Helping or Harming

So looks like the next few weeks of the blog are not going to be as peppy as I would like, but I guess that's life. When I was younger, I self-harmed. Everything I say on this topic here is from my own experience and is my own opinion. I realise that self-harming can be a bad road for many people, but when I was younger it always helped more than it harmed. I don't have a troubled background, I come from a white, middle class, educated background. My family never lacked money and my parents never abused me.

But when I was roughly fifteen, I moved schools because of problems I had been having at my previous school and fell in with the alternative crowd at my new school. I had never really fitted in properly (though I'm not sure that anyone ever really feels as though they do in high school - no matter what it looks like on the outside) and a couple of my new friends self-harmed. I had never even considered it as a possibility before - it just wasn't the kind of thing that was usually in my universe. I came from a world of good grades and an excessive submersion in fantasy novels. But when the road got rocky for me about halfway through my school year in ninth grade, I fell into a regular pattern of cutting myself to deal with any psychological pain I ever felt.

Fantasies

People have all kinds of fantasies. To be another person, to have their dream job, to be with the person they most desire. Hot sex or a tasty dinner. I've had a thousand fantasies - people, jobs, university degrees. Some of my most powerful ones involve living a life without my anxiety. To just keep being myself but be free of my anxiety and panic disorders. To be able to experience things normally and not have to be afraid of myself, and not be able to know if I can trust my own emotions and instincts because they're being overridden by panic.

That's my ultimate fantasy. I know it will never happen, there's no cure for anxiety disorder. You can learn to manage it, cope with it and adapt to it, but it will never go away. I already know that, that's why it's a fantasy. But I would give that fantasy up and every other one I have ever had, if I could just get the one I have now fulfilled.

My Sailor's Gone To Sea

So my sailor is going to sea. She left this morning and took my heart with her. For the initial training period, they allow barely any contact with family and friends. The last thing I have left is one phone call they allow her tomorrow night, to let me know she arrived safely. I can't wait and I'm dreading it at the same time. It means so many things, it means that she did get there safely and alright but it also means it's the last time they're going to let her talk to me for a whole month.

I would be more okay if she came home after the month, it'd be nothing - but even after that first month is over, they only get weekend leave sometimes and it's at the discretion of their officers. If she has a speck of dust on her shoes one time in week two, they might extend the initial training period a whole week. And if she's working the first weekend when leave is granted, she won't be able to come see me. It's not like it's a whole month and then everything's okay, it's a whole month of no contact and then chaos as to anything that will happen.

I don't know how to deal with not knowing when my girl is going to come back to me. If they'll even let her. I think that's the bit that troubles me the most - is that they can keep her away from me if they feel like it for any number of obscure reasons. I know the Navy in Australia doesn't have a Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, but I have no idea to what degree they are homophobic. It's just another issue in a giant cloud of issues that are all unresolved and have no way of being resolved any time soon.

I just want my girl to come home to me in one piece.