Bullsh*t doesn't get the taste of saccharine out of your mouth

I could stay in contact with everyone online from my bed. I could use pillows to try to get comfy typing a blog from bed. However, I can't be with the kitties (unless they happen to be in bed with me) and I can't be with DH (Darling Husband) without getting out of bed. That's why I get out of bed every day. If it wasn't for DH and the kitties, I think I'd just stay in bed all day.

I can't stop the inner voice from being negative. When I say that inner voice, I'm talking about the internal monolog or self-talk we all have. I don't have any control over it when I'm depressed, it overrides any attempted positive self-talk. If I try and turn my inner monolog into something positive, nothing comes of it, because inside me I know it's all bullshit. Knowing it's all bullshit overrides any cheery saccharin cliché positives learned in therapy to tell myself.

It's only two more days before I can see my therapist again. I've been having a hard time verbally describing how I feel lately, especially the deeper things. It's almost as if the part of my brain that can write about complicated deep things is still free, but the part of my brain that controls talking about that stuff has a lock on it. So I'm not sure how much therapy will be helpful, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.

I finished a book last night I really enjoyed. I loved the ending. I loved the rest of the book, too. It was a coming of age LGBTQ+ book about a bisexual teen girl who falls in love with another teenage girl. It was really sweet. I usually don't read YA books, but this is the second YA book I've read recently that I absolutely loved. The other book was a horror book and the first in a series.

I wrote my mom a letter today. I will try to get it out in the mail tomorrow. It turned out longer than I expected, but my hands were in great pain and I had to rest them for a while before I could return to my computer.

It's getting late...it's already after midnight. I think I'll go to bed soon. I took a melatonin last night and still couldn't sleep. Tonight if I can't sleep I think I'll try three Benedryl. I'm so frustrated.

19 years and two and a half hours ago

Last night while I was getting undressed, and DH (Darling Husband) lay sleeping in bed, I had a sudden realization. On my sister's birthday on August 14th, 2000 I was really manic, but not yet diagnosed with bipolar. I had just come home from a friend's wedding the day before. I wanted to leave, as I said, I was very manic, but I stayed home with my sister that day. The next day I met rapist #2. Two days after that I met him for the second time and he raped me. That means that it happened on August 17th, 2000. I previously hadn't been able to remember the date but knew it happened around midnight that night. I made this realization yesterday, on August 17th, 2018 at 2:30 am. I realized it had been 19 years and two and a half hours ago that it happened.

I started shaking uncontrollably and sobbing hard. I was surprised DH didn't wake up. I know I could have woken him, but I really didn't want to, as he really needed his sleep. I know that he will probably be frustrated when he finds out I didn't wake him, as I know he would have wanted me to wake him, but he was finally getting some sleep and I just couldn't bring myself to wake him.

I cried so, so much for such a long time; heartwrenching sobs. I had flashbacks and cried off and on until 6:30 am when I finally fell asleep. Niki heard me cry when I first started, and she ran into the bedroom. She climbed up next to me on the bed and purred. When I finally laid down, she crawled on top of me, purring and giving me kitty head bumps. Eventually, my pain started getting really bad from the release of stress hormones in my body. It's like Niki somehow knew that my pain was getting worse, so she climbed off me and lay down on my pillow next to me. She purred next to my head while I cried, and when my sobbing would slow she'd fall asleep and snore lightly. When I started up sobbing again, she'd press her body against my head and shoulders and purr. Katya also was on top of me, on my legs. At first it was wonderful. Once the pain got really, really bad, though, I tried gently pushing her off. After I pushed her off eleven times I finally let her stay. The pain was excruciating, but it was obvious that she really, really wanted to lay on my thigh and I didn't have a choice about it. I don't love Katya less than Niki, I loved her laying on me, too, until the pain got to flare levels. (It wasn't a flare, however, because a flare must last at least 24 hours.)

DH started waking up, but by then my tears had finally dried up and I was quiet. I gave him a melatonin last night because he just so desperately needed sleep.

Niki helped me get through the night, I think I would have lost it without her. I definitely would have had to wake DH, and I'm very, very worried about his health. Since DH hasn't been sleeping hardly at all, I think it's really making his already poor health worse. As my longtime readers know, DH is disabled as well.

I prayed the Rosary a lot last night. I couldn't remember the Mysteries, I've always had trouble memorizing them, even when I used to pray the Rosary daily. So instead, I imagined the Blessed Virgin Mary in the air above the foot of the bed, her hands clasped in prayer, snakes at her feet, and a blue light emanating from her and lighting up the bedroom. I concentrated on that, and my Niki next to me, and I was able to get through the night. I also concentrated on feeling the love I know DH has for me, as he lay next to me sleeping.

It was a really rough night, but I made it through, and I'm really proud of myself for that.

The clouds moving in

Last night I took a melatonin pill and it helped me get a nice ten hours of sleep. I haven't been sleeping enough at night, so I'm sleepier during the day than normal. I already have a lot of daytime sleepiness, from a combination of my poor health, unrestful sleep, and meds. It helped my mood tremendously, though I'm still very, very fatigued. Then when the sun went down my depression moved back in, like foul black clouds moving to cover the moon.

With nothing under my feet

Trigger Warning: suicide, self-harm
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I hate what mental illness does to my brain so much. Since I've been thirteen I've dealt with suicidal thoughts and self-harm. My bipolar began with a three-year depressive episode that started when I was ten, and I had my first manic episode very shortly after turning fourteen. I don't even remember anymore how old I was both times I attempted suicide. I'm sure if you're curious I mention the age I was somewhere in another blog entry. Right now my brain is fuzzy and I can't remember.

In the past three years, I've spent many a night crying and fighting the urge to act on swallowing a bottle of mouthwash, bleach, all my meds, or ending it with a beautiful scarf. I'm not suicidal right now. I haven't been for quite a while. But my mind, since I was thirteen, constantly makes note of the nearest sharp objects, and the nearest items I could kill myself on. I don't have to be suicidal, I don't have to be in an episode. I don't have to want to cut. My brain just automatically constantly notices these things. It's so second nature, it's not something I try to do. It just happens. It's constant and I hate it.

I've gone forty-one days without self-harm. I'm very proud of this. My mind is still on it all the time, though it gets easier to say no to the urges the longer I go without cutting. There are triggers everywhere. I feel like an addict, I think about it all the time. Sometimes the thoughts are unwanted, other times I crave it so much, but I know it's just not a good thing to do. It's a bad coping mechanism. So I fight it, I have to. I fight it constantly.

It's when I'm by alone that I cry, shake, and express how I really feel on the outside when I don't have to be strong for anyone, I can turn into the quivering and crying mess I am inside. I'm able to get in touch with my actual feelings and face them when I'm alone. When people are around I have to appear strong, I have to laugh, I have to try and look like I'm paying attention to what they're saying while in my head I'm drawing a box cutter slowly down my legs and beautiful red blood is spilling everywhere, sticky, warm, and gorgeous. It only makes the draw toward cutting worse knowing how low the chance is from bleeding out if you cut in the right areas, but it is hard to control sometimes once you start, so there lies the danger, as well as the danger of infection. That's not even mentioning unsightly scars.

This is the sixth day in a row I've been depressed, but these six days have felt more like six months. I can feel myself sliding downward, but I'm completely down yet. For it to qualify as a depressive episode in someone with bipolar, you need to have depression for two weeks. Hopefully, I can kick this before it turns into an episode. In general, I usually get hit with a depressive episode that starts sometime between September and November that usually goes away in March or April. By Thanksgiving, I'm usually fighting suicidal feelings. However, I still love Thanksgiving, though there have been two of the last ten years I stayed in bed nearly all day because I was so severely depressed I physically couldn't get out of bed. I've been feeling very anti-social, angry, and very irritable lately. My pain levels have been very high, and my fatigue horrible. That doesn't help my depression any.

From the movie Don't Kill It

I recently watched a B horror flick called Don't Kill It. (Spoilers following.) In it, a demon takes possession of people's bodies. When the demon takes possession, their eyes turn all black and they let out a guttural scream, before killing everyone in sight. In the end, instead of killing other people, one person gets possessed and while floating in the air, she throws back her head and lets loose the sounds of Hell, before the grenade she's holding explodes, and her body parts fly everywhere. I feel like I'm that last person. I don't feel possessed, rather I feel like if I don't keep a tight lid on everything I'm going to float up into the air, throw back my head, let loose the throaty, guttural, howls from the bowels of despair, and explode, with my body parts flying everywhere.

I feel like there's more to say, but I'll stop here.

Why I still listen to the album that was on when I was raped

Trigger Warning: Rape

I still listen to the album that was on the second time the first guy raped me. It was Sublime's self-titled album, which came out in 1996. It was his CD, and later I bought a copy from Blockbuster. My dad took me. I didn't want the edited version from Wal-Mart, so I told my dad they didn't have any copies at Wal-Mart, since the CDs at Blockbuster were unedited. I still hate songs that have words blanked out, because it messes with the whole rhythm of the song. I went into the store, carried out my newly purchased CD in a plastic white and blue Blockbuster bag. As soon as I got home I put stickers over the part that said "Parental Advisory" so when my parents made their frequent checks through my music to weed out "immoral" music, they wouldn't throw it away. I'm not sure, but the CD might still be packed up and in the garage. 

I don't know why I still listen to it. I like the music, though it never occurred to me that one song "Wrong Way" on the album is actually about child prostitution, for years I'd sung the song without thinking about what it actually meant. So that one song I don't listen to anymore, though I listen to the rest of the album. The of the album actually makes me happy in a way.

I'm sure a lot of people would never want to listen to the album that was on while they were raped ever again. However, as hard as it is to explain, I felt like that was the only good thing that happened that day. It was my respite in the face of trauma. I listen to this album and feel like I am a survivor. I have survived what happened to me, and in the face of that trauma there was a safeness, a form of shelter from the awful things happening, and that was Sublime.