I made it to my bloods/ECG/obs appt this morning. Then a friend came over and we put the world to rights and made dream catchers. Then I did Kate's prescriptions for her bc she's poorly. Now I'm heading to a church group but sososo tired.
So it's not a very arty journal today and not what I planned but it felt really relevent (I found myself crying on the bathroom floor earlier asking myself what went wrong...). I wrote it a while ago but did nothing with it, so now I've stuck it in. Writing below:
We used to stand around, outside school, discussing our test results. Who’d succeeded, who hadn’t. Who had an A*. What we put for different questions, what we had learned, what we needed to revise further.
Now we stand outside hospitals, still discussing test results. This time it’s bloods. Who can drive, who can’t, who’s approaching hospital. Who is somehow managing to keep their bloods stable and how-the-heck do they manage that?
We would be nervous before parent’s evenings. What would the teachers say? Were we on track? Were we succeeding? Did we have extra work to do? We might have a sleepless night the night before, we would chat to our friends about what each teacher might say and how much trouble we might be in.
Now we are nervous before big reviews. What will each professional say? Are we on track? Are we succeeding? Are we looking at hospital admissions or more intensive treatment? We will have a sleepless night the night before (what’s new?) and chat to each other about what professionals might say and how much trouble we might be in.
We would devour our school reports, picking them apart. Were we good enough? Were we likely to get the grades we needed to achieve our goals? We would look to the future, excited by the possibilities that might be waiting for us. School was simply something we did to get to the rest of our lives.
Now, we read hospital letters and CPAs. Are we good enough? Are we ever likely to recover? We don’t look to the future because we don’t think we have one. We no longer believe we have exciting things waiting for us. Therapy, counselling, medications etc. used to be the things we did to get us to the rest of our lives, but now they have become our lives.
We are the ones who are exhausted. We are the ones who are told to eat, who are told that therapy and medication won’t work if we don’t eat, that we will die if we don’t eat. We are the ones who do not care if we live or die, do not care if therapy and medications won’t work if we don’t eat, do not have any motivation to eat, because we are so tired.
Telling someone that eating will keep them alive becomes problematic when that person has no desire to live.
We are the ones who have stopped being scared. Who watch our hair fall out in handfuls, spend the majority of the day freezing cold, and struggle to stand up without falling over, all with a vague knowledge that maybe it’s not entirely normal, and a complete inability to care.
We are the ones who feel helpless and hopeless. We’ve been here before, we know we have to eat, we just don’t know how to eat. We know that it’s down to us, that nobody can do it for us, that we have to help ourselves. We believe that we are unworthy and undeserving of help. We don’t understand why we can’t eat. We don’t understand what our problem is. We know that our weight doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. We know the general mechanics involved in eating things. We don’t know why our weight matters. We don’t know why we can’t eat.
We are the ones who had bright and brilliant futures, the ones who burned ourselves out too young, the ones who can barely comprehend the next five minutes nevermind the next five years.
We are the ones who felt too deeply, loved too hard, lost too much, the ones who checked out of life because feeling nothing is better than feeling something and if nobody is close then nobody can hurt us.
We are the ones who have stopped believing in recovery. The ones who would feel lost, lonely, and scared, if we could feel anything at all. The ones whose families don’t understand, whose professionals don’t know how to help, the ones who have a thick plate of glass wedged between them and the world, blocking all lines of communication. We are the ones who have given up on ourselves, who have lost all hope, who might be dangerous if we had any energy at all.
We are the ones who wake up every morning and go to sleep every night with no recollection of what happens in between. We are your siblings, friends, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, employers, and employees. We are the ones who want nothing more than a hug and to feel safe.
@pyrrhula Thank you xxx
@helenhall thank you - I feel like I get daily word hugs from all of you Xxx
@taffy Thank you, support is lacking in my area, but I have some amazing people in my corner
@linnypinny Thank you so so much x
@suklassen Thank you - you're all wonderful x
@travelingcamper [hug]
@lynnz Thank you xxx
@pixiemac Thank you so much, it really is xxx
@gmonty Thank you x
@fayefaye Thank you x
@craftymeg Thank you, it's more than enough! X