**warning - -this post might be really triggering for some people. read with care.**

It is so strange to come back from being so far away. Not in terms of geography, but in terms of mental states. I just spent a couple hours posting images on this website, digging through my photoshop archives, reading our mission statement, and I couldn't quite believe any of it --  not in that "oh my god I won the lottery I can't believe it" kind of way, or that "this project has spread so far how amazing kind of way," but in that "I have spent the last few years of my life working on this project? I can't even find the files on my computer anymore or remember how any of this works. That all seems like it must have been a movie I watched about someone else's life, not mine. None of this seems real and I forgot I was ever capable of doing anything creative or anything with a computer, much less anything as complex as being part of building this website and publishing all these materials. And yet the evidence is all here that I did it. I was doing it just a few months ago. What happened? When did everything become impossible and so very dark?"

I've been back on meds now for a little over a week, after 2 years off of them and a recent episode with the demons in my head that tried to kill me. Certain things are starting to return, and it is astonishing to feel them again, and astonishing to realize how far away they went -- like my sense of humor, and my ability to put things into order, or write more than a couple sentences, or make a plan, or discuss anything with any degree of emotional charge without dissociating to the point of paralysis or catatonia. None of it left all day every day -- there were always moments and windows of lucidity, and even small scraps of joy and hard work -- but for so much of the time there was this undercurrent of agitation and torturous anxiety that is very hard to describe and totally debilitating.

Now that I am back on meds and working with a good therapist certain things are just leaving. The strange voices that would sometimes crank up and start telling me I should do absurd things like pull all the bones out of my back or smash my head against the floor. The nearly constant paranoia (which I mostly did not realize was paranoia, cause I believed it) that told me almost everyone was mad at me, most of the time, and that everything I was doing was somehow wrong. The insistent refrain that if I could just die I wouldn't have to deal with this anymore, and the way you start scanning the horizon hopefully for things that might kill you -- like trains and car accidents -- instead of scanning the horizon for landmarks or rain. The terrible fear and panic attacks and slipping in and out of feeling completely unreal. the unrelenting desire for and fear of attention. The state of being nearly constantly overwhelmed, unless I was doing something very very simple, like weeding. The inability to return phone calls, e-mails, or answer the question how are you.

fuck that part of the dangerous gift. I do not miss any of it. fuck the suffering that makes me yell at god and sob or hide for half the day.

hmmm. I had intended this post to be inspiring. I had intended to talk about what is returning, and the hope I have for actually being able to live. But maybe I just needed to talk first about what it is like when something inside you just won't let you live, and you are trying your damnedest, and it is too much.

I know some people will read this and say, but you weren't like this all the time. You posted some really uplifting things here. you seemed to be enjoying parts of your life. You are painting a picture that is too black and white.

And that is partly true. But you know -- when the dark thoughts win a certain percentage of the time, they do a pretty good job overriding the rest of it. they have worn me the fuck out. I'm done.

I do not like the idea of taking meds but I really do not like the idea of suffering in agitated misery and killing myself. I am only taking one med, and it helps my head so much, but it makes me ill. Upset stomach and sedation. They say it's temporary. the side effects are a little less each day, which is what I remember from being 19, and back then they stopped completely after 3 weeks, which I hope will happen now. Today I got through the whole day without any physical problems. But I can think again. I have patience again. I can actually talk to my friends and my therapist without complete shutdown, seizures, switching personalities, or getting suicidal. I might be able to work through some of the trauma that triggers me without jumping off a roof or giving up. I can actually do things like respond to a panic attack with breathing exercises or yoga and get through it. I can actually use my tools. The meds do not make me well, but it feels like they might make me safe, and that if i am safe I can do the things that actually make me well. I am done with the torture and the abject suffering. It is just not worth it.

The phrase that keeps going through my head is: You don't have to understand.

The other phrase that keeps going through my head is: To Thine Own Self Be True.

This is my body and my life. You can have all kinds of opinions about what you would and would not do if you were in my shoes. But you're not in my shoes.

Sorry I really didn't mean to be confrontational in how I wrote this post at all. I guess sometimes it just comes out that way. there's so much more I want to write about, but for now I think I should go to bed.

much love to everyone struggling and coping in all our different ways,

Ashley