This is me, trying.

SERIOUSLY??

2/14

Today was my first appointment in the counseling center.

I woke up feeling pumped and ready to go, ready to do it, and then as I walked to the student center and got in the elevator, I was just about overcome with feelings of fear and dread.

What you have to understand is that I am terrified of anything clinical— doctors, dentists, anything. They scare the shit out of me. And I didn’t care that counseling was just talking— it was no exception.

But I managed to get up there and to get in the waiting room, and I found my counselor’s office. I was early— my appointment wasn’t until 10— so I sat on the couch outside and waited. Her previous appointment walked out and so I got up and went and knocked on the door.

“Just a second,” came a voice from the inside, and immediately I started kicking myself: why did I do that? Why didn’t I just wait until she came out? Now she’d think I was some pushy, impatient bitch.

After a moment, she opened the door, let me in, introduced herself and shook my hand. She gave me a clipboard and some paperwork to fill out while she went to get some water.

The paperwork had all kinds of boxes on it to check: guilt, low self-esteem, feelings that you aren’t real, eating problems, social issues, anxiety, excessive worrying, self-harm, excessive anger, etc. I checked the ones about guilt, social issues, anxiety and excessive worrying. Then I signed the paper and handed it back to her.

She held it for a moment, looking it over, and then started asking me seemingly random questions: how was my family, was I close with them, how did I end up at school here, what made me decide to start coming to counseling, how long had I been feeling like this.

At this point, the discomfort had already risen to an unmanageable level, and I started tearing up. As the session went on, I just could not stop crying. It was so embarrassing. I felt so… helpless, I guess, that I couldn’t even control myself in front of a complete stranger. I even admitted to her my past struggles with cutting, something I have never really told anyone. She asked me if I still did it, and I emphatically said no, which is true. She asked me if I’d been to treatment for it, and I again answered no, which again was true, and then she asked me how I had stopped.

I couldn’t really figure out how to answer that, so I replied “I just did.” She then asked me “If you managed to stop doing that on your own, why do you think you can’t stop the anxiety?”

I’d never really thought of it like that, but I said “Because cutting is physical. I could see what I was doing to myself, and I could see that I needed to stop. But anxiety isn’t that easy. It’s not as concrete and physical. Since I can’t see the impact it has on me, I can’t stop.”

We talked more, about my childhood, situations I felt uncomfortable in, what I do for fun and what I do to relax. Eventually, she asked me how I felt about being medicated. I said yes, absolutely yes, and she said that she didn’t like to get people on medication usually, but that since my anxiety was clearly such a problem, she referred me to a psychiatrist to get a prescription as soon as possible to help alleviate some of it and to make it so I could be more comfortable in counseling and start learning how to control it.

Afterward, I was so overwhelmed and overstimulated, it felt like I was vibrating. I went downstairs to Starbucks to get a cookie and some coffee, and to take my Adderall, but it didn’t help like it usually did. I ran on that high all day. I felt like I could throw up or start crying or run a marathon all at the same time. It was terrifying, and I felt really out of control.

I finally managed to come down and get my heart rate under control, but I didn’t start feeling better until around 4 o clock, which is a LONG time to be feeling that way.

I know medication isn’t always the best route and that it carries side effects, but, at this point, I’m not sure if I care anymore. I just can’t keep living like this.

I just watched Demi Lovato: Unbroken and I sat here and cried throughout the entire thing.

I just look up to her so much. And I know that that’s become almost a cliche at this point, but it really is true.

For most of my life I’ve literally hated myself. Toward the end of high school, when I really found my place, it seemed like it was getting better, but then I graduated and was torn away from everything that I loved and that I felt loved me. I was thrust into college, and even though I didn’t want to admit it, I was terrified. My best friend and I used to call each other at least three times every day, we missed each other so badly. I stayed in my room a lot, never really went out and did anything. I had maybe one friend, and that was only because we went to high school together. I was on birth control pills to help alleviate my acne, and all they did was make me depressed and gain even more weight, a topic which I was already incredibly uncomfortable and unhappy with. My parents were constantly furious with me about the fact that they were paying all this money for such a great school and all I did was hide out in my dorm and watch Netflix. It seemed like all they did was yell at me, telling me I was wasting their money, threatening to send me home to community college unless I shaped up, and constantly demanding to know just what in the hell my problem was. But it wasn’t that easy— I didn’t even know what was wrong, so how on Earth could I tell them? I felt trapped, literally trapped; I’d find myself holding my breath, like I was waiting to exhale. I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to make sense of anything, so I turned back to cutting.

It got really bad for while. It seemed like no more than two days could go by before my fingers would start itching for the blade. I was so ashamed. I hadn’t cut since I was about sixteen, and even then I only did it a couple of times. But here I was, eighteen, allegedly mature and grown up, slicing away at my skin again and again until I could finally relieve some of the constant tension in my chest. It was the only thing I really felt like I had some sort of control over. My problems only worsened. I continued to become withdrawn, started smoking, and cutting cutting cutting. When I would get in the car to drive a few blocks to Target to pick up some things, it literally took every fiber of my strength to actually go to my original destination and not just get on the highway and drive and drive until I ran out of gas and felt like I could breathe again.

New Year’s came. I wanted so badly for things to look up, I threw out my cigarettes and my blade. I was so determined to finally get a hold on myself. I rushed a sorority, hoping to put the fall of 2011 behind me and meet new people and branch out. All of those things did happen, but I would look at my new sisters, so skinny, so perfectly beautiful, and I would feel even more lost in my overweight body. Anxiety and depression crept back, and I started crash dieting. Some days I would feel so confident in my body, so pretty and curvy, and then other days I would be so ashamed of myself that I couldn’t even bear to look in the mirror. Some days I would recognize that I was fucked up and needed help, and I would make plans to call the counseling center, but inevitably the next day I’d lose my nerve and say to myself that I shouldn’t waste their time, because there are people with real problems.

Then, about a week ago, I was feeling completely numb. I didn’t know what else to do, so I grabbed a pair of scissors and used one of the blades to make a neat horizontal cut on the back of my left wrist. As soon as I realized what I’d done, I dropped them, horrified at myself.

Today, during my voice lesson, my teacher commented on how defensive my posture is, and how scared I seem, and how I appear to be looking around the room as if I’m expecting someone to pop out and make fun of me. This scared the absolute shit out of me— I’ve known this man barely a month and he notices all my anxious habits?

When I got back to my dorm, I was on Skype with my best friend, who has been encouraging me to go to counseling for some time now. After weeks of trying, I finally managed to pick up the phone and call the office. Guess what? No answer. I got voicemail. So, I swept my feelings away again with the excuse that I didn’t really have problems.

Watching Demi’s thing tonight made me realize just how oblivious I’ve been to how screwed up I am and how much I really do need help.

I have to get better. I just have to.