A few days ago, I was in bed trying desperately to sleep before my shift at work. My eyes were heavy, my body exhausted, but my brain didn’t get the memo. My brain was rushing around, no singular thought, but a conglomeration of thousands in a symphony of chaotic bits. My brain is never quiet, there is always noise. Sometimes I can tune it out, sometimes it is deafening. I describe it often as trying to live, and function, in a very crowded food court.

That day it was very loud, and I knew there would be no sleep. No matter how hard I fought it. To those with a mental disorder, they are no stranger to this. Sometimes just laying in bed and resting my eyes is enough.

As I’m laying there, my anxiety goes through the roof. Heart pounding, shallow breathing, followed immediately by the overwhelming urge to hurt myself. Not in a suicidal fashion, but cause some form of harm to myself. I needed a cigarette, I needed drugs, I needed to cut myself until I bled. I needed to get so messed up that I couldn’t recognize who I was anymore. I needed pain so I could fix it.

I tried grounding myself, telling myself I didn’t really want to hurt, but I didn’t listen to me. Of course I needed to hurt, wasn’t I listening? The longer I denied it, the worse the anxiety began to feel. Soon, invisible insects were crawling along my skin, and I was scared too move for fear that any movement would be to bring about this harm.

A pen wouldn’t work, a popular technique taught to those prone to self harm allowing them to draw on themselves rather than harming themselves. I needed the actual pain of it, not just seeing the marks left behind. I tried thinking of anything else, tried to drown out my thoughts with television. But I quickly lost focus because I wasn’t LISTENING to me.

I found a crisis text line, but couldn’t bring myself to text them. Couldn’t bring myself to admit it, because how do you explain to perfect strangers that you want to hurt yourself, need to hurt yourself, but you don’t want to kill yourself? Mental illnesses are stupid. And complex. So very complex.

I was in no condition to work, but I had no choice. I had to do something. The only thing I could think of to do was pop myself with a rubber band, so I wore one around my wrist. That seemed to help. Whenever I felt the urge, I’d just pop the rubber band. It helped. Healthiest way to deal with it? Maybe not.

But I didn’t drink.

I didn’t smoke.

I didn’t cut myself open.

I didn’t resort to drugs.

Just a rubber band pop every so often.

I’m calling it a win in my book, and truth be told, I’m proud of myself. I made it through my shift, and when I got home that night I was exhausted. I slept.

When I woke you, I felt….different. I felt better. Better than I had in a long time. The weird overwhelming urge to hurt myself had pulled me out of the depressive funk I’d been trapped in for the better part of a year. And it was nice.

But this is one of the reasons I hate how romanticized mental illness has become. Depression isn’t curling up in a blanket, eating a tub of ice cream. Manic isn’t a “good thing”. Not everything can be cured with a positive mental attitude. Trust me, we’ve all tried that, and when it fails, it makes the symptoms worse. Because then not only am I depressed, I’m also a fail whale for not being able to just snap out of it. With everyone trying to fix me, whatever the intentions, what my brain picks up on is you believe I’m broken, and you’re trying to fix me because I’m problematic. So depressed, failure, broken, burden.

My impulses aren’t always funny, though it has led to personally funny moments. Like once I bought a life size cardboard cut out of Matt Smith because I was really manic. But do you know how much money I could have saved, how much trouble I would be out of right now, if I could control those impulses? That’s not a joke.

I won’t lie, this blog just took an entirely different direction than my original intention, but I needed to get that little rant over before I could continue. It has taken me years of studying, and research, to get where I am today with my mental health. Years of personal growth, acceptance, and forgiveness (of myself and others) as well. The only reason I didn’t completely collapse under the mental pressure the other day was the familiarity of what was happening, and applying knowledge/techniques I’d learned. Even with the knowledge of what was happening and why (invasive thinking exasperated by OCD turning it into a mental compulsion, and the inability to complete the compulsion caused anxiety, fueling the compulsion), it was still terrifying.

As a teenager, I didn’t know what was happening, or why, I only knew that I needed to hurt so I could feel better. I will always carry the scars on my arms. With the knowledge I have, I was able to forgive teenage me. Teenage me as even more afraid than adult me. A lot of shame was just taken off my heart, a lot of pain was repaired.

And that’s why I felt better. That’s why I feel better than I have in years.

Getting myself back where I need to be in order to function as an adult, a mother, is hard. But I finally feel like I’m back in the driving seat of my head and I can control the car. But just like operating a motor vehicle, I have to accept there are elements beyond my control, and sometimes I just have to hold on and hope for the best. But in the more turbulent parts, where I feel like I’m hydroplaning out of control, I just hope that I never touch the brakes.