Cries for Help

In the disease, I channeled much of my despair into words. My journals over the years have captured the intensity of pain and the deep darkness that the disease surrounded me in. When I first went to treatment, my case manager kept repeating how dark my writings were. She was very concerned about the depth of my depression, and I was told that I was on suicide watch for several days as the staff closely monitored my every move. At the time, I laughed at them for being so cautious. Of course, I now understand why they were so concerned. I was a stranger to them, and they were responsible for my safety. Why did I initially laugh at their concern? Simply because I had lived this agonizing existence for so long that it had become my norm. Yes, I had thought of suicide but never planned it out. More or less, I would say in conversation with my family that I wished I would die or just not wake up in the morning so definitely experiences passive suicidal ideations. That was my way of asking indirectly for help out of the suffering. I did not know at the time any other way to use my voice so most of my cries for help went unheard and unseen. They were written hastily into my journal when the mood would strike, and the words would flow onto the paper in harsh fragments. I think it is important to share some of my darker thoughts during the depths of my disease. Many people only get to hear about recovery after the fact when the individual is feeling better mentally and physically, and they do not really get to learn about the inner thinking of someone in the midst of their disease. In order to understand a person in recovery, I feel it is important to know segments of the journey that led them to recovery, and ultimately, choose life again.

The following excerpt was written the Christmas before I went to treatment. It would just be a matter of months before I found myself on a flight to Texas to seek help.

"All I want for Christmas is to love myself. There is a lot that goes with that one wish. I want to not hang my head in shame. I want to wake up and look forward to the day. I want to look in the mirror and be able to smile at my reflection. I want to touch my body. I want to be able to wear clothes that look nice. I want others to be able to touch me and not feel me cringe in response. I want someone to reach out and hug me without me sucking in a deep breath of agony. I want to have days where I do not cry. I want to not numb myself from emotion. I want this hole inside of me to not ache so intensely. I want it to go away. I want to not exercise for one day and not feel panic set in. I want to exercise, and then feel like it was enough instead of thinking that I should have "gone just one more hour".  I want to put food in my mouth without feeling guilty and without feeling the immediate urge to vomit it back up.  I want to make it through one night without waking up in terror over the fact that I am still in this body. I want the chance to recreate my body so that I can love it, but most of all I want to know why I cannot love what I have. I want to know why I cannot accept it as it is. I want to know why I feel the need to look differently in order to be happy and to be loved. My Christmas wish list is much longer and more complicated than I thought. I guess loving myself is a complicated matter. Yet, sometimes love seems so simple. I am never, ever going to have the body that I think I need to have. In order to do that, I would have to starve. Really starve. Completely starve. Yet, I cannot find it in me to do that. So maybe all I really want for Christmas is just acceptance. Acceptance that all the above things I want may never happen. Maybe by accepting that, I may find some sort of peace. I do not fully know why my life has turned out to be this way, and chances are I may never. Yet each day passes by, and nothing gets better. Most days I awake and do not want to go on. But I do. Because somewhere deep down inside of me there must be a flicker of hope. Hope that I will beat the odds and figure out how to beat this. Lately, I feel that flicker fading away. Honestly, I just do not know how many more times I will be able to keep it alive."

This entry caught my eye when rereading my journals because it encapsulates my lack of love for myself. I would like to say that all the self-hate disappeared during my inpatient treatment, but I still have my moments where I have negative thoughts about myself. I have moments where I feel disappointment in my behavior or feel that I have failed at something. Some of these moments I consider to be normal for any human to experience, but I also know that the disease likes to hide and build up a strong army so it can strike when it feels like your defenses are down. The disease looks for the moments when you are feeling low or less than even if they are brief. I have learned to recognize the troops as they began to assemble so I am able to stop them before they become a full army. Today, I am fortunate to say that when I look at my naked body, I immediately have a sense of gratitude.