bus

write down the shadow that's hiding behind the urge.

In this moment I am slipping into a parallel world, the one of shadows which exists behind my mind. It's evening. I've been rehersing all afternoon; it didn't go too well and I feel respponsible because I haven't been pracrticing enough. I often feel urgey after rehersals because of the emotions generated, partciularly when I'm doing close work on style, which is what I'm doing at the moment. Also, I'm working on a lot of songs abut sleep and childhood. I'm in a bad place in my life- adrift and frightened. I find it hard to keep my personality in focus. I keep slipping into a different time and place- afraid of fragmentation. I feel frightened a lot of the time. I also feel like I've been upp against the wall too long and I don't know how to chnge anything.

I am scared shitless that I am losing my friends.
Lonely.
Alone.
Tired of having to make excuses for not being in a relationship and not having been for so long.
Ugly, uncomfortable.

1. how will this situation or feeling change if i hurt myself?

I'll feel whole and like an adult. I'll feel in charge again. I'll be part of the world. I'll be back in time. I wont lose more chunks of my life.

I will feel that I have been granted a clean slate for tomorrow. I need to do something to show that I know I have been bad and that I repent. I will feel that this time is over and a new one can begin. I will feel like I am not stuck waist deep in mud.

I will feel sad but alive.
I will feel.

2. what will hurting myself bring to the situation? what will it take away from the situation?

It will bring an action, a decision, a thiing I can do. There isn't a particular thing which is wrong which I can focus on. It will give me that. It will bring the bits of me back together. It will bring the illusion of solution.

It will take away my will to struggle. It will take away my capacity to see what is wrong, and so not seeing it I wont deal with it and I will just end up back here again. It will take away the broken half of my self and leave me with only the functioning top half, when what I want is to try and resolve the two- but that seems like a distant and very metaphorical goal at the moment.

3. how do i want to feel about this in the long run? is hurting myself likely to get me closer to or farther from feeling that way?

I want to feel that I have made good decisions about how to live my life. I want to feel that I have made those decisions because they were the right decisions, not because they are decisions I have made by running away from paiin and confusion. I want to feel in control. I want to feel like I have something to offer.

Hurting myself will get me faarther away from feeling like I am inhabiting, and therefore able to take responsability for, my life. In the long run, I will look back and think that I was in a daze, and that not being entirely of sane mind I might have decided things badly.
It will get me closer to feeling in control. It will get me further away from BEING in control.
It will give me the illusion of something to offer, wierdly. Doon't despise me for saying this. I feel like I have nothing to offer people. And so I have to find some other way to stay. Hurting myself will give me a 'gimmick' (I don't mean that's what it is, I am trying to say something of which I am deeply ashamed but this is how it FEELS even if it shouldn't). It gives me an illusion of personality. I don't really exist; I'm a nothingspace, a sort of nonentity. This will make people think that there is something in me. It will make me feel that other people can see me as real. It will make me feel that they are tied to me, that they aren't going to leave. I don't mean that they will know. But it will reassure me that I am a something, and so that other people can see me. It is the thing in my life. I feel that I'm so boring and silent and rubbish; hurtingg myself is the only tangible thing about me. If I can't have something good to offer Ii can at least have something bad.

4. if hurting myself seems like my best option right now, how long will the relief it brings last? what will i do then?

It will last for a night, maybe a day. Then I will begin slidding back into numbness and negativity until I am back here again.

5. what is something i could do now instead of hurting myself? how will it change the situation i'm in? how long will that change last, and what will i do then?

I can't do anything right now to change the situation. I could look for more jobs, but I suspect that would make me feel more worthless, so while iit would help the situation in the long term it would bring me closer to hurting myself right now. I can find a way of getting through to tomorrow and then when it is daylight I will feel more grownup and able to cope.

So right now I can carry on listening to the marriage of figaro, and read, and fiinish my bottle of wine in the hope that this will make me sleep quiccker than I can be mad.

6. how will i feel tomorrow if i hurt myself? how will i feel tomorrow if i do the other thing i came up with?

If I hurt myself then I will feel more energetic and able to deal with things tomorrow.
If I don't I will still feel turgid and lost in time, like there are no markers for remembering what I did.

This is how I will feel. I know iit is probably the opposite of what will be real but real isn''t so seductive right now.


7. what do i really want to do right now? how can i best honor the self-protective instinct that has me wanting to self-injure right now?

I really want to doo something kind for myself. I really want to do something which will make me feel like a real adult person in charge of my life. I want to feel that I am a growwn up able to take charge of my body. I really want to do soomething assertive, asserting my existence and marking my place.I want to do something that will break the drift into mindlessness and memory loss.
I don't know what will work. Everything I can think of- write a lot, scribble on the walls in marker, scream, run, smash stuff- will make me less numb but will make me worked up, making me more likely to hurt myself again. The trouble is, if I go one way I will be too spaced and I will hurt myself and not remember it, and I, me who is writing now, will feel that I wasn't wholly present at the time- I don't want to get to feeling that out of control. But if I go the other way then I will get manic and it will havve the same effect. I need to find some middle path- the one that represents wholness not fragmentation to one part or the other.
I don't know what to do.
Suggestions welcome although I know this is long and probably makes no sense. I am crap, really.
Maybe I could ring someone and talk, but I don't want to bother people.
I don't know how to honour what I feel in a way which I can control.
So drinking until i fall asleepseems like the only option right now. I'll hate myself for it tomorrow, but I'lll still be in one piece.

Sorry this is so long.

Thank you anyone who reads.
Tatty

I am scared shitless that I am losing my friends.
What is your evidence for this? Why do you feel that your friends are leaving you? Do you think this could actually be another paranoid episode?

Yes,probably. The trouble is I can't tell the difference between paranoia and real risk. I know that I am a hard and fraustrating person to deal with, and that I often give those closest to me reason to leave. I ought to be able to think that since they never have before they probably wont now. Essentially, it comes down to trust- I have to trust them not to leave and trust my judgement when it comes to whether my fears aare real or imagined. I don't really do either. Not trusting myself is okay- I'mnot very trustworthy- but I do have to learn to trust my friends.


Tired of having to make excuses for not being in a relationship and not having been for so long.
Why are you tired of making excuses? Is it because you are actually making those excuses to yourself and thus allowing yourself to be lonely and alone as a means of punishment and a way to perpertrate your own psychosis that no one wants you? Do you in fact want a relationship at all or do you feel you need to conform to social stereotyping to make it seem to others that you are recovering because in your mind the only way to be well is to conform?
I think it's a bit of all these things. Although I don't think I make the excuses to avoid aloneness- in a very real sense I am not alone. I have some extremely close friends. I can tolerate huge intimacy in friendship. What I can't deal with is anything which transgresses, or threatens to transgress, those boundaries. This is something which makes me very angry. I was screwed up by the thoughtless actions of others, and now I am struggling to right the mess. If what happened hadn't happened I think I would be a very social, very affectionate person. There is a large part of me which is all those things, and which is in conflict with the more damaged part. Although this conflict is painful it's probably one of my saving graces- it shows that there is social life in this old dog yet. I just have to find a way of letting that have free rein.

I get fed up of making excuses, because people keep asking me why I don't have a partner. I'm twenty three, not beautiful but not ugly, bright and sometimes quite funny. People keep asking me why I'm single. I say that it's because I am best this way. The truth is not that I want a partner- iit's that the situation is more complicated. Ergo when I'm feeling maudlin and angry and resentful towards people most of whom are dead already, I pick up this and magnify it. I resent not being able to be normal when I sense that there is a strong drive for functionality somewhere in me I can't reach yet.


But you are an adult Tatty, you are one of the most articulate and intelligent people I know. You have all the attributes of adultness but you refuse to see them in yourself. Why is that? Are you denying the adult in you because you don't want to participate in adult life?

*shrugs* I know I'm an adult. I just don't feel like one. I can't get the hang of paying bills on time and I'm afraid of the dark. I suspect that one never feels like an adult, and I should just get over it. But sometimes I feel less like an adult than other times, and it's usually a sign that I am losing my grip on reality and need to do something. Because I know that this feeling is such a strong indicator of impending unwellness, I'm pretty well attuned to it.

Does self-flagelation give you a clean slate in reality? or does it just give you a sense of repentance so that you can allow yourself a clean slate? What changes with repentance other than a feeling that you have atoned for your sin? Can you not accept that you are not perfect, I am not perfect, the world is not perfect and you can't change that but you can accept it.

I can accept that you are not perfect. I can't allow myself not to be. This is something I am aware of and am working to change. Self-flagellation doesn't give me a clean slate in any objective sense, but it does get rid of the feelings of guilt and shame which are so uncomfortable to live with and which I find hard to disspiate another way. You are right that I should try and remember that feeling bad doesn't mean I am bad, and feeling like I deserve punishment doesn't mean that this is what I do deserve. If I could seperate these things better I think I would find rationality easier.


Can you be alive and feel because you are?

No. Feeling nothing comes with the territory. I have found no satisfactory way to deal with the numbness which comes in lew of complete dissociation sometimes. Until I find a way to make this stop happening, I need to find a way of existing through it- again, realising that what I feel isn't necessarily what is. Just because I feel like I don't exist doesn't mean that I don't exist. It's very hard to remember that in the moment.


Can you find another way to complete yourself? Which parts are fragmented and need joining? In what way have they become fragmented?
I don't know. Again, this is something that I am working on but which primarily I need to learn to live with. Again- what I feel isn't necessarily real- if I feel I am fragmenting and this is the end it doesn't mean I am et cetera. It would help if I could look back on other times I've got through and know that nothing bad happened last time, but the trouble is I often have a very distorted, fragmented, or completely non-existent memory afterwards, so I can only reconstruct what I felt and did from what I've written, which often isn''t too... uh... clear .



Since self-harm fragments the pieces further would self-care bring them back together?
Yes, sorry. What I was trying to say is that ultimately what I am trying to achieve is wholeness, not just ignoring the more, um, troubling bits of myself. But the goal of wholeness seems pretty metaphorical when I'm in a state.


your decisions are the same decisions anyone else takes whether they be good or bad.

I'm not sure that this is true. When I look back on the decisions I've made in the last tree years, I have made them not because I thought they were good or right, or evenn because they were what I wanted, but because I was in such a mess I did the first thing that came into my head, or because it was the only way to make everyone shut the hell up. I don't want to be in that position anymore. I want to feel like I am making my own bed to lie in, not that I'm just some sort of psychotic bull in a china shop.

Running from pain and confusion is not always the worst decision, it doesn't make you a hero in your own life to try and fight the demons before you've been to the armoury!

Right. But I don't want my life to be based on running from pain which isn't actually there. And the decisions I'm making at the moment, while not irrevocable, are important. I know you can't be in control of everything, but I want to feel... I don't know. That I did things while in sound mind. I don't feel like that at the moment.

So you have already worked it out. You already know that self-harming is taking you further from your goals. What will take you towards your goal rather than away from it?

Not self harming. Game and set to mabness.


But you are real Tatty, you are an entity. You are tangible. You are caught up in your own existentialist bullshit (sorry to be rude). You have wandered so far along the path of trying to work out why you are what you are, you've forgotten who you are. Other people see you, they don't see your self-harm, they see Tatty. Stop wandering about in words and be, be something in the world, shout, scream, break things, daub the walls with paint make yourself real in the world again, make a mark on it to prove your own reality to yourself! Self-harm is allowing you to continue not being anything in the real world, only your own world. You are doing it to prove nothing in the real world, only to prove to yourself that you are bad and you aren't.

True and not true. I do get stuuck up my bum, and I write iin a way which doesn't help people understand me. But there is also something which, while not real in the real world, is real for me. I do often feel like I am not 'there'. That's a real feeling and one which scares me. It's usually a sign that there is something wrong and that I am heading towards complete dissociation. My sense of self and reality is really, really fragile, particularly at the moment. One of the reasons I am wary of doing things like shouting and screaming is that things like that can fuck my state of mind up much worse than letting myself worry. The best thing to do is to sit quietly until it goes away. It always does in the end. I know that, but it's hard to put into practice when I feel like I'm slowly ceasing to exist and, often, really believe that that is what is happening.

Self-harm ultiimately leads to the unreality being perpetuated. I know that. Unlitimately, it means that my relationships with other people are less real because they are all somehow wrapped round in my buggeredness. But again, it's long term versus short term. If I'm terrified that I'm iinvisible and no one will be able to see me, then I can self harm, which I believe will work, or I can sit it out, which I know will work, but don't believe when I'm bonkers enough to be thinking the reverse. Again, it's about trusting myself. I have to trust what I KNOW to be true in the face of what I believe or feel to be true. It's like flying a plane through a cloud- I have to trust the instruments, not my inner ear telling me I'm upside down.


So it doesn't solve anything. It doesn't allow you out of the cycle.
Nope. Ironic, huh?



How can there be a middle path when you need to make a definite choice? A choice that I admit must be a scary one but it is the only productive way out of the cycle. Maybe making your mark on the world around you will make you mad and scared and manic, perhaps it will ultimately lead to self-harm but it will be a different self-harm from the self-harm that you do to create a new unreality so that you don't have to live in the current one.

I don't think this is true. Sorry, I don't think I was explaining myself at all well. The place I will arive at if I start doing dramatic things is no more real than the place I will be in if I sit being frightened. Also, it's much more bizarre for other people to see (and embarassing when it's over). Ultimately, I have to chose neither of those thiings, but just have faith in the fact that I am real, I do exist, and I don't have to prove it, and that whatever nasties my head conjours up will disappear in due course leaviing me entirely unscathed. Because, you know, you can'tprove it. And once I allow myself to start trying- whether by hurting myself or by smashing crockery- I don't stop and just get more and more wierd until someone comes and sorts it out. I can chose to do neither. I can chose to just keep on reading the paper like nothing wierd is going on, and then I will be actually fine.

The thing that strikes me most Tatty is the fact that once upon a time you were the storyteller in your fantasy, now you are just along for the ride, you no longer have control over your own fantasy, the characters have taken on their own minds and there is a real danger you will never get the control back so you move from unreality to unreality trying to get the control back. The reason you are so scared to make a mark on reality is because you are scared that when you try you'll find you don't exist anymore. But you do.

I think this is true in principle but not in actuality. You are right about the problem, but this is a pretty central problem for me. For various reasons both complicated and dull, mainly centering arounf having been brought up by a pathological fantscist, I hve never had a clear grip n the difference between fantasy and reality. II have always had to tell stories, because it was the only way I could attribute rationality to the people who were bringing me up, who were reassuringly more nuts than I will ever be (bless 'em). I got the habit young and now i am trying to break it. What it comes down to is- yes- trusting my perceptions. trusting my intellegence. Trusting what I know over what I feel. Just having a bit of faith and sitting tight until the urge to freak out has passed.

I know this. I know it more when I'm foced to think about it. It's just so bloody fucking hard. My dream worlds are so much easier, and you don't ever get bumped, evenn if they are based on the premise that everyone else is good and I am bad. Seriously, it's nicer in there.



I hope you are OK Tatty and I haven't upset you.

You did, but in a good way. I needed to be upset to get shaken out of the place I'd talked myself into.

Thanks mab. A thousand good thoughts.

Tatty

Hi, Tatty. I read -- really, all of it! -- and ...

... I'm sorry it's confusing, and good luck. I'm not in a safe enough space to respond much, and Mab's doing such a good job, but I just wanted to send my well-wishes. (For me, staying safe and real sometimes means getting away from words and going out into the rain, and that's what I'm about to do, but I wanted to leave a footprint first to let you know I'm around.)

Good luck,

Lycander