Tumblr text: The morning after I killed myself...

I came across this on Tumblr... and it really speaks to me. Especially lately when I've been kind of struggling a bit. It gives me motivation to continue fighting... So here it is...

The morning after I killed myself, I woke up... I made myself breakfast in bed. I added salt and pepper to my eggs and used my toast for a cheese and bacon sandwich. I squeezed a grapefruit into a juice glass. I scraped the ashes from the frying pan and rinsed the butter off the counter. I washed the dishes and folded the towels. The morning after I killed myself, I fell in love. Not with the boy down the street or the middle school principal. Not with the everyday jogger or the grocer who always left the avocados out of the bag. I fell in love with my mother and the way she sat on the floor of my room holding each rock from my collection in her palms until they grew dark with sweat. I fell in love with my father down at the river as he placed my note into a bottle and sent it into the current. With my brother who once believed in unicorns but who now sat in his desk at school trying desperately to believe I still existed. The morning after I killed myself, I walked the dog. I watched the way her tail twitched when a bird flew by or how her pace quickened at the sight of a cat. I saw the empty space in her eyes when she reached a stick and turned around to greet me so we could play catch but saw nothing but sky in my place. I stood by as strangers stroked her muzzle and she wilted beneath their touch like she did once for mine. The morning after I killed myself, I went back to the neighbors’ yard where I left my footprints in concrete as a two year old and examined how they were already fading. I picked a few daylilies and pulled a few weeds and watched the elderly woman through her window as she read the paper with the news of my death. I saw her husband spit tobacco into the kitchen sink and bring her her daily medication. The morning after I killed myself, I watched the sun come up. Each orange tree opened like a hand and the kid down the street pointed out a single red cloud to his mother. The morning after I killed myself, I went back to that body in the morgue and tried to talk some sense into her. I told her about the avocados and the stepping stones, the river and her parents. I told her about the sunsets and the dog and the beach. The morning after I killed myself, I tried to unkill myself, but couldn’t finish what I started.

Written by Meggie Royer

Handle With Care: Trigger Warning

“People always want to know what it feels like, so I’ll tell you: there’s a sting when you first slice, and then your heart speeds up when you see the blood, because you know you’ve done something you shouldn’t have, and yet you’ve gotten away with it. Then, you sort of go into a trance, because it’s truly dazzling—that bright red line, like a highway route on a map that you want to follow to see where it leads. And—God—the sweet release, that’s the best way I can describe it, kind of like a balloon that’s tied to a little kid’s hand, which somehow breaks free and floats into the sky. You just know that balloon is thinking, “Ha, I don’t belong to you after all.” And at the same time, “Do they have any idea how beautiful the view is from up here?” And then the balloon remembers, after the fact, that it has a wicked fear of heights.

When reality kicks in, you grab some toilet paper or a paper towel (better than a washcloth, because the stains don’t ever come out 100 percent) and you press hard against the cut. You can feel your embarrassment; it’s a backbeat underneath your pulse. Whatever relief there was a minute ago congeals, like cold gravy, into a fist in the pit of your stomach. You literally make yourself sick, because you promised yourself last time would be the last time, and once again, you’ve let yourself down. So you hide the evidence of your weakness under layers of clothes long enough to cover the cuts, even if it’s summertime and no one is wearing jeans or long sleeves. You throw the bloody tissues into the toilet and watch the water go pink before you flush them into oblivion, and you wish it were really that easy.”

I think this quote is literally one of the perfect descriptions of what it’s like to self-harm. I know this could be triggering for some people, as it is for me… but lately it’s all I can think about. I’m 6 days clean, and it feels like there is nothing more that I want to do… all I want to do is self-harm.

But I have to be strong. I have to make it through the end of the year. I’ve been able to cope with life more healthily.

I was in one of my classes today and I was feeling really suicidal, but I made it through the day. The feelings passed.

The feelings always pass. It’s just learning how to get through those feelings.

Self-harm is like a thunderstorm… the forecast says it’s going to rain… but before the rain comes, it is just lingering… Like the thought of self-harm is always there… just lingering.

Then the storm comes, and it starts raining… that’s when the blade comes in…

Then lightning and thunder is when the actual self-harm happens

Then when I am done hurting myself the storm starts to clear up…

Then there is the rainbow, where I clean up and pretend that everything is a-okay.

I know some people may be scared for me or worried about me, but I am safe, I have a good support system. I am not going to kill myself. I WANT to live. I want to get better. I want to stop self-harming.

I just don’t know if I want to get better enough. Not right now at least.

I have just been having super weird impulses at like super weird times. Like I can wake up at 3am and want to self-harm, or 3 in the afternoon when I’m watching TV with my friends. It can come in the middle of class and then that’s the only thing I can think of!

School is number one though. I can cope with everything until the end of the school year. I am going to be okay.

Fake it till you make it.

"Imp of the perverse"

I have no motivation to do anything… fighting these self-harm impulses is emotionally and physically draining. I feel like I have no strength anymore and all I can do is lay in bed and do nothing but want to cut... literally, all I want to do is self-harm… so here is an assignment I wrote awhile ago for one of my classes:
 I believe in the existence of the “imp of the perverse” (which I am going to refer to as impulses) for one reason, and that is because I can personally relate to how it makes people act, and the feelings that surround those actions.

In class, when we talked about this short story, it was really interesting on how diverse the impulses are, or can be. Someone’s impulse could go from stealing money from your mom’s purse to committing a homicide, and everything in between.
I personally related to the professor when she expressed her impulse was when she stands on the edge of a cliff or a bridge, she feels compelled to jump. When she said she felt compelled to jump, it reminded me of one of my friends.

When the impulse kicks into my mind, I have thoughts of doing bad things, but these bad things are usually only things that will hurt myself. I do have impulses to do something to other people, but there is no way I could ever hurt anyone else. One thing that I have struggled with for awhile now is self-harm and eating disorders, along with suicidal thoughts. When I start to get the feelings that I want to hurt myself, whether it be through cutting, or restricting, binging or purging, I know I shouldn’t do it. I know that it’s the wrong thing to do, but there is something in me that compels me to go through with it.

My friend (who is the friend I was talking about in previous paragraphs) had some of the same impulses I have. I met her in the hospital, she was there for trying to kill herself—she had attempted many times before but she always woke up. Until one day, May 8, 2013, I got a message on Facebook that she died. She was successful in carrying out her impulses.
The same thing happened to me when I was at home for Christmas break two years ago. I tried to commit suicide as well, and wasn’t successful. Everyone says, “Thank God she’s still alive,” when sometimes I don’t want to be alive.

Most of my impulses compel me to cut myself or not eat anything for a few days. Earlier this year, I was a few weeks away from becoming three years clean from self-harm, but there was a situation that just rattled me so much. This is when I relapsed. I’m not going to lie, I kept it to myself for the longest time, but like in class we were talking about how guilt can be very possible.
In the end of the story, the narrator feels so guilty that he has to tell someone about his “perfect crime.” This is how I felt when I didn’t tell anyone what I had done. The thing was, both of us had achieved our goal; his goal was to commit the perfect crime, and mine was to cut myself. We both achieved our goals, and the next thing was, telling someone. The guilt killed me, and I could not hold it in anymore and I figure that is how the narrator felt as well.
I also think that someone’s impulses do not fully disappear. The thoughts will be in my head for as long as I live, but it is just about learning how to overcome those impulses.

Culture definitely affects how my impulses were viewed, or better yet, how my body is viewed after hurting myself for so long. Usually, these behaviors are complimentary to some form of mental illness. I am diagnosed with chronic depression, anxiety disorder, and bipolar disorder.

Mental illnesses are still so stigmatized in our society today, that people who are diagnosed with an illness, are scared of other people finding out about it. When someone finds out that I am diagnosed with bipolar disorder, they change the way they act around me. They treat me like I am lesser of a person because of it, and it is really frustrating.

The story my professor told us about being compelled to jump off of something high, sparked my thoughts of my “imp of the perverse,” or my impulses. It made me realize that sometimes there really is that little voice in the back of your mind; well at least my mind, telling me that I need to cut or I need to not eat anything. My friend’s impulse, or her “imp of the perverse,” was taking her own life. The culture that we live in today affects how different people’s impulses are viewed, and how the stigmatization of mental illness is still looked down upon. All of these points that I talked about, support my belief in “the imp of the perverse.”