I feel as if I am getting more and more unreliable as the years go by. Every time I realize I haven't done something that I said I would do, a knife twists in my gut and I get gripped by this cold terror that I'm slipping; the act is slipping and soon everyone will know how worthless I really am in spite of how hard I have worked to hide it.
No, but listen. I avoid my friends and family. I forget to do household tasks except at times when I'm not in a position to do them. I procrastinate on assignments and person requests and end up scrambling to finish them, if I remember to do them at all. I'm not making this stuff up. It happens. These are things that I do.
But they call me "steady." "Dependable." "Reliable." I believe that I used to be. That was a long time ago. The people who know me now still think I am as functional as I was then, and maybe they cut me slack because they think I'm going through a rough patch that I will recover from. That's what I tell myself, anyway. That's what makes sense to me.
I used to make promises to myself. Sometimes I even kept them. When the sun came out, I'd look at the terrified, aching child inside me and promise her that I would do better. I would be kind to her. I would keep her safe from harm. I would give her space to breathe, to dance, to create. I'd give her permission to tell stories. God, how she loved to tell stories. But it got to the point where the shadows would close back in and I would keep none of them, none of them. She doesn't trust me anymore. I don't trust me anymore. I don't know what the tipping point was, when the balance shifted. All I know is that now the bad days outnumber the good ones. All I know is that now I spend the "good" ones paralyzed by the knowledge that soon my veins will freeze over again.
I don't keep the promises I make to myself; to tell the truth, I hardly make them anymore. It's useless. If actions speak louder than words, my words say I am worth nothing and my actions scream it. I am not even worth honoring a promise. But as I treat myself with less and less consideration, I am losing the ability to have integrity everywhere else. Out of practice.
I used to write to get the bad blood out. I used to lay it all out on the table and come away seeing things a little more clearly. It was something like this. But now I look at this and all I see is how many times the letter "I" appears in it and I want to erase them all. How dare I? As if it isn't bad enough to waste this time, these words, acting as if I am important, I have to do it on a public forum, too. I don't have to, but I am doing it anyway and that is disgusting.
These are not rational thoughts. They're what the illness puts in my head.
See, this is why I want an official diagnosis. I don't care what it looks like to you. I want an expert to tell me that I am sick so that the little nagging voice at the back of my head that tells me I am just making excuses for weakness and laziness will shut up. I know I don't experience the world the way healthy people do. The way I am constantly aware of my heartbeat. It pounds. If you touch me. If I have to speak. If I walk into a room and there are people in it. If I think of the things I need to do. If I wake up. It pounds. It pounds. It pounds.
I am not a danger to myself in the way I was last year, but I am afraid of myself just the same. I think I will wait forever. I think I will turn to stone. I think I will die waiting for someone to give me permission to live. I don't starve anymore. I don't cut. I don't bruise or deliberately deprive myself of sleep. I don't destroy the things I make because there's nothing to destroy. I don't make. I lose. I lose. I lose. The things I defined myself by are gone.
I am surrounded by people who love me and I feel so goddamn alone. I need help. I need help. I need to stop being such a whiny little brat and face reality. I need help. I don't know what I need, besides sleep. I'm tired. Everything is heavy.
