My story - in pros

LET'S LOOK BACK

So guys, I thought it might be appropriate to explain myself a little by here.  I have been a person living in fear, in anger, bitterness and hate.  I was so set upon becoming a different person from my perhaps mediocre  childhood and I wanted to stand out and be set apart from this image I had of myself.  I was so insecure and desperate to find acceptance and, more specifically, to find love.  The elusive love, that we all so tenaciously seek in the world.  I needed love from a lot of things, but this meant that I threw myself into friendships with a lot of people, relationships and encounters with people that were not truly like me, I didn't seem to fit any mold. I didn't seem to be the right shape for so many things.  It meant I had to adapt to fit different environments.  I had to adapt as a person, a spirit.

Unfortunately rejections from certain people sent me down different roads, and I encountered people that were so vastly from my natural disposition that I actually managed to change my disposition.  I was a sufferer of my own thoughts, my own hatred and self-loathing, enlarged by my repetitive self-destruction mechanism and the hands I fell into and were thrown out with.  I was once, many years ago as a young girl a good, kind, loving, honest, hard-working but very spiritual person but that changed because I didn't believe it anymore.  I carried so much the pain of other people that I actually started embracing it.  Becoming the creator of it, torturing myself, my good friends, my family and the world. Half of me still had this great humanitarian element about it and I was loved by a lot of people, and appreciated.  But I had no control over the darkest part of me.

My own experience of how people would react to me and treat me meant that there was this fire ready to jump up and get on my defenses and this made me act in terrible ways.  A wounded fox is more dangerous than a Jackal, I was licking my wounds, like a frightened animal in the corner, and if anyone looked like they would harm me or my friends, I would show my teeth.  I hated myself more than anything, because I was both the seeker and corrupter of the consistency and peace I so longed for.  People didn't understand me.  They didn't understand my mental illness.  Yes, I did use drugs.  I always was fascinated by them. The experience of transforming into something else.  I was either living as something I was not or desperate to destroy what was left of me.


MENTAL ILLNESS AND IT'S COMPANIONS


The early drug abuse and Bulimia seemed to have remarkably been overcome during my A-levels and the first year of my degree.  But like everything from my life, I was haunted by my past, and I believe that it caused me to develop Bipolar disorder, type 1 in the second year of uni.  This was the period of time when I started my clear manic and depressive episodes.  I wasn't on drugs, but it felt like it again.  I put it down to love for someone.  I fell in love with someone who was so different from anything that was good for me, right for me, but it was the elusive love, so I chased it.  Love is the drug.  Cliche, I know but it truly is.  The feelings of euphoria to be loved are quite like any other chemical.  There are complete highs and lows, and I was living them, but on some extreme level, having extreme behaviors.  This is when I believe, 'I went away'. Because I can tell you now, everything in the past feels like a dream after that point.  Like someone else had control of my body.  I got back into drugs, partying, and started my life on the illuminating bright lights of the city.  I loved it, it felt like everything.

To have that many friends, to be out every night, to be in love with someone, was all I ever wanted to do.  Sadly the only thing that remained consistent was the 'out every night' part.  My highs were extreme and radiant, I was funny, popular, bouncing with energy, attracted many people to me.  When things started to go wrong with love, it meant that I met a lot of blokes, but was unable to maintain anything fixed or stable... with anyone, because there was a depressive side of me so dark and so bitter that it meant that I couldn't.  Sometimes you walk down the wrong paths, meet the wrong people, do the wrong things, are in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Sometimes there's no expecting what happens to you.  There is definitely no expecting the effect it has on you.

FALLING

Having left Birmingham after a long period of high and lows, productivity and then destruction, I had called it a day.  I was no longer any sort of good person, or at least it felt like.  I thought coming back to wales would be the thing that saved me, because I was loved and accepted back with open arms by all the old faces.  Coming home when you've been living in the dark was the best feeling ever.  To be wanted again, and loved.  But my mental illness period was not over, not under control.  I was still harboring all the fear of my past, and what had happened to me on the way.  I still had very clear problems with my personality.  I was changeable.  Of course the first few months of being back it was easily identified, flat out periods of mania, loving life, loving old friends, and being sociable (but then taking it to massive extremes and doing ridiculous things) or depression, unable to move, unable to do anything.  But my episodes started becoming shorter and more together, started having highs and lows very quickly and rapid cycling.  Then I suffered my final act of violence and rejection to seal my fate.  I had left, it wasn't me anymore.  I lashed out on everybody, said terrible things and then begged for them back.  I was showing signs of borderline personality disorder.  Now accompanied by the self-destruct button, led to my most recent series of attempts at suicides, and to my psychotic behavior.   I wanted oblivion and I lusted for it.

Early recovery was a bit of a blur, as I spent months away from everyone, numbed by prescription drugs.  I was also predisposed by the prescription drugs, developing a dependency on prescription Benzodiazepines, sleeping a lot, mood swings and gaining weight.  But the worst thing about was the loneliness and rejection still haunted me, and was all I was obsessed with.   After the final fall (or at least it felt the biggest) I decided I needed a radical change.  Years and years of just prescription and intermittent therapy had not been the answer, clearly, because look at where I was.  I sought out my routes of spirituality.  


RECOVERY 


Having the Reiki therapy was the best thing that ever happened to me.  I arrived to see the healer and automatically felt completely in my comfort zone.  I wept on her shoulder, confessing the sins of my past and crying out in fear of being the terrible person I believed I was.  She was compassionate, caring and most of all understanding.  She told me I was not a terrible person, I was just very very hurt by my past.  She told me that I needed to let it go.  The therapy was the most amazing experience I had ever had, and so physical and real.  I felt the pain seeping out of me, and it even caused convulsions of my body.  I heard people speaking to me, telling me I was going to be strong, and before my eyelids visions appeared.  They were of happiness, and nature, the beauty of the world, and more importantly the future.  I saw the outline of angel wings and felt a voice telling me I WOULD be strong.  (On no drugs here at this point by the way!).  After the first treatment I felt exhausted, like I'd run a marathon, so much energy had been shifted in me.  I went back to bed in comfort, slept well, and was peaceful.  This increased with the later sessions, and the feelings and connection became more dramatic, but more importantly, I was recognizing that I was a decent person and forgiving myself.  I no longer desperately sought the love of others, but was interested in the incredible nature of everything around me, like a severely short sighted person who puts glasses on for the first time, rediscovers eyesight.

I was going out, embracing the beautiful country, reconnecting with family and friends, producing good work and laughing again.  The greatest thing for me has been noticing when I'm being tested, and reacting calmly and rationally to situations again, instead of flying off the handle.  I have started eating healthily, exercising, drinking lots of water and I certainly would not think about putting the evil stuff I put in my body before.  It was over, well it is over.  Yes I'd be stupid not to recognize that life is gonna throw things at me, at everyone, and it will have its effects.  But I believe I will be stronger now.  I will have more of an understanding when it comes.  Because I do.  I think I understand, first time ever, I get it.

FRESH PAGE

I am ready to live life and celebrate it, embrace it but to be wise about my decisions.  I'm applying for University again to finish it off, but maybe switch to counselling instead of straight Psychology.  I've got a desire to help people, but there are many ways to do that.  Writing has been the main way I've coped really. Keeping this blog of poetry, but mainly, a diary of what was going on, has allowed me to look back and study my progress, think more about the effects of some things and causality, let me the see the Ripple effect in motion.  My main advice to anyone is, have faith, like I said.  Believe in a better future because it is there for you, if you are having a bad time, be strong, and battle through it because it will shape you to make you the person you need to be.  Everything in life does.  This is not a sign off, but for now Peace, light and love to all! x x x

IN ASTROLOGY, IT IS ACTUALLY THE AGE OF AQUARIUS! YAY!