These last couple of weeks have been difficult. I’ve been holding a lot back from everyone, mostly to my detriment. It feels like I’ve started pulling away from those I need and just falling back into the old routines of doing everything myself.

Last week I wasn’t able to skillfully process the interaction I had with my 6 year old son. If he acts differently around me than his father, then it must be something that I am doing wrong. I felt as if I was continuing to damage my children’s lives just by being in them. I quickly spiraled down after these revelations of course. In the end, I willfully convinced myself that cutting was better than what I wanted to do and would ease the pain enough for the suicide thoughts to be kept at bay. Sadly, this was not the outcome. The result was shame. Shame that I didn’t manage my crisis the way I know I could have. Shame when I tried to hide my cutting from my boyfriend. Shame when anyone at work asked about the bandage. Shame when I had to lie about it. Shame has been my default emotion most of my life, so it was very easy to allow it to consume me. With the shame came the withdrawal from those I needed when I needed them. What I read as my partner pulling away from me was his reaction to me distancing myself after self-harm.

The silver lining of this latest relapse of self-harm is that I’ve been holding on to a lot of baggage that I need to let go of. There are so many things every day that I am carrying with me that are not only out of my control, they don’t even concern me. After tomorrow, I have 5 days to begin to unload the weight. I’m going to start by being more mindful of where my thoughts are focusing and whether or not it’s really something I want to spend my valuable time on. Then I can start letting go of judgements, about others, about situations, more importantly, about myself. Lastly, I’m going to start focusing on building and living my life worth living.