Losing Control

Losing control... I would say that would be a fair understatement of where I've been for quite some time now.

I've been convinced by the demon in my head that I cannot exist with or without it... The twenty-odd years of 24/7 brainwashing has worked and I think I cannot shake this conviction from my heart. With its departure from most of me, my life seems empty... I am, I think, in effect grieving for the loss of it. I don't know how else to explain that nauseating feeling of loss, and feeling very rather lost since I've taken its reins and banished it from controlling my life.

Its ghost is there, in the background, telling me I'm nothing without it, and I do feel that. Its been there since I was a young child of eleven. Possibly longer without my knowing it. How do I possible define myself now a prominent part of me is suddenly missing? I have to suddenly go out and actually find out what's left and build it back up to be a whole person again... A tough task when you've made a dent into your thirties. After decades of fighting for survival against the demon, against trauma, against the world, the most taxing thing in my life is ensuring BT and the landlord get paid on time, and maybe what game I'd like to play. And nothing really intimidates me anymore - I've seen worse - the worst - and survived to care about nothing more important than whether I prefer Mr Muscle or Cillit Bang (... read it properly...!)) ... Its a different world. And frankly I do not understand it.

I find myself overwhelmed with this task of managing a "normal-ish" life, whilst also failing to understand how people find it taxing. There's nothing big to worry about... Its probably why they invent "problems" like "am I skinny enough???", "can I 'have it all' and still be skinny", "I can't afford to go to Florida AND Australia this year...", or "oh dear, I can't choose the best nursery for my little darlings"... After going to Hell and back, I do not understand how people can be so intense about making these frivolities "problems". Me, I get confused why it matters and why I'm supposed to take precedence with things that - the grand scheme of things - matter not one whit, and is nothing you'll be thinking about when its time to follow the light from your deathbed.

In the middle of all this, I also know that am not "normal"... I am internally battle-scarred and rather hardened, carrying cynicism and little sympathy for others who fall at even a minor hiccup. I do not, and I am not going to, play by these daft and pointless rules of society's "pretty" existence - I'm not interested, as its barely a facade that keeps itself together. People go out of their way to live up to imagined expectations (I mean who made this "perfection" crap the "law"...). I cannot do that, and I will not - cannot - play their silly games. I've been through too much to feel such things can possibly be so important that they make you miserable. Find out what real misery is - then maybe you'll have something to say that's worth your whining... It may sound cold to anyone who hasn't faced trauma or real hard times, or someone who hasn't looked death in the face and then turned their back on it. But that is how it feels when people who don't have it so bad go on about things that don't really make that much difference in the long-run of life.

In the end all this makes me feel like I've totally lost control of myself and my life... And to be honest, like I never had it in the first place. It - the demon - has controlled me almost my whole life, and I have done some awful things to grasp some of that control back, but I never succeeded. I still feel lost; scattered to the breeze like I have been crushed into so many pieces I have no hope of being put back together again. Without my "arch enemy" to fight, I feel my life has lost purpose - that is has no other purpose... And, really, it doesn't. Everything in my life as been governed towards fighting it. I thought being its mistress would lead me to peace - instead it leaves me feeling empty and without focus.

I honestly don't know what to do without it. In gaining control of the monster, I seem to have lost control of my life.

It was very far from what I expected.

I suppose you should be careful what you wish for... It might just happen...

Now that it seems to have happened, its not the outcome I wanted at all. And I feel lost... 

Freedom in this Labyrinthian Realm

Feeling lost has been a confusing and heartbreaking experience. Nothing is "OK", makes sense, or is worth any effort when you are lost inside your own mind. My focus has been gone, and so have I...

I unfortunately only just came to realise that last part though.  I nearly lost far more than myself because of it. I didn't exist, and it was only after what felt like almost a divine-like epiphany did I actually finally come to realise I hadn't really existed for a long time. Not the me inside, screaming so loud and for so long to be allowed out. I was a walking zombie, with empty eyes and a tempestuous shell driven by pain, fear and confusion. What had happened, and was happening, to me had drained me of my very soul and had left very little, if anything, behind. 

I haven't sung, written, made music, or read much - if at all. All the things I have always previously adored were nothing but a burden to me. I wanted to do all those things so much, but they were simply too much effort for a scared, unfocused and rambling mind like I had. Lost in a nightmare of a labyrinth, with no idea how I got in and with no way out, I felt always destined to wander about inside it with no way of solving it, allowing myself to be free. 

It was music that came back to save me from this Labarynthian Realm. Something in the music shifted something in my mind, leaving open a black hole of realisation I had never experienced before... And I was startled, shocked, and appalled to see for the first time what I had really become. The skeletal-like remains of my personality and character were not what I expected to see - and I had never realised quite how deep inside Hell I had fallen.

I have been here before - many years ago - in a similar situation, and when the trauma-coloured glasses fell from my eyes, I was horrified to see what had become of me. Sixteen years ago it was because I was anorexic and didn't really know it (or, in all honesty, didn't want to acknowledge it) - then one day I saw myself for what I really looked like, without the help of the vile disease looking through my eyes for me. I was left horrified and shocked at myself for allowing myself to be taken in by it so - and now I feel almost exactly the same way again now, all these years later. And the things that I have done (and in some cases, not done) leave me feeling immensely guilty - and in some extreme cases, sickened and overwhelmed by what I had done, and had been reduced to. 

Yet somehow, I now feel some hope. And, even more importantly, I feel more like I'm on a path towards myself. The me that has a personality and bright eyes and a smile... not a glassy-eyed shell devoid of apathy and running on pure selfishness. I am well aware I am never going to be anywhere near perfect - I have a past that is deplorable and affects me still, and an illness that sucks the life out of you like a greedy vampire that won't stop. I am no longer skin-and-bone, but food still terrifies me, and I am still learning to co-exist  with my paranoia and perpetual fear of everything (I've given up trying to override them)...

However, I have hope I will be at least in touch with myself, feel a little better in my own skin, be more accepting of who I actually am, and treat people like heart-felt humans and real friends - and not inanimate objects who's sole purpose is to revolve around my tempestuous hyper-sensitivity and make me "feel better", whilst enduring my erratic and frightening behaviour. I have hope that in time I can learn to be focused on the things I want to do and like doing, without having a panic attack about just the thought of it. I want to write music and sing again, write the book(s) that have always been tumbling about in my head, read as much as I used to, and have some self-confidence and self-belief. It's going to be baby steps, but I also hope that the projection will be forward, even if progress isn't at breakneck speed. Moving forward, even slowly, is better than staying still - or worse; going backwards. 

I think I have managed to pull myself from the brink of what could have been a huge disaster in my life. I've had too many of them and could never have survived yet another one. I hope I will learn to manage the black demon in my heart better, and that I become the Queen of my own realm - not a victim to another one of madness and hopelessness, being lost and wandering blindly and in vain. 

One day I hope to be the person I know I really could be. Until then, I'm going to keep on working on it... 

Lost In Wonderland

I feel like Alice falling into the rabbit hole... Falling with me into the chaotic darkness are characters from (my) books (that I've written/ am writing), loud music, voices saying the most awful things, memories and echoes of things that are long past yet haunt me still - the cacophony is a familiar but overwhelming soundtrack to my descent into my very own Wonderland of nightmares.

Then to live in it becomes the norm, and before I know it, six months are passed and I have no idea what has happened except that I did virtually nothing but live in a numb and frightened nightmare the entire time.

It's always a familiar path to that rabbit hole, and sometimes I can even stop myself falling in at all. Most times these days I get stuck in "Wonderland" for a while, looking back up the rabbit hole, wondering how I fell down it and trying to work out how to get back out again. At least it doesn't happen that often anymore, though. Not only that, but there is the added helpfulness that life down the rabbit hole doesn't last very long, and is no longer as extreme, intense, or horrific as it once was.

But falling down into into the nightmare of "Wonderland" is always a frightening feeling, even if it's now probably the most familiar thing in my life - the one thing I seem to be able to count on... I try and reassure and remind myself now that it's never going to be as bad as it once was to experience, and I no longer end up cocooned in a catatonic trance of numb misery and paranoid terror for months, or years, on end. I even remind myself that I'm now flying solo and coping with life - and the mild "relapses" - relatively well without medication (which always proceeded to make me feel worse, as my physical reaction to side-effects were never positive). But it doesn't make it less frightening because that is my experience of it, and what I fear is that it will happen in just the same way again. It hasn't for years, but it just might.

So now I fall down the dark hole again. The cacophony of noises is (quite literally) too loud in my head to hear life outside of it. Sometimes I really am not aware that life actually is going on outside of it, and above me as I wonder about, lost in Wonderland. My mind is not really any longer my own, and I struggle to understand what is going on around me, as I genuinely cannot any longer comprehend what "reality" as everyone else sees it (and how I usually do, when I'm not busy doing this). Everything looks as though it may very well be in a dream, looking slightly distorted, colours dulled, and not quite conscious of what is going on at any particular moment. And at this point, sleep generally ends up being barely more than a pipe-dream, which obviously does nothing to help the situation at all. 

In times like these,  I get more than irritated by people complaining of being "depressed", or even using it as an excuse to hide from work and claim welfare for when they know nothing about the real suffering that goes on behind the mediocre words. As if it's simply "the blues", and not a matter of being depleted in required brain chemicals for synapses to function at the required level of "OK", resulting in living in what feels like a horrific nightmare every second that you simply cannot wake up from. I get irritated that those who haven't been down their own version of the rabbit hole, who throw it around like it means nothing - if they knew what it was like to live here, they would all shut up very, very quickly, and run away from it just as fast. 

I wish I could... 

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