Total Pageviews

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Last post of 2013.. :)

It's December 31.  And oh my god, what a year it's been.  It's been full of ups and downs, some of them pretty big.  More than pretty big.

Honestly, it's been a life-changing year, and while there have been some pretty difficult times, it's also been an incredible adventure.  I've learned a lot about myself, about love, and about the world around me.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I don't have any resolutions going into this new year.  There's nothing that I want to wake up tomorrow and start doing.  I don't think life works that way anymore.. I don't think you can just wake up and out of nowhere change who you are.  It's a process, and it's one that I would like to think I've already started.

I'm constantly changing.

One thing that I have been thinking about a lot over the past couple weeks though (and no, this is not a New Year's resolution, it's bigger than that).. I want to start saying yes to life.  And not just literally... I don't want to keep saying no to doing things that I may actually end up loving.  I know I can't say yes to everything, but I certainly don't want to keep saying no as much as I have in the past.. because this year, the fact that life really is short and can be taken away at any time, was made all too real.  I want to feel like I have lived my life to its full potential.

And on that note... I am off to celebrate the end of one year, and the start of the next trip around the sun.  :)

Saturday, December 28, 2013

I'm not going to write today... I have a ton of things I want to get done.  But I haaaaave to post this video.  I've had the song on repeat for days.  <3



Tuesday, December 17, 2013

You always have a choice.

I've been thinking a lot lately about choices.  I don't have a specific reason for it, it's just been on my mind in general.

I recently made the decision to get better.  To recover. 

I've never really thought of it as a choice before.  It's always been something that I've thought of as something that would just happen with time.  But it's not like that.  Things happen...and then more things happen.  As long as I'm alive, things will keep happening... because that's kind of part of what life is.

And as more things have happened in my life, it's gotten easier and easier to make excuses.  Like.. "Well I can't get better because this happened".. or "I can't get better because this other thing might happen".  But those excuses have been nothing but a waste of time. 

As I made excuses, I was really just letting myself get sicker and sicker.  Because that was easier.

It's easier to stay the same than to wake up and choose to change.  But what I've realized, above all else, is that recovery is a choice.  A choice that nobody else can make for me.

Recovery is also a complete lifestyle change.. but I'll get into that more at a later time.  :)

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Lost? Most definitely..

So lately I've started watching Lost again... right from the beginning.

I'm currently on season 5, and have to say.. I am so fucking confused.  Time travel?  Really?  And different people are stuck on the same island but in different decades? 

I.  Can't.  Even.

I've actually tried to get through the series three times before.. which makes this my fourth attempt.  I think I might actually finish it this time.  :)

Monday, December 9, 2013

"Don't let your struggle become your identity."

This quote.. it doesn't matter how many times I see it, it always gets me thinking.

Right now, I'm being faced with the reality that feel like I don't know who I am without self-harm.  It's kind of hard to explain.  I mean, I know a lot about myself.  A lot.  But at the same time, there's this nagging feeling that I don't really know who I am as a whole.

It's like self-harm, that was how I identified myself, for nearly half of my life so far.  I identified myself as a self-harmer.  Not so much with other people.. with other people, I tended to not talk about my self-harming unless I absolutely had to.  But within myself.. I saw myself as a self-harmer with mental health issues, and that was about it.

I kind of failed to overlook a lot of other parts of myself that are way more important.  Like... I have a really big, vivid imagination.  I'm creative.  I love learning.. I'm full of love for the world around me.  And yet I fail to recognize all these positive pieces of the puzzle that is my life.

Today, I am three weeks free of self-harm.  It's been a struggle.  There's no denying that.

But here's the thing.  There's been a shift in the way I see myself.  I now see myself as a lot more than a mentally ill self-harmer.  I see it as a struggle that I have faced, and that I still am facing.. it's been a daily battle, and probably will be for a long time.  But even though it's been a struggle, it's not my whole life.

There is a lot more to my life than what I have done, or what difficulties I have faced.  And there are much bigger, brighter things to come in the future.   :)

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Another thing I had to share..

Right after clicking the "publish" button for my last post, I went to check my facebook before I go to sleep for the night, and saw this, so I had to share it here.. :)

Moving forward..

Now that I've started to get a bit of separation from cutting, I feel like I'm forced to face the fact that without self-harm, I don't know who I am.  I've never really been able to imagine my life without it, so now that my life is happening without it, I don't really know what to do or how to feel.

I keep thinking that it shouldn't be any different from any of the other times I've stopped self-harming.  That I can just live my life the same way I did all those times...especially the times I was free of it for almost a year.

But here's the thing.. living my life that way will not not help me.  It won't get me through this, and ultimately, it will just lead me right back to where I started.  Cutting and/or burning myself.

In the past, I've stopped cutting.. great, right?  Not so much.  Because that's about all I did.  I stopped cutting, but didn't really go any further than that.  I didn't work on myself.  I mean, sure, I saw a therapist.. but when you're not fully, completely, 100% committed to helping yourself, seeing a therapist is useless.  Because the reality is, recovery isn't something anybody can do for another person.  Recovery is a huge commitment that a person has to make to themselves before anyone else.

Yes, other people can be there.  Other people can help, and they can be supportive.  But what I've learned this time, what I think is different, is that I now know that nobody can force me to recover from this.  I think what's different this time, is that I'm ready to make that commitment to myself. 

I feel so overwhelmed right now.  Because, as committed as I am to getting better, I am absolutely terrified by the thought of never cutting again.  It scares me, because it means I'm letting go of something that has been a really big part of my life for the past decade.  Self-harm was something that I spent a long time believing was the only thing keeping me going (I now know that I was wrong).  It's really hard to just stand up and walk away from that.

It feels like a loss.  Even though I know I'm doing the best possible thing for myself, it feels like I've lost a part of myself.  An important part of my life.  I really hope that feeling goes away soon.

Friday, December 6, 2013

"You're beautiful, and you're worth more than harming yourself." 
     - Demi Lovato

This quote is going on the mirror in my room.. because lately, I have to remind myself a million times a day.

I hate that cutting is still so heavily on my mind.  I've been wishing and hoping and praying that the thought of it would just.. I don't know, go away on its own?  But it hasn't.  I've gotten rid of my  blades and the thoughts are still here.

Yes, getting rid of those blades was such a big step in the right direction, but it's just that... a step.  It doesn't mean the work is done, it means the work has started.  I want so badly for things to just go perfectly, and exactly how I want them to go.. but that isn't the reality of the situation.

Life is messy, it's never perfect.  Things will go wrong.  Probably every single day.  There are going to be times where I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin just wanting to make the unpleasant feelings go away.  But feeling these things, it's part of being human.  It's part of being alive.

And as I said a couple nights ago, I want to experience life.  I deserve to experience life.  I mean, I am human, right?  And as I've recently come to realize, I am also very  much a work in progress.

A work in progress, but still worth a lot more than harming myself. 

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Every day you wake up..

I came across this on Facebook earlier tonight (on Sober Is Sexy's page - check them out!), and had to share.. :)

Circles can be broken..

Thinking more about what I wrote last night...about going in circles.

Circles can be broken.  I don't have to stay in the same patterns forever.  It's a choice.  A very difficult choice, but still a choice.

And right now, I'm making a choice to break the pattern I've allowed myself to stay stuck in.  I just threw out the razor blades I had been cutting with.

I know that it shouldn't have even been a question.  Logically, there was no reason for me to remain so attached to those blades.  They're just a tiny object.  But they represented so much more.

They represented escape.  Denial.  Avoidance.  And yet, at the same time, they also represented the one thing that I felt was holding me together.  It's crazy terrifying how much one blade can influence a person's thinking.  My need to cut made me believe that I couldn't live without it...that I could never survive without it.

But here's the thing.. my need to cut was also putting my life in danger.  Not the cuts themselves, but what they led to.  My cutting was not an attempt to end my life, but over the past few years, I've noticed a pattern that once I started cutting, I started spiraling into deeper and deeper depression to the point where I felt that ending my life was the only solution.  It just goes to show that cutting never held me together.. it was actually, literally, tearing me apart.

Yes, I've only been free of cutting for 17 days.  But I feel like my whole perspective on my life is shifting...I want to be healthy.  I want to move forward.

And I've also realized just how dangerous my thinking patterns have been over the years.  And how lucky I am to still be alive after all that.  I want to experience life, not run from it.

So... here I am, alone in my room on a Thursday night, feeling like I've made a huge step in the right direction.  There are going to be millions and millions of little steps along the way, but I've just taken the first step.  And it feels good.  Finally.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Circles.

I hate this feeling like I've spent years going in circles.  A week and a half ago, I got out of the hospital...again.  After sinking into depression...again.

It's like.. I always want to change, I always want to get better.  And for a while, I do get better.  But then I stop working on getting better.  I don't know if it's because I get bored, or because I get lazy, or maybe recovery just plain scares me.

To be fair, actually allowing myself to finally recover.. allowing myself to finally rid myself of these demons that I've been dealing with for years.. would be a really big change.  It requires facing things head-on.  It requires honesty...complete honesty...with myself.

Facing things head-on is probably one of the hardest things for me, because usually, my first instinct is to run the other way.  Deny, deny, deny.. pretend they don't exist.  Because in the moment, it seems easier.  It means I don't have to deal with it in that moment.  But later.. later, it all starts to sink in, and everything is there in front of me.  It's real.  And I have to face it all at once, and it overwhelms me.  So I try to go back into that comfort zone of denial.  But it doesn't work.  So then I start fighting myself, and then I start spiraling back into old thinking patterns and old habits.

That's usually when I start cutting myself again.

But I don't want to cut myself anymore.  I want the last time to be the last time.  Except that I know I say that every time, so I feel like it doesn't have any meaning anymore.  I keep promising myself these things... over and over and over.  I've been promising myself that the last cut was the last cut for more than eight years now.  That's more than a third of my lifetime.

Looking at it that way, it breaks my heart.  I feel like I've wasted so much time fighting this.  Why can't I just give it up? 

Because it's a fucking addiction. 

That's why.  Because I've reinforced it over and over to a point where I don't know how to live without it.  The thought of living without ever again cutting myself absolutely terrifies me.

It terrifies me, but I'm trying.  I'm trying because I want better for myself.  I don't want this to be my life.

So right now, even though my mind is spinning, even though I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin, I will not cut tonight.  Because I don't want that to be my life.  I don't want to look back someday when I'm old to realize that I lived my life for a razor blade.  I want better for myself.

Even if it takes a long time to get past this, I want better.  And even more than that, I want to get to a place emotionally where I feel like I actually deserve better.