A few nice dating secrets images I found:

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Image by me and the sysop
secret 14 isn’t a secret to everyone, but the majority of people i know now (i.e. coworkers) don’t realize i’m bipolar. i’ve mentioned it on this picture and this picture, which happen to be a couple of my favorites thusfar in my 365.

anyhoot, in sum, i started cutting myself when i was 13. i punched walls for a long time, but my mom would complain about the noise i made. i would punch as hard as i could and often cut my knuckles. i don’t remember the first time i cut myself, but it was a quieter way of releasing stress.

the first time i abused myself in a similar manner was with a plain old #2 pencil. i etched a cross (from my perspective, upside down) into my left hand between the forefinger and thumb. i kept digging into it as the skin opened, filling the wound with graphite. as the graphite washed out, i would refill it using colored pencils. temporary graphite tattoo.

i knew it was wrong on some level, so one day, sitting on the hearth, i removed the bandaid and showed mom the cross. she was upset, naturally, and made me promise never to do it again. maybe that’s why i started using sharp metal objects, to comply with her wish on a technical level.

i was 13 at that time, and i didn’t stop for six years. the last date, to be exact, was march 7, 2003. i used the same pink washcloth to soak up/stop the bleeding, and i still have it.

allow me to story tell. once my mother and i were having a fight when i was, oh, probably 16. this was the year it peaked. i confessed to my mother that i had been smoking pot and having sex with strange boys, that i missed my period two months in a row, and i had some kind of infection "down there" (staph, deserved it). after that she tried to be understanding, but i know i would have been just as angry.

she went somewhere after one of our fights, leaving me along with five-year-old sarah. she played in her room next to mine, and i sat in my pink bean bag and started tearing my arms up with dull scissors. i felt awful, and i wanted it to be ugly and painful. i dug and dug until blood was dripping all over my arms and legs. mom walked in, scissors still in my hands, and went berserk. she asked how could i do that with sarah in the next room? what if i go too far and kill myself? how does she explain to a five-year-old that her sister is gone and never coming back?

that coupled with my following experience was one of the most powerful ones. i wore long sleeves and ace bandages to cover my scars. (once a friend saw a tip of one, yanked up my sleeve, and said, "you’ve been doing it again, haven’t you!" while we were in class. i was MORTIFIED. thankfully no one knew what the hell he was talking about.) while in the bathroom checking on these cuts, baby sarah walked in and saw them, raw and glistening with barely wet blood. her eyes went wide and she looked so hurt as she asked what was wrong. i blamed it on the dog. she was still upset.

i continued on for some years after that, but by that point it was an addiction. i didn’t want to do it, but it was the only thing i knew to do. the only time i seriously considered suicide was december 17, 1999 (16 years old). immediately after making the gash on my right arm, about four inches long and a quarter inch deep, i knew i made a mistake. blood immediately was everywhere on my body and my bed. having already been abandoned by my high best friend (no hard feelings, honestly) and "boyfriend," i called my other best friend. even though she was cleaning a flooded kitchen, she dropped everything to get me. she didn’t even put on shoes. she played "take me down" by the smashing pumpkins/james iha on our way to her house. she took me to the bathroom, shut the door, and gasped when she saw it. i soaked a white washcloth in my blood and continued to apologize for ruining her washcloth.

i never got stitches. the wounds sat gaping, sticking to any material barely coming into contact with them, for weeks.

another powerful moment was when my college-era best friend saw fresh cuts, turned her face into a vision of anguish, and gently kissed the fresh wounds. it was the most beautiful and loving thing i can imagine.

i could go on, but actually i can’t due to the subject matter of this photo. being bipolar, i don’t sleep well. depression causes one to wake up several times during the night, and mania (for me at least) prevents me from sleeping because i’m not tired. i took a tylenol PM knockoff as instructed by dr. mom and now need to crash. taking pills that expired a month ago and were stuck together in the bottle is safe, right? they become less potent and not more poisonous?

work is intensely insane. i’m doing three people’s jobs and stressing. i feel guilty that i can’t cope, but mom said i’m trying to do 120 hours of work in one week. it’s just not going to happen, and i need to try and lower my standards to a more reasonable mark. i’ve joked that if my children are athletic, i’m going to be the scary demanding father who thinks you never perform well enough, that your actions are slowing down the team. that’s what i’m hearing in my head.

9/18/08 21:33

Image by maryanndevine