Long Battles

Today was a bit harder in therapy. Doc is always gentle, though today she was firm as well, like a parent teaching their child to swim or ride a bike. They have to push a little before the child will have success. That was today.

Last week, I gave her permission to be more direct, that she could ask or steer the conversation to places where I normally do not go. I feel that I am my own worst enemy because I'll divert the conversation or beat about the bush, as they say. This afternoon, Doc took advantage of that and said she was thinking about something I'd said last week.

"You said that sometimes you miss self harm, what did you mean by that?"

I must admit I was very close to telling her to back off, but in all honesty, its not the worst question she could ask and it was one that desperately needed answering... for myself. All of my siblings are addicts. One's an alcoholic, another is a drug addict, two are addicted to their own misery. Me? I worked very hard to not be a junkie, not be an alcoholic. Look at me now. Addicted to self harm.

I know a few out there ( okay... probably more than a few) will disagree with me, and that's fine. That's you. For me, injuring is an addiction. When you're stressed out, pissed off, in emotional pain, or feeling numb, do you have something you say you need? "I need a cigarette, I need a hit, I need a beer". I tell myself, "I need a tool." I hate thinking that I'm an addict, I hate it! But there is no getting around that fact. It is what it is, I am what I am.

Hells bells, I talked more about self harm today alone than I have in the whole of the time I've been seeing Doc. This tells me one thing that I hadn't really wanted to think about: Its going to be a very long time before I am no longer seeing her. It took years for me to get this bad, years to go from one method of injury to another, years.... Its going to take a while, maybe even years, to get myself "normal", or at the very least to conquer my addiction.

Am I up for that challenge? A few months ago, maybe a year ago, I would have answered "I don't know." But right now? I've fought all my life to survive. Its what I do, its how I function in this big, bad world. Its all I've ever known, and its exhausting.

I'll tell you this... I Want To Live. There are so many times when I should have died, when I could have died. Yes, that implies I had a choice and made the right one.

So here we go, its going to be one hell of a long battle, but I've fought this long. I'm worth it.