Stay sane inside insanity.
Jan. 3rd, 2012 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressTrigger warnings: Self-harm, depression, anxiety, hope
There on Twitter was a link from The Bloggess, labeled "This is the hardest thing I've ever written". I had to follow --she is too good a writer, too good a person to pass up, and with a tagline like that, well...yeah.
It is a post revealing the fact that she self-harms.
There was the line that makes my heart break. Because that's why, exactly why. Because you can't destroy the thoughts in your head, so you have to destroy something else, anything else. Because if you hurt yourself enough, you'll have to start spending time fixing it, cleaning up, anything that's not just sitting there trapped in your own thoughts and nothing more.
I don't know that I've ever explained publicly my complicated relationship with insanity and self-harm. I think it's time I did.
I do not cut myself. Ever. I do not burn myself. I don't use pins to prick little holes in my arms and legs. I don't pound my head hard against walls. I don't do most of the things that commonly define self-harm, and I never have, and I probably never will.
In tenth grade or so, and for a few years before, I would dig my nails into my arms sometimes. Scratch myself hard enough to leave welts, angry and red and long-lasting enough to get questions at least once. I would bite my tongue, as hard as I could, or my lips or my hands. And then Alis showed up to live in my mind. She termed herself my Guardian Bitch, and told me I was never allowed to do that again, and for the rest of high school and start of college, I didn't. Being crazy enough to hear voices meant I was sane enough not to physically harm my body.
In college, I discovered sharpies. More accurately, somewhere around Thanksgiving my Freshman year, I discovered that all the angry words I had could be written on my body instead of on paper. I could mark myself, angry bright marks, and keep them hidden so no one else would see, but I would know they were there. It made it so much easier. I would cry and cry and nothing would help and then I would drag nib across skin and become distracted in the verb and noun of writing. And I would calm down.
Alis is gone most of the time now --it takes much effort to bring her out. She wouldn't be able to stop me if I started hurting myself again, but I mostly don't need to anymore. Sometimes, if I am in an unbearably public place and can't escape, I will clench my upper arms and leave little cresent marks under my shirt where no one can ask about them, but the activity is solely to keep from crying in front of everyone. (It would not, I assure you, be better if I cried in front of everyone. My relationship with weakness and caring and love and pain is too strange for that.)
But I don't hurt myself badly. I don't leave welts, and I almost always, within a few minutes, either get distracted away from whatever is tearing a hole in my psyche or find a chance to go to a hidden place in the world. And when I am in those hidden places, where it doesn't matter what I do because nobody will see, I don't hurt myself.
Instead I write. Sometimes I draw, but mostly it's words that get slashed across my skin. For visceral reasons, red is the best, but orange has meaning too, and black, and purple. I'll use whatever's available to me, sometimes one colour, sometimes several. A lot of times I write song lyrics. Sometimes I write something original. And the words are not always in an alphabet you will recognize.
I write on my inner wrist, which is a signal, because you can see it and it is not hidden, and it will be the most cryptic thing. I write on my upper arm, where the words will be tucked beneath my sleeve, and only might be revealed. And if I am very broken and need the escape very badly, I write on my left thigh, where damn near nobody has the opportunity to see. This is where the words become explicit --most recently "I survived everything else, I can survive this too."
Yeah. That was less than two weeks ago, if you need a time frame.
And that's how I get through the things that cause my brain to howl. I have written damnations and lonliness and insecurity and fears and memories and the too-rare affirmations and all the pain that ever was, transferred into the flow of ink, the blessed noun and verb of writing.
Why?
Because it makes it better. Because it makes it hurt less. Because it gives me something to do when I can't think through the tears, can't think through whatever petty pain is driving my mind to lock itself down in self-destruction. Because if dancing is my therapy, writing is my sanity. Because sometimes I just need to see something beautiful in a state of ruination, and sometimes that something needs to be me (and sometimes writing just makes me more beautiful, because I love words in a way that nothing else can ever approach.)
So I'm not a self-harmer. I do not, in fact, self harm. But I understand the impulse, I understand the need, I understand every single person out there who has to and why. I understand how fucking hard it is, and I understand that because I've never really been there, with my blood on my hands, I'll never really understand.
But I'll be damned if I stop marking myself when I need to.
The Bloggess dreams of a world where people wear silver ribbons --survivors and supporters of mental illness-- with pride rather than shame. People on Twitter have started posting pictures of their ribbons.
I don't know if I qualify. The only mental fuckery I've actually been established to have is a healthy dose of ADHD. Honestly, I don't think I've got it bad enough to have anything else, not when there are so many more people out there who have so much less cope. But even if I'm not a survivor, I'm sure as hell a supporter.
So here's my ribbon. May you too find the mechanisms you need to keep yourself well.
Much love.
~R.
I know it only very rarely is able to be used, but if you are ever in need of a shoulder, a friend, a reassurance, a place to sob, whatever, you are welcome to contact me. I am on IM much of the time, and when I have a phone, I am always willing to receive calls and help. You are awesome people I know. Stay that way.
Trigger Warnings go both ways: Self injury, depression, and anxiety. And just a little bit of hope.
There on Twitter was a link from The Bloggess, labeled "This is the hardest thing I've ever written". I had to follow --she is too good a writer, too good a person to pass up, and with a tagline like that, well...yeah.
It is a post revealing the fact that she self-harms.
I do it to self-sooth, because the physical pain distracts me from the mental pain.
There was the line that makes my heart break. Because that's why, exactly why. Because you can't destroy the thoughts in your head, so you have to destroy something else, anything else. Because if you hurt yourself enough, you'll have to start spending time fixing it, cleaning up, anything that's not just sitting there trapped in your own thoughts and nothing more.
I don't know that I've ever explained publicly my complicated relationship with insanity and self-harm. I think it's time I did.
I do not cut myself. Ever. I do not burn myself. I don't use pins to prick little holes in my arms and legs. I don't pound my head hard against walls. I don't do most of the things that commonly define self-harm, and I never have, and I probably never will.
In tenth grade or so, and for a few years before, I would dig my nails into my arms sometimes. Scratch myself hard enough to leave welts, angry and red and long-lasting enough to get questions at least once. I would bite my tongue, as hard as I could, or my lips or my hands. And then Alis showed up to live in my mind. She termed herself my Guardian Bitch, and told me I was never allowed to do that again, and for the rest of high school and start of college, I didn't. Being crazy enough to hear voices meant I was sane enough not to physically harm my body.
In college, I discovered sharpies. More accurately, somewhere around Thanksgiving my Freshman year, I discovered that all the angry words I had could be written on my body instead of on paper. I could mark myself, angry bright marks, and keep them hidden so no one else would see, but I would know they were there. It made it so much easier. I would cry and cry and nothing would help and then I would drag nib across skin and become distracted in the verb and noun of writing. And I would calm down.
Alis is gone most of the time now --it takes much effort to bring her out. She wouldn't be able to stop me if I started hurting myself again, but I mostly don't need to anymore. Sometimes, if I am in an unbearably public place and can't escape, I will clench my upper arms and leave little cresent marks under my shirt where no one can ask about them, but the activity is solely to keep from crying in front of everyone. (It would not, I assure you, be better if I cried in front of everyone. My relationship with weakness and caring and love and pain is too strange for that.)
But I don't hurt myself badly. I don't leave welts, and I almost always, within a few minutes, either get distracted away from whatever is tearing a hole in my psyche or find a chance to go to a hidden place in the world. And when I am in those hidden places, where it doesn't matter what I do because nobody will see, I don't hurt myself.
Instead I write. Sometimes I draw, but mostly it's words that get slashed across my skin. For visceral reasons, red is the best, but orange has meaning too, and black, and purple. I'll use whatever's available to me, sometimes one colour, sometimes several. A lot of times I write song lyrics. Sometimes I write something original. And the words are not always in an alphabet you will recognize.
I write on my inner wrist, which is a signal, because you can see it and it is not hidden, and it will be the most cryptic thing. I write on my upper arm, where the words will be tucked beneath my sleeve, and only might be revealed. And if I am very broken and need the escape very badly, I write on my left thigh, where damn near nobody has the opportunity to see. This is where the words become explicit --most recently "I survived everything else, I can survive this too."
Yeah. That was less than two weeks ago, if you need a time frame.
And that's how I get through the things that cause my brain to howl. I have written damnations and lonliness and insecurity and fears and memories and the too-rare affirmations and all the pain that ever was, transferred into the flow of ink, the blessed noun and verb of writing.
Why?
Because it makes it better. Because it makes it hurt less. Because it gives me something to do when I can't think through the tears, can't think through whatever petty pain is driving my mind to lock itself down in self-destruction. Because if dancing is my therapy, writing is my sanity. Because sometimes I just need to see something beautiful in a state of ruination, and sometimes that something needs to be me (and sometimes writing just makes me more beautiful, because I love words in a way that nothing else can ever approach.)
So I'm not a self-harmer. I do not, in fact, self harm. But I understand the impulse, I understand the need, I understand every single person out there who has to and why. I understand how fucking hard it is, and I understand that because I've never really been there, with my blood on my hands, I'll never really understand.
But I'll be damned if I stop marking myself when I need to.
The Bloggess dreams of a world where people wear silver ribbons --survivors and supporters of mental illness-- with pride rather than shame. People on Twitter have started posting pictures of their ribbons.
I don't know if I qualify. The only mental fuckery I've actually been established to have is a healthy dose of ADHD. Honestly, I don't think I've got it bad enough to have anything else, not when there are so many more people out there who have so much less cope. But even if I'm not a survivor, I'm sure as hell a supporter.
So here's my ribbon. May you too find the mechanisms you need to keep yourself well.
Much love.
~R.
I know it only very rarely is able to be used, but if you are ever in need of a shoulder, a friend, a reassurance, a place to sob, whatever, you are welcome to contact me. I am on IM much of the time, and when I have a phone, I am always willing to receive calls and help. You are awesome people I know. Stay that way.
Trigger Warnings go both ways: Self injury, depression, and anxiety. And just a little bit of hope.