Society

There is a great phrase which says "never be ashamed of who you are" it is very true, I have a question though. What happens if society dictates that you should be ashamed of what you are. Society sees me as a self harmer, a practice that makes people uncomfortable regardless of the reasons behind it. People see my scars and immediately judge me on that basis, what they don't see is the story behind them.

I have just worked out that I have spent around £8500 pounds trying to fix me and make myself more acceptable to society. The thing is even with the time, effort and money I have put in that society hasn't finished with me. I now feel ashamed of myself and of who I was. Society needs this so it can justify it's actions towards me.

I feel that my humiliation and my shame just isn't enough though. It feels like I must go one step further and apologise for the way that I dealt with my personal pain. I must also cover up the evidence of what has happened. I must ensure my arms are covered, I must never speak of the horror or how I used self abuse and suicide attempts to deal with it.

Maybe it is defiance, stubbornness or maybe it is because I am stronger now but I refuse to apologise for what I have been through, I refuse to apologise for my personal pain or the methods I used to deal with it.

I will however say I am sorry for the parts that became public for whatever reason. If after seeing the effort that I have put in to getting my life back and my repeated apologies you are still not satisfied then you are in a part of society that I have no desire to be in.

Replacing lost possessions

Tomorrow is going to be an unusual day for me. I am finally going to be able to start closing the door on a horrific chapter in my life. I have posted about it before and it was the part of my life where I became homeless for a short period of time and was extremely close to being on the streets. At this point in my life I lost everything I owned. Either it had to be abandoned, ended up completely damaged and broken or I had to sell it to make sure I could eat.

At the time I did have some valuable possessions which I ended up selling at times for a matter of pounds, I remember even being grateful to these people for buying them. They would have made a huge profit on certain items and quite rightly so. I have always said I am not a material person but I think part of recovering and rebuilding ones life is to replace what you have lost if at all possible.

Now tomorrow morning I am going to replace what I believe is the final item that I had to sell. I am going to fairly seriously overstretch myself moneywise doing this but I believe that this is necessary and possibly fairly important for me. Moving forward I will then be able to deal with some of the mental scars caused by that period of my life.

Provoking myself

It has been several weeks since I did any damage to myself, I got through Christmas and New Year without resorting to self harm. I am happy with myself and hoping that I can continue this streak well into this year.

I am going to admit that I am having to put up a fight at the moment to prevent any damage and continue the positive start that I have had to this year. My therapist calls them negative thoughts, I call it provoking myself. The logical part of me agrees they are negative and the thoughts I am having are untrue. For the most part I can challenge and stamp on them but the part of me that feeds the addiction I am trying to break keeps on pushing them. The silly thing is that if another person said anything close to what my brain is saying I would go ballistic.

I am now going to say it on here so it is in black and white. I DID NOT FAIL MY DAUGHTERS!!! It is only my brain disputing this, no one else. They could not be saved. I did everything I could for them. I can't perform miracles and no there wasn't anything anyone could do that would have saved their lives. I gave them everything they needed.

I now have the huge task of hiding what I am really feeling before I get to work.

Routine

A couple of days I was thinking about my family, especially my daughters and I was bursting with pride. It is am amazing experience having rock solid pride rather than heartbreaking sorrow. I miss my family and think about them on a daily basis, there was so much I wanted to do with them.

Since Friday I have been feeling sorrowful, a bit down and most definitely missing my family. I am alone in the darkness of this world and it is scary. Hot chocolate comforts me but what I really need is a hug, a proper hug. Something that kicks through the bull shit my brain is creating. Even feeling like this I am able to function normally and carry out my normal daily activities. I am no where near the position I was in before my suicide attempts in 2009. It hurts and regardless of what people say, time does not heal the loss. It makes it easier for 90% of the time and enables you to live with the loss.

In March it will be 5 years since I lost my eldest daughter and wife. I have said before that I bonded with my eldest daughter before she died, in fact I can tell you the exact moment it happened. I had decided what i was going to do to mark such a major event in my life this year and for future years, it took a huge amount to come up with something that was perfect for the occasion. The thing is that what I wanted to do is something that should be shared. It was a dream that I wanted to share with my wife. There is only one person on this planet that I would consider sharing something so personal with. For reasons out of my control I am not going to be able share this with her, I don’t want to do it on my own. So this year I am not going to be able to do what I planned.

Now I haven’t got a clue what I am going to do and this really isn’t helping. The reason I have to plan ahead with anniversaries is that when I get it wrong, it gets very messy and at times dangerous for me. It is the price of being a bit of a perfectionist and loosing such significant people out of my life.