After a couple of months, I’d successfully pushed everyone away. My school attendance was still bad, missing somewhere between 1-3 days every week. My mom was concerned, busy, tired, focusing on the upcoming move. She didn’t fight with me about it, maybe because my grades were still A’s and A+’s across the board, and I made an effort not to miss tests, even if I left school early afterward. As my mental health deteriorated, I still had goals: to get a soccer scholarship to a good university, majoring in astronomy or marine biology. Something to do with research. I liked learning and figuring things out as a challenge, and school left a lot to be desired on that front.
I don’t remember much until that Christmas in 2013. I still talked to my boyfriend at the time a lot, though we’d started having arguments. I think they were largely due to me being cold and irritable a lot, alternating between the two with no reason or warning. He struggled with his own mental issues, mostly depression, and he still had suicidal ideation from time to time. Our issues didn’t clash that well, as the voices hated him and would insult him in my head. They told me I couldn’t trust him either, that he was weak, that he was bad for me and I needed to leave. I fought back on that for a long time, but I was crumbling, and they gradually picked on his quirks, making me uncomfortable when he did something that made him the guy I loved.
My aunt has a condo in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and my family was going there for Christmas. I forget if it was one week or two weeks. We invited significant others to come with us: my mom’s boyfriend at the time, his son’s girlfriend at the time, and my boyfriend at the time. It was supposed to be an amazing trip for everyone, and I’ve had to accept my part in making it less so for the people close to me.
I had lost almost all of my emotions at this point. My boyfriend irritated me, basically everyone irritated me. I wanted to isolate to keep myself “safe” because at this point that’s what I believed. The voices had successfully gotten me on my own, and they were starting to attack me now too.
Unlovable. Useless. Worthless. Weak. Manipulative. Cold. Cruel. Heartless. Stupid. Unlovable, unlovable, unlovable.
That’s the one that got to me the most. They said more too, but these are the ones that stuck out to me. I would carve these words into my left forearm during class. Always wore long sleeves or a sweatshirt to hide the marks.
I had some extra schoolwork to do during our time in Mexico because I’d arranged with my teachers in Havre to finish the semester early so I could go to Missoula before Sentinel’s spring semester started. I was empty while I worked on the homework. My boyfriend tried talking to me at one point, and I totally shut him down in the coldest way possible. At one point while we were there, he went down to the beach after it was dark and the tide was coming up. He was feeling very suicidal, and I just remember feeling angry at him. I went down and pulled him back up to the condo, but I didn’t feel any empathy. The voices talked about how weak he was. It made me uncomfortable – I had my own struggles with depression and suicidal ideation – but I also was too empty to care.
About a month later, I talked to him about breaking up. He begged for one more weekend, I gave in, but at that point, being around him made me want to smash a hammer into my own chest and pull out my heart. Whenever I was with him, the voices would scream at me, attack me, attack him. It got to be too much for me to handle. Once again, I used an excuse to get out, saying that it would be better for him. It was a total lie, and I should have been honest about what was going through my head, but I wasn’t as open about things then as I am now.
To be continued…
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