A year to forget in hindsight

On December 12 I finished my extended nine month Roaccutane sentence. It grieves me to see how optimistic I was about this treatment at the end of last year. I thought I was ready. But I quickly found that my extensive research was inadequate in protecting me or even readying me from the deathly call it unleashed. Further to my mounting grief was the necessity of an elongation of the treatment. In the time where my body should have been free and healing as I prepared for exams, I was still wilfully poisoning it for sheer vanity.

This year has been one of real hardship for me. My final year of school, confounded doctors, mystery illness, quitting my job and roaccutane. If this year had forced me to deal only with the first three issues then I think, no, truly believe that this would have been a different story. But I gambled with roaccutane at the wrong moment. Quitting my job was one of many harsh side affects that I grudgingly accepted. I danced with a killer and it nearly cost me everything.

I wanted to achieve in school this year. I did. Never before had achieving been so important, in the grand scheme of things. Unfortunately this desire ebbed away until it was a mere trickle that occasionally sparked to life, but only ever briefly. I was consistently battered by roaccutane who, as I now understand, threw the book at me. No other roaccutane patient that I know personally suffered as I did. I was in constant pain. New constant pain. And I was forced to learn to live with it; except I couldn't. It frightened and tortured me at the same time and my mind began to rot. I got handballed from specialist doctor to specialist doctor and ultimately received no answers and many years I will never get back and my mind continued to rot. I fed myself despair and anger, hurt and resentment, fear and pain. Happiness didn't come easy anymore. It was forced or faked. Who wants to achieve when their daily victory is dragging a broken body out of bed? My academic year, on the whole, was overtly average for me. My marks occasionally slipped here and there. On more than one occasion I saw fit to end it all. In term three it was very much over in my mind. Scarily, it was very much planned and only a matter of time because I couldn't repair the rot in my head and I was tired of living with it. So very close.

Then my only lifelong dream was realised and I forced myself to make it for this wonderful horse, and for this wonderful horse alone. I even rallied for exams throwing myself into study with a final almighty effort.

And though I had no real business setting expectations, I failed to meet them. I know that I am my harshest critic, but if I'm not kicking my butt then who is? And I was so disappointed with my end result. To sit here and know that the potential to be better is very much there is haunting. And I know it's just a number. I know no one really cares. I know that I have a long line of reasons and excuses for not achieving my best. But I do care and it doesn't lessen the sting of falling so far short. Nor the sting of fighting on for what is, in my mind, inadequacy.

Life can and will go on. But I don't know where to go from here. Roaccutane finally finished, but it's yet to fully leave me and won't for sometime yet. Truthfully I am no better now than I was in school. My mental serenity is so precarious and unpredictable that I know I won't be this level for long. The rot in my head is still very much there. The pain still sounds it's voice. The sleeplessness still rears it's ugly head. I am, at the end of the day, nothing that I wanted to be. Only I now have clear skin.

- Sky

The first mistake

I looked in the mirror today. That was the first mistake. I'm wearing this cast that weighs half a tonne. I have two bags under my eyes. I have red, flaky skin. I am covered in a red, itchy rash. I am carrying painfully obvious extra kilos. I have bertocchi ham thighs. One breast is bigger than the other. And there's nothing I can do about these things; not even accept them.

Part of me is actually astounded that I could still be so unhappy in the now. The very same now that should be blissful and free. This other part of me is not surprised at all and consoles me with the dark fact that it was only a matter of time until I reached this place again. And how could I not when the only circumstance that changed was my going to school? Roaccutane still ruins my life on a day to day basis. My return to the Alfred hangs gloomily over my head. My body still punishes me for every movement in every moment in every day. Life is practically the same, despite the promise of it all.

Suicide does still cross my mind, but far less frequently than the thought and need to cut. I am surprised by how much I think of it now. Especially given how much time had passed between cuts; though I do currently wear one proud red mark. And I'm far less upset about this than I should be. Show me an alternative that 'works' and I'll show you one that doesn't. I'll even go so far as to admit that I like the scars. I like the blood, the more the better. I like the sharp foreign feeling of the act that is so different to any other pain I'm feeling. I like being able to see and touch them and feel visible. I like the idea that I can raze the pain away and I would quarter myself if it made the difference between happiness and what I have. I probably won't ever really stop.

But still, the most distressing circumstance remains my ongoing depression and wondering for the first time, just how much of this is a product of school? And now without it there is no reason, no motivation, to continue this dogged forward march towards the light I can say with confidence does not exist. Why should I get up in the morning? Why should I eat? Why should I get dressed? Why should I make the effort to keep up with people? I can count on one hand the people who consistently make the effort to say 'hi' to me now. I'm tired of chasing. These people don't care. And that's okay now. I'm not going to try anymore.

I am tired of hating me though. I'm over the mistakes. I wish these things wouldn't happen to me anymore.
- Sky