Posts

on drama

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Growing up I was the least dramatic. Silent, not speaking. Not expressing pain in medical procedures, learning to deny all physical pain altogether to others and then to myself. Denying wants and needs. Not expressing emotions, thoughts, feelings to anyone and then diminishing them to myself, discounting, telling them to shut up, that they weren't important, werent even real. Learning never to complain or bother or exist.  Cutting when I was in the unbearable emotional pain I told myself I had no reason to feel, a cut being a reason something was wrong, something to point to. Bandage and fix. Proof of something. No one could know. Then people knew and I got horrible reactions from medical professionals but no reaction from my family. I was bad for doing it and crazy and deeply ashamed of hurting myself. I was fucked up. Then I was screaming with it, more and more extreme and outrageous and reckless attacks on myself but then witnesses to hurt and scare to share my horror my death
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Part II: Object permanence, or lack thereof

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In my previous post on object permanence ( object permanence or lack thereof ),  I discussed how impossible it felt for me to "hold onto" others; to grasp their image in my mind, to continue to feel a relationship, connection, and even realize their and my own existence. Out of my sight I could barely seem to clutch anything solid to tell me the other person was still there. I could not internalize them. Quick Note Piaget put forth the theory that children obtain "object permanence" at around the age of 4-7 months. At this stage children are able to learn that objects continue to exist even when not in view. The psychoanalyst Lacan said that between 6-18 mo the infant becomes able to recognize themselves as a separate entity, to be able to see themselves and hold onto a self-image. I couldn't grip this myself, the mirror was not provided well enough. This means drifting in the void, darkness around you. Reaching out in all directions can you see me am I here?  A
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Confessions of a chronic cutter

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Talking about cutting today in therapy, and guiltily comparing someone else's surface scratching to what I view as like, "successful,"  more extreme cutting for me, made me think of the ways that I kind of romanticize self-harm. Only for myself though. I don't wish others to harm themselves. At times I view self-destruction and damage as an almost beautiful thing. I describe gaping gashes and streaming blood in romantic words in my head, with infatuation, calling up the magical feeling of release and relief. I think of it as something special and perfect. Intimate. I daydream about different ways to cause more severe physical harm, like the times I decided to burn my arm with a metal knife heated against the stove, and pressed it, scorching my skin. That was an achievement in my world. Something I feel like I should do again, that I've been slacking. I need to push further to feel the euphoria and fulfillment. Danger is in my body. It feels so inticing. It calls t
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the invisible girl

I have been in a lot of treatment and met many people who got the help and attention, intervention, early on. I am not one of those people, though I needed that help desperately. My mother describes me as a very young child to be outgoing and bubbly, scaring away other children in the playground with my overwhelming friendliness. I was afraid of nothing. But by the age of 5 there was a split in who I was. That happy child morphed into a sad, depressed little girl. I shut down completely, lost my voice and rarely spoke. My kindergarten teacher commented to my mother that she was concerned I never smiled. My third grade teacher also expressed concern. My mother's response? "That's just how Caitlin is." I would cry at night and not have the words for what was wrong and she just would get frustrated. I was wordless. The Unsayable had me destroyed. But that's not who I was originally. My trauma changed who I was. It altered the person I was supposed to be, suicidal tho
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lines drawn

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My cuts are open-mouthed sirens singing high-pitched help psalms. If you looked you would know. If you saw I wouldn't have to tell. My parents saw it as a suicide attempt that first trip for stitches. Then they never spoke of it again. The day after no one would speak to me at all as if I had sinned against them. Each wound is a different cry, a different voice. Each is as significant as the next one and the one before it. Each one is silenced and shrouded in gauze and bandages and often never spoken of to anyone. If I slice my skin in silence is my skin even really split? If no one sees it where is the proof it took place? Sometimes I want someone to take care of them but when I do I downplay it, I am calm and smiling "this is not the worst." 17 years and I started at 17. The damage has been done, the stitches aren't cosmetic. My case worker doesn't ask about my cutting anymore, it is as predictable as the seasons. But no one sees it happen for real on the bathro
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birthday blues

Birthdays have been hard won. Is "won" the right word when it has been a battle but not a victory? I didn't try for this.  Every year I'm here feels like a shameful failure, honestly. I value the love I receive and others' care but I would really rather not still be here. It's a reminder I have failed my suicide efforts, reminds of the crushing despair of coming to in another ICU bed, or the taste of charcoal in my throat, the tangle of wires and monitors, stitches and hospitalizations. Survival is a lie. It doesn't show the death I feel in my soul and it does not do justice to the pain and trauma I have endured. I was killed off early on, something essential stolen from me. Who I was supposed to be forever altered and destroyed. I am a ghost girl wandering hospital halls and emergency rooms. I am a scarred spector searching, self destructing to try to fill the sinking emptiness that consumes me, the longing that will never be filled. Black hole never whol
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emotional starvation

Need is like a bottomless pit. Like hunger that is un-ending. I receive and feel something good for a moment, but then it highlights a lack of something essential. I start to feel starving. What I received doesn't feel like Enough. There is so much I didn't get and I can't catch up to it all. Then I am filled with fear and wanting. I need so much that no one could possibly give it without becoming drainers themselves because I need EVERYTHING. Going back to the beginning. I start to feel like it goes so deep that it's an emergency. I need something NOW to fill the void that opens up wider every time I am given something good. I can't get enough. No one can be near enough. There is a reaching and then fear. Fear of the hole in me and how it devours my core. It encompasses everything. Then I want to detach. Why eat at all if you're just going to become hungry again later? Override the hunger with starvation so that the hunger goes away. Live in the lack so that it
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