So, this is
apparently becoming an annual thing. I feel like, even for someone as
unorganized as me, one post a year is achievable, even if there’s no rhyme or
reason to them.
Here’s the
thing, the only real reason I’m writing this post is because I’m too much of a
coward to say it out loud. It’s been five years and it’s still difficult to
talk about verbally and I couldn’t tell you why,
only that it is.
My last proper
relapse into self-harm was roughly five years ago this semester. I think it’s
around September, honestly I kind of blocked it out so it really could be any
time around now. But still. Five years.
I still have the
scars. I still have the memories and the urges and the battles. It never goes
away, not really.
But I made it.
As typical of
this time of the year, my brain has gone into possible meltdown and instead of
emphasizing what is good, it immediately thinks of what is bad. What is broken.
I’m very good at focusing on what is going wrong currently in my life,
magnifying every issue until I’m pretty sure that nothing is good and will ever
be good again and I’m trudging along without any kind of aim. I will never
achieve anything.
So I’m using
this post to show myself that isn’t true. It can’t be. Because five years ago,
when I decided enough was enough and I had too many lines up my arms showing me
that bad times can never truly leave, I thought it was impossible. I thought
any kind of normal life, any kind of real feeling, was impossible.
(depressed but still cute)
Recovery is the
hardest thing I’ve ever done. I’m still doing it, like I said. Those urges
don’t ever go away fully, they don’t ever truly shut the fuck up, no matter how
much you try and drown them the way they used to with you. But you can muffle
them. And the more they’re muffled, the slower they get, the quieter. And it’s
easy to ignore them and get on with your life on land.
Okay look, I’m
an English student – metaphors are my thing. I’m not really sure how to display
a point in other ways so just go with it.
But at one
point, I really was drowning. Fifteen year old me hadn’t just forgotten how to
swim, it was like she’d never learned and she’d forgotten how to talk and
breathe and there was a general acceptance that this was life now. This IS life
now. Nothing will change. Nothing will get better.
But that just
isn’t true. Rough patches last however long they last, but they never last
forever and the fact is that it’s been five years and I’m still here, still
breathing, lungs only filled with a little bit of water. I’m alive, which
fifteen year old me wouldn’t have comprehended. AND SO – if fifteen year old me
can’t believe where I’m at now, then twenty year old me won’t believe where I’m
at at twenty five and so forth and so forward. Just keep swimming and all that.
I survived the
hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. I can survive anything. I can
survive the memories I know is associated with so many of the scars, I can
survive a deadline tomorrow (that I’m definitely not procrastinating by writing
this), I can survive a degree and whatever else is thrown at me because the
hardest thing I’ve ever had to do was entirely to do with me. I caused the
problem, I realised the problem, and fuck it I fucking kicked that problem so
hard it’s still bruised to this day, which means any problem other people
present has nothing on me.
At least, that’s
what I’m telling myself in order to get this essay written.
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