I used to freak the fuck out.

Over react to everything.

Screaming.

Yelling.

Texting people nonstop about my random issues and problems.

I answered the phone today when I shouldn’t have.

I was frustrated about my car air and vents not working, and frustrated about how everything is so fucking expensive nowadays and I answered the phone when it rang.

I was out running errands in a hot car with a dog that was panting and drooling between the seats and I felt so bad for him.

And I answered the phone.

And I was unresponsive and distant.

Almost a version of my old self.

In the past few weeks I’ve had a procedure, have come in and out of a psychotic episode, Bruce was on the verge of death and had yet another expensive vet appointment, I’ve had major drama at the one place I consider a safe place, my car has been acting up, I had a “bug in my ear” (or it was a hallucination, I’ll never know) but I went to the ED at 4am for it, I’ve had horrible pain levels that have kept me up at night, and I’ve had night terrors practically every night.

That’s a lot of bullshit in a two or three week span.

I’m spent.

I’m tired.

I haven’t been walking much the past couple of days.

I just haven’t felt like it.

I know I need to.

I know I should.

I’ll try better tomorrow.

I’m just done.

I’m tired of being by myself, but I’m so scared to open myself up to people.

When I do, people like the one in my last entry surface.

Unhealthy people, with no respect for my boundaries pop up, and then I’ve put all of this time into a relationship or friendship with someone, just to have it immediately dissipate into nothing.

Into drama, into bullshit.

And then into nothing.

It’s fucking wild.

See, I’ve been working nonstop on myself the past four years or so, and I’m not the person that I once was.

I’m far from the Keren I was several years back.

I’m no longer that irrational, explosive person.

I mean, I can be still.

In private though now.

And it’s much fewer and further between than it once was.

I used to be constantly, frustratingly dramatic.

Consistent talking, explaining, reasoning myself and my situations to people.

Now I don’t feel the need to explain as much.

I keep things more to myself, and to my therapist.

I write about things more, and try to process things in a better way.

A healthier way.

And even though I don’t have a lot of people around me now, even though I don’t have a lot of friends anymore, I don’t usually feel that alone.

I get out and go to groups throughout the week, and it helps my social battery fill up.

So when I’m home I feel satisfied in that area and my online friends fill the remainder of the gap.

I feel good about life nowadays.

A far cry from how I used to feel.

I used to be surrounded by people and would still feel so alone, all of the time.

I felt like no one understood me.

The thing is I was the one who didn’t understand me.

I was my problem, not everyone else.

I was the one not listening to myself.

I wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying, to what I was thinking, to how I was thinking, really.

Until I had literally no control over my thinking.

Not that one can ever really control your own thinking, but going through psychosis episodes, and labeling them, giving the chaos a name, has changed the way I view life.

I don’t take my lucidity for granted anymore.

I don’t take my day to day life for granted anymore.

Every day that I wake up and have control of my body and mind is a great fucking day.

Because I’ve lost control, and it’s terrifying.

Being lost in a world that’s chaotic and scary and that’s literally manifesting your wildest, strangest, deepest, darkest fears and secrets, is the fucking worst thing ever.

And losing absolutely everything helped me gain a level of empathy I don’t think many get the chance to experience in life.

Honestly I’m not grateful for it, but in a fucked up way I sorta am at the same time.

I’m grateful I gained this level of understanding.

This level of sensitivity towards humanity, my emotions and feelings.

Because I honestly used to be a total dick.

I would just go off on people about my problems.

Not giving them the ability to tell me they didn’t have the space for me that day, or didn’t have the capacity or ability to handle my problems at that time along with everything that was happening in their own life.

And the shitter is that I would call people talking about how I was suicidal.

I only remember doing this a few times, but I can guarantee you it was many more than that.

Because I would be having ideations all the time.

I still do, I just don’t talk about them now.

And I just wanted to talk about them back then, and my urges and my desire to fucking end it all, not realizing that most people don’t think about that all the time like I do.

Not realizing, to most people, it’s not an everyday thought like it is for me.

Not realizing that it’s not a normal thought.

And I remember calling people, crying, hysterical.

Talking about how I wanted to end all of this fucking bullshit.

And I would go on and on.

But I really just wanted someone to feel my pain with me, to understand where I’m coming from.

To understand me.

To hear me.

To hear me.

My emotional pain is so intense – still is, I can just channel it differently now, in a better, healthier way, for the most part.

Now I can write and get it out, but, yes I still hit.

I still self harm.

I know I do.

It fucking sucks.

Everytime after I hit, I ugly cry.

I sob.

I sit in the floor and fucking sob.

Because I still have areas of my life where I can’t control myself still and that fucking sucks.

And it feels like certain parts of me will never be healed.

But I know they might be, maybe, if I just keep working on them.

If I’m just patient.

I just have to keep trying, and I never knew that before.

I never saw any sort of progress in myself before, to be able to go off of.

I didn’t think it was even possible for me.

Now I have three and a half, almost four years of progress to leap off from.

Now I have a running start.

I have antipsychotics.

I have a therapist I can trust.

And my therapist is getting the rest of her EMDR certification this month, so really, there won’t be much stopping me soon.

I’m really, really hoping I can overcome my self harming.

I’m hoping that by the time I turn 43 next year, I can have a funeral for my self harming behaviors, a whole ritual for it.

And put it to rest.

That would be a huge fucking accomplishment.

The longest I’ve ever gone is about six months between incidents.

I’m hoping my therapist and I can EMDR it enough to calm it in me permanently. 

That’s my goal.

Because I’m tired of these old Keren behaviors that still pop up.

They’re exhausting.

I don’t know how I used to do this every single day.

They’re so emotionally taxing and draining and a whole slew of other adjectives.

I’m glad I’m ever changing, morphing and evolving now.

Being diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder was the most gamechanging thing that has happened in my life.

It changed everything.

Having the correct diagnosis is critical and eyeopening.

Because before that, I was so confused as to why my misery ran so deep.

Why my life was so fucking chaotic and dark.

Why I was so thoroughly misunderstood and lonely.

But I broke.

I finally broke, and I lost everything and everyone except for my parents and some family members.

I lost my job.

I lost my best friends.

I lost all of my friends, really.

I lost my apartment.

I was moved into my parents place at the age of 38 – which is a very fucking humbling experience.

And I was still a total dick at first.

Because I was still in psychosis, I wasn’t correctly diagnosed right away when I got down here.

It took me a couple of months to go into the psych hospital.

I remember I was suicidal and went to the ED a couple of times and then that’s when I went into the psych hospital, the following day.

I don’t remember any details, I just remember being at the clinic here all day.

The nurse getting me a blizzard from the DQ at some point that day, and going to the hospital via cop car.

I’m grateful for the growth I’ve had these past few years.

And I still have a long way to go.

But I’m grateful for how far I’ve already come.

I’m so fucking glad I don’t call people when I’m suicidal anymore.

I have my writing for that now, or again, rather.

I didn’t want my ex-husband to find my writings, when I was married, so I just stopped fucking writing.

I stopped my core way of processing when I needed it the most.

Not even realizing I could just write on an app on my phone, a place he would never find or look.

Instead, I stopped completely.

I just held it all in.

I just let it all out on my friends.

My ex-friends now.

That’s part of the reason why they’re gone.

And I don’t blame them.

I lost myself.

I would lose myself all the time back then.

I would become engulfed in my feelings.

And I never had a grip on myself in the first place.

That’s why all of this work has been so incredibly difficult.

I only had sand, but was expected to make stained glass.

But now I feel like I can finally wrap my head around the reality of being healthy.

I can be triggered and continue through my day and not have that be the end of it.

Not have the triggering event be the obsession for the next week of how I was wronged, and how I was treated unfairly.

Now that I’m not the same person I once was, I understand that the world keeps moving regardless of how much I obsess over the same wrong doing against me.

Regardless of how many times I’ve been treated unfairly.

I no longer blame everyone else for my problems.

I now give myself the space to feel what I need to feel, when I need to feel it, and move on.

– Keren