Self-Harm (TRIGGER WARNING)

If you knew me in high school, here's what I assume your description of me entailed: got good grades, parents worked at school, did some sports, chorusband, Michael's girlfriend, Ben's little sister, prom queen, nicenormalfriendly girl. You know what you forgot on that list? Self-harmer.

If someone were to tell you to picture someone who "cuts," I bet you a million dollars you're picturing an "emo" teenage girl (or boy) with jet black hair, pounds of eyeliner, listening to Welcome to the Black Parade, carving their perceived sins out of their forearms. Yeah, a lot of people who cut do look that way, but not all of us. Now, I should start off by saying that I didn't "cut" per-say. I could never make myself run a razor blade or knife along my arm. Instead, I would take my thumbnail and run it back and forth on my wrist until it was deep enough to bleed. Took longer. Prolonged the pain. 

The good thing (HA "good thing") was that it looked more like a burn than a cut so I could tell people I burnt my wrist with my curlingstraightening iron on accident and no one would be the wiser. There were some people who questioned it. My best friend, Tyra, my other best friend, Zach, my college boyfriend, my mom. But I could explain it away so easily, it never became an issue. It was never a cause for concern. 

I never wanted to kill myself. That isn't always the point of cutting. "So why do it," you ask? To feel something. To release. Sometimes, things would happen and I would get this feeling that my whole body was swelling like a balloon, not in a "fat" way, but in that all these emotions were blowing me up, trying to escape any way that they could, I could feel them trying to burst out of my fingertips. They needed somewhere to go. They needed a way out. So I opened up my skin and let them seep into the universe, hoping never to see them again. 

The last time I self-harmed was in 2016. Since then, I have gotten a tattoo on my wrist that covers most of my scars although if you look closely, there are still a couple that are visible. It helps remind me that I can cover up my past, but I shouldn't want to. I am my past. My past is what made me. I don't want to forget that this happened in my life. I want to use it to fuel my fire and to remind me that things WILL get better, then they'll get worse, but ultimately, they'll get better again.

The Bad Days.

If you've never experienced any type of mental disorder, this isn't going to make any sense to you, but I hope you'll try to understand anyways.

When it comes to anxiety, some days are worse than others and then there are some days that are the worst of the worst. Yesterday was one of those days for me. The kind of day that I am me without being me. It's as if there were two sides to my brain. One side thought like myself and the other side, someone completely different. The "different side" controls my body and my mouth, then the "me side" is almost floating above me, judging me and hating everything I'm saying and doing.

The "different side" makes me say and do things I don't mean and then I regret them with my whole being for days afterwards. By this, I mean, I feel physically ill with regret about the things my "different side" has made me do. I feel like I'm going to vomit or I punch into my hand repeatedly or scream while I'm in my car. All these things, just to try and get that regret and anger out of my body before it explodes. I would do anything to make it stop. I want to send everyone a message saying I'm sorry for things that I don't even know what I'm sorry for, just to make the overwhelming feeling of regret and guilt go away.

This sounds insane, I know, but I'm being 100% truthful. They say that mental disorders are a chemical imbalance in the brain, so I kind of have a theory. Most of my really bad days come after days that are extremely good. They come after days where I am happy and feel amazing. My theory is that my brain tries to level out the chemicals in my brain when there is too much "happy" chemicals by emitting "downer" chemicals but it doesn't know how to regulate the amount and ends up pouring in a whole cup when the recipe only called for a teaspoon. Now, I'm obviously not a scientist or a psychologist or anything really, this is just how I like to think of what happens to me.

I don't know why these days have to happen to me, and I'm still working on ways to control them or at least manage them. Until then, I'm sorry to anyone I shut out on those days or disappoint on those days. I truly don't mean to.

Why I Hate Thanksgiving

November 22nd: "Don't eat all day so you can eat tomorrow."

November 23rd, Morning: "Workout for hours so you burn off the calories before you eat them."

November 23rd, Dinner: "How many calories are there in turkey? Bite. Chew. Swallow. Did they use butter in the potatoes? Bite. Chew. Swallow. Why is everyone watching me eat...? Bite. Chew. Swallow. Will they notice if I go to the bathroom after we eat? Bite. Chew. Swallow."

November 24th: "Guilt. Guilt. Guilt. How could you be so weak? It doesn't matter if it was a holiday. So what? You're weak. You gave in and ate. Failure. Fat. Fat. Fat."

Thanksgiving is the hardest holiday for someone with an eating disorder. A holiday revolving around food? Our worst nightmare. You'll go back and forth between guilt and defiance. "I can't eat." "It's a holiday and I'm with my family. I'll eat." "These potatoes are full of butter and carbs." "It's one day a year, I'll be fine." You become stuck in this circuit until you're mentally exhausted. 

And the jokes don't help. "I'm going to have to unbutton my pants after this meal." Why would you ever eat that much? How can you eat that much? "I'm not going to have to eat for a week after this." Ha. Ha. Jokes about restricting are so funny. 

The thing you don't understand is that we've spent weeks, months even, preparing for the emotional turmoil that is the holiday season. So much food and having to eat it in FRONT of people? The constant thought that people are judging your every bite. The questions. "How can you eat potatoes without extra butter?" "You don't want dressing on your salad? Ew." "That's all you're eating?!" 

Please, just take into account that Thanksgiving and huge meals are an insanely tough time for some of us, no matter what stage of recovery we're in. Holidays are hard even for "fully recovered" eating disordered people (I put "fully recovered" in quotes because I don't believe this to be possible). 

Happy Holidays Everyone!!

"I'm Fine..."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I'm fine."

I've said before that "I'm sorry" is my catchphrase. If so, my second catchphrase would be "I'm fine." I don't like to talk about myself, and more importantly, I don't like to talk about my feelings. This is not a good trait considering last night I nearly had a mental break down regarding the stress that comes with juggling three jobs. I was freaking out and cried multiple times, harder than anyone should cry because of any job. But the thing is I don't believe I was freaking out solely because of the jobs. Most the time when I cry or have these breakdowns, it's little things that have built up over time from feelings that I don't allow myself to feel. I don't allow myself to feel these feelings because, "I'm fine."

The funny thing is that I could spend hours listening to other people tell me about their problems and feelings and be perfectly fine with it and want to help them in any way that I can. But if I spend one minute talking about my feelings to someone, I immediately feel guilty, like I'm taking up their time or that I am a burden and then I apologize profusely and quit talking. I normally end a sentence about myself with, "I'm sorry for talking about myself so much. It's no big deal. I'm fine." I'm not sure what made me this way or why I feel the need to apologize for having emotions. I just don't want other people to have to worry about me or my problems when I should be able to handle them myself. I shouldn't need help with my emotions. I should be able to control them and I should be able to fix myself. I don't know if "fix" is the right word, but it's the only word I can think of right now. The problem with all of this is, like I said earlier, when I tell other people that I'm fine, I'm mostly trying to convince myself of that and in doing that, I don't allow myself to feel the emotions that I should be feeling. This is where the trouble starts. This is with the emotions start to accumulate behind this dam I've built in my brain until the cracks start leaking and the dam finally breaks and what happened last night happens again. 

In group therapy, my therapist used to give us hand-outs on "mindfulness" and "distress tolerance," etc. One of them was called "Cheerleading Statements for Interpersonal Effectiveness," which I thought was incredibly stupid at the time, but now I kind of get it. Two of the statements it lists are:

1. It's OK to want or need something from someone else.

2. Giving, giving, giving is not the be-all of life. I am an important person in this world, too.

These are two statements that I have been trying to frame my life around. I am important too. I am not a waste of space. I am not a burden. I deserve help too.

"But you don't SEEM like you have social anxiety..."

"You have social anxiety?" 

"Yeah right, you talk so much and are so friendly." 

*Insert eye roll here.*

The truth? I do, in fact, have social anxiety along with the slew of other mental problems. The reason you can't tell that I have social anxiety is partly because I've been taking medication for it since I was 19. That makes five years of taking medication for my social anxiety as well as going to both group and individual therapy. 

Not only does the medication I take help, having social anxiety does not technically mean that you can't speak to people. It means that it's more stressful for you to speak to people or that you over analyze a lot of interactions more than normal people do. So just because I don't seem like I have social anxiety on the outside, doesn't mean that my brain isn't going crazy thinking of all the different scenarios that could go wrong with said interaction.

I read somewhere once that extroverts become energized by social interactions and introverts have their energy drained by social interaction. This makes total sense to me as someone who has social anxiety (which usually means you're introverted). There are times where I need a night or a whole day alone just to recharge my brain. And when I say alone, I mean alone. No friends, no boyfriends, no parents-- alone, where I can just sit and do whatever I want. I can watch Criminal Minds, go on Tumblr and just recharge. Now wanting to be alone isn't because I don't want to be with these people or because I don't like spending time with them, it's purely because for my brain to function properly, I need this time to recharge. 

It's very easy to assume that people don't have mental disorders because they don't act in the typical ways associated with that disorder. Just remember that, that's the point. They don't want you to know that they have a problem and they've probably been working their way to this point for a while. They may be on medication that helps with the disorder or have been going to therapy to help with it. Remember, don't assume, because it just makes and "ass" out of "u" and "me". 😉

John Mulaney talking about having social anxiety is everything:

Sorry...

"Sorry,"

is probably the most used word in my vocabulary. I've even had people tell me that it's my catchphrase. I will apologize for anything and everything, but why? Why do I feel the need to say sorry so much? 

If I talk about myself too much to someone, I say sorry. If I accidentally bump into someone, I say sorry...at least five times. If someone trips while they're walking next to me, even though I did nothing, I say sorry. My favorite is when I apologize for apologizing too much. "I'm sorry I said sorry so much." Yes, this really is something I do very frequently. It's almost a compulsion at this point. One time, when I was a junior in college, I accidentally cut off a mini-van while getting onto the interstate and they honked while zooming around me. I still remember exactly where it happened and the guilt wracked my body and how I wished there was some way to find them and tell them, you guessed it, that I was sorry.

I still haven't figured out what it is that compels me to apologize for everything, but I also know it's not uncommon, especially among females. Some people say that females apologize more than males because they're oppressed and blah, blah, blah (while yes, I am an extreme feminist, I don't want to go into this in this post. If you want to know more, read this). While this may be true, it definitely isn't the whole reason. I've found that I apologize the most when I feel as though I'm being "too much." When I talk too much about myself. When I praise myself or speak about my accomplishments. When I tell someone about my problems, especially when I tell people about my problems. I feel guilty for putting my problems on them when I should be able to handle them myself. 

I still haven't figured out why I feel the need to apologize for just being myself. Sometimes I believe it's because I was called annoying as a kid and I don't want to be annoying. Sometimes I just don't want to be a burden to someone. I tend to live by the mentality that I want others to let me help them with their problems but I'll be damned if I burden someone with mine (I guess that's what I get for being a Cancer). And sometimes I just genuinely feel guilty for whatever it is that happened, even if it is out of my control. 

The funniest part about this whole post is that every time I post a new blog post on any of my social media outlets, I feel the need to apologize for...I don't even know...clogging up your news feeds with my posts? Who knows...but...I'm sorry. 

PS: This is one of my favorite poems by Tyler Ford. It hits very close to home...

"Coming Out": Mental Disorders

Trusting someone enough to tell them that you have a mental illness is one of the most difficult things to do. There's always that fear that they'll think you're crazy or that they'll tell you to just "get over it." So, you keep quiet and go on believing you're in this alone until it eats you alive. Let me be the 10,000th person to tell you, YOU'RE NOT ALONE. I know, I know, it's the most cliche statement and has been drilled into all of us, but it's true. You'll realize this once you start sharing your problems with people you trust...or in my case, the entire internet. Just recently I've been told by people I love and have known my whole life about the troubles they have with mental health that I didn't know were happening. It makes me so sad that they have had to go through it but it also brings me comfort to know that mental illness is NORMAL. 

"Coming out" with your mental illness to your family or friends is a really difficult task and sometimes, depending on the illness, impossible. I know that for me, texting, emails, or notes were the easiest and probably the only way I could have told the ones I love about my problems. Most of the time, I am not able to talk about my problems with anyone. Now, when I say I'm "not able," I mean the words in my brain refuse to work their way out of my mouth. It's as if there's a shield blocking them from being spoken. So, I turned to writing and it has worked the best for me. 

The first person I told about anything was my mom. For me, this was the most obvious choice because she's my best friend. Even then, I told her by text message. I was a sophomore in college and writing my 10th journal entry about how I really wanted to start therapy when I thought, "instead of writing this over and over I should do something about it." So I texted her and told her what was going on. The next week I had a session with my first therapist. Now obviously, telling someone about this stuff isn't always going to go 100% okay, there are some people out there who still think it's all "no big deal" and you can just "get over it." But I'm telling you, a majority of people will understand and want to help you out.

I told my dad by email and he let me know that, while he doesn't understand mental illness, he was still there for me. I didn't have to tell some of my friends, they just knew and understood. My best friend has always just somehow understood that this is the way I am and has loved me anyways...I don't thank her enough for that. I told my college boyfriend about it all by writing him a long note and hiding it in his backpack. When he found it, he sent me the sweetest message about how it doesn't change who I am and that's something I think is really important. Your mental illness doesn't change who you are. You're still you. 

No matter what you're going through; anxiety, OCD, depression, an eating disorder, etc., you're still YOU. Although, mental illness will always be there to tell you that you're alone in this, at the end of the day, the people that actually care about you won't care what kind of crazy shit is going on in your brain, they'll just be there to love and support you no matter what. 

Picky Eating or Eating Disorder?

I was probably 9 or 10 years old when I had my first "eating disorder" thought. We were at my grandparents house for family Christmas and there was chocolate cake for dessert. I loved chocolate cake. I was so excited when my aunt cut me a rather large piece and then someone said, "You're going to eat that whole thing?" in a disdainful way. I didn't love chocolate cake anymore. I can still remember this moment so clearly. It was when my whole life changed. 

After that, I started noticing how my clothes were tighter on me, especially around my tummy. I noticed that my friends were thinner than me as well as my brother. By no fault of his own, I have always, to this day, wished I had his body instead of my own. While growing up, I started to develop these thoughts categorizing foods into "boy foods" and "girl foods." "Boy foods" were mostly junk foods: potato chips, sugary cereal, chocolatey desserts, basically anything greasy or sugary. "Girl foods" were the blander, "healthier" foods: pretzels, rice, plain pasta... I think I doing this because I knew my brother could eat these things and still stay skinny but I couldn't, so instead I would just say, "I don't like that," even if I may have actually wanted it. This is where I began being classified as a "picky eater." 

I never realized that my picky eating was disordered eating until I got to college and started going to therapy. See the thing with my version of picky eating wasn't that I would try something and realize that I don't like it. My picky eating was refusing to eat something in the first place, usually because in my mind, it was "bad." This in itself is considered a form of Anorexia: the refusal to eat. Then with anorexia almost always comes the binge eating of these so-called "bad foods," normally in secret while alone. Which eventually leads to the purging of said foods, enter: Bulimia. So you can see how this "picky eating" quickly became more than meets the eye. 

I'm definitely not saying all "picky eaters" have underlying eating disorders, that's not true at all. I'm trying to help you watch out for signs of more than just picky eating. This is something I've dealt with for a majority of my life, a lot I which I'm angry that I let it affect me the way it did and that it held me back from so many opportunities. I'm hoping that by sharing my stories, I can help someone else struggling know that they're not alone, and help others understand that mental health is more than just a bad day.

Don't Mind Me, I'm Just Overthinking About Overthinking...

You know how at the end of Finding Nemo, all the fish from the dentist office finally make it  back to the ocean but are still trapped in those plastic bags? That's what it feels like to have anxiety. 

You can see the whole ocean and all these possibilities of endless things that you want to do but you're stuck in this plastic bag and you just can't do them no matter how hard you try...except the ocean is life and the plastic bag is your brain. 

All too often, people assume social anxiety is just being nervous around people or being too scared to try new things, but once again, you're wrong. Anxiety is crippling. 

For example, there was this one time in college where it was raining and I didn't feel like taking the bus to class so I drove my car and parked in in an apartment building parking lot near by. As I got out of my car and began walking towards campus, a guy said to me, "You know this is a private parking lot right? You shouldn't park here, you'll probably get towed." And just that comment from a guy, probably trying to be nice and look out for me, was enough to literally wrack my body/mind with anxiety and I got back in my car, skipped class, drove home and got in bed and didn't speak to anyone for probably the rest of the night. That was about three years ago and it has still stuck with me as one of the most ridiculous bouts of anxiety I've ever had. 

See the thing with anxiety is that you know it's ridiculous and unrealistic. You know this but yet you still can't break through that "Finding Nemo Plastic Bag" surrounding your brain. Logically, I should have just taken that guy's advice, parked else-where and still went to class but my brain told me that just doing that one small thing like getting noticed parking in the wrong area made me the biggest failure and I would be better off hiding from anyone so I couldn't possibly fail that badly again.

Another common occurrence with me (and why most of my friends hate me, I swear), is communication, especially through texting. I'll get a text from a friend while I'm working or busy in some way and I'll tell myself I'll text them back later. Then I, more often than not, will forget to respond until the next day and when this happens, I am sent into a over-thinking spiral of, "Did I wait too long to respond that it would be weird if I respond now? Because if I say I was busy or at work they'll wonder why I didn't just respond afterward and if I say I forgot then they're going to think I didn't care enough to respond to them even though I really do care about them, I just genuinely forgot..." When this happens, I usually end up just never texting back which is really awful because that really makes it seem like I don't care at all which isn't true.

Just typing all of this out really makes me see how ridiculous it all is while also making me anxious about how absurd it actually sounds...but that's also what I'm trying to explain. While my logical mind knows that it's unrealistic and absurd, my anxious mind is looking at it through that goddamn "Finding Nemo Plastic Bag" again and can't make a hole in the bag big enough for me to calm the logic of my brain and break out into the ocean. 

While my meds help with all of this a little bit, it's still quite a struggle daily. I'll talk about medication another time though, as that's a whole other lengthy explanation in which I'll probably use more crazy analogies such as cartoon fish in bags near P Sherman 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney.