Loss

Blogs have been the only place I've been able to be fully truthful about what's happened in my life, but apparently some people in my family who don't believe what's happened have think I'm delirious and a lier. I've lost one of only two people who I thought actually understood what I'd gone through and it turns out the whole time they think I've been making things up. So I guess now I don't have anywhere at all to talk about my problems. Back to bottling everything up and my mental health getting worse I guess.

Vanity

Trigger warning: self-harm mention

Sat in a really long six hour rehearsal for an upcoming performance, and we just had our photos taken for the programme. The photos of me on the camera were so unbelievably unattractive that I just burst out crying. I've been relatively comfortable with my body and looks for a while, and today has just brought all of that crashing down. It's made me really want to self-harm again to punish myself for being so utterly hideous. I want to slash and physically cut parts of my body off. What the actual fuck is wrong with me? This is not a normal reaction, especially when I've felt so fine about my body for so long. I can't believe that something so small can give me such an intense reaction. I'm meant to be all body-positive and stuff, but when it's me that can all go out of the window in a matter of seconds. I feel like such a fraud.

Coming Out. And Out. And Out.

Constantly coming out is hard. At least 2 years (possibly 3) since I was forced to come out as bi and poly to parents, they still refuse to acknowledge (let alone accept) my relationships. They still pointedly refer to partners as 'your FRIEND'. Every time they purposefully do this, I have to firmly "remind" them that we're partners. They never ask after them. When meeting them they barely even acknowledge them, which really hurts me, and doesn't exactly make partners feel great either.

If someone you love is queer or poly, it's not your place to agree or disagree with their relationship. They're an adult and have a right to love whoever they want. You either accept them with all your heart, or you don't. If you don't, you're choosing to close your heart to the joy their partner(s) brings to their life because they offend your sensibilities or make you uncomfortable. You're telling them that your comfort is more important than their happiness.

As long as you think the problem is with their orientation/relationship and they think the problem is you not accepting them, you'll be driving a wedge between you. You're making your love conditional on them being a different person. Whether or not their relationship/orientation is fixed forever or changes, the horrible feeling that your love is conditional could outlive all of it.

My partners' commitment to me is not contingent on my loving others less than them. It's a level of love and commitment I could never get in a monogamous relationship. This is fundamental, and makes me feel safe, secure, loved, and cherished.

Slipping

The last few days I've felt quite emotionally fragile - weepy and low, and not feeling able to cope with much. I've wanted to cry for no discernible reason, On Saturday I had to leave my course after lunch - if I'd stayed any longer I would've just broken down in tears. I knew that leaving early would mean being paired with someone different for my case study - someone I don't get on with - but I just wasn't able to continue.

I've felt a lot more apathetic and lethargic. On Friday I did the absolute minimum work for my course that I could do, and since then, despite having lots of things to do, I've just not cared enough about anything to get them done. I've ignored messages from friends for no good reason, I just have no desire to do anything.

I'm worried I'm slipping. I seem to have be climbing a gradual but steady incline for a while, and now it feels like I'm starting to slip back down the track. I'm worried that I'll gain momentum and end up hurtling right back down to the base of the slope. I'm worried I won't be able to finish my course, that this'll be another thing in a long line of tasks I haven't been able to complete. Just another thing in a long list of failures. I'm worried that I'm not really even ill anymore, that I'm just a lazy person who can't be bothered to do anything. Maybe I've become so used to not being able to do things, to feeling and acting depressed, that it's just become the way I operate. It's just become second nature and I don't even bother trying.

Dreams and Reality

Trigger warning: abuse, assault, rape


For some time now, I've been having incredibly disturbing dreams, which seem to mix together the violence and abuse I suffered at home with the rape I endured at uni. They're generally about my parents abusing and raping me. In all of them I'm trying to get out of that situation, but either not being strong enough and just being laughed at or overpowered, or being unable to because doing so would put my little sisters in harm's way. Sometimes it's trying to convince one parent about what the other is doing to me, and being dismissed and not believed, or simply ignored because they don't care. These dreams are so real and vivid that they stay with me for a long time, and the feeling stays with me at least all day, often longer. The more they happen, the more real they feel, and I wake up feeling hugely traumatised and distressed. I'm finding it very hard to put these out of my mind at the moment, which often makes me feel really overwhelmed and tearful.

I'm not entirely sure how to deal with this right now. I'll bring it up next time I have my EMDR appointment and see what my psychologist says, but until then, I guess I'll just have to live with it and try to distract myself as much as possible.

Musings on the past

A couple of weeks ago, I was feeling a little low, and my brain decided that the best things to do in that state was to look through photos of Dorian, which I knew would make me sad, and to read back through messages between me and A. I'm really good at doing self-destructive things like that when feeling a bit low. I'll know that it's not a good idea, that it'll make me feel bad, and yet some part of my brain wants me to feel that. It's like I have to be feeling a certain level of bad before it's valid. Before it's official. Feeling really bad is something I'm used to, something I understand. Feeling just a little bit low is something I don't quite know how to handle. At least I know what to do when I'm in a really low place. It feels almost comforting, because it's a state I know and understand so well.

Since then, I've been dreaming about A a lot, and because I have very vivid, emotional dreams, the mood from them tends to stay with me all day. I'm trying to piece together why I still have such strong thoughts and feelings about him in my dreams, and I think the main reason is how things were left. Firstly, we'd agreed to try to stay in contact and remain in each others' lives, and yet it was always left to me to make any sort of move to try to arrange things, which made me feel less important to him than he was to me. Then there was the very sporadic replies to messages - after cancelling a meet up we'd arranged and agreeing to arrange an alternate date, I didn't hear anything for months, and when I asked if things were ok, I was still ignored. Then there were times when I didn't feel able to see him at social gatherings, so I only went when he wasn't going to be there. He occasionally said he was going to something, and then didn't go, without telling me, so I felt I'd missed out on seeing my friends for nothing. He became suddenly distant and uncommunicative, and a little uncaring, which was very hard to accept. The last time we communicated, he asked me how things were going. I told him, went in to detail about how things were in my life, and asked him how things were with his. That was over a year ago, and he's never responded. I just feel like it's all been left hanging, and I haven't had any closure. I assume at this point that I'm not going to get any, but it's still hard.

Then there's the fact that he got together with B - his partner before me - after we broke up. When A and I started seeing each other, B was very jealous and upset, and acted like I was taking him away from her. She seemed to act like she had ownership over him, like she had a claim and I was trying to split them up, despite the fact that their relationship had been over for a while. I often felt like she resented the fact that we were together, and I didn't feel comfortable in her presence. I don't mind the fact that he's seeing someone else (I am, so it'd be a bit hypocritical if I did), but when we were together he told me so often about the damage that B had done to him, about how she'd been the cause of his depression, and how he could never be in a relationship with her again. Even his mother was worried at the prospect of them living together at one point, because she said that B wasn't good for A. Despite that, he often spoke fondly of her, and I occasionally felt that I didn't measure up to her. The fact that he did get back together with her has just added to the feeling that I was never 'good enough', and I still want to prove to him that I can be. I hate that I still care. I hate the fact that he obviously wants nothing more to do with me and is probably much happier with B than he was with me.

I think the last thing is his family. With A, I felt like I finally had a family who loved and accepted me for who I was. I didn't have to pretend. His mother would talk with me like an adult, and listened to and respected my thoughts and opinions on things. She looked after me as she would her own child, and made me feel one of the family so completely. I spent a lot of time at their family home, and truly felt I had somewhere I belonged. Of course I have wonderful friends and partners now, but I feel like as well as my relationship with A, I lost a family, and a sense of togetherness and belonging that made me feel happy, secure, and like I had a home. I miss that.

Also, a lot of the times I spent with A were amongst the happiest I'd had in years - he supported with me through my depression, which seemed to be getting better while I was with him, and I was able to have fun, and feel fulfilled and loved while I was with him. As soon as he ended things, my mental health took a very severe dip, and I did blame him for a while for that. I still am not sure if I'm back to where I was before we broke up in terms of mental health, but I know I am getting better, and I've finally had a diagnosis that makes sense to me, and found a mental health professional who seems to understand.

I know this post has been a bit of a downer and mulling over the past, but I feel like I needed to write it all down to get my thoughts straight on why this is still affecting me, and hopefully this may help to get some of these feelings out of my system. Despite all of the negatives here, I am doing a lot better than I have been, and I have wonderful friends and partners who make my life better just by being in it.

Antidepressant 'poop-out'

Over the last week or two, I started getting occasional withdrawal symptoms. I haven't stopped taking my antidepressants, but I thought maybe I'd accidentally missed a dose. To make sure I hadn't, I religiously noted down every day when I took my dose, and I definitely haven't missed any. The symptoms only lasted a couple of days, but then the effects of the antidepressants themselves started to wear off.

I've been gradually getting less motivated, barely moving from the sofa during the daytimes. I've also been exhausted most of the time - the smallest thing fatigues me, and I can't face doing things. If it weren't for the fact that it's production week for the show I'm in, I'd definitely have called in sick to rehearsals and stayed on the sofa doing nothing but watching TV. I've been getting more tearful, and feeling constantly like things are too much for me and like I can't cope.

At first I put all of these symptoms down to having had tonsillitis and being on antibiotics possibly interfering with the sertraline, until I realised that the withdrawal symptoms (brain shivers/zaps, worsening depression, etc) started before I went on the antibiotics.

I started googling, and discovered that this is a pretty common occurrence once someone's been on an antidepressant for a while - it just stops working. It's called antidepressant poop-out, or, less amusingly, antidepressant tachyphylaxis. I've made an appointment with my GP for tomorrow morning, and really hope they're able to change me to a new drug, because currently I've got lots of stuff to do, and I just don't care about getting any of it done. I know that they need doing and that I'll be more stressed if I don't do them, but I have absolutely no sense of urgency, or of them being important, and basically just don't care.