Dear Trichotillomania

I don’t like how you make me feel about myself. You point out my flaws. You constantly remind me of how imperfect I am. You taunt me, persuade to destroy myself, mock me for believing you. You hurt me. You hurt the person I am meant to be.

But I know that I would never be myself without you. I know I would be arrogant, selfish, and never easily humbled. Thank you for bringing me down at moments where I need to be reminded of who I am.

You are blessing and a curse, Trich. Thanks for that.

Dear Depression

If you please, fuck off. This is the second time I have been put on anti-depressants. The second time I’ve been referred for counselling. I know it’s not your fault. I know my fucked-up family and high anxiety are triggering. I know you’re just the way I cope. But fuck you, all the same.

You’re making me push away the love of my life, and it fucking hurts to not know if I mean it when I say I love him. You’re making it impossible for me to do my university work, making is a chore to get up in the morning, to get shower, to get dressed, to leave the flat, to talk to people, to smile. I dread to think what’s going to happen to my grades because of you.

I need to get my mental health back on track or I run the risk of not being able to work. I run the risk of not being hired for jobs, of being lied to about why I didn’t get the position and someone else, less qualified than I, did.

I need to remember how it feels to love my partner, to not be numb towards him for fear of being hurt. I need to remember that he loves me, that he would never actively seek to hurt me, that he only wants me to get better.

I need to remember that although my parents made shitty choices and let them reflect onto me, it doesn’t mean that I’m a bad person.

I need to remember and you’re making that fucking difficult.

So please, fuck off and let me live my life the way it should be lived.

Dear PTSD

I know you mean well. Really, you do. You come from my cortex, and from the dim history of human evolution. You track things that might be a threat, and when you see them again, you send an emergency message to the emotional part of my brain, to prepare for fight or flight.

You want to keep me safe; you have one job, dear cortex, and you do it exceedingly well. When you perceive a threat, you snapshot everything.When you see any of those things again, you raise my anxiety levels according to how threatened I was when you took that snapshot of that thing you just noticed again. And how often it was there when I was threatened.

But the problem is, I now have a consciousness. Your feudal-like workmanship (unquestionably excellent - but also unquestioning) is simply out of date in the modern brain. I wish you’d listen to the more modern part sometimes; the part that knows that sitting in a pub is a perfectly safe thing to do, even if that song gets played, or somebody mentions the summer of 2010.

By all means, please do alert me to a bloke in an EDL t-shirt which you spot out of the corner of my eye! But please, please, Mr Cortex; take feedback in the constructive manner in which my consciousness offers it. Mr Consciousness doesn’t want to hurt your feelings; he’s well aware of the tough job you do. When it seems like he’s trying to ignore you - or even when he tells you to please, please just shut the fuck up – it’s not that he doesn’t appreciate your services in general. In fact, he thinks you’re invaluable! But if only you could more easily take on board the corrections when you flag up a false positive, all our lives would be so much easier, and so much more pleasant.

Being in a specific room, or on a specific road, or with a specific friend may once have been in a time of real danger. But that doesn’t mean the room was dangerous in itself. Really!

Maybe you see the more modern part of my brain as a spoiled youngster, and you hark back to the simpler times, when you were a lad, and when fight-or-flight was the only way to be. I understand; nostalgia is a wonderful thing – but the world has moved on, Mr Cortex. I know that – realistically - you will never join me in the present, and you are stuck in your ways. But I want to embrace you for the useful things you do for me (making me jump backwards if I hear a car horn sound as I step into the street) and yet distance myself from the other things you do (making me shake all over in panic when I hear a name or a phrase or see somebody wearing a certain type of headgear).

But I can’t distance myself from you, Mr Cortex. You are an inseparable part of me. So instead, I shall embrace you. I shall learn more about you, and I shall learn how to train you to not recognise those signals that don’t mean danger. You’re so old., Mr Cortex, that I don’t even speak the same language as you. I have to communicate with pictures, and actions, and it takes a few attempts to get the message over. You’re a bit slow, in your old (evolutionary) age.

Dear old Mr Cortex; my distant ancestor (yet current biology), who loves me and cares for me – yet who can seem so alien - and a bit doddery, if I’m honest.

We’ll keep on plugging away at those pesky triggers, you and I – until one day we can both be at peace again.

Dear Schizoaffective Disorder

I’m not going to let you be the end of me.

You are not who I am. 

Dear Borderline Personality Disorder

Do you know how much i dislike you? No, dislike isn’t a strong enough word, I despise you. You have fucked me over repeatedly. Day after day, week after week, year after year.

For eighteen years now, I’ve felt so different. I’ve always known there was something wrong. I’ve always been so different from everyone else.

The chronic depression, explosive anger, hallucinations, self harm, suicidal thoughts/attempts, fucked up relationships, impulsiveness. All of it made me feel like an alien.

You’ve made me go from feeling sky-high-in-the-clouds one minute to so depressed that i cut myself to pieces and try to end my life the next. But you haven’t done this just once, oh no. You’ve done this over and over and over and over again. Until i’m dizzy from all the ups and downs. Not knowing whats coming next.

You’ve stopped me having friends, relationships. You make me lie, attention seek, manipulate people. You make me feel so low that i make other people feel shit just so that I’m not alone.

What kind of person are you making me?

Throughout my life, I’ve had diagnosis after diagnosis; depression,OCD, paranoia, schizophrenia, psychosis, bulimia and now this. How much more do you think i can take? Because I’m telling you now, it’s not much more.

The abuse I’ve endured can tip me either way. It can make me even more depressed with the flashbacks and hallucinations. Or it can make me feel better in that, I got what i deserved. I got punished for all my sins and all the wrong things i had done and would do later on in my life. And to this day, i still punish myself.

Through all the hatred I have for myself. All the hatred inside me that I push deep down so that no one sees it. It builds up and builds up until I can’t hide it anyone so when it rears its ugly head it will either be in the form of explosive anger or self harm.

I know you want me to give up on my life. And inside, I’m already dead. The only part of me that’s left is my ugly body. The fat, scarred, undeserving body that you’ve created. Well i hope you’re happy. You’ve succeeded.

Dear ADHD

I’ve obviously dealt with you all my life. You’ve made things interesting, confusing, and difficult over the years. Learning how to manage you is an ongoing project - one that will probably never end. (Yet another unfinished project in the pile.)

Yet I wouldn’t “cure” you for the world. I wouldn’t say I “suffer” from you most of the time, either, though you certainly disable me in many ways.

Because who would I be without you colouring my perceptions of the world? Who would I be without the life experiences that have shaped my personality - experiences that were, of course, coloured by (and in some cases, caused by) you?

You and I, ADHD… you and I, we have quite the past. I’m sure we’ll have quite the future together, also. Hopefully part of that will include making sure that people who don’t know you on this same intensely personal basis stop assuming that you are horrible and bad and evil.

Because you aren’t.

You just are.

And that is okay by me.

New Rule

No more posts from people who are talking about someone else. I think this will fix the problem.

Thanking you patient people.

So here’s something I didn’t know

(TW:ableism? Help?)

I will post things on here sometimes that don’t fall under the category of mental illness, but this is because I am not a psychiatrist. Not knowing that Autistic Spectrum Disorder did not fall under a DSM description is a point of ignorance borne out of…well, my own ignorance. I’d like to keep posting Autistic Spectrum Disorders on this blog though, as many people apparently want to write letters to their condition, and the communities overlap in such a way as I think that we can happily support each other.

HOWEVER

Someone reblogged my last Autism post, with a very angry message about ableism. I was very confused. The submitter, as far as I’m concerned, was frustrated that an ableist society had judged her brother inferior due to his inability to verbally communicate (which, as was pointed out, is only one form of social communication, but I hope we already know that).

Somebody else just explained to me that this is offensive to some people, and although I still can’t really understand the reason, I can relate to people being frustrated about sentiments re:conditions of any sort (diabetes can be especially interesting). They can be very demeaning or patronising without realising it.

I have no wish to enter into debates with people, and somebody is going to be offended at something no matter what anyone does in any place or time. But if you think I’ve gone into territory that’s a bit iffy, sending me a message may educate me, and I like being educated, and I’ll learn.

More letters tomorrow, just don’t let me be an ass. Also, thank you to the person who wrote to me.

Dear Depression

I want you to let go of me, because I’m drowning. I hate you for every fucking thing you’ve done to me. Sometimes I can’t get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes I can’t hold a conversation because you have made my mind so slow. I can’t do things I love. I can’t hope. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. I can’t wake up from this. 

You took my last two years of high school from me. You took my freshman year of college. You took this summer away. You turned me into a smoker, and you turned me into a painkiller addict, and not a single person I know is aware of that, and I can’t make myself tell them because I’m too ashamed of it. You’ve made me feel alone, and cornered, and suffocated. I can’t look into the future anymore, because it’s a blank wall that terrifies me. 

I’m too young for this. I’m in college. I’m not even twenty yet. This should not be happening. 

You have bled me dry and broken my heart, but I swear, I fucking swear, one day I will be rid of you.  

Dear Autistic Spectrum DIsorder

(TW: Ableism)

You took my brother’s speech when he was two.

You’ve made his life difficult and people have made fun of him.

But, thank you, because you are the reason I’m going to university for developmental psychology, and I am inspired to make a better life for me, but most of all him

He will have everything he ever wants, in spite of you.