Tag Archives: mental illness

I’d rather break my leg

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Sometimes I wish that I was missing a limb rather than suffering with various mental illnesses. At least if I had no legs or no arms, or something that disabled my physically, people would see it and understand my difficulties, but mental illness is much worse. Even to myself when I try to snap myself out of it and understand that it is just my mind. It doesn’t matter though, no amount of pep talks seem to work.

Yesterday my OCD was at a high point, I am not even sure why, something usually triggers it. I think perhaps if anything it was the fear of something going wrong and the only way to cope was for my OCD to come out.

I’d been about to cook dinner as I do every day, but something felt wrong with it. Perhaps it was that I was making something that wasn’t planned, I don’t really know, but that feeling inside that tells me something is wrong with the food wouldn’t go away. I cooked it though, cooked it for longer than it needed. But as I tried to eat it, I found myself analysing every mouthful. In the end I decided I couldn’t eat it, that bad feeling was too much for me and there had to be something wrong with the food. I gave my excuses and said I wasn’t hungry today and then put it in the trash.

I dislike the days like this, when I can’t do something just because, even though I could do it yesterday.

Digging for triggers not treasure

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Digging for triggers not treasure.

The world of mental illness is often shied away from by those that do not understand and those that live in it suffer the shame of the things that can’t be helped.

I realise something has triggered me big in my head, but I do not know what it is, when I get to it, then the wave of issues I am riding will ease and I will be able to breathe once more.

I stood today and washed my hands for the third time in a row, I saw the look on a strangers face, I saw the thoughts, the way they paused as thy spoke to me. I felt my own shame flush my face because I knew that my hands were still not clean and the person was staring.

The worst part of suffering a mental illness is the looks from people.

People say they are tolerant and understanding to it, but in truth they are not. They stare, they judge and if rude enough they point.

My hands are sore. They are cracked and bleed so bad that I look like I’ve gone ten rounds with a grater. I cannot get then clean. I’ve fallen into my OCD cycle and no idea how to get out of it or what set me off.

I cannot touch anything. I have to shower before I go to bed, I feel the days dirt all over me like an invisible film. It’s dirt inside and I can of get clean, but I keep trying.

I feel like I’m crazy. I know people see me as crazy. In some ways I am crazy. I’ve self harmed almost daily that I don’t even try and stop it, it’s just another right for me to lose.

If I could just find the buried trigger, it would be like a treasure to mind. The treasure of freedom.

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Walking Through Fog.

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I wrote today, not just edited, but wrote a little, it was for part of book three. I don’t know why, it felt good though, somewhere in my mind I have been hiding, but I hear the whispers inside. Maybe I am coming out of wherever I have been, I’m not really sure. It feels like my mind is bursting with a story to tell once again, but at the moment it just goes around in my mind.

I’m not sure if I’m getting better on this part, or I’m just transferring it to another condition. I know I am fighting at the moment with my OCD. I am sure people don’t believe me when I tell them I have it. I think there’s a stigma to it and people use it so often that it’s like a joke or a term for some to throw around, but I was officially diagnosed with it in 2006 when it was so bad, that I could not live.

I cope with it now, it flares up on occasion and I have to find out why, my mind shuts down and I can never just say, such and such is on my mind. I’m at that point at the moment. My hands are sore; I can’t get my skin clean. I’m fighting the need to make the words feel in my throat as I say them; I don’t want to sound like I have some odd tick, because I have to repeat a word just to feel it, so I fight it and try not to, but it’s there, like a lump in my throat I have to scratch. I make myself feel my breathing in my nose, all these things tell me I have something going on, but I don’t know what it is yet. I’ve detached still, I can feel it, or not as the case may be. I know I have easily lost myself in the world of fiction; it is a good escape of course.

Everything feels numb, like I’m not focused in the real world. I don’t feel like I am real. It’s very hard to explain, and I probably can’t do a good job of it. It feels like the world is moving and I am not. I can hear myself talking, but I stop because the words are not mine. I am not me.

It’s the self harm that does it, or contributes to it. I think I self harmed a couple of days ago, but I can’t remember. Even this morning seems like I was somewhere else. I feel like I’m walking through a fog and I can’t see.

My Nemesis, the Badman.

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My Nemesis, the Badman.

        It is not just bruises that child abuse leaves behind,  bruises are the things that heal the fastest.

He is there, when I turn off the light, when I close my eyes. When I lay down after a normal day. He is upstairs when my foot touches the bottom step and I stare, daring myself to go up. He is behind me. He is waiting. He is the shadow I cannot run from.

Every night he haunts my sleep. Yet he is no longer real. He is not physical, not just those years as a child he stole, but all the ones that followed.

In the darkness I lay down. I close my eyes and sigh and let the day go like everyone else. Seconds later my eyes open, I stare into the dark. I try and make the shadows nothing. I know he is not real any more, but I am waiting. I do not move. Do not blink. My breath is caught. I am 35, not 5 he cannot beat me anymore, but he does.

I am afraid to sleep. What if tonight he becomes real once more?

I see his face. Like a flash before my eyes. He is grinning. Smiling, yet I still don’t know his name.

Just the shadow of a bad man from long ago.

Read Dear Teddy.