Sharing Our Innermost Thoughts

TRIGGER WARNING***

For about as long as I remember, my life has been driven by my feelings. It’s a constant roller coaster. I’ve always been to myself but only because I’m always in my head and I don’t realize. When I feel good I can be the most social person in the room and smile at literally every stranger I can make eye contact with, but when I’m down I get so lost in thought that I forget to listen when others are talking to me.

Over the years my ability to cope with my emotions hasn’t improved. I started cutting when I was about 14/15 maybe? I can’t remember but at first it started very rarely and only when I was under a lot of stress, then it became a thing I did when I was sad, which was often.

Around that time my family and I moved states and it was very hard for me because I am not good at making new friends and talking to people, so for the entire first year I refused to make friends. I only sat with 2 seniors at lunch in the library sometimes but we never talked. I just sat with them. I went into a deep state of depression. I’d stay home and sleep, write , eat or read. Constantly cutting mostly my thighs.

A year later I decided I needed to force myself to make friends and so I did but not with the right people. These people treated me very badly and because I was so desperate to be liked I didn’t care. After, these “friends” decided they would ghost me and so I found myself back in square one. So I started hanging out in my English teachers class all the time and she started encouraging me to write poetry so I did and I was actually not bad at it, but writing poetry and little cuts didn’t help me feel better anymore. I felt anger and sadness and an anxiety that felt like it was consuming all of me. So one night, I snapped.

I remember my parents were asleep and I had just got out the shower. At that moment I looked at myself in the mirror and just started crying then without a single thought I began to cut my hair and it made me hysterical. I remember looking at my hair and laughing then immediately thinking my mom was going to be furious. So I grabbed my hair and went in my room. Then, I just began to rash out, I had no control over my actions at that point, I began ripping my clothes out my closet and snipping holes on it with scissors. Then I saw my blade and I began cutting my arms (across not long ways, I wasn’t really trying to kms) . I’d never cut that deep before and blood began to go everywhere. I felt that the best thing to do was leave so I put on a jacket over my sleeping shorts and T-shirt and grabbed a bag and filled it with my poetry journals, tape recorder, and blades.

I remember that night there was a storm because there was a hurricane out in Mexico somewhere and it was POURING. At this point I’m completely out of my mind, I’m walking down the street aimlessly repeatedly singing “Night of Broken Glass” by Jay Reatard and repeatedly making cuts on both arms. The cuts were so deep they made my waterproof jacket wet on the inside with blood. I walked for hours and at some point walked on the freeway and ended up in downtown. It was about 3 am and no one was out and the cops that passed me ignored me thinking I was maybe a homeless crackhead. It wasn’t until at a gas station a guy was trying to get cigarettes but the gas station was closed. I was hesitant at first but at this point I was soaked, cold and mostly sane so I approached the guy. He was a tall big white guy around 25 years old and he immediately looked concerned and asked me if I was ok. (Forgot to mention I didn’t have a phone) I began sobbing and asked him to call 911 and he did. Meanwhile he stayed with me and talked to me. He was so kind, I think about him to this day. Hope he’s doing alright. The rest of the night was all a blur. I felt like so much energy had left my body I was numb. Numb to doctors taping my skin back together. Numb to my parents crying. Numb to the doctors asking a million questions. They diagnosed me with “Major Depressive Disorder possible Bipolar type 1 but it was too early to tell” . My parents refused to leave me in the hospital despite the doctors orders so I was discharged after 48 hours. There I met a girl, who truly had a reason to feel the way she did and I felt so bad. Like maybe I was being selfish and only looking for attention so I decided to get better for the sake of everybody. At first everything was better. I started going to therapy and my shrink was honestly the sweetest person. She made me feel so valid but I only went for about a month because she discharged me. I was okay she said.

Soon I stopped taking my medication too and not long after I started smoking weed. I stopped cutting at this point but now I was obsessed with being high. I would skip class just to smoke weed and then I’d go home and smoke more. This went on for my junior and senior year, I barely graduated.

Now, I’m an adult and I found a man I truly love but my thoughts always get in the way. I constantly think he’s cheating or is just using me. He constantly reassures me but I can’t help feeling this way. I’ve reduced my weed smoking as I feel it doesn’t have the same effect anymore. It just makes me think twice as much and trip about everything so I try to do it less and only with people I trust. Now, I started cutting again. The first time I relapsed I lied to my boyfriend and said it was an accident, it was really deep so he believed me. We live together so it’s not easy to hide it so he eventually found out and I promised I wouldn’t do it again. For a couple months I didn’t but recently I’ve been doing it a lot more and yesterday I cut my upper arm by my shoulder. I cut a lot so he found out. I cut the letters “FU” so i couldn’t lie. Now, I don’t want to keep feeling like this but i feel this is permanent and will only get worse. I don’t want to get my boyfriend involved in this and feel like I should cut it off cause he wants to marry me but I feel I have to learn to control myself first. I love him so much and it would break my heart doing so but I don’t want to hurt him as I feel like I’m getting close to a breaking point and I can’t get professional help because I have no health insurance. I don’t know what to do anymore. At this point I feel like a balloon close to bursting.

For about 5 years I’ve had this goal to become a famous singer because it’s what I love to do and I feel it’s the only thing that comes easy and natural to me but now I don’t know if i should even put my energy into it. What if it’s just me being manic, thinking I could achieve that? What if I’ve been lying to myself all this time?

I’ve been holding onto this for a very long time and if anyone reads this, I’m sorry if I made you sad or triggered. I just need someone to understand. Someone to hear me. I don’t know what to do anymore and to be honest, im not sure I want to do anything anymore…thank you if you read this far.

Love,
Creation