Emotional Cutting

When I was in my teens and was depressed or felt no one was listening I would occasionally cut myself. I have one scar on my leg and one on my arm. The other two scars on my wrists were suicide attempts. I know I was cutting in the wrong direction because people felt it was their duty to tell me. After hearing it for the fourth time I finally got mad enough to respond ” Thanks I’ll remember that for next time!”. People don’t think before speaking.

I stopped doing that when I started drinking. Drinking worked better but gave me more courage to go further than cutting. I was lucky that I was always too drunk to actually know what I was doing, how many pills I had taken or cutting my wrists the wrong way. Yes I actually said I was lucky to be drunk. I never thought I would think that way but it’s true in this instance.

When I got sober six years ago and diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder I found myself without a way to express my emotions. I’ve always had a hard time with confrontation and telling people how I really feel. I don’t deal with stress or grief. Instead I swallow it down until I feel like my head will explode with all of it.

When I get overwhelmed with everything I make it worse with emotional cutting. This is the only way I can explain what I do. I listen to every song that I know will trigger memories of my mom, things that happened in the past while drinking, loneliness, isolation, and anger. Then I move on to pictures of my mom or when I was little. I will also watch movies that I know are extremely sad and upsetting just to feel worse. I think I deserve to feel worse. Eventually the feeling will lift but sometimes it can take days. These days are hell on my family. Just this morning my father told me to “Shut up!”. I really deserved it, I was being extremely negative and a little rude. I was trying to pick a fight. If you knew me for any length of time you would know that isn’t me. I’m usually a mouse cowering in the corner of a room. I hate that about myself.

My sister calls me out on the emotional cutting. She won’t talk to me if she senses that’s what I’m doing. Then I get upset because she isn’t there for me. I want more from her than she can give. We are twins. I always had this image/idea in my head since we were young that we were supposed to be close. That because we are twins we should be closer than regular sisters. She had other ideas. She didn’t want us to have the same friends or hang out together. In our 20’s her friends came before everyone else. My parents even commented on it. You could never reach her, and she never came home to visit. She was only 15 minutes away. She did call me when she needed money which I gave her. She moved to California to be with her boyfriend after graduation. It didn’t matter because things stayed the same, you could never contact her unless she needed money. They moved back to Rhode Island a few years later and it still stayed the same. I don’t know why I still have this fantasy in my head. Our mother has passed and I thought it would bring us closer but it’s still the same. I mentioned taking her and the kids to this Hotel with an Indoor Water Park or another place near Mystic Aquarium. She said she was already going with her friends on Friday but if I wanted to she guessed I could tag along. Ummm…….Thanks but no. Tag along?  Again the friends come first. She says I’m “Snowballing my issues and she can’t talk to me when I’m like this it’s not good for her”. OK I can fix that we won’t talk anymore. That’s how I feel right now. I also feel like taking off by myself to a Hotel for a few days but for some reason my Anxiety level is at 20 and I can’t move. So I’ll stay home and try to calm down. Somehow. Maybe some more earrings. I did these yesterday to calm down.