It probably goes without saying that I didn’t just wake up
one morning and decide now is the time to get my shit together. Actually, forget
what I just said, that is totally what happened. I guess the point I am trying
to convey is that this has been a long time coming but my final decision to
actually do it was pretty sudden. I have been toying with the idea of finally
dealing with my less than perfect past for approximately six months, but until
now I haven’t really done anything terribly proactive about it. I went for an
assessment with my university’s counselling service and decided that particular
provision just wasn’t for me; they were way too interested in my parent’s separation
and my physical health as a child, it felt as though they were disinclined to
dig any deeper, and the particular counsellor assessing me seemed to have an
aversion to asking challenging questions in fear that I may display some form
of outward emotion. Following this, I just tried to forget the idea that there
may be a way for me to move forward.
Late August, I started seeing a girl and I fell for her
pretty quickly. It seemed that she was everything I could possibly want and she
led me to believe that she was very much in to me too. Emotionally, things
moved quite quickly and, I hate to admit it but, I became very attached to her.
However, as is life, she dumped me at the end of October. By text. When 24
hours previously I had been in her bed whilst she tried to persuade me to book
flights to go to Paris together at Christmas and we talked about what we were
going to do for my 21st birthday at the beginning of December. It
made absolutely no sense and she didn’t even given me a reasonable explanation,
bar saying that she isn’t ready for a mature relationship, blah, blah, blah. I
felt, and to some extent still feel, as though she is just another person who I
have let in who isn’t there for me anymore, who I falsely believed had my best
interests at heart. It wasn’t a long, serious relationship and by no account
did I love her or anything, but I did let her in. I showed her my weaknesses, I
allowed myself to be vulnerable in front of her, and I trusted her not to hurt
me. I have been able to identify this as the trigger for my recent bout of being
slightly mental.
Anyway, I went off the rails slightly following this and
basically spent a week drinking copious amounts of alcohol and sleeping. The
alcohol seemed to be working, as at no point during that period was I
completely hammered, and it had a rather lovely numbing affect. I think that
this was the first time in my life that I was able to understand the potential
benefits of alcoholism. Alas, all good things must come to an end and this
period of zero emotion ended rather spectacularly.
I went to a small Halloween gathering on the Saturday, which
was attended by just a few fairly close friends. Initially I was having a
really good time and, besides a few friends initiating conversation about the
previous week’s events with the girl, I was reasonably okay. As the booze
flowed it became obvious that I was becoming extremely intoxicated and much more
emotionally unstable. I don’t really remember entirely what happened; I
remember sitting on my own on the front door step of the house, I was crying
and I remember feeling as though I wasn’t me, I felt as though I was watching
myself from above, a fly on the wall so to speak. The next thing I remember was
being in the bathroom with a razor in my hand and blood dripping from my arm. I
don’t remember making the cuts, whether that was because I was so highly inebriated,
because I was disassociating somewhat or because I have, on a subconscious
level, blocked the memory of the incident out, can only be speculated upon.
I don’t remember what happened and who found me but I do
know that I caused a lot of hurt that night. Some of my closest friends had to
witness my emotional breakdown, moments after I had cut myself in THEIR house,
using THEIR razors. Everybody was crying and I was crying and it was all just a
complete mess; once again I had managed to take something good and turn it to
shit. I talked about a lot of stuff that night, including my ever increasing
thoughts of suicide. I remember adamantly telling one of my closest friends
(who happens to be one of the kindest people I have ever met in my life and
somebody who has always been there for me no matter what and the one person
who came into my room for cuddles when she could hear me crying in the night
way back in first year) that I wanted to die. I will never forget the look on
her face and the way that she said “you can’t fucking say that”, but I did say
it and, at that moment in time, I meant it.
I’m not denying the fact that alcohol has the tendency to
exaggerate emotion; when you feel happy and you drink it makes you feel even
happier and the reverse is also true. However, I personally feel, and I can
only talk for myself based on my own experiences, this is not how it always
works for me. I think that alcohol causes me to lose my inhibitions, which causes
me to say things that I would never dream of saying in the cold light of day.
This does not mean that I don’t feel these things when I’m sober and it does
not mean that I don’t think about these things when I’m sober. What it does
mean is that I am able to rationalise my emotions much better when I am sober
and know not to say the things that I am thinking aloud.
The following day was horrendous. I had to acknowledge the
harm I had done, both to myself and to other people. I had to accept that I had
potentially destroyed some of the most rewarding friendships that I have. I
felt unable to look anybody in the eye and, to put in bluntly, I felt like the
biggest bell end in the world. I was told, in no uncertain terms, that my
friends didn’t know how to deal with me and that they didn’t even want to look
at me at that point in time. I was told that they needed some space away from
me and that I needed help before I ended up on a mental ward or dead. I think
the reason that their words formed such an impression upon me was because I
could entirely understand where they were coming from and I knew that what they
were saying was true.
I'm not trying to turn this into some kind of pity party; I
know that I fucked up and, although I am now spending time with my friends
again and have reassured them that I am actively trying to access support, I
still have a long way to go in proving to my friends that I am truly sorry for
what happened. I don’t want this to read as me being a self-indulgent spoilt
little girl who feels as though the world is out to get her and nobodies on her
side; I'm just trying to explain how it is from the inside.
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