The Scars of our Souls

Today is self-injury awareness day, so I thought I’d do a post to celebrate. 

Celebrate? Well that really appears to be the wrong word for this sort of sensitive topic doesn’t it? Perhaps, but I am celebrating because spreading awareness makes a real difference and even if we are hiding behind a computer screen, it is still spreading the message. 

Perhaps I am also celebrating because proudly I can say that I haven’t self-harmed in a long time now, probably close to a year? I haven’t been counting. I have had the urge to a few times lately, but I have been able to stop myself. I actually burned my arm by accident taking a tray out of the oven the other day and have been freaking out that people with notice and think "she's doing it again".

When people see the scars on my arms 90% of them don’t have any idea why they are there, perhaps because injuring one’s self on purpose is a concept so far removed from the minds of those who have good mental health that when they see someone who doesn’t follow the society stereotypes of an “Emo” or appear to be acting overtly crazy then surely there must be a logical explanation.

Their ignorance is mostly obvious because so many people who notice my scars will comment on them. If people actually thought they were from self-harm at first glance, then they wouldn’t say anything, chances are they would stop making eye contact and awkwardly talk about the weather until they could walk away and we didn’t have to see each other again.

I get commonly asked things such as “were you a chef by trade?” the first time I heard that one was from a customer at work and I didn’t realise they had noticed my arms so I laughed and asked “Why on earth do you ask that?” to which the person said “Oh I just thought because of all the burn scars on your arms, my nephew is a chef and he has the same thing”. I was taken by surprise and didn’t know what to say which made the rest of our interaction rather uncomfortable. 

Now when I get the ‘chef’ comment I usually just laugh and say “Obviously not a very good one!” which seems to satisfy people. If customers or strangers directly ask me “what happened to your arms?” I tend to just reply “burns, I’m pretty uncoordinated”.  Which are both true statements, they just happen to be unrelated. Imagine if I said “Well those

scars you see on my body are simply the trademarks of the invisible scars on my soul.” Conversation stopper right there.

A lady I worked with in a government department years ago was also bipolar, I had already known, but she told me this one day when we were having a D & M. I laughed and said ‘maybe that’s why we get along so well, so am I” She just grinned like she had been heard for the first time and rolled up her sleeve to reveal arms covered in winding tattoos of cherry blossoms and vine leaves. She looked at me as if to test me and said “I suppose you do stupid things like this too then?” I looked closer and beneath the tattoos were hundreds of fine white lines, scars of varying lengths.

I smiled back and rolled up my sleeve to reveal my own history “Yep.” From that point on we looked out for each other, if one of us was having a bad day a coffee would suddenly appear on our desk with a smiley face post it note saying “luv ya!” Finally, somebody I knew in real life ‘got me’ and I didn’t have to explain a thing. 

Causes of self-harm vary widely and it’s a very individual thing; for me has always been about punishment rather than trying to “feel”. Inflicting pain or giving myself a scar to remind me of the ‘bad’ thing I have done and theoretically prevent me doing it again; ironically when I do hurt myself I am usually so angry that I don’t feel any pain from the wound anyway and I always inevitably do that ‘bad’ thing again anyway.

I think it is the self-hatred of my eating disorder that triggers me more than the bipolar depression; 90% of my scars are punishments for having eaten or binged. Some of the risk taking behaviours of my mania’s may also be considered 'acts of self-harm' officially, but for me they are less intentional acts and more of an impulsive recklessness. They ‘feel’ like two very different things.

One day I hope that I will be able to be more honest about my scars, stand up tall for mental health and contribute towards ending the stigma in person rather than just behind a keyboard. But for now the truth is reserved for the pages of my blog and people in my life that I love and trust while long sleeves continue to hide my struggles from the outside world. 

Do you, or have you self-harmed?   

If you do, is it a coping mechanism or punishment? 

Can you be comfortably honest about it or is this something you are working towards?

Mental Illness & Mothering, my hard truth

Ok. At the risk of losing all of my friends and followers but in the interests of ending the stigma, I am going to be brutally honest in this what turned out to be extremely long winded post. 

Mothering with a mental illness is hard for me, some days its fucking impossible.

I love my kids to the moon and back but sometimes, oftentimes, I can’t stand to be around them. It’s nothing they have ‘done’, yes they fight and act up and demand attention incessantly but that is what children do, they are no different to anyone else’s kids. No, it’s me with the problem and while I am aware of that, I find it really, really hard to change.

I have four kids, not a single one of them was ‘planned’. My first child was born when I was 17 but it could have been a lot earlier, I knew better but my insecurities and hypomanias made me careless and I am just lucky that the guy who eventually knocked me up turned out to be my soul mate.

 I am so very glad that my babies exist as they are each wonderful little people, such different personalities with so much to offer the world, but a big part of me often regrets having them because I am so very worried about just how much I am fucking them up. 

At 32 I still struggle to raise myself, I wonder how the hell I can raise four children.

On the days that my self-hatred reaches boiling point and I am struggling to look in the mirror without punching my own reflection I just don’t have it in me to give them what they need, yes they have a roof over their heads, clean clothes and food on the table but they don’t have the motherly emotional stability and support. They need that and I am not providing it. It breaks my heart. 

During a depressive episode I often resent them for making me interact with the world, getting out of bed to take the kids to school is only slightly less impossible than the thought of keeping them home and having to deal with them all day. I am then forced to get dressed because that one time I didn’t I had a flat tyre on the side of the road and had to change it in my pyjamas, I live in a small town full of sticky beaks, stigma and questions.

During a hypomanic episode I surprise them with pancakes and spontaneous trips to the beach, until I haven’t slept for 4 days and get over stimulated and irritable and just yell at them for breathing.

When I look at my offspring I see myself in them, they all have my eyes and love for animals, some have my nose, my daughter has my hair but when I see my mannerisms, my insecurities or the volatile way I react to situations come out in them, it scares the shit out of me. 

One of my children in particular seems to be following in my wonky footsteps, he was diagnosed with global developmental delay, anxiety and a ‘mood disorder’ at just three years old. He is definitely my most empathetic kid, he feels EVERYTHING to his core, he is kind to everyone except himself and when he drops something and unleashes hell in a tirade of swear words and self-doubt, it is like looking in a mirror. 

The haunting scars on his 13yr old arms and the memories of the time he ate washing powder because he wanted to die during his first depressive episode at age 11, which was kicked off by my own suicide attempt & subsequent 2month hospital stay, that’s what rocks me to my core.

I caused that. He didn’t have the same understanding and coping abilities of his siblings, I turned his little world upside down and I wasn’t there to pick up the pieces when he needed me.

I don’t want him to be like me, but he is and while you would think that would put me in a great place to understand him and help him, it doesn’t. Well I understand, but I don’t know how to help, I don’t know what to say and I get frustrated. It all feels too close to home and I haven’t yet learned how to cope myself let alone give advice on the matter.

 I open my mouth to comfort him and anxiety shuts me down. He is doing ok at the moment, he’s angsty but not depressed, the psychologists say that only time will tell if he also has bipolar, he is moody and quick to temper, sometimes gets silly and talks too fast but he hasn’t had a definable hypomanic or manic episode. Yet.

Now days I often feel that I had no right to have children and inflict my genes upon someone else, but I did and I can’t change that. I have only really come to terms with the fact that I have mental illness myself in the last 4 years, before that stigma owned me and I didn’t want to think about it. Denial is a river in Egypt. 

My biggest fear is that I am verbally abusing my children. When I am in a mood episode I yell a lot. I yell a hell of a lot. I swear at, to and about my kids. I am trying really hard not to, I can get in a rage suddenly and for no reason and words just come out without a filter. I hate myself for it.

The worst thing I have ever done in my life happened five years ago when I chased after one of my children yelling, while I had a knife in my hand. I don’t even remember what caused it, but I was quite irritably hypomanic and had been chopping something up in the kitchen and was holding a kitchen knife when I lost my shit about something my son did, he ran outside so I chased after him still yelling, I was absolutely not considering using the knife as a weapon, I just happened to still have it in my hand so it went with me.

Even at my angriest I don’t smack my children at all, but the child involved freaked out and thought I was going to hurt him, in that moment he honestly believed that his own mother would stab him with a kitchen knife, I will never forget the look on his face. As soon as I realised what he was thinking I immediately dropped the knife and tried to hug him, I apologised over and over promising I would never hurt him while he just backed away screaming and screaming in terror. No child should ever, ever have that fear. I don’t know how badly that damaged him and I will never forgive myself.

My kids are lucky to have their father in their lives, he is stable and loving and has done a great job of navigating them through my mental illness. He was the person who had to tell the ones old enough to understand that I was unwell but safe in a psychiatric hospital, then he had to tell them I had tried to kill myself while I was in this so called safe place and was now on life support. He was the one who had to deal with all of their fears and questions while trying to be positive telling them that the doctors would make mummy better while not knowing if I would wake up brain damaged or even wake up at all.  He is a true rock.

I don’t know what the future holds for my family, my moods have already done a lot of damage and I can only hope that things improve with time. I have support around me now, the older kids seem to understand that my mood swings are not their fault. 

Nobody asks questions when I eat a different meal to the rest of the family each night, they give me extra hugs and make me "I love you mummy" cards when they notice I am spending more time in bed and not wanting to answer the phone, they dance with me when I have the music pumping at 7am having baked my 6^th batch of cupcakes and give me a wide berth when I am unreasonably irritable. 

Mental illness is hard, while we may not have the perfect home life we love each other and are trying our best to make it work.