Self Destruct

****** Trigger warning******* 

This blog does talk about my self harm and suicidal thoughts/attempt. Please keep yourself safe, happy and healthy. If this is something that is too hard to read, but you would like to know, feel free to reach out and I will talk with you about it in a less abrasive manner. 

Alright, so here is one of the more personal posts that I was talking about...

I knew it would have to come up sooner or later

For the last few days my depression has really been beating me up and I've felt like crying for the last 3 days, I have barely slept

in fact I didn't sleep last night

 and space out a lot. And, so my brain starts, what I call, self destructing and thinking about things that aren't necessarily true or aren't as bad as my brain makes them out to be. 

This has happened to me for many years, so I'm not sure if its a depression thing or a hypersensitivity thing since it started before I got my acute stress disorder. 

I have learned over the years different coping mechanisms, such as last night when my brain flipped, I cut my hair... sometimes I dye it, sometimes I schedule a tattoo appointment or I go shopping for clothes/shoes that I definitely do not need. 

Now here is where we're going to get personal...

I wasn't (and still have some struggles) good at coping with finding non-destructive ways. I used to self harm and I used to have many different suicidal thoughts... such as taking a mix of medications and not really caring what they were or what the side effects would be.
I first started self harming my sophomore year in high school. I would cut on my legs since I didn't wear shorts

I'm far too pale for shorts... I glow in the dark, I swear

and therefore no one would see. I didn't want to be accused for doing it for attention because I did it because it was one thing I could control. A lot happened in my sophomore year. I lost a lot of people I cared about, there was so much death... so many heart breaks and so many fights. I couldn't control any of it, but I could control the knife. And therefore it became a release, not the most healthy of one but it kept me from freaking out worse.

Junior and Senior year started to be better, though I still had relapses towards self harm when things were too far out of control for me to handle it. 

Junior year was the first year I had suicidal thoughts, though I didn't act on it. I had thought about how much better people's lives would be without me. How difficult I am to have around. All of it...

College came around and I started doing so much better. I hadn't even thought about self harm and my suicidal thoughts had seemed to disappear. I was happy and it was fantastic. I smiled daily, I was healthy, I ate, I made new friends...

Then my biggest life altering experience to that point happened. 

I was a dance major in Nevada... originally from Oregon, so I was states away from my family... from "home".... 

I hurt my ankle and it felt wrong. I went and saw a doctor, without even touching me she said "oh well, its tendinitis". I knew she was wrong. I have loose ligaments and have been a dancer since I was three... I knew what tendinitis was. I was trying to take it easy in my dance classes to see if my ankle would feel better but one of my teachers said it was good I was sitting the day out because I probably couldn't do the routine anyway. I got up, danced and felt  that snapping and instantly fell to my knees. 

It wasn't tendinitis. I had small tears in my ligaments, muscles and had angered my tendons. My ankle was telling me to stop, not that I had tendinitis. The snap I felt... was all of it tearing. I went to a specialist, and he told me I probably wouldn't walk normal for the rest of my life, and chances of me dancing were gone. 

I went back to my dorm that night, my roommate was gone for the weekend... I grabbed alcohol from a friend, and went and took a handful of who knows what.... what did it matter anymore? My dreams were gone and I might never dance again. I passed out. I woke up with the worst headache I had ever had, and a friend of mine staring at me. How he had gotten into my dorm, I have no idea. 

I moved back to Oregon because I couldn't stay at the dorms unless I was a full time student, I had a boot on my ankle so walking across campus for classes wasn't that easy. I had a few self harm incidents while I lived in Eugene, but I swore to myself I'd never let it get as far as I did in Nevada. 

When I moved back to my hometown, I was doing better again. I was happy... and then I wasn't... 

I have been a year and 6 months clean from self harm, and I haven't fully attempted since Nevada which was 10 years ago now. The hard part is that my brain still goes there though - I still find myself wanting to and going through the motions. My brain tells me awful things and it makes me feel a huge loss of control... and so having that control back seems like an easy fix. But instead of creating more scars, I cut my hair, I dye my hair, I bake... 

there are healthy ways to have that control, I promise. 

I know I'm not alone in this, I have many friends and a huge group of people who have gone down this route... so please, I know I have at least one dedicated reader thus far... if you're on this path... please know you're not alone, I'm here always. 

I wish I had listened to that back in 2010... but I'm glad I do now. I dance. I teach dance. I walk normal. Sometimes my ankle hurts, but its rare. I work through it. I found the path of psychology and it is something I'm naturally good at. Its where I'm supposed to be. My injury nearly killed me, but it was for a reason. I wasn't meant to be a dancer in the sense for what I was working towards. Dance is my love, passion and an amazing release, but I would have lost that passion once it became work. So, know that whatever you're going through is for a reason, live long enough to find out what that reason is.

Thanks for listening, you guys. This is all something I don't really talk about, and don't admit to many but figured I could put it out there so that if I reference anything later, it makes sense.

For now;