Posted by waterfall on March 30, 2006, at 15:26:54
I was a cutter for 13 years. I stopped 12 years ago and I am on the verge of going back. All I can think about is harming myself. I know people get triggered here so I won't describe what I want to do, I just want to harm myself and I know concretely how I want to do it. It will not result in death or an emergency room, just pain.
I did something I shouldn't have done - I had a one-night stand. I'm being judged very harshly by my friends who were present, as well as my shrink, who equated the selfishness of having a one-night stand with child molestation (normally she's not such a pathetic counselor, but I suppose we all fall down on the job sometimes) (don't worry, the man I had the affair with was 35 and there were no children involved, she was just being punishing while I sat there and cried).
I haven't told my husband about the affair. I think he would leave me. The friends I would normally go to for support are the ones judging me so harshly. And yes, they've had affairs while being married also, so what makes them so much better than me I'm not quite sure.
I am struggling so hard, I feel like I'm at the tipping point. A few nights ago I didn't sleep at all. I had 6 milligrams of Ativan and 4 drinks over the course of the night and I still didn't sleep. (I know, don't mix. I know. But I have a 12 year track record I'm trying really hard to keep in tact right now and that night it felt like anything that would keep me from self-injury was good enough).
I have a solid plan for tonight:
1. Stay late at work
2. Pick up my husband at the barber shop and take him home
3. Do the grocery shopping
4. Grill hamburgers for dinner
5. Check my computer and look for reassuring messages from this post.
6. Watch Six Feet Under on DVD with my husband
7. Look at the pretty pictures of myself that a photographer took last month.
8. DO NOT HARM MYSELF.I've had so much Klonopin in the last two days I'll be lucky to stay awake through Six Feet Under.
Three nights ago I was in this same place, working out my concrete plan not to harm myself and I was cooking dinner (step one: make a complicated meal and do the dishes) and cut my thumb pretty badly, badly enough to need stitches. I didn't go to the ER of course. I have a lot of scarring even though I haven't harmed myself in 12 years and walking in with any cut on that same arm I'm going to get questions. Normally, my psychiatrist's business card would be my "get out of jail free" card. "Here, call her, she'll tell you I'm fine." But right now I am not fine, and she knows it, and so I'd get the psych consult and maybe I would go home and maybe I wouldn't and there in the emergency room my husband would learn I had had a one-night stand the previous weekend and now was being hospitalized because I couldn't be trusted not to harm myself. Yah, no thank you. So I've got my thumb all wrapped up and I'll have an ugly scar when it all knits back together however it feels inclined to knit back together. I did not cut myself on purpose. I was thinking about my concrete plan to keep myself from doing it. But I was also on Ativan, and drinking, and harming myself was all I'd wanted all day. I have stopped the drinking, at least for the past few days. The Ativan, too. Neither was working alone or together. The Klonopin seems to be helping some.
I'm also on Lexapro and Lamictal for bi-polar 2. I am not in a manic phase. The sex was about having fun, not mania.
Please, some encouragement, some support. I'm feeling so punished, and so judged, and so close to the edge with no where to go.
poster:waterfall
thread:626677
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/relate/20060220/msgs/626677.html