Faultlines by Karine Polwart
Have you ever held something
until your hands were aching?
And then
let it go and watched it fall
and listened to it breaking?
So it’s not been good. This week I’ve been reducing my medication as it was running out, because more than anything, I want off the goddamn drugs. But that also means that this week was a bad week. Really… really bad. I relapsed. Rather badly. I haven’t even dared take the bandage on my arm off even though it was two days ago now I put it on. Which isn’t a good idea, but I am just full of so much shame. It hurt. I haven’t hurt myself in a while really. But it does hurt. Quite bad. My arm stings, the cuts are angry and red and shiny and new. They bled and hurt and the blood ran down my arm. And I didn’t know what to do. I was scared. Because I am terrified. I am fucking terrified that this is it – recovery lasted as long as it did the last times, and now this is it, I’m off to suicidal village and the hospital any moment now. I’m terrified.
It took me a long while to get out of that rut. I’m still not completely out of it now, but I’m trying. The day I cut I also punished myself more with punches to my face and stomach – something I haven’t done in an even longer time. Last night I just sat on my bed and cried silently into the darkening light of my room. Mum came in to talk to me and didn’t even notice, but then again, I mastered that a long time ago. I wrote a diary entry; I wrote how Lara Croft was no longer so inspiring since I’ve played A Survivor is Born. Because she’s just as broken as I am. All the promises we made, just to let everyone down. Alice, from Resident Evil, too. She’s been ripped apart, so many times. Rain, Claire, Carlos, Jill… it’s all there. She gave up long ago. Yet she is still fighting. And it took until today, when I watched Resident Evil: Retribution while at my Grandma’s, that I realised. Yes, Alice is broken. As broken as the Tomb Raider, the Winchesters – as broken as me. But she carries on. She goddamn fights on. But sometimes I just don’t have that power.
Dan, my older brother, and I, have been watching Star Wars recently, for the 4th of May; May the Fourth be with you. And that is something of an inspiration too. How hard the jedis worked for everything… then how Anakin, the chosen one, the one who was supposed to bring balance to the force, slaughtered younglings, murdered his wife, fought his master. How darkness came for him. And that wasn’t exactly inspiring to me, because that’s often how I feel. The demons are still inside me, and they are fighting to win again. They’ve been quiet under a drug-induced brightness since I decided to fight them back in January. But now they’ve sensed weakness. I’m dripping away again – fading away, and I don’t know how to stop it. It scared me.
Not only do I have myself that I am letting down, but there’s the others. My mother who tries so so hard, who had to live through three hours of not even knowing if her daughter was alive. Who continually forgives and loves a man who refuses to cease in his constant abuse of most of his family. My mother is amazing. And I don’t want to let her down, really really don’t. I already have, unfortunately. I’ve been finding it very very hard to go even out the door to walk the dogs I walk. She knows this, and she doesn’t know how to help. This may be due to the other weekend’s activities – in London, no less. We were there for the weekend, for the Marathon, and I knew there would be a limit. Sure enough, on Sunday, the day we had to be places, I couldn’t any more. I just couldn’t. Breaking down in a terrifying terrible panic attack in the middle of London Underground was something completely different from anything else. I had to stay on a train, crowded, people everywhere, while I literally could not breathe through gasping and whimpering how I had to leave, how I had to get off. But I didn’t, I stayed, not even I know how. When we finally got off, I collapsed in a corner, physically unable to move anywhere, feeling truly like I was dying – I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see through tears, I didn’t feel like I could be. It is almost unexplainable how terrifying it was. And since then, anxiety has been very hard on me.
It’s always hard for me to leave the house alone, to walk down the road, to be with lots of people, to eat ‘normally’, to just sit around all day or whatever. But this past week has been close to hell with this. It has been almost unachievable to leave the house on time to walk the dogs, because I just… can’t. It’s unthinkable that I can do such a thing while I’m still in the house, and before I know it, I’ve decided I can’t do it. But if I do, then when I come back, it’s almost like actually going out there is a dream, and it didn’t really happen; it was more of a wistful fantasy. Of course, dogs do help. And recently I’m missing Milly a lot. More than that – I’ve returned to the thoughts of how I need an assistance dog. And yet it will not happen. It would save my life, for sure, and allow me to actually live… but it won’t happen. And that breaks my heart.
So last night all I could do was silently let the tears fall, full of despair and grief for what I could be. What I was. I don’t cry often any more. But when I do, it is for the unimaginable future. Tears for the beautiful but so distance past. And I silently cry in the dark most of all for who I am and for who I am not. I am not as strong and beautiful as they all believe. I am broken, and I am scared. I don’t want to let everyone down… I don’t want to go through the hospital again. Surely the next one will kill me. When you can’t eat for fear of those numbers; when you bundle blankets in front of the door and curl up there because you can’t breathe when you think of the fact that someone could come in without you knowing; when you think the only way to feel is to hurt. That is what we call loneliness. This is what I call fear. And in fear, and loneliness, there is always despair.
strugglingbutstillfighting 