The state of my current mental health is probably the worst yet. I guess I was bobbing along life and sometimes a big wave would come along and I would struggle for a few days and then I would go back to bobbing along. I was by no means in recovery but I wasn't getting worse either.
Two weeks ago that all changed. I had my birthday, the best and happiest birthday for a long time and then the day after the voice returned. A voice I call anorexia's voice regardless of what anyone else calls it, to me it is anorexia in aural form. The voice talks to me in two different ways, "You are a fat b*tch, hurt yourself" and it's orders will usually be about a way I could hurt myself right then in that second. Another way it speaks to me is by saying things like "she isn't dead yet" I don't know who it is talking about, is it me? Or is it talking to me about someone else? The voice alone is confusing and stressful.
I've also been getting unwelcome visions in my mind, visions I am certain anorexia places in the front of my brain, the picture stretching across my forehead like a widescreen cinema screen. I see myself in a coffin, my skin rotting and falling off, parts of my face are missing. I see myself with a knife in each thigh using them like puppet strings to move my legs. Disturbing, gruesome and sickening thoughts that bother me constantly.
I have broken-record thoughts, sometimes I am lucky and it changes it's wording but it's always there. The same few words are always playing on repeat, spinning around my mind. "I want to die" or "I am not dead yet" tend to be the words that fly around. I don't want to die, not at all, I want to get well. I want to live my life, I just need my mind to get on the same page as me.
Anorexia is tiresome, people keep using the word choice. "You can choose to eat or not Claire" but it isn't a choice not like the choice between having a bath or a shower. My choices are very powerful ones with very powerful consequences, I feel the word 'choice' in this situation is too mild a word. An anorexia sufferer does not choose to eat, they fight their hardest with every ounce of their energy to eat and then have to deal with psychological aftermath.
I've been really unwell lately, the evening has felt like the morning and I've wanted the world to stop spinning for a second just so that I can catch my breath before I carry on. It feels like the world is spinning too fast and it's making me nauseous. My illness has tidelwaved over me and left my body at the shore covered in shells and tangled up in seaweed. I have thought about dying just because I want this all to stop but no matter what I will always be here, my atoms will always remain whether that be in a coffin, my ashes sprinkled in the sea or the memories in others' minds, as much as I want to erase my existence I cannot because I was born and I am here living and that can not be reversed.
I did one of the hardest things I have ever done yesterday, I made a phone call asking for help and I got on the bus with music blaring through my earphones and silent tears rolling down my cheeks. I walked into the psychiatric ward and I told them everything with my sore, tearful eyes hidden behind sunglasses, my lungs panting and my hands shaking.
I am so determined to get better, I will not let this illness detonate me like a bomb and destroy everyone around me but neither will I live in such misery. I will win.