Where I Stopped Digging

I wrote this one week ago - and only made minor changes in punctuation and wording to make it more comprehensible, so I'm just going to leave it as is so that people can read it and be in those moments with me:

I think it's imperative for me to write things down and share them in my worst times before they get better. I'm now in a place that I can share it more as a gift rather than as a plea for help, but I want to share it - I have to share it - because we get into these places and feel so lonely, lost, and broken (even though we are not), and as though there's not a single soul that exists who will ever understand the depth and complexity of our despair. 

We feel hopeless. We can't think of ways out. We feel trapped. We spiral. 

I've been spiralling. The last 3 weeks have been the lowest and darkest places I've gone in a long time - and the way I've coped with it has brought consequences.

As much as I would like to say I've grown so much that I chose to trust my supports, trust God, and power through, doing the right thing because I know it's the right thing - I have done the opposite. 

3 weeks ago I found out my foot had a stress fracture and that I couldn't run or bike for an indefinite period of time. Without a thought, I immediately stopped taking my depression medication. As someone who has been fighting an exercise addiction in conjunction with my eating disorder, I didn't even want to fathom trying to live with my new reality and recover from my mental illness with such an abrupt loss of safety and control the addiction brings me. I can't explain why because there aren't words for why. The prospect of experiencing the loud, abusive voices and the paralyzing anxiety at a level that's been absent for a very long time filled me with dread - and also a sense of submission to it. 

I believed I deserved the darkness and cruel words, and also was sick of fighting them so hard - but I didn't even really think about it. I knew the voices in my head would tell me to stop taking the meds until I did what they said, so I just went with it as though I had a premonition of a heart attack and called 911 before experiencing symptoms. 

In the midst of it all my eating disorder started to creep in and has been pestering me to relapse. I've been engaging with more disordered eating behaviors, but I have refused to let myself go so  far that I give up completely. I do know, however, that the more I engage, the more difficult it is to stop - and if I don't stop now, I may not be able to in the near future. Disordered eating is never controlled. 

Someone can look at me right now and wonder why I go around preaching about mental illness when I fall into these rabbit holes still. This is where I have to say - I'm not preaching. My only goal is to help people see that they are not alone no matter how dark or seemingly just unusual and wrong their battle against self is - and that they can have a relationship with God while they fight. Even if fighting sometimes is being stagnant, or making half the helpful decisions and half the unhelpful decisions, or even going backwards without having fully chosen to give up. I may still have my twisted thoughts because of how my brain works - but I've never given up on God - and he never goes anywhere. If he's always there - then I would be the only one pulling away in any given scenario. He doesn't withhold love and grace based upon circumstance. There is no rewards system for the love and grace of God. 

Are the choices I made self-sabotage? Yes, I can confidently say it is self sabotage. I consciously stopped taking my medication. 

This is frustrating to people who have fought so hard to support me and help me change over the years. 

Two things are true at once though. Yes, I made that decision. Also, there are still voices in my head taking advantage of me. The things they tell me about myself, and the things they think I should do in order to be an "acceptable person," bring so much fear that I chose to trust them, as they have been with me much longer than any other human, over my support system. 

There are so many reasons I stop taking the meds. The voices have always been with me, I feel as though I deserve the cruelty and need to be punished, I feel like I'm not a good person and the meds help me, I feel like they change who I am, I feel like people try and change me to make me more manageable by putting me on meds, it feels normal and safe to me to have the familiarity of consequence that generally comes when I don't engage in my obsessive-compulsive behaviors related to exercise. Of course - this is all what the voices tell me to believe and have me convinced of. 

Ironically I made a choice trying to avoid the wrath of the voices while in reality the longer I've been off my meds, the worse the voices have become, and the more resistant I am to taking the meds and trusting my support team. The more I push my supports away, making them want to pull away. The person I become, is the person I have spent the last couple years trying to run as far away from as I can possibly get. I become needy, I become blame-y, I get angered easily, I let the voices control and dictate my words, actions and beliefs, I become FULL of fear - so full that I project it onto others and decide for them what they will probably decide to do - which in my mind is pull away, become cold hearted and eventually threaten and give up on me. So I act as though they have already done those things. 

For sure my fears come from valid places - I have a significant history of losing supports in devastating ways for me, and a history of being treated with punishment for my declining mental health. So all the voices in my head are doing right now is taking advantage of my weaknesses and vulnerability, and causing me to hurt others. I am trying to say, "I'm scared of being alone, I need to know someone loves me more than the voices!" Yet all I can do is continue to make bad life choices out of fear. My soul, somewhere in there is weakly attempting to be heard and seen in its desparate pain for the human need of connection and unconditional love. Unfortunately this is not the language humans speak. People do not translate those actions into those words. And souls don't directly communicate with each other.  

It's isolating me. I have the most fear right now than I have had in years. I truthfully am having a really difficult time fighting it off, and it is so tempting to give myself fully to these voices. 

But I think it is important for me to write a blog post during the fact, and not after the fact. Because it is so easy to explain how to do the right thing to someone when you are no longer in those dark moments. When you aren't still having a difficult time getting out of bed halfway through the day. When all you can think about is no longer completely dark. When you no longer have very little faith and hope. 

So here's my current truth. 

I am in a really dark period of time. I am having a difficult time getting out of bed. Most all I can think about is completely dark. There seems to be no way out. I feel very little hope and faith. 

My fire is flaming hot. I have to walk into it and face it. Let the flames of reality engulf me and learn from it. Let my mistakes teach me, instead of running away back into my old habits. God is with me in the fire. He does not let us burn from life circumstances as long as we choose not to. 

I decided I'm ready to post this because I already took my medication once (last night), and I intend to keep doing that. It won't begin to work for a long time, especially restarting at such a low dose, but this is all that I can do. I watched 2 videos on Glennon Doyle's instagram about her own mental health, to remind me I have to do this and that she is doing it. That darkness is not unique to me, nor is it indicative of my humanity or morality. I read my Bible for the first time in a while. 

I can't get anything done without hearing the voices. My head pesters me relentlessly. I start to focus on homework and all I hear is the back of my head saying I've finally done it. I've finally ruined my life. I am truly the most hopeless human being. 

But these are the choices I made today, because I don't know what else I can do.

I will not give in this time. I will not dig myself deeper. I will not sabotage myself more. 

Glennon said in the last video I watched, "We need to figure out how to quit using our fire to burn ourselves up, and start using our fire to light up the world."

Right now I look at my past and feel as though I haven't changed. I can choose to let my history and the situation I've gotten myself in, and my mental illness, and the dark voices in my head,  burn me up. I have that choice. I have been making that choice for the past 3 weeks. I have been burning. I have control over no human, and hardly even myself. I don't have control over my head. I can try and fill my head with the Truth, but it only goes so far because it is seemingly impossible with such vehement mental pushback. I am not feeling very much better today but I wrote this because I am in the depths of it, and I have still chosen to try. That is a possible choice to make. 

I took my meds once. I will take them again today. I will eat enough today. 

I've been burning my own life up, and that's an option, but when I come out of it and look around, it's really going to suck if I do more damage. I've done a good amount of damage already. I see how ugly I become when I give into fear, and the way I speak to people, and how self obsessive I become. Sure, I struggle with diseases that I can't just erase. That isn't my fault. 

There's no shame for it, even though I feel very full of shame. But I know that there's no benefit of judging the way I try to protect myself from valid fears that I have. These safety-making behaviors have served me in the past. In addition to this truth, now that I am more mature, I have to objectively look at my choices with curiosity, to decide if there is a different way to react that may bring a more desired outcome.

I have the choice to let these diseases burn my life up, to let them kill me, or to surrender. 

I don't want to lose this fight because I've seen where it takes me when it gets worse. 

I want to do a whole separate post on this concept, but to give others something to think about - when we struggle with something - mental illness, addiction, the way we react to others - labels don't matter. It doesn't matter if you're anorexic or if you have a medical diagnosis of anxiety or depression or whatever it is you battle.  Just ask yourself this. 

Is the way you cope with life making you feel more free, or feel caged and trapped? Is it serving you, bringing you the life that is most true and beautiful to you, your values and integrity? Is it enhancing your life, or making it worse? Is it bringing you closer or further away from who you want to be and how you want to impact others? 

These thoughts are also from Glennon Doyle. It deeply impacted me. 

The things I chose to do, merely starting from stopping taking my meds, has brought me so far away from the person I hope to be. 

Anyone can heal, though. You don't need a label to heal. You don't need to have a diagnosis to heal. Any amount of disordered eating, any amount of alcohol you drink that feels like it is bringing you further away from the life you strive to live, isn't that enough to stop and think? 

Is dieting making you someone who you like to be around? Is it making you more absorbed in values you want to have, and values you want your children to have? How is your mood? Is this strategy serving you?

To answer my question about skipping meds, engaging in disordered eating behaviors as well as other maladaptive coping mechanisms, I will be honest. I have been horrible. I never want to see the person I am right now again in my life. 

I know for sure what actions take me far, far away from how I long to treat others, and how I want my life to look. 

Everything above was mostly written the morning after the first day I took my meds after 3 weeks subsequent to the news about my foot -  and I was at my lowest points I have experienced in a long time (for various reasons - only a fraction of it was due to the meds; but it was one factor that could have impacted my overall outcome). It scared me, and was a wake up call. I am out of the lowest part of it, although it still comes in waves, and have been on and off taking my meds the past week. I am trying to keep recommitting every day to recovery and the life I hope to live. It is not a perfect path. I, however, feel confident in which actions will lead me to the life I'm striving for, in line with my values and integrity. 

This is growth for me too - by the way. It doesn't sound great on paper - but I did not fully relapse, and I was able to recognize the track I want to be on within 3 weeks, and helped myself back onto it. I have absolutely changed. I could have gone so much lower. There is always a lower spot we can reach, so if you ever find yourself deep in a mess, be proud of, or at least recognize, that point where you stopped digging. 

I am not here to be fake with any of you. I am still on my recovery journey. This is the reality of mental illness. It is super ugly - and I don't want to sit here and say things I don't mean or that are impossible to actually do in times of distress. My purpose is to be here and be real with you. If you relate, or need to be seen or heard, feel free to slide into my DM's or email me at kyra@kyraarsenault.com.