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.

Maybe a Kind of Therapy my Therapist Would Disapprove of

So I've been interested in Wicca - rather, learning about it - for probably over six months. A few months ago, I picked up a couple introductory books of sorts (Scott Cunningham's Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner and Soraya's The Witch's Companion)
I've just barely made progress reading the former - as in, I started reading it today - and already I feel like it just.. makes sense. Speaking religiously, from what I'm reading, Wicca is the closest thing to my core religious/spiritual beliefs. As a child, I believed in the power of nature, the likelihood of reincarnation and multiple deities.
I love the idea of rituals, and am very excited to (eventually) perform some. I've been into crystal healing since I was about sixteen, I just didn't associate the powers of the crystals with Wiccan beliefs. (I got clean at sixteen, and wearing an amethyst point made me ... feel strong. I'm not quite sure how else to put that.) I've also been reading my own tarot cards since I was about seventeen, but didn't associate that either.
I've found some great-looking starter sets on Etsy, plus some decently-priced crystal balls and cauldrons because those are the only things the sets don't include. I'm just really hoping for birthday money. My birthday is this Saturday, so there is hope.
To get to the point, I'm feeling like Wicca may well be a very positive thing for me... however, I know that most therapists don't relish the thought of a patient who practices magic and believes in what is typically beyond the normal.. who also has frequent psychosis issues. That's not to say I'm letting that stop me from getting into this, though. I think learning Wicca and becoming a witch could actually help me help myself - I already know that the crystals make me feel stronger. I wear a wire-wrapped rose quartz any time I'm dressed, and I wear stone plugs (in my ears). As of late, I've been wearing tiger's eye. I did have a fantastic malachite pair but they're too small now.
I'm just feeling very positive about this... venture. It feels like a light at the end of what might as well be a literal tunnel, with the way I've been doing lately, and especially given that my birthday is only getting closer.
The Wiccan principle that to hurt your own body is to go against the belief system is actually something I feel like I might be able to convince myself is a good enough reason to try a little more - to stay self-harm free, to work on my eating or at least make eating manageable, and maybe even to try to stay alive.
I don't know. I'm just feeling ... well, not positive, but much less negative.