Joan Baez- Diamonds and Rust

Much to everyone's suprise, I'm still alive.

Much to everyone's suprise, I am somewhere between where I was and well. Nearer to where I was than well, but still somewhere on that exponential curve the wallahs call recovery.

I haven't posted for a long time. There are many reasons. Partly, it's because it's been hard enough living it without writing it, too. Mostly because I ran out of jokes, so just for this one page, don't expect the funny. Like you did.

Suddenly, the whole thing just didn't seem very entertaining anymore, and there's nothing worse that people talking about the miserable intricacies of their therapy sessions. Well, there are worse things, actually. Living the miserable intricacies of therapy sessions, for example. Having hot needles inserted under your finger nails, or being raped. That sort of thing. But from your point of veiw, my oh so avid reader- I didn't want to bore you.

And so, what happened to occasion this change? I honestly couldn't tell you. I would like to give some down-pat story of love and redemption, but I can't. For a start, love is a poor basis for redemption, because love pales, and where does that leave you? Buggered, to be honest. Back where you started, but harder. It's a journey. I'm sorry to have to say, that needs to be done alone, without any crampons, and with a sadly defective tent. I can't give you a rock bottom moment, because I don't believe in that sort of thing. I've been skulling around the shallows of rock bottom drowning in two inches of water for years, and it got me not one jot closer to health than I was when I first arived there, brand spanking new and ready for Damascus, too many years ago to list.

If anything happened, it was just being listened to, and being taught how to speak. It's taken a year, and even now, perhaps, being able to tell the difference out loud between anxiety and sadness, anger and mania, is a small thing to effect so large a change, but I've only cut myself twice in the last ten weeks, and that seems a tangiable enough difference to remark upon. Self harm has felt like screaming for many, many, years, and finally I find that I don't need to scream. I am able to articulate myself- clumsily, brutally, but verbally- and someone is listening. Years ago, in my early teens, I used to get so angry or upset I couldn't speak. My mother would ask what was wrong- distressing for her to find a child so hurt and so inarticulate- and I could do nothing other than crawl, and huddle, and rock. For the first time since then, I am able to stand up straight and speak. No screaming silently. No shaking. I fall down on my knees and thank the good lord god I don't- bless me- believe in. I don't feel like I'm screamining into silence anymore. And that's a big sort of end.

What I find in this hinterland of mental illness is strange. It is harder than it was. Without the masking power of self harm, the problems I have stand starkly, and on bad days seem to multiply. I feel no inclination to see people. I want to hide, my flesh too pink and squashy to stand up to the scrutiny of contact. At the same time I am desperately lonely, because I tell you, when things seems this glaring all you want is someone to hold your hand. Self harm seems an easy thing to deal with when set beside this shifting myrad of things I just can't do like, you know, talk to strangers, and go to the supermarket, and deal with people cancelling on me. Maybe that's the secret of its power- to reduce everything to one simply manageable wound, each scab the promise of an actual healing. I find that there are no solutions- just hard work, and doing things you're frightened of not inspite of, but because, they frighten you. I find that I am sick in ways I never imagined, but also that there is a core of wellness I never knew I had. I find that its about balance. Sometimes I'm manic and sometimes depressed- about one week a month I still have to spend in bed, watching the ceiling- but there is a centre. I get closer to it.

I miss cutting. I miss burning. I miss bruises. And then I don't. I have spent lots of moments recently sitting on the side of the bath or in the corner of my bed holding a razor in my hand, then putting it down again (I still keep them- cmfort blanket or, you know, sentimantal value, innit). It's not a sense of obligation, or any kind of resolution. It's more that for the first time I am given the foresight to see what my impulsiveness will entail- blood, and pain, and my clothes sticking to me, having to wear black, fear of being touched in case people inadvertently open my wounds, more pain, and more blood. The way my skin puckers round a cut a few days after I've made it. The way new skin opens under pressure. Not being able to sleep in another person's bed in case I mark the sheets. Frankly, put that way, it doesn't seem like so much fun. Maybe you don't get well, you just get wise. Maybe. Maybe there just isn't a formulation, and no explanation for what happens when you turn your sights on something else. I can tell you that I drank a lot of bad whiskey when I first stopped. That now I am not eating much. I can't quite do without an anaesthetic yet. But I am getting well. Or at least starting.

I look at my scars a lot. I can feel them undreneath my clothes. I ought to say, they show me how far I have come, they show me who I am, they show me... yadda yadda et cetera et cetera. It's all bollox, frankly. They show me sweet fuck all. They're there, though, and although I cover them now more than I did because I have less to say and less to scream, I am still pleased I have them. I turn my face somewhere else. I resist he urge to make illness my life and soul and centre. In, for want of any of my own, someone else's words:

Well, that's over. The woman who cherished
her suffering is dead. I am her descendent.
I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me,
but I want to go on from here with you
fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.

-Adrienne Rich