Recovery, in a Time of Insanity
At times like this, it’s easy to slide backwards.
At times like this, it’s easy to slide backwards.
A few days ago, Trisha Paytas released a video. The internet’s most dedicated full-time troll, it’s not exactly as though she’s a stranger to controversy, but this video hit that internet sweet-spot and soon blew up in a big cloud of outrage. In it, Paytas claimed to have Disassociative Identity Disorder (DID), which, she mentioned, she had diagnosed herself.
You remember that Not Like The Other Girls phase? That time you spent, however long it lasted, where you were just convinced that you were that one specimen of femininity who didn’t, quite, fit?
I write this on a plane returning from Spain, where I’ve been bouncing around the last few days visiting my family; it’s one of dozens of trips I’ve taken over the course of this decade to chase after my perma-travelling family, and whatever misc. dogs they have managed to acquire along the way.
Alright, sometimes I plan what I’m going to write here, and sometimes I just wake up and it hurts and I need to talk about it, alright? Alright. Alright!
Hi! I’m Louise, and I’m an asshole.
Trigger warning for discussion of eating disorder behaviours.
It’s Saturday today. It’s the day off I force myself to take; I slept in, did an hour of yoga, sipped on my fancy tea. I call it self-care, even though it’s somehow more stressful to think about taking care of myself than it is to think about work.
(trigger warning for discussions of suicide, hospitalisation)
In March of this year, at about eleven in the evening, I sat down on the edge of my bed. My partner, of six years, who I had met in the smoking area one Halloween when he was dressed as the wrong Doctor from Doctor Who and I just had to pass comment on it, had just voluntarily left our shared home to go to hospital for a psychiatric evaluation after a suicide attempt. From there, he would be committed to a mental ward, where he would stay for the next month (note: would it be funnier if I had titled this article “in the month of madness”?).
Do it anyway.
