MY DARKEST HOUR

Dolls, this blog post isn't a cry for help, a call for sympathy or a desire to receive advice. I've had difficulties with my mental health for most of my life and throughout it, I've felt like I was the only one who felt the way I did. In my experience, people don't talk about things that are considered taboo and mental health, though there's been improvements over the recent years, is still a taboo topic. I'm sharing my darkest hour of every day for a week to demonstrate that even sane, non-crazy, mostly happy, personable people can think the same thoughts you're most ashamed to think.

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1. I don't care if I die

Some days, I love everything about being alive... I love the taste of my morning coffee, I love how my heart lights up when my dog kisses me in the morning, I love how I feel inescapably warm on a sunny day or how enchanting the birds sound when they sing. But for me, these days never last. These moments come and go as harshly as coarse salt on my skin. And soon, I face the reality of living in the world I know best. It's the world where my nightmares plague every night I spend asleep. It's the world where I don't look when I cross the road. It's the world where my one pleasure of the day is seeing a number on the scales and the same one is where that number tears me apart, leaving me raw and open, bleeding out the life I could've had.

2. I hate living inside of my head

Calories. Tired. Scared. Hungry. Depressed. Not clean. Just a few of the only topics that recycle in my mind. The only thing pure about the cycle is that it's predictable. Sometimes, simply existing feels exhausting because simply existing involves listening to the incessant torment of anorexia, the voice that tells me I'm not good enough, that I don't deserve to eat and that I have to punish myself. A moment without this voice is so rare that I cannot remember the last time I was gifted a moment so precious. I wish I could turn off the noise or at least the volume of it but the more I listen to it, unfortunately, the louder it becomes.

3. There's nothing about me that's really special

I've been fortunate enough to grow up surrounded by a family that encouraged, praised and supported me. It is one of the biggest reasons I feel most ashamed to struggle so badly with my sense of self-worth, self-esteem and self- perception... I have every reason to be confident, strong & determined and no reason to be what I am - inherently insecure. My family are so proud of my writing, personality and values. But alongside my knowledge of this exists an unshakeable voice, one that convinces me that everything they say is a lie, that they don't mean anything they say and that the sooner I accept this as a truth, the less difficult it will be when they come around to tell me how they've really felt all along.

4. I only feel beautiful when I'm small or empty

When I refer to feeling beautiful, I don't just mean physically. I mean feeling enough, worthy and accepted. As I grew up, I learnt through personal experience, society and the media that it's commendable to be thin. I became so afraid of everyone else's perception of me, including the harsh critic that is myself, that fitting in stopped playing a role in my life and became my life's purpose. Equally, I found that the less room I took up, the safer I felt. It was like my superpower was hiding from the things about the world and certain people in the world that really scared me. Being empty allowed me to become numb to the pain I was expereincing.

5. I hate eating, but I hate that I love it too.

I spend a lot of my waking hours avoiding the task of eating. When I eat, I experience a burning sensation, like ants crawling beneath my skin, my head feeling like it's on fire and I become deeply ashamed and guilty. I hate how eating makes me feel worse than it does better. I hate that for me, the only thing simple about eating is just how inextricably complicated it is. And just as you expect that to be the thick of it, an additional layer to this is the part of me that loves food - The flavour, its ability to make me full, the appearance and the control I have over it. To know and recognise that there is a part of Luka that exists despite her eating disorder is to admit that the person I've claimed to be my whole life isn't the person I always want to be. It's embarrassing, it's remorseful, it's exposing. I feel torn between these two sides of me, equally hateful of both.

6. I must punish myself for requiring the fundamentals of living

I struggle to truly express what I mean by this because it's one thing to think this way but it's another to lay out this thought and feeling I have in my head to depict it on a page. When society discusses the concept of punishing ourselves, it's usually discussed in the framework of a period of time after a person has had excess of something. For example, going on a diet after a week on vacation or abstaining from alcohol after being on a bender. But for someone with an eating disorder, my perception of excessiveness is vastly different to another's. And it doesn't take much engagement in fundamentals such as grocery shopping or eating and hydrating regularly (to name a few), for me to want to punish myself through compensation or disengagement. I don't view my position in the way I view others'. Having the urge to punish myself for doing something that others don't think twice about feels lonely. It's lonely because in viewing myself as someone underserving, I exclude myself from the society I view as deserving and instead, label myself as something being wrong with me, being different and out of place.

7. I'll never recover

Despite my fears of losing control, gaining weight, spontaneity and many others, there has always been a part of me that imagines and grieves over the other world in which I didn't get so sick from anorexia. I spend many of my days feeling defeated and hopeless. Most people don't believe I will make a full recovery from my illness, including myself. And that may be a belief, but I still see glimpses of the little Luka that lives in me, hoping for a better outcome, a life more free and enriched. So when I have those days that are completely obliterated by the blackness within me, the thought that I'll never recover does feel disturbing and ruthless, even though it's a thought I often have. Giving up on yourself doesn't mean you give up the melancholy that comes with that.

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There are seven days in the week, Dolls, but just one dark hour can feel like seven weeks. Some days, I don't experience any of these seven, dark hours but on some days, I experience more than one. It's through enduring such dark hours that I've learnt to become more appreciative of the other hours, the ones filled with the lights of family, joy and life. Sometimes, in life, Dolls, the best we can do is just that... Our best.

Kisses,

COS x

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