Definition of crazy (autobiographical) *trigger sexual abuse, ED, suicide*
 

I may or may not continue with this, but here's the first bit:

Suicidal dreams:

A definition of crazy is: ‘Affected with madness; insane.’ I don’t think that describes me really, though many would disagree. I am passionate, furious, empathic, a whirlwind of ideas, philosophies and realisations, but crazy? I doubt it. Crazy is believing that lines can be drawn indelibly in the sands of the time, between the sane and the insane, the good and the bad, the successes and the failures. Crazy is waking in the morning without admiring the colour, the vibrancy, the hope and the tragedy that makes life what it is.


I’m telling my story because I hate this process of boxing, labelling and sending people off in different directions on the whim of some mysterious authority who claims an action is bad or good, a thought is insane or crazy.


The last dramatic label I obtained was at the age of 14, when some omniscient body of people decided that I was mentally ill enough to require psychiatric hospitalisation. Labels such as post traumatic stress disorder, emotionally unstable and depression were bandied around, but to me it was perfectly simple. After everything that had happened my brain had quite frankly had enough, and was for all intents and purposes throwing it’s hands in the air and yelling ‘STOP!’


Years of sexual abuse at the hands of a family member, and the subsequent disclosure a year previously had taken their toll, and it had gotten to the point where I just wanted to roll over, stick my fingers in my ears and squeeze my eyes shut, and make it all Go Away. To this end, after visiting my partner in hospital, I left the grounds. Happening upon the nearest Co-operative I purchased a pack of pills and a bottle of Coke. Sitting on a bench beside the shop, hands shaking with deliberation as much as fear, I popped the capsules out of their casing, and swallowing them, two at a time, until the packet was ingested and the damage was thoroughly and irrevocably done.


Panic took root in the pit of my stomach, spreading vines that crawled up through my intestines and nestled in my throat. If anyone saw me, once the tablets had taken hold, would they be able to tell? Would my plan be ruined? Did I even want to die what would happen to my dog how would Mum cope would my friends and family hate me would I die in pain. Head buzzing I re entered the hospital in a daze of confusion and headed for the toilets, a haven of sorts. Slamming shut a cubicle I let my head fall into my hands, and allowed the tremors to take my body. I grabbed handfuls of hair and pulled just hard enough to clear my head with the pain of it. Soon it wasn’t enough, I needed to Think Clearly. Rooting desperately in my pockets for some kind of weapon against myself, I came upon a safety pin. Delicately I unpicked the healing wound of an old gaping cut, and scratched the skin on my ankle until was raw and bleeding. Now, when the buzz of pain had replaced the buzzing of my thoughts, now I could Think.


To die or not to die? To leave it to fate, and see if anyone found me in time, or go back out into the scary cacophony that was the world, and claw myself out of the living hell I was trapped in. A variety of arguments presented themselves as I sat, head in shaking hands, thinking through the most important decision I had ever had to make.


Death would make it all go away. No more fears, flashbacks, feelings. No more tears, terror or turbulence. Just peace. Never having to see the disappointment and worry on the faces I loved more than anything in the world. Never having to see the face that had haunted me for so very long. Never having to gaze into my own eyes and want to rip the person in the mirror limb from limb for being so pathetic, so stupid, so vulnerable, so selfish.


Life, on the other hand, meant hope. It meant the promise that anything could happen, including recovery and better days. It meant choking on pizza in a frenzy of laughter with friends, walking the winding path of the canal bank with my dog and her unwavering loyalty, cuddling up with my mother on the sofa, watching chick flicks and Hugh Grant. If I chose to forsake life I was committing the most horrendously selfish act in comprehension. I was leaving my family and friends in the shadow of a grief that would tear them apart in a way in which they would never be whole again. I would be choosing the coward’s way out, running from my problems, running from my past.


I had never been selfish. I had never been a coward. With a sigh and a stomach churning jolt of fear I stood up, shaking so hard it was difficult to remain upright. I walked, as though to a narrowly escaped hell, towards the A&E department, sat with a number clutched in my hand, fighting the urge to flee. Eventually I entered the consultation room sat down, took a deep breath, and looked into the brown eyes of the nurse sitting opposite. I squeezed my hands together so tightly the knuckles went white, and the words rolled like poison from my lips. “I’ve overdosed.”

*hugs tight*
your writing is gripping and intense as always hun but more than that, i think you're incredibly brave for being so honest about some of the worst times in your life, i hope it will help you to work through them
love you x

your an amazing writer...hope your okies x x

Wow, this is an amazing piece of writing. But the content is something even more than that. Thanks for sharing. It was very brave! Thanks

That's amazingly well written.

Catherine x

you have no idea what that means to me I think I will write more and post it it is very therapeutic

Thank-you for sharing, you write brilliantly

Calculating the consequences
 

Minutes later I hoisted myself up onto an examination table, closing my eyes as a doctor rolled up my sleeves to see my shame, the many and varied scars and cuts coating my arms, layers upon layers of raised and flat, wide and thin, purple and white scars that used to be my skin. The ones on my legs were worse to show, the words, wide, purple screamed ‘FAT’ and ‘UGLY’. After marking the battle scars on my body in a human outline on a piece of paper, I was informed my parents had been called, and handed a plastic cup of a thick, black tar-like substance. “Charcoal,” a nurse explained, with a grimace of empathy.


“It’ll line your stomach, limit the damage.” I didn’t bother protesting, or explaining that quite frankly, I’d had a change of heart, and I didn’t want any damage limitation, thanks very much. Under her watchful eyes, I took a mouthful of the charcoal. In involuntary wretch shuddered through me as the foul substance hit my throat. It stuck in my gums and coated my tongue, clung to the walls of my throat, tasted like liquidised chalk, sand and paint all thrown together to make the most unpleasant taste sensation known to man. A wry thought entered my mind as I reached the half way mark of the cup: ‘Well if this doesn’t put people off overdosing, I don’t know what will.’


I heard a flurry of activity and knew, with deep seated dread that my parents had arrived. Mum appeared with a fury on her face that I had never seen before. Verbal lashings were laid in before I could say a word, though Dad was remarkable calm, if looking a tad shell shocked. Gradually my parents calmed down, and we were instructed that I would have to stay on the paediatric ward over the weekend until the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Team could see me.


Dad left to gather some of my belongings from home, but Mum stayed with me and showed a strength of love, character and resilience I still marvel at to this day. She held my hand as a blood test was administered, even made jokes about the late night television programmes as we waited afterwards.


Later, armed with a pair of pyjamas, my diary and a host of regrets I slipped into the cold callous hospital bed, tugged my sleeve down over my bandaged arm, curled up in a ball, and wept. The silence of the sleeping hospital pressed on me, suffocating me with my own loneliness. My thoughts turned to the following morning, where I would have to get up and continue on with a life I wasn’t sure I wanted, and face the consequences of my self destruction.

this is so well written! thanks for sharing it, i hope its helping you :)

would love to read more when your ready *hugs*

this is so brave of you to share, i'm glad it's helping you.
It's so powerful to read and very well written.
hope you are ok.
xxx

Strokes of sunlight
 

Sunlight stroked my mascara marked eyes, forcing my reluctant mind into consciousness. Voices murmured, indistinct and unfamiliar in the background, blending and buzzing until I felt a scream rise and fall, silent in my chest. I sat up and reached for a sheet of paper and felt tip pens then made marks, mapping my pain on the plain pure page, marring it with my own misery. As I did this, a tall woman, with whiter the white skin, curling brown hair and a severe line of a mouth approached my bed. Introducing herself as the doctor doing the morning ward round, she proceeded to prod and poke at my innermost thoughts and feelings, trying to determine the level if insanity beating in my brain.


She left, a nurse approached, then left, my parents approached, then left. I pushed each and every living soul who dared approach away with a bitter, bruised contempt. Looking over at the collection of items brought in by my family however, my eyes lit upon an unexpected gift. Inside the cover of my diary, down the side of the plastic cover, a delicate slither of silver glittered. Heart thumping loudly against my ribs, I reached over, and slid the minute blade out of the plastic covering. Drawing in a deep breath, I glanced towards the ward doors. Out on the main corridor the nurses were discussing a diet consisting of red and green days, and a new doctor was busy at the desk. My chance for release was here. Tugging up my sleeve, I pressed just hard enough to make a white indent in the skin. Before it had chance to rise I slashed down, watching as bubbling fat rose out through the crimson tears.

Golden relief poured through my veins, the pain numbing and exhilarating all in one glorious moment. I heard movement and shook my sleeve down over the cut, praying whoever it was would leave before the blood soaked through the material, a guilty gash of evidential support for my madness. The nurse looked hard at me, piercing me with her eyes. “Are you ok?” I nodded, smiling too brightly. “Then why are you holding your arm like that?”


Minutes later, annoyed, the nurse led me to the doctor, who confirmed the need for steri-strips. I bit down on my lip hard as the rubbery fingers pressed the two sides of the cut together.


In the days that followed the nurses learnt never to trust that I would keep myself safe and whole. I bashed my head in the bathroom until I saw stars, no drawing pin in the notice boards was safe from my grasping greedy little hands. I remember one day, after watching Titanic, identifying so vividly with the moment Jack sinks below the surface and floats away, drowned and dead. I felt for the drawing pin in my pocket. I glanced to check the nurses were busy. Going to the window where sunlight streamed in, I stood, elbows resting gently on the sill, gazing out. I removed the pin and dragged it again and again over my hand until not one inch of skin remained unscratched and bloodied. I felt a tap on my shoulder, and then my hand was being shoved under cold water, and the eyes that met mine were alight with confusion, and frustration. “No one has ever been so good at finding weapons against themselves in my care before.” I felt proud and sick to the soul, all in the same moment.

That night was a terrible night. The pain built in my head until I felt sure my skull would burst under the pressure of it, that my body and mind would wilt like a winter flower. I thumped my head with my fists, trying to ease the pain of it. Memories flooded me, his hands, his face, the distinctive way he said my name that has made me detest that accent to this day. His hands forcing mine down. His fingers stroking the inside of my leg. Focusing on the film so that I could put some distance between myself and the aching wrongness of what was happening…


“Katy? What are you doing?” I shook her off as she tried to hold me, her big dark eyes heavy with concern, but less real than the torment replayed over and over on an ever spinning reel in my head. She took my arms and held them as she wrapped me in her own, holding me safe, speaking soothingly until the only movement was the shuddering sobs. She told me how she had been hurt too, how she understood the confusion, the guilt, and how she knew that I would get through this and be better and stronger than ever before. I shook and cried against her, so glad, so very glad to have someone else be responsible for my safety and state of mind for once. Staying with me all night, she persuaded me to take the medication I couldn’t bear to have touch my lips, reassured me that his hands would never touch me again.


We sat for hours, her talking, me mumbling out vague responses and crying. The night was suddenly less terribly scary. I was not alone.

Wow.
I cannot say anything that others have not already said before me.
But i trully admire and look up to you for doing this, the courage and strength to actually delve down into what must feel such torturous memories.
The uncompromising honesty and the snippets of dark humour flash through often, but it doesnt make it any less poignient.
It made me laugh when you used a set of paranthetic commors ( ive got a feeling i spelled that wrong). I remember in starbucks when i splained that to you.
Either way, total tangent concerning grammer and punctuation over, tis good, continue plzkthxbai.

I did the commas wrong? How?? *headdesk* I will never get the hand of the bloody things I swear to god :-P

No you didnt use them wrong! You used the exactly as they should, and thats what made me laugh, as i knew they used to confuse you. Argh i feel like ive offended you now :(

Haha not offended, just easily confused :-p

Katy you amaze me.
Your writing is amazing and you're so damned brave it's unbelievable.
And you need to tell me what a paranthetic comma is because Callum has me confused.

That's really stunning writing and I lapped it up, felt like I was there, though that might partly be tiredness, and partly raw memories, the point is, it's poignant, and brings tears to my eyes.

I cant believe how brave you are, first for getting through this and secondly for being able to write about it so deeply! *hugs*

Your amazing Katy its written so perfectly it made me cry >.<
*squishes*