So where do I start? How about I'll start by saying I'm listening to some not-so-happy music because that apparently is what I do when I'm upset. I listen to music that makes me even more upset because it just feels like that is the right thing to do. So what else, Sash? What else.
I feel loneliness and abandonment by people and society as a whole. I don't quite know why, I don't outwardly seek new friends nor do I outwardly feel the need to nor want to. This spiral of depression comes over me like a wave, often triggered or exacerbated by events in my life. This particular one was starting to affect me after I suddenly became angry after playing War Thunder and getting Spawn Sniped after a minute from across a 2KM map with no way to react. I felt like I couldn't cope with the anger.
I threw one of the bean-bags I bought on advice of my therapist (which I have since cancelled because I don't want to spend the money on something with no guarantee of fixing how broken I am), the release from the throwing of the bean-bag at my wall and the subsequent thud as it impacted did release a significant amount of chemical anger. But I was unable to keep playing, and it got worse from there, despite having a positive morning with no obvious signs of one of my "low phases".
It seems this one event triggered the phase and now as I type this, I feel the full power of that darkness coming over me. I feel the wish to 'give up' on my life, to forsake myself and destroy what I have in one final release of rage directed at people from my past that have destroyed my mental health.
I am extremely angry internally. I harbour immense hatred, passionate hatred that would see me commit sins unfathomable and jeopardise my entire life just to release the anger at those I feel wronged by. It feels like I've fallen off my tether many years ago, the final straw long since taken, and there is nothing left but a husk of emotional charge building up waiting to explode. I feel like a pressure cooker, slowly building up pressure until it reaches the point when the containment vessel simply fails, and the resultant explosion will destroy me and those around me.
Part of my logical brain acknowledges this is the emotional instability and inability for me to regulate my emotions that stems from my Borderline Personality Disorder. But despite that acknowledgement, I feel completely powerless to actually resist it. No matter how many times I tell myself this phase is a mental illness, I cannot resist it. It feels like it is how it is. It feels like my entire existence, my purpose on this earth - everything about me, every fibre of my being needs to be dedicated to enacting vengeance on those people I deem responsible for destroying any chance I had at a normal life.
There's a list of those people.
It starts with the bullies at both secondary schools I went to. My social anxiety developed during this phase, with an emphasis on the second school - Potturspury Lodge school for boys with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. The school now takes girls and is completely different, but that's besides the point. At this school, I was exposed to individuals who had the power, and often the motivation, to cause me serious harm, potentially even fatally so.
Boys from violent backgrounds sent to the school because no other mainstream school would accept them. Fights were relatively common, as was violence. There were people in that school that could hurt or kill me, and I spent a lot of my time there absolutely terrified of them. I was bullied extensively, every day I was subject to continued emotional and sometimes physical, abuse from a few select individuals at the school. Many of which, were stronger and more violent than me and could hurt me severely. This is where I learned, as a child of 13~14, to be a People Pleaser.
My brain hard-coded new neurological connections wired deep within my mind, reinforced every day, to keep these people happy or I would be hurt, maybe even killed. It may seem dramatic, but that is the reality of how I felt at that school. Years of this 'boot-licking' behaviour has installed within my brain a complex of anxiety and fear for essentially any person, any human being, regardless of their outwardly demeanour. The anxiety is crippling, it is absolute, and it destroys my life.
Even to this day, I keep people happy just out of fear. Even those I love and respect the most, I 'boot lick' to keep myself safe, because deep down, my brain still fears being hurt like I would have been at school, if I didn't keep the bullies happy. The boot licking is so extensive, I will often put myself in situations of major disadvantage, or unfair to me, just to keep people around me happy so they won't hurt me. 15 years later, as a 29 year old, this still affects my life severely.
My sister is a narcissistic individual with "my way or the highway" attitudes that result in violent fits of rage and abuse if you dare oppose them in any capacity, regardless of how objectively wrong they are. Coming home each day from school to a sister who essentially bullied me in the same way continued reinforcing this defensive mechanism in my brain and gave me no respite. Even at home, I was forced to keep my often violent sister happy or face the, potentially physical, consequences.
Most of the memories of my childhood I have are negative, or traumatic. The first thing I remember about my father is being physically threatened by him after opening a can of tuna that was supposed to be for his work. Other memories include how he'd turn the power off to my room if I was making too much noise or past my bed time, instead of asking me. Then how he'd make so much noise with his PC and flight simulator I couldn't even sleep.
I remember how my sister told me I can't play with, or even touch, her plush toys because they were 'hers'. How she threw stones at my window and shouted abuse at me, when she forgot her keys and I was playing on my PC with my headphones on. How she abused me as if it was my fault I didn't let her in immediately as I didn't hear her.
How she used a huge stone as a battering ram against the back door after my mum refused to let her in one day after how abusive she was being. How scared I was then. I remember how my father and sister never understood me, how they simply said my anxiety was not real and I was 'lazy' and wasn't trying to get a job.
How I could 'get a job in an instant' if I 'tried'. I remember their complete refusal to accept my mental health issues at all, and how they themselves had contributed to the broken husk that I am now, a shadow of what I could have been, if I was allowed a fighting chance in life. If I was spared the abuse and bullying.
There is so much more to put here. I haven't even mentioned my aunt in detail. A more recent affair, my aunt re-opened the partially healed wound I harboured after many years of isolation from the entire family. And it is her that I largely blame for my rapid deterioration in mental health over the last few years that has seen me isolate myself even further, and lose someone I considered my soulmate, in the process. Pushing them away like I push everyone away.
The anger gets replaced with grief. Sadness. Hopelessness. I feel anger at myself, too. I blame myself for so many things. perhaps I am right to do that, or perhaps that is unfair. I don't really care, because self-hatred has become a significant component in my depressive spirals, which simply drives the desire to enact self-harm not just for the overriding capability of physical pain over emotional, but for the desire to hurt myself and punish myself for being a pathetic failure in life.
These thoughts will bounce around my head, often being drowned out by hatred and anger for those i mentioned above, backwards and forwards, until the metaphorical ball comes to a stop and the emotions subside, the phase passes and my life goes on.
I just feel that each and every day that passes, the closer I get to acting on those emotions.
The consequences of which, will be severe. Not just for me, but for the people mentioned here. two decades of boot licking people that abuse me has created a wrath within me, only tamed by the severe anxiety, at least for now. It will only take the right combination of events and circumstances and the result will be catastrophic.
Comments