journey not recovery

My therapist says I don't need to solve all my conflicts right now. I am divided in so many ways and show it by splitting my skin wide open. It remains as my strongest voice when words lack the weight. Hospital gowns and gauze, scissors and stitches and the burn of lidocaine needles. The explaining and the downplaying so as not to be hospitalized. It's all on autopilot at this point. I know the right things to say and play the game. I have been cutting for 17 years and started at age 17. I'm so scarred people often ask if I was in a fire. My therapist says thank God for it. It's why I have survived this long. I say its been too long.

It was a kind thought this nurse had for me: "You can't be the sick girl. That's not you identy. You are a strong kick-ass woman." I understand what she means and it made me feel good in some ways but she also missed something important:  I never been anything but the sick girl. Invisible existence because people couldn't ever understand. Sick girl was also at 18, in her first psych admit. In her 20s when sick girl found the trauma unit and it was where she lived, she never left, never out for more than a week before she would be brought back in pulsating red and blue comes back to stay months longer. Sick girl was quiet but she's spit out words at her intended targets which often ended up with them crying. Not sick girl  Sick girl was in her 20's and tucked into her bed at night by her favorite nurse, always assigned to her every shift she worked. Sick girl's nurse. Sick girl's doctor was a kind of God to her and Sick Girl's social worker was

I have been the loudest person on the psych unit, wailing my heart out at times of tremendous pain that had been so built up over my life; breaking shit and cutting in front of people so impulsively; getting restrained; and arguing with people, instigating and once pouring a bottle of Ensure over a girl's head . Basically taking up the most time and attention. Did I know I was doing that? Hell no. I had no awareness of what I was doing or thought at all of the existence of other patients. I was going through something major, life-altering that until then had never been talked about.  I was in a place in my life where I believed in the depths of my heart that I can't trust anyone because everybody leaves. In addition to that, I my Self was not a solid being. I existed only in the eyes and the physical being with another. This created a dilemma. Trusting people who can't be trusted in order for me to exist. I would spend every day making people promise they weren't leavin