I was watching some documentary on the tv about British children who run away repeatedly. I don't know why they showed it here. I know it's important but I don't know if it helps to show it here. It increases awareness, of course. Perhaps that's everything that's needed. I don't know.

There was a little bit on suicidality, suicide attempts and such. They also linked self-injury with suicide which is not right. Self-injury doesn't have much to do with suicidality, in my case and many others. One poster to alt.support.self-harm put it quite well "It's not that I want to die, I just don't want to live that much either." Suicide attempts and self-harm are two different things. I wish they weren't linked in such a way, like they belonged together. Because they don't.

When I was a kid I always hoped I had the guts to run away but the outside world proved always to be too much to face. I used to spend hours thinking of running away, planning how I'd do it but I never got it done. It was too stressful to go outside, with all the unknown people. I spent a few years, from about 9 to 14 avoiding going outside unless I had to. 'Had to' meant things like school and the occasional visit to see some of our relatives (which are few). And, of course, library about once a week or more often. Library was terrible though. I wouldn't have wanted to go there but there were too many good sides to it. I could distract myself for another week, which meant that I didn't have to be around, which was the best thing ever. Really, I think I spent most of my childhood trying not to be present. Trying not to think or feel or notice what I was doing. I think I figured feeling would've been too dangerous. I used to think about safety issues a lot. Not that kind of ones where you ponder if it's safe to go to remote places after 9p.m. (which I always did 'cos it was the only time of the day I dared to go outside), but whether it was safe to say something, if it was safe to do something, whether people would notice me if I did or didn't do something. It's quite odd, actually. I was always so scared of people. I used to hide in corners because I couldn't face anyone.

I was suggested a shrink a few times but because it was always left on me to decide I never went. I don't know how they thought I was capable of making that kind of decision. I started crying when people talked to me, for god's sake! (Well, only on bad days, but the majority of days at that time were bad.) I couldn't bear the thought of going to see anyone, I was scared shitless when faced with the prospect of having to go to school every morning even if there were people whom I had known since the first grade.

Ugh. I guess I have no reason to be bitter about. Not really. Shrinks probably wouldn't have helped a thing, at least they didn't ten years later.Of course, everything can be subjected to speculation but there's very little point to that.

I'm still sometimes amazed at how I was capable of pulling it off. There was no greater threat, to me then, than someone finding out what actually happened in my head, so that probably explains a thing or two. And the fact that no one really cared.
The shrink I saw later on said I didn't look at all nervous. I was almost crying of fear at that exact moment. So it isn't much of a compliment, really, to say I can fake it well. Perhaps things would have been easier had I actually been less good at faking. But I had many years of practise prior to going to school, even. Yeah, it dates that far back. It just got worse over time, and now it's getting a bit better.

It was highly disturbing that no one actually confronted me about my feelings (they did yell at me because my actions made them mad). It feels so impossible. It can't have been real, surely? That kind of thing. It rises doubt, occasionally, what if I just made it all up? What if I just exaggerated it, distorted my memories (either accidentally or, more likely, on purpose)?

I don't really believe that, no. But sometimes there's a bit of doubt that I'm just making it all up because there doesn't seem to be a 'real' reason for my behaviour. And of course I do have plenty of reasons, I just can't think of them as valid ones because they were so ordinary things. Like violent fights and all kind of stuff like that. At some point you just get used to everything. You get used to being always afraid and in the end it's difficult to even tell if you're afraid or not. My parents never really beat me up and that caused me a considerable amount of distress. I mean, there was always the threat of that happening but it never really did. And I hoped they had done it because then I would've had a concrete reason to feel so terrible. I was also hoping it would've forced me to finally run away, which I then considered was my only way of staying alive (and happy).

Uh, I think I'll continue some other time. But it really does make me feel better to talk about this without anyone yelling at me how stupid I am. That's why I'm writing here. At some point everything has to come out. Otherwise you burst. I used to think I could go on ad infinium, and that was no happy thought. So it's better this way. Much better.

Main. | Fallacies.

[And B, if you ever read this (which I'm sure you don't), perhaps you understand why I can relate to your life :) ]