Ça c'est l'histoire

Even positivity generates anxiety. For the first time in a long time - albeit for the wrong reasons - I'm feeling lighter and brighter; even, dare I say it, beginning to really look forward to Paris. I just pray that my relatively stable (with tendency toward mania or delirium) sustains itself throughout the trip away. One great fear is that it won't.

I haven't been away without my Mum since I was 12 years old so besides the thrill of the fast-approaching vacation there is inevitable trepidation. I cannot deny that my prevailing worries are orientated around my illness - which shames me in a sense, given that I know there are many more dangers in the big wide world other than food and my insecurities about my weight. I'm not worried about the threat of food, because, admittedly, it won't play a part in my trip away. I'm living off air and water again, but for once that scares me somewhat I'm horribly uneasy about how we will go about ensuring I have at least some marginal calorific intake over the four days so as to prevent collapse. Lucy will be incredibly supportive, that's a certainty; but how can I go about indicating that I'm about to pass out and that perhaps a drop of milk in my black tea would be a wise idea, when it's the last thing I want in reality? What if there is some physical crisis and everything is ruined? I am terrified of letting my dearest friend down.

I'm doing my utmost to put my excruciating concerns over my body image aside. I am determined that we will have the experience of a lifetime together - I just don't want to tarnish the. It's such a quandary: if I were to eat (which in my present state I cannot) I would have the physical energy but my mood would hit the floor, whereas if I did not as will be the case my mood will most likely be more elevated despite the odd unavoidable down I'm sure, but I will be at risk of exhaustion and thus the inability to do everything that we plan to, or at worst collapse. It's not as though I have much option - it's at a stage where it isn't that I don't want to, it's that I literally can't do it. All I can do is keep my fingers crossed that this so far remarkably resilient body of mine holds out the best it can, and that I can have the courage to accept the support of Lucy when it gets to the point where at least some calorific liquid needs to be consumed. It's an absolutely terrifying prospect.

Nevertheless, in devotion to the positivity I intend to impart throughout this entry, I am finally looking forward to the trip. We have so many things planned and it should be a wonderful experience for us both. Of course, pessimism taints my hopes in that I am fearful beyond words that something awful should come about so as to impede our adventures before they have even begun, but I am striving to bear in mind that there is nothing I can do about these worries - I just have to let them go, or at the very least displace them with a more pleasant occupation.

Another problem with high moods other than the likelihood of a pitiful subsequent crash is the feelings of disorientation. Everything feels so exhilarating, whirling by with such speed and unpredictability that none of it seems real. Last night I began to question whether any of reality was real or not which resonated with sickening nostalgia of my period of psychosis, when every little detail of life's fabric was completely symbolic and linked to previous or future happenings or my fate, reality a haze of distortion and confusion. It goes without saying that I haven't declined to that dizzying state again, but in my thrill the memories were fresh as the tomorrow of yesterday. 

We will be together after all which is perfect. I've been really struggling with being alone and it's getting to the point that I'm having to retire from sixth form on a more frequent basis simply because everyone else has a lesson or another priority so for a period I may have virtually no company, which I seem clinically incapable of coping with. I still feel an outsider, no matter how hard I try to smile or timidly participate in conversation with peers. There seems to be this great, perpetual pressure over me in any given social situation; generating feelings of substantial discomfort and unease which I cannot shake. It's a complete enigma: absolute intolerance of being alone but at the same time afraid of talking and being burdened with the difficulty of trying to relate to others. At least in Paris I will be with one of the few people in this world who I don't feel so awfully on edge around. I love Lucy more than I can say, and at long last I'm sensing that exhilarating excitement of exploring the beautiful city with someone so precious to me.

People Are Strange

I'm commencing this entry in the context of great uncertainty as to how to begin. I will endeavour to keep the narrative of a lighter nature than it typically transpires to be, but I'm afraid of setting such an expectation given that, as ever, it's when things are particularly difficult that I feel the need to write self-indulgent essays by way of some desperate catharsis. So please forgive any misery-ridden expression to follow.

It's an unpleasantly contradictory situation to be in - feeling both horribly alone and overwhelmed by the scrutiny of others. I've recently found myself suffering such a circumstance even more than usual. In starting my second year of sixth form over again I can't help but feel lost and abandoned without the small but wonderful circle of friends whom I would usually dote and depend on. Once again I seem an alien in an environment I was already far from comfortable with. To be on an entirely different level to my peers - not in superior way - is incredibly isolating. I simply cannot relate. How could I? These people know nothing about me or the suffering behind my social front even though that is through no fault of their own, so when they go about their trivial chatter it's inevitable that I feel more distant than ever. The sense of exposure doesn't help my already soaring anxieties. It's horrible to be literally stared at by most of the younger years and unforuntately this is not paranoia talking. Paranoia is merely the consequence of their glares: I wonder what is going through their minds to cause them to feel the need to blatantly nudge their friends and point, then follow me with their eyes and whisper amongst one another. Are they gossiping about that girl wearing the weird clothes? Or worse, are they questioning why I should be allowed out in public looking as fat and grotesque as I do? It has got to the point where I've had brush ins with year 8s, being assaulted with sarcastic remarks or less-than-kind comments after I ask them (admittedly not-so-politely myself) to stare at something other than me. In all honesty it's troubling me more and more everyday in accordance with my increasing discomfort with my own body, living with the burdens that I do.

People are strange. Everything seems unsettling and frightening when one seems a stranger to the rest of society; either completely unknown or known too much. Socialising is such a daunting process, made worse by feeling on a completely different planet to everyone else. There are very, very few who understand, who I can actually converse with to a degree which exceeds the frustratingly unfulfilling conditions of empty small talk. Lack of empathy combined with my heightened sensitivity render the smallest remark as a source of great distress for me. I wish there was some way of presenting what I've been through and how I'm still struggling terribly without fearing the judgement of others. Despite being reserved and introverted in nature it makes it all the more difficult to get through the day when no-one appears to have any comprehension of how much words can hurt. Even the most inadvertent comments about mood, personal experiences with regards to hospital or food - from those suffering from eating disorders as well as those who are lucky enough not to be afflicted with such a soul-destroying disease - have the power to trigger the depressive, self-destructive voice in my brain until there is very little spirit or rationality left in me. I don't really know what to do anymore. It's a perpetual enigma; to be both terrified of being alone and fearful of human contact, desperate to communicate socially but utterly unable to relate.

I know I've got to hold on but I'm so exhausted that it's painful. I'm going to Paris with my best friend in less than a week and I don't feel ready at all; I want so desperately for us to have the time of our lives together but I'm so very fearful that my raging insecurities will ruin everything. This new adventure simply has to be a turning point for me; a goodbye to pain and trauma - but I have this absolute terror that I won't even make it on the trip. I somehow need to nullify this despair and emotional instability within five days. I need to no longer be on the brink of suicide by Sunday night.

Think of the good things. Grin and bear being around others until the agony of isolation subsides. In crisis seek those you love. I know all of these things but it's a challenge to say the very least to put them into practice whilst my mind and heart feel cast adrift in a vast ocean of emptiness.

I know that biting the bullet is the hardest part so I'm trying my best. I'm persevering with sixth form in spite of my hopelessness, in an effort to pass the time more than anything until France. Something has to inspire my hope and joy again. If I can make it, hopefully life will become less of a torturous experience and more a blessing, or at least a challenge I feel equipped to face.

I Mind

I'm growing horribly tired of either feeling too much or feeling nothing at all. It seems there is no comfortable medium, no bliss of relative contentment - only the agony or short-lived thrill of an extreme. The rapid and intense oscillations of temperament are persuading me to a point of exhaustion. 

Feeling nothing is unpleasant. It might not be painful, but it surely renders a sickening discomfort to the newly barren expanse of existing as a ghost. At times it almost seems as though feeling absolutely nothing at all is worse than feeling hurt. The chronic emptiness, the crippling loneliness... they are like a nausea which will not go away... I am washed out at sea, indolently rocked by the ocean's currents which keep me afloat but leaves me lost. I can somehow miss the interjection of pain amidst the vast, grey void. At least it reminds us that we are alive.

The lows are, understandably, pitiful. Once sunken into the dark, unfathomable depths it is seemingly impossible to drag oneself from the mire. You can fall unexpectedly too; in a moment a minor incident can throw you from the level terrain of comparative emotional stability into the rocky chasm of absolute turmoil. Worse still, the higher you fly, the deeper you plummet. The potential for subsequent despair jades even happiness with a sense of danger and trepidation. 

I don't think I'd be here however without the sporadic highs. Disorientating though they can be when the mania and hyperactivity is so intense that I feel I might be losing myself in the exhilarating whirlwind of my thoughts and actions, to be floating above one's surroundings in a strange yet delightful haze of delirium can be an oasis amidst an otherwise torturous existence. Who wouldn't want to feel happy? Even if the manic sentiments are purely superficial, an armour of glorious ecstasy enveloping and, ephemerally, eclipsing the internal anguish, they still feel better. I could describe it like being in a curious daydream you don't want to wake up from. Logic tells you it is all a figment of the imagination and will soon swiftly leave your mind in a potentially abrupt and frightening manner, a flurry of newborn starlings leaving their nest; but this knowledge does not necessarily hinder you from (foolishly) allowing yourself to be swept up in the romance of the euphoric sentiments. It truly is a crying shame that the good times all have to come to an end. More often than not I find they meet a miserable fate.

It isn't just the volatility which is draining, but the nature of my sensitivity and relation to others in terms of what has been described as a 'fatal sense of empathy.' I simply cannot stop feeling for other people. Blotting paper for the suffering of others, I can't help but absorb their pain on top of my own. I know that it is only detrimental for me given that it reliably sends me into self-destruct mode, but upon hearing that there is someone struggling or witnessing their decline I become dangerously pre-occupied, even if the anxieties go unspoken. It literally kills me. I can cry myself to sleep over someone who, though I've never met, I'm aware is in poor health; or spend hours ruminating, worrying myself sick over those poor girls I left behind in that horrible place. What am I supposed to do to stop seeing and feeling all this suffering? There is no way to expunge my thoughts of worry, nor my breaking heart of its pains for them. There is so much hurt everywhere; I just can't not notice it. I can't stop it from affecting me, more deeply than I can begin to describe. It is utterly impossible to detach my mind or heart from it: I cannot forget, I cannot forget, I simply cannot forget. 

In essence it isn't just that I've been through too much; it's that I've seen others go through too much and it still haunts me day and night. I mind that there are people out there in misery who I am powerless to help, and I mind to a damaging degree. Of course it is difficult for anyone to move on, but the past seems inescapable for me, as does the continuation of suffering which pervades the present. There is little solace from the perpetual grief - I am sad to say - and I'm not sure how to go about finding any, unless in the near future there were to be some technological advancements toward brain transplants which as it is I may well be morally wary about. Perhaps there is no answer. No escape from my woes. Is it possible for one's life to embody an eternal grief process? 

If I cannot turn off my mind the best thing I can do I suppose is to enrich my life with joy as oppose to allowing myself to succumb to the darkness within. I am endeavouring to look forward instead of back but it is far from easy when it truly is a day-to-day battle. Maybe I need to accept that I will always be emotionally fragile as a result of what has happened, and particularly susceptible to the stresses suffered by others as well as myself; I might never be able to move on. The best thing I can do for now is to live, in spite of it all. I will; for those I love and care for if not for myself. I have good experiences ahead of me if I can make it and - typically, as a testament to my rapidly fluctuating mood - I am determined to. I am going explore the wonders of this world with those most precious to me. I am going to embrace new discoveries and take joy in the positive memories I do have deep down. If only there was a way to erase the anterior areas of the brain which have been wounded by trauma and torment... perhaps my mind and spirit would be sanctuaries rather than cemeteries. 

The Beast

It's difficult to contemplate myself as human at times. There's something quite otherworldly about suffering from a severe mental illness; particularly one with the power to transfigure the individual to such a grievous extent, physically as well as psychologically. How can I see myself as Naomi when I am not that joyful, precocious child who saw wonder and curiosity in everything, relishing life's small pleasures without question, able to live and love and laugh? It has been so long since I knew her, simply her, without this coexistent presence. Longer than I can remember.

It has been suggested to me before that my illness is so entrenched due to some companionship that has been cultivated over its course. There is little capacity for companionship however between two entities so intertwined that they are indistinguishable from one another: for trying to discern the two independently would be as complex as the process of separating salt from sand. Neither one is the fundament, nor the complement; they simply are together, their amalgamation forming one. 

Thus I cannot define my illness as a friend, because I do not regard it as a separate presence. Even writing or talking about 'it' seems unnatural to me, though something I endeavour to employ in the light of objectifying my situation to those who may not otherwise be able to comprehend it.

If I was to address my condition as anything (with great difficulty) it would be as a seducer: whispering sweet nothings in my ear, persuading me toward self-destructive fulfilment with promises of contentment and pleasure and security. After an extended period of intense attachment with anything, even an abusive lover, it can begin to feel as though one cannot be without the other; for each is a vital component of the whole which could not otherwise function. My illness may have inflicted the gravest hurts imaginable to me and those I love, but realisation of this does not sever the bonds so ineradicably fixed that they are beyond means of perception. I lay with this beast day and night, though no longer out of choice. He has taken over me and through this strange act of coition we have moulded into one flesh. In manipulating me into this new creature he has ruthlessly robbed me of who i used to be.  

Freud believed that behind every act of pleasure lies a conflict with a subconscious drive toward self-destruction. Perhaps it would be deemed morbid to reflect on a secret desire within us all to destroy ourselves; but is this not the crux of many mental afflictions who render the sufferer with a debilitating disability - an inability to cope with life? Certainly, if i was to acknowledge a separate side of myself, its ultimate intention would be death. I can acknowledge that: it is out to kill me. It may sing sweetly of short-lived relief from the turbulence and frustrations of ordinary complications which obsession eclipses through the nature of its consumption - yet I know that evasion from life's difficulties can only be secured absolutely in the form of nothingness. That is what it wants from me: total annihilation. That is what I want from myself, or so it feels when I allow myself the ease of being blind to a separate presence of the possessor. The struggle comes with finding the life force beneath it all. When in the throes of despair it is totally extinguished by the desperation to escape life completely. Everything has become so complex - too complex - for me to discern where my true ambitions lie, and where they are distorted by some ulterior motive. Of course there are times, predominantly during manic episodes, when I can accept, or even embrace the wonder of life: but beneath the thrilling hysteria of it all I am never without this subliminal force resenting and fighting back at every will to live. 

I have so much to look forward to, but it's impossible at times to see ahead past the next hour when every minute feels a torturous battle I would rather not fight. There are opportunities coming up which I desperately want to enjoy but I fear them when the power of the beast is growing stronger by the day. I am desperate to be positive but I feel alone. I'm not sure that anyone can fully comprehend how much of a struggle everything is. My morning routine is a predictable one: I drag myself out of bed and put on my mask, which few have the misfortune of seeing fall. There are times during which my facade of coping is obliterated by the intensity of rage or fear or misery which can overwhelm me in an instant; but in most situations it fools everyone surprisingly well considering that I had always thought my skills as an actress decidedly poor. Perhaps it's a positive practice, to put on a social front, in the hope that one day it would not be a no longer be a glamorised misrepresentation of the internal. Maybe one day pretending will turn into believing. I don't want to live like this though - it's exhausting, to keep this beast caged behind bars whilst I attempt to function like any other person, going about day-to-day activities when behind the stage curtains there is a monstrous creature raging. I want to be without it, desperately, but I no longer know how to be rid of something which is not part of me; it is me.

I'm not here for myself in the slightest: I am here for everyone else. I would say that one day I hope that I can truly live for myself as oppose to for those I love, but I have such difficulty in accepting myself that I'm not sure how I could ever do such a thing. I hate myself, completely and utterly. How could I not want to hate myself? Hate fuels hate, therefore I hate myself for hating myself, to such an extent that I hate myself even more. 'Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.' It's one thing to change an action, but to change a prejudice, a mindset, is a completely different matter. I'm not sure how to undo the hate, when it has literally endured for nearly as long as my earliest memories - I'm not quite sure how to go about this curious activity of 'loving' myself.

If, for now, it takes coexistence with this demon, who trips me each time I look in the mirror, haunts me in my sleep, screams at me each moment that I am awake, then that is what I can only attempt to survive. I don't visualise recovery as ever possible for myself, that is a certainty, unfortunately. However, even as I write a fresh determination to achieve what I want to in spite of it is growing. I am going to Paris with my best friend in July. I am going to enjoy my summer with friends and family. I am going to get through my A levels and go to university. I must hold onto these things with any strength I have left. It's such a shame that positivity and hope is a comparatively transient creature, a butterfly at risk of being crushed in the beak of the cruel raven who tears through the sky without grace of warning. 

Dust in the Wind

I've been thinking a lot lately. Whether this is a good thing or not is entirely circumstantial - reflection can have its uses in times of difficulty; though in excess, particularly when one has a tendency to slip into a dangerous spiral of introversion and over-analysis it can be an ultimately self-destructive process. The trouble is that the thoughts won't actually stop. Isolation is an unpleasant by-product but also a catalyst in the vicious circle that thinking can become. Perhaps it would be better to be caught up in the rat-race, busying myself with the trivialities which others regard as priorities without time to think or feel. Tragically I've already dipped below the surface. It's an effort not to sink any lower when there doesn't seem anything substantial to hold onto to prevent me from drowning altogether.

There are good things in my life at the moment it has to be said, but then again in my experience 'good' equates to feelings of intense insecurity. I refuse to allow myself to decline into some self-indulgent, misery-ridden prose as in my previous entry but I cannot deny my absolute pessimism. Natural is it not, for one to fear subsequent tragedy after every triumph when thus far it consistently appears to be the formula of events? I am incapable of accepting anything good-natured given the inevitability of subsequent disappointment. 

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet...

...Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not. 

So goes Heaney's poem 'Blackberry Picking', a verse singing of bittersweet childhood memories. Nature dictates that everything born must ultimately die - are you telling me that this evolutionary practice should not be perceived as a reason for distress? It's not even physical death itself that bothers me. It's the in-between: the mortality of pleasure versus the permanence of suffering; the transience of hope versus the prevalence of fear; the short-lived nature of joy versus the misery which faithfully follows. Believe me, I resent myself immensely for being able to think in such a way, for in light of my inclination to take everything to the extreme, if I can I must; if I cannot I will not at all. In essence therefore, my default mentality is one that sees too much, knows too much - beholder of the dire and excruciatingly profound I cannot stop contemplating all this pain. Sometimes it gets to the point that I absorb so much grief that there is physically no vacancy for consideration of positivity in the heavy-laden vessel within my skull, nor in that throbbing organ burdened with such severity at times its wrecked convulsions may shake the surrounding cathedral of bone. It takes great skill to forget or at least ignore; I am yet to accomplish it. 

Time, experience and admittedly the wisdom of my highly quotable mother tell me that repeating the same actions will only produce the same results, and it would be foolish to consider otherwise. Therefore, I know it, I truly do: I need to change my thinking. How does one go about such an uncomfortable project? How can I let go of what has been and gone? How can I detach myself from the anguish of the present? And how can I overcome such an intense apprehension of the future?

I hate the things that have happened to me and those I love. I've been hurt, and gravely hurt by misfortune and abuse - yet I take the anger and sorrow unto myself as oppose to my oppressors, or the unkind forces responsible. The horror of the traumas I have suffered can come in unexpected seismic waves inducing nausea and panic; though, forgiving any impression of self-pity I may have inadvertently just made, it has to be said that it's the suffering of others that has caused greater devastation. It truly sickens me to think of the indescribable distress which I have witnessed and which may well continue to persist indefinitely. Violation.

I neither understand the justice of the present, for the reasons most recently expressed. It seems never-ending. The present is, quite plainly, a product of what has been - so if unalterable inflictions have occurred in the past, then their contemporary embodiment is unlikely to be anything different. Where is the peripetia? At which point do circumstances change and joy suddenly and miraculously arise? What transitional landmark is there to indicate the difference between our histories and the immediate and do we have any power whatsoever in-between to secure a comfortable reality? The enigma of it all is utterly terrifying to me, in particular the sense that we are so lost and helpless within it all.

If I do not feel in control of creating the present there is no way I could ever deserve a feeling of security toward the future. In advance none need be disturbed if this narrative were to take on a rather morbid tone - my musings are burrowing deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of my mind and readers are under no obligation to pursue the winding course of this rapidly unravelling thread. Simply, I cannot foresee a distant future for myself sometimes. There has been so much that has already happened, and I can't quite comprehend what's next, where I go from here. I've done too much too young, more than most would experience in their lifetime - surely this roller-coaster of trauma and pain, (but also episodes of extraordinary joy to a point of delirium) cannot continue for years and years to come? No human on earth could endure it. The most logical conclusion to be drawn from this therefore would be that an end would be imminent. Unless the intense cluster of drama settles to a tolerable plateau and I am somehow able to move on from the past and simply live on. This only confounds my terror of what is to come, for I simply cannot imagine how 'living' in the context of everything that has happened is a possibility. I'm not sure I'd want it to be. I don't want to live with what has happened. It's too much to bear. Perhaps that is why I struggle to live at all. 

As per usual (ie: always) I have taken this far, far too far. This is why I scare myself. I don't feel the same as everyone else.  Superciliousness is the last of my intentions as I attempt to explain the inexplicable so forgive any inadvertent suggestion of such; but I feel like I know and feel too much to function like any other person. Survival doesn't seem compatible with this 'other' psychological dimension I seem to be cursed with - and I do hope that I have adequately portrayed the message that this curious intellectualism or agonizingly-analytical mindset (or whatever term to use to describe my thought processes) is rarely a blessing from the perspective of the individual experiencing it. None of this will make any sense, I am perfectly aware of it, because there is no doubt that my audience will not be companions in this dimension... But it's as though my otherworldly sentiments are holding me back from ever, ever getting better. 

It's high time to obliterate this level of consciousness with copious quantities of nicotine. I have over-thought and I'll continue to over-think unless I accept the reality that I have the mind that I do and unless brain transplants for the psychologically unstable become a regular component of clinical practice anytime soon - an opportunity that, though I would love to accept given the torment I am under reminds me a bit too much of the mental 'conditioning' through torture used in Burgess' 'A Clockwork Orange' and therefore would have numerous moral qualms toward - there is little I can do about my situation. Of course it's a shame that it's only socially-acceptable substance use which will ground me, but nothing else can lower the volume on my brain's incessant introspections as plum-flavoured tobacco and blackberry rizlas.