Survival skills

Hello.

I've been screaming inside of my own head for the last two months. It has been long and it has been hard and I still don't feel back to base level okay. I'm getting there, but it has been very hard to get to this point and it mostly feels like I've had to wait out the cycle of my brain because fighting it is so difficult and the effort feels wasted.

I usually post a lot of life snippets on my instagram story but the last two months are pretty bare compared to usual. I've deleted all the posts where I've spoken about how I'm feeling. I wiped my whole feed. I feel like this time I isolated myself more than I have for a long time. I convinced myself my closest friends do not love me and did not want to be my friends. I convinced myself June doesn't love me and does not want to be with me, and I cried about it daily because I was so encased in this fear of being abandoned. I felt so alone, and I was. I felt lost. I am chipping away at this fear. It's something that never really disappears but it has never hit me this hard and in this way.

I feel so grateful to June for looking after me and taking me to the doctors and making sure I’ve been eating and make me a lot of hot chocolates. I’ve needed so much constant reassurance that I feel like it’s been annoying. I’ve asked them to do things I’ve hated to ask. They take care of me all the time.

I spent my time over the last weeks crying and crying and crying and sleeping and a lot of convincing myself that I'm unworthy of love and being alive. I had to take two weeks off work because I felt like I was drowning. Being back at work is mostly okay, but it is hard to be there all day when I have nothing to distract myself with. Things have been too quiet and I am getting more frustrated than usual and the grind of things, and of having to be switched on and proactive and the person you go to when you need something. I don't feel like I am or should be that person right now. I'm so thankful for my job and for the people I work with, who have been nothing but supportive to me throughout the last few weeks, but it is such a chore to show up.

I've never had to cry to my boss before about everything being too heavy for me and I've never had to take time out like this. I've taken a day at a time before. A few extra days during a painful family event, but I've never dared take two weeks off for myself, to focus on just being alive. I needed it so bad and I'm so grateful to myself for asking for it when I did, and following through. It was so fucking hard. I didn't feel ready to come back but I had to. I don't feel ready to be here but I am.

I am so grateful to my boss, who I was once so afraid to work for, and who I thought would ruin my perfect world in my perfect job with perfect people that I loved. He has been so kind and understanding of me in regards to my identity and my mental illness. I've spoken to previous bosses about this stuff, but they have never taken the time to understand and never asked the questions that he has asked to make sure he was doing what he could to make work an okay place for me to be. He told me to take the time when I needed it, and I needed to be told that it was fine to go right away. I needed to be told that I did not have to schedule my recovery around things at work and that I should above all focus on me because I am more important than the job. He reminded me that work would continue when I was not around, and that they'd all be glad when I was back, and hopefully feeling more okay.

I have stripped myself back to the very basics of reminding myself it is okay for me to be alive, to be sad, to feel that sadness, and to express that sadness. I am trying so hard to re-instil in myself that my being sad is not a burden on my loved ones, asking for help does not make me a burden, needing comfort does not make me a burden. It is not a betrayal to be sad or broken or hurt and I am allowed to rely on my loved ones, and they will not hate me for it. I am finding it so fucking hard to believe any of that at all, but I have to keep sending that signal into my brain until it sticks.

I'm not really okay, but I also don't feel like I'm on the cusp of death anymore. I feel drained and exhausted but I'm safe and I'm getting help and I have support. A dear friend helped me get in to see their psychologist and I am so thankful I want to cry when I think of it. The psych is really kind and has been so validating in the two sessions we've had so far. We have a lot of work to do and I feel almost embarrassed speaking to her about all the things that have happened in my life and to me. I’ve always felt this great, pressing shame about it all. 

Today has been a bit hard, I haven't felt okay and I have struggled to keep on track at work. I should not be writing this at my work desk, but I am because I feel like I'm about to burst. I spoke about a lot of trauma yesterday with my psych and it is weighing on me today. I have never gone into great depth with a psych about these things before and I somehow managed to keep it together in her office, but I don't know how to keep it together now that it's all fresh in my head. There are a lot of things that I have buried inside of myself and that I don't speak about. I have to remind myself that not every day is this hard and that I have survived everything up until this point. I can survive again, every day.

xx