Since I began blogging, I’ve noticed something about the way I speak about myself. To write about a feeling, to open up about anything at all, it has to become unbearable inside of me. I carry everything inside for so long that when things finally come out, it feels like vomiting. It feels violent, visceral, and impossible to hold back any longer. I speak or write about things then. Most of the time, I can only let myself release things through writing or drawing. Still, even the words I publish here are things I’ve lived with for years before they ever reached my keyboard. For me, spilling my insides into the world is never natural. It feels like exposure and invasion. I feel like, once I’ve exposed something, it feels like I’ve stepped into its control.
After having talked to me for years, my therapist told me he suspected bulimia, a few times he mentioned depersonalization and encouraged me to research hypomania. I’ve always been fascinated by diagnoses, fascinated enough to know a little about everything, but labels terrify me. Deep down, I don’t believe I’m sick. If dozens of doctors hadn’t confirmed that I’ve had stress-induced eczema since the age of four, I might not even use the word “stress” at all for myself today.
I’ve come to the realization that help feels like a coal stove for me. Even when I “vomit” my feelings out once in a while, I feel unsure and scared. I am made of contradictions and my mood shifts several times a week. What version of myself should I trust to stick to? I don’t know. Reaching to someone burns me. Even in the presence of people I trust, talking about what hurts leaves me blank. My mind empties, my thoughts scatter, and suddenly I’m stripped of whatever small order I had to speak. “Maybe my mood will change in 10 minutes and I won’t feel like this anymore. Now that I’ve said this, every time this person looks at me, they’ll see it written across my forehead. Am I even sure this is how I really feel?”
I am aimless. I have talked to my therapist about not feeling like a whole person and I wanted help killing off different people in my mind to be left with only one. He basically told me it didn’t work that way, that I couldn’t just kill them and be done with it. I can’t tell people about this because I know they’ll do a whole song and dance about multiple personalities and I’m not ready to be misunderstood about something so personal.
In therapy, just when I began to uncover something, my brain shut down. I changed the subject, I drank before the next session and I eventually left therapy again. It’s only when I’m on my own and writing, sketching, pouring myself into something I can hold at a distance that my feelings rise to the surface again. So I think I will keep doing the one thing that I am used to do. I will keep on putting the feeling at arm’s length and give it form.
You might also like my Mirrors collection.
