Tag: Self harm

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

I am therefore I am: a conundrum

Posted on by WeeGee

WARNING: This post contains armchair philosophy and thoughts and ideas that might make your head explode or something.

Here’s a question for you: if you spend fifty percent of you time thinking that yesterday was better, and the other fifty percent thinking that tomorrow will be better – what does that make today? I think that’s my way of trying to understand time and existence. I’ve a feeling I’m biting off more than I can chew here, but I’m going to give it a go….

If you’ve ever had any kind of counselling or therapy ‘mindfulness’ will be a familiar concept to you. It seems that if you want to be normal rather than mental you have to keep your thoughts in the here and now: no past, no future, just the moment you’re in.

Mindfulness is something I struggle with in part because it’s only a few steps shy of meditation and meditation makes me giggle because it’s not the kind of thing I can take seriously. At all. Ever. The end.

Maybe I’m just too cynical for all this mindfulness stuff?

I’m also not entirely convinced that human beings can ever ‘exist’ in one moment alone. I understand the arguments, but I wonder whether we’re really wired that way. Everything that I am now is surely a culmination of everywhere I’ve ever been? Everything that I do now is surely a small contribution to who I’m going to be in the future. If all there is is now then who was I, and who will I be? Those things are important, no?

I suppose it comes down to what ‘existing’ is and whether you believe (is it a belief, I don’t know?) that the verb exist has a legitimate past and future tense. Existing isn’t just being alive. I’m sure about that because, for example, I’m sitting on a chair at the moment and the chair definitely exists and is definitely not alive* Some things ‘existed’ thousands of years ago but people argue that they only exist now in this moment. You are reading this in a different moment from the one I wrote it in. When does it exist?

I exist now and I’m fairly confident of that. And I know I existed yesterday because I can REMEMBER yesterday. That’s quite straightforward in a way, but tomorrow only ‘exists’ in so far as I can imagine it. Does that mean it exists or not…. I’ve never been to Madagascar but I know it exists, or does it – maybe it only exists in this moment if you are actually there? Do bears shit in the woods?

……. Dear oh dear. Is your head hurting yet?

I think I’ll have a nice musical interlude at this point to get my hurting head off the hook….. Here’s a (very) handsome man with a gruff and gravelly voice singing about tomorrow. It’s nice. It’ll make your head all better:

I got lost in existence for a while there. Sorry. But I think you have probably got the gist of the difficulty that I have with mindfulness?

The past matters to human beings. It forms a large part of our collective identity, and, I think of our individual identities too. The past is important and I don’t think you should wipe it away and I don’t think you really can – no matter how you train your brain. That’s why we have Armistice Day (as an example) because what people did in the past matters a great deal to who people are today, and for that matter, how they live today.

As for the future, I can’t imagine what humans would be without it. Would we ever have done anything? What happens to progress if there is no future? What happens to hope?

Living in the moment is all very well. But what if the moment you are in is terrible? I don’t really mean broken brain terrible (although that is quite terrible enough) but what if, for arguments sake you are being held in a Syrian jail and tortured within an inch of your life IN THIS MOMENT? I can’t see how you find happiness in that moment under those circumstances…..

I’m over thinking it aren’t I?

Here are my final thoughts on mindfulness…..

Google ‘mindfulness’ or ‘living in the moment’ or whatever variation on the theme you can think of and you’ll find people who have found ‘happiness’ by simply ‘living in the moment’. I think that’s fantastic for them, I really do, but what they never say is HOW they do it. Do they just wake up one morning and find themselves in the moment? If the only problem that I have is that I can’t live in the here and now, why can’t someone just give me a step by step guide to living in the here and now?

I don’t get it.

Finally – in my mind there is a very practical problem with ‘living in the moment’. Okay, so here I am today. I’m typing up a blog post and watching Olympic Volleyball. That’s all that matters because that’s now. It’s all I should be thinking about.

But here’s the thing. There isn’t a lot of food in my flat and one of my friends has a birthday coming up. That means I need to think about buying groceries and gifts and I will do both of those things in the future but I will plan for them now. If I stuck with the moment I’d just head out into the world to forage for food when I was hungry and I’d never get a gift to anyone in time. Sometimes you have to plan but if you ever say that to someone who is trying to teach you mindfulness they will say  ‘ah, but that’s different – it’s a different kind of thinking, a different thought process’.

To me, that says that mindfulness is an intuitive thing and I end up back at wondering where my step by step guide to mindfulness is because I quite clearly don’t get it. As usual.

What a long post to say nothing more than ‘I’m confused and I don’t get it’!!

Lots of love from a philosophical WeeGee xx

*Unless I have well and truly taken leave of my senses once and for all!

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

Olympian

Posted on by WeeGee

Don’t worry – this isn’t another one of my gushing posts about the Olympic Games. It’s a post about this song:

Or at least it’s a post about a couple of lines in this song:

“I wanted to be there with you / For I can only be normal with you / I’ve given my all for you”

Twice in my life I’ve managed to find another human being that I wanted to be with. Twice in my life I’ve managed to find another human being that made me feel ‘normal’. Twice in my life I’ve managed to lose the most special person on earth.

My conclusion to all this is that I must not be supposed to be with anybody and that certainly I’m not capable of being normal by myself. I don’t cut the mustard when it comes to all that belonging and normal stuff. You get what’s coming your way. What’s for you doesn’t go past you. If you get nothing and it all goes past you – that’s what was yours.

Everything I do is with reference to other people. That’s just the way my brain works and all the counselling and therapy in the world isn’t going to change that.

I am who I am.

I’m lost. I’m lonely. I’m mental. I’m not normal. This is what is mine. I wish I could make something matter, I really do.

Boo hoo. Woe is me. I hate myself and I want a pie.

Lots of mixed up miserable love (once more) from WeeGee xx

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

Things fall apart

Posted on by WeeGee

I didn’t make the title of this post up myself. I borrowed it from a clever man who borrowed it from another clever man – it just seemed right for today.

Yesterday didn’t go according to plan. That is what you call an understatement by the way. The plan for today had to change owing to yesterday not going to plan, but that’s okay.

The plan for today ended up being the plan that WeeGee is best of all at following – the plan you have to stick to in order to put it all back together again. Again. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to put it all back together again (again), but that’s also okay.

Today I took care of myself. I’m forever telling other people to ‘take care’ and I know I need to learn to take a little bit of my own advice. It was a quiet, contemplative day in WeeGee land. I fed myself and relaxed and I got my apologies in. When I was ready I did the routine de-brief with Mr Wise.

Mr Wise gets it. He always gets it even when I can’t explain it very well at all. I still don’t really understand why I called the crisis team and not him last night. Self sabotage I suppose. Next time things fall apart I have to remember to call Mr Wise because only he can look into my head and say ‘yeah, I see it, but it doesn’t matter because it’s going to be okay’

I’m about to have a birthday. It’s the second birthday I’ve had since the worst thing ever happened, which also means that it’s almost the two year anniversary of the worst thing ever. Anniversaries matter to me. An elephant never forgets.

Anyway – I’m rambling because I’m tired and a little bit mental (but not in a scary way). All I really wanted to say is that I have come to the conclusion that every once in a while things will probably fall apart for me. And that’s okay.

I will probably never get to a point in my life where I say – ‘that’s it; I’m never going to fall apart again’, but what I can do is learn lessons when I do fall apart so that eventually I will find a soft enough place to fall.

Lots of love from WeeGee xx

 

 

 

Posted in Welcome to my world

You know you’re having a bad day when….

Posted on by WeeGee

…. You get two calls to the crisis team in before supper*

I’m going to have to issue one of those ‘trigger warnings’ now. I don’t want to upset anybody or put them in a bad place so please bow out now if you are vulnerable about – self harm, suicide attempts, weird food stuff or mental madness in general.

Is there anybody left? Are you sure? This is quite long and not very cheery until the very end….

So, yeah, self harm, suicide attempts, weird food stuff and a bit of mental madness to boot. I have some larks don’t I?

For three or four days my brain was on best behaviour. I managed to trick it into playing a game of ‘let’s just try really, really hard for a while and see what happens’ and it worked until my brain decided it wasn’t going along with that anymore. As brain quite rightly pointed out, what’s the point of trying really, really hard if you end up where you always do anyway (which, for the record, is curled up in a teeny tiny ball trying desperately not to make plans to end your life sometime soon)?

I had a rotten dream last night. I could have done without it because when I woke up and remembered it (at just gone three am this morning) it stirred up some stuff that most definitely didn’t need stirring. I guess everyone has stuff that doesn’t need stirring – I’ve got a lot of it and if I have learned only one thing about stirring stuff that doesn’t need stirring it’s that if you absolutely have to stir it you should NEVER EVER do it between the hours of 10pm and 7am because of the golden rule of safe stirring: stirring is not be done when it is quiet and everyone else is asleep.

Thankfully (maybe) not everyone was asleep because there was my local friendly crisis team – on call 24/7 for my every mental madness emergency. So I phoned them up and told them I’d broken the golden rule of safe stirring and was now going a bit mental.

We tried to work out ‘what had gotten into me’ but for some reason (I don’t know which reason) I didn’t tell them the whole truth. I told them I wasn’t hungry and there was nothing obviously dangerous in the flat. Two breaths, two pointless lies. Why? Just why?

The truth was that I wasn’t hungry but starving hungry having eaten nothing but a bag of Doritos all day. Actually, here’s another rule for you. If you absolutely have to be mental, avoid being starving and mental at the same time AT ALL COSTS. It’s rubbish. Truly rubbish.

Why hadn’t I eaten anything all day? I decided not to. That was it. I just decided and once I’m decided on something like that I’m totally decided. The theory goes is that I use deciding not to eat in order to punish myself somehow. I don’t know if that’s it but it’s as good a theory as any, so I guess I have to go with it. Why didn’t I tell the nice crisis support people that I hadn’t eaten? Because I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep it all to myself.

Why was there something dangerous in the flat? Well there wasn’t – not in the ‘usual’ sense which is really just to say that I hadn’t deliberately brought anything into the flat in order to deliberately hurt myself. But a girl’s got to shave her legs, right? So there were ‘the emergency disposable razors’, which were not intended to be dangerous but which could be with a little determination) And I didn’t tell the crisis team chaps about them because this was an emergency and I had all the determination I needed. I was mental and angry and frightened and, in all honesty, I didn’t want anyone to talk me down. I dismantled the disposable razors with relative ease and bob’s your uncle, fanny’s your aunt…. I hurt myself. It hurt and made me feel small and foolish and even more frightened. It was supposed to make it better – it was supposed to get rid of whatever it was that had gotten in to me.

A period of pacing commenced. I felt like I was waiting for something. I don’t know what – maybe it was the thing I thought was going to happen the other day? I decided to curl up and do my waiting on the couch. It started to get light and I wondered if that was what I was waiting for – morning, because everything is better in the morning? Except it isn’t – it’s exactly the same. Every single lousy morning is exactly the same (that was broken brain’s take on it by the way).

I tried the crisis team again because I didn’t think I was going to make it. They suggested diazepam (another emergency ration, but GP approved unlike the disposable razors) and if I couldn’t do that (I’m scared of diazepam because it’s habit forming) it was ‘maybe time to think about coming in’.

Okay. So I thought about ‘coming in’ and dismissed that because I felt more mental than I’d ever felt before and decided that if I went in, I’d probably never get out again. I didn’t want that to happen. So I carried on waiting. Waiting and thinking. It all got a bit boo hoo and grizzly.

And then there was an epiphany moment in WeeGee’s broken brain. What I was waiting for was…. the last day WeeGee would ever spend on Earth. Not only that – I’d made it. No more waiting! Today was the day.

Once I had decided that this was the last day that WeeGee would spend on the planet things got a bit easier. There are things you need to organise if you’re about to bow out like making sure ‘the box’ is in order. ‘The box’ lives on top of my wardrobe and has a copy of my will, bank account details, information that my parents need about probate, insurance document, strict instructions about dealing with The Cat, a couple of photos and some letters. Ever since I got hit by a bus** I’ve been paranoid about making things as easy as possible for my loved ones  if I check out early – whether at my own hand or by an act of god. ‘The box’ was in order.

I had a shower and got ready. It took a while to decide what I was going to wear but in the end I settled on the skirt I wanted to be buried in (don’t ask – it’s stupid). I fed the little man and then fed him again. I think that was guilt. And then I headed to the outside world to purchase a tin of Heinz tomato soup and 32 painkillers. It’s a bit dangerous that I know that there is a shop within walking distance that sells painkillers 32 at a time. I see that now but I don’t know how to ‘unknow’ it. That is a problem for another day.

I got back – opened the curtains (because no-one wants to spend their last moments on planet Earth in the dark) and heated up the soup. Heinz tomato soup isn’t much of a last supper is it? All I can say is that if you have decided that this is the last day you will spend on planet earth YOU ARE CLEARLY NOT OF YOUR RIGHT MIND and are almost certainly in no fit state to decide what your last meal should be.

I washed up and emptied the bins and then fed Gryff again. A lot of food this time in case I wasn’t found for days. And then I sat staring at a box of 32 painkillers for a very long time. First of all I put them very far away from me, and gradually I brought them closer until they were right in front of my face. And I looked at them for another very long time.

By this time Gryff was sitting in ‘croissant cat’ position looking at me looking at the painkillers. And I came all over all soppy. I thought about the worst life night of my life ever (which was also the worst night of Gryff’s life) and how when I finally got to bed that night be had jumped up, burrowed under the covers and curled up next to my tummy and stayed there all night to stay safe and to keep me safe. And I wondered who he would curl up with to be safe when he realised that I, the only person he ever trusted, wasn’t coming back. And then I thought about Mr Friendly, and Mr Wise, Mrs Worry and Mr Hilarious who would all, in their own ways, blame themselves even though it was nothing to do with them. And I thought about my mum who would never, ever be able to understand no matter hard she tried.

And then I thought FOR FUCK’S SAKE GAIL WEEGEE. Are you really going to top yourself BECAUSE YOU HAD A BAD DREAM? After everything that happened and everything you bounced back from? Seriously! What is the matter with you……. PULL YOURSELF TOGETHER.

‘Pull yourself together’ is not something you should ever say to someone with mental health problems. But, if you yourself are mental you are allowed to say it to yourself. Not because it will make it all better but because it will stop it all getting worse. Sometimes that is all you can hope for – things not getting worse.

Where am I now? I’m mostly back. I’m fed and watered and safe. I’m playing ‘let’s just try really, really hard for a while and see what happens’ once more. It’s the only game I’ve ever been any good at.

Love from WeeGee  xx

PS – I re-read this one and realised that it’s a bit wonky and meandering and mental. Sorry. But you know me 🙂

*Dinner if you aren’t pretentious like me. Or tea if you are from The North

**Which is a whole ‘nother story!

Posted in About today

I did not see that one coming

Posted on by WeeGee

Okay, so the first thing I should say is that this post discusses self harm. If you think that might put you in a dangerous place please look away now, because it’s important to everybody that everybody stays safe.

{Pause to allow people to look away now}*

The second thing to say is that I’m currently on step number three of the safety plan**. I used to have three ‘real’ people I could communicate with if I thought I was in a risky situation: Mr Wise, Mr Hilarious and Mr Friendly, but now I’ve added my blog to the list of ‘people it is safe to communicate with’. The aforementioned Mr’s*** are otherwise engaged, and (as daft as it sounds) I’m not in the right place for crisis intervention so I’m writing this post in an attempt to communicate all this crazy stuff out of my head.

{Pause for a few deep breaths}

Here’s what happened. I sat down to write a post (it’s a funny story about me at a party so I’ll probably get round to posting it another time) and then I had a nosebleed. A proper, massive, wouldn’t stop nosebleed.

I don’t think I’ve had a proper, massive, wouldn’t stop nosebleed since I was about twelve years old and although I know it should have been a tad distressing, I actually really liked it. I liked it because all that bright red blood on a white tissue felt like the most sensible, meaningful thing on earth and I thought to myself that if my nose stops bleeding there would still be lots of other ways to get back to the most sensible and meaningful thing on earth.

I haven’t cut myself since last November. I didn’t really remember doing it but the evidence suggested that I made a pretty serious attempt to actually cut one of my legs off. To be fair, that was an isolated incident and it’s a very long time since each morning has been about working out what I’d done the day before with reference to the bloody rags and sharp implements scattered around me. I was in an awful, painful place, I have some pretty hideous scars and would do anything, anything, anything to go back in time and make it not happen. So why should it make any sense whatsoever to think that slicing myself open and watching the blood ooze out is the answer to a question that I haven’t even worked out yet?

Nowadays, I tend to work on the assumption that I am a grown up, and that I have therefore found grown up, subtle ways to hurt myself. As if that’s some kind of achievement! I know it’s a load of blinking rubbish, because most grown-ups don’t spend any time what-so-bloody-ever thinking about hurting themselves. What’s this thing about hurting myself even more than I’m already hurting? What’s this thing about bright red blood on white tissues? Roar, roar and triple roar. Can I start again please?

I’m sorry if this one is a bit rambling, but it was more about getting thoughts out of my brain than achieving a coherent post…..

Meanwhile in other news I have managed three meals and a trip to the outside world today, and my cat has just about got used to the new voile panel in our flat. Oh. And I went to a party yesterday.

Take care, Wee Gee x

*I hope you won’t think I’m being flippant because I’m really not – it’s just my way.

**At the moment my number one mission in life is to be well enough to be able to cope without a safety plan.

***I know perfectly well that Mr’s is not an ideal use of the apostrophe, but according to the OED style guide it is acceptable to use an apostrophe to ensure clarity of meaning. If I’d put Mrs it would have looked like I meant a married lady person, rather than the plural of Mr. (What can I say? I’m the grammar police so I’m getting my alibi in early….)

Posted in Some thoughts about my journey

After the storm

Posted on by WeeGee

I had a bit of a blip this week.Thankfully it didn’t last too long and with a little help along the way normal service was resumed sometime during Thursday morning. The ‘blip’ is done with, and I don’t want to spend too much time talking about it. That said, I should be honest and say that I hurt some people who care about me and I hurt myself too – whilst I’m trying very hard not to feel guilt, I certainly feel regret and it’s right and proper that I should.

When I have an episode like that it’s very loud and it’s very chaotic, and the period that follows tends to be very quiet and very still. That’s how things are now – quiet, still and mostly calm. I’m content with that.

The storm has passed – it’s safe to deal with some of the debris and important to remember that:

“Storms make oaks take root” George Herbert