Content Warning: This piece involves depression, self-harm, suicide and eating disorder. Please don’t read it if this will upset or trigger you.
Read moreTag: self-harm
Broken
Day 28 of 30 Days of Poetry
Splintered shards sit.
You see only my ghost,
Afterimage of when I was whole
While my pieces fall silently.
My hands cradle my head,
Keep the lees of my consciousness
From spilling beyond resurrection.
You see only my painted mask,
This skin that is not my own,
This skin I can never cut deep enough
To release the demons inside.
The Arrogance of Sanity
As a child I used to imagine having a mental breakdown, a bout of insanity as an escape from what on the outside might have seemed a wonderful upbringing but which wordlessly forced me into a shape designed by others. But my mind remained stubbornly rational.
Read more(mis)Handling Overload
I’m just going to relate something that happened to me today. I’ll warn you now that I describe self-harm. Read more
Reach Out, I’ll Be There
Yesterday evening (UK time) I posted a status on Facebook where I set out how I was feeling due to depression and anxiety.
Just venting here.
I’m exhausted. My anxiety keeps flaring up with no obvious triggers, the depression is with me more and more. I’m getting seriously eye-rollingly sick of feeling like this so much of the time.
I’ve got some seriously strong urges:
– To run away to old, familiar places.
– To lock myself in somewhere safe, curl up in the fetal position and stay there.
– To just sit here and cry.I’m feeling kind of trapped. I feel like I’m failing. I’ve not got the strength left to keep on fulfilling my responsibilities. But there’s no escape, no respite. I don’t want to play any more but the merry-go-round won’t stop and I can’t get off.
It wasn’t generally visible: I restricted it to people I feel safe sharing more sensitive, personal things with. And, typically, I worried that it might have been attention-seeking.
I had not slept well all week; I somehow unproductively scraped through a day’s work with the assistance of much music, and was feeling enervated and pretty hopeless. Again. I think that it wasn’t so much attention I wanted as just a little acknowledgement. A bit of solidarity to help me feel less isolated.
I never used to reach out like this. I would keep it all in and try to handle it on my own. Well, I was prepared to do that this time too: I was seriously weighing up the pros and cons of self-harm. The knife is still where I put it, within easy reach. I didn’t need it in the end.
Reaching out worked. I never used to have any kind of network, any group of friends I could turn to for support when I was struggling. In recent years this has been getting steadily better. I still feel a reluctance to impose the burden of my feelings on anybody. But they are a compassionate bunch and what I received was caring and supportive.
They helped me reach the point where I could make an important decision: to visit my brother. It was something my daughter and I had talked about. We both feel a connection to that part of the country, a link to happy times in the past. In a way this really is fulfilling one of the urges I felt: running away to an old, familiar place.
I phoned my brother, checked when he would be around, and then organised what dates my daughter and I could manage. Suddenly I had an escape, the promise of some respite, and I started feeling positive. I messaged one of my best friends to share the news: we ended up chatting for hours, well into the night!
I slept well, cuddling my plush toy penguin as usual, and woke up an hour before my alarm feeling better than I had for ages. Before lunch the time off work was booked, as was the hotel. I can’t deny I’m feeling incredibly excited about the trip.
More than anything I am amazed by how much different I feel just within 24 hours. To go from despair bleak enough to make cutting myself seem an attractive option, to this hugely positive feeling of anticipation and excitement. I wish I could bottle the feeling and save it for the next time.
I know I will feel down again, the depression is always there in the background. It’s not a case of, “Hello darkness, my old friend.” Circumstances affect my mood: it swings between highs and lows. But the highs don’t shine a beacon of hope that is visible from the depths, and the lows don’t drag me down when I’m soaring. All I can do is live in the moment and respond to it in whatever way I am able.
But one thing I have definitely resolved to do is to make time to keep in touch with my friends and, as much as I am able, to go and meet them, spend time with them. They are well worth the effort.
Toxic Masculinity and Suicide
I’m not a man but I am well-placed to write about toxic masculinity.
I know what it feels like to be surrounded by people expecting you to live up to their expectations of what a man ought to be. To be repeatedly shamed, teased, or bullied for allowing the mask to slip, revealing the person behind the act.
Forty-odd years ago in a hospital in Manchester I was born. I’m guessing some doctor took one look and decided I was male: that’s what went on my birth certificate. I’m still living with the consequences of their decision.
I might have been given the label but that’s all. It didn’t mean anything to a baby–why would it? But it influenced the way everybody around me interacted with me. How they spoke to me, how they dressed me, what toys they gave me, what future they imagined for me.
I wasn’t given a choice, not even made aware that alternatives existed. So as I grew older and became more self-aware I felt more and more that there was a gap between what was expected of me and how I felt inside.
I’m autistic: there are certain behaviors like hand flapping and toe walking that are natural expressions for me. An autistic body language. I was teased and bullied for them in school and worked hard to suppress them.
But not all the behaviors I had to suppress were related to autism. Others–mannerisms, speech patterns, responses–were shamed as being “girly” or “sissy”. I had to learn the rules to be seen as acceptably male, to conform.
That’s the essence of toxic masculinity: conform or be punished. You will be bullied. You will be abused. Until you fit in. Or you die.
You see, it doesn’t take long before you feel you’re being watched every minute of every day. You watch yourself, alert to every slip. The pressure to conform instills a deep and abiding fear and anxiety.
Living with that day in, day out wears you down. You learn to hate yourself, hate the fact that you must conceal your desires and feelings, that you must hide yourself. You go through every minute of every hour pulling levers behind the curtain of this fake persona to keep yourself from harm.
You become depressed. You wonder why you make the effort when you will never be free. You might self harm just to feel something real, to do something to reach down through all the layers of deadening armor between you and the world.
It’s easy to feel suicidal. It’s understandable. It takes away the crushing pressure of the trap you are caught in. I tried to kill myself a couple of times. It wasn’t like TV and the movies try to show it. There was no note, no plea to the world for understanding. Just utter, wordless despair on a lonely, dark night with a handful of pills and a load of alcohol.
Most of the people who made me feel this way had no malicious intent at all. They just projected their expectations onto me, expectations of masculinity. I’m not male, but even if I were I would have been subjected to the same pressure to conform.
That’s why it’s toxic: it poisons you, poisons your mind with its relentless drip, drip, drip. “Man up!” “Grow a pair!” “Sissy!” “You’ve got no balls!” “You talk like a girl!” “Poof!”
There is no single, right way to be male (or female). There is not a single characteristic that all people of a particular gender share except one: their own identity. Expecting people to conform to your idea of their gender is immoral, coercing them by shaming or violence is abuse.
Trying to prevent people from expressing who they are, even unconsciously by perpetuating gender stereotypes, harms them. It really is a matter of life and death. I’ve lived it, I nearly died. I know.
We Care A Lot
Being a carer is hard work at times. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not complaining. I do it through choice. But lately caring for Anne has become a whole lot harder. Her illnesses have gotten worse and she has become very depressed, frequently experiencing suicidal thoughts.
I can’t switch off from it. I’m receptive to her state of mind, and — believe me — when you’re prone to depression yourself it’s extremely stressful to feel the echoes of somebody else’s. It negatively affects my own emotional state and after a while, day after day, it builds up to the point at which I have to do my best to shut off. To lock myself away and wait for the overwhelming feelings to recede.
It is exhausting. I have found myself needing to take a break more and more often. And that is a cause of stress in itself because I feel guilty for failing to be there constantly. She relies on me, she needs my help, and I’m not always able to respond.
I’m aware that I’m not looking after myself as well as I would normally. I’m mostly subsisting on take-out food and candy. Things like washing are falling to a bare minimum. I’m becoming snappy far too often, my motivation is poor and I’m feeling low. Oh, and aspects of my gender dysphoria are increasingly intruding on my thoughts.
There is a feeling that I’m losing control, adrift and at the mercy of life’s currents. I know from past experience that this is a dangerous situation for me because it is a powerful trigger for self harm: cutting in my case. The thoughts and impulses are there, even as I write this. I sat for about an hour over the weekend holding a blade, just thinking about using it.
I haven’t yet because I do consider it something of a last resort. I’m just concerned that the time when I yield to my impulses is getting closer by the day: the time when I will regain the illusion of control over my life, at least for a while. The temptation is strong but so far my fear of falling into the cycle of dependency has stayed my hand.
The Clarity of Pain
ASSAULT!
Loud. Bright. Voice. Touch.
Stress. Retreat. Stim.
People stare.
Eye pressure.
“STOP THAT!”
“ACT NORMAL!”
Loud. Bright. Voice. Touch.
All too much. Overload.
Wanting to scream,
But no sound comes.
Confusion. Ravenous fear. Feeding
On the mind’s elemental chaos.
One hope. One chance to escape.
One solution to calm the storm.
The clarity of pain washes through
Like a tsunami. Silent wreckage
In its wake. Peace has a price.
Welcome Pain
I don’t usually put warnings up, but there are elements here that might be graphically disturbing. It’s a little poem about self-harm.
Cutting Relapse
It hardly broke the skin. (Probably just as well: the blade I used was a little rusty.) But I was in a bad place, my head scrambled by fear and stress: I couldn’t think straight. A tortuous feeling for one so reliant on intellect. So I gave in to the desire and experienced, in that instant as the blade sliced through a couple of layers of skin, a terrible clarity. A focus that cleaved through the turmoil. That intense instant of sharp, pure, cleansing, beautiful pain as I slowly drew the blade over my wrist.
Fully intentional, in control of my actions. No wild slashing for me: a slow, deliberate motion. Experience telling me just how much pressure to exert for the necessary effect without excessive harm.
What happened to cause this? I was cornered in my safe place, overloaded but going the way of dissociation rather than meltdown. But instead of being left alone to decompress I had to endure further provocation. I ended up with confusion rather than dissociation. The one beacon of hope, the one idea that my mind was able to present to cope was to relapse and cut myself.
I did it with the first blade I had to hand, on an old “waiter’s friend” bottle opener: I’ve used it in the past. I felt that same old release. The confusion sloughed away and my mind began to function again.
This wasn’t done for pleasure. It was desperation. I couldn’t see another way to regain control, to shock my mind back into its usual rhythm — just like defibrillation. It worked, and as the photo above shows I didn’t cause myself much harm. Not that I’m recommending this as a regular course of action.
I’ve had so much going through my mind recently; my blog posts didn’t give much away but I’m struggling: starting to feel burned out. I chatted to a few friends afterwards: they’re worried about me. A lot. They’re awesome and I don’t think I deserve them.
My Autistic Dance 