I guess I joined this website because my life is falling apart in front of my eyes.  I am hoping to find support and relate to others on here.

I am 24 years old and have been dealing with depression and/or anxiety disorders since I have been 15.  I have seen multiple therapists and psychiatrists, all for them to leave me still sitting here feeling alone and helpless.

I have tried almost every medication in the book to finally learn about 2 months ago that I am possibly bipolar and that is why medications don’t work well.  I am again at a point where my medicine isn’t doing any good and things are getting bad.

I have chronic severe pain in my side that my doctor has gone around in circles with for over a year.  I finally went to a pain specialist, only for them to send me back to my regular doctor who won’t do anything for the pain.  It’s miserable.

I have always been a bit on the heavy side, but I have now hit the highest I have ever been.  My doctor sent me to a gyno regarding my pain and they gave me a shot, which caused me to gain 5o lbs in 6 months.  I guess I have been “self medicating” by overeatting lately (What’s another 2 lbs after it’s all gone to garbage?), which has made things even worse.  I can’t exercise because I am in too much pain.  I try to diet but I get depressed and sabotage it.  My body image is down the drain to say the least.  5’6 and 265 lbs isn’t ideal.  I remember NYE 2007 I weighed 150.

Along with my chronic pain and low body image, I have recently came out of the closet and admitted to my “friends” that I am in a relationship with another woman.  This has created major chaos in my life and I have lost almost every friend that I ever thought I had. 

One of the only friends that I do have, I am pushing away slowly with my wreckless behavior and actions…

I’ve been SI’ing for as long as I can remember.  When I was 16, I remember injuring the first times.  I had a type of intervention and was taken out of school when I was 16 for about 2 weeks and went through intense inpatient therapy.  It helped a little bit to know there were others like myself and I made a few friends who I could talk to things about.  I stopped SI for quite awhile as I got into other harmful things in highschool like underage substance use.  Once I graduated (#1 in my class by the way), I thought things were going to be amazing for good.  I was wrong.

After graduation, I started college and maintained a gpa of 3.97 for 2 years.  I never got my degree though.  Between work and school, I ended up depressed and felt alone.  I went through many unhealthy relationships with men (Which now I see why they didn’t work), and ended up losing my job.

SI has been back in my life for over a year now.  In one summer, I got 12 tattoos because they helped me to feel “good” and let my emotions out by making my body pretty.  I now know that it was just SI in an artistic form.  I used to go about 3 mo in between episodes where I lost it, to most recently 10 days… the last being 3 days ago.  I’ve promised my mom and friends and partner that I would stop, but it’s not that easy. 

My best friend has been there twice that it has happened, one of the times I had to go to the er because of injuring.  The last time, she just got extremely mad and hasn’t talked to me since.  She thinks I’m crying out for attention.  It’s not that simple.  She calls them drama attacks. 

I feel like there is just this voice in the back of my head at all times thinking of new ways to hurt myself or make all my pain go away.  It haunts me.  I am alone most nights until my partner gets home at 6 am, and I sometimes just lay in bed wondering where I would be if I didn’t have her.  She gets me, but doesn’t get why I am still hurting myself when I know how bad it hurts her to watch me suffer.  Sometimes I wonder why I have been put here to go through all of this pain.  It’s hard to get out of bed some days, knowing that all I am going to do is sit at home (usually alone). 

I have tried to get out and do things, but my side pain keeps me from going too long.  I recently had a terrible time going Christmas shopping and had to go home and lay in bed because I was in so much physical pain.  The doctors don’t know what it is, and I can’t wait much longer.  I have been through so many tests for them to find nothing tangible.  I have thought about injuring myself where it hurts just so they can see something and hope maybe they can fix it.  I went to a pain Dr and they wanted to give me an epidural, but my insurance won’t cover it and then they said there is nothing they can do for me.  I’m running out of hope- that was my hope.

I don’t know what to say to my friend to tell her that it’s not about her.  I don’t have the energy to explain it with words that don’t exist.  I need to stop so bad.  My body is covered.  Each scar has a memory, but in the future, I’d rather look at my memories in a scrap book.  It’s an addiction and I can’t stop.  I control it the best I can most of the time, unless I have been abusing substances- then it goes out the window (So I try not to).  That doesn’t stop my thoughts of doing it though.  Those never go away…