Forgive Me

... I forgot I ran this blog. So, please, my dears, forgive me. I'll do my best to re-cap.
The last post I made was in May... early May, so I'll start there. May was hard for me, really, brutally, teeth-grittingly hard for me. Flashbacks, all the lot of what you can get with PTSD. It sucked. I was a mess. .... Even more so than usual. However, my (awesome) individual therapist has been helping me with that, and she had me go to a CPT for PTSD information session near the end of the month. Trauma treatment is not a thing I'm excited about, but I know I just can't live like this forever. I can't. With that in mind, my therapist is trying to get me ready to start trauma treatment in (I think) late September. She thinks that if I do this treatment while I'm still in DBT for BPD, it'll be easier, because I'll be able to use and keep learning skills that can help me tolerate what this trauma treatment demands. I'm mostly just going along with whatever she thinks is best, or what she thinks I'm ready for. If I let myself completely be in charge of those decisions, I never would have gotten help to begin with. So that was May. Teary, tumultuous, just ... bad. Dark.
That's not to say I'm a ray of sunshine today, though.
June was better, I'll say that. I finished my philosophy course - which felt like a big achievement given all the 'vulnerability factors' - and started a new course, studies in literature. I can carry it into the summer, and even though the school is only open on Wednesday afternoons in the summer, I get to get - hopefully - another credit. My guidance counselor is hopeful that they'll be able to grant me about five or six 'freebie' credits based on life experience/etc. ... Which would mean that I only have to take between one and three courses in order to graduate. Which would allow me to graduate around January. Which would have me registering for college. I'm really happy about that.
Another development is my quickly-expanding friendship with a girl I've been 'kind of good-ish' friends with since late 2013. She and I have been spending a lot of time together - we have similar mental health issues; we both kind of.. have no one else*; we have a lot in common, we just get along. We just 'get' each other. I don't feel like I have to wear my daedric armor around her.. she's safe.
The anniversary of my being recovered from drug addiction was.. well, it was hard. I had intense cravings the night before and the day of. I resolved to celebrate only the 'big' anniversaries. This was six years.
Church/temple's been going really well, too. I'm getting to know a lot of people and I'm feeling really accepted. I've never had a community like this before, and it's just blowing me away at how positive it feels.
And now, to the now. Summer's out, so the boyfriend is working less. I'd really like it if we could go to the zoo or to a conservation area and go swimming. I'm - hopefully - starting violin lessons soon, I just need my boyfriend to get it all squared away - he's in charge of sign-ups. I'm trying to write more. I'm trying to enter into participation more. I'm trying to be more social. I'm trying to start doing nice things for myself.
Also, on a 'meds' tangent, I'm two weeks into taking Abilify and haven't noticed too much. Any experience or advice is welcomed.

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*Story time: My 'best friend', the one I've known since kindergarten, has in the past year or so begun to prove herself as not the kind of friend I want in my life as an adult, increasingly so. I haven't trusted her in well over six years, and I'm afraid a falling out would mean a spilling of my secrets. She's a very narcissistic person but also plays the martyr.

Wear Purple

Tomorrow is May 1.
I didn't know it until today, but May is sexual assault awareness month, and there's this campaign. 'No One Asks For It!' encourages people to wear purple in a show of support, and it's all across Canada, which is pretty neat. It's a simple idea, and it'd be really cool if it caught on and the hashtag trended. It's listed as an event on Facebook, and I'm sure would be easy to find - I decided to keep the link out of the post.
I love that this is a thing, and I'll absolutely be wearing what little purple clothing I own. Though I do worry a little about how much I publicly involve myself, especially on social media. I don't think I can take any prying questions about my experiences. I think, though, that it's important to try.
I find it hard, sometimes, being in the positions of both activist and affected. I feel like it's important to be vocal about these issues, but it can get really uncomfortable when you, as a victim, inevitably feel some sensitivity. It makes it hard to lead a rally.
Tomorrow is May 1. Sexual assault awareness month begins. #NoOneAsksForIt.
I am an 'affected'. I am a victim. I am a survivor.
It's been years, and it's still harder than I would've imagined. I don't like to talk about my experience or really give any details, but I feel very connected to this campaign. I wish I could be stronger. I wish I didn't equate strength to being able to 'get over' a trauma. What I mean is that I wish I had my PTSD under control, and knew how to cope, and was able to advocate the campaign and talk about myself, rather than uncomfortably always speaking in the third person and making everything objective. .....But that isn't where I'm at yet, and that's okay. I'll get there. This is the year that I decided to eventually go into PTSD/trauma treatment. When I'm ready. When my therapist thinks I'm ready. For now, this is the best I can do. But it's real, and it's important.
Tomorrow is important. It's important that people are participating and paying attention. It's amazing, and the support is beautiful.

Illuminated by Forty-Nine Candles

It's been two days, going on three, so I feel like I can safely say - without 'jinxing' anything - that I'm feeling better than usual. I'm feeling better than I have in months. I'm feeling better than I have since 2014, probably earlier.

I haven't cried since Monday. I haven't felt so anxious or depressed that it was overwhelming since Monday. 

I feel productive. I feel good about school - I feel like I'm doing well and that there actually is some 'light at the end of the tunnel' that is my 'high school' career. I want to get up in the morning. I don't feel sleep-deprived. I have energy. I'm enjoying things. 

I feel like, at least for now, I'm out of 'crazy mode'. I feel like I can switch to 'girlfriend mode' and do all the things I want to do with my boyfriend. Or to 'student mode' and work harder at school. It's nice. I know that this spell of feeling better can't last - it never does -, but I feel so good. I don't even feel that good. I don't even feel happy.. but I'm actually experiencing positive emotions and I can't remember the last time I've felt.. normal. Above my baseline, at least.. low as it is. I don't know how to feel what I'm feeling, though. I feel like this, feeling good, doesn't belong to me. Like I don't deserve it. I feel guilty for feeling good. I feel bad for feeling good, because I just don't know how to handle that.

It doesn't matter, though. I'll take it. I know this won't last, so I'm just.. trying not to think about it. I'm trying to just live it, this period of feeling good, and allow myself a break from the stress of literally always being in a low mood, almost completely unable to feel anything positive for more than thirty seconds. It's nice. It feels.. smooth. Like ice, but comfortable. Warm. Like a water slide at a public pool, all warm and cleansing and bright and easy and happy.

I know I'm going to have to face up in May, but I'm trying my best to ignore that inevitability.*

I'm trying my best to feel the sun. I'm feeling good about so many things, without even trying. School. I've been making progress, and I'm finally almost at the end of the booklets for my philosophy course. Therapy. I feel like I'm learning about myself and accepting so much, and I feel really good about my individual therapist. My boyfriend. He's been just as stressed as I have - in completely different ways. I'm just feeling good about things, like I'm accepting things. I've been reading and playing video games, and I've been eating. I've been able to eat more normally than I think I have in a long time. I feel good about being awake. I want to be awake. Clearly, I'm still in a state of surprise about this.

With this Saturday being Beltane, I'm feeling like the way I'm feeling isn't coincidence. Well, it probably is... but with this being an auspicious time, religiously, I feel like the Goddess - and maybe the God, too - has something to do with it. Like somehow maybe this is a reward of sorts for beginning my foray into Wicca.

I'm just feeling good, and I'm trying just live it, not dissect it. I'm treading uncharted waters.

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*My diagnosis of PTSD is related to a trauma that happened in May.

Speedbump Update

Looking back to the last time I posted here: I was a mess.
I still am, really.
I'm just a bit more anchored to life than then.
I started group DBT; this morning was my second group. It's a group of all women, and they all seem nice enough. I think I'm still too anxious to think about making a friend there. The group itself is.. confusing. The week that I started, they were doing one of the 'hard' parts of DBT. (Dialectics.) So, it didn't quite take, but I have at least a year of this to get it right. Today.. this week is mindfulness.. it makes a little more sense.
I've still been having my individual sessions with my therapist, and they're going really well.
I'm a rollercoaster in black-and-white. I get down, so down - 'pits of hell' down - and when I start to feel better, I start to feel worse because I shouldn't be allowed to feel good, or I don't deserve it, or I start feeling worse simply because I'd even instantaneously felt some relief.
My going to the Wiccan Church is helping... it's really great. I even made a friend there. Everyone else is wonderful and nice and welcoming. My therapist thinks this - religion - is good for me. Having a higher power to place faith in when I need help.
I don't have too much to tell, it'd just been a while.

I'm Still Alive

It's been a tumultuous couple of weeks.
My depression - that usually spans October/November - February - is continuing into April with a vengeance. It's gotten bad.
Last week, on Thursday, I wanted to kill myself. I wanted to do it. I was going to do it. I could barely stop to catch a thought, my mind was racing. I was hysterical, crying and incoherent. It was when I got home from my CBT group, and it was about 4PM, so my boyfriend was at work. I called him, because I didn't know what to do, and he's the first person I turn to in every situation. In retrospect, I feel incredibly guilty for putting him in that position. He couldn't leave work, and I made him worry he'd come home to me passed out, or a corpse.
So I called a local youth crisis hotline. I'd never called before. I'd always had my boyfriend call and speak for me, because I would get too anxious and I would be crying so hard I couldn't speak properly. Well, that was still the case this time. I don't know how I managed to make the call, but I'm kind of glad that I did. It was a woman who answered, and she was really helpful. We talked for about a half hour, and I felt much more calm, and a little in control by the end of it.
I was going to call a local shelter - more of a safe environment really - to see if I could just go there for a few hours until I felt safe, but I felt like I was okay enough to try to stay safe on my own.
I took a hot shower, used my favorite body wash - strong smells can be grounding - , put on comfortable clothes, made a tea, put a movie - Twilight - on, and got my 3DS and the stuffed Hello Kitty that my boyfriend gave me. I curled up in a blanket writing in my journal, and I tried to be okay. I made it through the night... obviously.
I've been more in control every day since, but every day I still have strong thoughts and urges to hurt and kill myself.
I don't know how to cope. I've been drinking more than I should but I don't care. I woke up for school this morning and went back to sleep for an hour and a half before I finally got up and half-assedly went to school.
I've been trying to write more, because I can turn my blood into ink. I've been listening to music.. a lot. I've been amping up my studies in Wicca, and just today I picked up some more incense for the coming full moon and invoking Hecate, and to dispel the negativity in my life; also picked up a leather bag just the right size for my raw clear quartz point on a string. I burned frankincense earlier today, and cleansed the crystal, and took the opportunity to attune with the Goddess. I'm finding things that.. not work, but help. Improve the moment.
I've been seeing my new therapist - in the DBT program - weekly, and I feel really positive about that. I feel like she can help me. When I saw her on Friday, we talked about Thursday night, and we talked about why I feel like CBT isn't helping me. She made a good point in asking me if exposures are really going to help me get better if I don't have trauma treatment. That my lack of improvement and progress in my attempted exposures is valid, because I have this impediment that the rest of the women in my CBT group don't have.
I get to start group DBT on the fourteenth, and I'm excited about that. It's going to be hard... really hard, but I need to do it. I can't live like this forever. I mean, I would, I absolutely would... but I want to be the kind of girl my boyfriend can love without stress, keep forever, not have to worry about. I know recovery should come from within, but I'm not quite there. I feel like I'm a little closer to being 'there' now than I was a year ago, so that's something. I don't care if I get better, to be honest. However, I care about my boyfriend - I love him more than I hate myself, most of the time - and I want to be better, healthy, recovering and eventually recovered for him. If nothing else, I want a life with him. I also have my goal of becoming a published poet.. so I have little motivators.
I get to - finally - see the psychiatrist on the ninth, which is a great thing, because my medications are in need of some serious tweaking. I know I need my Valium upped. I want to up my Wellbutrin, because now that my purging is almost completely under control I'm much less at risk for seizures, and my depression is at a point where I feel like I need .. more. I love Wellbutrin. I haven't gained at all on it, and I had virtually no side effects, and it just.. works. I just need a little more. .... And I feel like something needs to be done about my psychosis. I'm on Lithium and Saphris - antipsychotics - and I feel like something could be done with that. .... And now that I think of it, I'd like to up my Clonidine - sleep medication - too, because I'm on a very minimal dose, and it doesn't do as much as it could in terms of keeping trauma nightmares at bay.
I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like I'm robotic, just going through the motions and every day is the same, occasionally needing to re-charge and being completely useless for a time.
So I'm still here. Alive. Safe.
I'm not okay, but I'm doing my best.

Post-Birthday Update

My birthday came and passed, and I'm still alive. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about that, but I'm trying to see things in a less (completely) negative light.
My boyfriend bought me this really nice metal travel mug that I know was expensive as hell, and he's giving me a bunch of money to see Andrew Jackson Jihad on the 24th, which is too nice of him.. so it's a good present(s).
I had plans to go out with my mother to get coffee and get our nails done. I really thought about cancelling because I hadn't voluntarily seen her in probably a year or more, but I ended up going. It was... awkward, initially, but we started talking, just casual light catch-up stuff. She gave me a book for my birthday - 9-11 by Noam Chomsky - which was really sweet, because I`m pretty sure I`ve only ever mentioned liking his stuff once or twice, and that was while I was still living with her.
We got our nails done, which was nice. We got to talk but nothing of real weight because, well, very public. Afterward we went to go get another coffee, and ended up talking until around 9:30pm. We caught up on years. It was really good. I feel like it`s safe to have her in my life again. She`s doing really well, and knowing what she`s gone through - and having gone through it myself - I feel rather proud of her. I`m just really glad I can be in regular contact with her again. I really did miss her.. I just didn`t realise the extent until we talked.
I`m alive. I didn`t feel the need to drink heavily, or feel the urge to attempt any more than I usually do. Less so, even.
I`m not sure if being off school for a week will be helpful in terms of mental rest, but at least I have the ability to take time to rest. I have, however, been doing some schoolwork. I got more work for the break, in case I finish the book I`m on and want to do more work.
My dad told me that he and my step-mom are probably coming down to visit next weekend - they were going to come for my birthday, but my dad planned it so last minute that they couldn`t make it. They live about five or six hours north of me. When I do see them, though, it will probably include some sort of family gathering - I don`t have a big family, just grandparents and two sets of aunts and uncles and cousins. It`ll be nice, though, because my dad will probably have my birthday present. He ordered it online and it didn`t come in time. Plus, seeing extended family so soon after my birthday almost guarantees birthday money. That would be infinitely helpful in getting started with Wicca.
This week is going to be okay. I`m going to make it okay. I have CBT group on Thursday, and I have my one-on-one with my new DBT therapist on Friday. I`m going to read a lot, rest my mind, and just try to live.

What I Want

My new therapist, today, asked me what it'll look like, when I get into therapy and start learning coping skills and start getting better.
What I want it to look like.
My answers were, in my opinion, lacklustre. Going to college, improving the relationships I have.
What I want in my life that I don't right now, because of my illnesses.
If money weren't an issue, I want to be riding again. I need it. So, a job. If I had a job, I'd have the money to ride again - believe me, it's expensive to take lessons and buy everything necessary.
That part of the conversation reminded me of what I want, what my ultimate life goals are. What I feel I must accomplish before I die.
Become a published poet - even if only 100 copies of my collection is printed.
And, if I get so lucky, buy a horse. I do, technically, have a horse at my grandparents', but as I've said, she's pretty old for a horse and can't do most of the things I want to do. She is a huge sweetheart, though, and will always be up for a hack in the fields - being a mare though, she does have a tendency to be an asshole from time to time. I have the scars on my chin (fell on my face so as to break my fall properly and not break my neck which easily could have happened) to prove it. I used to take lessons, but stopped. I loved it though. It was the highlight of every week. Mucking out a stall actually makes me happy.
I have things to look forward to. I have things I want to do, to have. I have reasons to stay a while longer. I have a great love. I have two best friends whom I can say I actually trust. I have the opportunities to try to get better, through therapies that are completely free to me because I live in Canada. I have so many books I want to read. I have religions to explore. I have places to see. I have tattoos to get.
I will make it to ten minutes from now. I will make it to thirty minutes from now. I will make it to an hour from now. I will make it to safely getting myself to bed. I will make it to the morning, and in the morning, I'll take it as slow as I need to.
I think I just decided to live, for the time being.

Well, This was Unexpected

It's the night before my birthday. Twenty-second, if anyone's interested.
It's causing... major depression... and suicidal thoughts. Including plans and intent. I just.. I never planned - when I was in my early teens, I made myself a promise that I wouldn't live to nineteen. When I did, however, make it to nineteen, that old promise wasn't on my mind. I celebrated by going out with my grandparents, and later going for drinks with a friend. I had reasons to live. I had a life I felt was worth living. Sure, I was working part-time at a pizza place and I'd dropped out of high school, but I had my boyfriend. I had - still have - this great love, this wonderful, beautiful man who loved me for every good, bad, and `somewhere in between` thing that makes me up.
Well, as time went on, my mental health got worse, and I`ve said before that I got to a point at which I was attempting several times. I did almost everything I could to succeed. My boyfriend had other plans. He has physically restrained me multiple times, stripped me down in an instant and thrown me into the coldest possible shower - dive reflex - taken me and stayed with me in emergency psych, everything. He did his homework on every of my diagnoses, and he loves me harder than I deserve. He`s why I`m alive. Cheesy, I know, but when you think you have no reason to live, any motivation is good motivation.. and I think in time, eventually, I`ll be recovering for myself.
My twentieth and twenty-first birthdays weren`t upsetting. They were nice. Drinking with friends, having a casual gathering of safe people.
This year, for some reason, it`s different. I don`t know if it`s because my mental health just still isn`t getting better, or maybe is getting worse, but the idea of having lived one more year in this consciousness is repellent, abhorrent, terrifying to me.
Like I said before, the notion of dying at twenty-seven is ... intruiging - five more years.. I think I might be able to manage five more years. More intruiging is dying on my birthday.. better still, dying the night before.
I'm working so, so hard, just to stay. To think of reasons why.
I have my boyfriend.. and he loves me, or at least makes a very convincing falsehood. He's told me he would be (his words) a wreck if I died. If I killed myself.
I have small events and things coming up I'm excited about. I'm seeing one of my favorite bands with one of my best friends on the 24th. I'm doing well in school. I'm finally able to start the therapy I've been waiting a year and a half for. I'm reconciling with my mother - tomorrow, we're supposed to go get our nails done together and catch up. My boyfriend spent money he didn't have on a present for me.. and as much as I feel guilty that he spent money on me, I love presents. Little celebrations help me get though things.
What's huge right now is therapy. I just today had my first appointment with my new DBT therapist. She's lovely, an older white woman who seems... relatable.. like I can, eventually, be open with. I'll get to start group therapy in about a month. I know DBT works for me, and this program is a million times more intensive than the one I did in 2013... so that's a reason to stick around. Why not wait a couple of months, see if therapy helps or even does anything? It's worth a shot, right? Maybe I'll even start to get better, or make progress. I want to learn how to cope, and I want to live forever with my boyfriend. Logically, it's easy to see that I shouldn't attempt. I have love in my life, supports in place, goals - I want to get my high school diploma, go to journalism school, and be a published writer/poet. In that order. Those are things I want out of life. I want to be published, and I want a horse. I'm trying my best to focus on things that could happen in the future that would be good enough to make me hold on. Graduating high school. Applying to colleges and universities, and getting an acceptance letter. Maybe even getting married - that 'maybe' was brought to you by commitmentphobia. Buying my first horse. Traveling. Seeing more than this section of the world. Writing for sources I love - Jezebel, Feministing, Bitch Media. Writing poems I'm proud enough of to try to get published, and actually getting published.
Right now, I'm trying to keep myself safe. I've confined myself to the living room - I brought water, snacks, the stuffed Hello Kitty my boyfriend got me (that's really just comforting), I have Netflix, Animal Crossing and Pokemon, music, I have my journal and my poetry notebook, I have a number to call if things start getting out of hand... I'm doing all that I can to make it through the night.
That's all I can do. Go day by day.
But that sickly sweet desire is smelling stronger.

Preface

I'm new to proper blogging - I hail from the land of Tumblr, so I'll do the best I can.

I've had 'issues' for as long as I can recall. My teens were a figurative disaster area, and it's been a rollercoaster of sorts since. To really give the best preface possible, I should explain. I was a teenage drug addict. I lived an incredibly high-risk lifestyle, and I'm lucky I got out okay. I've been clean for five years now, six this coming June.
After I got clean, things got a little easier, but my mental health only improved in the addiction regard. Looking back, the warning signs were clear, in terms of mental illness.
It wasn't until about October of 2013 that my mental health started interfering with my life - rather, my ability to hold a part-time job. I was, however, already on anti-psychotics for a mental illness no doctor could put their finger on. Before that time, though, I was.. functioning. I got by.

It was around that time that my restricting got worse, I started self-harming again, and I made a few unsuccessful suicide attempts.
My memory of my first visit to the emergency psych ward at the hospital is a little fuzzy. I was dazed, and was at my worst point yet. It wasn't until my second time there that the doctor and nurses referred me to treatment. They referred me to a six week DBT program, because they speculated that I might have BPD (borderline personality disorder).
I got into the program quickly after being referred, and after being officially diagnosed with BPD, started both group and one-on-one therapy. It was at this time that my other diagnoses were.. examined. I had already been diagnosed with anorexia - purge subtype, as well as dysthymia. After a.. screening, for lack of better word, I was diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). I was also diagnosed with social anxiety, though meeting the criteria didn't involve quite as many questions.
The psychiatrist assigned to me found a combination of medications that fit together, fit me, and also wouldn't be a trigger (my psychiatrist made sure that every medication she put me on was not what she called "a weight gainer"). The program was time-limited, so at the end of the six weeks I was referred to a much more intensive DBT program, which I was told could be at least a year long depending upon my progress. The waiting list for this program was approximately eighteen months. In the meantime, my therapist referred me to a short CBT program for social anxiety/phobias. I also started attending a self harm support group, and on January 19 of 2014, I stopped self-harming. I can proudly say that I haven't relapsed - though the temptation is always there.

It was a while before I got into the CBT program, and when it did, I didn't find it to be very helpful. Even so, I went every week, did all the homework, and just tried.
After that program ended, my depression was peaking again, so my CBT therapist found me another CBT program, for mood disorders (mostly anxiety and depression). I'm in that program now, and today was session five of twelve.

A little over a week ago, I got the call I'd been waiting for. The head of the DBT program had found me a (female) therapist, which meant that I'll be able to have my first appointment with her (March 13, the day before my birthday) and start one-on-one. From what I'm told, a few weeks into that, I'll be able to start group therapy, and I'll have a psychiatrist to manage my psych medications.

Now, at present, my mental health is on the decline again. I work really hard to eat every day, at least once, and ideally something small while I'm at school. My depression is spiking again, and I do have very self-destructive thoughts. Some of them are suicidal ideations. My psychosis is rearing its ugly head again - for the past three days, I've been in and out of dissociating, and constantly derealized. My anxiety, like my depression, is a constant, something I just.. live with.

All that said, I'm doing the best I can.
I'm trying to do things to feel.. not happy, but at least lessen the bad thoughts for a time. I've picked up playing guitar again, after over a year of not playing out of depression. I play games on my 3DS all the time. I'm writing my poetry again (it's not my best work, but at least I'm producing).
I may not be ready to 'recover' right now, but I'm taking baby steps.
This blog will be primarily about my treatment, but I'm sure some other personal things will slip in somehow.
I'll probably make a (much shorter) post as a kind of 'about me'.

Sending good vibes.