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Haven for the living Princess and the Pea

Bipolar

“You were blessed by a different kind of inner view, it’s all magnifiedThe highs would make you fly, but the lows make you want to dieAnd I was once there, hanging from that very ledge where you are standingSo I know, I know, I knowIt’s easier to let go” 

Missy Higgins, ‘Nightminds

When I was a child, my mother described me as a live wire. I had an inner motor that never ran out of fuel. I was constantly running, climbing, moving, bouncing off the walls, smacking people with balloons, rolling down hills, flying through the air on flying foxes, winding the rope swing which hung from our gumtree up until it couldn’t get any tighter and then sitting on it in great delight as it unwound and the world became a blur. When I look at photos of myself when I was about two my mouth would be open so wide that it reminded me of those laughing clown ball machines at carnivals. It looked like I was screaming, but if I was, it would have been out of sheer love for life. My eyes sparkled blue as the ocean. I really was, as s.c lorie @ butterfliesandpebbles wrote, the girl who had sunflowers for eyes and fireworks in her soul.

I barely slept, and didn’t need much sleep. My parents said that I was a wide-eyed child the minute I was born, as though thinking “wow! Isn’t this world amazing!”

My mum said that she would ask other parents if they thought her child was “normal”. I was a force of nature with the energy of a tsunami. One carer said she’d rather look after ten kids than one kid like me.

My mum blames my father for my hyperactivity. She said he was always tossing me around and putting me up trees. But I think it was just me. Continue reading “Bipolar”

Get me out of here

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.” Shakespeare

I wish I could say that life is better now that I have broken free from the mental health system, but the truth is that I continue to suffer what feels like a slow, agonising death. I suffer with the damage therapists and especially the drugs have caused me.

There is little I enjoy, and I find myself going to bed at sunrise as there’s nothing I want to do and I’m worn out all the time. Yet despite being worn out, despite feeling like I’ve been pounded around in the ocean by wave after wave, I still struggle to sleep. My existential crisis haunts me day and night. I drift away to a place where there are no dreams and in fact nothing at all, just endless black. I feel like I’m dead. My feel like my consciousness has been obliterated. I wonder if this is what it will be like when I do finally die: no souls or afterlife, just nothing at all. I start to come back to this world. I hear doors being opened and closed all the time: car doors, house doors. I hear bangs and noises next door, like gates of hell welcoming me back to this world. I neither want to be here, nor in the next world, if there even is one. I neither want to die nor be alive.

I wake up feeling even more exhausted than I was before I fell asleep. I feel sick.

All I’ve been eating is take away as I don’t have it in me to make a meal.

I’ve started writing a book about my 12 years in the mental health system, but everything feels pointless. My suffering feels pointless. The book feels pointless. I am painfully aware of my own mortality, and I wonder what is the point of anything?

I just want to run as far away from the city as I can get. I want to wake up to the lul of the bush, not bangs, machinery and people. I want to relax into the rhythms of nature where no body demands anything of me. I’m sick of being marinated in 5G and the other ills of civilisation. I want to live in a place so far away that no phones will work.

Anxiety and having a crush

Imagine a time when you were worried about something. Now, imagine that this feeling does not go away after the thing you were worried about is over. Instead your mind will find something else to be worried about. Imagine being in a perpetual state of dread and anxiety over anything and everything. That is what it’s like to have Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Continue reading “Anxiety and having a crush”

The night and Nine Inch Nails

I’m hunched over the laptop next to the fan heater in my small, messy ensuite right now hoping it will induce some creativity in me today. I like small spaces as they allow me to go inwards. I don’t know if it’s the cold, dreary weather, the room, the fact that it’s daytime, or that I got my period today, but the words I want are not coming to me. I feel like crap. I want to cry but no tears are coming out. They are stuck inside just like my words. Continue reading “The night and Nine Inch Nails”

Rebuilding life after therapy

Even weeks after leaving that final session with my psychologist, I am still not sure what hit me. That session was so grotesque… the way she said she’d been speaking with colleagues about me and they all agreed that she should stop seeing me… the way she brought up all the times I’d been difficult during my private hospital stays to prove that I was indeed too “unstable” to work with. Apparently pulling a third person into the dynamic is a documented strategy used by “selfish individuals” to “comfort and protect their egos”, and “reinforce their sense of rightness or superiority”. I was left feeling ganged up on. All I had left to say to my psychologist as I left was “fuck you”. All I have left to say now is this quote by Booker T. Washington.

candle quote

Continue reading “Rebuilding life after therapy”

Resilience

“I know you have a little life in you yet
I know you have a lot of strength left
I know you have a little life in you yet
I know you have a lot of strength left”

– Kate Bush, This Woman’s Work

Yesterday I had plans to go to Box Hill and see somebody I met in hospital. I was going to catch the train there. It has been a long time since I’ve been on the train. I drove to the train station, staggered up the ramp, and swiped my Myki card, only to be told it had expired. I was furious. Nobody staffed the train station and the train was nearly there. I ran into the supermarket over the road and asked if they sold Myki cards. They didn’t, but told me the milkbar up the road did. I slouched up to the milkbar as the train pulled in, wondering if I should just catch the next train and tell my friend I’d be half an hour late, or call for a taxi, which would be expensive. I bought the new Myki, but to my surprise, when I left the milkbar the train was still there. I decided to make a run for it. I felt like I was going to collapse from the stress, but I actually made it onto the train about a minute before it left. It was waiting for another train to arrive before it could leave. There were some girls from my old high school sitting on the carriage. They decided to make fun of me because of my earmuffs I wear to block noise, and probably my whole attire (I was wearing a rainbow top and baggy, men’s cargo pants). They giggled as I passed. I rarely go out in public and forgot that people target me because I’m different. I had gone to the school these girls were from up until Year Nine when I left due to bullying. Sadly, it looked like the school hadn’t changed one bit. Continue reading “Resilience”

Thoughts on loss, life, and asexuality

gill card good

This is the card I sewed my therapist about two years ago. She got it framed and put it in her office. She has now callously discarded me, telling me I’m too “unstable” to work with, but I doubt she’ll take this down or return it to me. She will keep it up as she has no remorse. She may even keep it up as a trophy. I similarly spent six months working on a painting I gave to another therapist who did the same to me. I lose a little piece of myself each time. Continue reading “Thoughts on loss, life, and asexuality”

Reminders

When we lose someone we love, it can be hard to know what to do with the things that remind us of them. When I lost my case worker a bit over a year ago, I never touched my soft lion and elephant again. I had brought them into an appointment not long before my case worker was taken from me. Suddenly they felt tainted. They no longer brought me comfort, but sadness, so I kept them out of sight. I only just feel ready to dig them out again now, after seeing this picture of them which reminded me of how sweet and special they are.

maggie

I realised that they are mine, they are whole, and no body can take the joy they bring me away from me anymore.

Continue reading “Reminders”

Fawn

“But I know the difference
Between myself and my reflection
I just can’t help but to wonder
Which of us do you love?”

– Evanescence, “Breathe No More”

I often get told that I am easy to talk with. Strangers tell me all about their dark family secrets. They tell me I am a very nice person and I make them comfortable. But the truth is I don’t really know if it’s “me” they like, or a version of me created through trauma. Pete Walker talks about the “Four Fs”. When we cannot fight or flee, sometimes we freeze and sometimes we fawn, placating people by becoming who they want us to be to avoid further abuse. I wear a smile plastered to my face and I serenade people, ironically making them feel at ease when I am anything but. I am like a duck that seems calm but is furiously paddling away beneath the surface. Continue reading “Fawn”

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