This is the story of a girl.... in Chapter 9 : Oil Above Water

[who cried a river and drowned the whole world…]

TRIGGER WARNING : This entry is full of graphic descriptions regarding Self Harm and Eating Disorders…but it has a happy-ish ending.

This is a tale of how the world closed in and darkness was about to pull me under. This is also a story of of recovery, of rediscovery, how the colour came back in to my life, of how light returned, of how I began to bloom again. I’m not a new person, I’m not my old self, and that’s OK. I’m bionic; a hybrid of the old Kit and the pieces of me that I never knew existed until last week.

Right, enough mush. Hankies at the ready if you’re a weeper. Are we sitting comfortably? Then we’ll begin.

So…things have changed somewhat and I feel the need to do a whole big thing, like an op-ed to myself, and all of you about it. This academic year has been a complete mind-fuck; however despite this I’m possibly in the best mental space I’ve been in for a LONG time, and that’s why I need to write it down and get it out.

It’s time.

Lets begin in June 2017. I knew I was coming back to college, and I honestly was OK about it for the most part until I realised a) that I was going to have get all the Inclusive Learning guff in place so that I could thrive, and b) knowing that for the first time in a long time I was going to have to do Maths again. The thought filled me with dread, now looking back (hindsight’s always 20/20) I know it was most likely the spark that triggered the spiral downwards. It was essentially the straw that broke the elephant’s back. All the old trauma from school returned, and lit the issues that I had going on but had bottled up, consequently I exploded like some sort of mental Molotov Cocktail. There was no way I could control what was going on, sometimes resistance really is futile. I fought and fought but I was essentially trying to extinguish a full-ball blaze with a water pistol from Poundies. I lapsed in to all the old behaviours, all the old ways of coping and making myself feel better. I was running on fumes in top gear whilst screaming “YIPPEE-KI-YAY, MOTHERFUCKER” internally, like I actually stood a chance, but one way or another I was intent on self-destruction and this time it was going to be explosive so that I would have what would feel like a legitimate reason for the anger inside. At least that’s what I thought at the time. The old behaviours had taken control and I was furious with myself. It’s a vicious cycle.

The minute I ran the Exacto across my thigh for the first time in so long, the relief rushed over me, as the pain flowed out and in to the bath water, but the problem with such overwhelming relief is that you don’t stop with one. I couldn’t stop. Every time I felt myself bubbling, I would take to the bath once more and let it all out, perfectly straight lines in columns around the top of my thigh. When I got as far I could reach, I would go back and start again, like an old typewriter because my OCD just refuses to be left out of any breakdown that I have. I refused to allow anyone in, not my friends, not my classmates, certainly not my fucking family; the less ammunition they have against me the better. The self loathing runs deep, it always has. As my mental health continued to plummet, the ED issues started to rise, because at least with an ED you think you’re in control, FTR – you’re not, it is, I know this as I sit here in the middle of an ED relapse, not quite ready to put a stop to it because I’m not quite ready to relinquish the idea of control that I think I have. You see, the thing about whichever Eating Disorder it is that grabs hold of you, is that it sneakily plants this idea of it being simply nothing more sinister than “mind over matter and you won’t get fatter…” but what it’s actually doing is akin to being a shitty relationship with an abusive partner, only you’re in a shitty relationship with yourself. It starts off by destroying your self image, if you can fix that then you’ve half a chance at a successful recovery, if you can’t then you’re going to wind up living your life with Ana and Mia constantly trying to worm their way back in to your life at every opportunity they get. So they get you to a stage where your convinced that you’re nothing more than a monster worthy of mythological status, then they plant ideas in the back of your mind; Starve, binge, purge – do whatever the fuck it takes. “GET SKINNY OR DIE TRYING BITCH” is the internal monologue that I have lived with for.....well forever really. For me, this time around I’m running on synthetic energy. Diet Energy Drinks (because I never fucking learn rolls eyes and when the shakes set in, swallow a Glucose Tab and carry on regardless. I eat just enough to keep prying eyes away. I take Multi-Vitamins under the guise that being Vegan needs supplementation (it doesn’t if you actually eat a healthy diet). Years of being told that losing weight will cure all that ails me has been grabbed by A&M and it goes round on a ticker in my mind all day, everyday. Since last summer I’ve lost 7 stone/98 lbs/ 44.5 kg and I don’t feel any “healthier”. Actually what I feel is fucking oppressed, you see once the seeds are planted, the behaviours bloom but it’s only a matter of time before people start to notice your weird behaviour then they combine it with your weight loss and before you know it, every piece of unsolicited and unqualified bollocks starts to roll out of all these mouths who know fuck all about you. You don’t want them stealing the power and control that you’ve convinced yourself you have, so you start to withdraw and isolate yourself in every way possible, this only adds to the further delusion of power and control because you don’t need anyone, right?

Wrong.

You need someone. You need someone who can actually help, someone who actually gives a shit.

Enter Rita and Disco.

Around about Halloween time, we wound up with not one, but two new faculty members. By this stage I was in free-fall and the ground was merely feet away. If I had gone much further into myself then I’d had have swallowed myself whole. GAD and Panic Disorder was causing double digit amounts of panic attacks on a daily basis. Major Depressive Disorder had me at the lowest ebb I could go to. The Prozac wasn’t working. People had started casually asking if I was alright, I wasn’t, but I wasn’t going to admit that to anyone, I wasn’t prepared to lay out my vulnerability to anyone, especially not those who wanted it as gossip fodder to further cement their beliefs that I’m “strange”. In passing one morning Rita asked if I was OK, I stretched out a faux smile and told her I was fine, just tired. That day I went on to have 4 panic attacks in 6 hours. I couldn’t go on. Rita had told us that if we needed her, just to ask. I went and asked her if she could share any tips on dealing with Panic Attacks; she could and she did, and so a whole new world had begun, but I wasn’t aware of it….yet. Around this time, Disco had set us a self-reflection assignment on the subject of Stress Management. I wanted to crawl inside myself and die, how the hell was I supposed to write this? My methods aren’t “healthy” and I sure as shit wasn’t going to plunk them down on this essay. I approached him to ask if I had to discuss what steps I would take to turn my “unhealthy” habits in to “healthy” ones because frankly I had no intention to do, or any idea how. He told me I did because I was obviously not in a good place, and somehow I managed to pull just enough to get through it. As we moved through the year, Rita threw a life-raft out to me when she could see me getting darker and darker inside. When the time to start making progression decisions arrived, Disco unknowingly pushed me through the mud with advice and words of wisdom his parents had passed to him. It helped to lift some of the weight from shoulders when everyone else was telling me I was ungrateful and making the wrong choice. I went back into therapy, it didn’t help. I didn’t go back, then Rita suggested NLP & Clinical Hypnotherapy.

Enter Niamh.

To say I was unsure about this is an understatement, but I was desperate, so anything was worth a shot, at any cost.

I have never been more wrong.

Where talking therapy, CBT and mindfulness failed, this worked. Is working. Niamh is single-handedly teaching me how to deal with the riot in my mind. It’s not about fixing me because I’m not broken, a little chipped around the edges, but not broken. I’m almost down £500 and it’s been worth every single penny because what she’s teaching me is working. I did give Rape Counselling a brief shot alongside it, which was not for me. Turns out that talking therapy is a MASSIVE trigger for me because all it does is keep me going over what’s happened rather than dealing with it, packing it away and walking away from it. After the second session I was so triggered that I was genuinely terrified of myself and what I would do to myself that night. That’s when I started to notice a change in myself. That’s when I noticed that I’d actually started wanting to feel better and I started to move back in to recovery again. Recovery’s a long path, I’m pretty sure it’s the other path out of Munchkinland. There’s no end to it, it’s a never-ending sodding journey with shit paving and potholes at every turn that are just waiting to trip you up and have you fall flat on your face because whatever your issues are, they don’t want you to recover, they’re like little trolls that the Grimm Brothers forgot to warn us about. They want your power, your soul, your everything. They want you dead. You have to choose to survive, you have to choose to persevere. You have to find a reason to get better, for me it’s my kids, because for all the noise that goes on in my mind, there is one belief that shouts louder than all the others “I AM A FUCKING BRILLIANT MAMA”. Everything I do is for my kids, right down to breathing. They are my all and I don’t want to miss a bit of them. They deserve me being on top form, despite all this though they’re not inspiration, they the force that keeps me in check, they’re what I hold on to as I fall through myself. Eventually someone will inspire you though, someone’s words will break through the noise of your issues. You’ll put down the craft knife, you’ll start to build a new relationship with food, a healthier relationship with yourself. Someone will inspire you the way Rita inspired me, someone will speak your language.

Last week was a week of epiphanies and “a-ha!” moments. I’ve finally accepted that when I left the cabaret job that I loved in favour of the wild world of accounting, that I made the biggest mistake of my life (it does NOT excuse the way things happened though, that shit was frankly disgusting and karma will get her). It’s OK though, these things are meant to try me, obviously. Once I accepted that I started to actually and finally process events from there on. I’ve accepted that this is where we are right now and I have to make peace with the town that destroyed me in order to mend my soul, it’ll take time but I’ll do it, it’s a work in progress. I’ve accepted that the kids have to play a part in decisions I make about our future because they are our future. Moving back home is off the table indefinitely. Staying in Scotland has become a reality, as much as it pains me. I have to build a whole new life and be open to the fact that I might meet someone in the future (apparently we’re social creatures? I think I missed that memo? I was probably out having a fag when they were programming my personality). I’ve reassured myself that staying in Scotland does NOT mean that I have to commit to the special form of hell that is living in this town. We could go to a nice village in South Lanark, we could go to Glasgow, we could go to Edinburgh, we could go to any city we want. I’ve accepted that life is what it is now and it’s down to make it something worth living, I have to make it what I want it to be and aim for the future rather than clinging on to my old life that I loved. I didn’t just pluck all this out of my arse though, it came from Disco arranging Palliative Care nurses to come a chat to us about the work they do, as nursing students it’s kind of good to have an idea of what’s ahead. They talked about the What, Why, When, Where and Who. They talked about Self-Care. Then they showed a video of their patients discussing what the services provided at our local hospice does for them. Suddenly like a thunderbolt there was a change of perspective. One woman, was talking about how her diagnosis and prognosis affected her, then she made a statement that I’ll never forget as long as I live. “I’ll just say it, I feel like I’m alive, like I can live again.” That statement, those words. I had to leave the room. I had to go to my hidey-hole and cry. What she said truly touched a piece of me that I never knew existed, you see I’ve spent my whole life wishing that I would die, hell I’ve even tried a couple of times and then all of a sudden there’s this woman who’s actually dying and she’s just so happy that someone is helping her to live the rest of her life. For the first time I actually wanted to feel how she feels, I want to feel happy that I’m alive, I want to feel happy that there’s a whole life ahead of me. It’s like a goal that my soul set way back when, before my brain broke down like a banger on the M6. I want to get better, but I’m scared, because there’s always that chance that it’ll go the other way again, and free-falling through your emotions is soul destroying stuff. It takes a flame haired bundle of empathy and optimism recognising the little light inside you and the person you least expected to fan THAT flame to relight your mind and extinguish the darkness that is cocooning you.

There’s nothing I’ll ever be able to do to thank them enough, except get stronger and be the person I was born to be, and that’s fully what I intend to do.

Last updated May 09, 2018