would give up anything if it meant that I would just stop feeling like this. Anything.

I'm so tired of doing all the right things and it making no difference at all. This aching sadness is just too much to bear. I keep thinking of something Helen says in Jane Eyre - "it is weak and silly to say that you cannot bear what it is your fate to be required to bear."

But I am weak, and I must be silly, too, because I feel like I just cannot bear it.

[spirituallyyellow]

30/5/24

I feel like all the feelings I've held inside for the last seven years are pouring out of me now. It feels almost uncontrollable, but also like a relief.

I haven't got long to write before I need to go to work, but I missed sitting and writing properly. I got the Finch app to try to help me do some of the basic self-care stuff I really struggle with, and journalling is down as an "every other day" task. I obviously haven't kept up with it while I've been sick, and I did it the other day but it was on my phone which I don't like doing as much. This is probably really extra of me, but I like the sound and sensation of my fingers flying over the keyboard.

I've been feeling the need to reread the Brontës recently. Jane Eyre, Villette, Tenant of Wildfell Hall, even Wuthering Heights. There is something about feeling shitty and curling up with a book centred on surviving on wild moorland that just feels right.

In some ways I'm feeling a lot better than I was a couple of months ago - in other ways, I'm not. I don't actively feel like I want to die anymore, most of the time, but I also can't say I'm finding a huge amount of pleasure in living. I mostly feel resigned.

One of the bigger contradictions I have in my head is that on the one hand, I feel like I have big "dies young" energy (although I guess I'm not that young anymore), but one of my deepest fears, and one that I always have a feeling is going to come true, is that I'm going to outlive everyone I love and be totally alone.

I think that if I weren't a Christian, I probably would have gotten myself into a really bad situation by now. I said to someone recently that if I weren't a Christian, I'd be the scummiest person you know, and when I say that to my non-Christian friends they're all like "nooooo, you're so lovely and kind etc etc" but when I say it to my Christian friends, they're more like, "yeah, you definitely would be" and it's both funny and sad to me.

I don't exactly regret not giving in to all my self-destructive urges (not just suicidal ones, but all the little ones), but it almost feels like obsessive-compulsion - every time something goes wrong, I immediately think of all the ways I could just self-destruct, far easier than I can think of any other options, and I'll think about it intensely, going over everything, almost like I'm imagining a relationship with a lover, a really toxic one. One that ends with me hurting and alone.

It really does feel inevitable. Either because I've ruined all my relationships or because everyone died before me, but it does feel like I'll come to the end of my life and I'll be totally alone and hurting, and nobody will come to my funeral because I never let anyone close enough to care.

It's insane how I can write this and literally two entries before I was like "so many people have reached out to help me because they care about me or something????" fucking hell man. I hate being in my head.

_

So I work mostly with survivors of sexual violence, and even though I have made an effort to move away from that - or at least to lessen it - they keep finding me. Clients I've taken specifically because I thought they were unlikely to bring a lot of trauma to the sessions have then, after about 4-5 sessions, unloaded just some of the shittiest trauma. And I know this sounds awful, but there's only so many stories about rape, incest, and sexual assault that I can hear in a week without just... something breaking in me, you know?

Anyway, in the last month, I've had four different clients unload numerous sexual assault stories and so we've been processing it together, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up to me hearing about sexual assault every single day I've been at work throughout all of May, and I wish so much that I could go back to when I didn't quite understand how common it is. I remember when I was on placement at The Cursed Place, probably the only thing they rightly said was, "There are some things that once you know them, you cannot un-know them, and you should be prepared for that when you start working here," and that was so much more true than I understood at the time, and I thought I understood it really well.

Tonight I've got life drawing with J and I'm really looking forward to it. I've been really tired all week and really struggled to cope, to be honest, but I've tried to keep my mind focused on life drawing and I'm looking forward to it so much. I love the atmosphere there - the dim lights, big airy art studio, vibe-y chill music, and just staying focused on the present moment. It's just exactly what I want right now.

I wish I was a better Christian. I've felt like a really rubbish one lately, and I don't know if that's the Spirit giving me a nudge or if it's just my shitty, scummy, deceitful heart making things harder for me than they need to be.

[spirituallyyellow]

28/5/24

I just want to sleep all the way through the night. It’s been weeks since I have and it’s killing me. I’m sick and I’m beyond tired.

I just want to feel well.

[spirituallyyellow]

24/5/24

So when I said I was sick, turns out I really meant it.

That was probably the most unwell I've been in a very long time. I ended up going to the GP on Monday, which I hate doing - not because I don't trust doctors but because 1) I don't like feeling like a Sickly Person and 2) trying to deal with the NHS GP administrators is an exercise in self-hatred. And then the GP sent me to the hospital, and the hospital sent me to a ward, and I was extremely sick for about three days and had quite a lot of poking and prodding and scanning and puking and general Much Unwellness.

Without necessarily going into all the ins and outs of the experience (ALTHOUGH I CERTAINLY COULD BECAUSE YOU KNOW I LOVE TO RECOUNT DRAMATIC SITUATIONS), I think the thing that is mostly sticking with me is how, like, nice everyone has been to me.

Meg offered to pick me up for D&D last night. Steve offered to pay for my drinks and food because I hadn't been able to work all week. Jon sorted out ordering stuff for me so I didn't have to go up and down the stairs. Two people in my D&D group privately offered to loan me some money to make up for the lost income.

Daniella offered a visit at her house for me to go and convalesce. Sarah offered to send money. L&W sent money. Evan and his friends prayed for me. James offered to take off work and come visit me when I was in the hospital. Alice offered to do a bunch of cooking for us. Josh dropped off peanut butter cookies.

I don't know how to react to all this. I don't feel worth it.

I just don't understand it. It feels very nice. But I don't know what to do. Obviously I thanked everyone. But I feel so strange, almost like a trapped little girl trying to work out what everyone thinks she is so she can keep pretending to be it.

[spirituallyyellow]

20/5/24

I’ve been so sick the last couple of days. N had to be away for most of yesterday because he had to pick up our son from N’s sister, who lives several hours’ drive away.

I really struggled to cope - just in pain, feverish, shaky, all that. Tried to sleep, couldn’t really.

I did have a nice conversation with my mom, though. I was on FaceTime with her (I really, really hate being alone when I’m sick) and she did the thing she used to do when I was little, where she told me the story of the day I was born and then hummed old southern gospel songs until I was relaxed enough to fall asleep. Which I did, but not for very long.

Anyway, when N and the kids got home, N came up to sit on the bed with me and was just rubbing my calves mostly and I could feel my heart rate slow down. The pain that felt so unbearable felt a little more bearable. He talked in a low voice about the journey, and I suddenly realised how dysregulated I had felt when he wasn’t with me and how regulating just having him nearby felt.

I told him this, and he said he was surprised because he knows he’s not very good at comforting. I said, “It’s not that - it’s just being near me. That’s what helps.”

Over the last couple of years, our marriage has felt like a pretty fragile thing, but that made it feel more solid again to me.

[spirituallyyellow]

18/5/24

I've gotten sick and I hate it. It feels like a personal failing to be sick. Every fucking time I get sick I panic that I'm going to end up being just like my mom, where being sick is a constant thing that everybody has to plan their lives around. We couldn't go to an event that my daughter really wanted to go to today because I'm so fucking ill, and when I knew I couldn't go, and N wasn't going to leave me alone at home while I was so ill, so she was going to have to be disappointed, I fucking hated myself.

I don't know how I'm ever going to get better mentally when getting a damn fever sets me right back into a hole of self-hatred and disgust.

[spirituallyyellow]

17/5/24 pt2

I wonder how long I'll keep writing this much.

In high school, I wrote in my livejournal just about every single day - sometimes multiple times a day, and usually really long entries, too. I kinda believe that writing in my LJ was a major factor in surviving my teens and very early twenties. I wrote deeply personal stuff on livejournal, and I had a physical journal that I wrote in often, too, and then on top of that, I had an online friend who was quite a bit older and pretty much filled the role of my Internet Aunt who I could email for advice about boys, friends, school, body stuff, all that. It's such a risky thing in hindsight, but she was lovely and helpful - a really deep source of support.

I stopped updating my LJ every day when I went to the commune at 19 - this was before internet was easy to access and we had to schedule in half hour slots twice a week, and I was nervous about other people there finding it in search history or something. I'd update occasionally and wipe the history, but mostly I just wrote in my physical journal.

Then a weird shift happened where N and I went from being LJ friends to being RL friends, to dating, to being engaged and then married, and it felt strange to write about my thoughts and feelings when I wasn't always telling him about them.

I worked very hard to try to keep my family from ever being able to see my LJ, and I think when N made the shift to family, my brain kinda went, "my private thoughts are off-limits now".

I don't like it when people I see in real life know about my thoughts.

Anyway, eventually Russia bought and killed LJ, and that outlet disappeared completely. And I had kids, so I had less time and energy to write, and then it kind of became a bad association because every time I did write, it was because everything felt so awful I had to get it out, but then it meant that there would be huge gaps of multiple months or years and then a short entry that basically said, "Everything sucks, I don't know how to cope" and that was it. Just unscrewing the cap juuuuust enough to let out the carbonation, not enough to actually relax.

I think what makes this different is that I finally came to the end of what I could bear. And I do like typing and sending my thoughts out into the internet void - that's a strong hardwired positive thing in my brain, just because I had been doing online journalling for pretty much the entirety of my adolescence, to mostly positive results. I'm still in contact with some of my LJ friends, and obviously I'm still married to N.

The only thing I don't like about this is the lack of comment thread function, to be honest. LJ really nailed that.

Anyway, I've given a couple of people this address - I don't know what will come of it. I did it mainly because I didn't want to actually tell them the whole story - I preferred to link them to what I'd written. It's very exhausting to tell people you wanted to kill yourself because then they have feelings and I feel like I need to attend to them and I can't because my feelings are so horrible.

Also, how do you even comfort someone in that situation?

"No, don't be upset, I'm not really that great tbh"

"It's OK, you would have been a little sad for a short time and then you would have gotten on with the rest of your life"

"It's all right, it's just me, I'm not worth all this"

I don't think that would go over very well, even if it does feel true.

I remember a long time ago, the last time I felt suicidal. It wasn't even that bad, more of a hopeless feeling than anything, an "I'd be better off dead" but not really planning anything kind of deal. I went for coffee with someone I was friends with but not like super deep friends with, and she asked me how I was doing as I seemed a little down. I told her, very calmly, and she started crying, and I was one hundred percent bewildered. Like, girl you do not care about me this much, come on. Couldn't fathom it.

I still sort of feel that way, even with the friends I'm very close to. Like when Pam started crying on that phone call, I felt horrible and ashamed of myself, but there was a little feeling of, "but why though?"

And it's also extremely awkward and weird to try to move on from the conversation, I'm finding. Like how do you go from, Hey buddy, just wanted to let you know I almost tried to kill myself recently, no worries to here's this stupid gif I found? You don't.

I hate it when people say reach out or call me anytime. I have no idea how much they mean that. I don't know what their schedules are like. I don't want to be that person who calls when somebody is already having a shitty day and then all of a sudden they have to be on high alert for their suicidal friend. I don't even know what I want to say, 90% of the time.

It does feel like such a huge thing for people to not know about. It makes it hard to connect to people, especially in real life. I don't want to tell a lot of people, I don't want to deal with the reactions, and I don't want to deal with my inner anxiety gremlin constantly clawing at the walls of my brain, desperate to know what they're thinking.

In early 2020, before covid, I told my best friend from uni about my cousin. And because he was also training as a therapist, we were both really comfortable just straight up asking each other, "How do you feel after hearing this? What are you thinking? What's going on for you right now?" and both of us had the emotional intelligence and self-awareness to be able to name those feelings and sit with the complexity without trying to fix it.

Although, when I told him about my cousin, I asked, "What are you thinking right now?" and the answer was extremely simple.

"I'm thinking about how fucking proud of you I am, and how much I want to fucking kill this guy." He smiled at me, but not in a pitying way. In a caring way. Maybe a little sad. I felt too nervous to spend a lot of time looking at him.

"Do you see me differently now?"

"Of course not. Are you okay?" That of course not did so much heavy lifting. Like it was just a complete given that I was still the same person.

I smiled and said, "Yeah, I'm just - really shaky and sweaty," and he passed me his glass full of ice so I could cool my hands down.

R is really good at just moving on from difficult topics. Probably of all the people I could tell, he would handle it the best, but it's really overwhelming to think about letting somebody else in to all of this mess right now.

I need to do something this weekend. I'm kind of sick - one of these super lethargic, coughing, struggling to breathe sometimes kind of bugs. But I think I need to push through this weekend and do something else because I just can sense how easy it would be for me to spiral.

I've spent all day in bed today. To be fair, I really have been sick and I've slept a big chunk of the day, but it did feel appropriate. This has been such a hell of a week that I had no choice but to take to my bed, like in a Tennessee Williams play.

N and I had a really difficult conversation last night and eventually I said, "I just feel like if this was a Jane Austen novel, I could go live in a mansion in the countryside for a month with a kindly aunt and uncle while I recover from my melancholia."

"So we just need to find a rich aunt and uncle in the countryside," he said with a gentle smile.

I laughed, a little bitterly. "I feel like the closest thing I could have to that is going back to [the commune] but like..." and here I did start crying a lot, "I just don't have the energy for that right now."

He rubbed my foot and said, "Just because it's the right answer sometimes doesn't mean it's the right answer all the time. It does take a lot of energy to be there."

And when I think of going back now, honestly, I'm mostly remembering the amount of shame that got dumped on me, that feeling of, I can never do anything right for these people, I always misread everything, I make it too deep, I'm doing it wrong. I'm doing that place wrong, every fucking time. At this point, to be completely honest, I don't know if I'll ever go back. I'm tired of always being told the same old shit: I'm needy, I'm too intense a person, I always go too deep, I always look like I'm desperate for people to love me. And Andrew, years ago, telling me that I am dangerous when wounded, like I was a fucking dog.

I don't know what I did. That's what really upsets me: people tell me all of this every time I go there, but they never tell me what to do differently. I just have to magically figure it out.

And at home, in my normal life, I have literally everyone around me telling me the opposite - that I'm not needy at all, that I'm extremely competent, that I could do with being more needy, that I'm not too intense for people, that I'm kind and funny and make people feel cared for. It's such a wildly different perception of me that I just have no idea where to even start.

It all feels like a trick. Reach out to people, but not like that. Ask for help, but you have to figure things out for yourself.

You know, like, how am I supposed to deal with this anxious-insecure attachment when literally all the feedback I get about my behaviour is so wildly contradictory? I feel fucking paralysed.

I talked about this with J, my friend and office-share person, and my therapist, neither of whom are Christians, and they were both like, "It's crazy that anybody would see you as needy, I don't see that at all."

And then I have M from the commune being like, "I've known you for a long time, Lauren, and you are..." blah blah blah all those negative things.

And you know what actually, how fucking ridiculous is that. She hasn't known me for a long time - she sees a two week glimpse of me, every few years, during what is usually a really turbulent time in my life, and she's hardly ever even been in the house when I've been there. Even when I was there for the full term, seventeen years ago, I don't remember any significant conversations with her. I had a different tutor, who also gave me shit. It honestly makes me feel like I have Punching Bag written across my face.

I don't know if I'll ever go back - I honestly think at this point that I might not, I might just be done with it, but if I do, I can't see how on earth I could ever sit down across from her and get anything productive done.

I wish I'd had the wherewithal to stand up for myself and tell her to shove her tutorials up her ass. And Andrew, too. And I'm using his real first name because I'm done protecting the identity and role of some asshole who told me that being molested by my cousin wasn't significant enough for him and his stupid tutorials.

The only thing I miss about that place right now is sitting in the small study with a fireplace and a board game. But I miss that a lot, even though it's so small and stupid. It was just the only time in such a long time that I can think of feeling okay in. I almost wish I'd never had it because now I wouldn't know what I was missing.

I believe that God put me there, in that place, at that time, for a reason - so many things lined up to just fit perfectly - but damn, sometimes even gifts feel painful.