Trigger Warning: suicide, drug/alcohol mention, self-hate mentions, self harm
I’m sure we’ve all had days like this; you wake up feeling oddly refreshed and motivated. Maybe it’s much easier to go out of the house than normal or maybe you feel more comfortable around the strangers outside, but you can definitely tell things are easier somehow. Then the next day comes around and you wake up with that sinking feeling…”Things aren’t like they were yesterday.”
It’s always hard having a good day and then realizing how few and far between those days seem to come. You get frustrated that you can’t seem to keep up the good pace that you had handled so well the day before. My good days are pretty rare. It’s rare that I wake up and don’t feel hopeless or suicidal in some regard. It’s rare that I can think of something I want to do and actually do it. Most days I spend so wrapped up in my head and in trying to sort my thoughts and feelings out I just sort of go through the motions of “life” without actually experiencing anything. It’s easy for me to see why I end up getting so wrapped up in change when I do have good days because the rest of my days are very bleak to me. I won’t describe my good days as manic, because I don’t want to risk appropriating the term in any sense, but I would say they are frenzied for me. As soon as I wake up and don’t feel the dread I start planning my days, weeks and months ahead. And I mean intense planning. It’s something like this: “If my mental shit is gone then I can start looking at going back to college, oh and I should put in an application at Ulta and Sephora. I should also create a walking schedule at the gym down the street and plan to go to that Starbucks and read for a few times a week.” I know it’s hard to understand these plans in context because you don’t know much about me, but I know many of you understand how extreme social anxiety can be and how harshly it can interact with other mental illnesses…what I’m saying is that most of you understand how grandiose these plans are for someone battling multiple mental illnesses.
My issue lies with my thinking. There are many parts of me that still haven’t come fully to terms with my limitations and pacing. I was able to go through high school and some of college because I repressed all the shit I am dealing with now. I was a complete mess and using alcohol, self harm and occasionally drugs to mask all the mental turmoil so I could live my fantasy of being someone “normal”. Obviously that wouldn’t last forever, but I am still very much upset at myself for not being a “normal” person in my own eyes. There is a deep level of self hate I have and a deeper level of hate I have for those who harmed me. When I experience my good days I automatically think as if things have permanently changed and I can just start going back to my life before. I want that to be the case so badly and in the end it makes the next day even worse because I realize that things don’t work that way with trauma and mental illness. There is no straight line or “optimal path” to recovery and management, which is part of what makes mental health management so tricky and difficult. In general people want things to be easily comprehensible, straightforward and consistent….mental illness is rarely any of those things.
I’ve been in therapy since I was 13, and I realize what I privilege it is that I have been able to afford it. At the same time I go through periods where I get frustrated and angry. Surely after 10 years of talking and working through the same stuff I would be better, right? It is taking me a long time to let go of that outdated and useless perspective. I may be in therapy for the rest of my life if that is part of what manages my illnesses and I need to learn to be okay with that. I can’t look at it like it’s some black mark on my being or like it’s a judgement of who I am. When it comes to mental illness thinking in permanent or linear ways only sets me back and I want to promise myself that I will get past those perspectives so I can further love myself.
-M
The Iceburg Burgeoning 