Still falling

Recovery. I guess we all have to choose it at some point. But what happens when our brains just wont let us. When everyday is a constant struggle to get out of bed or get yourself in the shower. What happens when you cant focus on work or classes because all you’re thinking about is trying to keep yourself alive.

 

I guess that means recovery is something we have to choose everyday. It really sucks. I wish we could just be recovered and thats it. We dont have to fight anymore, its just easier after we decide to recover.

 

I feel like I’m fading. I am lost in this world and I don’t know why I’m here. Do we need to have a meaning for this life? I dont want to die without achieving something. Maybe the thing that I have achieved is surviving this long. I can feel myself grow colder.

Its time for a poem… (tw)

I’ve come to realize this worlds full of sin, there’s nothing for me here i’m just a waste of space, I’ve got no reason to stay here with this awful race. Its a disgrace, I was misplaced born in the wrong time and in the wrong place. Its okay though cause I’ll see you soon, you’ll know when your time has come just look at the moon. As it shines bright throughout the night and remember everyone’s facing their own fight, but I cant deal with this pain cause I’m not a fighter, you’ll make it through the night just hold your pillow tighter. So let the world know that I died in vain cause the world around me is the one to blame.

How grief has changed me.

The way I viewed the world around me was filtered by the rose tinted glasses that I wore. For most of my life I didn’t know what true loss was. When I turned seventeen the world that I had created for myself slowly began to crack. I lost my two best friends in the space of six months. My father died first, suicide. My mother not long after, a heart attack snatching her away.

If we talk in clinical terms, there are five stages of grief. The first stage is denial. When you’re faced with a fact that is so horribly unbelievable your brain will do anything to protect itself. Denying the loss of someone so close to you is the brains way of trying to cope. If you don’t believe it, then surely it couldn’t have happened. Denial is also I very hard stage to move forward from. I also find that it is closely related to the second stage of grief, anger.  tbc

Happiness damn near destroys you.

                                                                          I’m lost.

I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m struggling so much to see a future for myself. Everything just looks…empty.

I don’t feel like the author of this chapter anymore and the only thing I can do, is live this out and hope that there is a happy ending.

                                                                           Who am I?

 

I don’t know how to find out.

 

Disappear with the night

Sadness. It creeps up and sneaks into my head when I least expect it. It sets up camp and refuses to leave no matter how many mantras I whisper to myself. Sadness makes its way through my body and into my heart. Sadness is an awful guest.

Give your tears to the tide.

It’s hard to know who you are without mental illness clouding your persona. My illness appeared when I was young which made it difficult for me to really know who I was without it. Time after time I would tell my therapist that, “This really is me, its who I am, I don’t know who I would be without this illness.”

Every day that I wake up I need to remind myself that I am human. I am not a shell that leaks depression, I am not a waste of space who should vanish with the wind. I am a sister, a daughter, a friend, a person who deserves this life.

Dancing with the devil

The hardest thing about recovery has been trying to normalise my feelings. If something is to go wrong I automatically catastrophize what has happened. I automatically feel like everything I have worked for has fallen apart and all this effort was a huge waste of time. I’m not sure if anyone else does this or not but my therapist has to remind me every session to normalise my feelings. Just because I am having a bad day today doesn’t mean tomorrow will be the same. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to fall back into an eating disorder or depression or self harm. All it means is that I am human. I am allowed to hurt and breakdown and be sad. That is what makes us human.

This isn’t everything you are.

I look forward to the day when I can say that “I’m recovered.” I had an eating disorder and I battled depression but I worked hard and survived it.
I have defined myself by my illness for so long and tonight I had an epiphany. No longer will I let myself be controlled by my illness. I know that somedays it will be hard and the struggle will take all my effort but I am willing to put in the work. I am willing to continue fighting for a life free of this hell.

You can go your own way.

I hate feeling lonely. You know that feeling of utter hollowness in your chest. Usually I would try anything to numb this pain but I know that if I do that it will only undo all the hard work I have put in after coming out of inpatient. I feel like there is something missing, part of me thinks I’m missing my anorexia. I miss having something that is mine. However, I am far enough along in recovery to know that this feeling is only anorexia trying to pull my back into that hell. So I am doing my absolute best to ignore this back and forth battle that is currently going on in my head right now. Sometimes sleeping makes things better so I think I’m going to sleep early tonight. And hopefully things will be better in the morning, right?

When the time is right and there’s no way out

You know what? Sometimes you just have to pick yourself up and dust yourself off because no one else is going to do that for you. My whole life I have always out others before me. I neglected myself because I was so busy making sure everyone else was okay. I thought looking after myself first made me selfish but it doesn’t at all. How are you supposed to look after everyone else when you can’t even look after yourself?