Admitting defeat or claiming victory?

This past week has been rough. I’m not going to lie it has been a week full of  stress, anger, fear, frustration sadness and buckets of tears. These feelings however have not come completely out of the blue exactly but something has triggered them, something which for a while I have shoved under the carpet and choose not to deal with. I had many reasons for choosing not to deal with this issues and despite knowing that its not good to hold it all inside I continued to keep it contained until it came back to mind. I chose to bury it and that is what I did for years and right now while I am writing this I am regretting my decision not to address that issue. While this  issue is not something I feel comfortable talking about on my blog at this early stage I will go so far as to say it is related to my feelings towards my own self-harming behaviour.

Despite realizing that theses feelings have come from somewhere I am not 100% certain that they have all come from that same place. Part of me sees the normal aspect of my low mood over the past week, part of me recognises that everybody has bad days and I too am having a few bad days. But having spent the past seven days struggling to get myself to college, struggling to get myself through an hour of coaching and an hour of scouts and struggling even to get myself out of the bed I am beginning to fear that these bad days are something more.

Am I being unreasonable?  Is my fear unjustified? I don’t think so, looking back over my history I believe I have every right to be fearful that this bad week may turn into something more. I fear that this bad week may go from one week to two and two weeks to three weeks and eventually I will be stuck, unable to recognise that there is a problem, unable to cope without self-harm and eventually unable to keep myself safe in my own environment.

Seven months ago I made a decision in conjunction with my GP to come of my anti-depressant medication and at the time it appeared to be a good decision and to finally not have to take medication was a huge achievement for me after spending 3 years on them. But the past few months haven't been easy not because of not being on medication but because of being in therapy, having further set backs with my jaw surgery, having a difficult time during my college placement and also with my self-harming becoming more frequent at times. Ive been thinking about going back on the medication as it helped when I was on it and when I was on it for most of the time I felt good and I felt in control and lately I haven't been feeling in control of my life especially this past week.

Waking up this morning I had planned to go and see my GP to discuss some things with him, discuss the possibility of going back on medication. This isn't a decision I have made lightly not by any stretch of the imagination. I have spoke to many people about this including my dad and considering my low mood over the past week they feel it may be for the best and so too did the doctor. Ive lost sleep over this, I don’t want to be on medication for the rest of my life(there is no guarantee that I will be) I don’t want to be dependant on medication to keep my mood up and I certainly don’t want the added pressure that comes with being on medication but looking back over the past I have realised that me going back on medication is not admitting defeat but claiming a victory. 3 years ago when I was at my lowest, self-harming multiple times a day, considering suicide and eventually spending four months in hospital I wasn’t able to see that I had a problem, I wasn’t able to recognise self harm as a bad thing and I wasn’t in a position to take control of my life but now, now I am, now I am able to recognise all those things, I am able to say that I think medication is a good thing and right now while I feel like things are spiralling out of control, I still have control and  I want to keep that control for as long as possible. If accepting I need to be on medication to keep my bad days to a minimum, to keep my mood up and to help ensure my self- harming does not reach dangerous levels once again I am going to accept it and claim a victory over Borderline Personality Disorder, depression and self-harm!



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