Here is a collection of the posts I wrote for BEDA this year for you to explore at your leisure. Enjoy!
Day 1 – When I Opened My Eyes
TW: Discussion of Suicidal Ideation
There have been many days where I didn’t want to open my eyes.
So many mornings where my brain would wake up before I teased open my lids to let the early morning light in, and the mere thought of another day was so heavy on my chest that I just wanted to not exist.
But every single one of those days I opened my eyes and I made it through. Sometimes I didn’t know how I did it. There were days that passed me by in the usual routine of coffee, work, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat. And by the end of the day, I would mostly not remember the majority of my day. I didn’t know how much longer I could do it for. I felt like everything was too much. I was staring into a precipice and I had no more strength to pull myself back from the edge.
One day, when I opened my eyes, there was hope. It was like a low flickering candle in the middle of a storm, but I cupped my hands around it and carried it through the worst of the winds. Sometimes I had help and my husband would wrap his body around mine and shelter me. Some days, he was my hope. He was the fire that I wanted to keep going for when I couldn’t do it for myself.
This morning, I opened my eyes to a cup of tea and a kiss before my husband left for work. I woke up in our apartment with a job I love in a city I feel at home in. I watched the sun shine on the river and I watched it set the sky alight as it set over the horizon.
Some days you haven’t ever really opened your eyes. But I try so hard to see everything that I’m living for now.
Day 2 – A Seperation
Sometimes I feel seperate from my body. I feel like I’m floating just above the surface and going through the motions. There are times when I look down and I don’t recognise my own hands. I look around and I don’t feel present. I don’t understand my reality or my surroundings.
But I have things I like doing to make myself feel present in my body. Hot showers to ground my skin in the sensation of warmth. Long runs where the air tears at my lungs. Messy fruits that drip down my chin.
I hate feeling that separation from my own body. But I’m working on keeping myself reconnected.
Day 3 – Limbs
I always wanted to be held and adored.
When we eventually stumbled headfirst over the increasingly blurred line from the safety of ‘just friends’ (if we ever really were just that) to the unsuretey of ‘what happens now?’, I traced all of the tattoos on your arms in a charged silence. My fingers lightly grazed the heavy black lines and the symbolism I already knew was inked behind them. You shook with anticipation, and years after this night, you got my own art inked on your arm to join your growing collection.
The first night we fell asleep together, our limbs were wrapped together like the roots of a tree. And they’ve been that way ever since. Curled up together like rattlesnakes, impossible to tell where I end and you begin.
Your limbs hold me and adore me. Thank you for being the security and safety I always needed it. I will always be thankful for the home that you gave me in your body.
Day 4 – Strange Behaviour
One of my superpowers was that I was always really good at knowing when I was about to be broken up with.
Sometimes I could tell by a text. Sometimes it was how they kissed me when they said goodbye that night. Sometimes it was the tone of their voice. Sometimes it was how they looked at me or held my hand. But mostly, it was a collection of strange behaviours.
‘He’s going to break up with me tonight,’ I remember saying to my boss at work one day, years ago. I was a teenager dating a man in his mid-twenties and his mood fluctuated like the English weather. I don’t even remember what it was in those black and white innocuous texts, but I remember that I just knew. During my shift, I spoke to other people. They read the texts and didn’t see anything wrong. But I was adamant. ‘He wants to see me tonight,’ I’d said as if it was an execution sentence. ‘He’s breaking it off again.’ Spoiler alert, reader: I was right.
I used to fear those changes. I would be on a high alert for any shift and inconsistency – I was probably a very high maintenence girlfriend and I had a lot of self-esteem issues and trauma that made me how I was. But hindsight shows me that I was with the wrong people. I was with people who’s behaviour frightened me and made me feel like I had to try and always be five steps ahead of any potential disaster. And sometimes I was wrong – but mostly I was right.
Maturity, growth and experiences have shown me that sometimes people’s strange behaviour isn’t always about me. Being tuned into slight shifts in moods and atmospheres wasn’t always a good thing. But hell, does it make for a weird flex.
Day 5 – Crush
I feel myself being crushed under the weight of my own expectations.
I’m a perfectionist. I have to be strictly and rigidly perfect. And if I stumble and falter, I don’t value myself anymore. The entirety of my self-esteem is build on a sandy foundation and the tide is coming in quickly to sweep it all away.
I’m a control-freak. I can’t handle not being able to control every single thing around me. When one single thing isn’t in my control, I feel myself spiralling wildly out of my own control even when I could have just … not.
I’m trying so hard to understand that I don’t have to be perfect and I can’t be in control all the time. I know these things realistically. I understand the theory behind it, because it’s impossible to be perfect and in control all the time. But I am struggling to offer myself the same kindness that I would offer to my friends. I am trying, though.
I don’t want to feel crushed by my own self anymore. I don’t want to keep punishing myself for feeling like I’m not good enough.
I might be messy sometimes, but I’m not a mess.
Day 6 – Time (Non-Linear)
They say that time heals everything. But the problem with that, is that I’m not a patient person.
Healing is non-linear, but time will always march on in the same rigidity as always. Sometimes I try to sleep through the day to cheat time, because any time spent with my own self feels like a punishment.
Trying to heal myself goes in waves. It ebbs and flows like the tide and I wish I could fast-forward to the moment where I can take care of myself the way that other people do without thinking. But I can’t fast-forward. I have to do the work. And because I struggle so much with perfectionism, the moment I make the mistake I want to put everything in the bin.
I’m trying to learn that nothing is truly linear. I don’t have to be this perfect version of myself all the time. When I make a mistake, it doesn’t mean I’ve failed. Healing is non-linear.
Day 7 – Body Swap
I wouldn’t even have to think twice if you offered me a body swap. But I know that I shouldn’t feel that way.
I want to love the body that has carried me through twenty-six years of growth, heartbreak, sickness, and joy. I want to love my body the way my husband does.
I did a body swap, once. I lost a lot of weight and thought that having the perfect body would finally make me happy. And guess what? It didn’t. I was still depressed. I still carried my traumas with me. Losing weight didn’t make me lose my mental health issues. Sure, the exercise and the healthy eating helped, but it didn’t magically make me happy. Like properly happy.
This Valentine’s Day I got a tattoo. It’s a large floral quarter sleeve and I got it as a gift to myself as a message of kindness and compassion. It’s not a quick fix, but I’m really trying to be kinder to myself.
I should love my body with its scars and tattoos and imperfections. I shouldn’t want to swap it with another, but I do.
But I’m trying really hard not to.
Darcy Wilde. 