Playing a Game

Have you ever felt the wound of a broken heart reopen? One that you thought had closed, but realized it might just be chronic?

I've been trying to figure out what's been up with my depression lately. I've been fighting my eating disorder harder than ever - following my whole meal plan even when it is more than I've done in a year, fighting against my head when it tells me not to, when it tells me that none of it matters, that none of my life matters. 

It asks me why I'm doing any of this at all - that it's pointless. That I don't mean anything. 

Like, when I'm faced with a decision of paying for food or not eating at all. Why would I be worth the money for that? What a waste of money that could be spent on something necessary! (Because food isn't???) 

The depression has been getting louder and louder. 

I've been super inconsistent with my meds, which probably contributes. I had a very unexpected period. Also contributes. 

I don't know, this is a hard week for me. I can't explain what it is, but all I can say is that my heart is an open wound again and the pain is there. It's very much there. 

I don't know if some things fully heal. I don't know if I've been alive long enough to know that. Sometimes it doesn't feel like I want to be alive long enough to know that, when there is just so much pain in the here and now, and it doesn't always feel worth it. 

Wounds re-open. It happens. I try to control the bleeding and when I feel it, but it just doesn't always work that way. 

I try to distract myself the best I can. Family time, new friends, starting Grey's Anatomy, planning my future. Distractions are good, I'm now completely obsessed with Meredith Grey and her career. I'm on season 2. 

But I think sometimes I get both busier and sicker at the same time, too. When stuff like this comes up I start obsessing over other things. 

How busy can I plan my future to be to keep down the horrible feelings? 

So I don't have to believe these heinous things about myself. I plan myself to be so busy that I know it might make me sick and exhausted. 

How focused can I get on something else, like my treatment?

I don't think about it consciously but I really cling tightly to things that didn't matter that much before to me when I need to stop feeling other things.

I've hardly paid any attention to how long it's been taking my foot to heal, but now I can't stop thinking about when I'm getting my MRI done and obsessing over it in my head. I'm starting to overthink relationships that I've given plenty of overthought to, but I hadn't been worried about them until these unwanted other feelings came up and I needed a distraction. 

Anything, to make these horrible feelings less important and get them off my mind. 

Trying to find ways to make myself more important.

How can I get myself to be more important in someone else's eyes right now?

How can I be more needed by others?

How can I make others see how needy I am, and pay attention to me?

How can I become such a successful person that I've proven I'm important and worthy in this world? How can I prove my right of passage to live? To show my face? To deserve friends and respect? 

I have to say now too, you have no idea how embarrassing these things are for me to admit. I just know they’re true, and so why pretend they aren’t? I can’t be the only one who works like this at times, and I know I used to need to know that it was okay. So, I’m normalizing behaviors that we experience as humans.

I think of Dear Evan Hanson in the song "Words Fail."

It's an extremely powerful song to me. He's talking about how words fail him, how there are no words to describe why he did the terribly wrong thing that he did.

"Words fail, words fail, there's nothing I can say, but sometimes you see everything you wanted and sometimes you see everything you wish you had and it's right there, right there, right there in front of you. And you want to believe it's true...

But I've learned to slam on the brakes, before I even turn the key, before I make the mistake, before I lead with the worst of me, I never let them see the worst of me.

Cause what if everyone saw?

What if everyone knew?

Would they like what they saw? 

Or would they... hate it too?

Do I just keep on running away from what's true?

All I ever do is run... so how do I step in... step into the sun?..."

This song is felt in my heart and soul. 

I don't know if I ever told you all one of the reasons I share my story. 

Besides hoping some isolated souls out there can relate, and besides helping some other desperate souls understand loved ones a little better -  it's also because I've had my story twisted and in the hands of people I never wanted controlling it. 

My life was forever changed because of it. 

I lived in so much paranoia of who knew what, and how they heard the story, and who told it, and what was said, and I couldn't sleep because of it. 

All my biggest fears came to life.

I had no power.

The whole, "would they like what they saw, or would they hate it too?"

was pretty much showing me that the world hated it. My worst mistakes, the most private parts of my mental health were being shared offhandedly and abused. Specific things I would talk about the voices in my head, I had entrusted to the wrong confidants. I was wrong. 

So, I chose to control my story. If I share it, I own it, I put it out there, no one can dictate it. If I tell you, you can't hold it against me or shame me for it, because I don't share it with shame. You can try to shame me, but it only works if I feel that way. You have no power over me if I don't give you any. It's my story. 

All I ever did was run. So I stepped into the sun. 

In that sense. 

But I'm still running. I'm still lying to myself, telling myself that something, something I can do, will make me worthy. I can make myself worthy or make myself believe I'm worthy by doing things that make me feel successful, doing things that make me friends, or just eliciting responses from people that make me feel loved. 

I haven't healed. I control the story, I'm not controlled by the story anymore. 

But I haven't healed from the story. The story of my life. My life that's just begun, although it feels like it ended 5 years ago.

Alex Morgan wrote in her book when she was 26 that she was so young and her life had really only just begun. I'm 24 and my life felt like it ended at 19. 

I sit here working, planning, emailing, exercising, eating, trying to LIVE. To make myself worth it. And I can't. I can't do that. I can't MAKE myself worth it. 

I already am. But running away, hiding behind pain, using obsessive behaviors, that's all I can do to stay "safe" and afloat. Why am I fighting to stay afloat? I have a life jacket. I also can swim. I don't have to struggle to survive. But that's what I'm doing. I'm struggling to survive. 

My PA told me today that I've come so far in the last 5 years, since my life changed forever, but I still become a scared little girl when it comes back up. And it's always with me.

It's okay, because I know I can be okay. I know that I will find a life work balance. I think we all run away and hide sometimes. 

I think we're all trying to figure this out. I think we all have some obsessive habits that try to protect us when we feel like control has been taken away; when we have flashbacks to losing everything that was important to us without having control over the outcome and our bodies just go on autopilot to protect and manage and survive. We don't recognize autopilot anymore. It's like daydreaming while we drive. We hardly remember we're driving, we don't think about it. We drive every day. 

We fall into these habits and patterns every day when we feel threatened or like we're losing control, and we don't even know it. 

Being out of control is just absolutely terrifying. Not knowing what's next, is absolutely terrifying. And isolation in your own experiences making it impossible for anyone else to understand, knowing others have a wholeness to them that you lost because you lost what they have, makes it all feel like a sick and twisted tease. That life is playing a prank on you. That your life was punk'd. 

It could sound dramatic, but since I get to control my own story, I get to share how it is for me. 

And the truth is I feel like I'm always playing a game. The planning I do is just playing pretend. None of it feels real. It all feels like a game of distraction until the day that satan lets me know that I'm his. I'm only fooling myself.

I know it's not true and that someday all of the hard work I do will come to fruition but the more I use it as distraction the more burnt out, sad, and isolated I get. 

Which tells me it's about half and half. Yeah, I might be trying to hide. But I'm still in plain sight. I'm fighting. I get up every day, and I try. Trying to make myself worthy tells me somewhere inside of me I believe that I could be worthy. And the next step will be believing that merely existing makes me worthy. 

Watching Grey's Anatomy beats over exercising, or hurting myself. Obsessively trying to follow my meal plan beats obsessive restriction. Going to 4 doctor's appointments a week beats staying at a hospital. Trying to get the attention of the people who love me beats not reaching out at all. And it sure beats not having anyone to turn to. Trying to be needed and offer what I have beats fully believing I have nothing to offer. 

I think all of these things prove that I do believe I'm a little bit worthy. And some day, I won't be trying to prove anything. I'll just know it. But we are getting there. We all are. Godspeed on your journey. 

Here's a picture of me with a giant blue chicken. Why? Because sometimes I'm playing pretend, doing things without actually believing I'll succeed or that I deserve to. And sometimes, I'm playing chicken. How close can the car get while I'm lying in the road before I get up and run off, without getting hit?

Also, blue is my favorite color, and this was the coolest sculpture I have ever seen.