Sensitive Subjects

Most people are very uncomfortable about subjects such as mental illness and self-injury. I guess I'm so used to it having been a part of my life for so long that I forget how it can affect and shock other people to find out about someone like me having these problems. I just seem like an average, if somewhat troubled at the moment, middle-aged woman. It probably wasn't fair for me to just throw those things out there the way I did. I use this blog a lot just to vent my thoughts and feelings without thinking of how it might affect others. I'm sorry if I greatly disturbed or upset anyone with my casual reference to cutting. It has been a struggle with me for a long time. The first time it happened, I was 8 years old. That was a very difficult year in my young life and I was confronted for the first time with feelings I didn't know how to cope with. I won't go into details but I will say that things happened that year to turn my whole world upside down, pretty much like now. I believe the cutting then was an important indication that mental illness was beginning to take hold of me even then. No one wants to see these things in children. Back then, mental illness was an embarassing thing to talk about much less admit that it was in your own family. I repeatedly asked about seeing counselors and talking to someone but my parents were ashamed and scolded me, accusing me of trying to make them look bad and seeking attention. It didn't occur to me for years that there really is nothing wrong with seeking attention when you need help. I made it through those years mostly because even at that young age I had faith in God. I was saved very young but there were contradictions between what was said in church and what was happening in my home. It was a confusing time and I was very unhappy until I was about 14 or 15 when I was old enough to make my own choice about church and I left my parent's church and found a more open one. I was happy during that time but the underlying mental issues were always there underneath. From the time of my senior year in high school, there was nothing but ups and downs and constant emotional upheavals. This lasted through my first marriage, where I had my first complete breakdown, through my divorce where I had the second one and off and on until now. I tried many medications over the years and sometimes they worked for a while and sometimes they didn't. I was in therapy continuously. Things came to a turning point a year after my dad passed away. When he died in 2002, I fell into a depression that left me almost non-functional. I stayed in bed day after day and night after night, barely speaking to anyone. I neglected my personal hygiene and refused to take part in anything. This lasted for over a year. I was completely useless to my family. Finally, I began to have suicidal thoughts and was checked into Peninsula Mental Heath Hospital. The doctors there decided my depression wasn't plain old clinical depression as I had always been diagnosed, it was Bipolar Depression. That was the beginning of finding my true diagnosis. They treated me not just with an antidepressant but also with an antipsychotic medication. This made all the difference for me. I've been on these meds ever since and I've been completely stable. As I always thought, it has taken a major upheaval to breach my stability. Until the other night when I was overwhelmed and cut, it had been 12 years since that happened. You can imagine all the feelings that have gone along with this, what I consider a failure on my part. I never expected this to happen again. I couldn't even imagine anything happening that was so terrible that I would be that desperate to cause my internal pain to be visible on the outside. Physical pain also takes momentum away from the internal pain. I know to those who have never heard of self-injury or who have never had this problem, this makes no sense whatsoever, but this is the best explanation I can give. The physical pain causes a release of emotions that there doesn't seem to be any other outlet for. even writing here daily and pouring out my heart and my thoughts wasn't enough of a release for that intense rejection I was feeling at that moment. I am determined that this incident will not be repeated. Now that I know I'm weak again in this area, I have needed to plan certain safeguards to keep me safe. I feel so bad that it happened at all that that by itself might keep me in line, otherwise I have supervision most of the time, especially when it is time to bathe and use a razor.

Anyway, I didn't mean to upset or shock anyone and I wanted to explain this to the best of my ability. Enough for now. Maybe more later.