Healing Journal - Tumblr Posts

Yesterday was easier. Today, yet again, feels heavy. I have to constantly remind myself that I'm not a failure; healing just isn't linear and that's okay. It comes and goes in waves, but that doesn't mean it will stay like this forever. It's hard to think it will be okay, but as clichè as it sounds: it will be okay, as long as you do not give up on yourself.

Be kind to your mind. Always.

- Reni

Haven't posted in a while, I'm sorry. The truth is, I've been feeling better and I'm kind of learning how to live again and how to have trust in myself and my body. The meds are working just fine, I'm also done with the cardiology visits and my heart is very very healthy, I only have problems with my big pulse which is a result of the anxiety, but I take meds for that too, so everything is okay. I can't wait to go back to my hometown still though, unfortunately I won't be able to do that until the end of June because of university duties, but oh well, that's life I guess. I am still afraid of certain bad things happening, so the negative thoughts did not suddenly leave my mind, but I'm trying very hard to re-gain confidence, because I know deep inside that I am capable of so much more...

I can only repeat what I've said a thousand times before already: healing is a process, a wave, stop being so hard on yourself. You're doing the best you can with the resources available to you. And it will get better.

- Reni

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This chapter tackles subjects that can be sensitive to some readers, please do not interact if you are uncomfortable. And it's about my personnal life, though I feel comfortable sharing those facts. Of course, don't read if you're not interested :)

⚠️ Warnings : depiction of mental health (depressive thoughts, suicidal thoughts, self harm, self hate,…).

Read at your own risk. - Beaucoup d’amour, Poppy.

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❀ Pansy n°4 = A little catch-up.

*sigh* So ! There’s a lot to say…

I didn’t plan to make this book, or whatever this is, so personal but I feel like this could do me some good and that it could actually be interesting to share a bit more of my struggles.

I mean, I think this book makes it pretty clear - especially with what I write and think of writing in it - but I suffer from chronic anxiety, ‘masked’ depression and a bit of ADHD. First and foremost, ‘masked’ depression is a bad translation from my native language but basically it means that I try - or at least tried - to hide it from others, to keep up appearances. Which is… Way too true. But anyways.

To start from the beginning, it has been more than a year since I got “diagnosed” with chronic anxiety by my first therapist. He told me it was most likely hereditary - which is true, I got f*cking anxious parents especially my dad. I started therapy in January 2022, after years of mental distress. I always remember being anxious, sleeping badly and feeling lonely as well as inexistant, useless, transparent. It is like, most of what I remember from my teenage years (and I have massive blackouts from my childhood somehow :/). I am constantly struggling with my feelings, thoughts and place in life. It is as if my entire life revolves around internal conflict. I was - and still am a bit - used to dealing with all of it on my own, because I am convinced that you can count on nobody but yourself, but mostly that I shouldn’t burden people with it especially when they won’t care anyway.

Adding to that, the fact that I am the youngest of three siblings, I grew up thinking that I was too much in my family. Like my parents had already too much to deal with and just hadn’t the capacity to fully care for me. Moreover, on my dad’s side of the family I was also the younger cousin. So when my cousins and siblings became teenagers and young adults, I was very clearly put aside. The worst was that everyone was aware of it. I mean they literally gently threw me out of each room they were in when they wanted to talk about more “adult themed” subjects, always promising to call me back when they were done which obviously never happened. At the time, I complained to my parents and relatives about it, saying that I was tired of being rejected and just wanted to spend time with my cousins. But everyone just told me to wait it out, that it was normal as I was younger but with time it’ll change and it ended with people not even caring anymore if I was saddened about the situation. From this experience I think I just came to the conclusion that older people would always look at me as a less valuable being just because I was younger than them and theoretically couldn’t understand their “grown up and experienced” mind. As well as the fact that nobody - not even my family - cares about my feelings even if I communicate them.

I think that is when my difficulty communicating started to grow. I totally closed off from everyone, trapping myself in a never ending feeling of loneliness, even sometimes feeling like I am a spectator to my own life.

So I grew resentful towards my family, always wishing to stray away from them, to flee the country and build a new and better life. Away from everything. Then, I started thinking - very firmly - that without me, things would stay exactly the same. My family wouldn’t be impacted at all as I was only an unwanted nuisance that took too much care and money. I did not feel important, nor truly loved. I felt I just couldn’t be loved as I wasn’t interesting and had nothing for myself to make people appreciate me, just because I craved for attention I was not given by my family. 

Furthermore, when I had just started middle school, I found out I had scoliosis. And a pretty bad one at that. After three months of observation, my spine ended up forming a perfect S shape. It was so bad that I had to wear a medical corset, in order to keep my back in check. That is how I ended up wearing a plastic made medical corset 23 hours a day every day. All of that, just a few weeks before my 12th birthday… Yes, it was an amazing gift :).

So, I found myself being sort of disabled. Wearing something totally new to every single one of my classmates and even my school’s administration. Find a way to feel more left out and alienated. Yet, I was not truly bullied for it. People were kind and curious, often offering me to carry my bag or things like that. Still, I was faced with the fact that a majority of people just wouldn’t understand how hard it could be on someone’s body and mind. People just thought of aesthetic corsets when I had to explain what I had, and didn’t understand why I made the choice to wear one as well as why it handicapped me. 

In fact, it was truly a burden. It was not only painful, it was also truly incapacitating. I couldn’t bend down, I couldn’t sit without having my thighs being compressed and cut by the plastic, I couldn’t breathe or eat properly. At first I couldn’t even go to the bathroom with it. Plus, you are taught to get it on while laying down so I had authorized access to the nurse office - even when she wasn’t there - to take it off and pee. Only once was I refused the access to it, and my mom was so mad she made sure to call the school and report how it was unacceptable as I literally had a PCP (Personalized Care Project) which granted me special rights like access to the nurse office or even prioritized access to the cafeteria to not risk me being pushed and falling in the middle of a crowd. I actually got crushed by someone once. I was kneeling near my locker and someone fell on me. My breath cut short and I had trouble recovering. I only remember one of my friends opening my corset but nothing after that… Weird. But knowing how much I forget traumatic events I’m not even surprised :). 

Aside from that, the corset also took away my dream career of becoming a ballerina. It was a harsh reality check for a 12 year-old who already had a lot going on. So to sum it up, the corset physically blocked me, woke up unbearable back pains, made me feel even more abnormal, broke my dreams, ruined my birthday and made my nights even worse. Nice.

And it is only the beginning.

At the same time I also had a really sh*tty friend group. You know this type of friend circle in which everyone swears they’re best friends but spit on each others’ back? Well it was exactly like that. Adding the fact that they truly enjoyed putting only some people aside. I only have one friend from this group to which I still talk to this day. She is the only one who was honest with me, cared and liked me. And she changed schools during our second year, so she clearly got away from all the drama. But we kept contact and we are still really close.

Yet, I lost my best friend of 7 years to this group. She preferred to stay with them even if they were making fun of her behind her back, while I decided to leave and find other friends. Still, I was fairly traumatized by this friendship as one of the girls very clearly confessed in secret that she thought I was nonexistent, invisible and that without me things would be the same… So yeah, trusting people after that was especially hard.

Man, teenage years s*ck…

Eventually I found new friends with whom I felt a bit more like myself - whoever I was at that age. I got closer to this one girl I met at the very beginning of middle school and who is, today, still my beautiful and amazing best friend <3. That year I remember not having so many dark thoughts, but they became a bit too normal. Now that I had new people around me and felt I could express myself, it became really hard for me to repress my feelings. I was so used to bottling everything up, put on a straight face and feeling numb that once I felt a bit more at ease, it was impossible for me to go back.

I felt better with my friends and started questioning myself. Who I was. Who I wanted to become. Who I liked… I was around 14 years-old when I came out to my friends as Bisexual. I had this huge crush on one of my friends and even if I got - kindly - rejected, I knew where I stood. Everyone accepted me, I wasn’t judged by any of them. My siblings didn’t know yet at the time - as we didn’t share the close bond we have today. And my parents still don’t know to this day…

Nevertheless, this new discovery about myself made me question my attraction towards this one female friend of my friend group (just to bring precision, I didn’t and still don’t really hang out with boys much. Idk why lol). And this questioning ended up with me being in my first ever serious relationship, and it was with a girl behind my parents back.

I won’t go into details about this relationship or how catastrophic my middle sister’s first reaction was. But even if I should have known by now, things didn’t go according to plan… LOL.

I started this relationship thinking I had nothing to lose but in the end I lost my sanity and will to live, is that okay with you ? No but seriously, this girl ruined my life. She was what we call a ‘narcissistic pervert’. Literally made me lose any closeness I had to other people, wanting me to care only about her - even at my own expense. She constantly wanted to make me jealous with weird fantasies she had with her former crushes, making me feel like I clearly wasn’t the only one on her mind or even a tiny bit special. Once she even told me that before we got together she also had a crush on another girl, and that if we didn’t start something she might’ve not chosen me… B*tch. She even made me feel guilty for any little thing I could do or say when I tried to communicate - yes, it is called guilt tripping :). She was weirdly sexist, like she took on the ‘stereotypical role of the man’ in the relationship and wanted to be the one to lead the relationship in everything, even when it was uncalled for. She didn’t value my feelings, many times gaslighting me. Towards the end of our relationship, she often made me feel forced to engage in foreplay and sexual acts…

I know that, in a way, it was also my responsibility as I didn’t communicate much, always putting her first but I also felt like I couldn’t because whatever I said or did she put herself in the victim position while I was made the culprit. You know, she even got mad at me once because I fell asleep texting her - I took plant based pills, and they worked really well at the time. And she was aware of how much I struggled sleeping! Everything just had to revolve around her, all the time. It was clearly a one way relationship.

For other anecdotes - because I ended up going into details… :/. Even when I broke up with her, she couldn’t help but guilt trip me. She was literally telling me how cruel I was not to think about the situation she found herself in when I asked her for a break. (Yes, I needed a break first to see if I was better alone and to prepare myself to break up with someone… Oopsies.) Because of our relationship, I lost a friend who sided with her and it completely broke our friend group as no one wanted to hang out with the two of us when we were together. Yes we were f*cking cringe middle schoolers… Yikes.

One of the worst memories I have, concerning her lack of real care for me, was when I harmed myself… I was wallowing in self pity, hating myself and my life when everything was supposed to be better. I was dying with anxiety as important exams were coming up and as usual my feelings were minimized at home, and in my relationship. Even if it was the year I grew closer to my sisters, our relationships were still rocky - especially with my middle sister. I felt like all of my problems were meaningless, and I was the problem, the one to blame. So for an entire week I harmed myself. It was the simplest way I found to prove myself I had a reason to hurt. What better way to prove you’re in pain than having physical wounds ? That was my reasoning. It was also a clear cry for help as I did nothing to hide it. I constantly thought “the bigger it is, people would see it less.” And it always proved to be true.

One evening, I was having dinner with my two sisters and my mom. Simply wearing a tank top, my scarred wrists in plain sight. When my mom asked me what happened to them. I lied, saying that I simply scratched myself too hard with my long nails. And it was never tackled again. My sisters never caught up with it, my mom never asked more. It just went unseen. But, as I said earlier, my ex did even better. I literally showed her and after arguing a bit I just told her it was my way to cope and she answered “if it helps you, I’ll learn to live with it.” What a caring significant other am I right ?

Then after a week of only being able to think about doing it. I stopped because two of my friends found out and made me promise to never start again. But to be honest, I think I never really stopped. I learned that chewing the insides of your mouth (like really aggressively) is also a way to self-harm. I also used to scratch myself really hard when I felt mad at myself. And I happened to try and use a blade once more a few times, but felt extremely pathetic afterwards. I have been quite clean since then, especially since I don’t deny my own feelings and let myself have breakdowns lol.

During highschool I slowly started healing from this amazing relationship. Sadly, my anxiety grew because of school and just as I thought things could still go better… Boom. World wide pandemic. We had to stay focused on school while being stuck at home. It was really hard on me especially because my dad had to work from home while my mom - who takes care of kids at home - didn’t stop working. The cohabitation was less than pleasant. Anyway, I don’t have anything interesting to say about the period, just that it helped me go down the rabbit hole even faster :). A pleasure.

For my last year of highschool, teachers and adults expected us to go back to normal and be perfect students as if Covid never happened. They expected us to be okay. And it was just not possible. My anxiety went haywire as we had really important final exams at the end of the year that I couldn’t fail. All my friends were feeling down, I was feeling suicidal and just wanted to end the pain. I also lost my great-grandmother and a month later - literally two days before Christmas - my dog also passed away. It was a very difficult time for my family. Then came January and I felt more than ever like dying.

Each passing day I was only feeling like life was just a burden. Why did I have to suffer so much just from living ? I had to take the train every day, always thinking of just jumping on the rails. I had to fake a smile every day, to try and forget. To take care of my own friends who were too feeling horrible. I was just so tired…

Then my savior came. One of my close friends went to express their worries about me to one teacher with whom I was very close. She was a PE teacher and my dance option teacher for two years already. One day she asked me to talk after a class and as I exceptionally had finished class early I accepted.

It was the most intense and emotional discussion I ever had.

We both cried - a lot - I confessed everything. I was honest and she brought so much help. Thanks to her my parents became aware of the situation and I got help. She made my mom call a therapist she had heard only good things about and talked to me about what I could do and take to sleep better. I missed her class to go to my first ever therapy session and she often checked up on me. I could never thank her enough for everything. 

She saved my life. Literally.

This therapist was special but not bad. He talked a lot and I didn’t always feel heard, but he diagnosed me with chronic anxiety and slight ADHD. Therapy didn’t really help for my inner conflicts but I started to manage my stress a bit better. I passed my exams with less stress and excelled. But I still felt like it wasn’t a good match so I stopped seeing him. I let summer pass, trying to get my mind off of things. Went on vacation with my bestfriend and just tried to feel better.

Things went okay, but I was still bothered by anxiety as I was to start university. And it didn’t miss. Uni is a literal hell. Like what the f*ck ?? Why does it have to be so hard and stress inducing ? September was my way to hell…

I found a new therapist not far from my house. Since then I haven’t changed. My therapist is just amazing. I feel so much at ease with her, I have real conversations and I can freely express myself. I truly feel like it is helping me. Still, it was not enough for me to feel at least a little better on a daily basis so I started taking anxiolytics. It helped a bit but after a month it was clear that I had to take stronger medicine if I wanted to go through it day by day. So after being diagnosed with depression by a first psychiatrist I got prescribed antidepressant and sleeping pills. It was really hard at first as I had a LOT of side effects.

It did not help me sleep at all. The first night I literally did not sleep and had a mental breakdown just as I got up. I got really shaky and I was constantly nauseous. I missed some classes to rest at home but I couldn’t allow myself to miss more. I went on and even if we add to rise the dosage of my medicine I am feeling a bit better today.

I am still on my way towards healing but I think I am on the right path. I am surrounded by amazing people. My sisters and I are closer than ever, best trio ever <3 And I even grew closer to my mom. I express myself way more and try to be positive. It is not easy everyday but I start to finally believe that it might not be that impossible to heal. Right now school is almost finished for me and I never felt better. I am working on myself, trying to improve the person I am in order to become the person I want to be. I take good care of myself, try to change my mind and go out more. I do things I want and do not force myself if I don’t feel like it. 

I feel like I am in my healing era. B*tch I’m gonna glow up ;)

Anyway, if you ever went through difficult things I cannot tell you how important it is to surround yourself with good people and get help. It is really hard to ask for yourself, so if you see friends struggling do not hesitate to get them help. Believe me when I say I know how hard it is to accept the fact that things aren’t going well and that you have to do something about it. It is not going to be easy, it asks for a lot of effort but you are not alone. We can get through this. And… I think it is going to be worth it.

It’s going to be 5 months since I started being medicated, and 7 months since I restarted therapy. Things are looking good right now. I know I might still face some hard times but I am going to continue trying to feel better. I promise, if you promise to try too, dear reader. <3

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🔺Original work please do not steal or copy, Thanks.🔺