A Good Start - I'm finally speaking out.

Hey there. If you're reading this, I guess I trust you enough to tell you my story. Sit up straight, lift your shoulders and don't relax for anything. Don't crack a smile, and take minute long intervals to stare into space and remember how wrong the world really is. Limit your breathing. There. Now you feel like I do while I write this. Now imagine your world being simple black and white- that is, either you do something or you don't. Everything's pretty defined. When you start to see colour, even though your head isn't capable of really seeing it, that's when things turn grey. Grey is confusing and repetivive, and there are so many different shades that it's impossile to distinguish what each means. That's me on a bad day- most days. It makes me feel sick, anxious and less worthy. Now, tying the two sides of the spectrum together (the second I will explain later) is a ton of bad self-esteem. I see myself as the lowest behind all the pretty, popular girls. I'm not even smart- the smart, pretty girls get everything and everyone else follows them. If you're a nerd or just simply pretty, you tend to do better than the losers who have nothing. The pain of being zero everything (except for clothing size, sadly) makes the hell of a bad day somewhat torturous. Then you find yourself closer to the other end of the spectrum, and your self-esteem is heightened. When like this I feel brighter, smarter, I don't have the need to starve myself and I actually eat at school. I have a future, when I'm like this. Only, there's a hitch. Now I want you to imagine your world full of colour, bright, vibrant colour that moves so fast that no-one can understand it. You're tied up in a hurricane of things with so much more meaning, a future for everything! But it moves so fast that while you keep hoping you can get off the hurricane into a happy future, you just keep on going, and you keep on trying. You skip nights of sleep trying to get to that other side of sheer positivity. You make reckless decisions in the hope that they get you there, in some twisted way. You feel like you're talking really fast and your friends tell you your not, or they think you are and you disagree. It's a hurricane ride to the end, where the spectrum loops and you crash. Yet again, you're at zero everything (except for clothing size) and you feel worthless, regretting everything that happened whilst manic and completely exhausted from a lack of sleep. I think you all might have guessed where I'm getting at. While not being mentally assessed enough to be deemed Bipolar, I certainly have all the symptoms. And the self-esteem issues have caused an eating disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder- which by the way is actually very common. I diagnosed this all myself, with a fear of talking to people in person. Have you ever noticed me shy away and talk more through my phone? Face to face contact is terrifying because you can see what they think about you. A self-diagnosis can actually be helpful, in my opinion, because you can focus on fixing areas in your life to help manage your two sides. There must be hundreds of websites with coping strategies there for your use. Professional help can be pretty useful, like if you're suicidal or something, but at the end it's all up to you. I might not be there yet, but one day I will refer myself to Mirror. I've already considered it, when things have been bad. When I was at my worst I considered phoning EPS (Emergency Psychiatric Services) and getting them to take me away from everything I could do to harm myself- but then I look at everyone else and think how trivial my own problems are. If I cut, it's not because of some traumatic event in my life, it's about destressing and relaxing, and coping with panic attacks. Yeah, it's not the best way to cope. I do know that, and I've taken to drawing something to represent my two amazing best friends on my wrist. It does actually help, though it looks a bit funny because I'm not exactly an artist! Right now the flower I have on my wrist is keeping me away from there, because I don't want to hurt my friends. Yes, I am on a bit of a massive low right now. But writing this is helping.
I don't know why I wrote this. It was a good alternative to cutting, I think, even though I had slipped already when I started. I don't even know if I'm going to risk posting this letter. But I felt like someone, anyone, needed to know about my struggles. GAD and panic attacks are only the start of the long race I call life, but they're the easiest to explain. I promise I'm not going to run off and do anything stupid, this isn't a suicide note. But if you've stuck through and read this and if you aren't about to run off letter in hand to a counsellor for "my own good", then I suppose I've trusted you with good reason. Honestly, not even my parents know all of this. Only my two amazing best friends who sadly don't even live nearby, and there are confusing bits for them too.
Okay, I'm off to class. But thanks for reading, it means a lot.

:) smiley faces and rainbows and sparkly unicorns,
- Olivia