Hi again, guys. Thanks for letting me stay for awhile. I just... some of the things you have written, and the videos you have shown me. God, I will (probably...) never know your pain. But I don't know how else to describe hell to those who dwell on earth. I don't know if this is anything like your pain. A fraction of your pain. But I guess part of my empathy and my heartbreak over this is... is... it starts with this.

"The truth... is stored up in our body and lives in the depth of our soul. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings can be numbed and manipulated, our perception shamed and confused, our bodies tricked with medication. But our soul never forgets. And because we are one, one whole soul in one whole body, someday our body will present its bill."
-Alice Miller

///

It's in my fingers - my knuckles, specifically. That's when I know this will be a bad one. If I'm in a crowd I have to run away but pretend I'm walking, so afraid to make THEM afraid. So afraid that they will see me like this, the me who's not me. Unless it's too late, and then pain twists through me so completely that I forget other people exist. I forget that anything else exists. The only word for this kind of pain is "spiritual", but it's not heavenly. It's hell. If I'm unlucky this time, I will rip off my sweatshirt and scream into it until I vomit. I'm crying so hard at the same time that I can't exhale, so I choke on it. I hope it chokes me. I hope I die. Please just let me die, please make it stop, please make it stop, I want my mom I want some kind of god I want and want until I don't want anything because I forgot what wanting means. It is just me and the ground I'm rocking back and forth on, or the room I'm pacing back and forth in. The gravel street I'm racing down barefoot, my feet bleeding as I try to outrun the pain.

Maybe I'm lucky this time and the hurt consumes me almost literally - I'm basically gone. Watching myself from the ceiling, maybe, or the walls. Now it's okay because I'm just part of the floor I fell down on, and even if you walked on me I wouldn't feel it. I really wouldn't feel it. I can't blink anymore; my eyes will hurt so badly later and I will be grateful, because it means I got to go away again. Dissociation, they call it. I call it thank you.

But either way, something has to happen. When I'm screaming in agony, I will do anything, ANYTHING to relieve the pain. Razor blades, bleach… I don't want to get too graphic, I really don't. But once I jumped out a window. I broke my back and my foot, yeah, but also the episode. Broken bones, burns, drill bits, drowning. Fire. It feels so good to feel bad because it's a different kind of bad. I can control this kind of bad.

Good.

It ends eventually. Sometimes minutes, sometimes hours. I'm shaking and bleeding and dying and fine. I clean my real wounds and the ones they say are fake. I rock back and forth a little longer, waiting, not trusting that it's gone (especially if I also "went away"). I rinse out my mouth and say something to make sure my voice isn't shot from all the screaming. I need it for when I walk back to the party next door and explain cheerfully that I had to take a phone call. Yes, 45 minutes. Mothers, right? What can you do.

All of this because when I started to load the dishwasher someone said, "You finally decided to help, huh?" Maybe she was joking but I'm still a bad girl I'm still a bad girl I'm still curled up in my room shaking, turning 14, she's in there, something bad happening, now I'm 30 and still a bad girl, she wants me to die I want me to die. How dare I complain about my pain. How dare I even hesitate before jumping. So. I protect them, hide me, keep my face straight even though I'm such a crooked creature. Wake up sweaty, nightmares, so tired, just let me sleep just let me sleep, just let me sleep forever, I can't take this anymore. And yet I want to live. Isn't it funny, how even when you can't breathe, your body keeps breathing you through it. Making you live. Damn that or thank that?

///

Maybe that's why it hits me so hard, your pain. I can never compare that kind of pain to your pain, as I've said and said and said and don't know if I ever dare stop saying. But the videos… the horror movie screaming, the terror of those around you, the taking your own fist to your face, to your head, digging for your brain, and trying to fight off that feeling that you wish you could put something… else to it instead. And then it slips away mid-scream, as if it never happened. As if you don't know it will be back.

///

"The worst type of crying wasn't the kind everyone could see--the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived."
-Katie McGarry

///

I have borderline personality disorder. Not cluster headaches. Guess my personality is broken or something. Half my life now, it's been. It is a hell that is literally unspeakable; I'm afraid to tell most people in person. They will think I'm crazy, or they'll say they were depressed for months after their cat died but there's no sense in wallowing. It's all in  my head. Have I tried homeopathic remedies?

And it's like… yes. Yes it fucking is. (Can I say fucking? Sorry. Fuck.) Thank you, random person, for reassuring me that it's all in my head, where my brain happens to be. Now how about you take it for a walk while I drink your special onion juice and think about your cat. No, really, I'm happy to help. My pleasure.

But then I look down at my feet, and I am so happy I can still stand on them, and I walk forward, and isn't it something. These tiny miracles.

"Your perspective on life comes from the cage you were held captive in."

Thanks for reading. I don't know. I guess I just know you understand pain, and it makes it a little less lonely down here.

Erin, I'm another who writes at times like these.

Much of it I later tear up, astonished at the intensity of what was happening at the time. It's as though by destroying it I'm destroying the reason for its creation.

My way of proving I'm tougher than the monster we must fight.

Please keep writing because it helped me a lot,

Brian down under.