I promised to publish my story here on my blog. Even though this is a very personal story to me and was difficult to write it has helped me immeasurably and I'm hoping that if I share it on my blog it may help other people as well.
So here it is: My story
Telling my story
In 1997 I was 23. I was in a new exciting country, Canada. I was with friends, I was young, beautiful, kind, creative and funny. I should have been having the time of my life instead...
I felt so full of pain, the searing pain of self hatred, that I wanted to die. Then, I hoped, I’d stop hurting. I was curled up feotal, on a futon in a wood cabin style room. Snow glistened off the slopes of mount Rundle, which looked down on me through the window as I lay sobbing. Sometimes I would hit myself hard, watch the bruises bloom across my skin, hoping my sorrow would fade as they did but I knew it wouldn’t. I yearned to fade away like the bruises. I wanted to be nothing, feel nothing, melt away like snow on the mountain side. No warmth, no substance, no me. Just light, no mass, no boundaries, finally free. I thought of Princess Diana saying that she wanted to dissolve away like an aspirin in a glass of water and I knew exactly what she meant.
The alternative was unbearable - to live and continue to feel the turmoil, the stifling feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and despair. Crippled by the vicious sting of guilt and self loathing. Everything was my fault, I’d ruined everything. I had been shamed and humiliated and I had failed.
But I didn’t die. I didn’t fade away. The sorrow and the pain didn’t go either it stayed with me, traveled back with me to Britain remaining part of me. Like a dark volcanic river of lava it would rise to the surface again and again for the next 12 years and I would learn that it was a part of me that had been with me for as long as I could remember.
The trigger in 1997 was a stressful experience when I was teaching and a brush with the nastiest, pettiest and most exploitative kind of media intrusion. But there had been triggers in the past and there would be more in the future. In the future the nature of the triggers would range from: stress at work, break up of relationships, moving house, all the usual life stresses. Mostly though, I didn’t know what the triggers were I just saw the reaction and the reactions changed too. Panic attacks, and migraines became common. I also developed fairly short term phobias relating to flying, using public transport and even one about being seen wearing my glasses in public. Sometimes I would feel paranoid about work colleagues or neighbors, what ever I felt though, it would feel too much, be totally overwhelming. Sometimes I would be full of positive energy and think that I had solved all my problems and go mad spending money. Always though, I would have the low afterwards and before, when I would be exhausted and run down, have no energy, no concentration, no will to do anything.
What I have come to accept is that I have a volcanic type of personality; I have periods of great activity, sometimes these are periods of great happiness, joy, excitement and enthusiasm for life, sometimes they can be explosions of anger and pain. The build up to these explosions will usually be filled with fear and anxiety. I also have a dormant element to my personality when I am exhausted by all the activity and I can become depressed, run down and the world slows down for me. My childhood was full of these highs and lows and as a child I just accepted that this was totally normal for me.
Of course as I grew older and stresses in my life increased this added pressure making my reactions so much more extreme. I also began to worry about my reactions, became anxious about my feelings, which added to the stress, and the vicious circle was complete.
I say I have come to terms with my personality now but how did I do that? Why did it take me nearly 13 years from the initial big break down / eruption?
There is no short answer to this. Many reasons made this road a long and meandering one.
I wasn’t ready to accept I needed help for a long time
When I did accept it, I wouldn’t seek help (well not very often) because I was scared
I still hid many aspects of my symptoms from family, and professionals because they scared me
Professional help isn’t easy to find even if you seek it
Up until 4 years ago I self medicated mainly with alcohol, not in any extreme way I just let off steam by getting drunk every few weeks
I also changed my behaviour to try to contain my emotional reactions, tried to hide and cover up my symptoms which put enormous pressure on me.
In spite of all the above I did seek help and I am really feeling the benefits of it.
I am very lucky that I have an incredibly supportive family who have always been there for me and helped me through all of the tough times. I also have a small but very strong network of friends who have helped and supported me immensely as well. But I wasn’t always able to call on them for help. I spent 5 years in an unhealthy and sometimes abusive relationship in which I was isolated from many of my friends and family. Leaving that unhealthy relationship when I was 32 was the first major step to getting myself back together. It was also one of the most difficult things I have done in my life. It was a slow process - it took me many months of determinedA effort. It was as if part of me just worked on freeing myself with out me even knowing what I was doing. I had reserves of resolve and insight inside me that I didn’t know I had.
Since then I have done many more things to release myself from many of the aspects of my life that were making me feel trapped and unhappy.
The second hardest thing I did was see my GP and tell him the truth about how I really felt. I didn’t brush over anything or put on a brave face (my happy clown face as I used to call it with my friend Lorraine, the mask I wore to convince others I was happy. It’s a sinister clown face though.) I was honest even though it hurt and I felt a failure for admitting this to my GP. He referred me to see the community mental health team and from there I haven’t looked back.
I’m still taking my medication, I’ve attended an “educational recovery course” which I am writing this piece for. Through giving myself space rather than “containing” myself, I have made some startling decisions (startling for me anyway) to work part time and to set up my own business as a freelance equality and diversity consultant. I am in a wonderful relationship with a supportive and caring partner - something I wouldn’t have been able to do if I hadn’t made those first steps to make changes in my life. The strength I get from my partner Jason, has enabled me to have a time and space to “recover.”
The freedom that I longed for 13 years ago in Canada was there, not through death but through my own actions. I just didn’t know that I had to open up and step outside. I had to confront the thing that I was most afraid of, I had to face up to feeling weak, helpless and vulnerable. It has taken me a long time and it has been a painful and joyful journey but it was worth it. I have always had mood swings from the very energetic to the much more gentle. I am someone who one day wants to be the centre of attention in the bustle of life and who a fews days later will want to be totally alone and isolated from everything. I’m not going to change that. I have to live with it and allow myself to flourish through it. I can’t do that until I accept that is who I am and give my self time and space to explore what it means.
I have changed my life style - made my own reasonable adjustments - to accommodate my “volcanic personality” to use it for my best advantage. There will be tough times ahead but I am hopeful and I am grateful that I didn’t take the route of becoming nothing but energy and light as I longed to do in Canada. Instead I am now heading towards a future where I can feel fulfilled, in control and not have my emotions controlling me.
3 comments:
It was - though it might sound strange to say - a pleasure to read this. In part because I recognised what a big (and daring) step writing about such experiences is and because it's a story I share to a certain extent.
There's a lot of advice given by "experts" about how exposing one's inner thoughts is a self-indulgent and ultimately dangerous thing to do on the internet. And yet, I'm of the mind that it's only by sharing experiences amongst ourselves that those in need can benefit - both authors and readers.
So well done you. Thanks for taking the bold step.
Thank you so much for your comment it means a lot to me to know that you and others can read this and relate to it even if only in parts, we're all different after all. I know that reading about other people's experiences helped me a lot during the "telling my story" course and so I just hope that this can do the same.
Thank you for your support :-)
Thank you for sharing this part of your journey. It is encouraging to read how you have traveled from a place of total despair, to a place where you are looking to the future. 'I am now heading towards a future where I can feel fulfilled'. And there is the happiness and excitement, within the recent post about your work change. It is good to read about the huge change that has taken place over the years. That provides hope to others - to me.
Thank you for taking the risk of sharing your story.
Take care. Wishing you well as you continue to move on.
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