To carry on from where I left off.
Six months, 2 weeks and 2 days ago, I tried to kill myself. The previous blog details that, in rather a LOT of detail, actually. I am now going to explain what happened next.
Chapter Two, I guess, in my second chance at life.
As you know from reading my previous blog, I spent Christmas in shock and worrying about the state of my parents' marriage. I was unsure how long it would last, and the more they tried to stay stable for me, the more they grew angry at one another.
On around the 28th of December, I started talking excessively to a member of this website, some of you know him, some of you don't, but I won't mention him by name right at this moment. We discovered we had a huge amount in common. I'd noticed this guy before, in the chat room, sitting on his webcam looking dark, broody and generally gorgeous, but dismissed him as anything more than a friend due to the fact that he lives on the exact opposite side of the planet to me - Australia. But here we were, talking as if we'd known each other for ten years, instead of a meagre two. He told me he'd hated seeing me hurt in the past, and I told him a lot of things about my sordid and difficult life. He never said he was sorry for me, he never expressed much shock at what I'd been through, and that in itself was enough to make my cock my head and think "hang on, this guy is different".
New Years Eve' rolled around, and I was not allowed out on the town for celebrations, so I decided to invite my best friend over for food, a fair bit of drink and some Buffy. She came round, and we spent time with my parents and two of my sisters, and one of my sister's boyfriends - Neal. We played a game, Articulate, I believe it was called. My Dad made us laugh with his Michael Jackson impressions, but he wasn't trying very hard, because he'd started to really hate my mother, I think the realisation that she'd been cheating on him for most of their marriage was starting to set in, and he himself was sinking into a nasty depression. When the New Year was rung in, I gave all of my family a kiss, and made three New Years' resolutions.
1. Do not give up smoking this year.
2. Instead of ignoring your gut feeling, like you always have, follow it.
3. Find a cure. No matter what it takes.
As I thought of those resolutions, I suddenly only needed to talk to one person. The boy I'd been talking to for so many hours. I felt a huge urge to kiss him, to throw my arms round him and not let go, ever. And I realised at that exact point, that I needed to take notice of resolution number two. I needed to follow my gut. I made a decision about five minutes later, when Lindsay and I were having a celebratory cigarette on the street outside my house - I was going to leave behind me this small town with all its' horrible memories and lifelessness, and I was going to get away, and follow my gut all the way to Australia, firstly to see if it was right about the boy, and secondly to find my cure - space.
On January the 2nd, he asked me to be his girlfriend. How could I possibly refuse with everything that I now knew about him? He was me, but slightly older and male. Our similarities scared us, slightly, but enough to make us laugh in tune with one another, he was beautiful and deep and every last atom within my body was yearning to be closer to him. So of course, I did not refuse.
I set about job hunting, but at home, things started to go awry. My parents, seeing how well I was doing, forgot momentarily that it was only a fortnight since I'd attempted suicide, and started bickering and arguing more than ever. Throughout January I searched desperately for a job, and continually tried to ignore the bombs that were going off around me. I hid in my room, getting to know the only person I really wanted to know, and feeling happier with each little thing I found out; that our favourite song was the same, that he loved cats, simple tiny things that grew and grew in my head to form this picture of this guy that I couldn't make up because I couldn't touch him. I told him I wanted to be there, with him, and he was extremely happy to hear it.
February came, very very quickly. I set myself a date to reach Australia - May 31st. Shortly into February my parents had the biggest argument of all, and I witnessed it, from upstairs, listening intently and quietly panicking. A week later, my mother moved out, she found a flat not far from here and she moved in, sadly, despite the fact that this had been what she'd wanted, really, for the longest time. I stayed here, with my Dad, claiming that I wanted to stay in the house that I grew up in, but really I didn't want to hurt her feelings - we do not get on living together.
Shortly after that, I had my first phonecall with the boy. When he answered the phone I nearly screamed as I was thrown headfirst into falling in love with the way that he spoke, his inflection and the feeling in his voice. I absolutely loved talking to him, and called him three more times, for an hour or more at a time, that month.
I decided I wanted to go from having black hair, to having white hair, so I bought myself some bleach and got to it. What I got was a definite ginger, the first time, so I waited a week before trying again.
The snow in February was harsh but beautiful, I took photos I'm proud of and froze to death trundling round the park in my boots, listening, of course, to my ipod.
The snow eventually melted, though it left a trail of very cold, very slippery ice behind it.
I bleached my hair again, and it definitely turned white, but it also started to rapidly fall out. I'd killed it. I was extremely unamused by this development, and cried quite a lot for the first time, since, well, December.
When I'd gotten over my hair loss, the boy and I started playing World of Warcraft with another member and another Suicide Girl, who are also in a long distance relationship - MartyDistortion and Sin. We had a great time playing together, and I got to hear his voice, for free, using the audio there. However, things suddenly started to go very wrong.
At the beginning of March, the time leading up to my birthday, I was sitting, playing WoW, with the boy, online, when suddenly I felt like I had a cramp in my right calf. I stood up and tried to stretch it out, but it wouldn't go away. I tried to ignore it, but after five consecutive days where the pain was getting worse and worse, it was impossible to ignore any more. I went to the hospital, and was sent in, all of a sudden, for blood tests. The hospital thought I had a blood clot in my leg. The tests came back positive for blood clots, and suddenly my head was full of not being allowed on planes, not to mention the fact that if I had a clot, my iminent death. I suddenly realised how much I really really wanted to be alive. I was given stomach injections, meant to freeze the clot, for I think four days before I had an ultrasound on my leg to see if they could find the clot. By this time I was walking using a walking stick. I can't tell you how many funny looks I was given, this young looking 21 year old, walking around with a stick like an old lady.
The ultrasound turned up nothing. There was never a clot. All the crying and fear I had felt was for nothing, yet again a mistake had been made, and of course, it would happen in the time around my birthday. What I'd had was something called "Baker's cyst" which is a cyst, that sits in the back of your knee, and then, one day, it bursts, sending fluid down the backs of your calf muscles and leaving you in absolute agony. There is no reason for the cysts, and apart from surgery, no cure. It will probably happen to me again at some point in my life.
I was put onto a pic'n'mix of pills. Painkillers and anti-inflammatories. And slowly, over the course of a very painful week, the pain faded. By my birthday on the 22nd I was able to go out, without the aid of a stick, and drink.
The day after my birthday the reality of what my mother leaving and my leg playing up had done to me and the boy set in very very fast. Not to mention the fact that I hadn't been tackling anything that had happened in December, but rather been ignoring it. It had been having a very nasty impact on my relationship and I had become self-sabotaging, thinking that it would not, could not possibly last, because nothing ever had before. I drove him away from me. We had a fight, early in the morning, about something utterly insane and stupid. It was one of many fights that we'd had that week, and it ended badly. The boy split up with me, there and then, and left me feeling helpless, lost, and causeless. I went downstairs and cried into my dinner. I told my Dad that by all rights I should be dead, so why should this be happening to me? He booked me in to see a friend of his, who was a psychiatrist, on an emergency appointment, I think fearing a repeat of December. I saw the psychiatrist, and was told I'd be seeing him more until he could sort out something permanent in the way of therapy, which I should have been having after a suicide attempt, anyway.
Then, all of a sudden, I was calm. I knew what I had to do.
I left the house. And I didn't return for over twenty-four hours. I walked and I thought and I thought and I walked until I knew exactly where I had gone wrong with the boy. I decided that I was definitely still going to Australia, because I still needed the break, and I clarified a lot of things to myself. I was not going to try to win this boy back by begging, or by any other means. He'd agreed to keep talking to me, and all I wanted him to do was at least remember that I wasn't a nasty, bitchy and annoying person. I'd thought about many plans in the days before that, to win him back, to talk to people who knew him, but deep down I knew that that wouldn't work, and if he wanted rid of me, that was what would happen.
I returned home, and found him online. We spoke, for a short time, about not much, and we played WoW together. I prepared myself to begin getting over him.
Exactly a week after my birthday, he said he wanted to give it another shot. And between us, things got slowly better until they were better than they were previously. I began to smile again, realising that I still belonged to him and vice versa.
Therapy started in May. I was and still am receiving therapy in the form of Cognitive Analytical Therapy. I have recently discovered that for years I was lied to and passed from doctor to doctor, who, unable to deal with me, had given me snap judgements and quick diagnoses on what was wrong with my head. For years I was told that I had these things:
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Anxiety Disorder
Nightmare Disorder
Panic Disorder
Bipolar Disorder
Depression
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Primary Insomnia
It turns out I only, really, have one thing wrong with me, one thing undiagnosed by every doctor, psychiatrist and counsellor I've ever come into contact with.
Borderline Personality Disorder
I continue to attend my sessions, weekly, and I'm making huge progress with my life. The boy is still with me and I hope to be spending every night for a very long time if not forever, holding him close to me as we sleep. And that is hopefully going to happen in October, before the date of what is going to be my new birthday.
I know there are other people out there who have been in the situation I was in back in December, and I know that they might not have come out of it quite so well as I did. If that's you, please take something away from this in that despite how cliched it all sounds, things can get better, but they're not going anywhere unless you want them to get there.
I'm not feeding anyone any bullcrap about how there's always someone who has it worse, because you will never know exactly what it is like to be anyone but the person that you are. But that does not mean that the person that you are can't change, grow, and get better within their own minds.
So take this as one crazy chick, just telling you a story, an insight into six months of what is turning out to be a beautiful second chance at what was once a very ugly life.
Thank you for reading.
Six months, 2 weeks and 2 days ago, I tried to kill myself. The previous blog details that, in rather a LOT of detail, actually. I am now going to explain what happened next.
Chapter Two, I guess, in my second chance at life.
As you know from reading my previous blog, I spent Christmas in shock and worrying about the state of my parents' marriage. I was unsure how long it would last, and the more they tried to stay stable for me, the more they grew angry at one another.
On around the 28th of December, I started talking excessively to a member of this website, some of you know him, some of you don't, but I won't mention him by name right at this moment. We discovered we had a huge amount in common. I'd noticed this guy before, in the chat room, sitting on his webcam looking dark, broody and generally gorgeous, but dismissed him as anything more than a friend due to the fact that he lives on the exact opposite side of the planet to me - Australia. But here we were, talking as if we'd known each other for ten years, instead of a meagre two. He told me he'd hated seeing me hurt in the past, and I told him a lot of things about my sordid and difficult life. He never said he was sorry for me, he never expressed much shock at what I'd been through, and that in itself was enough to make my cock my head and think "hang on, this guy is different".
New Years Eve' rolled around, and I was not allowed out on the town for celebrations, so I decided to invite my best friend over for food, a fair bit of drink and some Buffy. She came round, and we spent time with my parents and two of my sisters, and one of my sister's boyfriends - Neal. We played a game, Articulate, I believe it was called. My Dad made us laugh with his Michael Jackson impressions, but he wasn't trying very hard, because he'd started to really hate my mother, I think the realisation that she'd been cheating on him for most of their marriage was starting to set in, and he himself was sinking into a nasty depression. When the New Year was rung in, I gave all of my family a kiss, and made three New Years' resolutions.
1. Do not give up smoking this year.
2. Instead of ignoring your gut feeling, like you always have, follow it.
3. Find a cure. No matter what it takes.
As I thought of those resolutions, I suddenly only needed to talk to one person. The boy I'd been talking to for so many hours. I felt a huge urge to kiss him, to throw my arms round him and not let go, ever. And I realised at that exact point, that I needed to take notice of resolution number two. I needed to follow my gut. I made a decision about five minutes later, when Lindsay and I were having a celebratory cigarette on the street outside my house - I was going to leave behind me this small town with all its' horrible memories and lifelessness, and I was going to get away, and follow my gut all the way to Australia, firstly to see if it was right about the boy, and secondly to find my cure - space.
On January the 2nd, he asked me to be his girlfriend. How could I possibly refuse with everything that I now knew about him? He was me, but slightly older and male. Our similarities scared us, slightly, but enough to make us laugh in tune with one another, he was beautiful and deep and every last atom within my body was yearning to be closer to him. So of course, I did not refuse.
I set about job hunting, but at home, things started to go awry. My parents, seeing how well I was doing, forgot momentarily that it was only a fortnight since I'd attempted suicide, and started bickering and arguing more than ever. Throughout January I searched desperately for a job, and continually tried to ignore the bombs that were going off around me. I hid in my room, getting to know the only person I really wanted to know, and feeling happier with each little thing I found out; that our favourite song was the same, that he loved cats, simple tiny things that grew and grew in my head to form this picture of this guy that I couldn't make up because I couldn't touch him. I told him I wanted to be there, with him, and he was extremely happy to hear it.
February came, very very quickly. I set myself a date to reach Australia - May 31st. Shortly into February my parents had the biggest argument of all, and I witnessed it, from upstairs, listening intently and quietly panicking. A week later, my mother moved out, she found a flat not far from here and she moved in, sadly, despite the fact that this had been what she'd wanted, really, for the longest time. I stayed here, with my Dad, claiming that I wanted to stay in the house that I grew up in, but really I didn't want to hurt her feelings - we do not get on living together.
Shortly after that, I had my first phonecall with the boy. When he answered the phone I nearly screamed as I was thrown headfirst into falling in love with the way that he spoke, his inflection and the feeling in his voice. I absolutely loved talking to him, and called him three more times, for an hour or more at a time, that month.
I decided I wanted to go from having black hair, to having white hair, so I bought myself some bleach and got to it. What I got was a definite ginger, the first time, so I waited a week before trying again.
The snow in February was harsh but beautiful, I took photos I'm proud of and froze to death trundling round the park in my boots, listening, of course, to my ipod.
The snow eventually melted, though it left a trail of very cold, very slippery ice behind it.
I bleached my hair again, and it definitely turned white, but it also started to rapidly fall out. I'd killed it. I was extremely unamused by this development, and cried quite a lot for the first time, since, well, December.
When I'd gotten over my hair loss, the boy and I started playing World of Warcraft with another member and another Suicide Girl, who are also in a long distance relationship - MartyDistortion and Sin. We had a great time playing together, and I got to hear his voice, for free, using the audio there. However, things suddenly started to go very wrong.
At the beginning of March, the time leading up to my birthday, I was sitting, playing WoW, with the boy, online, when suddenly I felt like I had a cramp in my right calf. I stood up and tried to stretch it out, but it wouldn't go away. I tried to ignore it, but after five consecutive days where the pain was getting worse and worse, it was impossible to ignore any more. I went to the hospital, and was sent in, all of a sudden, for blood tests. The hospital thought I had a blood clot in my leg. The tests came back positive for blood clots, and suddenly my head was full of not being allowed on planes, not to mention the fact that if I had a clot, my iminent death. I suddenly realised how much I really really wanted to be alive. I was given stomach injections, meant to freeze the clot, for I think four days before I had an ultrasound on my leg to see if they could find the clot. By this time I was walking using a walking stick. I can't tell you how many funny looks I was given, this young looking 21 year old, walking around with a stick like an old lady.
The ultrasound turned up nothing. There was never a clot. All the crying and fear I had felt was for nothing, yet again a mistake had been made, and of course, it would happen in the time around my birthday. What I'd had was something called "Baker's cyst" which is a cyst, that sits in the back of your knee, and then, one day, it bursts, sending fluid down the backs of your calf muscles and leaving you in absolute agony. There is no reason for the cysts, and apart from surgery, no cure. It will probably happen to me again at some point in my life.
I was put onto a pic'n'mix of pills. Painkillers and anti-inflammatories. And slowly, over the course of a very painful week, the pain faded. By my birthday on the 22nd I was able to go out, without the aid of a stick, and drink.
The day after my birthday the reality of what my mother leaving and my leg playing up had done to me and the boy set in very very fast. Not to mention the fact that I hadn't been tackling anything that had happened in December, but rather been ignoring it. It had been having a very nasty impact on my relationship and I had become self-sabotaging, thinking that it would not, could not possibly last, because nothing ever had before. I drove him away from me. We had a fight, early in the morning, about something utterly insane and stupid. It was one of many fights that we'd had that week, and it ended badly. The boy split up with me, there and then, and left me feeling helpless, lost, and causeless. I went downstairs and cried into my dinner. I told my Dad that by all rights I should be dead, so why should this be happening to me? He booked me in to see a friend of his, who was a psychiatrist, on an emergency appointment, I think fearing a repeat of December. I saw the psychiatrist, and was told I'd be seeing him more until he could sort out something permanent in the way of therapy, which I should have been having after a suicide attempt, anyway.
Then, all of a sudden, I was calm. I knew what I had to do.
I left the house. And I didn't return for over twenty-four hours. I walked and I thought and I thought and I walked until I knew exactly where I had gone wrong with the boy. I decided that I was definitely still going to Australia, because I still needed the break, and I clarified a lot of things to myself. I was not going to try to win this boy back by begging, or by any other means. He'd agreed to keep talking to me, and all I wanted him to do was at least remember that I wasn't a nasty, bitchy and annoying person. I'd thought about many plans in the days before that, to win him back, to talk to people who knew him, but deep down I knew that that wouldn't work, and if he wanted rid of me, that was what would happen.
I returned home, and found him online. We spoke, for a short time, about not much, and we played WoW together. I prepared myself to begin getting over him.
Exactly a week after my birthday, he said he wanted to give it another shot. And between us, things got slowly better until they were better than they were previously. I began to smile again, realising that I still belonged to him and vice versa.
Therapy started in May. I was and still am receiving therapy in the form of Cognitive Analytical Therapy. I have recently discovered that for years I was lied to and passed from doctor to doctor, who, unable to deal with me, had given me snap judgements and quick diagnoses on what was wrong with my head. For years I was told that I had these things:
Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
Anxiety Disorder
Nightmare Disorder
Panic Disorder
Bipolar Disorder
Depression
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Primary Insomnia
It turns out I only, really, have one thing wrong with me, one thing undiagnosed by every doctor, psychiatrist and counsellor I've ever come into contact with.
Borderline Personality Disorder
I continue to attend my sessions, weekly, and I'm making huge progress with my life. The boy is still with me and I hope to be spending every night for a very long time if not forever, holding him close to me as we sleep. And that is hopefully going to happen in October, before the date of what is going to be my new birthday.
I know there are other people out there who have been in the situation I was in back in December, and I know that they might not have come out of it quite so well as I did. If that's you, please take something away from this in that despite how cliched it all sounds, things can get better, but they're not going anywhere unless you want them to get there.
I'm not feeding anyone any bullcrap about how there's always someone who has it worse, because you will never know exactly what it is like to be anyone but the person that you are. But that does not mean that the person that you are can't change, grow, and get better within their own minds.
So take this as one crazy chick, just telling you a story, an insight into six months of what is turning out to be a beautiful second chance at what was once a very ugly life.
Thank you for reading.
VIEW 19 of 19 COMMENTS
I'm not feeding anyone any bullcrap about how there's always someone who has it worse, because you will never know exactly what it is like to be anyone but the person that you are. But that does not mean that the person that you are can't change, grow, and get better within their own minds.
Fuckin' A.