So I did it. I took the plunge and tried medication … I never thought I’d say that. If you know me and have read my books, then you know that taking any form of medication was off my list. I refused Decided that I could deal with my mind and I’d get through it.

I’ve been on a downward spiral for a while now. A good few years I just couldn’t get off the damn slide and I was slipping farther and farther down it. It’s been really coming to a head these last few months. Over Christmas time I struggled so hard just to get myself out of bed and I’d have these arguments with myself almost. Like why was I feeling this way? But no matter what I did I couldn’t shake it. My self-harm has been so bad. I’ve had so many stitches. I’ve landed myself at the hospital. It’s just been a total nightmare with this monster in my head.

I’ve been on my medication for four weeks now. I started at a lower dose and then my doctor doubled it, mostly because I was afraid of taking this leap, but my god. I know these meds take 2-3 months to work, but I already see the benefit from it. I’ve not self-harmed in four weeks. Four Weeks!!! That deserves those exclamation marks, because before I started, I would be lucky to say four hours.

I’m not saying the medication has fixed me, or cured me, but it’s certainly had a great effect on me and my mood. I’m still struggling with my anxiety. That’s increased a little bit. It’s such a strange thing. My anxiety has increased, but I can cope with it better. Rather than having a full blown out episode, I can stop and say to myself, okay. This is my anxiety. Let’s deal with it.

I have some side effects too, but nothing I would say are overly adverse. I’m grinding my teeth to the point that my jaw aches and I have to stop it. Sometimes I feel a little spaced out, so I take my medication before bed and seem to sleep that off. I can’t multitask like I used to. My mind seems to want to focus on one thing and if I try to add more, then it has a freeze up. Not really a bad thing I guess. Multitasking is bad for you anyway. I have to most weird vivid dreams. They feel so real. Sometimes they’re horrible, actually more often than not they’re horrible, but I am sleeping. I sleep all night I also find that I need to get the full eight hours now. If I don’t I get sluggish the next day. Also not really a bad thing. But so far so good. I can’t really say they’re major bad things really. Just things that I notice.

I feel a lot of anger recently, though. I’m not actually sure if that is my medication, or that is stuff that I’ve held inside for so long coming out.

My father has had a do not resuscitate order placed upon him. He wanted me to take it off. He was quite upset about it. But he isn’t of sound mind. He was upset because he believes himself to be going to work every day, and he isn’t. he can’t even get to the bathroom now. It was very hard for me to fight this because I felt like I was holding his life in my hands. And ironic all at the same time, that I am the one with these choices. I am the one who suddenly has come control on my father’s life and he has to trust that I will do what’s best for him and that I’ll care for him.

It creates a lot of anger for me I’m losing my dad and I’m fighting with my emotions inside. The part of me that is his child wants to grieve at the coming loss and the part of me that is so angry at the things he has done, doesn’t understand why I am upset. It’s almost like I can’t comprehend that I am upset about him. And all these years, all the family has ever seen is that we’ve been at war with each other He’s seemed to hate me all my life and I’ve done so well to wear a mask that shows it doesn’t hurt me, that I don’t know how to take that mask off now in front of my family and show that I am upset. Somehow even the right to be upset has been taken from me and if I try to take it back, I feel like a fraud.

I have been meaning to write this post for a long while now. I know I don’t post so much here any longer. A lot is trying not to bore people, trying not to sound like I am whining all the time and some is just trying to stay afloat in my own mind.

I was in a class a few weeks ago, we were studying sex offenders. I was a little anxious when the class began, I didn’t know what to expect and worried the class might trigger me. It maybe did in a way, but perhaps a good way. We studied people who sexually abuse children as part of this class. I am not going to call them paedophiles. I feel that is like saying that is all they are, but I am not defending them either. The act they commit is wrong.

We were learning about why. Why do they do this? Because when people here about it, the first thing they think is that sick bastard. Should be shot. Should be hung etc.

Why is probably one of the hardest questions I have. Why me? What was it that caused it? Why not my brother? So many whys that plague me for so many years and the answer came in this class. It is hard to explain, but I will try.

Many people who sexually offend against children lack social skills. I don’t mean that they can’t be social, or can’t talk, but something about them is different. They lack that thing that connects them to another. So their relationships feel empty. Usually this comes from things in their own childhoods. Not abuse, but maybe an overly strict parent, maybe a parent who didn’t hug them. Something that meant they didn’t quite learn how to connect with others. So they feel different.

My father’s parents weren’t abusive, but his mother was a gambler and his father worked a lot to pay for that habit, this meant that my father didn’t have much parental time, which meant that these skills never developed in him.

So he met my mother, and what he got was someone who was domineering, didn’t listen to him, wasn’t the same as him. People like my father have problems with peers. They just can’t fit in with them. Then this child comes along. Not just any child, but one that the adult can connect with, intimately and when I use that word, I don’t mean sex. I mean like a close friend. That’s what the child becomes. And this was where my why is. My father likes to read. He likes science. He is intelligent, but he had these parts missing and then I came along. Someone who is so similar to him in mind. Quiet, a reader, someone who likes to think. I was reading by the time I was five, suddenly my father has this connection with a human that he has never had before. Someone he can talk to, but also because this someone was a child, there was no fear of rejection, he was at the top and I was at the bottom in the hierarchy. So he had control. And this is generally what it is. So how does it get from having a friend to sex? I guess this is the part where it gets screwed up. Where the adult wants to get closer and closer to the child and they do, the child becomes like a relationship partner and sex is generally a part of that. Suddenly the child is no longer a child, not in the eyes of this adult at least.

I realised in this class that it wouldn’t have mattered if I was the first born, or his tenth child, he’d have picked me every single time, because it was something about me, but not something that was bad. It was because I was the one he connected with the most, because I was the one who was most like him.

In some sick twisted sense, it feels like a compliment.

I am not saying what he did was right, but this, if you can understand what I am saying, it is the answer to that question. Why?

I self harmed today. I did it kind of on Saturday evening too, that wasn’t so bad, hot water from the shower, today was cutting. I made it a week, though. That’s pretty good for me, except that I spent much of the week in my own head, forcing myself away and leaving other parts of me in control at the helm.

I’m not really sure which way is better. Perhaps last week was easier. I didn’t cut and I can function on an academic level so my studies don’t suffer. I can care for my children and give them what they need, but for the most part, I am not mentally there. It’s like holding my breath and waiting to hurt. Stepping over mines and any moment one of then will go off.

Sometimes I get afraid I am always going to be this way. Sometimes I get more afraid that I won’t be, that one day I’ll be someone else.

I wish so much that my dad or one of his friends would have gone too far when I was a child. It would be so much better for me than this. Those children who die through abuse, at least they no longer suffer. They don’t wake in the morning with a pain in their chest, caught somewhere between still being the broken child, to being the physically grown adult. They are at peace.

I was reading a journal today on child deaths and their sibling survivors. Of course it made me think of my own brother. I always wish my dad would have killed me when I was a child so that my children now wouldn’t suffer and my pain would be over. But how would my brother have coped?

He’d have had no reason why I died, how would he reconcile that? And if he did know, if he found out it was our father, what level of guilt would he have? Would he feel guilty for being here? Would he feel guilty because he couldn’t help or that he didn’t know. Would he feel guilt at not knowing what was happening in the house he resided?

look what you did dad, father of mine. No escape. Not as a child who could turn back time and escape because the effect on my brother would be devastating. No escape in adulthood because I will not let your actions affect my children. No escape from my mind because I have to keep your secrets. I have to keep your toxic actions inside so that no one else gets hurt. I wish I could cut your skin instead of mine.