Reaching Out = Reaching In

I am feeling very disconnected right now and wanted to write in the hope that my thoughts will start to make sense again.

Today is the first day in a while where my thoughts have been entirely focused on food/weight/calories. Literally nothing else has come into my brain- I haven't been able to answer my phone, talk to anyone, do *anything* except obsess about what I'll eat and when and how. Normally days like today drive me insane, but it's been an almost welcome relief today.

Before I continue, I want to say that I am going to be talking pretty openly about suicide/urges/thoughts, so please don't read if this stuff triggers you. I am 100% safe right now but this is my blog and I need to use it to "think".

This week has been rocky to say the least. I am being seen daily by the Home Treatment Team and have been discussing the thoughts and feelings I have been having around suicide. It is something I have tried before, but always in an impulsive way. This time has been thought about, planned, mapped out- details figured out, everything put in order, etc. I also wrote, for the first time, a letter.

I wrote it a few days ago, tucked it away and haven't looked at it since. This evening when the nurses arrived, I spoke about how my focus has shifted today and I'm not quite sure why- perhaps because there was nothing left TO plan/organise, or quite possibly a survival mechanism (things are getting into dangerous territory = switch back to what's familiar/safe/comfortable). They asked to read the note I wrote- I wasn't entirely comfortable with this (is this "okay"? There's no "suicide planning etiquette" handbook). I sat there while one read it and passed it silently to the other. We talked a little about it before the conversation shifted. I made it clear that I am not IN that place tonight...next thing I knew, we were joking around trying to fix my TV.

After they left, I picked up the note to read. I don't really remember writing it. I remember trying to condense the zillion things I had to say into a short space, highlighting things I REALLY wanted people to know/understand, yet knowing that they may never understand and I wouldn't be there for a "question and answer" period.

One sentence jumped out at me:

I'm doing this NOT because I want to die, but because I so
desperately want to LIVE

This pretty much says it all. The depression, despair, anger, frustration- it stems from wanting, so badly, to be a valuable person, a worthwhile member of society, a good friend, a close sister/daughter/niece...and yet feeling like I stay so stuck in the same patterns of doing well for a while before falling flat on my face.

The note doesn't make pleasant reading. It's pretty jumbled with appalling spelling and grammar- there is a sense of urgency in my writing that I don't recognise. Perhaps a reflection on the mindset I was in when I wrote it, but also so desperately wanting to cause minimal pain to my friends and family, explain to the best of my ability why I reached the conclusion I did.

I feel very disconnected right now. Very much *here*, in this present moment and detached from who I was when I wrote the letter.. I want to write a new note. A response to the exhausted, scared and frightened person who wrote the note. Not some Pollyanna-style "things will get better/hang in there/keep fighting" stuff, because as much as that helps at times, right now it doesn't feel enough. I imagine reading this note if someone else left it. I imagine all the things that would jump into my mind that I wish I could have asked them or said or talked to them about. I don't know. Maybe writing a response to my own letter would be helpful?..