#Blaugust2019 – Mental health

This is a trigger warning for the below on multiple fronts. Proceed with caution.

This was a post I was deciding if I should post or not and if it has gone live, I obviously decided against my better judgement to let it go public. It is one of those stigma breaking things I need to get used to being open about.

I make no bones on this blog about my feelings and struggles with PTSD, rape culture and the ups and downs of my temper. I try and not post about it a lot because I use WoW as an escape from my head. People don’t need to read about all that stuff from me – there are plenty of other popular people out there who talk about their struggles openly. My issues stem from nearly being murdered and ignored during my rape.

Recently though, maybe the last 2 -3 months, I have been slowly spiralling a little into some of the darker parts of my brain. The hard part of this is I only have my husband to turn to because he knows the depths to which I have sunk in the past and how hard I work through things now to not go back there. I say it is hard, but I mean for him, he is the one who has to cope with my tears, temper and sadness. I carry the guilt of burdening him with my craziness.

There are a multitude of little things which is contributing to my current state of feeling worthless including a reduction in exercise, me feeling like I am always the one reaching out to others but noone reaching out to me or people not responding to questions IRL and over social media. They build up and come in waves, some days I don’t notice, other days even the smallest thing sets off my negativity and tears.

Two bigger events which are weighing me down are relating to people wanting to use my online handles/website because they are starting something new. In my head, they will re-write my history/my name and my mark will be erased (granted it isn’t a large mark but these are long standing parts of my life). No one really understands how much devastation I am feeling about either situation. Yesterday was the culmination of months of angst, hurt and fear and I just couldn’t stop the tears for hours.

Ultimately I wake up every day, I go to work, I smile I do what needs to be done for the day, I go home, cook dinner, smile, laugh and then whilst watching TV or playing WoW spend the rest of the night in my head trying to correct the negative self talk into positive. It is exhausting to constantly be telling myself I don’t suck and people do like me and wanting to overwrite every facet of my life isn’t bad, when everything fibre of my being is screaming the opposite. I just need to keep swimming through these periods so I can come out the other side alive.

This was a hard post to write especially when most people have no idea about what I am going through. I don’t ask for help or talk about how I am feeling because I was mocked publicly by others when I was clearly in recovery and actively seeing a therapist. I want everyone to believe I am ok now. So thanks for reading this if you did, I am sorry for anything I do or say which seems over the top.