…forget the wrong that I’ve done. ((Leave Out All The Rest — Linkin Park))
——–
Back in the days when I was even more fucked up than I am now, someone asked me why I had thought about suicide. And I think that EVERYONE at some point in their life considers suicide at least once out of curiosity. Or maybe I’m a weird bitch who is completely wrong.
I couldn’t really find the right answer to say to them. This quote just puts it out there, and I kind of wish I had thought of it. & for the record, this isn’t me being a Twilight fan, this is me being a person.
“Death is peaceful – easy. Life is harder.”
It’s just that sometimes you can slip into a place where nonexistence looks so much simpler than existence. I think that’s true for everyone on occasion. Life is ridiculously hard, I know everyone knows that much. So it only makes sense that the opposite – the dark to the light, the hate to the love – would have to be easy. It just follows the rules of nature, for every action – there is an equal and opposite reaction. Yeah, I’ve taken Physics.
So I think that’s a really good way to see it. The harder things get, the easier death looks like – which is WHY so many people see (and myself on occasion, admittedly) suicide as an easy way out. I know that sounds bad, and I’m not about to go off myself. It was just something I was thinking about on my way home. & I’m not saying the actual killing of yourself is easy, because you are taking a pretty severe step mentally and whatnot. I’m talking about the outcome.
This was morbid. & depressing. Sorry if this offends anyone. I’ll go listen to Jack Johnson & get back to you later.
This blog is new and one I’m still introducing myself to, but I wanted to talk about something that’s a really big part of me. It’s not exactly the easiest thing to talk about, but it’s something that I feel I need to in order to sort it out better. Getting things out of my head is always one of the most helpful things to do because I can visualize my problems. So here goes. Sorry if it’s kind of all over the place and choppy, it’s not exactly something I know how to talk about it.
Underneath the crazy, sarcastic bitch that I usually am is someone completely and emotionally unstable. I can admit that. I have depression that flicks on and off at inopportune times and can range from a few days to a few months. Then on the other hand I have weeks where things are great.
I am a self-injurer. It is something I have admitted before but to very few people. I’m afraid of it, but not afraid to admit it, if that makes any sense whatsoever. I don’t know the exact day it started, but it was around two years ago in August. It was towards the beginning of one of my worst “downs” I’ve ever had. That one itself lasted over eight months.
In simple, stereotypical terms, I am a cutter. There, I said it. (Tangent — I really hate the fucking emo kid jokes about cutting because around people I seem fairly together, but those jokes fucking hurt more than people really understand. So if you’ve ever told them, whatever, just stop because chances are there’s someone around you who is insulted that it’s something you take so lightly — end tangent)
It initially started pretty light with just making light scratches along my palms. I am a pianist though and so that quickly became a bad spot. So I moved to my upper right thigh. It was more….convenient… I guess. It was easy to cover without questions to be asked.
The light scratches soon turned to more prominent cuts as I became more “brave”, so to speak. Weapon of choice: a pair of sharp metal tweezers. Bloody parallel lines soon loitered that section of my body. Jeans (and pants in general) were getting more painful to wear, but I didn’t care at the time because it felt good. Even though the damage was done, I was able to feel it for periods of time afterwards when the fabric rubbed & irritated them. Yeah, it’s kind of fucked up.
There were times when I tried to stop. I did everything from rubber band snapping to pushing my nails into my palms, but nothing ever felt good enough to replace it.
Why did I started/kept going it is something I frequently ask myself. I think I have a pretty good idea — I was alone and it felt like my world was falling apart. I think I needed something else to feel besides weakness and being out of control, because that’s how I felt. I felt weak for letting someone I cared about tear me apart and leave me. I felt weak for letting my best friend be taken away by an asshole of a guy. I felt weak for pushing people away because I hadn’t mastered the whole ‘act like everything is okay’ bit and I was so fucking afraid of them seeing me as imperfect. I felt weak for constantly feeling depressed. I felt weak for not figuring out how to manage my own fucking life. I felt weak for letting my emotions completely take control. I felt weak for not knowing who I was and feeling disgusted inside my own skin. I felt weak for not being able to make myself happy. I felt weak for not being able to reach out. I felt weak for faking everything about myself. But most of all, I felt so weak that I couldn’t hide from past demons that occurred years earlier, things that if I ever talked about or relived, I would probably turn into even more of a disaster. I had been getting nightmares and panic attacks again, and I just couldn’t handle reminders of things.
By hurting myself, I was distracted, if only for a little while. I could feel the sting and watch the blood. I was taking control of my life in the only way I felt I could. Control is a huge issue for me. I’m a major planner. I don’t like things out of their natural order or being late or not knowing what’s going to happen. Everything was just out of control and I couldn’t stand it. Cutting was the one thing I could control in my life at the time. I could control how much, how deep, where, and when. It felt good for a while. Then it felt worse because that control only lasts so long. So the pattern kept repeating itself. It was this cycle that I had fallen into and couldn’t get out of. It still makes me nauseous to even think about it.
It got so bad that I found myself on fucking Christmas Eve with a razor in my shower. On school days, I did it in the bathroom at lunch. If a class was ever becoming too much to handle, I’d excuse myself and do it then too. It was so constant, and my whole life was revolving around how deep I needed to get me until I could be at it again, it was pathetic. Nothing was ever in my way, so nothing ever made me stop.
A little past February things started to get a little better. I have no clue what changed, whether it was the depression letting up or just a fluke. Then things got worse for another few weeks. Then they got better. It wasn’t overnight. It was a gradual change I noticed. I was able to space it out more, I didn’t rely on it as much.
I have not quit completely. It’s a goal, but it’s something I’m working for nonetheless. I use a calendar, and for every day that I don’t, I put a star. I don’t remember my longest run without any off the top of my head, but it’s somewhere in the fifties I believe (as in days). At the moment, I’m around the forty seven-day mark. This is the time when things do get a little rough. Hence why I’m writing this blog, to try and just talk it out instead of just brooding over it in my head. I probably seem pretty contradicting. It was only yesterday when I said I was living life and having a good time, but then again my moods change in an instant.
Somehow I kept in mind not to ever go too deep or too far. Just enough to leave a mark for a few weeks and then fade away. Maybe it was an inner conscious that saw a future ahead where I didn’t want brutal scars. There are scars, there is no doubt, but they’re not as noticeable. You have to be looking for them to really see them, which I think is helpful in many ways. I’m not reminded every day when I look in the mirror, yet when I need to remind myself of where I’ve been, there’s always plenty to look at.
Two years. I know there are people out there, who have it much worse, but this is my story, and this is my life and my story. It doesn’t matter if it’s been a few months or a few years. It still matters, and it still affects people differently. And it’s still wrong, despite how it may feel at the time.
Besides cutting, I do other smaller forms that could be labeled “self injury” though I don’t really think of them that way. I pick at my skin and chew on my lips/inside of my mouth. I pull hair from my scalp, legs, eyebrows, and eyelashes. Sometimes I’ll purposely get angry and give myself bruises. They’re still self-destructive, but I feel like it’s still a step down from actual cutting.
So anyways, to wrap this all up now that I’ve kind of gone on a tangent because I started feeling uncomfortable, self-injury sucks. It’s a problem, and it’s one I’m trying really hard to fix. The best thing I can suggest to people is a strong support system. When I initially pushed away all my friends, it was probably the worst thing I could do. Now they’re what keep me grounded and remind me that I’m alive and need to snap out of things. They’re also there just to listen to me rant when I need to take my emotions out on something other than myself. I have so much anger and sadness that when it gets bottled up, things just go wrong.
So. Yeah. Now I feel awkward. Um, questions or comments are welcome.
Religion.
“When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion.” (Brownie points for the person who can tell me who said that quote) It’s easy so please don’t be a skanky bitch and type it into google. Ha, kidding. I would so do that.
So. If only things were that simple. I often have talks about religion with two close yet separate friends of mine. One is a strong Christian slowly losing her momentum with the church. Another is an atheist in his own way.
Lets start with the Christian friend. Her father is a douche bag and her mother raised her and her two other siblings basically on her own. I think she got most of her religious roots from her mother, whom (or who?) as a single mom of three did something most would do – she turned to faith. When I first met her she was very open about it and very passionate. As the years have progressed she has started to see fault within the church. It has boundaries and it has guidelines. She still has her faith; she is just fitting it to her own practice. That’s mostly what this entry is about. (I’ll get to the whole bring it together thing for my point in a minute)
On the other hand, there is the atheist. He’s more a unique atheist though. He believes that moral values can come from religious texts and that they can be applied to life. He believes that lessons from religion can be applied to himself and his environment to make him a better person. He studies religion purely by choice as to find what lessons to reflect on him and to see how they work together in the world. It’s less of a “THERE IS NO GOD” and more of a just that he sees religion as guidance with the absence of a higher power. I’m not quite sure if I’m explaining it right, but it’s really interesting I promise.
I on the other hand am loosely agnostic, I guess. I find religion interesting because of its historical value, and yet I still have my own beliefs. I hate organized religion because it puts people into boxes with rules. “If you do this, you are going to hell.” I just don’t like that. Why should it be an ultimatum? Isn’t living enough? I don’t believe in hell. It feels like religion uses hell as blackmail to get everyone else to follow and that irks me. We should be rewarded for living to the fullest, not living in fear that something we do will damn us. I have a lot of strange beliefs that I won’t get into now =]
My main point is that I feel religion should be what you make it. No matter what category you can be placed in, religion should be different for everyone. It should reflect who you are as a person. Life is what you make it. The same should go for religion. And it’s not so much religion as it is faith. It drives me crazy when atheists look down on those who are religious and say they are stupid. Faith is a part of life. People need to look to something. If we don’t have faith in something, ANYTHING, whether it be in the fact that religion is for morals or that there is God and heaven and hell, then what are we?
As I sit here in my own personal shell at three thirty in the morning, staying awake only off my own insomnia and season two of Gilmore Girls, I am asking the question, what kind of life is there without faith in something?
