Niagara Falls Jumper Explains

nitsirknerual:

I wasn’t trying to kill myself,
not really. It was just there:
the water and the falling
music of it. I was in need
of that sort of rush,
a sort of deathsong baptism
like the day I drove across
a bridge and had this urge
to accelerate and aim
for the side, dive over
the abutment and rush past
every temptation.
I just closed my eyes and mouth
and let the water hold me,
the cold cocoon of it
tumbling and throwing me
against everything
that had ever gone wrong.

—Karla Huston

it’s 1:46am. i just spent the last hours reading all of winter girls and listening to demi lovato’s fix a heart on repeat.

i’m still quasi-suicidal. i’m still fucked up and depressed. i am lia and cassie and i am emma and i am a winter girl. (a winter girl wannabe?). i have so much to explode to my counselor/nutritionist. but i have to wait until thursday. thoughts of inpatient frighten and entice me. my head is a swirling vortex of confusion and cutting and sadness and miracles and hope and suicide and starving and purging and fighting and recovery and relapsing and i want to vomit ink on paper or words on my therapists carpet but i am afraid. God is all around me. the enemy is tempting me. i feel bloated and heavy, but also very small and very sad and scared.

tonight was the baccalaureate mass.

also known as the hooding ceremony and the final mass (because it’s a catholic college). i didn’t take communion because i’m not catholic and i also don’t know the catholic way of doing it. but otherwise it was a lovely ceremony and the priest’s homily was incredibly well received and the message needed.

however, i just feel so fat and like a failure because of how much i ate today. i’ve been restricting so well (keeping under 5/700 calories a day for like the past three weeks) and today to just go nuts with the chocolate covered sample strawberries/junk food at work and then at the reception after mass… i ruined my restricting. and violated my rule against eating after like 7/8pm. i need to fast. but that will have to wait until everyone leaves and life resumes as normal.

i’m still here because i want to see what happens next. curiousity didn’t kill me, it’s what is keeping me alive.

ten rules for being human.

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it’s yours to keep for the entire period.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called, “life.”

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of trial, error, and experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiments that ultimately “work.”

4. Lessons are repeated until they are learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

5. Learning lessons does not end. There’s no part of life that doesn’t contain its lessons. If you’re alive, that means there are still lessons to be learned.

6. “There” is no better a place than “here.” When your “there” has become a “here”, you will simply obtain another “there” that will again look better than “here.”

7. Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself.

8. What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9. Your answers lie within you. The answers to life’s questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen, and trust.

10. You will forget all this. (by cherie carter-scott)

sunday 29 april, reality.

every so often i’ll look at someone and really take notice that they are human - a person with their own existence, thoughts, feelings, life story, etc. i guess sometimes i don’t realize this or take it for granted. it is like i see people and i can interact with them, but it is hard to recognize them as more than simply existing beings. it’s really hard to describe…

i think i see this problem most while at MOPS working with the young toddlers. when the kids are babies they’re just that - adorable, drooling, lovable creatures to hold and enjoy. but when they’re toddlers they are starting to speak, play, understand the adults more and more, etc. and they are no longer adorable babies, but actual small humans, with their own existence, emotions, opinions, etc.

somewhere in me i think this is because i don’t feel real all the time. not in a dissociation kind of way, but more in the way of i’m just going through the motions of life. i do dissociate sometimes, but it is more that i just go the places i have to and don’t contribute much to anything.

i wonder if this is why i cut, binge, purge and restrict… to help me feel more real.

thursday 26 april, 307.50

307.50 [and] depression. there is an official name. there is an official number. it has an official number that i can look to when i feel like i’m faking and making this all up. there is a notation on a chart that will be seen by counselors and insurance people alike that i can use against the lie that i am not sick enough or that i’m just a fraud manipulating people and making up stories.

what is the number, this diagnosis? depression and eating disorder not otherwise specified. it means that this is real. it means that i have evidence to rebuke the lies. it means that i am inching that much closer to recovery, to being comfortable with myself, to being comfortable with others, to hope and to the day when i can renounce shame, the enemy, and all his lies for good.

one of my greatest struggles about getting help, seeing counselors and talking about my mental health issues is that they are not real, but my mind exaggerating things or me manipulating people. it has been so easy to believe the lie that i’m not sick enough to have an eating disorder or that i’m not sad enough to have depression. but i do. it has been confirmed and now i can get that much closer to overcoming this lie that has so plagued me in my seeking help and continuing with these resources until i recover.

i have a diagnosis. this is real. and once i realize this the next step is to realize that i am not my depression and that i am not my eating disorder. i am not my self-injury. it is a part of me, but it is not me. i can write it here without difficulty, but i do not yet believe it. i cling to my disorders and struggles because they are so much a part of my life. i have called myself the cutter and the girl with depression and the girl trying desperately to be skinny and control herself (her eating, her life) for so long that it’s comfortable here, i know who i am with these parameters. but i need to realize that it is true that i am so much more.

i have a number. but it is not who i am. self, please believe this soon. self, it is going to be okay. i promise. self, recovery is possible. your counselors are great - really nice, funny, real, down to earth people. work with them. work with the people at work, church, school, your friends and your family. hope. hope and love will overcome the shame. you’ll get there, soon. one day you’ll believe all this. and one day you’ll look around and all these issues will be rooted firmly in the past.

Father God,
thank you so much for putting jen and ani into my life. thank you for giving me the finances to afford treatment and for the people you’ve put into my life who have and are encouraging my journey into recovery (thank you for renee, kristen, jerry, marisa, roe, tyler, and nesem). thank you for letting my parents not react the way that i thought they would - but help them to understand fully. help me as i go towards recovery to look to You for strength and hope. help me to run into your loving arms and to walk with Jesus in all that i do. Father God, help me to pray better, to speak more articulately and to dream in color again.