Remembering That I Have A Void To Scream Into (WARNING: Contains Ideation of Suicide, Self-Harm, and Discussion of Trauma) · 2:29am June 20th
To preface: I'm okay. Physically.
At least in the sense of "no injury." I'm still feeling the effects of some physical sickness, that is half aftermath and half a reoccurring health issue that I can usually handle on its own. I'm trying to eat and hydrate and everything else that makes a body work semi-properly as I scrape together this blog post.
There's moments in life when someone you know invokes the words "that's my line" in response to something you say. The last time I recall it happening was when I sent out my cry for help earlier in the year, and it was Estee who uttered the words. And what did I say that prompted it?
"I try not to tell folks about the really bad stuff".
Yeah.
It's easy to say I'm busy because of "family stuff" rather than telling you that my mother is trying to get to bottom of a health issue that, if she has a particular variant of it, might be affecting her heart. Or that my father has partially lost sight in one of his eyes and still won't GO TO THE FUCKING DOCTOR at all, because he's one of the most stubborn people alive about just waiting until his next checkup to bring this fucking stuff up.
I claim that I'm held up by "partner stuff" rather than detailing the fact that she's staring down another test from the government of whether she's "still disabled enough" to keep her benefits and is so terrified of being stripped of them that her heavily traumatized brain is telling her to, and I quote, "sell all of my possessions, flee, and then unalive myself when fleeing doesn't help."
I complain of "computer issues" when I'm getting warning signs that something might be wrong and I can't afford to buy replacement parts.
I say I'm "not feeling well" when I've spent the entire day in bed and have been barely eating.
Or... I tell people I "don't like driving" when the truth is that I don't trust myself behind the wheel ever since the intrusive thoughts happened about getting in an accident. Deliberately.
It's not that I want to die, precisely.
It's more that I just want things to stop. To slam a pause button on my life and go elsewhere for a while. I'd want to come back eventually and resume my existence, presumably now prepared to actually make something of it. The pause wouldn't even necessarily be very long. To even keep the world in stasis for a week's worth of time would be worth it.
The Isekai fantasy has existed in my mind, to make the permanent jump to another place, but as I said, I'd want to come back eventually. Besides, the kind of drama that would be plaguing your average fantasy world would be just trading one stress for another. Yes, even to jump to Equestria, even the versions of Equestria that are chill with a HiE situation.
So I don't want to permanently leave to another place, including that place called "afterlife," I just... want it to stop, for a little while.
Unfortunately, things don't stop. Bills don't, obligations don't, all those little things that are required to run this meat suit (remember to eat, remember water, remember to take my medications and other supplements that keep all this from getting worse..) don't. I don't get stasis, I get to shut down against my will because my body finally said "enough" and come back to everything having gotten worse.
One comic I used to read is Questionable Content. I haven't checked it in a while, and my interest was always off-and-on, because its brand of humour and my sense of humour are sometimes oil and water. But there's a character there. One who had a day when she was driving, had a mental break behind the wheel, and came back to herself with the car wrapped around a tree. She has no idea if she deliberately aimed for that tree, and never will, the question left to hang there.
Do I think I would have a moment like that? Highly doubtful. The trigger was that she had a driving-related flashback. I don't have trauma surrounding the act itself, (unless you count how hard it was to get my driver's license in the first place, haha trying to be funny during a serious blog) just... one time, when I wasn't medicated yet, I had... thoughts.
I can drive, safely. It hasn't happened again. But I often ask for a ride instead, when someone else needs to make a trip to the same place, all the same.
Even those thoughts about a car accident weren't about anything fatal, not really. It's more that a hospital stay is something like a pause. Not for everything, but... it's a "legitimate" reason to not be engaging with life for a while.
It'd also be painful.
It took me a long time to even recognize it as self-harm, because it doesn't take the form that most people consider the act to be.
Most people think about cutting. Knives and razors into skin. Some are educated enough to know about the places to look for the scars (people who don't want to get caught will cut places where it's a lot easier to hide than on the arms) but that method is still what everyone checks for when they worry that someone might be harming.
I have a phobia of blood, with a side of a fear of sharp objects. Getting my blood drawn for medical tests is a nightmare, and it took me longer than it should've to learn to cook competently because I was skittish of working with anything sharper than a butter knife. I don't like cuts. I'm afraid of being cut, and just like how arachnophobia will keep someone from entering a room with a spider, it's kept me pretty firmly away from even starting to think about putting blade to skin.
So it manifests as blunt impact instead.
It's a simple, subtle thing, a lot of the time. I have a habit of pacing. It's a mind-focus activity--I compose entire scenes in my mind while moving--along with providing me with some exercise; I use a step-counter and there's a surprising amount of one's daily walking that can be gained from just going up and down a hall.
But pacing means that I'm near walls, going past shelves, passing the dog's crate... Easy to just... step a little to one side, or swing an arm a little wider.
Thud.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, I just bumped into something."
It's not conscious. I didn't even realize I might be doing it intentionally until the other parts clicked together.
I sometimes get the urge to punch things, when I'm upset. I was given the usual advice to punch a pillow, but that never worked. In fact, I'd come out of it feeling worse. I'd get angrier and angrier as I hit the pillow and usually end up storming off to scream at the top of my lungs instead.
Then one day came that I hit an emotional breaking point and pounded a wooden door with both fists, over and over, and came out of it with aching hands but having achieved a level of calm the pillow never had. I reasoned at the time that there was something about the sound of impact, or the way the door bounced in response (it doesn't quite fit in the frame, so it doesn't close properly; it bounces off and swings back open again) that was satisfying my brain. Mimicking an actual punching bag more closely, or something.
It didn't occur to me until a long time after that the door worked because hitting a pillow doesn't hurt.
(My throat hurts after screaming, too. Sometimes I scream until it feels like my lungs are burning. Maybe that's part of why that works. Maybe I need to stop that too...)
Then there's the worse things. The moments when I want to slam my head into a wall. The moments when I want to crash my entire body into it, like I'm a body-checking hockey player. There was one day that I hit a point when I was standing in the middle of a room, wanting to hurtle myself against all of the hard wooden furniture in it like I was a rampaging bull, and I stood there shaking for a long while until I started to cry instead.
I hate pain. I'm in pain from plenty already. Migraines, muscle issues...
But that's the point. It's punishing myself for being... everything I consider myself to be. Useless, worthless, a waste of everyone's time...
I have control over it, now. As long as I recognize it as a self-harm activity, nothing comes of thinking about it other than the stress of the intrusive thoughts themselves. And I'm working on management.
Progress just takes time.
There's something called Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, or DBT for short, and it's saving my life.
It's typically taught in a group setting, but that has its drawbacks to it. I have heard enough horror stories of That One Person in a DBT group who ruins it for everybody, like the one whose every second phrase is "unskillful behaviour" (what you're supposed to say instead of going into detail about how you self-harmed, drank alcohol excessively, or otherwise did anything but the actual things you're being taught to do), or the one who just treats it like My Private Therapy Session, Part 2 and will talk about themselves endlessly instead of focusing on the day's topic, or the one who manages to trigger the trauma response of everyone in the room simultaneously by talking about sexual assault in graphic detail when you're not supposed to do that and ignores the facilitators trying to stop them.
So I'm taking the solo learning path. There are books, and I found a podcast actually recommended by a therapist and created by people who've facilitated DBT groups before. One of these people even had a history of self-harm herself, and had to stare down the fact that it was either stop and get help, or she would die from it sooner rather than later. Solo learning means being able to go over the material as much as I need to in order to lock it in, instead of needing to speed along to the next unit in the program, something that people who do it in groups often wish they could do.
DBT was originally developed for treating Borderline Personality Disorder, by a person with the disorder, at a time when people thought there was nothing to be done to treat it. That's how I learned about it, as I've met multiple people with BPD in my life and it is still the treatment option.
Do I have BPD? No. I'm operating under some very different brain wiring in plenty of ways. But there's a lot of facets to the therapy, and since BPD is something that develops in response to trauma, a lot of it is useful to someone who's just... traumatized, in general.
(It's been hard realizing that some of the crazy bullshit that goes on in my brain are trauma responses.
There's whole chunks of my life where I don't remember much of what happened. I know of a few incidents. I remember the child who tried to drown me in a pool and gave me my aquaphobia, I know I was a bully victim for several years, that at least some of them attacked me physically alongside the more common verbal, I know that I was... harassed... more than once in high school by peers... and that's just childhood.)
There's a lot about mindfulness and emotional regulation, about navigating interpersonal relationships, about "radical acceptance" of self and of things you can't change. A lot of it is useful.
I know how to meditate now, for one thing. When I want to slam my head into a wall until I concuss myself, I instead put on the sound of a fireplace crackling and sit, eyes shut, and let my emotions settle.
It.. helps.
But I'm recovering, and that might be a perpetual state. You don't truly come back from this kind of thing, you just learn to live with it.
The alternative is... well, we've been over that. There's no pause button, not in reality. The alternative would be a permanent stop.
I won't deliberately crash my car into a tree. I won't. I know that I won't.
(It doesn't stop me from having nightmares about it, and things like it. Just today I woke up in the morning right after a dream where I walked directly into an endless darkness sent to swallow me up.)
I'm getting better, but life doesn't wait.
I, like a lot of people in the fandom, used to read Friendship Is Dragons. It recently came to an end, and the epilogue was a punch to the gut for a lot of reasons. But the one most relevant to me was this page.
That moment when you think you're fine, that everything is fine. You're coping with it all just fine...
(I can't make my own parent to go to the doctor
I can't make the government stop harassing the person I love so she doesn't have to dose herself with medications to sleep instead of having constant panic attacks all night
I can't fix what's wrong
I can't help
I can't even take care of myself consistently
And then the thoughts start
That I'm useless
That I'm worthless
That I deserve to hurt)
And then your body shuts down, without your desire and consent. Immediate timeout, occupant's wishes be damned. It tried to slam the pause button, and now everything's worse.
I spent a few days barely eating, hydrating, or leaving my bed, and I'm still fixing the aftereffects. My body's such a damn delicate balance that when I don't eat everything goes screwy fast. I balance so many supplements and what boil down to mandatory snack foods. Doesn't matter if I'm not in the mood for those dried apricots: two daily, or I'll be bedridden for whole other reasons. Better add pumpkin seeds to the rotation, too, for the next while.
When this happens, I'm expecting frustration and anger from others whenever I pull myself out. "Where did you go this time, Silver?"
Anger's better than the alternative, though. It could be concern.
Concern is hard to swallow, for someone who hates themself. I feel like I deserve anger, to be lashed out at, just like that I deserve to slam into a wall. Worry feels like I'm inflicting myself on people, making them feel worry for someone who doesn't deserve it.
(Radical acceptance has been known to get the response of "oh I hate that one" from people learning DBT. Trying to get yourself to even tolerate yourself is an uphill struggle.)
I initially wasn't going to post this. Just write it for my own sake, to help process, and then... start up the apologies and downplay what happened. But I guess I eventually came to the conclusion that I owe everyone a certain amount of transparency.
I try not to tell folks about the really bad stuff.
But this space comes with a blog... and it's as good a place as any to scream in a way that won't hurt my throat.
Back to less heavy content, after this.
If you got through all this... I'm not sure whether to thank you or apologise. Maybe both.
Take care, all.
I'm afraid most of the responses I would come up with would probably sound like empty platitudes. However I do know that this site has had several people admit to stuggles similar to yours. If you ask around I'm pretty sure you can find people who would be willing to talk and share stories. Maybe that would help.
....yeah, thats...that's really familiar in a lot of ways. I still struggle with the notion that I'm not only allowed to take up space, but that as a human being I am *supposed* to.
It's so bloody hard.
I wish I had practical advice, but every situation is unique and I'm no professional. But even when it feels hollow, try to hold onto the notion that things *can* be better, and you *do* deserve better than the suffering your brain tells you.
It's awful. But you don't deserve the storm, and it doesn't deserve you - so hold on, however you can, until you can feel the sunshine again.
Definitely in the "I don't think anything I say will be helpful" category myself. I come from a family where, for every one of us, the first impulse when hearing something like this is to fix the problem. And I know from firsthand experience how some things don't have a simple solution, and incessant suggestions for fixing the problem only add to the frustration. Besides, you've found a non-harmful answer in the DBT. It's not perfect, because nothing could be in these circumstances, but it's working for you inasmuch as life allows.
I hope this also helped to some degree. We are here for you should you need us, as much as text on the Internet can help.
Vibes and sympathies, Silver. Very glad to hear you've found something that helps you and works for you, though!