Healed

6:00 AM (+ 20 Hours)

I have a lot of good days, mostly good days, really; the ratio of good days to bad days is quite steep. The problem isn't that I have too many bad days, it's that the bad days are really, really bad, they're a ten ton steel ball swinging a hundred miles an hour towards the castle built with good day bricks and mortared with all the space I've put between me and my addiction. My bad days send my fortress tumbling down, my bad days watch me pick up the pieces and build again knowing as well as I do how much of a waste it is to stack these fragile pieces of happiness upon eachother.

My bad days don't go away on my good days, my bad days are ghosts clinging to my legs and arms reminding me their absence is only temporary. I'm not allowed to forget that I'm diseased, I'm stalked by my illness wherever I go. My good days are meek little cherubs fluttering around me as I walk, they ease the weight of the shackles I placed on myself when I was eleven, they make my scars look like just another patch of skin. Good days don't carry bows or shields, they carry incandescent bulbs to stay the darkness, but my bad days have sawblade teeth and carry heavy oak bats wrapped in razor wire.

I am not afraid of my bad days, as menacing as they are, I could spend weeks, months, years with them, we know eachother all too well, we were best friends for ten years, the kind of friends that fall asleep in each other's arms to stay warm in the cold. Our friendship bracelets are something only time can fade away, they line my arms and legs and ribs and thighs, tracking our years like rings on a tree.

I am afraid of the good days, afraid of building my castle with every brick placed with increasing anxiety and the weight of the structure baring down on me. I no longer install stained-glass window or decorate the garden with colorful stones. My architecture has grown lazy after tall failed and pretty failed and even strong failed. I build with the expectation that collapse is inevitable. My existence is constant anticipation of darkness, so much that I cannot enjoy the light.

When I was being evaluated the doctors and therapists all asked me the same thing over and over. Why do you do it? and I answered the same way every time, because I like it. They were never satisfied with that. What was I supposed to tell them? Sharp things were my friend and what do you do when you're lonely? Invite a friend over. Sad? Invite a friend. Bored? Out with a friend. Maybe you just miss your friend, maybe there's no reason at all.

People don't understand that, they don't understand that my illness is something I miss. They look at the mutilation it left behind and say I'm sure you're glad to be rid of that, but they weren't there when I drew those lines, they don't know that those are cherished memories. I don't blame them; I can't imagine someone fighting years to push their cancer into remission only to wish they could spend one more day in chemotherapy. So why do I miss sitting in my room with music digging into my skull as I screamed my agony away? Why do I miss hastily struggling to open a fresh pack of blades? Like that one birthday present that you just know is gonna be that big thing you asked for.

My illness was a gift, it came to me at my loneliest time when I needed it most. It loved me like nobody else, it wanted to be with me wherever I went. Nobody wanted me, nobody needed me, nobody cared. We visited often, and even though the only times I've seen it in three years were through foggy mirrors or the corners of my eyes I still miss it as if it were only yesterday.

Eventually, after a few years of prying at me, the doctors decided that the reason for my habit was that I was neglected by my peers and couldn't connect with my parents and this was my way of crying out for attention. Maybe they were right, maybe at eleven I hated myself and wanted nothing more than for someone to see me and tell me I'm not as bad I thought I was. Maybe I thought if I bled someone would smell the dirty pennies in the air and look at my arms and say I see you. But maybe it felt good, maybe it stopped being about attention a long time ago.

They diagnosed me with depression and social anxiety, they drew up a treatment program consisting of DBT and medication. DBT, or dialectical behavioral therapy, taught me how to stop negative self-talk by countering it with positive thoughts, it taught me how to be present with myself in the moment through mindfulness, it taught me to redirect my urges and distract and ride the wave. My medication, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, mood stabilizers, even multivitamins helped my body and brain function almost like a normal person. It worked, I started being less sad, I started talking to people and making friends.

Recovery was always an option; I knew this even before the hospital visits and the doctors and therapy and meds. The funny thing about recovery, though, is that you have to want it, and I mean really want it. I saw it over and over again in the hospital and the group sessions both inpatient and outpatient. It wasn't just people like me, it was anorexics, it was alcoholics, it was anyone who'd made themselves a cozy nest inside their habit. If you don't want to get better, you won't, and wanting to get better is the hardest part.

Standing on the outside, this all must seem an absolute circus filled with fools, gymnasts swinging from a trapeze slicked with oil, falling into a pit of broken glass repeatedly. The act is over, the audience is screaming for them to stop, but they climb the ladder bloody and weak, each rung bringing them closer to death. Why don't they just stop?

On the inside though, the trapeze is slicked with honey and the pit is filled with rose petals and candies, it's filled with familiarity, it's filled with safety, it's filled with warmth. On the inside the ladder is all we've ever known; on the inside it all makes so much sense. When the inside hurts enough sometimes you make the outside match and sometimes it works so well you forget that it's wrong. On the inside we ask why would I ever stop?

I found my reasons one by one, I found friends and family and I found purpose in helping people. Even when my illness got jealous and tried to pull me back in, I found more reasons, I found Grace and we made Audrie and we made a home and a life and a million more reasons. Yesterday was a bad day, maybe today is a good day.

Grace says we've been here before.

Grace says this path is old and worn.

Grace says we know the dark forest ends and the meadow awaits.

Grace is right.

But the first brick is always the hardest.