This week I’ve been seeing images when I wake up in the middle of the night. Usually in the form of slow, flesh ripping decapitation, or bullets entering non-vital parts of my body, like my arms. Not of self-mutilation but mutilation of the self. These images, in some form or another, have followed me my whole life, and went away after I started therapy¹. Now they’re back.

There’s been a new one lately though.

I have a one-inch thick, two meter pole through the heart, sticking out perpendicularly to my body in both directions evenly. My heart and lungs have grown and healed around this pole, and even a gentle impact on either end, due to the mechanical-force multiplying nature of the fulcrum that is my heart, could disrupt my organs and kill me.

So as I’m trying to fall asleep again, I see myself going about any regular day, stumbling around with this unwieldy pole, hoping I don’t trip, and no one bumps into it.

1. Or perhaps, co-incidentally from something/someone else. [↑]

Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.

—Sylvia Plath

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I’m in a transition phase. Living in self-destruction. Building tolerances to all the wrong things. Picking my scabs. Shedding skin. Killing a little bit of myself every day.

Trying to get it all out of my system.

My anxiety is now under control¹, so my therapist and I have moved onto other issues.

It’s funny that I started going to therapy for my anxiety attacks, but he keeps digging up issues I never knew that I had.

Not that any of it is as debilitating the way the anxiety attacks were, but it’s made me realize that they have affected my quality of life. All of it stems from my parents (as opposed to being teased, some kind of incident, etc.). Once again, I say that I don’t like to blame them, but the glaring fact is that I can now trace every issue back to my childhood.

The idea of a self-destructive pattern whereby we repeat the pain of our childhoods is called a lifetrap. They’re categorized differently, depending on the school of psychology one prescribes to, but my most significant ones (i.e. rated “very high”) are emotional deprivation, dependence, unrelenting standards, and punitiveness. When I first started, I also had pessimism, but this has mostly gone with my anxiety.

I’ll touch on two of them now:

Emotional Deprivation

• One of the things that sparked the realization that I didn’t have a regular childhood was when I was asked to fill out a diagnostic questionnaire. I was told to rate how strongly I felt about the statement “I have not had someone to nurture me, share him/herself with me, or care deeply about what happens to me”. I thought to myself, “That’s normal? People have that?”.
• This is why I feel alone and detached from the world. It’s not quite as clean-cut as this, as there are a bunch of other issues that factor into the issue, but it’s an overall feeling.
• Until that point, I never considered the idea that such people exist. I assume the parents are supposed to fill this role, and eventually a spouse.
• In many people with emotional deprivation, the lifetrap manifests itself in relationships where they remain emotionally distant. For me, it’s more of a difficulty communicating to my girlfriends about my needs, and then feeling disappointed when my needs aren’t met.
  • This makes me wonder how certain relationships would have worked out if I was a different person and didn’t keep breaking up with my girlfriends
  • Unfortunately, I could write a book on this.

Unrelenting Standards

• I’ve realized that I’m still being too hard on myself. This stems from the expectations put on me as a child, or simply the fact that I think being unsatisfied with stagnancy is healthy because self-improvement makes me a better person. Most likely, a bit of both.
  • Sometimes I have to compare myself to someone like Pat to give myself perspective on this issue. He’s a person who hasn’t “achieved” much when evaluated by my standards, but he’s happy and that’s what matters. It makes me question what I’m trying so hard to achieve. I think of an old Calvin and Hobbes strip, where Calvin says, “It’s hard to argue with someone who looks so happy”
  • I understand that it’s the pursuit of greatness, not greatness itself, that should make life worth living, so when I have this self-destructiveness as a result, it doesn’t quite make sense. I’m working on this. It helps me to keep a quote by Charlotte Cushman in mind: “To try to be better is to be better”.
  • A side effect is that I’m too hard on other people because I project my unrelenting standards on them as well.
  • A lot of people tell me that I wouldn’t have had so much pressure to be the best and perform well if I wasn’t an only child.

1. I don’t say solved because I don’t think one can completely eliminate anxiety [↑]

I’m thinking this and writing this and I have to say something to someone but Pat’s busy, Julie’s out of town, and John’s gone missing. Not that they would understand anyway. Not that even I understand.

De-loused in the Comatorium is cranked on my speakers right now because it’s how I feel. Last week, my neighbour told me he’s never heard a peep from me. Now I question whether I’m pushing my luck. It’s like I stepped out into the darkness of a cool night from a production of Equus. These synapses firing. The jitteriness. It’s ten, I haven’t had dinner, but I’m shaking too much to eat.

I feel like I could write for days and days and days and days. Maybe I’m just happy to have something to write about. Maybe I’m just happy to feel this way again. This self-destructiveness, even in the face of certainty.

A little clock in front of the turquoise man says I’m away, but I’m here. Talk to me, Darren. Where are you? Only you would get it. Only you know how I feel, because you’re probably feeling the same thing right now.

We’re drawn to that which hurts us. In this way, we reveal our vulnerability, and only those who are so vulnerable recognize their own.

It’s time I turned down this music. It’s time I put some food in my stomach. It’s time I scalded myself in the shower. It’s time I got some sleep.

Sometimes you don’t know you’re alive until you’re burning.

I can see the pain living in your eyes
And I know how hard you try
You deserve to have much more
I can feel your heart and I sympathize
And I’ll never criticize
All you’ve ever meant to my life

I don’t want to let you down
I don’t want to lead you on
I don’t want to hold you back
From where you might belong

You would never ask me why
My heart is so disguised
I just can’t live a lie anymore
I would rather hurt myself
Than to ever make you cry
There’s nothing left to say but goodbye

—Air Supply, Goodbye

Over four years ago, I started this blog because of you. I felt like you never understood me, so I needed a place where I could express myself without any inhibitions.

I had a lot of hope in you, being drawn to your youth and innocence. A lot of hope in us. I always thought you were like clay I could mold. Someone who would eventually complete me, but you never changed or showed improvement.

It took me a long time to realize how wrong it was for me to do that. How wrong it was for me to want you to be a different person.

I hope I didn’t hurt you. I heard from your brother that you’re already on your Masters degree. I hope he’s healthy and happy. I hope your parents are doing well, that your dad is retired and they’re travelling out east like they’ve always wanted when you started university.

There are a lot of fond memories of our time together. I wonder if you believed me when I said that I wanted to marry you. It was something I honestly felt at the time, until things started falling apart, and I went through one of my phases again. It wasn’t your fault.

I had to end it before I led you on any further.

The Letter To An Ex-Girlfriend series

1. Introduction
2. Ashley
3. Michele
4. Christie
5. Jackie
6. Louise
7. Bronwen

I’ve never been against any form of (non-permanent) self-mutilation, as long as it’s not considered a solution to a problem. After all, some people watch TV to get their minds off things, others pull out carving knives and make designs on their arms. Neither activity actually helps a situation, but are just ways to deal with things that can’t be helped.

I always make sure that I don’t have any razor blades handy. I figure that if it ever gets to the very rare point that I want to cut, I’ll be calm again by the time I go out and buy some, sort of like a cool-down period for firearms.

I’m proud of the fact that I’m strong enough now to resist, that if I did have a pack handy, I wouldn’t reach for it as a release.

FDR had nothing on me.

Some cut. Some burn.

I bash.

I can see it in your eyes
I can hear it in your voice
the signs are obvious
that all we had has run its course

—Matchbook, Strung Out

The hardest thing isn’t knowing this’ll end, because the certainty of such a fact was clear from the moment we started. It’s knowing that the end is coming and still falling in love that’s the hardest.

How can I distance myself when everything you do draws me closer? If only it wasn’t so fruitless to keep reminding myself that this will never last. All that can be said is that it’s worth it. Everything I’ll be feeling soon is worth another night lying next to you, worth another morning waking up with you.

So give me one more kiss, one more taste of your lips, and tell me how much you’ll miss this.

“crazy bitch still looks good!”
“dont look man”

I’m exhausted but I’m not tired. I must sleep but I can’t sleep.

Sometimes I wish I was strong enough to gut myself. I’d make a line across my stomach, proping myself against a wall, and try to pull my intestines out to see how far they’d stretch. I’d make a hole on the left with the tip, curved for better control, and drag to the right with the edge. To enlarge the hole, turn the knife blade facing away from you and place between your index and middle finger as a guide. I’d cut my arms open and tear out the flesh to make sure I couldn’t sow myself back together. Sometimes I just draw the lines on my stomach, mixed in with all the writing, and imagine that the coldness of my pen is the chill.

For some reason, it helps.