Microscope

What is this anyway? This blog? No one knows about it. No one knows who I am. So what's the point? I don't know. I really don't know. That's okay, I guess.

I had my counseling appointment today, and I am humiliated. I'm not regretting telling him about my suicidal thoughts, because I really do believe that there is no point in counseling if I'm not being honest, but it still sucks. I feel like I'm under a microscope. My every move, my every thought, every pill that I have, every word that I say, every word that I don't say, absolutely everything, is being analyzed and picked apart. It's like I'm a new virus, being scanned, questioned, analyzed... but you see, there is no cure. It's all just exploratory research. I'm afraid that it's chronic.

Quicksand

It's not really that I want to commit suicide. I don't. It's irrational, but I am afraid of death. I'm not quite sure why. I think it's just the possibility of things getting better. Anyway... at the same time as the fear of death plagues me, I don't want to be alive anymore. I wish I was never born. That would make everything so easy. Obviously. If I could go back in to time and make sure that I was never born, it would be the best possible scenario. No one would have a chance of missing me, because they never knew me. But since that can't happen, I find myself hoping that something happens to me. I daydream of "tripping" into the street as a car passes, I daydream of someone shooting me, I daydream of "falling" off of a cliff, I daydream of "accidental" overdose... A murder, a car accident, a horrible disease that takes me quickly, a heart attack...anything but suicide. And anything but living. Living is hard. And it's true, the things that are most valuable are hard to sustain. But I have to wonder...in the end, is it really worth it? I'm going to die no matter what I do. No matter if I get through it, no matter how hard I try...I'm going to die.

So I feel stuck. Very stuck. Much like quicksand: every step I try to take only draws me closer to my impending death. Any small movement and I sink deeper into the trap. I call out for help, but I have wandered so far off the path that I am so alone. No one hears me. No one sees me. I am wasting my breath. As the quicksand begins to swallow my chest, everything feels so tight. I can't breathe. I'm panicking. I need out. The only way out is to either succumb to the quicksand or fight through the sediment. If I were to fight, it would be so hard. When I got out of it, if I got out of it, I would be so exhausted. I would wonder if it was worth it. Succumbing would be much easier.

Nothingness

The melody of life within my body has ceased to play its beat. My metronome heart beats with no song.

My desperate plea to feel better fades to silence as the walls inside of me shatter. I'm dying. The color has been stolen away from me. I'm looking through a thick fog that threatens everything I've ever known. Everything is colorless. I'm left with black and white rays that soon dim to gray and evaporate into nothingness. Everything is colorless.

And I'm no longer begging for warmth, for I feel nothing. It's like that moment during hypothermia where the victim finally feels warm and that's where they really start to worry, because their lips are blue and their breath is jagged and their heart is slow, but they feel quite the opposite.

Fear, laughter, anger, joy, pain...they have all been deceived, for I am a vacant being. I hear nothing, I see nothing, I feel nothing...All I can do is draw the conclusion that there is no hope.

Lord, place me on hands and knees. I want to be begging "please, ease the nothingness in my soul". I want to desire to be.

Someone

The silence screams my name as I ignite the flame and wearily take the blame. It stole my song at the break of dawn, egging me on to keep doing it wrong. I cut hate into my arm to numb my heart of any harm. It sets off an alarm to never feel, oh how I want to feel, how I want to be real. Every painful breath I mirror is a step closer to the death I fear. I walk it alone, meandering unknown, while not a single eye catches my smile a lie. I'm good at faking it, good at making it day by day with pretending I'm okay. I hate it, but I take it. I need to speak, I'm afraid to seek. They'll give up on me, they'll step on me, they'll tell me I'm insane, something's wrong with my brain. Someone save me. Please, someone save me.

I am afraid.

I am afraid. I am afraid. I am afraid. I am afraid.

I am afraid of my thoughts. When I am with people, my thoughts drift to how they would react if I died, what they would say, if they would cry, if they would be shocked... When I am alone, I dream of death. I desire it. I wonder why I would possibly go through all this pain, deal with being a childhood sexual abuse victim, deal with whatever disorder I might have...why would I do all this, just to die someday anyway? For my family? They will die someday, too. For future generations? Well, I don't want kids, and I don't plan on doing anything that will make me go down in history, so that doesn't matter. And anyway, they will die too. I will be forgotten and long dead someday, no matter when and how I die. Thoughts like these, though completely rational, scare me.

I am afraid of dying. It sounds weird, knowing that I am suicidal. But it's true. I believe in God, but would God accept me in to heaven if I kill myself? I don't know. I hope so. I am also afraid of dying because of possibility. What if things get better for me? What if this frame of mind I am in changes? What if?

I am afraid that if I talk about my desire for death, I will be completely outed. What will happen? Will I be put in a hospital? Will I have to be watched all the time? Will my parents have to know? I don't want to talk to them. I won't talk to them. I would rather die.

I am afraid that if I talk to my counselor about my desire for death, I will be given up on. It's happened before. Well, sort of. I don't remember exactly what happened or what I said, but he told me that he couldn't help me anymore. I didn't say that I was suicidal. I would never say something like that. I was a minor, so they would have to tell my parents. I'm not stupid. But he told me that he couldn't help me anymore. And I have to ask myself, was I too much? Was I a lost cause?

Am I a lost cause?

Therapists and counselors and doctors, oh my!

I've had my share of therapists. And let me tell you, it's not easy to find a good one. I guess I can't really say that they were bad therapists. I really don't know. We just didn't connect. I felt like I couldn't be open with them. Ironic, huh? But fear not, there are good ones! I've had two (though one was a high school counselor).

The first therapist I saw was one that I was basically forced to see. I guess I had the option of saying no, but a little part of me wanted help. Why did I go? Well, I started cutting in 9th grade. By 10th grade, it was pretty bad and someone from church (who happened to be a police detective) noticed. He didn't say anything at the time, but he came to my high school the next day with a therapist to talk to me about depression and cutting and suicidal tendencies. The detective (who I will call Andy) called my dad and asked him to get me an appointment with Marty. Within the next week, I walked into the awkwardly quiet office. Marty called me in to her office and completed intake. She (yeah, I was surprised when Marty was a woman as well) immediately diagnosed me with depression and wrote a prescription for Prozac. I think I took Pozac for about two weeks, but decided that I didn't want to take medication, so I stopped. Going to Marty's was always awkward and I felt pressured to spill my guts, but I didn't want that. I wanted to go slow. After all, I've been silent for so long. And then the breaking point happened with her. When I went home from school one day, my dad had a very concerned look on his face and asked me, "Did you say that you were going to kill yourself?" Though I had definitely thought it, I had never spoken it to anyone. "Um, no. Why?" He sighed, "Marty called me and that's what she told me. Apparently someone tipped your high school counselor, who called Marty, who called me." I was so pissed. Why in God's good name would she call my dad!? Sure, if she had true reason to, it would only make sense. But she didn't even ask me! She didn't bother to run it by me first. Neither did my high school counselor. Idiots. So I never went back to Marty, and I was so happy about it.

It took me quite awhile to try counseling again. But I eventually tried again. It was a christian lady, and her name was Jackie. I felt really weird talking to her. People thought that I had this really awesome deep relationship with God, but I didn't. I was really active in my church, but I rarely spent time with God. So I made stuff up. I felt like I had to say hopeful things about God and church. And she prayed for me at the end of the session. It was just a really awkward experience. So I didn't go back. It wasn't that she was a bad therapist, I just couldn't do it. That one only lasted one session.

The next one has a bit of a story to it. I stopped going to biology class in the middle of the 3rd quarter in 10th grade. I didn't mind the subject much, but I hated my teacher. I have never hated any teacher like I hated her. It was 2008 when I went to Belarus on a mission trip (which was wonderful, btw). I had talked to Ms. C before I went. I told her I would be missing a week of school, and said she was okay with it. She warned me about missing the huge biology field trip that was the day after I got back from Belarus, and I told her I would try to make it. When we got back in to town, I was exhausted. I was jet lagged and so tired. So I didn't go. There was a make-up assignment for the field trip. Yeah, bad idea. When I completed the make-up assignment, she gave me an F with a note, "I told you that it couldn't be hand-written". I was so pissed. First of all, she didn't tell me that. Second, I didn't have a computer. Third, I had spent a lot of time working on that project. So I called my dad in tears, and he complained to her about it and somehow it got fixed. Following the next couple of weeks, she picked on me a lot. She would say things like "Some students don't like to listen to directions and think they can get away with it" and would look directly at me. When I tried to talk to her about anything at all, she would talk to me like I was a child. She told me I had issues standing up for myself. Yeah, no joke. So I stopped going to that class. Eventually, it caught up with me. I was called down to the vice principal's office (Mr. M) and he gave me two weeks of detention and a very stern warning. He also told me that it was impossible to switch out of the class because it was the middle of the quarter. I left his office and burst into tears (which was very embarrassing) and called my dad, who called Mr. M to once again stand up for me. That same day, I was called back to Mr. M's office (I was actually in Ms. C's class when I got called back down), who saw my red eyes. He sighed, telling me he didn't know what to do. Just as we were talking, Mr. B, the drug and alcohol counselor for the school at the time, was walking by (which, btw, is not the counselor that called Marty). I had never met him before. I never had trouble with drugs or alcohol. Mr. M called him in and asked him if he could help me. So Mr. B and I walked to his office. He explained to me that he doesn't usually deal with student schedules, but that he was willing to do it this time. I told him all about what Ms. C was doing, and he agreed that I needed to get out of the situation. He walked down to her classroom and got my backpack out and brought it to me so that I didn't have to go in. He presented me with a paper that needed to get permission from both Ms. C and Mr. A (who was the other biology teacher) to switch into Mr. A's class. I went to Mr. A's class, who didn't give me permission as a professional favor to Ms. C. Apparently I was a cry baby at that time, cause I burst into tears again. I went back to Mr. B, who walked down to Mr. A's classroom and demanded the permission slip to be signed. The next day, I was attending Mr. A's biology class. And I started seeing Mr. B about once a week. He didn't make me speak. He made me feel safe and comfortable. Sometimes I would go into his office and just sit there. Somehow, he knew when I just needed a break. He helped me stop cutting for awhile, he helped me realize that I needed to leave the church that I was in, he was an advocate for both personal and academic problems, and he was someone that I felt like I didn't have to be silent with. I saw him for the rest of 10th grade, and all of 11th grade. In 12th grade, he transferred to a different school and I didn't see him again.

Once again, it took me awhile to go back to a counselor. It was the very end of 12th grade that I saw Debbie. The first time I saw her, it was great. I felt like she understood and she made me feel comfortable. Over the next few weeks, I started to feel forced to talk. I started making up stories because she didn't like the answer "I don't know". You know, sometimes my answer to a question is honestly, "I don't know". Apparently that wasn't okay with her. So I made things up and talked about things that I didn't care about or even really identify with. It wasn't helping me at all, so one day, I just stopped going.

Fast forward almost two years. I took a year off of school and applied to college the next fall. I thought I was doing pretty well. I loved college. I loved my classes. But yeah, that didn't last long. I went to the counseling center for the first time only about a month after school started. The lady there told me that there was a long wait list and that I couldn't get in to individual counseling. Oh well, at least I tried. It wasn't until the end of spring quarter that things got really bad. I was cutting a lot and suicidal thoughts were coming more and more often. I went to the medical center at school this time. The doctor prescribed me Sertraline at first. I ended up being allergic to that, so we switched to Bupropion. The doctor also marched me over to the counseling center and made a "crisis" appointment for me. I saw the same lady I had seen fall quarter. Once again, she told me that there was a very long wait list. I felt bad. All these other people needed help, why I do I think I need it more? So I just dropped it.

But less than a week later, I got a call that there was an opening for an individual counselor every other week. I took it. I began seeing Dr. Armstrong. The first appointment was a little awkward. I have trouble looking people in the eye, so I started at a magnet on his desk while I did little to no talking. But he took it as it came. I told him about some of my past counseling experiences, and he told me if an answer is honestly "I don't know" then that's what it is and that's okay. That honestly blew me away. I have always been told that "I don't know" is an unacceptable answer. So to hear differently was just crazy to me. I feel comfortable talk to him, though I haven't completely opened up. I think that takes awhile for me. But immediately, I felt like it was okay to feel how I was feeling. Weird.

So if you're wondering what my point is... It's this: if you have a hard time finding a therapist that you like, you're not the only one. It took me quite awhile. And I'm pretty sure I can't see Dr. Armstrong after this quarter anyway, so my search will continue as well. But don't lose hope. There are good ones. You will find one.

She Said Beautiful

Recently, I was a contestant at an art battle for an event at my university. The event was to raise funds for an organization that raises awareness and provides resources to sexual assault/rape victims. I was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. The painting is my story. I won the art battle, and this poem is my response.

She said beautiful
But that's not the intent
He said I vote six
But that's not what I meant
She said I wish it were different
Well so do I
He said congratulations
But I'd rather die
You see, that's me
My pain, my silence, my words
To me, congratulations only hurts
I am finally acknowledged here
My pain is displayed on canvas
A story of abuse, year after year
Isn't this what I wanted?
Years of closet-worthy paint
Finally recognized as more
This should be my gain
It should be an exciting open door
But it's not
Instead, I stare at this bottle in my hand
And it's filled with a vivid promise
Of no more hurt, only a dark plan
It's filled with endings, full of brief questioning
And I wish I had no obligation
I wish I could leave today
End the constant disintegration
Stop pretending that I'm okay
But I will wait it out, I will wait
I will watch my pain be auctioned off
I will watch a price be put on my words
And I wish it were true, I wish it was gone
But it's not and I'm not gone
So I will stay here, with perennial silence
Pondering this bottle of a vivid end