I can’t do this one more day – it hurts too much. It hurts to try to be OK when I’m drowning. It hurts to put on a brave face when all I want to do is hide. It hurts to keep trying and 99% of the time feel like an abysmal failure. The ache […]
There seems to be no way to gain any perspective lately – the sadness, ache, and fear are overwhelming. It colors everything. I know that it is not the whole story but I cannot escape. I cannot escape and so I hide. The shame of the sadness drives me into isolation. I feel broken: unable […]
It took a month after getting home from the hospital to feel like I was doing more than just getting by. I came back more lost than I was before I left. I began to wonder if I would ever be fully human again or if I would be a fragmented shell for the rest […]
I go to a yoga class every Saturday morning at 8am. It isn’t easy and it is probably only possible because the studio is five minutes from my house. I find myself going out of a sense of obligation knowing that it is good for me. My attitude changes when I get there: relief begins […]
The ghosts of the past trail me looking for weak moments. They say that cutting is the only way to get relief . . . They notice me take a long, deep breath of rubbing alcohol fumes that take me back to the days of martinis and blackouts. How could I long to go back […]
“Derealization (sometimes abbreviated as DR) is an alteration in the perception or experience of the external world so that it seems unreal. Other symptoms include feeling as though one’s environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional colouring, and depth. It is a dissociative symptom of many conditions. Derealization is a subjective experience of unreality of the outside […]
I’m emerging from yet another “dark night of the soul”. Or, rather, a dark week of the soul. My body and mind shut down and I felt like I was losing a battle. It was the most frightened I have been for my well-being in a long time. I was somebody else – an empty […]
It’s strange when the smallest things people take for granted seem so huge to me. I never go to shops. Never. I steel myself to go out to stores for what I can’t get online. My favorite grocery store moved to a bigger space so at least it feels less suffocating. I decided to fight […]
It was recently explained to me this way: I have a deck of cards – my priorities – and when I get stressed I rearrange those cards putting everything higher than myself. Self-care gets placed lower and lower in the stack until I become desperate and cannot reach that bottom rung on the ladder of […]
Confession: I have been down on myself and overwhelmed lately. I feel like I have no business even talking about it because I have not been trying very hard at self-care. It’s like I have to earn the right to admit that I am – once again – overwhelmed and lonely. Everything from taking my […]
Healing The Ache 