ocd

I feel like I’m being beaten to the ground from all angles. My period adds to the assault, worsening my already terrible mental health and sleep, bringing severe pain and making me sick. There is an ugly physical driver to all my issues. Often I can literally feel all the chemicals/hormones running rampant in my body. Shortly after I got my period this week, there was a day when I was swamped with the worst feeling which I cannot even name or describe. There were so many things I wanted to do- write, sleep, go to the park, answer texts, see people, finish my shopping, open the parcels that have arrived and return the items that don’t fit, clean up my house, do a better job at looking after myself- but I couldn’t do anything, and I still struggle to. These days just getting up and filling a glass of water feels like running a marathon. Then knocking over a glass of water by my bad, which I had managed to fill, feels like the end of the world. When I got my period I had a total freak out when I heard my dad arrive home, terrified of him approaching me. I almost cancelled with my therapist, who I go for walks with. Thankfully he was running late as well, so I had a bit more time to finish the piece of writing I was determined to complete, get dressed and get myself together. I packed some diazepam in case I had a panic attack. When I saw him I think he could sense something was pretty off with me. I tied a top around my head to cover my acne, I had lost more weight, I was dressed up like a little girl in a pink Mary Blair pinup dress with a train printed on it, white lacy socks and tbars. We lay on the grass for a bit and I started to feel my whole demeanor turn into a little child. The park was strangely quiet.

“Can you leave me here?” I asked him.

He paused.

“I don’t feel comfortable,” he said. Continue reading “The fight for wellness” →

“Imagine living with a scream inside you.

And the scream is yours.

And no one else hears it.

That is grief.

Imagine living with a scream inside you—a scream that is yours alone.

It’s loud, it’s piercing, and it reverberates through every part of your being.

And yet, no one else hears it.

Grief can make the world feel so distant.

You might be in the middle of a conversation,

but your mind is elsewhere, caught in that scream.

What does a silent scream even sound like?

What would it sound like if someone else could hear it?

Perhaps it isn’t really a scream but a feeling

with sound, one so raw, so painful, so excruciating

that there are no words to describe it,

so it becomes a sound, a noise, a vibration

that rages through our entire body, screaming,

The scream of grief.”

– Author unknown

I spent most of my day in bed lethargic. The lethargy was actually a welcome relief from the restlessness and agitation that rips apart my insides every day and especially every night. I got a text from my dad thanking me for the various adventures we’ve been on together. It sounded like he was expecting one of us to die soon.

“Dear Zoe,” he wrote. “Thankyou for all the “adventures” you have taken me on ! Thanks for Philip Island, and taking you down there – to run away from the wretched police, and the stupid psychiatrist at Chandler House. Taping my torch on the back of my car, so you could follow in your car … Thanks too for taking me to see Margaret’s place, and her “church”. Thanks for checking out Bendigo, with me, and meeting Dr Julia Bourke… Thanks for “Wet & Wild” … rafting down the Yarra at Warburton. Thanks for inviting me to that place past Sale, where you stayed (with the woman who couldn’t stop talking), where I almost lost her dog, on one of my long walks. Yep, … we have been on some great adventures together ”

I didn’t know if the stress of seeing me suffer for so long, which has led me to isolate, no longer speak and lash out at him, was driving him to suicide. I didn’t know if he senses I am slipping away and may not make it through another year, or even to the end of this year. But tears welled in my eyes when I read that text. Continue reading “Losing things, OCD and more on dissociation” →

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Haven for the living Princess and the Pea

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The fight for wellness

Losing things, OCD and more on dissociation