Don’t quite know where to start this entry, so.. three deep breaths and here we go.. Don’t forget that spoonful of courage before you dive in!
Seriously.

Today is a week ago since my little brother’s wedding, and it has been a pretty hellish week for me. Went down, deep below the surface of living, drowning in pain. And I’m only now, slowly, slowly re-emerging.

It’s what I do when I’m in the depths of despair (to use an Anne of Green Gables-ism). I disappear. I cut off from everyone who could possibly make me feel better. It’s a many faceted thing; it’s firstly self-deprivation – a sense that I simply don’t deserve to be in touch with the people who love me the most and who would actually be willing to do anything to help me. It’s also a wish to protect them from the blackness that I’m feeling, almost as if I worry that I will somehow drag them down with me, tarnish their purity with my own darkness. And I don’t want them to see me when I’m at my very lowest. Because it’s an excruciatingly frightening thing to witness. I know this from personal experience. This last aspect – the wish to protect – extends first and foremost (although not exclusively) to my sisters. But it’s a double edged sword.. I want to protect them from the experience of seeing me at the verge of suicide by not being in touch with them, but because they know me so well, they know that I would never ever cut them off in this way unless I’m actually at that point. Which, I imagine, is just as frightening. And so knowing that I’m doing that to them, well, it feeds into this cycle of self-disgust, and I end up being even more angry with all that I am. And round and round I go.

During these last few days I have been going from being all-consumed with pain, just curled up in bed, crying, unable to move, speak, think, to completely switching off all emotions. From one to the other in three quarters of a split second. And it completely freaks me out. Because it’s when I do that – when I switch off suddenly like that – that my impulsively destructive behaviour comes into play. Spent two full days playing the choking game repeatedly, coiling a cord round my neck three times and pulling hard until I black out. A dangerous game, that really isn’t a game at all, since it could potentially have a deadly consequence. But I just can’t stop myself when I’m like that.

It’s like there is so much pain that I forget – or worse – ignore the rational part of myself, the part that wants to live and wants to work through my issues, and all I can think is to make the pain go away, any way possible, including killing myself.

Needless to say, it’s been a pretty rough week for me. And I’m not entirely sure I’m over it. But, yesterday I had another worried text from my sister, which, for some reason got through to something inside me: “No blog and no sound.. Makes me wonder where you are..”

And I thought to myself, I just can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep punishing myself and others for something that simply wasn’t my fault. So I texted back.
A single word. “Drifting.”

To which my beloved more than sister replied:

“..but somewhere below you there’s people who love you. ..and they’re ready for you to come home..”

So, I guess that’s what I’m doing now; trying to find my way back home.

xx

Drifting by Sarah McLachlan

Lyrics from Drifting © Sarah McLachlan