#... which looks like a fat seagull but nevermind

[the-head-in-the-clouds]

Inktober 2022- Day 11: Eagle

[zeldafreak911]

A sleepless night

You open your eyes.. it takes a minute for your brain to register the ever present fatigue. Nothing new though, it’s been 10 years now. what’s the time? Later than it’s socially acceptable to rouse on a weekday at least. You pull your exhausted body into a sitting position. Ironic isn’t it? That after a night of sleeping you can still feel tired. You wonder about how that’s possible some days. But not yet,the grogginess hasn’t cleared. It won’t for another hour or two. They call it ‘brain fog’. Funny word that, a symptom of myalgic encephalomyelitis. Or CFS/ME if you don’t speak gibberish.

Anyways, sitting up now, you put on a jumper, roll a smoke, grab your favourite lighter and put them in your pocket. You find trackies and ugg boots. Warm things; they help.

You slowly shuffle out to the kitchen. Bee-lining for the kettle. The family knows well enough now that their efforts at communication won’t be successful until post-coffee.

You make the coffee, warm up your wheatbag if it’s a particularly cold morning and you drag your feet along the ground and out to ‘your spot’ in the workshop out the back.

If today is a bad day for anxiety you’ll be fighting off the urge to vomit right about now. For no reason at all. Literally just your brain deciding to glitch out on you. A psychologist told me once that it sounded like I was anxious as soon as I wake up. That’s nice brain... just be anxious to fucking exist then.

You pull out your tin, pack a cone and smoke until you aren’t gagging and fighting the urge to throw up like before. Some days there’s no fighting it... no stopping it either. If it’s a good day you smoke as many cones as it takes until your brain is sufficiently numb.

What am I trying to numb myself from you ask?

I couldn’t honestly tell you for sure. Some days I’m curious, some days I don’t want to know and others I convince myself I’m not numbing anything. I genuinely enjoy the stuff though so no dramas there on my end.

After that you light your cigarette and take a deep breath of the sweet deathstick. You know you shouldn’t enjoy them as much as you do.. but you’ll quit eventually.

You sit outside for half an hour or so. Alternating between the coffee, cigarette and cones if you need a top up before going inside again.

Your back is already starting to hurt. Between your shoulder blade and your spine there’s a stabbing pain and there is a dull ache in the small of your back. You drape the wheatbag over your shoulder to ease the pain. It’s mainly from stress but poor posture isn’t doing you any favours. You try to sit up straight but somehow you always end up with your shoulders slouched.

Eventually you go back inside, usually once you’ve finished the coffee.. or the smoke. One or the other.

Most mornings as bad as it is, it’s part of the morning brain reboot to go out for another smoke pretty damn soon after that first one. The rest of the day you aren’t as bad but for some reason need to have two smokes in the morning or else you’re left feeling unsatisfied. Almost like you have an itch you can’t scratch.

It’s pretty similar to the first, just less cones and you probably made another coffee to take outside. Always need to have a drink out there with you or else you’ll have a coughing fit and if it’s a gagging morning then game over, you’ll throw up. Sometimes you sit out by the glass table. That way you feel the sun warming you and the wind on your skin. You watch the family of birds that likes the nectarine tree. They’ve been coming to that tree every morning for the last few years.

If it’s the right time of year there will be seagulls squawking overhead. The sky is usually clear and bright blue in springtime and summer.

You walk over to the fishpond. Well tiptoe. If the fish hear you coming they will hide. You silently peer over the edge, trying to make sure they don’t see you straight away. You see two of your favourites, Philip and Shadow. Leaning further to see them. Your foot makes a noise and they scatter. Oh well nevermind.

Occasionally you can hear your neighbour singing. He’s blind, runs on his treadmill in the garage and sings along to whatever he’s listening to. He’s pretty tone deaf but it makes me smile anyways.. he’s got the enthusiasm.

You go inside and put your tin and lighter away. By this time you’ll usually be replying to a few messages. Most mornings you’ll go and play piano; it usually speeds up the reboot of your brain.

You play whatever songs take your fancy at the time. Usually a few easy pieces that you know well to warm up your fingers. After about 10 minutes you start playing some new songs you’ve been learning and any others you have a hankering to play. You’ll play anywhere between twenty minutes to two hours.

There’s nothing I’ve found quite as useful for my mental health as playing the piano. When I’m upset I channel the negative emotions into what I’m playing. When I had a big problem with self harm and I was trying to stop I would play piano anytime I had the urge to do something. Music literally saved me in more ways than one. But damn, on my bad days I’ll play piano more beautifully than you would have ever heard before.

Usually it’s about this time you’re ready to interact with other human beings face to face. Mum is usually pottering around the kitchen or the garden, singing or humming along to you playing or complimenting you in between songs she particularly enjoys.

She will ask if you’ve had lunch yet; you’ll say not yet. Most days she won’t press you further than that. She knows if she does you will either snap at her or cry. One of the two..

Food is a touchy topic for me. I’ve got an eating disorder. My psychologist said it sounds like anorexia. Here’s the catch though.. I’ve never actually fell to the weight criteria for a proper diagnosis of anorexia. Literally I’m too fat to have the mental disorder it sounds like i have. Go figure.

So instead the category it falls into is EDNOS (eating disorder not otherwise specified). Which is basically the everything else. That being said however, my brain works the way of a person with anorexia.

Anorexia, I’m sure you’ve heard of it but you probably don’t really know much about it overall. There’s the obvious, low weight. Anorexia is the one that when you hear ‘eating disorder’, the thought that comes to mind is generally anorexics. Did you know though that besides low body weight there’s; hair loss, brittle nails, dull skin, dry/flaky/scaly skin, heartburn, nausea, irritability, low moods, feelings of weakness and fatigue, dizziness, being cold all.the.time., lanugo (faint hair that grows on the body to keep you warm when starving), fainting spells, shaky/weakness in legs mainly.. and pain. Fucking pain. When your stomach is stretching or shrinking, either or hurts. Also fun fact your organs can shut down, you can go into a coma and die. If that’s not bad enough it’s statistically the hardest mental illness to recover from and it has the highest death rate. Fun times to be blessed with that bad boy huh?

My psych explained anorexia to me as anxiety+OCD=anorexia.

Fun little cocktail of mental health problems 😂

I’ve had it about 4-5 years.. well I know it’s been a problem for that long but it’s plausible that I could have had it before and not been aware.

It’s the worst. It’s literally hell. Living hell. It’s seeing yourself in a mirror and being disgusted. Or crying.. or just being plain disappointed in yourself. Sometimes you’ll see a good thing or two when you look but usually it’s this hostile person staring at your flaws.

It’s getting moody around ‘mealtimes’ (when a normal person would eat) and taking it out on those around you.

It’s the constant obsessive thoughts. Because it is an obsession. An obsession with food.. or more without it. But I’m not sure if you’ve been starving before. Like not the phrase ‘I’m starving’ but literally your body has gone into starvation mode. Almost all you can think about is food.

Now let me explain the difference between a bulimic person and an anorexic one. Someone with bulimia right about now will either have already caved or will be stuffing their face with food because they gave in. Usually they will purge it in some way; by forcing themselves to vomit, laxatives, diet pills, water pills, (driven) exercise etc.

someone with anorexia can also purge which is where it gets confusing but usually a bulimic person has these binge->purge sessions pretty regularly whereas an anorexic will hold out a lot longer and doesn’t really binge as much.

Anorexia is all about control. In case you hadn’t realised.

Usually it’s about striving to be perfect... and control is needed for that. It’s also a lot to do with outside surroundings being out of the person’s control. So in order to try and cope they will create control somewhere else where it may not have necessarily been needed. Honestly I don’t understand the way bulimic people’s brains work and they don’t get anorexics. Kinda weird that but eh. It’s hard to explain it all to someone who doesn’t have eating troubles at all because they simply can’t comprehend why you would specifically go against one of your most basic instincts.

I probably couldn’t explain that one really.

It’s a no brainer for people to know that someone with an eating disorder is insecure about themselves. But does anyone really know what that level of insecurity looks like or how it presents itself? Probably not.

It’s nasty words and short tempers. Misunderstandings and overreactions.

It comes off as sad and desperate.. attention seeking. It’s jealousy, the worst kind imaginable.

Tears, voices cracking, puffy eyes.

Sobs that wrack your soul and hearts shattering with each breath.

Stinging eyes, throat hoarse, bloodied knuckles and skin you tore away from your fingers.

Uncontrollable tremors, your heart pounding too loud in your head. Make it stop.

It’s not being able to breathe. Thinking you’ll die.. fuck a panic attack isn’t how I wanted to go?!

It’s pushing people away before they get the chance to hurt you first. Only to apologise the next day and beg for them to stay. Go away! Come back!!? No! Fuck you!!

Go. Stay. GO. STAY

I’m just fucking sorry.. okay?

I hate that I do this. I hate that you care. I hate that I’ve forgotten how to care about myself. I wish I could change these parts of my brain. I’m like a ticking time bomb or a slow acting poison. I will paralyse you.. suffocate you. Maybe leave nothing left.

Someone told me all I ever do is drag everyone down.

Another asked me if I wanted to bring everyone else down with my problems.

No. Not at all.

So I stopped talking about my problems; and that’s how I’ve come to this carcophany of thoughts and feelings and insecurities. And the worst part is that’s not even everything.

People with an ED have thought distortions. That means they don’t see themselves in the way others do. People think this means purely physical but it can mean personality wise too. So because of this, if someone compliments me I don’t really take it in. It’s like.. a filter or something that’s always there and only certain things get in or out. The compliments rarely make it through the bubble. Insults and criticism however, they stick in my brain whether I want them to or not. They will literally cause an ocd tick about it going over and over in a loop on repeat. And I believe it too.. it takes a lot to drill these ideas out of me. Like for example that one about all you ever do is drag people down was like 3 years ago. And it’s like i can’t remember the way the memory looked but I can hear that person’s voice clear as day.

It’s fucked how people from my past haunt me like that. To the point I hear their voices. In a way it’s getting close to a full blown episode if I’m at the point I’m properly ‘hearing their voices’. it’s sort of like a memory.. but too vivid. Like I think one memory I had I got the words right but the voice I was hearing was the wrong person. It took me a long time to remember who actually said it and it really confused me. They’re like echoes in my head. Sometimes I can control it and sometimes I can’t. Which is terrifying in itself. I don’t often talk about these things let alone remember them myself.

A full blown mental episode for me is bad. They are bad for anyone involved.. and sometimes those not involved too. I’ll lose the plot. Won’t eat right, won’t sleep right, hearing things, imagining things.. my brain plays all kinds of tricks on me. But the biggest part is that I’m scared that ‘something’ is coming to get me and I’m convinced that if I sleep I’ll be off guard and won’t be able to protect myself. The level of terror I have though it’s like a fucking demon is coming to get me or something that no one will be able to protect me from but myself. Metaphorically speaking it does make sense but at the time I see it very literally. I wouldn’t even want to know what I’m like from someone else’s point of view there. I get scared to talk, paranoid as anything. I’ll mentally be incapable of doing anything that requires much thought process on my own. And also I’ll have something that I’m fixated on that has usually caused said episode.

People don’t know what to do though when they happen. Because if you aren’t qualified how could you know really. And my problem is I’m intelligent. My brain has the power to pull the wool over my eyes. So I’ll be convinced I’m better until something pops my little bubble/filter/distortion barrier and it’s like oh my fucking god I’m just as bad as always. But anyways, I tried to read a lot of things to like help myself mentally. But everything I know.. the mental illness knows.. and can use against me. It’s hard to explain but it’s literally like the worst sense of betrayal and disappointment when you snap out of it.

Self sabotage is a pretty human thing but that level of self sabotage.. like touché brain you impress me nonetheless.

Sometimes I wish I could look into some kind of magical crystal ball or scrying mirror and see a parallel universe where I was never born. See how things would be. Then I would like to see one where the night I took all those pills and laid down to go to sleep, that friend didn’t message me and ask me how I was just at the exact time I didn’t care enough to lie.

The last one I would like to see is a parallel universe where Amy survived.

Then again maybe the last one wouldn’t be a good idea. I think it would break me to see that and then come back to a world where she died at 7.

I don’t think i really explained BPD in this rant. That’s borderline personality disorder. And no I don’t have split personalities that one is multiple personality disorder or DID.

BPD was given its name because a number of patients were presenting in the ER with psychotic symptoms but they themselves were on the cusp of being psychotic and neurotic. Therefore, ‘borderliners’. It’s a lot more to do with emotional disregulation than with personalities. It’s been found in studies that people with BPD have an overactive amiygdyla (however you spell it.) and that part of the brain controls emotion and emotion regulation.

A good way to describe it is through the sims. Imagine when you’re creating a sim and in the traits section there is one you can’t unselect called which is like a supertrait that controls the rest. I don’t really know mine but it appears it’s like insecurity or something similar.

And then there’s the emotions. Imagine the sim emotion bar thing. That’s a normal person. Now a person with BPD has this same bar but doubled at the top and bottom. So twice as big. It’s great with good emotions. You feel them so deeply it warms your soul. But the other side is the doozy. You feel twice as shitty when bad things happen. Literally people with BPD feel emotions in a different way from normal people. Their brains function differently... it’s not one of those ones you just have to look on the bright side and deep breathe because that shit won’t fly with BPD.

You also have intense feelings of emptiness, loneliness and sadness that is a constant.

You lack the ability to self validate like others can. Basically say you have an idea.. you won’t know it’s a good idea until someone tells you it’s a good idea and then you take that as like acceptance or they have ‘validated’ you. On the other hand we are very sensitive to invalidation. This means that any time we have been invalidated (made to feel wrong, someone is saying something isn’t right, criticism etc) or even perceived invalidation. That one means when you think that someone invalidated you but in reality they didn’t.. the outcome is the same. It makes you feel worthless, rejected, sometimes suicidical, unimportant and the list goes on and on.

People with BPD are always at risk of ‘problem’ behaviours, self harm and suicide. Problem behaviours include things like drugs, risky driving, promiscuity and breaking the law.

They also have incredibly intense and unstable relationships and are prone to sudden outbursts of emotion.

There aren’t any medications proven effective for BPD clients at present. It is possible though to learn the behaviours that they lack and some people go on to not meet the criteria for BPD after years of therapy.