things-to-tell-my-therapist

[things-to-tell-my-therapist]

So turns out psychosis with mood swings is just schizoaffective disorder which I didn't even know was a thing until now

[things-to-tell-my-therapist]

Could I ever love an extension of me? Something of my own flesh and blood? If I was handed a child of my own womb, would I feel love at first sight?

I'd feel sorry for it. I'd want to protect it. I'd feel a duty to it, a duty so big it scares me. But would I feel love? I'm not sure. Caring for something is a form of love, I suppose. Raising and investing years of your own life into another is the ultimate test- we were literally bred for it, through evolution and natural selection. Unbroken lines of my mothers and fathers connect me to our ape-like ancestors and now the torch has been passed on to me. And so a decision lies before me.

I've been putting it off, though. For such a long time. For obvious reasons, at first; I was young and had no time for such dreams, I had an entire world to explore with no interest in playing house. Then, out of denial; no romantic interests due to insecurity and deep depression, I isolated myself and instilled the belief nobody would want that with me anyway. Now, because of fear; my relationship with my own parents deteriorated faster than I could cope and it's left me with a list of unresolved issues about family.

I suppose, however, it's something I'll be forced to face if I ever find someone. Many other people want kids so there's a good chance my partner would too. How would I face that? I'd fear I'd lose them. For some, it's an expected milestone they've been waiting their whole life to do with the right person. I'd fear I'd shatter their dreams, all because of my own problems. But if I loved them, and they truly loved me back, would I ask for help? For time? I've done so much of my own healing, could I ever swallow enough of my ego to allow that? Because I don't think there's any other possible way I could do it. Not now, not when I've never been loved enough to change my core beliefs. A chaotic life has left me with deep emotional scars, insecurities that I've only just started to challenge alongside fumbling my way through early adulthood. It's been overwhelming. Unbearable at times. Unimaginably incredible, too. But it all took time.

Maybe I just need time.

[things-to-tell-my-therapist]

Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't the only victim of the person who sa'd me. Maybe I wasn't even the first. Or the last. I'll never know, but I wish I could tell them they're not alone. That I'm not alone.

[things-to-tell-my-therapist]

I don't even know anymore

[things-to-tell-my-therapist]

.

[things-to-tell-my-therapist]

I don't like saying I'm not suicidal anymore. It feels like a half-truth. Like I've got my fingers crossed behind my back, gritting the words through my teeth. Because even though I'm now at a stage in my life that I want to live, I have things I want to do and see, I have people I want to spend the rest of my life with and be happy doing it- I cannot guarantee I will stay this way. That the thoughts won't come creeping back, that the compulsion to kill myself won't give me sleepless nights again, that I won't find myself back on that beach with an empty bottle of rum and bad ideas. Because it's always come back. I've gone through this so many, many times- I get bad, I hit rock bottom, I attempt, I fail, I rethink, I get better, I'm happy, then back to square one again and again and again.

I don't want to lie to the people I love that I'll be better forever when I know better. I don't want to give anyone false hope, including myself. It's soul crushing every single time, I'd rather keep myself pessimistic and everyone else too for that matter.

I just wish it wasn't this way.

[things-to-tell-my-therapist]

I knew about healing the inner child n all that but today had the realisation the woman I was on about last time wasn't a woman at all, just the angry teenager I thought I'd finally left behind

[things-to-tell-my-therapist]

Everything just feels so hard for no reason. To the point where I get so much anxiety before doing a task that I just don’t do it to make the stress go away. But that only works temporarily when the act of not doing most things in my life start to catch up with me. It makes me feel like a failure of an adult, that I’ve fallen so far behind and I’ll never catch up with my peers. I’ve always felt different, been different, but the one thing I could proud myself on was being ahead of mostly everyone I knew academically. It felt like the only thing keeping me afloat, that made me special where in every other aspect I felt underdeveloped or invisible. And now it feels like I don’t even have that anymore. I don’t feel defined by much else now except for being weird. And, on the surface, everyone would say I’m proud of that too, I make it my “thing” and laugh alongside them at my own weird antics. But it’s honestly something I’m deeply insecure about and have so many unresolved feelings towards. Because if I could just be normal I might actually have some direction in my life and not have to struggle so much. And it’s taken so much of my adolescence to realise being normal isn’t something I’ll ever have control over or master no matter how much I mask and laugh things off. Yet it’s still something I’m expected to aim towards, however unobtainable. It burns me out so bad. The lack of control destroys me with anxiety but also puts me in the worst depressed moods when I can’t even see the point anymore. I have to keep up this hopeful mindset that I’ll eventually get better and things will someday magically become easier, sometimes it’s so hard to believe. Sometimes I stop believing altogether- those times I try not to remember and still hold a lot of guilt over.

It's hard.

[things-to-tell-my-therapist]

I used to enjoy the chatter, the mind-numbing constant noise in the back of my head. I never felt lonely with it as a child despite being incredibly alone. I never felt bored because I could always check out and tune in, like an old radio under warm blankets. Sometimes I still do, but not out of boredom or loneliness, but out of mind-numbing fatigue and sadness. A sadness that feels so bone-deep, it feels like rot in my marrow, a forever hole nibbled out of my stomach (its contents leaking everywhere, like poison settling beneath my lungs and heart). The noise isn’t even the same anymore. It’s just screams and wailing and constant crying and sobbing directly into my ear. My voice, sometimes a child’s, sometimes a woman’s (she’s the meanest). It makes me cry to listen for too long, sometimes even a quick glance makes tears well up in my eyes. I have never wanted silence more in my entire life. I want her to stop screaming at me. I didn’t do anything wrong. Yet she breaks her voice and scrapes her throat raw cursing my name over and over and over again (some days I believe her). I need the child to stop pleading me to help her, she doesn’t exist anymore. She can’t be helped, she never was. Stop making me feel bad like it was my fault. It’s not my fault. I can’t stand listening to my own voice argue and fight and beg for forgiveness and punishment and freedom, stumbling over its conflicting wants in a never-ending loop. I can’t decide what I deserve. A lot of the time I believe I deserve to die. And the woman screams at me in her shrill voice why I’m still here, that I can’t even do that right, why were you even born? The child is inconsolable, she cries because she’s still afraid of death and can’t understand how I’ve become what I am. I’m trapped in a loop of swaying violently between living the life I begged so hard for and viciously ending it all. I want both so bad. So fucking bad I have to grit my teeth with the effort it takes not to beat my head into the wall and tear my eyes out of their sockets just to feel some relief.

I want to tell someone all this. But I can’t. How could I? How would I even begin.

[things-to-tell-my-therapist]

i will forever hate the feeling of temporary happiness right before a spiral

[things-to-tell-my-therapist]

I really don’t know how people can tell me to be open about when I’m feeling suicidal or about all the destructive thoughts in my head when we both know for a fact it just ruins everything if I do and doesn’t make a difference. I will still be thinking those things, screaming them in my head at myself constantly and it’s just not something you can sit down and have a chat about then move on to the rest of your day. You really want me to tell you what goes on in my head when I’m spiralling? You really want to know? It’s just flashing images of smashing my fucking skull into the wall or breaking my arm or tearing my goddamn eyeballs out. It’s screaming like I’m being murdered, shrieking at myself to do better to shut up to get over it to stop crying to get up and do SOMETHING but not being able to do anything. It’s that voice at the back of my head constantly telling me it would be easier to just end it whenever I can’t do the dishes or I missed a deadline. It’s screaming at people to go away when I’ve got messages I haven’t opened in weeks from my closest friends that I’ve left mid-convo but also feeling incredibly depressed at the idea of being alone and missing them with all my heart. It’s wanting to beat myself into a pulp yelling WHY CAN’T YOU DO IT, WHY CAN’T YOU BE NORMAL on repeat since I was 8. It’s this innate NEED to be understood but stopping people at every chance from doing so because I can’t bring down these walls without being intoxicated or in the middle of a breakdown. I used to rip my hair out as a kid and try to smother myself with my pillow every night before bed because I couldn’t stand the way I felt and my tiny brain couldn’t understand it. It used to be my nightly routine to kneel at the side of my bed and pray, beg, to the God I was taught was a saviour and cry myself to sleep every time He failed me. I would beg with tears covering my face for a friend, a better family, a better life where people didn’t hate me just for existing, just somewhere that I felt I belonged and wasn’t a burden or punished for being one. I got so used to being groomed that I would seek out adults on the internet as soon as I got access to it because their attention felt like a good thing and it made me feel valued instead of worthless. My self-esteem was purely built up from adult attention growing up and now that I’m nearly 20 I’m disgusted if someone even a few years older looks at me. The things I used to do to get their approval makes me sick now. My entire experience of growing up felt so performative and dysfunctional, I don’t even know who I really am sometimes because I certainly don’t want the person I remember to be me. I hate myself because I hate who I was and what I did and how I let it all just happen to me AND THEY NEVER GOT ANY CONSEQUENCES. NONE OF THEM. AND I’LL NEVER STOP HATING THAT OR MYSELF AND WANTING TO BE DEAD.