back to the counselor I went...

I had an appointment with a counselor at school today. I am not sure quite how I feel about it. I am sort of extra stressed out about it all right now. I feel very vulnerable and out of control right now. I mean I know I don't have to talk about anything I don't want to, and that I am the one who signed up for the appointment in the first place, but I just am feeling in a really bad place right now. I made an appointment with her because I have been in a really bad place lately, and I am worried that I might be depressed. I come from the idea that I would like to keep from being medicated if at all possible, so I want to try out some other options before resorting to medication.

The last time I had been to see her was near the middle of spring/second semester of last year. I had gone because I had had a really close time when I was feeling extremely triggered and wanting to self-harm, I had kept from self-harming but wanted to talk to the counselor. When I came in earlier today, she basically asked me why I had come in and I told her how I was feeling depressed, and just not good lately. After discussing that in general (symptoms, how long had I been feeling that way, any life changes that could be causing it, any medication changes, was I suicidal etc.) and some ways to help combat depression (without medication, things like more regular exercise, trying to be more involved in events, spending less time alone and more with people, etc.).

She then told me that she had looked over the notes from our previous sessions and wanted to talk about self-harm. How long had it been since I last self-harmed? I told her it had been about a month give or take...then she asked me how many times during the school year I had self-harmed thus far, I took a rough guesstimate and told her that I had probably self-harmed 6-7 times in the last school year. She looked down at the sheet she was writing on and jotted something down (as she had been doing the whole time) then looked up at me and said with a sort of disappointed tone, "that is a lot more than last year". The way she talked about the self-harm in general is sort of bothering me. She almost seemed sort of dismissive of it, and sort of said things to the effect of well don't do it again before our next meeting. It is just causing me to sort of freak out about it. Because, not saying that I will, but what if I were to self-harm, how am I supposed to come back and be honest about it afterward and face all the disappointment in her voice? I guess going to counseling in general sort of stresses me out, I find it so hard to talk about these sorts of things, and it is really taxing for me to be talking to a stranger about them.

The whole confidentiality thing sort of freaks me out too. The form we have to fill out at the counseling center has the confidentiality rules on the back and you have to sign the paper to agree with the terms, usually there are three things on there, first is that if you tell the counselor you are planning to harm someone then they have the right to break confidentiality and tell the person you say you want to hurt, and also to tell the police to protect that person, if they suspect abuse of a child or of a dependent elderly person, and if they suspect that you are going to harm yourself. The first two are pretty straight forward to me, but the last one really freaks me out. What do they mean by harm myself, what happens if the counselor suspects that I will self-harm, will she have to tell someone? Or is it only if she thinks I will kill myself? I just don’t know and that is what worries me.

So basically, all in all, I am just feeling a lot more vulnerable and out of control since the talk today, I feel closer to self-harming than I have in a while. I am in general a people pleaser, and the pressure I am feeling to try and please her by not self-harming is sort of causing pressure that I would normally relieve by self-harming…it is sort of crazy really.

Anywho, I really need to head to bed now, it is getting late. Hopefully I will be back soon enough. My next appointment is next Friday, so I will probably want to blog again then. One last thing, I mentioned to the counselor that I used to journal a lot, but it doesn't seem to do as much good anymore, and she said maybe we could talk about journaling next time and more ways to journal that might help.

Emmy R.

Counseling Appointment

So I just wanted to make a quick post before I head to bed.

Last night I cried myself to sleep. It was horrible and made for the worst nights sleep I have had in a while, not to mention just a general lack of sleep because I couldn't fall asleep while sobbing.

Anywho, the whole crying-myself-to-sleep thing at least had one positive outcome, I finally made an appointment with one of the school counselors. I have met with her before, but not at all this school year if I remember correctly. I though my appointment would be made for like next week or something, but it is already this Wednesday.

I have been feeling so extremely down lately that I just don't know what to do anymore, and I feel like this is my only option. I have no motivation to do anything whatsoever, I hardly scrape by and do the bare minimum for classes. I don't want to screw up this semester.

Anyways, I am sort of glad that this appointment is coming up so soon, but I suppose it gives me less time to psych myself out about it.

Hello again.

I started writing in this blog a few years back because I wanted a place to be anonymous and to share my innermost feelings. I wanted to be faceless, sort of a cover to show how I felt. My real emotions came through this blog. Poems I wrote, the emotion spewing forth through my fingers as I was typing. Somehow though, the relief that I felt as I typed stopped coming as easily. Little by little the relief that this blog brought lessened. It brought me to this point, where I rarely come on here anymore, each time promising to write more regularly, apologizing for my absence to the empty ears of my nonexistent audience.

I miss the days where I could pour my emotions out on here and it was so easy, so simple. I could talk about my struggle with self-harm and know that only strangers will read it. I could be a nameless, faceless stranger.

I changed my mind the other day. I uploaded a photo of myself, it scares me to think that someone I know could come across this blog and see my photo and read my words. How would they react? What would they think? Would they realize that the truth is that I am a stranger, a stranger to everyone around me? Would they think this blog was fake? Would it be dismissed, a mere trifle that I exaggerated my emotions into?

I started recording videos for a YouTube account a while back. I really enjoy making the videos, another outlet for me to express myself, but somehow not quite as pure as the written word. . I have met some amazing people on YouTube. I feel like I am doing far more good there than I ever did on here. I have more subscribers than I ever thought possible when I first started out. I thought maybe one or two people would find my videos, but there have been so many more who find me, some subscribe, others just comment on my videos. Strangers who I get to know through their posted videos, countries or even continents separate us, but I feel closer to them than I do to almost anyone in my real life currently. I was even asked to join a collaboration channel, where hundreds upon hundreds of people subscribe and could possibly watch my videos. I feel like I am in a position to help people and that is what I want to be doing. The pain in my life that I have experienced, I don’t want it to be all for nothing. If I can help other people maybe that will be enough, maybe it will make the pain ok. I don’t really know.

Right now I am struggling; I feel depression looming over me, most of the time I hardly make it through the school day. After I am done with school and work I come back to my room and fiddle around on the internet for the rest of the afternoon, hardly caring enough to glance at my homework and doing the bare minimum to get a passing grade.

I feel like a failure. I sit in my room all day by myself doing mostly nothing. I close the door so I don’t have to face the laughter and good times that might ring down the hall towards me from the other rooms. I hate myself for where I am. I walk around campus, rarely smiling, feeling alone. I hardly care enough to try to find some people to hang out with. Most weekends I spend cooped up in my room, by myself, watching reruns of Law and Order. I wish I felt some purpose to my life, I mean I know what I want to do in the future, but what should I do now? How can I have purpose in my life now? I feel alone and sad.

This might seem stupid, but it frustrates me that everyone around me has a “significant other” all my friendships change because people start dating and then care more about spending time with their new beau than about any old friends. Of course I sit here on the other side of things completely alone, with no dating prospects. I haven’t ever had any dating prospects. Then my mind follows some sort of deranged logic that leads me to what seems to be the fact of my lack of value. People have no interest in spending time with me, what does that say about me as a person? Guys have never given me a second glance, how should I understand my value from that? Long ago, I accepted the fact that I would likely never marry. I might say to my friends that I just have too much personality for most guys, but the truth is that guys just flat out are not interested. But like I said, I have accepted that. I will grow old, either alone or with my adopted or foster children, or even still living with my parents (my goodness I hope that last one doesn’t happen, I mean I love my parents, but I don’t want to live with them forever). I am resigned to this fact, and for the most part I am ok with it. I wish I had a friend though, someone I could trust to fill in that gap, the loneliness that is all consuming, someone who needs me as much as I need them. All of my friends have someone else, another friend group, or just SOMEONE, who they can go to besides me. No one needs me.

This blog is getting far, far too long, so I am going to end it soon. I suppose I will end with this, I don’t know where I am going right now. I wish I had something in particular to look forward to, but I cannot seem to find it right this second. I hate this feeling of being at rock bottom. I want to go back to counseling I think, make a new appointment with the counseling center on campus, but I worry myself too much about it. I have been before, and it doesn’t seem to help, but I just don’t know what else to do. I think I am depressed. I hate to use that word, it seems so cliché, but I just don’t know what else to call it.

Anyways, I am out of here. Hopefully I will be back soon with another post, sorry for leaving you guys hanging (that is if anyone really reads these) so long between posts.

Emmy R.

Once Again

Every time I post, pretty much, I say something along the lines of "It has been a while since I posted, but I just wanted to give you an update..." And once again this is basically about that.

I just recently headed back to college and am done with the first two days of classes. It is weird this year because I have moved to a different dorm with different rules and a change in the basic setup of it all. There have been a lot of changes lately, and I am not sure if they are for the better or not. I was supposed to room with a friend, which would have been nice because I would have gotten a chance to have a higher level of comfortability, but that changed last minute. I do not fare well with change, and although my new roommate is great, it has been hard to get used to all this change within a few weeks of school starting. Also now that classes have started I have added stress with that.

Like I said, my roommate is nice, but she is almost nice to an extreme. It is kind of weird. I never really had a relationship with my previous roommate, we just basically lived in the same space, but this roommate like wants to talk about our day, and I am just really not used to it, so it is a bit weird.

Also another thing that has changed recently, is my relationship with my friend that I was going to live with. I do not think that the strangeness is because of the moving out thing though. I feel it is more because of the fact that she started dating one of my other friends during this summer. They seem great together, but it is definitely awkward to hang out together when it is just Brandy and Jordan, and even more so because Jordan acts like a little gentleman and like helps Brandy out of her seat and stuff, and opens doors for her, I mean I guess it is all stuff that guys are supposed to do for their girlfriend, but it just seems awkward and weird.

I just feel myself growing apart from Brandy and Jordan, like however much closer they get, the further I get from Brandy in particular. I hate it, but it just feels like that. And then they do all this stuff together and hang out and do other couple-y stuff, and then I get left behind by myself in my dorm room.

Other than that I have been feeling really down lately, near the end of the summer it got pretty bad, and then it got a bit better for like a week, and then lately it has gotten worse again. I am never really interested in doing anything more than I have to, half the time I do not even care about working on my relationship with my friends. I just sit by my computer when I am not in class or at work, and mess around watching youtube videos and on tumblr. I have also been really tired all the time, which lately I have blamed on jet-lag from my flight to school, but really is not based on that I do not think. I realize that what I just said is like basically the definition of what depression is, but I do not know if I can see myself getting any help for it. Also lately my cutting has gotten worse again, I constantly feel like cutting, but half the time I am too down to do anything about it, and most of the time I just really cannot even bring myself to care anymore, like I just do not care if I get better or not. I have been cutting on my legs now because it is easier to hide, but once winter comes I might go back to my arms, because it feels better for some reason. I feel so lame and just out of it. Part of me wants to get out of this funk and get some help for it, and maybe some medication, but the other part just tells me I deserve to feel this way and why go to the counseling center at school because it is not like they will help anyways.




Sorry this is such a downer post, I hope that all is well for anyone who actually reads this blog...

When things like this happen
I automatically blame myself
It makes me feel
Like less of a person
I start to hate myself
Again

And I blame myself
Because it has happened
To me
This abandonment
Far too many times in my life
It makes me hate myself

When I am just learning
To love myself again
And my world crashes around me
So generally I fight any relationship
I am a loner

And I do not trust
So it hurts even more
When it comes from

One of the few people

Who I have let in

So i haven't updated in a while, screwed up again today, I just haven't been doing well this summer...

right now i am sort of in a bad place. I cut today and am just really feeling down and bad in general...i haven't been doing so great in general lately with sort of a roller coaster of emotions...

It all started with a routine TB skin test which tested positive...so i had to get a chest X-Ray which was negative, so my doctor said i have latent TB and there is pretty much no chance of it going positive unless i wait till i am old or have some sort of immune deficiency so she put me on an antibiotic to kill whatever i do have in me so there will be no chance of getting it, unless of course i am exposed again...

anywho i told my friend who i was going to be rooming with next year because i though it was sorta humorous...i really didn't think anything of it because my doctor said that testing positive and exposure was pretty common and i wouldn't get active and blah blah blah...so i told her and she told her mom and her mom freaked out and overreacted and told her she shouldn't room with me anymore because of it... (she has had her husband (Lung Disease, he was not a smoker or anything) and first daughter (SIDS) die of lung related diseases) and she basically runs her daughters life because she is way too worried all the time and over protective (my friend, brandy, is not even allowed to eat microwave popcorn because some ingredient in it can cause issues with the lungs, like i said over protective)

so now my friend is going to ditch me and move into another room or something, if she even can at this point with only 3 weeks left before the school year...so basically i am now just really frustrated with her mom for running her life and also with her for letting her mom do it...and also with myself for even telling her in the first place...it is all bullshit...and i am pissed off about it...

but there is nothing i can do about it anymore because though she asked me for my opinion she really didn't consider it and had already pretty much made up her mind...

the thing that frustrates me the most is that i feel abandoned (yet again) by someone i love...now obviously she will still hang out with me (or so she says she will) so she didn't really abandon me she just chose not to live with me...but it feels like i have been abandoned...

I am probably crazy for thinking that way...but

Pro-Choice Because

I just ran across an interesting pro-choice website. It is interesting for the fact that it consists of just submissions which are quotes made by pro-choice people. I have a few of my favorites I have found so far that I wanted to share.

Here is the link to the website: http://www.prochoicebecause.com/index.php

"Choice. What happens to all the sixteen eighteen or twenty year old "murderers"? jail time? death penalty? a fine? whats the point. not cool to punish someone for making a choice affecting their OWN life."- Anonymous

"I am prochoice because I believe in the sanctity of women's health care. Laws prohibiting abortions may lead women to back-alley clinics with little to no post-op and the very likely chance that they will not survive or be rendered completely infertile. The chance that this situation may occur is too great to be ignored." - Talli

"The situation is NEVER black and white." - Anonymous

"I am pro choice because I have seen a 12 year old incest victim deliver a child and then proceed to have a pulmonary embolism and die. She never had a choice not to have sex. She never had a choice to use birth control. She never had a choice to terminate her pregnancy. She never had a choice to live." - Anonymous

"I once saw a bumper sticker that said, "If you can't trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?" That sums up my feelings quite nicely." - Kate

"I think that if I had a child right now, my child would have two options: 1. Be raised by me and go without because I'm not ready yet. I'm emotionally immature and not ready financially. 2. Be adopted and think that I didn't love that child enough to keep it. Either way, I love my future children enough to make sure they never have to suffer with either option."- Marissa

""You cannot have two entities with equal rights occupying one body. One will automatically have veto power over the other - and thus they don't have equal rights. In the case of a pregnant woman, giving a "right to life" to the potential person in the womb automatically cancels out the mother's right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." It's my body." - Anonymous

This last one sums up my own thoughts on the matter pretty well:
"I am pro-choice, not pro-abortion. While I could never make that decision myself, I recognize that I am not God, and I cannot pass supreme moral judgement on the choices of other women. Every woman should choose as she sees fit." - Anonymous

Sorry i have not updated in a while...i have been busy and just not felt like writing at all...

I have been doing a little too much thinking lately...or rather tonight....
I should probably start at the beginning...

Today I went to a childhood friend's baby shower. We have known each other forever (since we were like 3 or 4) and grew up in the same neighborhood until she moved when we were in 8th grade because of some issues she was having (hanging out with the wrong crowd, doing drugs and so much more). But I went to her shower and before that we were shopping for a baby gift (my mom and one of my sisters and I). My mom kept making remarks through the shopping and car ride to my friend's mom's house. She was talking about how my friend did things in the wrong order (had sex, got pregnant, got married) instead of the right way (got married, had sex, got pregnant). I was like sometimes things just happen, and she was like well you can stop those things from happening. I get so frustrated by my mom's close-mindedness sometimes. It is not like she purposely got pregnant. I mean my mom just views it like everyone should just be a perfect christian and not have sex and she says it like it is the easiest thing in the world. Maybe she had an easy time with it (I do NOT want to even think about my mom with a sex drive, but seeing as I am one of five kids...). Idk my mom just seems to judge everyone lately, my friend whose shower I went to is just one of 2 friends of mine who have gotten pregnant/had a kid before they were married. She is just being so judgmental. I still wonder what it would be like to have a mom who I could confide in. I wish I had a mother figure of some sort I could just talk to, who would not judge me for the things I do.

It hurts a lot to have my mom judge strangers on their lifestyle choices. I used to think that if I ever got pregnant outside of marriage (which, lets face it, is not on the near horizon, seeing as I am 20 and have been on one date, never had a boyfriend and never even been kissed) that she would support me, but I highly doubt it, if I ever got pregnant I would have to hide it from my parents and adopt the baby out or get an abortion (which i couldn't do because I am personally against abortion, though i also believe it should be the woman's choice). I know now more than ever that my mother would never forgive me and would judge me harshly for having sex and getting pregnant. I think that once I am out of college and have a job and on my own insurance I want to get on birth control of some kind just so that I can have a safety net in place if I ever were to have sex...

wow...i am just really frustrated with the whole situation...i am just a type of person who is accepting of other people no matter what. I try my hardest not to judge because it is not my place to, and often i have begun to see my levels of what I accept to have risen above what they used to be. Like I now see more and more the difference between Gender and Sex and also the whole gender continuum and now I accept the gender continuum a lot more than I used to...


I am rambling now...so i should probably go to bed so i can sleep off my frustration...i think what frusturates myself the most is that I really truly do NOT want to become that judgmental person...and I heard myself say something that could have come off as judgmental today to my friend, but i did not mean it that way i think my mom does not always mean it that way, but sometimes it comes out that way...


bye now...

Emmy R.