It’s never enough. Or is it?

I realized that I should be happy and am not. My pain is not one big thing that destroys me in a matter of a few hours or a day. It scattered little things. Restlessness. The yearning for more. The yearning for purpose. Loneliness. Emptiness. All wearing me down. Slowly. Crushing me.

I took a step back and then realized that right now I am living my dream. I am doing what I love every day. I am surrounded by people I love and care about. Why am I so restless? Why am I so afraid of doing the wrong thing? Why am I so afraid of failing? Why is my present not enough?

There really is nothing I can do but realize how much my life right now is what I want. Remember that every day. And trying to be grateful. And by remembering maybe I can trick my emotions into feeling that happiness, that is supposed to come from my dream life. And I think I can learn it. I can teach myself to be happy. Because every day that I realized how much I want exactly what I have, I become a little happier. And hopefully this way, some day I can wake up and say: “I want this and nothing else.” and feel the happiness floating my system.

So, yes, it is never enough, unless we believe it is. Unless we see that we do not need more. And we have to teach ourselves to feel that. Because inherently we always want more even if we have enough.

Therapy-Status

I felt like therapy was getting me nowhere. I did talk to my therapist about it. Then my therapist went on vacation. Meanwhile I was supposed to decide how I want to go on about it. I figured out very quickly that I did not want to stay with my current therapist. And I made the plan to go see someone else. However now that I have not been to a therapy session for almost three weeks, I feel like I do not even want therapy at all anymore. There literally is no difference. Sure, there were some times where I thought that it was the worst time to not have regular sessions, but after all: It was so relaxing to not talk to someone for an hour, trying to explain and justify every severe action I did, without anything. Really. I do not think the last three weeks would have gone any different if I had seen someone in that time. I had a few friends who were amazing when it came to listening to me and giving advice.

Yes, I have been cutting a lot in the last few weeks. Yes, it has been an exhausting time. But now I am just trying to re-define myself. Trying to become better. Trying to move on. The topic of cutting makes me so angry. The thought of going to therapy frustrates me a lot and I just do not know if I really should go on in therapy. Sure, I need to fight my cutting. I should. But, do I need the help of a therapist for that? Do I really spend all that time trying to explain myself? I simply do not see the benefit. I do not need a therapist to revisit the things I have done in a week. I do not need someone asking me how much I drunk or how often I have cut. I can do that all on my own. In fact, I do that per default. I naturally check back in with me, and ask myself how I am, reflecting, trying to figure out how I can handle a problem. I do not need someone who is just as confused with who I am as I am.

Here is the thing: I do not want to. Really, my whole being is resisting, but I will go see another therapist. Because as a matter of fact I need someone to prepare me for the exam-time. I need help getting from “I went a day without cutting.” To “I did not cut for a week.” “For a month.” And hopefully months turn into years. But apparently I cannot get there on my own. So, I have to trust another human. Have to allow another person to see me the way I am. I am not scared of it. Just tired. Because it takes so much effort to try make anyone understand. Especially if I don’t really care about how that person sees me. It is like pouring salt into my cuts, because it forces me to walk all those dark paths again. It makes me remember the pain and loneliness, even if I am over it. But on the other hand I cannot be helped, if I do not talk about it to someone who can actually help me.

Emotional Intelligence: Curse or Gift?

No feeling understood can be the source of great pain. It is a symptom for many mental diseases, such a Borderline Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Social Anxiety and more. Not being understood leads to the loneliness that we humans dread so much. Feeling a bit lonely from time to time appears to be a normal part of life and nothing to stress out about. It is not like anyone who ever feels lonely has a serious mental issue. But when is feeling lonely an actual problem? When is the pain that it causes too big to be ignored? Being honest I think this has a lot to do with how the individual experiences the loneliness. But at the point, where it seems that the isolation starts to swallow everything it is definitely a problem.

Now, where does this all-threatening loneliness come from? Throughout history there have been brilliant minds such as Van Gogh who suffered from severe mental disorders and loneliness and yet were extraordinary personalities. And we see a pattern: many artists showed this issue. But why artists? Is there something, that makes artists different from other people? Something that makes them lonely? I think there is.

It is “emotional Intelligence” and I am honest I do not like the term. It is the ability to “see deeper”. Yeah, what the heck does “see deeper” mean. It means, that an artists sees connections that others don’t. And this is why that person can be an artist in the first place: As an artist, we do not define the world newly (though some do create worlds), but we find extraordinary connections between ordinary things in life. We shed a new light on the existing world.

But this “seeing connections that others don’t” is making artists lonely. Because we think differently. The way we perceive the world is different. We feel the world differently. And often times, we cannot explain why. We are not able to tell, why this beautiful sunset moved us to tears and the people around us do not understand. We keep asking fundamental questions. We challenge reality day after day. This is what cannot be understood. Why ask the same questions over and over. Why do we see connections between separate things in reality? And sometimes, we do not even know why we just happened to know what is going on in another person. We do not know how we could find the right words to comfort them. But we probably just saw those subtle hints in the world around us and without even realizing what we were doing, we followed our “Intuition” and did the right thing.

I am throwing around words like intuition and emotional intelligence and some might still not know what it is and say that these are not scientific concepts. Well no, they are not. But intuition and emotional intelligence in essence is the ability to make connections between things. And because it is something that not everyone has to the same extent it can make a person lonely.

But there is a bright side to it: in many sciences making connections between things is crucial for progress, which means that people with high emotional intelligence have a higher probability of understanding science faster. Note that it is only the the likelihood that is affected, because it is possible, that someone has high emotional intelligence and is great at human interaction, but has problems with math, because those two fields are so different.

However if we have high emotional intelligence, we have at least some area in our life, where we see connections that others don’t. This allows us to be better in that field than other. And this is a fact that we can draw energy from. We may not always be understood. But in turn we are allowed to have a deep understanding of the world, which I personally find overwhelmingly beautiful.

I wish I could believe

Four minutes. One song. That is how long it took me to write the 8 letters onto my skin. My hands sweaty. And shaky. My eye twitching. My fear is as strong as always. And I feel nothing. Nothing. All I know is that I will always be convicted. That whenever there is someone who is getting close to me I will end up trying to explain. That I will be asked questions. Even after I may or may not have won my war. There will always be those lines and letters on my arm. On my legs. Manifestations of my pain. My addiction. My fear.

Once more I have lost my “why”. I have no clue, why I cut. I just do it. It does not help. It does not change a thing.
“The person you hurt most is yourself.” Maybe. I should care, right? Do you know what I do care about? The fact that I don’t cut deep anymore. The fact that it never actually bleeds. just a few red lines. It saddens me. Scary right? I know. I do not want to protect myself anymore. I cannot stop the pain. Trying to is just a waste of time and energy. I know. I know. I hear everyone’s voices in my head:

“You will make it.”
“It will be okay.”
“I am here for you.”
“It will get better, easier.”
“There are people who can help you.”

Lies. Nothing but lies. Form people close to me. Some of them have an idea of what is happening. Some just really care. Some helpless. But I have known this for years. Known it long before I started cutting: We are alone. And it does not matter. We are who we are. In the place we are. We can do whatever we want.

We do not give up hope. We try to keep fighting. And we want to believe those people telling us that it’s gonna be alright. We want to. But… Until I experience that it is true. That it can get better, I can’t believe it anymore. I trust so easily. I want to believe that there is an end to the darkness. I do want to hold on to the light. But at some point the poet in me dies. Leaving the scientist alone. The scientist that looks at past events to determine the future. And those past events show no sign of light. It is not even about the cutting anymore. It is about what’s wrong inside me. I should get up and fight. I should be trying to find a way. But… I am trembling. I am parallelized.

The War I Fight

In the context of cutting, I have mentioned before, that I often do not even want to stop. I realized that cutting is not my enemy. I do not hate cutting. I do not hate myself for cutting. Cutting is a friend. When I have added another line onto my skin, I do not put the blade away hating myself. I am just as empty as I was before. But I do not feel the need to cut. When I have sled down into addiction, the need to cut grows stronger and about every 48 hours I end up giving in. So, when I am done, my thought is:
“I don’t have to cut for next few hours.”

How does this make sense with the fact that I call cutting a problem?! I said, that anyone who cuts should probably get help. But if cutting is a friend, and we do not want to stop, why would we seek help?

Just because I do not hate myself for cutting, does not mean, I do not hate myself. Just because cutting is not the actual problem does not mean that I do not have a problem. I hate myself for being weak. I hate myself for being negative (yes, this is why I make such a fuss about positivity). I hate myself for the sadness. For the intense feeling of loneliness that I cannot handle. That darkness inside me. That darkness that I express, when I cut, is what is my problem. Is what I want to get rid of. Is what I want to treat. Is what I need help with.

A friend of mine recently answered my question whether cutting defined me by saying: “No, but it’s a big part of you.” Well, I guess he meant the darkness. He meant the pain. Because cutting is just expressing that. And this is why this entire thing is so hard… I am not at war with cutting. I am at war with myself. With the feeling of emptiness. The feeling of not being good enough. The sadness that just takes control even though I know I have everything I need. I have everything to be happy. And yet: I cannot escape the cold inside me. I cannot escape myself. I cannot experience peace. Because I am fighting myself. And I do not know why. Sure, I know I hate myself for sleeping through lectures and classes. For binge-watching random shows instead of studying. But I don’t feel like that is the actual problem.

This is perfect conflict material for a book: I am fighting a war with myself for a reason that I do not know. And I do not know how to find that problem, so how am I supposed to change anything? And then again: I have been told there might not be an actual issue. It might be impossible to pinpoint it. I might never really be free of the darkness. And… that is scary. Because I do not want that to be the case. I want to be okay some day. I want it to stop. I am not afraid of fighting. I am not too weak to fight and win. But I cannot fight something that I don’t know. I could win, if this thing was winnable. If there was a single way to win this, I would go it. No matter what. But I have not found that way. And I have not met anyone who can show me that way.

Just a word on how cutting is perceived: It may seem like attention-seeking. And it may even be that. But there is so much more behind it. When I started cutting, I thought it was simple. But it is not. And I assume this goes for any addiction. Maybe this even goes for anything in this world that involves human beings. So, I think, we are too quick to judge. Especially me. If there is something that my condition has taught me it is that things are not always as they seem and while it is easy to objectively determine is something is right or wrong, it is impossible to judge a person.

So, I think especially social media, but we in our daily lives, should go easier on people. Because, we do not know why they do something. Maybe they are just hurting. Maybe they are doing it for a reason. Maybe they have no choice. Maybe… maybe. Point is: we do not know. And I grew up thinking that someone who is addicted, is addicted by his/her own fault. But I have learned that this is not necessarily true. And think we should -I should- treat addicted people more with sympathy than with judgment. Because the sympathy might actually help them, while the judgment definitely will not.

The moment when we question our strength

The moment we think we are fine, we get ourselves in a situation where we realize that we really aren’t. We end up in bathrooms. Cutting. Crying. Just sitting there hoping the panic goes by. But it won’t. Your body screams. Tickling. Twitching. Heat racing through your veins. But the pain doesn’t stop.

How does it feel when your heart breaks? How does it feel when you reached the end of the road and you know that it’s all over? Is it cold? Does it not tear you apart anymore? Because if it did you were still trying to fight. It’s when you have lost all hope. When you have given up the fight… that is when being shattered to pieces is peaceful. Because you have stopped trying to put yourself together. Do we need to give up to find peace?

Why do all the attempts to get better fail? And why is it so frustrating? Frustrating enough that all I want to do is declare my hate for everything and break into pieces. Irreversibly. Why do I feel like giving up? Maybe because I have always kept saying that I was about to get better. And I believed it. But it was never true. This is not how I imagined to be. Why does the cold not end? It should have been over a week ago. It should have. Maybe it will never. And I am starting to loose my strength. I am loosing my will to fight.

I once trusted that I could become better. That trust hast faded into a hope. And that hope is so faint now. I lost the will to hope. And when that happened… I turned my back at everyone. Because I do not want to hurt anyone. My pain shall not hurt those I love. And still. Those I love will tell me that it is not true. Then why does it feel like it? Pushing you away hurts. But putting you through my pain -my pain that I am not even able to name- hurts just as much. How can I trust that you will be able to handle it, when I am not able to deal with it? How can you still hope, when I am giving up? Why can you not see that it’s almost over. That there is nothing left to say. Nothing left to do. Just waiting until the fall ends and I hit the ground.

I am probably exaggerating. As always. I am probably just absolutely normal. Just going through some emotionally intense times. Am I not? How am I different from anybody else? The answer is: I am not. What I feel. What I experience… happens to everyone at some point. I do not know how other people deal with this. How other people can survive this. But I don’t feel like I can. That is probably the thing that makes me different: I am not strong enough to go through this. Others are.

Well… I even think giving up needs strength. I do not think, that I have that strength. Not yet. I am still trying. I guess… If I wasn’t I would not be writing this. But I am at the point where I look at the blade and think:

“You do not have to do this.”
“I know, but I want to.”

I am supposed to not hate myself for the darkness inside me. And you know… I don’t. Because I feel nothing. But pain. I am so good at covering it. I guess everyone with a mental disorder is. We smile and laugh to calm others down. To make them believe that we are fine. But it is just another lie. A lie that we tell because if we don’t we are just going to make ourselves and those we love more miserable? How is accepting the cutting and giving in different? Maybe I will find an answer to that question. At some point. For now: I am trying to not fall any deeper.

The Spiral. My Prison

I have become toxic. Not that is a surprise to me. But I just realized it. And… I do not hate myself for it. I just hate the fact that it happened. I hate to put the people close to me through this pain. And the more I say this, the more I wonder if this is even true. I keep saying it. And yet I am toxic. Spiraling down in that panic. I cannot stop it. I can’t. I do not have the strength to do that. Maybe I should prove that I mean, what I say. Should leave. Point being: I do not want to be alone, but I isolate myself (why does it feel like I have written these exact words down before?!).

I am locked up, am I not? In Fear. And Pain. And this self-imposed loneliness. I can try to get out. And sometimes it will feel like I was successful. But I cannot actually be free. I am at that point where I have stopped thinking about whether or not I created this situation for myself. Because now… it is here. It is real. It hurts and I just want it to stop. But I do not have the strength to do that. So I am just letting it happen. Hoping that one day it may end. The definition of giving in.

Just another Darkness

Yesterday I was afraid. Today I dared. I am the only one guilty of this crime against me. But I am not mad at myself. I did not push the blade down. I just let it slide over my skin. Feel the tickle of the metal. My fingers are sweaty. I guess I am still afraid. It is fascinating how such a thin piece of metal can have such a visible effect on a human even if we don’t actively try to make a big impact. I do not know how much harm I would do if I got mad at myself and cut… if I felt unheard and felt like I needed to scream louder. Cut deeper. For now: these cuts… mere scratches are enough.

So much pain comes from such a tiny thing…

I am sliding back into addiction. Why? Because I am so afraid. So afraid that I suddenly just think: I gotta leave. And I walk out and into a bathroom until I feel able to return. Or I start crying in the middle of a lecture. Sometimes I see my chest vibrating with the beating of my heart. I shiver and sometimes my hands tremble.

I know I should be fighting the fear without hurting myself. I know I should just be handling the pressure. Study harder. Trying to distract myself. I should be talking back to the voice that says I could be cutting. But all I really say is that I do not want to be alone. And then again… I want to be alone. And I isolate myself because being around people does not make the fear go away. All it does is drag those people down along with me. Just… seeing that I’m everything but okay… it hurts them. And I still cannot talk. I wish I could.

I have been in therapy for two months now. Nothing changed. Absolutely nothing. Actually… when I started therapy I was better than I am now. I thought… I might learn how to prevent me slipping… but I didn’t. I did not even get started in finding a way. I have no idea what went wrong. I thought it would help. I think I will see another therapist. I am not ready to give up yet. Just another darkness that I need to survive… Another darkness that will leave its scars on my skin.

I am so sorry. This whole thing is such a mess… and I created it. I was fine before I was so incredibly stupid. And then I created this blog to share what would help me get better… and all I am doing is explaining why I hurt myself. And… how it feels.

The Silent Scream

As a Teenager I started writing books. Encoding what I felt. Trying to cope. It worked for a while. Then my world changed. I got out of school. I was supposed to be an adult. And I tried. Tried so hard. Maybe that part was even successful. But I stopped writing for the most part. I started talking. I started explaining. Texting. But my words did not reach the hearts of those I cared about. They still could not understand. They just could not see, how my life was suffocating me. How my words were me begging for help.

And that is how I started screaming. Writing on my skin. But I was under the misconception that this would force people to listen. It is incredible, but all it does is make you even more lonely.

There are those who care. Those who try to understand. Those who almost do understand. And there are those who just wish you’d stop. But you don’t. Not because you would not love them. But because deep inside you feel that they still don’t listen. After all this. They do not listen. And you are still alone. So you keep screaming for help. Silently. Lonely.

No. Not everyone who self-harms feels like this. There are those who hide. Who are not trying to get help from those whom they love. Those who try to cope with their pain by scaring themselves without letting anyone know. Those may call me an attention-seeker. Those may hate me for cutting. Those are the only ones I will ever accept judgment from for what I am doing. But let me say this: If you do not try to be understood… you cannot be smashed to the ground, when you realize that no one understands.

By now… my own body is screaming for the pain to stop. I randomly shiver. My feet fall asleep. My muscles twitch. I am sick. And if I happen to be hungry and eat something, I will get even more sick. I could just let my weight speak for itself. Having a number attatched to a mental condition… just another hope of mine to make them understand. My plan to not feel hungry is simple: keep drinking coffee.

I know this is no joke. I know that I am supposed to fight it. I know that I should not be trying to develop an eating disorder. I actually don’t think I am. I just know that I want to be screaming from the bottom of my heart. I know that I do not want to fight. Because I want people to see. Even though I know they won’t.

What the worst part is? The fact that I do not want to talk to my therapist. The fact that I do not want to heal. I do not want to get better. I don’t. At this point I just wanted to write “It makes no sense.” But the sad thing is, it does. I don’t want to get better… because what is happening is that my symptoms would get taken away. The mental pain I am in, will stay. And the symptoms are my way of crying for help, so unless the pain goes away… I do not want the symptoms to vanish either.