Well, I’m sorry to have revealed his stupidity. :/ Although considering that there was a general response of “that’s not okay”, I think you’d still be more than fine going sleeveless. I’m never confident enough to have my arms totally uncovered unless I know there’s not much change at anyone looking very closely, so kudos to you for even being brave enough to consider it.

You know, I like to think that I’m above being hurt by people saying stupid bullshit.


Then I see a post like this and I realize I’m not. 


“dont most emo’s do that all the time?” 

theglassmenageriesecrets:

I do. And I watch you. Incessantly. While the furbies circle overhead.

I just end up texting you and telling my reactions 9 times out of 10. :P lol

xD You’re such a creeper. But it’s great.

Referring, of course, to my therapists’ advice. The whole idea of trying to just ride out my emotions without cutting. Although, interestingly, I think a lot of my problem over the past few days has been a distinct lack of emotion. I’ve felt frantic and just sort of blindly panicked for a lot of this week, but that hasn’t been the problem. Not really. I’ve been busy before, felt that kind of panic. I don’t really count that stuff as my problem this week. This week…I’ve been one of two things: Frantic or completely numb. And it’s been the numbness that’s gotten me the worst. It was the numbness that broke me this week and got me to pick up my razor, to carry it around with me in my compact. Because I couldn’t feel anything. I…I don’t know. It’s like I told my therapist on Tuesday: I needed it to ground me. I still can’t think of any other way to describe it. To bring me back into the moment? To assure myself that I’m still here? I don’t know. It bothers me now, that I can’t describe it better. Maybe someone else who self-harms can understand what I mean? Or maybe I just really suck at explaining myself. *shrug* Either way, that’s why I did it this week. Mostly. I know it. It seemed strange to my therapist that I was able to identify stuff about my actual cutting. Like, exactly what about it helps me and stuff. Is it that weird to think about it? Do other people not think about their self-harm?


Anyway, trying to get vaguely back on track: This week, I cut, despite not wanting to, despite wanting very much to follow my counselor’s instructions, and I cut because I couldn’t feel anything. The lack of sleep I’ve been dealing with (I’m up to 23 hours of sleep over the last 7 nights. That’s an average of  a bit more than 3 hours a night. But it’s worse than that, because last night I managed 6 hours. Another night I got 1 hour. It varied. Either way: sleep deprivation, even for me.) just made me numb to things. I couldn’t focus, couldn’t really react to things around me. It was like I was stuck in a fog, and I needed to get out. I tried other ways, but nothing was working. A few cuts, though, and I was alert. Just for a little while, granted, but I was alert nonetheless. Funny, though, because usually it’s not really a pain thing. Cutting isn’t about the pain for me, and usually the pain from the cut and the emotion that causes me to cut (the anger, distress, frustration, etc) sort of cancel each other out, and I don’t really feel the cut. Until later, that is, if it’s a deeper cut. (Or one of those bastards that looks and feels like a paper cut, but fuck that shit. I try to avoid making cuts like that. They hurt like hell all the time. I hate paper cuts.) But in this case, this week, it was the pain that I needed. Because it was the pain that grounded me and brought my focus back.

Today, I had to teach my Spanish class. Because my professor thought it was a great idea to have the students teach the class and get graded on it. I didn’t really have time to plan it out much. I tried, while I was at work and stuff yesterday, but I still ran out of stuff about 15 minutes before class ended, so I had to sort of just bullshit my way through the rest of it. So I knew going into it that it was going to be a struggle. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t make myself care, aside from just being upset at the inevitable failure it was going to be. Because, like I said, I’ve been in a fog all week. The condition I was in, there was no way I’d be able to focus on what the other students were saying. I wouldn’t be able to offer up any responses or take what they said and go off it. I needed to do something. So I slipped into the bathroom before class and took my little razor and made a little cut. It didn’t help much, though. I was back in the fog a few minutes later. Not a big enough or deep enough cut. I found out later that the damn thing barely even bled. Same thing later in the afternoon, before a big psych exam that I didn’t have time to prepare for as much as I wanted. I was trying to study more; cram in whatever information I could right before the test. But I couldn’t even read my notes. It was like things were kind of…I don’t know. Twisted? Blurred? You know how when you focus on something further away, stuff close by kind of blurs? Like how in movies, when the camera focuses on something in the background, the stuff in the foreground becomes less distinct? That’s kind of how my psych notes looked. I was just too tired. Another cut, and I bought myself another few minutes of focus. I knew about the mistake from earlier- not enough of a cut- and I compensated. I know how to work my razor, if nothing else. I’m pretty good at getting the kind of cut I want most of the time. I managed to buy myself enough pain to keep me grounded for most of the exam.


Is any of this a good thing? No, probably not. However, my counselor did say that I should allow myself to keep my options open. Including my option to cut. And this week, that’s what I needed. I’m not particularly pleased about it, but at the same time, if I hadn’t done it, I probably would have completely broken down like…Tuesday. So I really think that the fact that I’m still here and (relatively) unharmed is enough of an accomplishment for me this week. Still haven’t decided, though, if I’m going to tell him about any of this Ideally, that’s kind of the whole point. But it’s hard enough for me to keep going to his office for these appointments. I’m not sure I care to tell him about a week of cutting and numbness and panic.


Wondering why I’m so coherent when I’m talking about being numb and sleep-deprived? So am I. I’ve also had 2 hours to get this typed, though, because I’ve been in a psych lab for the past 2 hours running experiments. (otherwise I’d have spent the two hours taking a much-needed nap) You have no idea how useful spell-check has been to me writing this. Although I did keep missing punctuation, too, and I’m not sure I caught all of it when I reread this. But aside from that, I do feel mildly better now that I’ve gotten the two things that were causing me to panic out of the way. Now I’m just back to kind of being numb, which is better than being numb and also having this sort of creeping panic and dread lurking in the background.


Sidenote: I’m also not sure if I should keep calling him a “therapist” here. Technically, he works for the Counseling Services, so I think I should probably just call him my counselor. But he’s also a psychologist, so maybe I should just say he’s my psychologist? I don’t know. I don’t know if I should call my therapy “therapy” or “counseling” or what. 

Too busy…too tired…overwhelmed stressed angry can’t calm down trying not to lose it and failing and I’ve only slept 13 hours since thursday night. that’s…what..13 hours asleep, around 120 awake? fridaysaturdaysundaymondaytuesday and today’s wednesday… maybe if I could just get some sleep everything’d be better, but I can’t so it doesn’t matter and I just can’t relax because I’m too stressed out and tense and shaky and not happy…if I can just make it through my exams and presentations and the show. if I can just get to saturday morning then I can sleep. I can sleep for a while on saturday morning before I have to go right back to working on projects and papers and homework. I just need to make it to saturday morning. saturday morning i can fix it. maybe. i hope?

Okay…


So we started off establishing that I didn’t know what I wanted to talk about. Because I don’t know what I should be talking about. Like, I’m not the one who has a degree in helping people with this shit. If he asks me what I want to talk about next week, I will bite his face off. So anyway, here’s an abbreviated version of today’s appointment while it’s fresh in my mind.


Eventually, we worked around to talking about my emotions. The ones that lead up to my cutting and such. Awesome. Except I don’t know how to answer most of his questions. But whatever. He didn’t seem to think that was out of the ordinary.


 He’s surprised that I’ve thought critically about my cutting. When I described how it kind of…grounds me, like a sort of reality check (I couldn’t describe it satisfactorily, and he couldn’t quite grasp it. But whatever.), he asked why. If it was seeing the cut, seeing the blood if it bleeds (he doesn’t know that mine always bleed, or else they don’t really help), the pain, or what. I said it was all of it. The actual act of making the cut, seeing and feeling it. The whole package. I answered almost immediately, because that is an answer I know. I’ve thought about it. I’ve had 7 years to think about it, and I especially thought about it in the past when I’ve tried on my own to quit. So I was a little concerned when he seemed surprised, and mentioned how we tend to get into habits that we end up just doing without thinking about them. I kind of felt like I should defend myself, explain why it is that I’ve thought about it and stuff. I didn’t want him to think that, I don’t know, that I’m making this shit up or something. But then I realized that was stupid of me. He knows I cut, knows I’ve done it for 7 years, and since that’s the sole reason I’m going to therapy, there’s no reason for me to make it up. And he goes so out of his way to not sound judgmental (he accidentally used the word “cutter” in reference to me, and immediately backpedaled, apologizing because he used a label, etc…I don’t care if he uses the label. It doesn’t really matter.), so I didn’t want to make him think I thought he was judging me.


 We got around to the first coping thing he’s wanting to teach me. He used a surfer analogy. Which is funny, because we’re in the fucking Midwest. No oceans. But anyway, emotions are waves and no matter how strong they are they always eventually end. At the same time, like waves, emotions keep coming. Sometimes they’re pretty calm and steady; just neutral. Other times, they’re freakin’ tsunamis. But no matter what, they pass. And we can control what kind of effect these waves have (here’s where the analogy broke down a little bit; you can’t really control what kind of damage a tsunami does…).


Interestingly, he reminded me that cutting isn’t off the table. It’s a coping mechanism and, for me, it works pretty damn well. So he made it clear that it’s not something I should just throw away. Not yet, at least. Because whether I’m happy about it or not, whether I like it or not, cutting is a thing I do, and it’s a part of who I am right now, and who I’ve been for 7 years. It’s not all of who I am, blahblahblah, but just saying I won’t do it anymore and attempting to entirely swear it off and take it off the table as an option for me isn’t likely to end well. I wanted to mention that no shit it’s a part of me- I have the scars to prove it, but I didn’t, because that would’ve been kind of mean.


Anyway. I’m gonna try this advice. He wants me to try to just think about riding the wave- riding out my emotions, whether they’re positive, negative, or just neutral. Because the emotion will die down, just like a wave does. A problem I see with this is that, well, I’ve no problem riding out positive emotions. They make me feel good. I like them. Neutral…well…neutral is kind of bullshit. I almost think I prefer being upset to feeling just…blah. But whatever. I can still deal with neutral just fine, since that’s sort of where I end up after I cut. But negative? No. I have trouble seeing why I should bother trying to like wait out negative emotions when I can just cut and make them fade faster. But I’m going to try, even if I think it’s kind of bullshit. I promised I’d try. Both to him and to myself. So I’ll try. And this is a goddamned inconvenient time to try. I’ve got too much stress and shit going on. Oh, well. 

So this is a little overdue, considering that I’m having my 3rd session tomorrow morning. But I still wanted to write about how my second therapy session went.


It was the first real session we had, since the first one was just a patient intake interview thing. First thing when I got in to his office, he apologized profusely for not calling me like he was supposed to. He felt horrible about it, and that made me happy. Because being forgotten about is seriously horrible for me. It’s like…the worst case scenario, always. Being forgotten. So anyway, he was sorry and I assured him that I forgave him, and it was all good.


The thing I really wanted to talk to him about- the thing I spent most of my hour talking to him about- was an…incident…that occurred during Spring Break, the week before my appointment. I thought I posted about it here, but it seems I didn’t. So the abbreviated version is: Massive family drama when I went with my parents to see my sister, and I ended up scratching my arm up really badly with my fingernails while we were all together, and cutting my leg really badly when we got home. Worse than I ever have before. I was terrified, concerned that I might need stiches because of how much it was bleeding. Ended up having to bandage it for a week. I didn’t touch my razor for days because I was terrified by all the blood that’d been flowing out of my leg.


So we focused on that for my session, and my therapist used that as an example to get me to answer questions about what I feel before/when/after I cut and stuff. I will say right now: I do not like answering those questions. because I feel stupid because I can’t always come up with answers right away. Because I don’t always know the answers. But I guess that’s kind of the fucking point, isn’t it? If I had these answers, I wouldn’t still be cutting.


One thing that stuck with me, though, is that he essentially told me that my family is toxic. At least, all of them being together his. My dad and sister mostly (it was them arguing that led to the cutting incident over Spring Break, and I know that they were arguing almost constantly back when I started cutting). We talked a lot about what I can control and what I can’t control, and under the category of “things I can control” was being around my family. And it’s true. Now, he meant that in the more specific sense of like, my ability to leave the area if they start arguing. But he did also acknowledge that it also applies in the broader sense. Such as simply refusing to attend the event in the first place. And he’s right. Because I always know that it’s a safe bet that if my sister and father are in the same area for more than 10 minutes, they will fight. And if they fight, things will get ugly and the tension and anger will be too much for me. And I’ll cut. And that’s just not healthy. For the sake of my own safety, I really need to reconsider being around my family sometimes. Now, it doesn’t mean I’m going to swear off all contact with my family or anything. But it’s definitely something to consider.

He also talked a lot about getting “out of my own mind” and slowing down and shit. That’s what he wants to try to focus on with me, to fix me (note, he has never once used the word “fix” in relation to my problem. Ever. And he is always very careful to not phrase things in a judgmental way. Which is frankly annoying sometimes. I need to tell him that he doesn’t have to do that.). I don’t know how that’ll work, since I intentionally schedule myself so that I’ve always got stuff I’m supposed to be doing. It’s part of how I try to keep from cutting. Even if it’s also probably why I cut a lot of the time, because I get overwhelmed.



Whatever. I’ve got a standing appointment with him until the end of the semester, although he pointed out that I might not need all the appointments. Because it’s really all about teaching me how to use other coping mechanisms instead of cutting, and it really takes work that I’ll have to do on my own. But all I can think is that it’s lovely to think that I can listen to music or write a poem or draw or something instead of cutting, but it’s not practical. Cutting can be quick. It can take just a second, then you can go back to whatever you were doing. I don’t generally have time to excuse myself from a situation and go write a sonnet. 

One of my best friends looks up to me, and has for years, because of my “strength”. Because I’m always there for everyone, always a rock for everyone. I can’t bear to think of how she’d react if she realized that I’m not at all what she thinks I am. If she were to realize just how broken I am. She never even knew the old me- before I was what I am now. Hardly any of the friends I have now knew me before I was so broken. Maybe that’s something I did on purpose- pushed away childhood friends and got new ones who couldn’t compare, who couldn’t see the differences in me.