I’m presenting to the world, the best version of myself. I am debuting back into society after pandemic woes and incapacitating illness, and I want to put the bad behind me. I truly do.
I’m leading this time. I don’t want to confide my worst fears, I don’t want to be vulnerable — because it just reminds me of how little I felt believed. How I felt so misunderstood, and invisible, and at its worst dehumanized and denied my personhood. If I even share the slightest sense that I am still struggling with triggers that open floodgates of hurt, or anxiety about getting sick again, or how the lingering symptoms still limit me in ways that are so frustrating — I’m met with that fucking positive spin that is so invalidating, but I am giving the ammunition this time, with my performance that I’m embracing all the good fortune and joy in my life finally.
But I’m hurting, and I’m denying my hurt, and I feel the compulsion to cut myself, to see that blood and marks and remember that I’m real, that my depression is real, and this is the truth of my feelings. I’ll cover it, I’ll hide it, but alone I need to feel it, to see it, I need those moments to stop pretending.
Maybe it’s my acupuncturist who when i tell I’m emotional, tells me to simply not dwell on the past that I can’t change and let go and be in the moment. Or maybe it’s healthy program trainer, who is convinced that my fatigue must be due to the fact, that I am not following my nutrition, exercise, meditation, hydration and sleep regiment dutifully enough. Maybe its people in my life, who are eager to celebrate how far I’ve come so that they don’t have to sit with the discomfort of my prolonged pain anymore, who are relieved to be moving forward.
Maybe I don’t feel the permission to be anything but my most productive and positive self. And cutting is the only thing that signals to myself, that its okay for you to hurt, for you to reveal this fucked up part of yourself, the part of you that no matter how hard you try won’t go away, and it’s okay.
They tell you, just keep trying to do things you used to enjoy, even when you’re depressed, don’t go into your turtle shell, b/c eventually the joy will come back. So I try. And people believe, and the truth the schism of my existence remains buried.
I find myself nostalgic for one of my partial hospitalizations. Any other time, I’d tell you being hospitalized is traumatic, and it’s just a jail with board games, and its the same repetitive therapeutic tools, fixing your cognitive distortions and being mindful that I’ve already listened to a million times and have diminished utility at this point.
But as frightened I remember being at first, eating in the cafeteria alone in the mental hospital, I found a community. People from all walks of life, people of every age, race and socioeconomic status. All suffering in a way they could relate to me. And I didn’t have to pretend. I could be emotional and filled with rage, or just sullen and sad, and that was fine. Maybe the professional would think the me I presented in my acute breakdown was how I always was, not appreciating all the repression I was an expert in so i could be the productive functional person I needed be— to keep my full-time jobs and health insurance, to engage with my family without hyper criticism and judgment, to be the source of fun among friends so not to be debbie downer and a burden. At the hospital I had permission to be my most depressed self. And the professionals might spout out of advice that was totally misaligned with where I was at, but the other patients they made me feel seen, they made me feel heard.
So I can never really give up my maladaptive coping mechanisms. Because I will force myself to exercise, get a good night’s sleep and eat healthily —- I will try to process with a journal, with this blog, with my therapist, with art or just fill my life with distractions. And then in the moments when I have peace, I have a pause, I’ll cut. And I don’t think any dose of medicine will ever make me stop needing to in certain times. The times I’m presenting my most perfect version of having it all-together to the world. The times when I stupidly say something real and I feel erased and I need to remember I’m a human, I’m real- I need to bleed.
Inside My Madness 