let's try this one more time...

psychoanalysis...
PROBLEM: HOW DO I FEEL RIGHT NOW?
I feel like killing myself. I want to go cut my wrist.

HOW DID YOU FEEL ONE WEEK AGO?
Happy. But these feelings were welling up inside of me. I felt like I didn't deserve happiness. I felt like I wasn't born to be happy. I felt... so incredibly guilty. I felt like I was incapable of being stable and being okay with it. I felt like I was born to be depressed. I was uncomfortable with happiness. I really, really, really missed self-injury. I missed pain. I missed being broken.

WHY DID THAT CHANGE?
When I found out about Matt and Shauna, and a few other things going on, I plummeted. I stopped taking my meds. I'm so depressed right now. I feel like just killing myself and ending it all. It all seems so pointless.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE SINCE THEN?
I cut my arm and my leg very deeply. I jumped off our porch.

WHAT DID YOU FEEL?
I felt like a failure. I confirmed my inner belief that even if I am happy for a while, it will always crash. I reassured my fears that I will never truly be happy. I felt weak. But it also felt delicious, going back to that. I missed it a lot. I feel so much more comfortable when I'm miserable. No matter how screwed up that is it's true.

WHY DO YOU WANT TO KILL YOURSELF?
Because I'm a failure and always will be. I'm pathetic. I'm weak. I act strong but inside I'm as weak as it gets. I'm bipolar and I can't handle what that means. I grew up miserable and I can't handle what that means. I feel like none of my friends really care about me. I hate myself. I hate myself because I can't be happy. No matter how many wonderful things there are in the world, I will never be part of them. I don't deserve to be part of them. I can't handle these cycles anymore. My whole life, there will just be these cycles, these plateaus. I will be depressed and angry and suicidal, and then for a while I will be happy, and then I will go back to trying to kill myself again. It will never end.

FACE THE FACTS:
I am bipolar. I was abused. That is who I am. Whether or not I wanted it to be, I don't want that to change now. I will always cycle. There will always be two emotions in my life: depression and happiness. When I am medicated, I can control it. But it won't EVER GO AWAY. I need to deal with that. I need to accept that this is my life. I need to stop hoping that I'll get better some day and start learning to deal with it. Also, I grew up being hit and molested and screamed at and hurt. I grew up hating myself and feeling like I was undeserving of love and I was a failure because I couldn't hold my family together, and then I was a failure because I couldn't hold myself together. I chose to be weak (and am still choosing it) because I was afraid of anything else. I didn't know anything else. I still don't. Nobody ever taught me to be happy. Nobody ever taught me to be confident. And in my whole life I may never be able to completely undue the damage that was caused in my childhood. I may never be completely okay with being happy. I may never feel deserving of happiness or love. All I can hope is to keep fighting. The fight may never end. The fight will probably never end. Assuming it will is setting myself up for even more failure.

WHY DO YOU HATE YOURSELF?
Because I am weak. Because I cut myself. Because I don't know how to live without pain and depression and abuse, which makes me pathetic and inadequate and lacking something fundamental. Because I can't connect with people. Because I can't help people anymore. Because I'm useless. Because most people wouldn't care if I died. Because I don't help the world at all. I can't even help myself.

WHY DO I LOVE MYSELF?
Because I am writing this right now... no matter how many voices inside of me are screaming (and they are) remember that sex? remember how you liked it? remember how it hurt and you still asked for it? remember how you didn't talk to anyone? remember how angry you were? remember how stupid you were because you should have known it was wrong? remember how you felt bad about it, and you did it anyway? remember how you were never good enough for your mom? remember how your dad was so miserable he tried to kill himself? remember how your brother left you? remember how everyone left you, because you weren't worth living for, because you were a failure? Yeah, there are those voices. I hear them every day. Why do I love myself? Because I still write this. Because a part of me still screams, "You're wrong" and will not give up, will never give up. Because in my heart I know I would never call a five year old child who consented to abuse guilty. Because in my heart I know I could have never saved my family. I can't believe it yet. But I know it, I know it in the deep part of me that keeps me alive in times like these when all I want is to die.

WHY HAVEN'T YOU KILLED YOURSELF?
I've tried, believe me, a few times. But I don't want to leave behind weakness. I don't want that to be the end of me. I don't want to die with cuts on my body or laxatives in my system or masses of pills in my stomach or broken bones or a bullet in my skull. I want people to say at my funeral, "she was strong." If I were to kill myself today, as I feel like doing, people will say, " I never really noticed her. She was really weak, I guess."
Because a few people would care. And as long as one person cares, I will not be that selfish. When I cannot live for myself (as I have been unable to for most of my life) I will live for others. Because I remember how I felt when my dad drank that charcoal. Because I remember how lost I was.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO STOP YOURSELF FROM SUICIDE?
I have, several times these past few days, held pills in my hands and a glass of water. I have held the razor against my wrist. And most of me wanted to die. But a small part of me insists I am not that weak. So I tell myself, I will give that part one more chance. One more day. And if I can decide that today, and tomorrow, and every day this week, then I can survive until this weekend. Tonight on the way home and last night on the way home I turned up the music really loud. "Allstar." And remembered when I was in fifth grade in the car with a bunch of friends screaming that. Remembered Kristin and Olivia and me and the Shrek soundtrack. I was miserable then. But the point is... it's a memory. I was miserable and I survived. Tonight I screamed so loudly I could hear myself above the music, which was up all the way. I screamed so loud I almost laughed at how atonal my voice sounded. But when I got home I felt a little emotionally drained. And it was enough, for a few hours.

There is a parallel:
I am weak I am worthless I am a failure I am pathetic I am stupid I deserve abuse I will never be happy I'm not even capable of fighting I deserve to die Nobody will miss me

I am smart I am strong I have survived more abuse than my friends could dream of I have lived five years with diagnosed bipolar I believed in myself for a while I made it nine months without hurting myself I didn't hate myself for nine whole months I beat the urges for nine months.

SO WHAT IF I CAN NEVER QUIT FIGHTING...
It's better to live and fight than die in weakness...
I just have to keep fighting this urge. My main goal is to live through tonight. And then live through tomorrow. Maybe slowly things will come back. Maybe slowly I'll find more reasons to live.
I AM NOT SELFISH. I AM NOT WEAK.
No matter how strong the voice is in me that says I will never survive, I am weak, I will kill myself, it cannot drown out the small voice telling me I am worth it, I am strong, and I can beat this.