Ten years

It's quite an anniversary in January for me. I don't remember exact dates but it will be exactly 10 years ago that I: got depressed and stopped practising karate, got my chronic tension headache that's been with me ever since, started cutting myself, had my heart broken for the first time, realised that I'm transgender, the voice in my head became my enemy for the first time and I really started to fail in school.

January 2005 was probably the worst month in my life. And then followed a decade of pain and misery. I can honestly say, in a month, that I've been in this misery for a full decade. There's something oddly comforting in that. Something that makes me smile, a bitter smile, but I can't put my finger on exactly what that is.

I discovered a lot about myself that year, 2005 and in the end of 2004. About who I really am, everything from sexuality to the deepest, darkest secrets I will never reveal. I got in contact with the psychiatry for the first time that following summer, or maybe it wasn't until the fall, I don't remember the details. No cross that, I can only remember the details, not the big picture.

To be honest I never thought I'd live this long, not 10 years ago when I was diagnosed with Asperger, made my first 2 suicide attempts, got borderline psychotic and swore that I couldn't survive without the razor blades. When the war in my head became both mental and physical. When I tried to study in another city and it failed so miserably, I think I dissociated for 3 months. I had so much pressure on myself, I wanted to live a normal life with the abnormal brain that I had.

I was 16 years old through most of 2005 and I will turn 26 in April next year. 10 years have almost passed now and it does feel rather unreal. Maybe that's why I'm smiling and shaking my head - in disbelief. For all that's happened since then. Since I fell down a dark hole and I haven't been able to climb out of it.

I just kept hitting new bottoms and falling into more darkness, I never had a chance to learn how to live, and somewhere in that maze, I forgot to care. About life, about learning. All that mattered was surviving and sometimes dying, escaping that maze. Now, it's like I've reached another bottom and instead of trying to climb out I've accepted my cruel destiny and I've made myself an almost cosy home down here.

I'm no longer trying to learn how to live or fight for my sorry life. I say let it come and kill me, I don't care. Maybe I'm only still seeing my shrink for outward appearances, to make people believe that I still care about getting better. I can't get better, 10 bloody years down the line, it's fair to say that I'm a hopeless case. I wouldn't know what or who I am without the darkness. Maybe I wouldn't even like that person?

I'm not fighting anymore, but somehow I still don't think I've truly given up. I just let it have at it while I'm taking a forever long cigarette break and just won't go out into battle again. I'm sorry for all the metaphors, I really don't know how else to say it. That I don't care what happens to me now, that this ED, this chronic headache, my self harm and what more and what not, can kill me if they want to. I'm just here for the show. I'm not scared anymore. I'm not scared of dying, I'm not scared of living.

Is that bad? That I'm completely just giving into madness and let it ravage me however it pleases to? Maybe after 10 years I've only come to learn one thing, and that is that it can always get worse. And worse it gets. It's changed me, but I've forgotten who I was before.