The Cuts Deepen

******TRIGGER WARNING******

A few days have passed since my last really bad day. It’s not that I got better, I didn’t, I just wasn’t ready to let The Monster take over my brain for that whole time and so I fought, hard, to get myself back to being me. I played some Xbox games, I progressed with my jigsaw, I chatted with friends and I ate 3 meals a day. I guess that’s some improvement.

Is it better to tell a lie to somebody or to just completely ignore them? I’ve been branded a liar by my dad since the age of 18 and that hurts. Who makes something like that up? I wonder if he ever accused victims in the police station of lying. I don’t hold much confidence there. In my moral dilemma, I had chosen to completely ignore the people I was meant to see in the hopes of making things easier for myself. It would be better for them to think I didn’t want to be there, because that’s the truth, than for me to have to go there and be forced to deal with demons and triggers that I’m not capable of facing. I wouldn’t have picked up the phone had I not thought it was the therapist ringing with news. I wouldn’t have taken a real stumble down the stairs of depression had I not picked up the phone. I’m not saying it’s their fault; her fault for calling but I was, as often happens in this war, fine until I wasn’t fine and that phone call was the trigger to the whole spiral.

I was adamant that I wouldn’t go to their house and I had a plan. I was going to spend the evening playing on my Xbox; just relaxing and making the most of an evening to chat to friends and chill out. I could have lied. I could have told them that I had to go to counselling or I could have told them that I had something else planned with work colleagues but I chose not to lie. I thought it would be better to just say nothing. Apparently that’s not a good choice to make.

There was nothing for me to say on the phone to make things better. My Gran was worrying and that meant I had to go and see them. A half hour conversation felt like days. As I slumped in my desk chair, shaking from the effect of the images in my head, tears streaming down my face, my voice changed and I recall saying, caught somewhere between yelling and sobbing, that I no longer wanted to be alive. People don’t know how to deal with revelations like that. I don’t even think people who are trained to deal with them really know how. Surely they must be caught on some level between their professionalism and their personal opinion; I don’t think that you can 100% shut it off though in the moment it’s all professionalism. She told me she had a friend who committed suicide so her life never got any better. She thought it was not worth fixing and she ended her life. Maybe things did get better for her though? She wouldn’t have felt any pain anymore. If you haven’t felt the pain, then how can you judge it and say that it’s easy to just push yourself further and further. I need to be hard on myself, is what she said.

I know one thing. Guilt tripping somebody who’s feeling suicidal by telling them about a friend of yours who isn’t here anymore, doesn’t help. The only thought that I could see right then, was “lucky her”. My mind was overtaken with venom. I could see nothing through my hatred of them. The only clear way out from the consuming hatred and pain would have been death. Guilt is a strong feeling. I begin to hit my head with my free hand. I am almost convulsing. In the same way that I do when I have to deal with the tougher issues in counselling, I hide behind my hoodie but there is no hiding from this pain and this anger. I am not safe here, in my own room and on the phone to “family”. I wish it was a Wednesday and I could be safe at counselling. Not here. Not in danger of myself. I cannot control myself as I see the images flash by my face and I try to pay attention to the conversation; but it’s all that I can do to remain in my chair.

“You have to come, your Gran is 87 years old and she thinks she will die soon.”

How do you say no to that? I quite honestly hate her. I hate all of them right now. They didn’t protect me. I’m left here struggling. But am I so evil that I wouldn’t go and see her and stop her from worrying? Am I so evil that it has to be about me all of the time instead of about her? No. I’m not that evil. And so I agree to be picked up. That gives me half an hour.

It seems I’m taking a dip into the pool of depression. I am still crying violently as I open the packet to the razor. How the bloody hell do you even take them apart? There must be a way; they put them together after all. My fingers slip and slide as I manically try to pry the pieces apart. My crying becomes more violent and my movements more erratic as I constantly fail to pull it apart. I don’t have long to get this done. I have to do this now so I can rid myself of the emotional pain and concentrate on the physical pain for the evening. I grab my scissors, the new pair that I swore would only be used for paper, not for cutting my arms, and I attempt to pry the bottom from the razor. It’s attached as securely as my depression is to me. For a second, I think that I have it weakened so I hurry my movements.

“Fuck! Ouch! Oh shit!”

Pain surged through me like an electric shock. My thumb pulsed. My brain took a second to catch up. This wasn’t the pain I had planned. I had planned a methodical pain that I could see happening. I didn’t plan for the scissors to slice into the flesh of my thumb. Dropping everything, I rushed to the bathroom and ran my thumb under the cold water. A refreshingly icy blast hit my thumb and my brain slowly began to come back to its senses; the ones it had before the crushing depression. I never have the sense to call anybody when I’m in the depths of my depression. It’s never on the agenda and that’s something that really needs to change. One day it is sure to be my downfall. I call my friend and she calms me down. I am so thankful that she picked up and was able to make me laugh.

It’s ironic. I was trying to hurt myself and I hurt myself in the process. There was no longer any need to cut. I saw the blood seep out of my thumb and it wasn’t pretty; far from it. I felt sick and drained. Depression is draining. I knelt on the bathroom floor, my head in the crook of my arm, leaning on the sink, on the phone as I watched my hopes of a chilled out evening to focus on me, washing away down the drain.

I regained my composure, bandaged my thumb, washed my face and was ready to go. I stood outside and waited in the sweltering heat. I could have waited inside in the cool but I guess it’s just another form of punishment. The night went exactly how I thought it would. I was right to want to avoid it. There is no easy way to make yourself sick in somebody else’s house. I tried. There is a window you have, after eating, and the window determines how easy it is to make everything come back up. Sometimes, if you time it right, it’s easy. You don’t have to push as far or clench your stomach as much. Everything is simple and as quickly as the knife severs the tendons, the food comes up. If you leave it too long, it’s harder. The traffic jam gets stuck on the way out, the way it did travelling there. You push further and you choke; sometimes something comes up and that’s a lucky day. I left it too long. All that came up was blood. That’s never the intention. That’s too scary to deal with.

Does that mean that I won? The Monster was denied the chance of wallowing in the blood is so deeply craves. The food was not sacrificed in an adequate way. So, I won? It doesn’t feel like I won at all but I guess I did. I should be happy about that. I feel miserable. I am a failure. Maybe you can win and lose at the same time in the game of life. Maybe I’m a winner too. Is it winning if you’re just being “normal” or am I still losing because it shouldn’t be this hard to just stay alive and in one piece?

I don’t know what the night brings for me. I think that if I can write myself through this, I will be okay. I hope I will be okay.