Helpless to Defy this Fate

I'm feeling a lot of things at the moment, none of them good. I can't comprehensively say that I want to do this anymore, because I really just don't. This life I have feels more like a half life. I'm only there half the time. And further to that it's a painful existence. It's one thing for the pain to be mental, but it's another thing entirely for it to be physical. And different even again when its both. Because there is no relief. Not even cutting takes me far enough away.

I'm hurting, all the time. And I just don't know what to do. I let school escape and swamp me and I'm drowning and I have no one to blame but myself. I'm trying to rectify this, I am. Twelve hours of homework over the last three days and there is still oh so much to do. And it's not even an issue of organisation, it's an issue of time and motivation. Time is fast escaping and my motivation is too closely tied to my mood. And my mood is out of control. As with most cases, I can control my mood when necessary but I'm letting it go again. Why hold on? It's inevitable that it'll slip again, why stand in it's way? I feel like I'm fighting for nothing. I'm always fighting for nothing.

I'll wake up tomorrow and there'll just be more hurt, more pain. More hours of homework. It's wrong, it's so wrong. I cannot comprehend any of this anymore because it just doesn't make sense. It never did, and it probably never will. Life answers to no one but its own whim. I just feel its wrath, regularly. It's punishing, like I've committed some great crime. And honestly, I believe that. The pain makes me believe I'm a bad person. That I somehow deserve to feel this way. Because I've done something bad. I'm a terrible, awful, horrible person. But how much punishment can one bear? How much more do I have to wear before I've paid off my crimes? What crime could be so bad that I have to suffer like this? 

I have a new specialist appointment on the 13th of June, right in the middle of exam week. I've mapped June out. It's the month from hell. SACs, exams, doctors. Everything is happening in that month. It starts in six days. Six days. Six days until thirty days of terror. Of hate. Of self loathing. Of torture. Of loss. I'm so exhausted. Yet I cannot rest. I have to work. Work harder. I won't ever catch up if I don't. And if I don't catch up then I won't ever be good enough. I must be good enough. But how? All I feel is inadequate, like my best isn't enough. It isn't. Those looks I get when my best hasn't been enough. The accusation in their eyes. The cover-up. Then the "it's okay". But we all know that it's not. If it happens again, well. Lets hope it does not. My best is not good enough. I'm not good enough. I can't be good enough.

I'm just too imperfect. These imperfections, these doubts. They're so accompanied by school these days, partnered by roaccutane, married to my illness and pains. Depression's queen. They're all anchoring into the ground, holding me back, holding me fast. I'm struggling to break the chains, and even when I do they all come along for the ride. Dark passengers, lurking in the shadows, always ready to have their say. Drowning out all reason and logic with their awful screams of hate and resentment demanding the full attention of my mind all the time. It's one thing to say I need to shut them out, but it's another to actually do it. Not when they multiply, gain new friends and strike up a chord so much louder than when the depression first arrived.

There is no solitude in cutting. None in silence. None in distraction. Only in sleep. And only then when my sleep is dead, blanked of cryptic dreams that are asking the very same questions I ask myself all day, but also warning me and underscoring the trauma I'm shouldering bravely. Too bravely. There is far too much pride. It's a funny thing to suggest that one has too much pride. I know I do. It's hard to ask for help. Even when you know, without any doubt, that you need it. Is it a product of going it alone for too long, or not even knowing how. For me it is both. And when I do ask for help, I negate the issues that worry me the most. They are private somehow. Like it's my own personal battle. Only I can know them, their secrets. The things they are whispering to lead me astray.

No one knows what to say anyway. A sympathetic look. The pity. The silence. They're not sure how to help. I may not be a starving, homeless child in the developing world, but the trauma of my seventeen years is certainly in a league of its own. People tell me how strong I am, how brave. But it's not strength, I'm not brave. I just don't have a choice. Well I do, that choice is living or dying. But that's a big choice. The choice to stop or go forward does not exist. I can only go forward. There is no other way to do this. It's not even that it would be all over if I stopped, stopping is just not possible. It's not feasible. It cannot be done. Certainly not now that June is only six days away. Six days. I will get to June 1st, I will get out at June 30th. The variable is what state I find myself in. I can't predict, cannot foresee. It will just happen.

I'm utterly terrified. I've lost it now. How can it get any worse? I know it can get worse. It's been worse. This is nothing. I'm still talking. It could be, can be, will be, worse. And I am powerless to change the course of my journey. My delightful fate. 

- Sky 

Predetermined and Convenient

Was reading CFJ the other night. A couple of things occurred to me: 1) Geez I can be a whingy, mopey kid and 2) Damn I was thin. So many entries posting weights in the 65-70kg range... which is exactly where I want to be. None of this 70-75kg bullshit. It's slightly obsessive, but I don't even care. I have this picture in my head of the ideal me and I really just want to be that person. Every day the scales show me 73kg, I feel a tiny bit sadder inside. Sick, sad Sky. Wanting stupid things.

Got sick. With a virus. Possibly the best thing that's happened to me in some weeks -- despite the terrible dry throat, squeaky, raw voice and violent cough, as well as the headaches and blocked nose, not to mention all the snot. I was forced to stay home and do nothing. And it was great. No school, no homework, no people, just the company of my now preoccupied brain and endless hours of Gossip Girl. Soothing and distracting. So yes, getting sick was the best thing that had happened to me in quite some time. I needed a time out and I needed it badly. And I got it and it was awesome.

Except I'm still sick. Dammit.

I do, however, swear that I've got half the world worrying about me. I continue to assure everyone that it's under control. But the thing is that the reality of the situation is that it's not really. It's actually totally unpredictable and the best I can do is run with it and hope for the best. Luckily for me, I am in control 95%. Pre sickness, that excellent strike rate was slipping a bit. Well a lot, really. My resolve was not standing the tests of life so well pre sickness. All that relaxing now being done, it's not like I got any extra sleep -- which was the only bummer. On Saturday morning the bags under my eyes were nearly gone but now, they're back in force. Mostly because my insane brain insists on waking at 6am every morning, like clockwork. I don't understand. I'm not even trying to. There's just no point trying to decipher some, well most, of the occurrences in my life. Best just to let things roll on, I suspect.

So I just have to get that resolve up and keep plugging away. It's all just so variable these days that it's hard to know what to do. And it's hard to know what to do because I don't know what's going to come next. I know that that's just how life works, but why? Why am I not in more control of what is happening to me? So much of me has been stolen from my grasp that I can't trust anymore. Sometimes I can't even trust myself. Well that's most of the time because it seems to me that I'm rather untrustworthy where self is concerned. Not that that is at all surprising, I think.

It's easy to pretend everything is okay when it's not. I'm just an actress on life's stage. The roles have been chosen and the best I can do is play along -- as fate intended. It was never in my hands, after all. I think that that simple fact has been proven enough times in my years for that to be indisputable.

- Sky

I want a refund on my brain.

I suppose it wouldn't be a week of school if I didn't break down into tears at some stage throughout the week.

Yesterday, as you could all obviously see, I was quite angry. I'm angry at life for putting me where I am at the moment. And I know that roaccutane is, to a degree, my decision, but what else was I supposed to do? There's no better time than this, that's the simple reality.

So I'm just drowning anyway. And things are just too hard to deal with. I wrote down all the things I had to do/hand in for school yesterday, and writing it down in due date order made it look a hell of a lot less scary. I even stared at the page I had written it all out and and questioned why I found myself in the position I was in. But of course I know the answer. If it were just the school work, I would still be stressed, but not the way I am now. Or if it were just one, maybe two, of my medical problems then I would still be stressed, but it would be more manageable by a tenfold. So its obviously a culmination of many, many things that is accentuated by my currently not-so-manageable and concurrently fragile mental state. So the relatively small list of school related things that I had to do, once broken down, did not deserve the drowning feeling it is causing me. And then as my year level coordinator grouped things that were happening between today and the end of this term it became scary again. And I'm staring at this new list going "oh my God" and all I can think is how is this fair?

And that's when I burst into tears. And then a lot of things poured out of my mouth. And then I answered questions. And then I somehow got a handle on my emotion [because I always win that fight in the end] and I went to class [like a boss] like nothing had happened. This whole just everything, it seems to me that I've bitten off far more than I can chew -- and not even by conscious decision. That's the kicker.

While I was battling my surge of emotion at lunch today, I was asked about my family relationship. Now, obviously I can consider myself lucky because there are a number of things that are not wrong with my family. But by the same token, my family isn't exactly right either. A lot of that is, naturally, the fault of my own. I have a poor relationship with my parents as far as trust and sharing goes. I have a number of blacklisted subjects that I will not discuss. For example: how I'm feeling and self harm. I tend to combat such enquiries with evasive answers or just flat out lies. I am excellent at both areas, most of the time. My Mum has, lately, become quite protective of my sister. My sister, who is the youngest, experiences much anxiety and grinds her teeth. And this is all I hear about. It's all about how horrible my brother and I are. Or how we're going to give her depression and anorexia. I hate to be the one to point this out but like, I'm not the only who hurls abuse at her. This isn't my fault and I won't wear it. I'm wearing enough. I don't need this shit too. You're the mother. You're the father. You fix it. Preferably without the yelling -- which is evidently the cause of the problem, as you both have pointed out multiple times yourselves.

My brother and I learnt this behaviour somewhere. Time to take a good hard look at yourselves before you play the blame game. I'm so tired of being accused. And people wonder why I don't talk to my parents.

I don't like to talk about my family situation much. But I'm always conscious of how much grief I'm causing. It's quite disheartening really, to think about how much I cost. And we don't have that much money anyway. Budgeting and the like. See, can't even get it out now.

I just, I just hate my life. Clearly, it's not the heads of others that need tearing off. Just my own. Because I want a refund on my brain. And on life in general. So then I can be peaceful and happy and it can be all lollipops and rainbows.

- Sky

The problem is

Largely, that I woke up this morning. That I got out of bed this morning. That I got dressed this morning. That I made breakfast and had roaccutane this morning. That I went to school this morning and left at some point today. That I came home and studied [but never for long enough] today. That I'm now sitting here writing this blog because I'm that unhappy.

And I still don't know what to say. Because the words to discuss my life have continued to elude me in the most frustrating of manners. I want to talk, I do. But I cannot. It's almost like this deep hurt has paralysed me, in many respects. And I'm out of ideas, I'm out of solutions. I've actually come up with nothing. I feel like I'm done. I've been well and truly floored and that's all there is to it.

And I swear to God if one person even tries to pull any kind of roaccutane blaming line on me, I will personally see to it that their head is removed. You think that I don't realise. That I don't know what's happening. That I can't see it happening. That it doesn't upset me. That it doesn't make me mad while I sit here in pain, aching muscles, damaged limbs, completely exhausted. You think that I'm not aware of any of this, that I'm lost in the depression haze!? Well you are wrong. Because I do see it. I see it every waking second of every waking day. I know what its doing, what its done. I know what it will keep doing. I know that it may leave me with problems that I will never be able to fix. But it has thus far, more than two months in, given me absolutely no indication that it will do anything more than what its done up until this point. And you know what, I didn't get this far, to see some progress - despite everything this crazy drug has thrown at me - to pull the plug. Self esteem is a big problem for me and for many other people, whether anyone is prepared to acknowledge that or not. And I tried to beat the acne with every other imaginable treatment and it simply did not abate. Not even one little bit. And it brought me down. People bullied me endlessly. For seven fucking years. I tried to avoid roaccutane. I really did, but it became inevitable. And the sooner everyone gets that, the better.

Yes, I want to cry a lot. Yes, I want to rip the heads off a lot of people. Yes, I'm drowning in my school work. Yes, I hate my job. Yes, I'm ridiculously tired given the amount of sleep I get. But I'm going to say this definitively, and you are all going to hear me. I AM NOT GOING TO STOP. Pending some unforeseen circumstance, I will be seeing this course out. Nothing has ever come easy to me, that's the reality of the situation. We were all deluded if we thought my roaccutane course would be any different. Deluded indeed. This is the last time I will be justifying my decision to take on roaccutane to any one of the multitude of people who continue to express their distaste at my decision. My life, my body, my call.

Get over it. Or lose your head. The choice is yours. The above indicates that I have heard your calls - again and again and again - and have taken on board everything that anyone has said and I'm doing the best I can. So BITE ME for wanting nice skin like most of the fucking population. That is all.

I didn't mean for that to turn into a three paragraph speech denouncing everyone who has expressed concern but shit, I get it! Anyway.

I'm really just angry with life. And I'm somehow managing to take it out on people who are really not to blame. People I like too. This is probably because life, as a concept, is intangible. I'm also wound up really tight, due to the stresses caused by all aspects of my life - job included. So I'm prone to snapping, and for little or no reason at that. When you're hurt, you're hurt I guess. I mean, think about it this way: when your shoulders, knees and ankles ache for most, if not all of, the day you're going to be grumpy. And then you've got this annoying rash. And then you just can't manage to sleep enough -- and not for a lack of trying. And then your boss still hasn't mentioned that he's moving out of the city in June, you had to hear it from other people. And your friends annoy you for no reason at all because you're mad about all these other things. And then you decide to sit on your own to avoid any permanent severing of friendships. But this makes you feel worse because you've isolated yourself. And then you come home and you're like OMFG FAMILY GRR. So you sit in your room all night, or in a room separate to everyone else. So you're still feeling isolated. And you're even more grumpy. And as if you aren't struggling enough troll school turns up all like HERE'S A MILLION THINGS YOU SHOULD BE TONIGHT AND FOR THE REST OF THE YEAR, and you pretty much just want to bang your head against a wall continuously until you knock yourself out.

You know stuff has gotten bad when you hate your job, by the way. I know a lot of people aren't huge fans of their jobs, but I adored mine. I even pretty much ran the place over summer. But lately, I'm having a hard time convincing myself to go -- even though I've got limited time left. It's all a bit much really. I can barely find the time to deal with all my school work without paralysing myself, let alone process all this emotion and problems and circumstances, and well, reality.

It's cruel, and unfortunately for me, is fast becoming uncontrollable. It either comes out as anger/rage or tears. So, isolation is my extreme emotion control, except that I know continued isolation will prove detrimental in the long run. And then of course, by not allowing all this emotion to leave its packed away, where it will inevitably burst free. Today I had the overwhelming urge to cut, and I risked being caught to do so. I had to do it. And I'm not even ashamed of myself. Not at all. Pretty disturbing, isn't it. And I want to do it again.

I said I didn't have the words, but I got angry again and I found them. At least there's some order and sense in this post. At least I can say I'm avoiding the roaccutane/depression cloud for the time being.

- Sky

Reality continues to ruin my life.

For everyday that I survive, I find a new synonym of sad to mark it with. Today, that synonym is melancholy. Each new synonym is a sign of my continuing despair. This despair is measured by the rate at which I'm either treading or drowning in life.

Reality is awful. If it were my choice I would not partake in it any longer. It's drained me of all enthusiasm and energy. My body hurts. I'm mad at people I actually like for no reason at all. And I know why, and I guess that's the really awful part. Knowing. And knowing its mostly out of vanity that you torture yourself in this way.

Yet funnily enough, I'm starting to see a lot of people starting to get down about their own skin. I've done acne for more than seven years. Nothing made it better, and if it did, it made me worse. So I took a leap of faith, and this leap of faith is kicking my arse. Snapping at people, hating life, failing under the pressure of school, shying away from pain, sleeping when I should be facing the day. But I want to see this out. And I will. This leap of faith is kicking my arse, but I'm still here.

For now.

Aside from that, I don't have a lot else to say. Everything is so jumbled and back to front in my mind. Mostly because I'm exhausted, I think. Took me half the day to wake up. Ask me a simple questions, takes me five minutes to produce a reasonable answer. So much cloud, jumble and vagueness. Aided by pain. Nothing's quite straight at the moment.

Side effects.

Like me really.

I don't want to go to work. I reasoned with myself that I only have a few weeks left, but that was poor motivation when your mind, body and soul are crying for rest. Boss gave me silence when I asked, so I'm not setting an alarm. Poor logic maybe, or it will be when he rings me at 3.15am, but I don't care right at this moment. I don't care at all.

I try to tell myself that I don't care about anything, but the reality is that I do. Else I wouldn't be trying this hard to succeed. To win. To beat it.

Why else? Reality ruins my life and I just come back for more. I've consequently reached the conclusion that my logic is weird.

See, told you everything was jumbled. This is utterly incoherent. At least I got some of it all. Will try for more incoherence another time. Maybe. Might take another month, so don't practice holding your breath. My humour is terrible.

- Sky