Living Lilly

                   what LIFE is for


I may not know them, i may just read about them in the paper or hear about them from friends or in some sad cases have been their friend. The young people that have died. Who am i to say before their time and they may have left their legacy, your legacy doesn't have to have been SEEN by the world to have been felt by it. But i feel so sad because i know them. I don’t need to have done life with them to know them. I know and we all know them, we know the feelings of working, worrying and waiting for their future. And so we all know how sad it is that they are gone before their work is complete, or their worrying has dissipated or before getting to what they had been waiting for.

And saddest of all is when you hear those young people have been in distress. Or lonely or sad. And that has been the reason they are no longer here. Those wounds are just as serious as a broken back they kill too it's just that they SHOULDN'T kill. Not that a collision that kills instantly when you have been full of joy the second before is any better a way to die or any easier for family and friends to bear. I have attempted suicide and know that distress and it would have been the worst way to die. What i have come to realise is that life is a blessing even if you do not feel it to be. And there are many that judge do not understand(why do you want someone to understand because in order to understand they would have to have been there and i know i do not want others to travel to where i have been) and think you selfish(many of us stayed only as long as we did FOR other people), attention seeking – the list goes on and it always will despite any work professionals do to disprove this as always being the case with a suicidal person. But whether you are Christian or not it is important to know that people did not make you(as in they did not make your spirit, your soul etc even if they did ‘make’ you). So people, their actions their words against you etc should not be able to destroy you, don’t give them that right or make them a god . No person is a god and as a Christian no one is a god but God and he has made me/you. He has never told me i am not good enough and he would know the quality of his own work. So do not believe man telling you that you are not good enough or worthy. I hope you hear this and i hope i hear this because i am writing this as much to myself as to you who may read this not AT you. Life is for living because that is what he made us for.

I hope to remember this fact for everyday of this year and that even if i see it as a burden that i live this life. I wish the same for you. That is my resolution for 2011.

And part of this living shall include wearing the dresses i want to wear. And trying out the lipsticks i want to try - provided i have also applied a good covering of Lipcote. Lipstick teeth is NOT the version of sexy i am going for. A mysterious bite has appeared on my lip overnight so am wondering if there is a product to help with that first and foremost?
Blackbirdie

x

Normal Norma

This week saw the long awaited addition of nude open toe heels to my wardrobe. Note i buy and have a collection of heels but last wore a pair in 2006. Problems man. I also finally downloaded like my fave
and most played song in hair salons across the capital-Yori Yori by Bracket.

I am avoiding a return to hospital just now. But I wanted to tell you about my second  week out of hospital. After the bridge incident I spent four weeks in hospital. One week in an official, anti-septic smelling place the remaining three in something called a crisis house- on paper it still counts as a hospital. When you go into care your priority is always to get out and go home, you feel trapped-at first. But the dangerous part is where you get used to being looked after. How to go home and wake up, take a shower, medicate yourself and wash the dishes without reminders. How also to get used to your own company again. How to talk yourself out of a dangerous situation. How to rationalise that taking a bunch of pillls will not end your problems or in fact how to rationalise that it mind in fact end your problems but also all the good things too if you die. How to do this for youself. I have not yet mastered it, I'm not close. This week I still took a bunch of pills, passed out for a day or two. To me that was the best idea going at the time. That was I am not sure which day- but at the beginning of the week.

On Thursday I was playing with knives again, I called a few friends, one came over and sat with me for a while. I told her the truth that alot of the time what first makes me low is something as silly as this wierd unkindess towards me someone exhibits and that I wasn't raised that way and that I don't understand why I link my self worth directly to man. Those girls that throw themselves off a bridge because of people- well I'm that girl and I'm ashamed of it.

Last night -Friday  I went to church and found that I didn't want to ask God for forgiveness because I am used to hurting myself and I have no intention of stopping. Later in the evenning I wanted to walk. To just walk and then at the right moment walk into oncoming traffic. I'm 22, half-educated and it should be clear that this is perhaps a bad idea. Yet often when I go underground or walk on the pavement I have to resist the urge to throw myself onto the tracks or jump in front of a lorry. Naturally travelling can make me nervous sometimes- but I've felt like this for so long it seems normal.  And to be honest what stops me is the fact that I will hurt the driver more than the fact that the action would likely result in my death. I honestly don't think I will die and if i do i think it will be a pleasant experience, that I'm special in some way, super even. The temptation is worse than Lindt D'or  chocolate. I can never expect or want people to fully understand but I really think these things are good ideas and so I spend alot of time being scared. Scared and standing still in the middle of the pavement, sometimes crying and making strangers wonder just what I've been drinking. Scared of voices and people in my mind that tell me that these are good ideas and that the rest of you are in fact against me. I met a man and walked with him for a while in the direction of Muswell Hill, we parted company when we started talking about drugs because I was on the verge of accepting some of his, I met two young  men and walked back down to my area with them. A friend came and got me, you know because walking with strangers in the middle of the night is supposed to be a bad thing. They were really good people and helped me and looked after me until a friend came and got me to take me back home. They told me to ask questions and ask Allah. My friend prayed for me but that my spirit didn't like it. Sorry I scratched you when you were praying for me. I remember I felt safe and fell asleep.

Today, Saturday I woke up and started drinking- i don't particularly like the taste of alcohol nor can I tolerate it well, but I started and I carried on. I missed my support group because of it and carried a bottle of Vodka around in my bag all day as a safety net. I tidied my flat, got angry, scratched myself until i could see blood and went to the gym.

This week I broke a promise to a friend. I had promised not to hurt myself for 365 days. I broke it one day 1.

 I want to walk. Walk anywhere, walk far away- away from myself.

This has been my second week out of hospital. This is normal.

Truthful Trudie

 I hate what has happened to me, it makes me scream in pain at times or cry for hours until my eyes are swollen and I am tired. But the thing about being depressed is that lonliness is both your enemy and your friend. I cry about it but I know that my lonliness never leaves me and is always close at hand and so I let it in and I even feel sick about how I ENJOY my pain. This is the thruth and this post is about truths I find hard to explore but must.

I could pretend that I am purely a victim and that this mean depression and its friends have attacked me, that it is to blame for all my flaws, I could pass the buck. I mean with friends I do joke that 'Hey I'm crazy, I'm allowed' when I indulge in nonsense behaviour. But hearing a friend talk about someone she knew that suffered from bi-polar as being ' just actually a bitch', I worry. Which part is me, which part is the depression, am I all psychotic or are there bits of me that are me, as I have always been.



After four years it's hard to know. Who am I? Am I depressed first and a young woman second? I have been hearing voices and hallucinating over the last few months, I feel there is a force that is bringing something really bad to me. I question where I am in my head, because there are lots of voices shouting very loudly, none of them sounding like me. Where is the me people tell me about, the one they used to know. Does she exist or has she changed? Why is she slower? Why has her mind changed? Did I always screw up this much? Have I always been bad with time or did it start when the effort of getting up became too much. I care about your time but know I had to psyche myself up to come out and see you because to me the outside world can be so scary, I think you are all looking at me and can all see what a mess this is or that there is something black on my back, really, like that clicking black insect Catherine Tate had when she was the Doctor's helper. It's on my back. Was I always this self-involved or do I have to be self- involved to will myself to live each day. Do I drain my friends and family through my behaviour? Did I always eat the wrong food or did the size 18(yes I have lost a little weight) happen when the emotional eating began? Have I always been bad at relationships and clingy or does it happen when I worry about being left behind (whole other story). Have I always been angry, sad and lonely? I often get asked when did I start feeling this way, the truth is I cannot remember NOT feeling this way.



The good thing is that I am finding out some pretty cool stuff about myself too. Stuff that wasn't always there. So maybe I am a bit of a bitch, who isn't, I’m a bit/alot depressed, I have my fair dose of crazy mixed in-again who doesn't, 1 in 9 people hear voices, and I do obsess. But I am also here. I love my family and friends, I know too much about clothes, I have a good brain, a heart that tries, I make a mean batch of cupcakes. I fall in love too easily but I fall in love. There is a God up there that is refusing to let me go and therefore I must be something special- like you all. Maybe through all this I might turn out to be a better version of myself, and through this I will find who I am. Let's hope this is the case or it's alot of effort and heartache for nothing lol but NOT lol really.



X

Wish us luck. This week Trudie is looking for the SHOE. That special shoe that was made and meant to be on my foot. You understand? If you don't you never will.

Mirrored Megan

My behaviour is erratic so it follows that my posts are likely to be too. For the last two weeks I havn't had words, I am still lacking them. For example when people ask 'WHY' I did and do what I do, well, which explanation do they want, there are so many yet at the same time none, many reasons, no reasons. Do I hate my family and friends, not at all. I love them alot but it's true you cannot live FOR other people, you have to want it yourself and I spend most days wanting not to. Mind this is not a cry for help post, I will die- pun intended- before my last communication on this earth is through an online message. The fact that I am writing means I feel better and that I am am slowly winning my battle with an anti-pyschotic from hell. Never ever get depressed but if you do never, ever allow them to put you on Ariprizole. I won't bother to look up it's spelling if you take it you will know the one I mean, if even the nurses and doctors cannot pronounce or spell it, why expect me too. I could go downstairs and ask but well Ariprizole makes you really, really tired. It also means I cannot concentrate on anything not even ENDERS for more than three minutes. Even Gossip Girl was a struggle to follow. That's when you know it's bad.

I had a conversation with a lady I secretly call my Special Irish Lady, a middle age woman who I will call Rachel. She told me I reminded her of herself 20 years ago when she first got ill, angry, unsure about what to think of myself for being unwell and thinking it will never end. She said she could tell I don't like myself at the moment. From other people this pisses me off to such a level, especially when they say 'you need to love yourself', but from Rachel it didn't- she looked at me as if she was looking at a brown version of herself and she understood. An interesting thing she said was that she doesn't consider herself ill, rather that she has a condition, and that I must find my own definition of what is going on in my body and mind rather. Doctors and nurses need lablels to be able to treat me, to write out prescriptions but what do I need in order to stop being angry. What do you need when you are feeling unwell mentally or physically to stop feeling angry. I mean besides God, that is a given.

Leaving Lucie

Two Fridays ago I made a plan to leave. I had been feeling frenzied- a kind of bad energy that sometimes actually speaks to me, for a day or two already, then low mood and lonliness entered the picture and it makes a lethal combination especially when believing you are invincible is added to the mix. So all these things were swimming around my head when I decided to leave my home and unlike most people making thier way to work, (people who even though they know they are going to have a shitty day still get up and carry on) I made my way to Westminster Bridge- the easiest to get to. A young Italian man tried it on and I had to tell him that mate ' This is not the time or place'. I mean, who starts a relationship before jumping off a bridge? Not even I am that crazy;).

Obviously I am still here. I have still been here after each attempt since 2007 when I first began self-harming and trying to end my life. I honestly am not sure if i want to live but there is enough doubt to make it so that I am over familiar with paracetamol.

Problem Polly

Sometimes I won't write, I wouldn't know how to say what I feel without assaulting myself about how self- indulgent it sounds . And being surrounded by people that remind me a blog is a full time job and something to get stressed out about, I feel that it is hopeless, that whatever I am hoping to find by writing about this will never surface.  Last week I felt odd I didn't use any words. My entry wasn't even a word it was a dash. But the dash was important. I could post it and see that yes I am actually here. It is not that episodes are necessarily out of body experiences but that my spirit gave up so long ago that I am not here fully, there is a body that tires at the thought of having to wake up for fifty years if that is how long God wants it to be here. Many people look forward to a long and full life and like the old ladies on the ward I woke up in after my first overdose, want to breathe every breath and make it last longer. The funny thing is that I say this on the assumption that someone is actually reading and would mind. I am still feeling odd so I will  list today.


This week people have told me that:

'It may take 10 years' (IT is getting better. Not being able to time/control my recovery is more than annoying and inconvenient.)

'You are young' (I am turning 22 but I already feel like I am  being  left behind and it makes me angry)

'I will never hate you' (the worst thing you can do as a woman it seems is have issues, I have them and they have scared a person before and I guess I was/am waiting for this person to hate me)

'If you like to paint, paint, if you like to write songs, write songs- it's ok, maybe it is time to be you,'

'You need to love yourself'

'Thank-you'

That a beautiful person  has a rare and life threatening disease

That possibly I may not see someone I love alot for a while and that I may have no choice in the matter

That a friend is leaving



This week I told myself that

It's long ting and logic has no place in the issue. I also do not want to share head space. This in reference to a boy: I have been told to pray about it. I don't know if I want to spirit a relationship into my life. And I don't think boy in question would appreciate being spirited.

That I can leave a place that meant a lot to me

That I don't have any certificates to validate me at the moment and that maybe measuring my worth by achievements is not working for me

That I am angry


That it is going to be hard to live with myself  for the next few months knowing all the things that are happening to people around me, that someone so beautiful who wants their life may lose it and I, I don't want mine much of the time.

That I am scared, that IT is happening, will happen and when it happens that will be the end. But ask me what IT is and you will find I cannot tell you. IT is always there though.

X

Not really here Nelly

-