Ebb and Flow

Some days I feel like a person. Some days I feel like the last 9 years have meant something. Like I have progressed in some meaningful way. Some days I feel like the years have allowed some kind of healing in my heart.

Then there are the days like today. Today it might as well be 2007. Today I am the same girl who sat in the dark in my room with the door locked and music screaming watching the blood drip from my arm. Today I am not the person I have fought so hard to become. Today I am that broken mess of a girl that I used to be.

I hate that this person, this weakness, is still in me. I hate that I can fight for years to be better, to be happy. And in a second it can all just disappear.
I know it will be better tomorrow. I know tomorrow I will wake up fresh and put all the pieces back together again. But that's small comfort right now. Right now, even though I know that this night can't escape tomorrow, the sun coming up seems so impossibly far away.

And what's worse is that there is no one I can talk to. I don't have much in the way of friends. And the guy I am sleeping with isn't really into me. He just does me 'cause I'm there and willing. Plus, there is no point alarming anyone because I'm not going to do anything and tomorrow I'll make myself be fine again. So I come on here to write a post that no one will read because this is the only way I can get all this stuff safely out of my brain.

Why do I have to live like this? Is everyone else this miserable and they just keep it locked away like I do? Or am I as alone as I feel?

I just can't even

This Shadow Life - Taking a Day Off from Mental Health

I have this pretty sweet set up at work at the moment where instead of working five eight hour days, I work four ten hour days.

Now, when people find out about this they always seem to imagine me doing something glamorous on my day off. Like sipping coffee in a trendy cafe or out meeting boys at the park. Or at the very least they imagine me being productive by cleaning my house or catching up on laundry.

Honestly all that couldn't be further from the truth because for the most part I actually use my day off as a day off from mental health. My day off is like a free day to wallow in depression, go for a relaxing walk, binge on netflix, listen to sad/angry music, and basically just give in to my disease. It's a day when I don't have to be strong and together. I don't have to get dressed if I don't want to. I don't have to answer the phone if I don't want to. I don't have to do anything. 

That's not to say that I spend every day off in my room with the curtains drawn and heavy music playing while I stare blankly at the ceiling or cry my eyes out into my pillow. Some days I'm a normal person and I get stuff done, but the option is always there.

Some people probably think that having a day off from mental health is kind of counterproductive. Like all week you do your best and take a few steps forward, but then you have one day to give in and you take a million steps back. 

Frankly I don't think this is true. I think that having to be strong and working at your mental health all the time so that you can function like a normal person is exhausting. It's one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. and I have discovered in the past that when I try and keep it up all day every day, I'll last a while but eventually I will break and everything will come crashing down and there aren't enough sick days in the world to give me enough time to pull myself back together before another day at the office. 

Allowing myself some time off each week has given me a little release valve. A little bit of time when I can just let it all go and acknowledge my pain without having to feel like a failure for doing so. 

I can't be strong all the time... 

Things that make me happy.

This is a post about good things. Things that make me happy even when I am lost in the darkest parts of my mind. It's something I started working on a long time ago, but I never got around to finishing it until now. And now I need to finish it. I need to finish it because right now I am completely lost in the pitch dark nothingness that makes me who I am.
So, I need to remind myself that it's possible for me to be happy.

A little while back a friend of mine asked me to write a guest post for her blog of all the things that make me happy. Initially I thought this would be the easiest thing in the world. I mean, I know what makes me happy right?
Turns out no. The first list went something like this.

1. Books. New books, old books, second hand books, any books
2. Piercings and tattoos.
3. Tea
4. Music
5. My family and my pets
6. Late night adventures with my friends
7. Stepping on crunchy leaves
8. Rain. Both when I am walking in it and when I'm inside listening to it. 
9. Having pretty coloured nails and awesome eyeliner
10. Sleeping

The more I thought about it though, the more I realised that these things don't really make me all that happy.
The destructive hyper-energy I feel when I'm listening to really great heavy metal and rock music where the people scream so I don't have to isn't actually happiness.

The peace I feel walking on my own at night is actually much closer to despair the more I think about it. 

There are also things that make me smile, or things that I enjoy, but they aren't necessarily things that make me happy. 

After a lot more thought and close examination of my life, I think I came up with a pretty good list. Check it out here :]

That Other Girl

When you look in the mirror,
are you the only one you ever see?
Sometimes I look and see a face,
that doesn't belong to me.

Dead eyes and a sarcastic smile,
lank hair and bleeding wrists,
She is a vine through my soul,
that kills me as she twists.

When I cough and choke on nothing,
she is breathing under water.
When I'm alive she tries to kill me,
a self inflicted slaughter.

She is a lurking presence in the dark,
the reason I cry when I'm asleep.
She is the twisted broken half of me,
and a secret that I must keep.

She is the one that trips me up,
and never gives me a moment to rest.
She is the reason I broke your heart,
when you just did you best.

She is the current dragging me under,
the silence that makes me scream.
She is the empty hole inside me,
the doubt that kills my self esteem.

She is the part of me that broke,
under the weight of death and despair.
She is the part that keeps me running,
when my lungs cry out for air.

We are one but not the same,
she is the dark and I'm the light.
So how can I hope to survive,
when part of me will always lose the fight?

This Shadow Life - What Hurts the Most

Losing someone you love is hard. It is certainly the most painful thing I have ever endured. Agony is the word that come to mind. But over the years I have found that the people generally misunderstand what it is that hurts so much.

For me, watching someone I loved suffer through excruciatingly painful illness was awful, but it wasn't the hardest part.
Cradling him as the light faded from his eyes felt like having by heart torn from my chest and my soul ripped apart by wolves, but even that wasn't the hardest part.
Seeing the fresh patch of dirt over his body that would keep us apart forever felt like warm sunshine compared to what came next, because what came next was and still is the hardest part.

The thing is, in those awful moments of seeing him hurt and watching him die there was pain, so much pain, but it was just the pain of that moment. When he was sick I wasn't thinking of watching him die. When he died I didn't think of how it hurt when he was sick. However, once that immediate pain was over I was able to feel every moment of pain and happiness and love in an overwhelming rush.
The hardest part of losing someone that I love, the part that hurt the most, was the knife being plunged into my chest every moment of every day afterwards when I realised that he was gone. It was the pain of loving him and seeing him suffer and watching him die and kneeling in the dirt of his grave all rolled into one split second of realisation that tore me apart over and over and over again a million times each day.

I was haunted by him and every moment that we shared together. Every place we went punched me in the stomach, and every face that reminded me of him made me smile for a second before it killed me.

New places were just as painful. Every new experience or place was tarnished by the fact that he wasn't there with me. I am still tortured by all the places he should have been and all the things we should have done together.

Then there are all the times I forget for an instant that he is gone. When I wake up in the morning and my mind tricks me into believing that he will be waiting for me where we used to meet. Then I open my eyes and the truth rushes in and the pain of it all leaves me curled in a ball and shivering.

When he died the world became much smaller and much colder. Each day I had to try and live my life while navigating a minefield. Every step risked an explosion that would destroy me, every glance risked seeing something that would kill me all over again.

About a year after he died I thought I was doing better. I felt stronger and more relaxed because I felt that after a year I had set off all the landmines because I had been all the places and seen all the things that were going to hurt me. I could once again walk comfortably through the world. Then I went camping for a week with a bunch of friends and someone got sick with the same illness that had destroyed my life nearly a year previously. In an instant the pain flooded back and I found myself blown to smithereens just when I thought I was safe.

It's been years since the initial loss, but I still feel it every day and although things are definitely better now I still step on the occasional landmine and fall to pieces as all that pain rushes back in on me.
What makes it even harder is that I am often completely alone. No one seems to understand that I am still dealing with the worst part of the whole experience. They think that because he died so long ago I should be starting to feel better, and in some ways that's true, but time means nothing when it comes to pain and loss and love. When I breakdown for no apparent reason, no one wants to hear that it's because of him. Everyone else has moved on so they seem to think I should too.

Sometimes I wish someone else understood what it is like to be fine one moment and then reliving all the best and worst moments of your life in the next. I wish someone could tell me that they too have totally lost it over the most seemingly innocent thing because it brought all the memories crashing back. Sometimes I wish someone would tell me that it's okay to still fall to ruins after seven years. No one seems to understand that it still isn't over for me, and it probably never will be...

This Shadow Life - Hopeful

You might have noticed (or maybe you haven't) that I have been away a bit lately. I have been feeling pretty down and kind of numb so it's been hard to come up with anything to write about that wouldn't just be insanely depressing.
But! Recently something happened that made me really happy and so I just wanted to write a quick post to tell you all about it.

A friend and I went to grab a coffee a few afternoons ago. Nothing too exciting about getting coffee, but while we were in the line we were talking about one of our work friends. He has been having trouble working because his wife isn't well and so we were talking, and the conversation went something like this.

Friend: When I was working with him a few days ago he was saying how he can't get much work done because he is taking care of his wife and trying to get her up and moving.
Me: Oh that sounds awful. Do you know what it is that's wrong? (asked in the hope that she would say something short term and non-life threatening.)
Friend: She has depression.

Her answer wasn't what made me happy (obviously I don't like the idea of anyone suffering with depression. It was the way that she said it. It was "She has depression" like "She has the flu" or "She has chickenpox." There was no stigma, no judgement, and no reservations. She said the word just like any other word. She said it like depression is just an illness like any other that a person might have to face. I was amazed and honestly it just made me so hopeful that one day everyone will view depression this way. That people will be able to talk about it in a totally open, honest, and comfortable way. That I won't have to hide what I am going through and pretend that I am okay.
That one word and the woman who said it honestly made my week about one million times better. :]

Free From Scars

I'm venting the pain,
so blood must flow.
I just can't hold on,
so down I will go.

Deep down into,
the darkness my friend.
Can't see where,
this is going to end.

Might end in healing,
and yet it might not.
If I survive, the scars,
will be all that I've got.

I've got plenty of scars,
not all you can see.
They mark ever time,
I have failed to break free.

I just want to be free,
so high up in the stars.
Free from this body,
painted in scars.

I can forget the scars,
but the memories stay.
It doesn't change a thing.
I'm still not okay.

This Shadow Life - Living for Others

I wrote this for every person who knows what it is like to live for the sake of the people in our lives that we love too much to hurt. This is my tribute to the struggle that you and I face every day.
It is also for the people that we are living for. I hope that you might read this and appreciate the selfless agony that we endure so that we can stay a little longer and force a smile for you. 


One of the strangest things about my experience with depression and PTSD is that while I was completely suicidal for many years, and something I still am at times, I have always known that I would never do it.

When I became depressed I spent a huge portion of my time thinking about suicide. I used to drive at night without my headlights on just hoping for an accident, or hope for a murderer to walk through my front door and save me the trouble.
I even researched and planned what I would do if I ever did go through with it. But even with all of this, I kind of also knew that I would never let it happen. I would turn my headlights on before the really tight corners. I know that if that murderer ever did walk through my door I wouldn't go down without a fight, and to this day my suicide plan has remained nothing more than a list of steps in my head. I would never do it.

I have always kind of wondered how I can want to die so badly but still know I will never do it.
I think it's because of all the people that I would never want to hurt like that. I can't even begin to imagine what it would do to my parents and my brother and my extended family and my friends and even all the people who just know me from school or whatever.
I am living for everyone who's lives would be changed forever and for the worse if I went through with it.

This is something that I can sit and think rationally about now (hindsight is a wonderful thing) but at the time I resented it like you wouldn't believe.
At the time I felt pretty much nothing. My body had shut down and numbed itself to most emotions so that I wouldn't have to feel the agony of what I was going through. So I didn't really feel love for my family, but I knew that I loved them. The love was just buried deep inside me with all the other feelings that were too real to touch. If I felt the love I would also have to feel the loss, the pain, and the overwhelming agony that was constantly threatening to suffocate me.
So I never let myself feel it, but I acted on good faith that the love was still there. This meant that when my mum came into my room with tears in her eyes and pamphlets on mental health in her hand that she had printed out at work, I was so ashamed of what I had done to her. I was so sorry and I knew that I had to do better. Even just thinking about that moment makes me cry as I write this.

So I tried to be better. I tried to drag myself back out of the darkness. I tried to smile and laugh and spend time outside of my room. I tried to listen to top 40 instead of rock, metal and screamo, and most importantly I tried to always wear long sleeves to cover the cuts on my arms. I don't kid myself into thinking that it was always believable, but I think I did a pretty good job.
Unfortunately looking better on the outside never changed how I felt on the inside and I resented and hated everyone that I was living for. I hated how they were asking so much of me with every  look in their eyes, but how, somehow it was never enough.

I felt like they had taken everything from me. Even though it went against everything that I wanted to the core of my being, it was never enough for me to just keep breathing for them.
They took everything that I was using to cope with what I was going through. I know they just wanted what was best, but I often think it was what was best for them, not what was best for me.
I know that it hurt them to see me hurt myself, but in wanting me to be whole they took all the things that I use to survive. They would see me cut and start to cry. I would see them cry and want it to stop, but the cutting released the pressure. I would tremble and sweat and shiver. My mind would stumble and fall and spiral and explode and fly. Then the blood would flow and that perfect calm would flood back into my bones.
It would give me the strength and the focus to force one more smile, to make a convincing laugh, to survive another day.
After they made me stop all I had was the heavy music that my parents hated, played quietly through my headphones (so they wouldn't hear), and sung by people who screamed so that I didn't have to.
It drove me mad having to live like that. Having to hide how I felt so that I wouldn't keep hurting everyone. It was far too much pressure for anyone to have to take, let alone someone going through the hell I was living in.

My parents always told me that I could be whoever and whatever I wanted, but I don't think they meant it. I know they would never say it, but it made them sad to see me who I became. It made them sad that I wasn't the bright, happy little girl I used to be.
At first I was too lost in my sadness to care, but after that day with my mum I started learning to adjust to the pain that had become a part of me. I became strong enough to remember who I used to be, the person my parents need me to be, the person they wish I still was. Even though my world had changed, it's centre shifted to an unmarked grave where my broken heart lies, I learned how to live each day for the people I love. I learned how to breathe for them. How to leave my skin unmarked for them.
It killed me, but I learned how to keep on living for them.
I knew that they should never have to feel the way that I did, and I learned to live so that they would never have to.

My problems were my own, but somehow my parents problems became mine too. I was stretched to the limit being who they needed me to be. Every second I was dreaming of that moment when I would finally be allowed to break. To shatter into a million trembling razor pieces.
It was selfish of me to want to die. I know that. But it was also selfish of them to want me to stay, and I wonder if they knew that.
They asked me every day to deny myself the one thing that I wanted in life. They asked me to bear the pain of existence with a smile and a laugh, to blend in with everyone else, when I was nothing like everyone else.
With every breath that I took the pain was real. I know they needed me and so I shall stay. I just need them to know the price that they were asking me to pay.


I have always been someone who will put everyone else's needs before my own, so it's been really hard, but I want you all to know that I have now started learning to be the person that I want to be, not just the person that everyone needs me to be. I have started to embrace who I am, scars and all.


This story is my own and yours is probably somewhat different.
The people you are living for might not be your parents. It might be your partner, your children, or your friends. However, our pain is similar.
Unfortunately those of us who bear the emotional burden of depression and suicidal thoughts, often have to bear the burden of living for the sake of others as well.
We have to be strong for the people around us so that they don't ever have to experience the same pain that we do every day.
We have to live for them, even if it kills us.
I think that it is the last and greatest gift that we can ever give and very few will ever understand what it cost us or appreciate the gesture.

Many of you might even think that you can't relate to my story at all. But I promise you that you can. 
Everyone walking this world is fighting a battle with something, and they are doing it for someone they care about. My burden of living for the sake of my family is the same as a person going to a job they hate to support the children that they love, or a kid battling through homework to make a good life for their future self. 
Our struggle is the same, we are just fighting different things for different reasons.

This Shadow Life - Being Kind to Yourself

Positive change starts with positive thinking, and one of the most important changes that you can make is learning to be kind to yourself

I have found that it is really easy to get into the habit of being really negative towards people. It's something that I used to be very guilty of. I would see someone and instantly pick them to pieces in my head. I didn't think that it changed me on the outside, I actually thought I was pretty ninja about it. Like I had this stream of venom flowing through my brain but a friendly smile on my face. 

My dad was also pretty negative, not in an intentionally unkind way, just really cynical and jaded about everyone and everything. I have always been really close to my dad and so it didn't take long for this habit to rub off on me. Experiencing depression probably made it easier to slip into this habit too. My head was already such a dark place so much of the time, it was easy to start projecting that out onto everyone. Interestingly I was kind of proud of it. I was proud of being cynical. I liked being like my dad and it felt like I was able to see through everyone's bullshit.

After a while the things that my dad would say escalated a bit and started to bug me, maybe because he did it to people that I have some things in common with or maybe it was something else entirely. I don't know. 

I finally noticed that although always priding myself on being someone who didn't judge anyone, thinking like my dad was causing me to judge everyone. And I mean everyone. The girl with the unwashed hair, the boy who incorrectly pronounced a word, the teacher who was boring me, the parent scolding me. No one was immune to my hateful thoughts and criticism. 

This was also when I realised that all the judgement and negative thoughts I was having were ruining my life from the inside. They made my head into an awful place to live. A place of merciless criticism, insults and negativity. 

It certainly wasn't making me any friends either. No matter how ninja you think you are, people have a way of feeling those secret negative thoughts. 

As an added bonus, the judgement didn't stop with the people that I saw on the street or at school or in my day to day life adventures. I was so into the habit of hating everyone I saw that it didn't stop when I looked in the mirror. Just like with everyone else I would think of or see myself and without hesitation proceed to rip myself to shreds. This made me feel worse about myself, which then caused me to think more awful things about everyone else, which made me think more awful things about myself. It was a vicious cycle that it took me a really long time to escape. But I did escape.

When I started noticing all these things I resolved to change. I decided that I would stop thinking awful things about everyone. This was a hard thing to do at first. I would look at someone and find that I was criticising them without even consciously deciding to do so. So I decided that when that happened, I would counteract it by making myself stop the awful thoughts, really look at the person and find at least one interesting or beautiful or positive thing about them and think about that instead.

It is important to notice that I didn't reprimand or get down on myself any time that the negative thoughts slipped in. I just stopped them where I could and focused on the positive. 

It was a slow process at first, but eventually the kindness and positive thoughts started coming to mind easier and the negative ones occurred less and less. Of course I still get annoyed at people and that might make me have a little tirade of nastiness in my brain, but I think that's normal and natural and not something to try and stop. You have to be able to express your feelings at times like that, but it's important not to let it slip back into needless and unwarranted negativity. 

Eventually I noticed that I was able to follow the same process when I looked at myself. I learned to be kind and positive, if not all the time then most of it. This ended up helping a great deal with my mission to overcome my depression. It helped make my head a much nicer place to be (most of the time)

We know our faults better than anyone else so it's really easy to tear ourselves down. Sometimes they are things that other people have pointed out or things we notice ourselves, and somehow they are always the easiest things to believe. But there is so much more that is beautiful and interesting and perfect, if we can only learn to see it.

Good luck. 

xx Sasha

This Shadow Life - Eating Disorders as Self Harm

I recently read a very interesting, through provoking, and emotional post by Katie Arbre of Our Wolf Song (a fantastic blog that you can check out here). In the post Katie very bravely talked about her eating disorder and though our disorders are quite different, I found that we had a few important things in common.

I don't like eating. I don't like eating in public. I worry about what I am going to eat when I go out for dinner with friends or whatever. I often lie and say that I have already eaten just so that I can avoid the situation all together. I actually kind of despise food. I have done so since year 5 (about 10 years old) when an older girl at school made fun of my weight and the unhealthy food that I happened to be having for lunch that day. On a side note, that girl has gained a pretty significant amount of weight in the decade or so since, which leads me to believe that at the time she probably had her own insecurities that caused her to lash out at me. But anyway. I digress. It made me hate food, feel really bad about myself, and feel really self concious about eating. This resulted in me developing some weird food habits like not wanting anyone to see me eat, ever. Not wanting to take bites out of food (to this day I either eat off a fork or pull things apart with my hands first and put the little pieces into my mouth). Hoarding unhealthy foods and sneaking off to binge eat. Plus I hate the sound of people chewing.

Then my trauma happened (totally unrelated to my food disorders) and my self hatred increased exponentially. I despised myself. Enough to cut and burn and tattoo my skin.
At the same time, my weird food habits developed into me swinging between pretty severe anorexia and bulimia.
I have always just thought of my eating disorders as relating to wanting to be thin and not getting picked on or stared at, and I always just thought the hate and anger that they made me feel was because of my weight and the fact that I had succumb to an eating disorder in the first place.

Then for some reason the post of Katie's made me think about my disorders in a different way and I realised that for me, my eating disorders are a form of self harm. Sure I want to be thin, and sure I hate that I let my food habits get that far, but more than that it is punishment. It is self loathing. It is anger and hatred not at the disorders or the girl that first pushed me in their direction, but anger and hatred towards myself.

My name is Sasha and I self harm by cutting, burning, tattooing, starving, binging, and purging. 

This might not seem like a big revelation to a lot of people, but to me it is huge. I never thought of it like that and now that I have, it's totally changed the way that I will deal with it.

I used to try and deal with it by forcing myself into a strict regime of eating a relatively normal amount of healthy foods. I got an app on my phone that told me how many calories I should eat in a day and I tried my best to stick to it.
Now I have begun researching scientific papers on how I can deal with my eating disorder as a form of self harm. It's already proving to be super helpful.

I would like to encourage anyone else with an eating disorder to go on a little self discovery journey like I did (only if you are in a mental position where that would be safe of course). Try to think about how your disorder started, if there are times when you are more or less inclined to starve or purge, if there was a point where things escalated for you like they did for me, and most importantly, think about the feelings that go with all of these ideas. I know that's the super cliché doctor line of "How does that make you feel?" but for me it was examining my feelings that made me realise what I was really dealing with and how I can help myself get better.

Things are looking up. :]

This Shadow Life - Fragility

In the last few days I realised how incredibly fragile I am.
For much of the last year I have been under the impression that I am getting better. I feel strong and indestructible and inexplicable and like the centre of a galaxy swirls within my eyes. I have started feelings better about life. Not all the time, but a lot of the time I feel like I can do this, like I can survive. I'm almost never happy, but sometimes I am, and it feels more real than it used to.
Then, about a week ago something stupid happened. This guy did something mean and inconsiderate (totally unintentionally) when I was driving and it was all I could do to hold myself together. This might seem like an overreaction. It was. It was kind of like the straw that broke the camels back (my sanity being the camels back in this analogy).
I hadn't noticed myself slipping away until that little incident turned the stone walls of my castle into smoke. I crumbled and almost burst into tears. The hopelessness and crushing depression rushed in on me and I was taken completely by surprise, and that's what really shook me. The surprise of being rendered totally helpless to my depression when I felt like I had maybe been gaining some ground.

I guess the poison had been seeping in so slowly that I hadn't noticed. Rotting me from the inside.
This isn't really a new thing. It happens from time to time, but it always manges to take me by surprise. Like I said, I'm not often happy, but some times I feel like I am heading that way. At the very least I now feel at peace with myself most of the time, which is a huge achievement for me.
It makes me feel like I have accomplished something, like I am succeeding at this 'life' thing that has always felt so impossible. Then to have it all dashed away into nothing in an instant is kind of devastating.

I have since managed to pull myself back together. Music helps.
But now I am just wondering how long this new calm will last, and if next time I fall apart is the time when I wont be able to pull myself back together again.

Does anyone else ever experience this, or something like this?
Any tips to help me get by?

This Shadow Life - Crying and baths

People say that crying is a good thing. That it releases endorphins and relaxes you because you get all that emotion out of your system. Baths are supposed to be good too, but to be perfectly honest I find both things useless in my day to day life and dealing with depression.

As some of you might have guessed from my posts, I suffered a trauma and now I have trouble feeling emotion. 

People have suggested that I need to let it all out and have a good cry. That it will unstopper my emotions and I'll be able to feel again. People also suggest relaxing reflection in a bath. 

To my rational self these ideas make sense and in the abstract they seem like a great idea. But then it comes to actually doing it. 

Now, I have a lot of things I could cry about but I don't really cry about them normally. So, when I want to go on a crying jag, I have to really work up to it. It's like running the bath. 

Then I get into it. 

I sit and cry or sit in the bath and reflect but then I think "now what?"

I'm just going through the motions really. The physical act alone achieved nothing for me and it all just feels like such a waste of time. There are so many more productive things I could be doing. I don't get anything out of crying or baths. So what's the point? 

There is none. 

Crying and baths have no value for me. 

I'll have to try something else...,

Suggestions? 

This Shadow Life - Take Me Home

Today I went walking in the forest. I don't know why. I didn't plan it. I just found myself getting up from the lounge, putting down the chocolate, and tying up my shoes.
As a rule I don't exercise. It's easier to do nothing. It's easier to hate myself.
I know I need to make changes, but it's so much easier to just sit back down and watch another movie. To watch other people living wonderful, fulfilling lives. It's easier to be nothing myself.

Today was different somehow. It's like something was calling to me. Something I couldn't see or hear. Something inspiring movement in my wasted limbs. Something calling out to my very soul.
Through the open fields I wandered. Mindlessly placing one foot in front of the other, drawn onwards, ever onwards.
With time the field gave way to trees. The forest grew up around me with each laboured breath I took. It was too small to notice at fist, but with every step that I took through the trees I felt the peace growing back into my heart. With every breath I felt the self loathing slip away, I saw the world grow brighter. With every step my heart grew lighter, my mind clearer. With my body moving my thoughts gained purpose. To the rhythm of my breathing I contemplated myself. With the sun shining I remembered who I am.
Then the rain came down, gentle at first. It filled my lungs and clung to my eyelashes. It was like walking through a cloud. I smiled through the water as I felt a bubble rising in my chest.
Then the rain got heavy. It poured over me and I stopped. I stopped to hear the beat of the earth's heart dripping through my blood. I stopped to revel in the calm, in the elation, in the peace. I stopped to revel in myself. I turned my face to the sky and the bubble finally reached the surface. I laughed. The rain washed me clean. Washed my soul clean.

When the hate creeps in, it's like poison. Slow and patient and deadly. It seeps into my bones with every second that I spend away from this place. From the living forest that reminds me I'm alive.
Most often I am dying so long that I forget to even come back here. I don't notice myself changing. I feel fine. Until the forest calls me back here and reminds me who I am. It draws the poison out. It folds me deep into it's embrace. It reminds me that there is still beauty. Still purpose. Still peace to be found.
This life I have chosen. This path I am on. I think it is good for me, but it is so not good for me. There are no trees where I work, but the money is good. It's a good job. It's everything I was ever supposed to have. But as the poison sinks in, sometimes I hear the forest calling me home.

This Shadow Life - Count the Seconds

Laying in bed I wonder, how I can possibly keep on breathing.

The burden of life suffocates me and I can't conceive how I can possibly go on, how time can keep on passing, how I can keep on existing. 

I feel constantly on the brink of exploding into a million tiny ribbons of confetti. The pressure is overwhelming. 

Things always look better in the morning, but the morning is an eternity from now. The seconds stretch out before me. A marathon that I must run. 

I'm not a runner. I can't run. I fell down to my knees long ago and have been crawling ever since. I have been fighting for every second. Ever breath. Every moment that you need me here. 

It would be so easy to give in. To succumb to the pressure on me and within me. To give up this marathon and sink into the earth. It's what I want at the core if my being. There is a monster inside me fighting to get out and ruin my life. The life I have fought so hard for. The life I have crawled a million marathons for. 

But I will never give up. You know why? 

I will never give up because even as I write this, time has passed. Seconds have come and gone.

Every second that I can live, that I can keep myself together, is a victory for me. 

Some people find the slither of sand through the hourglass and the tick of the clock to be a unpleasant and troubling sound. Something that reminds them of how little they have achieved and how little time they have left. 

To me every second is a comfort because no matter what I am doing and what my life is like, time will pass like it always does. This suffering can't last for ever.
No matter how bad things are now, every second I am closer to a time when things will be better.
Every second it a victory. 

The years, as they approach bring many agreeable things. 

As they recede they take many away. 

Thus passes the glory of the world. 

Nothing can last forever. Nothing. 

Make the most of every good moment because it won't last. 

Grit your teeth and take comfort in the passing seconds when things are bad. The bad will be gone one day too. 

I love you all. 

I'll keep counting the seconds. 

I hope you do too. 

This Shadow Life - Why are we Different?

Life is hard. That's true for everyone who has ever lived, and everyone who will ever live.
Every person suffers pain. Death, loss, and disappointment are experiences common to all people.
But we don't all experience depression or suicidal thoughts.
So what's different in those of us who do? What is the difference between the people who are sad for the appropriate amount of time and then move on with their lives, and the rest of us?
Are we broken from the start, down to the very core?

I don't think so.
We are different. That's all.
We might have been normal at one point, but then some trauma happened and pushed us over the edge. I wasn't normal. Never. I might have seemed normal, or at least, not strange enough to raise concern, but I wasn't really. There was always something fundamentally different about me.
Then the trauma happened and I things changed. My world was destroyed and suddenly it became glaringly obvious that I wasn't like everyone else. My reaction was all wrong.

For me, and for many other people I have talked to who suffer depression, we feel like we deserve the pain that we experience. We deserve to suffer and live some half dead version of life.
When we experience some traumatic event, we direct the pain inwards on ourselves.  We accept the pain because we think we deserve it. We welcome it. We blame ourselves for whatever happened to get us to that point.
In some cases we will even do things to make our suffering worse, to inflict more damage and destroy the pieces that are left of our lives.
For many of us, we don't feel that we deserve happiness, or health, or comfort. So we sabotage any chance that we may have of living a 'normal' happy life. This in turn makes us feel worse. We hurt people that we care about and damage anything we come in contact with. Then we feel worse about ourselves, less deserving, and we ruin more and more of our lives in some horrible vicious cycle of self destruction and depression.

We also inflict more pain on ourselves because we need it.
After a while the pain  or the emptiness left in its wake feels like home. We need it to survive.
Often our trauma comes from loss. The loss causes pain, but as the pain fades we begin to feel that we are losing our connection to that moment, that moment of feeling and connection to someone and something that was most important to us. We inflict further pain on ourselves to renew the connection. The regain the feeling that connects us to the most important moments in our lives.

We are not broken in the beginning, we are just people who interact with the world differently. Everyone experiences pain, and loss, but when we feel these things we reflect them inwards onto ourselves.
We blame ourselves, we punish ourselves.

I'm not sure what the message behind this post is. I'm not sure that anything can be done to  change the way we are, the way we react, the way we feel. I just want to help you understand what it is like for me, so that maybe you can better understand yourself, or the people in your life who are experiencing depression or suicidal thoughts. 

This Shadow Life - My Story

Okay, so this is a story that I have never really told in full to anyone. To be honest, there are a few details that I probably won't even include here. Even after almost 8 years there are things that I can't say, not even to strangers on the internet who probably don't really care about me or what I have done.

I'll do my best, but even with a few details missing this will be the most complete account of what happened to me.

I don't know what I am hoping to achieve by writing this. I think that everyone's experience with depression is different so maybe reading my story will help put together the picture of what it is like. Maybe it will be one of the pieces that help people understand. 
As always, I hope that by sharing my experiences I may be able to help someone in some small way. If it makes you feel less alone, or even allows you to say, "Well at least I'm not as crazy as her," then the pain of sharing this will have been worth while. 
I think my reason for sharing is probably more selfish than all that though. 
I feel like on some level I am looking for closure and catharsis, but I don't know how writing about it will get me there. Maybe I'm hoping that going through the process of writing it down and forcing it all to form some kind of logical progression will have some kind of therapeutic benefits. So for all intents and purposes, you are my shrink for the day. 
Also, I have this desperate desire for someone to know me. To really know me. In and out. Good and bad. To know me and not who I pretend to be. It's pathetic, but it's true. 
Most of all I think I just love the sweet agony of taking a trip down memory lane. It's not something that I allow myself to think about all that often and I still kind of love how much it hurts. It's one of the few things that makes me feel like I still have a connection to what happened and what I lost. 

Prepare yourself, this is not a short story.

Background

When I was a little kid I was relatively normal. I say relatively normal because as I have explained in other posts I don't think I was ever exactly the same as most people, I just didn't have the mental abilities to ponder it and figure out what was different about me at that stage. 

Anyway. I went to school and ran around. I had friends and we had sleepovers. I laughed and cried. I got in trouble off my parents sometimes and tried my best to be good. I won awards at school and my dad called me his "little ray of sunshine." I was happy and bright and seemingly normal. 

I certainly always felt a bit different, but never enough that it was actually a problem. I was always quite restrained. Like if I ever relaxed or let myself get too out of control, people would notice that I was "weird" and stuff. I was also a massive people pleaser, so that helped hide that I was a bit strange. I let myself be completely guided by what would make other people happy (I actually still kind of do this but I'm trying to stay on track with this so all the rest of my crazy will have to wait for another day). 

My point is, I was still pretty normal. Now, if I had been writing this post a year or so ago, I would have said that that all changed in 2007. That that was the year my life fell apart. 

Now I'm not so sure. 

Cracking

Something happened a little earlier than that which I am gradually beginning to realise has had a profound impact on me. I have no idea of the extent to which it has altered me, and I probably never will. 

I was sexually assaulted. That is a sentence I have said to two people in my entire life. Two people who didn't really care, and made me feel that it was no big deal, so talking about it was a waste of time. 

It happened when I was on holidays when I was about 15. The person I was sharing a room with started touching me early one morning. I freaked out and had no idea what to do so I just pretended to still be asleep. I rolled over in my "sleep" to try and shield myself, but that didn't work. It stopped when someone knocked on the door. I didn't do anything about it. I didn't tell anyone or act in a way that anyone would question. I don't even think that I really thought about it. 

When the holiday was over and I was back in school I gradually worked up the courage to tell my best friend. She was pretty dismissive. She said, "Are you sure you didn't just dream it? Like you know how when you are almost to the point of waking up and dreams take on that really lifelike quality?" It was a giant slap in the face and it kind of killed the conversation.
I have no proof that it happened other than the memory, and in that moment she planted the seed of doubt. How do I know it happened? Maybe she is right. Maybe it was just a dream. 

In just a few sentences she completely dismissed and discredited ma and destroyed any desire I had to talk about what happened to me.

Prior to her questions I had not even considered that it might not have been real. It was a thing that happened, just like when I ate breakfast that morning or kissed my first boyfriend for the first time. None of the events had any proof other than my memory, but all are part of my reality. I don't know how to explain it better than that. One moment it was as real as anything else that had ever happened to me, the next minute that seed of doubt was growing in my mind. 

I warred with myself for a really long time over her questions, until I realised that it doesn't matter if it was a dream or if it actually happened. What matters is that in my heart of hearts I believe that it happened. That is my reality. That is the reality that changed my life.

I still remember it as clear as day, even though I tried so hard to forget it and so many other pleasant memories from that holiday have faded. 

I was sexually assaulted. It doesn't matter if it really happened. What matters is that to me, it really happened. It was the event that started me down the road to ruin.

For a very long time I didn't really think that what happened had impacted me. With the exception of times when I was trying to figure out if it was real or not, for the most part I honestly just put it out of my mind. I never really even identified as someone who had been sexually assaulted.
However, reminiscing and looking at emails after that event I have noticed how I started drifting down a path of emotional isolation, sexual promiscuity and negativity. What happened in 2007 just pushed my flying off the edge.

After the assault I started really pushing away a lot of my friends, particularly the girl who I told and who doubted me. I was emotionally distant, I wouldn't talk about anything that really mattered to me and I was nasty to anyone who tried to get too close. Now, if you know anything about relationships between 15 year old females, you will see how this isn't conducive to making/keeping friends with other girls who typically enjoy spilling their guts at sleepovers and whatnot.
I also became emotionally unpredictable. One second I would be open and wanting someone to care enough to delve deeper, the next I would be completely closed off and ice cold, terrified that someone would get too close. You can imaging how this confused and hurt my friends. 

This unpredictability also extended to physical contact. I had had relatively physical relationships with my best friends up to that point (some girls are just touchy-feely like that), and sometimes I still was, but mostly I would completely freeze up if anyone touched me for any reason and I would feel this need to lash out at them and run far far away. I still feel like that a lot of the time, and writing this all down in this order makes me realise how incredibly obvious it is that I was dealing (poorly) with the ramifications of the sexual assault. After such forced intimate contact while trapped in a room with my attacker, any physical contact triggered feelings of panic and my flight/fight response. At the time I had no idea what was going on. I couldn't explain my feelings or reactions to anyone, not even myself. I just thought I was weird and that I didn't like being touched. 

Anyway. I also became sexually promiscuous. I had always been pretty comfortable with sex, but I think after what happened sex took on a kind of dirty quality. Like it became some kind of self inflicted punishment that I both despised and relished. 
Even when I was in a really loving relationship, I loved having sex but I also despised it. Even all loved up and happy, during or after sex I would just feel awful. Like this poison flowing through me. I want to use the word dirty again, but that seems to imply that some form of cleanliness would help, it was more sick. It felt sick, in the same way that the idea of kicking a puppy feels sick.

I have also struggled in any situation where I feel like sex is expected of me. Like if my boyfriend and I got into a routine of having sex ever night when we went to bed, after a little while I would find my anxiety levels increasing when I was getting ready for bed and I knew it was coming. I felt terrified and like I couldn't get away (even though my boyfriend was the sweetest person ever and would never NEVER force sex on me). A single touch from him when I was feeling like that would totally freak me out and I would shut down completely. Now I realise why, but at the time I was as hurt and bewildered as him. :/

I dunno. Overall I guess I just started really fucking up my life. I didn't do it in a really obvious way. I mean, I still had friends and boyfriends and good marks at school, but it's like my insides had started rotting and just a few cracks were beginning to show on the outside.

I continued on like that until June 2007, the year when my life just imploded and I completely fell apart. I like to think that without the events in June 2007 I might have managed to live a relatively normal life as just another slightly strange girl.

Breaking

To cut a long story short, someone incredibly important to me died.
You might need a little more detail than that so I'll expand a little.
He was young, just starting out his beautiful life. He was kind and innocent and wonderful. I loved him. I trusted him. I pictured him in many of the greatest parts of my future. He loved me and he trusted me and I betrayed him. 

Anyone else will tell you that what happened had nothing to do with me. I will tell you that they are wrong. It was completely my fault. I still can't admit to you what I did. I'm not ready for that, but I'll tell you as much of the rest of the story as I can.

One morning when I woke up he was sick. I stayed home with my mum and dad to help take care of him but there wasn't much I could do. I walked with him and hugged him and told him that I loved him. There was like this ice hand gripping my heart and squeezing it. I remember being kind of fuzzy in the head, like my brain couldn't even process what was happening. 

After a very long day nothing really seemed to have changed. He was no worse or better than he had been in the morning. My parents told me to go to bed and get some rest. I did, and to this day that is one of the things I regret most. How could I have slept though some of my last hours with him?

I vividly remember waking up the next morning. The sun was shining through the window and it was the 15th of the month. I felt so sure that the nightmare has passed and that everything would be okay. I was practically buoyant with hope.
That part about the date might seem strange, but everything significant in my life seems to happen in some way related to the number 7. Him getting sick on the 14th just felt like an immediate death sentence, so with the dawning of the 15th I felt so so sure in my heart that the worst was over. 

That's when I noticed the look on my mum's face and that icy hand grabbed hold of my heart once more.

Turns out that the universe is a crafty bitch. I later realised that it was the 15th of June. The 15th day of the 6th month. 15+6=21 (a multiple of seven).

You might think this is a bit ridiculous, I agree with you. It's not normally something that I buy into, just something that I noticed once it was all over. It's really only relevant in terms of that insane hope I felt on the morning of the 15th. That insane hope that made it so much worse when reality crashed back down on me. 

Anyway. He wasn't better and from the moment I saw the look on my mum's face I have bitterly regretted those few hours I spent sleeping. 

We went over to see him and on the way my mum told me how he had started looking better briefly during the night, but that it hadn't lasted long. 

I remember feeling betrayed by the fact that she hadn't slept and I did. 

When I first saw him that morning I realised mum had been holding out on me. He was so much worse. I could feel it in my bones. The sight of doctors working over him, poking and prodding and testing was like running full pelt into a brick wall. I wouldn't be surprised if it literally stopped my heart from beating.
I got to spend some time alone with him, but he was so drugged out on pain medication I don't think he even realised I was there. I remember seeing a spot where some piece of equipment had rubbed the skin raw on part of his face and it absolutely breaking my heart.  It was such a small injury in the scheme of what he was going through, but to me that one little sore held all the hurt in the world. Here was this creature that I loved so completely, someone so full of life and energy, reduced to a barely concious shell. So far gone that an an injury we would have been treating on any normal day had been rendered totally inconsequential.
Ugh. I can't even come close to explaining what it was like. I was paralysed on the brink of hell. I was holding my breath as my numb brain refused to see the gaping chasm opening to fire and brimstone at my feet. I was completely unprepared when the ground crumbled away beneath my feet and hell engulfed me.

Later that morning he went into shock and died. I was there. I watched it happen. I felt it happen. I remember. I remember every agonising second of it. I remember how time kind of slowed down and the seconds felt like hours. I wont describe the details. Even though the film is playing over and over in my heart I don't think I could even find the words to describe it.
Right as he went into shock my mum held me back from him. She tried to pull me away so that I wouldn't see. I was appalled. I know she was just trying to protect me, but I needed to see him. I needed to see every moment of it. I vaguely remember shoving past her and standing helplessly in front of him as it all happened.
He fell to the ground and I knelt to hold his head as the doctor was working on him. The doctor kept saying words like "shock" and "ruptured" and then finally, things like "I'm sorry" and "nothing we can do."
I had his head cradled in my lap and I watched the light fade from his eyes.
That is something that I have noticed the movies always get right. I never really believed that death worked like that until I saw it for myself. It's true though, you really can see it  happening. You can see the life slipping away.
I remember the tears flowing unchecked down my face and realising that that awful choking sound was actually me screaming.

The world shrunk down until it contained nothing more than his face. It was just him and me surrounded by an eternity of emptiness.
I remember feeling something strange in my hand and then figuring out that it was his tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth.
Revulsion mixed in with the horror and the indescribable agony, and then something snapped and I was just empty.
I don't really remember what happened for much after that. Suddenly everything stopped mattering so I don't think I really took any of it in well enough to remember it.
I do remember someone trying to drag me away from his body some time later. It was my dad. They wanted to cover him up and get me away from him. Maybe it creeped them out to see me cradling a corpse. I don't know. All I know was that I was in no way ready to let go.
I'm still not really ready to let go, but at least I'm not holding on as tight as I used to.

Broken

Virtually all my blog posts tell some part of the story of my life after June 2007. Of most relevance is probably my post about Living for Others, where I talked about my use of cutting to cope with what happened. Instead of going into that stuff again, I will try to talk in a broader sense now.

I honestly can't tell you much about the weeks and months after June 2007.
After he died the numbness of shock slowly wore off and I can't describe the agony that hit me when it was gone. It was like being burned alive on the outside while my inside was frozen solid, and all the while my heart was exploding and my soul was screaming. It was completely overwhelming.

Eventually something snapped again, but it was deeper this time. Not something to do with the shock that wore off after a few weeks. I guess I just went into zombie mode after that, kind of like Bella in the second Twilight book (can't believe I just made that reference, but it's one thing the author got kind of right). When I was at school or talking to people and I was forced to kind of make my brain work it felt like wading through mud. My thoughts were so sluggish.
I got to the point where I couldn't think or feel anything other than superficial nothings. I had completely shut down as a means of self preservation. It's like I was skating across the surface of my mind, terrified by what I might have to face if I went in too deep.

I guess you know the feeling if you have felt it, but basically there was no way that I could deal with the emotions that hit me after he died, and so in some magical subconscious self defence mechanism I shut it all out.
I still felt like I was both frozen and burning sometimes (which is when I would turn to self harm), but I was blessedly numb from the emotional pain that had previously gone with it.

For a while after it happened there were people who would listen. Someone would ask how I was and I could see that they actually cared, but at the very start I was too bewildered and overwhelmed to be able to talk about it, and by the time I was kind of ready to let it out almost everyone had moved on to other things.
During that later time I realised that when someone asks how you are, there are only so many times that you can say "I'm pretty awful actually" and vent all your feelings or say "no, I don't know if there is anything you can do that will make it better," before people stop caring about what you are saying, and only a few more times before people just avoid asking you at all.

After he died I also had to deal with the fact that I lost interest in everything. Honestly, everything that I had loved or cared about before simply ceased to matter. This was hard because it was one of the things that people noticed most, so it was one of the things that people brought up in conversation a lot (rather than asking me what was wrong and not getting a good answer for the millionth time). It was easy for someone to ask why I stopped writing as a means of starting casual conversation, but any time they did it was like a hook wrenching at my heart. It was so inadvertent on their part, but in addition to hurting me, I felt like they were shining a spotlight on how much what happened had broken me.
When I was trying to get better, it also served as a really conspicuous reminder of how much I was failing.
Most of the things I cared about before still don't matter to me now. some things are still too painful to care about again because they are things that I did with him, but I think am getting better at being interested in life.

I don't blame the friends that I talked to. They were even more out of their depth than I was when it came to trying to help me. Besides, 8 years of dealing with the same problem is kind of exhausting for me, so I can understand why my friends don't want to still be doing it too.
It just made it so much harder to get better. One of the biggest problems I found with depression was how alone and isolated it made me feel. Talking to my friends only made it clear that they had no idea what I was going though, and some of the reactions I got were far from encouraging. So just like with the sexual assault, I just stopped talking about it.

It also didn't help that I resented people who did try to fix me. I still do. People I talked to would tell me to just cheer up or exercise or smile more, as though just changing my outside would help the inside. I now realise that these superficial solutions are just a reflection of the insanely superficial understanding those people had for what they were really dealing with.
It has helped that right from the start I have known that I am not a project. I am damaged and I am broken, but that doesn't mean that I need to be fixed. If I can get better or heal a bit then that's great, but everyone just forcing the pieces of me back together and expecting me to be over it hasn't helped me at all.

I guess it also took me a really long time to even want to get better. I hated the idea of 'getting better' like I hated the idea of being fixed. I think that after having felt out of step all my life, it was a huge relief to be beyond caring who I seemed to be to other people. It felt amazing to just be me, as twisted and ruined as I am.
To an extent I still don't want to get better. I still shy away from the idea of getting better because I am desperate not to lose the pain. That sounds strange, but when time pushed me further and further from the one that I loved and lost, the pain I am left with is the strongest way that I have to still feel connected to him. I will never forget him, I know that, but there is something so raw and real about the pain. It is a tether to him and I don't see how I can lose it without losing some part of my connection to him. It is worth any amount of pain in the world to keep him with me.
Now, when I can no longer revel in the mess of my life, it's a difficult balance that I am trying to maintain. I am trying to move forward into my new life and in doing that walk away from what happened, but at the same time, I am dragging all that hurt with me. It might be drifting further and further behind, but I am not ready to cut the rope tying me to my past.

I don't really know where to end this post. There is no real end yet. I think the only real end would be my death, because I feel that the traumas in this post are things that I will be dealing with until the day that I die. I honestly don't think that I will ever be able to say that its over or that I'm cured of my depression. I don't think depression can be cured. I think it is possible to get better, but never to be perfectly whole again. Maybe it can be forced into remission, but I think it is always there. 

Naturally the story of my life is a long and complicated one. More complicated than most people's lives seem to be. I have been making this snail pace journey towards some semblance of sanity for the last 8 years. Obviously there was a lot of darkness at the start and there still is, but there has also been lots of awesomeness, so there are millions of other facets and details to my story that I have not had the time or the space to mention here.
Maybe another day I will write a part 2 and discuss how depression influenced my relationship with the guy I started dating in October 2007 or one of the many other things to have come in the aftermath of my world breaking. Maybe. I am too emotionally exhausted to write any more now. :[

Regardless, I will be doing a guest post on another blog in the near future which will deal with the more recent ramifications of my depression and what it has been like leaving the shelter of educational institutions and becoming a professional with stretched ears, tattoos and self harm scars that I make no effort to hide. 
I'll give more info in regards to timing of the post as it becomes available. 

I'm pretty nervous about posting this. As much as I want you to know me, I am terrified of what will happen when you do...
Here goes nothing I guess.

This Shadow Life - People Like Me

I am not a perfect person, far from it in fact. I think I might actually be a horrible person.
Sometimes I am selfish, hateful, jealous, unkind, unattractive, lazy, self destructive, a liar, and just about everything else that people tell you not to be.
I have no drive or ambition. I'm happier reading stories about other peoples lives than being out and living my own.
I struggle to feel empathy for others. I don't care about you or her or anyone else, but maybe that's because I can barely find the energy to even care about myself.

Believe it or not, I am happy being me. I was raised to believe that I should be myself, embrace my flaws as the things that make me beautiful. Well, I believed what I was told and I did it. I learned to love my flaws, they make me who I am, and I love that too.
Not everyone seems to feel the same though, and since I have started thinking about this, I have noticed it more and more. People want me to be myself and embrace who I am, unless that means being something that they don't want me to be.

As an example I will tell you a little story.
Once I was listening to some music and came across a line that I really liked. I felt that it described me well. Excited about this new revelation, I rushed outside to tell my dad.
I told him the quote, "I like what I do, I do what I like". To me this exemplified the peace that I find in doing the things that I love and loving the things that I do. However, my dad swiftly informed me that this quote was incredibly selfish and that I should try to live my life for the happiness of others as much for myself.
What he didn't get what that one of the things I love doing is making people happy. I struggle to do it for myself so I try to do it for everyone else. (I guess I'm not an awful person all the time)
Too shocked by his accusation to explain that to him, I quickly found an excuse to go back inside.
Thinking on this I realised that my father, who has always loved and supported me, didn't like the idea that I might not be selfless, and immediately he wanted me to change.

I get that if I weren't selfless, then learning to become it would be seen as 'bettering myself'' but bettering myself by whose definition?
People say that you should be yourself. What they seem to mean is that you should be yourself, unless you are in any way lacking.

The other thing that bothers me with this, that I guess is semi-related, is the fact that you very rarely read a book where the bad guy is just an average person. They always have a mental illness, or a confused religious obsession, or they are evil incarnate. Why can't they just be someone trying to get by and doing what they think is best, even if the hero of the story doesn't agree with it?
I think that it is because people need a reason why this bad person is not like them. The reader needs to be able to put a little bubble around themselves and say "I am not like him, he is evil". I'm not talking evil like Voldemort or Sauron, although they would definitely be in that category too, I'm talking just people doing things that the hero sees as wrong/evil.

To better explain this I'll give another example.
I am reading a book at the moment where there was a girl on a convict ship because she had been arrested. The ship was shipwrecked on a beach and in full view of the people watching on the beach, a man (the hero of the story) swam out to save her because she was beautiful. The story then goes on to detail how the couple escape from the officers pursuing them, steal their horses and leave them for dead in the wilderness. Now, it sounds like all of their actions are horribly selfish, illegal and down right wrong. However, because they are the beautiful, in love heros of the story, this is all okay and the reader finds that they are cheering these criminals on.
The reader also finds themselves hating the officers because they are portrayed as fat and slow and angry and stupid and mean. They are portrayed as having every negative trait that a person can have. No redeeming features at all. Nothing that a reader would wan to identify with.
People say that you should be yourself, unless you are evil incarnate...

Now imagine the same story above, but told from the law enforcement perspective. It would be totally different.
All the negative things would be transformed by the new perspective. Fat would become a lovable weakness for his wife's home cooking. Slow would become patient. Being angry and mean would become a justified reaction to the torments of a criminal. It would be the officers standing up for themselves and doing what was necessary to get the job done. Being stupid would be transformed to being the lovable underdogs overcoming their god given shortcomings.
You would be cheering on the officers, not the runaways.
But, even if they are all fat and slow and angry and stupid and mean, why should that matter? They are doing the right thing and upholding laws that are in place to keep people safe. They are doing the right thing.
A simple change in perspective is all it takes to go from being the hero to the villain, from a good person to a bad one.
People say that you should be yourself, unless you are on the wrong side of the story.

I often hear people calling someone an unkind name or shunning them because they wear unflattering clothes, aren't embarrassed about they bodies, don't think that "private areas are all that private", or they scratch their crotch or breasts in public, or don't let ladies go first through the door, or because they are a female and have bigger muscles than most men, or are a man who liked to wear scarves to keep his neck warm. There are all super simple relatively uninteresting things that I can guarantee to you, someone in the world thinks is a bad thing to do. But that's just because it's what they have been taught to think.
Take young children for example. They will pick their nose, scratch their bottom and really do whatever feels right. They aren't embarrassed by their fat rolls or afraid to make their private parts very public. This is because they are totally unrestrained by the preconceived notions of society which say that all the things I mentioned above are wrong.
Personally I find nothing wrong with scratching an itch in a private area in public. I don't do it because other people seem to take offence, but I don't see why my private areas are any different to the other parts of my body.
How is a breast or a bottom different to any other part of the body, except that someone, somewhere once decided that it was bad?
This is really just an extension of my first thought I guess...
People say that you should be yourself, unless you challenge the preconceived ideas of our society.

Post your thoughts below. I would really love to know what you think about this.