• About

SuperDepressed

SuperDepressed

Tag Archives: self-harm

14th April 2019

14 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by SuperDepressed in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

anxiety, chronic pain, depression, graphic self-harm, intrusive thoughts, mental health, mental illness, self-harm, suicidal ideation, suicide

CW (Content Warning: suicidal ideation, self-harm, suicide):

Yesterday was the first day in a while that I woke up and felt like I wanted to die. It was beyond the feeling of wishing I didn’t exist anymore–that feeling is an old friend, and I try not to let it bother me too much–no, yesterday, I actively felt the urge to harm myself.

I don’t usually go into this much detail, but I need to get it off my prefrontal lobe (I’m out of practice, uni was 2 years ago, but let’s pretend that’s where the synapses for our current thoughts reside). I’m gonna give another content warning here, because this is about to get graphic.

When I woke up yesterday, I was overwhelmed by visions of me stabbing myself with a variety of rusty farming/maintenance tools. I used my own hands to drive wood-handled weapons (they were being used as weapons, anyway) that I don’t even know the names of, into my eyes, ears, neck, stomach, throat. I saw myself in a quiet, abandoned barn, far away from curious stares or offers of help, removing my vision, hearing, and eventually my life, forever. I felt sad (just sad–not depressed, or miserable, or like crying–just a normal, low-level sadness) during the stabbing portion of my thoughts, coupled with a bone-weary exhaustion. There was a flicker of anxiety (when do I *not* experience at least a flicker of anxiety?) that I might be too weak or tired to finish what I was doing, which spurred me on to finish the job.

(Looking back, I am rather taken aback by the undeniable normality of my feelings and responses: sadness at a regrettable event, a little anxiety that actually helps one to complete their task, rather than the debilitating type I typically suffer, etc. Such “normal” responses to such an abnormal situation… ordinarily, it happens the other way around, and I’m crippled by a minor setback that most people would hardly notice. Anyways. I digress.)

As the anxiety sparked a final push of energy, I imagined driving the final blade through my own neck, nearly severing it on one side, I felt such intense relief and even a frisson of pleasure. I saw myself topple to the ground, my body torn and raw in places, bright red blood already drying to the colour of tea stains in the bottom of an old mug (drying on clothing I don’t own, by the way–I don’t know if I’ve ever bought a flannel shirt and a pair of pale, straight-leg jeans). My hair was long, like it was until about 7 years ago (I still mourn my hair–like Jo March in “Little Women,” it was “my one beauty”) and I seemed a little heavier than I am, now.

Parsing through the memories of those thoughts, I suppose I might’ve been looking at me when I was about 17: starting to lose a little weight (which I gained back, never actually hitting a “normal” weight until hyperemesis with my 1st pregnancy) still with waist-length, curly brown hair, wearing some male relative’s clothing, and in a rural community not unlike the one where I grew up. I was near the sea, though. I never lived near the sea until moving to the UK… which I did at 19. 19-year-old me, a little slimmer than I actually was, then? So odd.

This wasn’t a dream–I was definitely awake–but it really knocked me, to have such an intense, self-harming…. vision?… out of nowhere, before I’d even sat up in bed. I was a little off with Hubs, yesterday. I suppose this explains that, to some extent.

I wonder if it’s time to increase my antidepressant. Or change meds, or request some talking therapy. I feel a little flat, a little worn-down, lately, and I’ve had a cold for a week or so… I didn’t think I was getting BAD again, though.

Maybe it’s just April. This is my least favourite month. Or–my chronic pain has been worse, lately. Maybe this is a stress response caused by intense physical pain, and I don’t want to kill myself, I just want to kill the pain/stop hurting. Then again–that’s what most suicides are.

And maybe I should go see my doctor.

My Narcissistic Ex

02 Monday Jul 2018

Posted by SuperDepressed in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

abuse, anxiety and depression, BPD, controlling, intimate partner violence, intimidation, mental health, mental illness, narcissist, relationship, self-harm

I finally blocked him, not that long ago–my mental health has only improved, in subsequent weeks.

During our final conversation, I told him that he’d had no right to start a relationship with someone who was mentally ill, unless he was willing to make the sacrifices they needed in order to continue improving their mental health.

He argued with me for an hour, I’d guess, accusing me of everything from saying mentally ill folk don’t deserve romance to lying about my motives. The sum total of his words were: “how dare you not accept the crumbs of my attention I’m willing to give you, the weeks or months of not talking, and then not be thrilled to hear from me when I finally deign to reply to your message or send one of my own–my girlfriend is mentally ill, and her needs come first.”

Throughout the entire conversation, he kept making references like the above, which let me know: he thought I was talking about when he began his relationship with his current girlfriend, who has Borderline Personality Disorder.

He never once understood that my words were an indictment against the years he spent deceiving me, lying to my face, and pretending that I “deserved” to be treated that way (abused, in a word) because he didn’t agree with the morality of some of my life choices.

I wasn’t talking about her, you pure-blind narcissistic idiot–the person you’re looking at is not necessarily the person at the top of everyone else’s thoughts.

I was talking about me: about the suicidal ideation that you were bored of hearing about (in pretty much those words: bored, tired of, doesn’t make an impact anymore….) the self-harm that I tried to hide from you (yet you *still* shouted at me for doing it, after following me into the bathroom to watch me shower) and most of all, the insistence that it wasn’t abuse to scream obscenities at me, call me ugly names, shove/restrain/throw things at/hit me, or coerce me into sex when I was so obviously stiff and scared and not in the mood.

I’m sorry for her, because she’s not equipped to deal with you, and you’ll take advantage, because that’s what you do… but, as ever, until I finally gave up the fight, I wanted you to just once acknowledge how you treated *me*.

One Post a Month–My Daughter

26 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by SuperDepressed in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

asd, autism, autism parenting, autistic, autistic spectrum, parenting, parenting a child who self-harms, self-harm

Look at my blog. I haven’t looked in any depth, but I feel sure I’ve noticed this trend on numerous occasions, and it certainly holds true for this month and last month.

What is it that makes things seem so much sharper (things past or present, or future worries) in this week of the month, every single month? I have very regular periods… I’m guessing it’s therefore something to do with my menstrual cycle. For whatever reason, at this point in the month, I feel more creative, but also more sensitive. I’m actually not hugely productive; I’m too busy trying to quietly deal with all the stuff that hurts me all the time, but is worse this week.

Tonight, I was lucky. My daughter (I’ve got to stop calling her my little girl–she’ll be 12 soon, and autism or no autism, she’s becoming a woman so fast the changes are more visible each month) was hysterically upset, self-harming, and saying she hated us all and wanted to live somewhere else… but she calmed down relatively quickly. I asked her to lie down in my bed, turned the big light off, and rubbed her back and shoulders and then her head (which she’d been hitting) as I suggested ways to make her feel better. I told her some stories about what she was like as a baby (she loves that, for now at least) and after a while, she felt safe again and went back to her room. Later, she came back to sit with me, and I wrote her some limericks (not THAT kind of limerick; a child-friendly limerick about her toy goat, another about her brother’s toy goat, another about her dad’s cat, etc) and it was glorious to see that she understood what I meant when I explained about an A, A, B, B, A rhyme scheme.

I don’t have any particular expectation that she’ll remember anything about rhyme schemes tomorrow, or be able to sound out one herself, even with prompting; but I don’t have any expectation that she won’t, either. She is the queen of keeping herself to herself, especially if she thinks she might have to demonstrate her learning before an audience (a prospect which visibly terrifies her) and so, as with so many things in our lives, we’ll have to wait and see.

There’s something ironic in the fact that one of the few sentences my daughter can utter, even in extremes of despair or stress when other words have vanished from her grasp, is a vehement and slightly guttural, “I HATE waiting!” Oh, Naomi. I know you do, baby. I know. And we’ve been waiting all your life, to see if you’ll catch up to other kids, to see what your diagnosis will be, to see if you’ll ever talk again, to see how many of the words might eventually find their way back to you.

No. That’s wrong. I won’t take her successes away from her–the words didn’t just fly back of their own accord, she went out and searched for them, and found all the ones she lost and some more besides. If she has fewer words at her disposal than most 5-year-olds, and fewer still when she’s in distress, that’s still thousands of words more than she had when she was 3, when ALL the words had disappeared. But I digress.

Lucky. I am so, so lucky. She and her brother have been my joy for so long, even with all the worry and fear and heartache being a mother causes, I can’t remember what joy was from before they got here. Did I ever truly feel it? Maybe as a very small child, when it was mostly just me, my own mother, my baby sister, and our dog (Pepper) and our cat (Miss Molly) and my dad was mostly not there, but sometimes there, and he didn’t *always* shout at Mama, and sometimes my Mimi (my dad’s mom) would let me come over and she would feed me a whole bowl of blueberries, deliciously cold from the fridge and sprinkled with sugar, and I knew I was her favourite grandchild and that everyone who met me loved me and thought I was clever and special.

But since those days–which came to an abrupt halt the summer I was 3–the truest joy I have felt began with the birth of my children. From the moment she arrived, I have loved Naomi more than I thought it was possible to love another human being, and I genuinely thought I loved my parents and siblings and close friends with all of my heart… I was wrong. I didn’t know. Naomi taught me unconditional love, and I am so lucky for having her.

If I could change one thing in the whole world, though, I would make it so that *she* could be the one who feels lucky… and I don’t have any way to do that. I guess she’ll have to keep waiting.

Enter your email address, and the blog'll email you when I post anew.

Join 61 other subscribers
Follow SuperDepressed on WordPress.com

Support My Writing?

amandaquirky@hotmail.com = my PayPal; thanks for even considering me.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • SuperDepressed
    • Join 61 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • SuperDepressed
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar