Trigger warnings: suicide, self-harm.
I've been in counseling provided through my university for the past four or five months. It's gone well, for the most part. I cried a lot at the beginning--it took a lot for me to go and get counseling in the first place because my first experience with therapy was an absolute disaster involving my mum and David, my third older brother, and the therapist asking why I was crying and not being able to say anything because it involved stuff about the abuse---let me cut myself off.
I cried a lot in the beginning. I word-vomitted stuff about the divorce last summer, the abuse and being suicidal the previous weekend in the ten-minute walk-in in early November and she, the counselor, decided it would be best to sign up for actual counseling. Shocker, right?
Well, more and more things kept coming up, along with my incessant tendency to self-diagnose and my really strange, masochistic desire to be locked away somewhere for mental problems. How many people have you met that actually WANT to be clinically insane? It's messed up, I know it is. This isn't my issue right now. Maybe it will be in the future and I'll tell my counselor about it this week, but in this moment, allow me to write purely in exposition.
On a side note, I would like to state that I've discovered that I'm identify as heteroromantic asexual. Fun story.
Fast forward to a couple Tuesdays ago. A friend of mine in our student Christian group here on campus took his own life, which brought up some stuff for me. Thankfully, only a couple days later I receive healing and now know that suicide will not be an issue for me in the near future. However, the enemy is a clever bastard, so he started bringing up something that I haven't had issues with in six or seven years...self-harm. I never actually bled, but I discovered how much I loved the feeling of the blade over my skin. It was soothing, smooth, metallic...solid.
Knives are a trigger for me now. Just seeing them. Having them laying around the kitchen. Pictures of my dad trigger me emotionally. I'm practically prescribed to not watch anything horror-related or that startles me because it stays in my mind and makes me have an over-active fight or flight response. I know I won't ever actually cut myself, I'm too scared. But doing it mentally is enough for me. That's why signing a silly safety contract isn't enough to protect myself. Going through it in my head, having an image of that knife covered in blood...that's enough for me. I practically get off on that. I had a piece of wood decide to gash my forearm open and my only thought was, "I hope that scars."
So my counselor and her supervisor decided it would be a great idea to have me see the psychiatrist on site. They have preliminary diagnoses of some form of PTSD and/or a dissociative disorder. Surprise surprise. This is all tacked on top of an awesome dose of depression and anxiety. And at this point I would rather it be a dissociative disorder because honestly, THAT'S MORE INTERESTING. My life seems so monotonous that it's downright boring. Everyday is the same. I would love to hear them persuade me that I have a dissociative disorder, not that it would take much. I feel like one of the dolls from Darker Than Black (anime) a lot of the time. This morning I had what I'm now calling a "dissociative day," which was a half an hour or so of me zoning out completely and detaching myself from people and any thought whatsoever because GOD KNOWS WHY. I think I triggered myself with my own thoughts or something. That would figure. I ended up sitting by myself with my arms wrapped around my knees humming a song over and over again.
Oh, this was before a meeting about a mission trip I'm going on to Haiti. We're leaving on March 23rd, by the way, if you feel inclined to pray for us or support us financially or just follow what we're doing. Here's the link to our blog: http://www.pscc.net/#/events/haiti-outreach-2012
/end shameless plug.
I laid on the couch in the prayer room we were meeting in at the church and stared at the floor, which seemed to squirm at some moments. Then I went outside to a partial staircase stored in the hallway and sat on the top step. No one asked if everything was okay. At one point my pastor was right next to me in the hallway. It was like he didn't even see me, and I was completely fine with it. I was completely disengaged from the entire meeting and am honestly still in that place at this moment. I've sat literally somehow doing nothing productive all day long. I feel no inclination to even go to classes tomorrow, which is definitely a red flag for me personally because I am ANAL about grades and not missing class. I guess a good trade off is that I'm not feeling ALL that stressed about homework, but that is severely abnormal for me. I still feel the need to get it done, but no drive to do so. I can't just sit down and do it.
On another, more cheerful note, there has been a potential guy on my shelf of "stuff," since last summer. He's the only one I've ever felt attraction of any kind toward. His faith life complements mine in that he is very centered on the Word and I am very centered in Worship. I feel at home in his arms and feel like I don't have to hide anything from him. I want to run toward God with him. It's all in the Lord's timing, of course, and I'm learning patience. I am at peace with the situation, for the most part. It's a process for sure.
That's where I'm at. Thank you for reading if you did. Any advice or helpful comments are most certainly welcome. =)
