Evening All!

The last week or so has not been one of my finest. I have been very busy and most of that is to do with good and positive things but there are few downers as per usual.

The good stuff is that for my first 2 pieces of university work for this academic year have come back with good marks and comments from my lecturers. Even the Old Testament Studies lecturer has been surprised that I have managed to do anything because in the past I have not done so well in his lectures and often had to drop his modules when I was too unwell to continue. I think I have proved that I can do the work and that I made the right decision to return to uni. I am trying very hard to find a way to get through to the class and talk more in lectures and break times. I had to do a presentation last night and I was so scared, I had an upset tummy all day but I did it and to my surprise the class applauded me twice. I am trying to gain confidence from all this and be more focused on what I am doing. I have been thinking very seriously about the future but I think that for now, I just have to look to graduating and then think of what to do next. Sometimes I have found that the universe does provide answers when you don’t expect them although my mother has recently visited a tarot card reader for advice and she said that the woman really knew her stuff so I am planning to go, as soon as possible.

I also managed to buy some very nice clothes again but this time I went shopping with m y housing support worker who is much easier to shop with than my mother! I did not realise that New Look now has a lard-arse range and I actually fit in their stuff. It is so nice to shop somewhere other than Evans (the Hefty-hide away – the UK version of the shop in hairspray!!!). I like what I have chosen and I hope that it will make me feel more comfortable in my own skin. That sounds like a load of arse but I frequently just wear what will cover up my scars and fat rather than what I’d actually like to wear. My mum calls it camouflage- dressing not to cause offence or draw attention to myself. But these clothes are a bit nice than my usual stuff – I take student grunge to a new level most days – so 2 nice shirts and a pair of linen trousers are a bit of a break for me!

Plus, I am very excited about this weekend – I am going away to London to see my favourite band, the Levellers, in concert at the Brixton Academy. The gig should be huge as it is their 20th anniversary year. I cannot wait as I have now booked a hotel room so I can stay the night and not miss part of the gig to get the last train home. I love seeing them play, it is the only time I get to be myself as most people expect weirdness at their gigs and their politics and outlook is so my true style that I can be whoever I want to be when I go and see them. Their music is amazing and played with such conviction that I live for these gigs – I have seen them over 15 times in all sorts of places and I just love it. I told my psychologist about how I feel and she said it was nice that I could tell her a bit more about me and the positive stuff I live for – although it wasn’t strictly therapeutic in the straightforward sense. I had a useful session with her and I managed to get to the true feelings of grief and sadness that I usually try to avoid by arguing and stuff. I even cried, which is not my style in sessions.

But … despite all these positives and behind it all is the truth … I have self harmed to extent that I have over 40 stitches in me at the moment. To keep going and face everything, I have to cut – deeply. Each time I cut, I still face the same lottery of treatment and feel such guilt that I cannot see how, in any rational sense, this actually helps. But it does. I can only function at the level I want to if I can cut. Mother’s day set me off – my parents could not be bothered to phone me and I had to not phone them because my sister was home and I couldn’t face speaking to her if she answered it. We have not seen each other for nearly a year now and it makes me very sad. I have to back off and leave her be but I miss her so much. Plus it was on mother’s day a few years ago that I cut so badly I needed to be resuscitated. I still think about that moment a lot – I had a chance to die and I couldn’t – something inside of me wanted to live. And I just do not understand that at all. I should be pleased to be alive and glad that I had that self-survivor thing but I instead angry and bewildered as to why I have been kept alive. It is very hard to explain and I don’t really know how to put it, but on Buffy, when Willow raises her from the dead, she had a feeling that she’d left something of herself behind … that she wasn’t meant to be. And I think that is how I feel (although I did not sleep with a vampire to get over it!)

Anyway, I am just hanging on to the thoughts of the gig and the fact I can do the uni work I have to do. If it means I still cut, then that is just the way it is. At least then I can still function – and it is happening less than before I went to the CRU.