My mental health has taken a huge nose-dive this past week. I’m still fragile. Extremely. I feel like I’ve collapsed from within.
My emotions are teetering and simmering on the surface and I’m edgy as hell. Very edgy. I’m crying easily over seemingly minor issues and I feel weak from within; all my inner strength has dissipated and drained away. I’d be better off in a hut in the middle of nowhere right now, just me and nature.
I’m a hot mess: I don’t want to get up in the morning and the smallest inconvenience is blowing me up like an unexpected landmine. The truth is I just want to be left alone, I don’t want to face anything, I don’t want to read emails, I don’t want to ‘be there’ for anyone and I don’t have the internal energy to want to cope with anything. My nerves can’t handle it and right now my system is in dysregulation overload. I’ve been here before and I know the signs well. I know I have to let it pass rather than fight with it…I have to let the pain body express itself and give it space to be what it wants, as much as I want the feeling to go away and to feel ‘together’ and strong again.
By now I’ve learned I’m not supposed to try and “pull myself together”; I’m supposed to express what needs to be expressed and rest, mentally, after the two-dimensional war I’ve been subjected to for months. Yes, the war has culminated but I just can’t cope with anything. It’s like that Monty Python sketch where the fat guy out for dinner on his own has eaten himself silly and it only takes one after dinner mint to blow himself up into a sickly, foody human mess. That’s how I feel – just one more thing and I know I’ll blow up and them crumple into not-coping heap. I know it’s okay to not try and hold my face to the light and descend into the depths of darkenss, allowing the dam of the mental tension to burst open, flooding my body with a chemical soup that I recognise as an emotional overload.
I’ve been feeling like this for over a week and I admit, sometimes I’ve tried to ‘make it better’ and make myself feel strong in small moments rather than letting it pass and not giving a fuck. There’s a difference – one is ‘doing’ and one is ‘being’, the latter of not giving a fuck is ususally the best medicine and the things that you think you should be doing or ought to be doing or that you worry about aren’t worth one iota of your energy. Fuck it. And if I don’t want to deal with something that isn’t life or death, then tomorrow is another day.
Here’s how dysregulated I am….you know that feeling when you’re already fragile and tetchy, your nerves can’t handle anything and something trivial but awkward happens, which you know is going to be a fucking PITA to resolve and your nerves start hopping around like they’re dancing on hot plates and trying to avoid a land mine….well that was the feeling yesterday morning. It was one of those moments. Yesterday morning a solar-powered power bank had inconveniently fallen behind a radiator which is inconveniently positioned behind a slatted wooden headboard of a double bed. The window is behind the headboard, that’s why the powerbank was there to charge. Picture that.
So, there I was frantically trying to prise the power bank out with long implements reaching over and behind the headboard, to no avail, like I was in an episode of the Crystal Maze trying to think laterally in a timed trial, but simmering more and boiling up inside into a lava that was waiting to erupt. After giving in I realised that the entire bed needed to be dismantled, boiling up the lava which was bursting to explode. Even then, after dismantling the entire bed, the damn power bank was so awkwardly lodged the lava just needed to erupt and I let out a loud and blood curdling screamed, quite violently, to the utter dismay of my mum who had come to over to try and help. Anyone would think I was seriously injured or in need of serious help hearing a scream that. It was a child-like, tantrum type of scream and although in that moment I knew it was an over-reaction to the situation, I also knew it was really a projection of my brokeness and my trauma screaming out aloud. It was a feeling of helplessness, if I could pinpoint it. It was a feeling of “help me, I can’t cope”. A painful cry for help. Was that the repressed cry for help of my wounded inner child frozen in time? (if you’re wondering, yes, after scraping my fingers behind the radiator we managed to prise the power bank out and my system calmed down somewhat with a sense of achievement following a damn awkward challenge).
I reluctantly dragged myself out afterwards, drag being the operative word – wanting to club to death every arrogant, annoying bastard on the road that got in my way. It was as though I wanted to get angry; I sometimes wonder whether my emotions are an addiction and I just want to be angry because it feels normal? But I was trying to make sense of my pain. When I feel this dysregulated it’s as though I want scrape something out of my insides that I just can’t expel. It’s a strange feeling. So when I get like this I want to lash out at the first thing that annoys me to try and ‘expel’ what I’m feeling or what is within me; deep down I was trying to understand the pain. I don’t know which wounded child part of me that this lava-like rage is, I was trying to distinguish where this really comes from but struggled to find answers. Of course it didn’t come from the stuck-behind-a-radiator power bank. Perhaps when I am that dysregulated and triggered there are lots of traumatised wounded parts in unison which may explain why the feelings are so intense and which is why I feel extremely fragile: the abandoned-by-her-family broken hearted child; the racially-abused-by-neighbours-and-living-in-constant-fear child; the scorned-by-her-mother-and-often physically-abused child; the victimised-by-mean-girls-at-school child; the rejected-at-birth-by-her-father child. Perhaps its all of her? Perhaps all of her like the Sedna of the sea, rises up from the depths of my unconscious and says “look at me”. Feel me. Don’t ignore me any more. Feel my hurt. See my pain.
I know there’s a message in the pain. Trying to understand it is probably the antedote to the pain. Dysregulated children want to be held, heard and understood don’t they?
If baring my soul to you (and the world) has moved or touched a part of you in any way, then your support would be very welcome. To help me on this healing journey, perhaps you’d like to buy me a coffee (although mines a tea) via the link below:
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