Last night I wrote a letter to SHED… Self-Harm, Eating Disorder.

It’s okay if you can’t understand why I think like this… I’m not asking you to understand it.

“From the outside looking in,, you can’t understand it. From the inside looking out, you can’t explain it.”

So here is this letter…

DEAR SHED,

I really want to say goodbye to you, but I can’t. You hve sucked me back into this. I am yet again in your grasps… why is that? Why do you always do this? I hate you and I just want to be free. I want to get rid of you, but I just can’t. I can’t let you go. I don’t want to. I wish I could follow the rules you tell me. I’m trying. I know I wanted… well you wanted… me to take that thing; I could stop listening to you if you wanted to, but I just don’t feel like it.

        

You have made me so happy lately. You make me smile again and you fill the void that is in my heart. But I just can’t stop. I can’t get rid of you. I want to stop.. lol.. maybe? Maybe I want to stop… still not sure.

        

Why do you do this to me? Why did you suck me back in? You did such a good job at stealing me back. I love you so much and you are not good for me. You ruined my life and I know you ruined me, but you also make me feel better.

        

Why the fuck does that happen? How can someone fall for you? What is wrong with me?

         Well, I honestly don’t think I’m “healed” or “recovered” because for me, having no impulses and not acting on them is recovery.

Recovery is happiness, it’s having a good relationship with your family and friends. It’s getting good grades, eating 3 meals a day, and not searching for instruments to use for self-harming. Recovery is being able to shave your legs without thinking about how you are going to take the razor apart. It’s eating a full meal without thinking about purging or how much weight you gained from the meal. It is being able to go out to eat with friends or family without having panic attacks due to how many calories are in all the food you just ate.

Recovery is being able to wear short sleeves without freaking the fuck out about who is staring at my arms. Recovery is not feeling threatened, ashamed, or judged when I do wear short sleeves.

SHED, you need to leave me alone. I want you gone, but I’m not strong enough yet. I still need you. Fuck, I still want you, I love the way you make me feel. You make me feel loved, You make me feel alive. I’m no longer numb.

You call out to me and forever will I answer you. You put your coice in my head, you can tell me these things that I can’t resist. And when I try to resist you, you just call out louder and louder. When I don’t respond to your screams, you bring up a traumatic incident/situation, which has scarred me. I hate that you have this control over me. But I’m scared it will kill me.

Well I kind of know that if I keep doing this it will kill me.. but I gues I’m not that scared about that because I feel like I have died many times already, still woke up every morning.

I honestly wouldn’t mind if I died. I don’t want to kill myself, but like I wouldn’t be mad if I just stopped breathing.

SOMEONE STOLE MY BLADE…

I am so not better than that. My friend told me I’m better than using my blade and for being attached to it. I am fucking freaking out.. I can’t do this anymore… I went to use my blade and literally it was not there. WHO THE FUCK STOLE IT?

Fuck, I think that the cleaning people saw it and threw it out. Maybe they were trying to keep me safe? That they thought they were doing the right thing. I understand that, but wtf.. this is not fucking okay. Anyways, you (SHED) are probably pissed off now and I’m super frustrated and upset. I would give anything to use you right now.

No fuck this shit

I just with you never existed anymore

For now,

JB

Future: assignment 15

Assignment 15: Future plans

What does your life look like in the next six months?

-December

I am going to be going back to school for the rest of the semester, and I want to at least pass all of my classes. I don’t care what grades I get, alright, yeah that’s a lie,  I do care about my grandes and I super want to pass all of my classes. I want to work on communication with my family and friends: tell them how they can support me and be honest with them. I want to get back into the groove with soccer. I’m progbably going to have to go to therapy every week now, and actually be honest with her. I want to also continue adding days between each time a relapse comes.

-January

Get back in the swing of things with school and friends. Hopefully get in some classes that I enjoy taking a succeeding. I want to do well in soccer and to continue adding days between each relapse.

-February

It will be my older sister’s birthday… but it’s also Valentine’s Day. Anyways this month might be a little rough for me because of some reasons I don’t want to talk about. But If I do self-injure, which I am planning not to… but if I do, I will try not to think all of the negative thoughts surrounding my slip up. I hope for myself to understand and realize that one slip up doesn’t make me a failure

-March

I want to be in a good place emotionally and physically. I want to be happy with myself and comfortable with my body. I want to be able to look at my arms and not be triggered.

-April

This is my birthday month, so hopefully it will be a good month. My goal is for this month is to have an enjoyable birthday and to hopefully have fewer impulses and to have more days in between when I act on them.

-May

It’s going to be the end of the school year, so I really want to feel happy with myself and hopefully the self-injury will not be an option for me anymore. I want to be playing soccer and enjoying my life. I want to be in a good place with my parents and my siblings

Describe where you think you’ll be in five years

I see myself in college with a lot of friends, and with homework and being busy. I see myself living a happy and enjoyable life with a loving family and friends. I see myself living a life free of self-injury and ana/mia.

Finishing the sentence

Finish the sentence to reflect your feelings:

1. I am a person who is…  good at hiding my emotions.
2. All of my life…  I’ve never been good enough.
3. Ever since I was little… I wished I was skinnier.
4. One of the things I feel proud of is… my grades.
5. It is hard for me to admit… that my parents love me.
6. One of the things I cannot forgive is... the pain people have caused.
7. One of the feelings I feel guilty about is… self-injury.
8. If I didn’t have to worry about what others would think… I would wear short sleeves again.
9. One of the ways people hurt me is… bullying me
10. Mother is always… nagging at me to do something.
11. What I need from my mother that she doesn’t get is… space, she suffocates me.
12. Father is always…being himself.
13. What I want from my father and don’t get is… nothing, he treats me well.
14. If I weren’t afraid to be myself, I might… be more open about stuff.
15. One of the things I am angry about is… my relationship with my family.
16. What I need and have never received is… I receive basically anything I need.
17.  The bad thing about growing up is… all the stress.
18. One of the ways I could help myself but don’t is… doing my coping skills.
19. I secretly… don’t want to stop this…

 I completed this exercise when I was in the actual hospital.. It is kind of tough going through it again, because it's stirring up a lot of emotions. like the thoughts that I was having while I was typing this out, got really intense. I knew that these feelings would arise, but they are making me impulsive.

Anyways, I wish I could say that all the answers up above are different today, but it's not. 

Assignment 13: Imagining/missing/ and knowing yourself

Assignment 13: Answers in treatment

What would your life look like if you were to stop with the self-harm?

I really don’t know if I can imagine my life without self-injury. I have made it 24 days without engaging in “traditional” self-harm, but I still have impulses every day, and I’m scared that at home one of the impulses is just going to be super strong and hard to deal with and I’m going to give in. I wish I had never made the choice to self-harm in the first place. But I did. And I can’t change that. I also wouldn’t change that because I’ve learned so much on my road to recovery and met great people. Imagining my life without self-injury I would be able to take the classes I want and to succeed in them because my full concentration would be on my school work. I would be able to engage in conversation with my friends family instead of isolating. I wouldn’t be hiding anything or sneaking around. I would be able to talk to my parents without scaring them. To talk to my brothers and sisters without scaring them too. I wouldn’t be a problem to anyone anymore.

What will you miss?

I will miss the release I get every time I do it. I will miss always being able to rely on self-injury whenever I needed it. I will miss seeing all my bodily fluids, (we weren’t able to say blood). I will miss being secretive about doing it. I’ll miss not being able to do it when I need to “feel” again. I’ll have to find new ways to deal with problems, people, situations, feelings, and anxiety. I will miss relying on it to make me “happy” again. I will miss the scabs that I get and not being able to pick them and make them scars.

Who do you want people to know you as?

I want to be known as the girl who followed her dreams. I am a daughter, sister, cousin, friend, niece and grandchild. I am a girl and a student, an athlete, a musician. I am smart, caring, kind, loving, compassionate, humble, loving, respect responsible, trustworthy, honest, loyal and faithful.  I am beautiful on other inside and on the outside.

Assignment 13: Now

Honestly, I think self-harm is going to be a disorder that I will struggle with my whole life. I really would like to say that I can imagine my life without it, but honestly I can’t. It’s something that some people will think is “crazy,” but to me its so real. Lately, I have NOT been doing very well with the controlling/managing my impulses. I know that I have had all of this practice with coping skills and alternatives, but you will never believe how hard it is to stop once you struggle going through a relapse.

Since I can’t imagine my life without self-harm, I can’t really answer the second question fully. If I had to answer it though, I would answer it for one of my friends struggling as well…. here is how I would answer it:

Yes, I’m sure you feel numb right now. I know you are, emotionally and physically, exhausted and as if you literally can NOT make it any longer… but I’m here to tell you that you can. You will. You’re alive and you’re surviving.

You’re surviving, that means you have lived every day of your life, even if you didn’t want to. You’re alive and you’re surviving. You need to remember that. You have made it through 100% of your bad days.

As for the self-harm, you honestly are so beautiful and you don’t need to mark your body with cuts and cover them with scars.. You don’t need to add that struggle to your life. You’re amazing and you are so much better than that. If you think you are at a point where you just cannot move forward, reach out to someone… Reach out to me.

One day, you’re going to wake up and not have the first thought of the day be self-harm impulses or suicidal ideations. One day you will learn to love yourself and you won’t want to hurt yourself anymore.

That day has come and gone for me ... many times.... But, it will come again, I know it will. I have reached out to all of the right people and I have all of the resources I need.

The hard part is actually WANTING to use them. 

Self-harm plays tricks on my mind. When I think I am  having the best day ever, I take one look down at my arms, or legs, or hips, or any other body part is used, and immediately want to go straight to my blade. It calls out to you, just when you think you can kick it to the curb.. it comes back... and THAT is when you have to decided whether it's worth it or not. 

Intimacy: assignment 12

I’m trying to think of the exact questions that these responses are too, and some of them I have no idea haha. I’m pretty sure:

#1 is what is intimacy and how do you see it in your life.

#2 who do you feel most intimate with

#3 are you intimate with your friends?

#4 what is your wish surrounding intimacy

1.     When I hear the word “intimacy” I think of a lot of things. I think of boyfriends and girlfriends, sex, and like romantic stuff. But I guess it really means being your true self around someone and being accepted for who you are. I’ve never reallyhad a boyfriend/girlfriend and experienced THAT kind of intimacy, but I do have a good amount of people who I am able to be my complete self around. It plays a pretty big role because I’m not going to take/share information with someone I’m not close to.

2.     I think that before I came here I was at a pretty gratifiying spot in intimacy with others. Like Sackett, some other friends and my younger sister, Sammy. Mostly I would talk face to face with them, but I also talked to them over facebook and texting. I felt my complete self around Kassie, Sammy, and Sackett. I would also spend time at their house or they would come to my house.

3.     Well I mean being able to be completely comfortable with my close friends. I don’t really fantasize at all about it, because that’s really creepy.

4.     Well, I wish I could be more intimate with my parents but I honestly don’t know what it would take to have my wishes come true. Maybe just them understanding me more and trying to support me instead of saying they don’t want me to come home because they don’t think I’m getting better.

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Intimacy is being able to be your true self around someone.

Intimacy is being able to spend joyous moments together

Intimacy is going on dates, holding hands, undoubted love

Intimacy is sharing your deepest secrets without being judged

Intimacy is being held when you’re on the bathroom floor

Intimacy is loving someone despite their flaws and accepting them for who they are

I would say, at the moment, I am most intimate with one of my friends back at school. She is such a great person, who has seen me at my lowest and metaphorically held my hand through it all. She has also seen me at my best and she has nothing but love for me.

I’m not really that intimate with anyone else, besides my younger sister is always on the list haha because she will always be my best friend… Sammy has one of the purest hearts of someone I know. She will push her problems to the side, and will hold people’s hands through their problems. She puts others in front of herself. Our relationship is great! We can tell each other anything. Just today, she called me and was SO excited that she worked for the academic letter and excellence medal. I could not be more proud!

Assignment 10-11

I decided to post two posts today because I forgot to post yesterday, and they are both short passages.

Assignment­­­­ 10: 

I want my life to be good, so that I will be happy. I want to get all A’s in school, have a significant other… who treats me well, can handle my craziness and they have to be good eye candy haha. I want to be healthy and beautiful; to stop self-injury and the ED. I want to have a couple close friends who treat me nice and I can tell anything. For my family not to fight, to be a better sister, to have a better relationship with my parents. I want to have a good relationship with God, have a good paying job, play soccer, and be good at it.

My attitudes

            Being bratty or a snot

            Having bad days

            Being mean

Beliefs: I don’t think any bliefs with keep me from amking progress.

Behavior

            Engaging in self-injury/EDs

            Acting out at home

Being mean to friens

Feelings:

            Anxious

            Upset

            Frustrated

            Mad

            Angry

            Envious

            Irritated

            Annoyed

 Assignment 11:

Well, I like being a woman. I would rather be a woman than a man. I like having long hair, wearing some make up, and sometimes I like to dress up.. usually just wearing jeans and a nice shirt. I think that the media puts a lot of pressure on girls to be super skinny, tall, tan and beautiful. And like they give you an “ideal” woman and everyone should be like her. If you aren’t like her, you won’t have friends or a SO.

Honestly, I really hate my body. I hate how my legs and waist., because they are extremely big. I wish I could weigh less than 100 pounds. That’ is my ideal weight. I would give anything to be that skinning and beautiful. I also like my intelligence, I guess. I’m pretty smart. I don’t know if that has anything to do with being a woman though.

The media tells us that a woman should be super skinny with big boobs and butts. Also like, women have the hard job in a relationship because we have to carry the child, and then go through the pain of delivery.  It makes me frustrated because guys don’t have to go through that kind of pain. Girls are supposed to be like “girly-girls” and only care about materialistic things. Like I’m a girl, I don’t want to dance or model or something… I am a girl and I want to play sports. Get at me bro.

We get called beautiful and stuff from parents or friends. It kind of makes me feel really good about myself and about my physical appearance.