journey not recovery

I used to not talk. I had the ability to speak but I lacked the words and the belief that nothing I had to say mattered or was worth being listened to. When I started therapy i sat mostly silent for whole sessions. When I was questioned about things I became so afraid of my reality, what I thought was real, being shattered in the light. I would skip sessions or else leave there feeling physically ill and going straight to bed in a darkened room, often missing classes. It's taken many therapists and a lot of years to learn to find words for things instead of acting them out. My therapist now tells me "Everything is important." I am learning that I have things worth saying that matter and deserve to be heard and listened to . However, I have yet to truly address my trauma. I was always an emergency, constantly, and not able to be safe, so talking about topics in depth was not really an option. Though I still react strongly to things and put myself in jeopardy, t...

I haven't yet survived my life. What is survival if it hasn't been exactly voluntary? In mental health we speak sometimes about "resiliency." To me, that word means getting through something difficult and coming out on the other side. To me, it's not the same as strength. Instead, for me resiliency has not been a choice. I haven't made it this far because I have wanted to necessarily. I have endured pain, trauma, life-altering grief while being forced into hospitals against my will, hooked up to feeding tubes involuntarily when I wanted to starve myself to death, stitched back together when I cut an artery open, and had 911 called on me other times I've tried to end my life. Good luck? Rotten luck? Sometimes I can't be sure. But what I do know is that after all these years I don't feel like what people call a Survivor. I don't feel strong or really yet that I have chosen life. I feel I am living halfway, in a kind of Limbo. Alive but not ...

I remember all the times at Proctor 2 my nurses used to spend with me, trying to get me to eat something instead of waiting til my blood glucose dropped to coma levels and they had to administer glycogen. I didn't think that unless my body was blatantly in crisis that eating was even necessary. Alex would tell me the dangers; that if they ever needed to revive me they would end up crushing my body. He would urge me on with bites of an apple, with juice. Christina would make me hopeful English muffins with cereal pieces glued into a smiling face on top. Mini Gatorade bottles with "Drink Me" signs taped to it like I was Alice, forever trying to grow smaller when they wanted me taking up more space. The days my vitals would drop too low to be allowed off the hall I would gaze through the heavy locked screens, my face squashed against them. I knew I was missing out on friends and the world and whatever it was my life was supposed to be. Swallowed tubes slid down my throat, ...

In my disappearance I am more visible. Self-enclosed, not needing, I stare unblinking at my reflection as it fades and becomes more unrecognizable. I revisit traumas and wonder if they really existed at all. I bring myself back to the same scene over and over again. Overturned, struggling. Intrusive. Bleeding, I make pain visible in order that I may see a truth. My body translates for me where words lack. I watch my limbs shrink in, find myself in the spaces around them, become negative space. I know I am badly failing at survival but it feels like the only way to live. I wait to fall farther. All I'm left with is an emptiness, a powerful sense of loss.  I tear apart my life looking to find it and now my time seems almost up. I am still a five year-old child, just knowing she has to get away from the body, the scene of the crime. Hospital girl, in files and hallways, waiting always. Waiting for doctors, waiting to get out, my life is a series of waiting rooms. There is no end t...

One of the many challenges of having both a severe eating disorder and mental illness is that nowhere seems equipped to deal with all of me. When I'm in treatment at an eating disorder unit there is little to no support for my PTSD, depresssion, or BPD issues. I often get placed in strictly psychiatric wards to deal with my dangerous levels of self-harm and suicidalityehile my lakv of eating goes barely dealt with. When I was put in Tewksbury State Hospital it was for the above SI reasons but I was also dealing with the constant starvation and weight loss that comes from having anorexia. It was easy for me to keep it quiet and let my cutting and scars overshadow everything else. That's what using gets the most attention for imminent risk and it can be frustrating. My disorder is often complicit in allowing this to happen in order to avoid the refeeding and weight gain process that comes from eating disorder treatment. I have never received complete treatment that encomp...