Please Understand What It’s Like To Be Me (…Or A Giraffe)

Click to read Cate’s bio

TRIGGER WARNING: Discussion of issues related to Eating Disorder recovery. No numbers involved.  

Also, there is a rather nasty animal welfare story mentioned in the first two paragraphs.

I read an horrendous story the other day about a giraffe tragically killed in South Africa recently as it was being transported on a busy highway.  The giraffe was decapitated when the truck it was being transported by drove under an over-bridge.  The giraffe was blindfolded (it makes me wonder if the driver was too), and I think that is standard practise for transporting these animals, to keep them calm (personally blindfolding me will not keep me calm).

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Gathering up the ocean in my arms

When Ruby asked me if I’d like to contribute to Canvas I was excited. As in really excited. As in ‘I’m a bit bouncy and excited’ excited. I bounced around for a bit, being all excited and then it started to dawn on me that if I wanted to write something for Canvas I’d actually have to sit down and write something. If I’m honest I sat down to try and write something quite a few times. I’ve always been a perfectionist. And I’ve always been struck by the irony that when you’re a perfectionist there is no such thing as perfection.

If I Never Had To Eat Again

TRIGGER WARNING: Eating Disorders

If I never had to eat again, I’m sure that my life would be simpler and without quite so many struggles for my mental health.  Take an addiction of another kind.  I was addicted to alcohol and have the choice of whether or not I will drink now that I am in recovery.  For a drug addict they can (and hopefully will) choose to not touch drugs again.  But when you’re addicted to issues of food and weight, regardless of your means of recovery you have to keep pumping 2,000 odd calories into your body each day.

How is your Inner Child?

The Addict In Me Is Not Scum!

My first day at University (College in some countries), as a 31-year-old, turned out a little different from what I had hoped.  It was a big thing I was doing, heading into study as an adult, after about four years of mental illness.  I was pretty anxious, and that showed when I found myself sitting in a Chinese language class rather than the Psychology class I had enrolled for.  I made a quiet escape, knowing full well that while learning Chinese might be interesting and even useful, I knew I would never pass.  Languages and me have never gone together.

The Immeasurable Value Of A Good Sense Of Direction

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Today, 10 October 2013, is designated World Mental Health Day by the World Health Organization (WHO). They have picked for the theme this year “Mental health and older adults”.  This is an excellent topic, one I hope to read many posts addressing.  It is also one I cannot address on a personal level, at least not in the way I think it is intended.

Thing is, I don’t really write posts unless I can write them with some amount of personal involvement.  I could, but this isn’t like churning out a middle school essay.  For me it’s much too intimate and important.  So perhaps this one I can flip around a little, as the WHO has so kindly given me phrasing which is easily manipulated for my purposes.  “Mental health and older adults”. . .

Say Hello to Dina Leah!

Click to read Laura’s bio

You’re cordially invited to Dina Leah’s coming-out party.  You might have met her before, but she is painfully shy, and has had to be earnestly convinced to reveal her true identity.

You see, Dina Leah’s life has been tough, and she’s got a lot of fears.  One of them is being discovered by her mother, who was terribly cruel to her as a child, and continues to be cruel whenever she gets a chance.  So Dina is terrified that her mother would somehow find her (she does know how to use Google), so Dina has built layers of pseudonyms around herself, in an effort to insulate, to build a wall around her identity.

Lines and Colours

In my mind, I am normal. This is because I live with me twenty-four seven (OK, not always twenty-four seven because some of those hours I am asleep).

I have BPD. In the past, I never realised that I feel emotions more easily, more deeply, and for longer than others do. I thought the intensity of my emotions was normal. Turns out, it’s not. I read somewhere that in non-BPD people an emotion typically fires for 12 seconds. In BPD’ers it can last up to 20 percent longer. BPD’ers emotions also repeatedly re-fire, or re-live, or recur, however you want to say it, so emotional reactions occur for even longer. I do. I go over and over and over the emotions, pinging from one to another like a steel ball in a pinball machine.