On Sleep and Skinniness

This is one of a series of posts about a breakdown I had in 2010
The story begins here.

Me, mid-breakdown.
Skinnier, but not happier.

I am so tired that I yawn constantly. Yawns so big that I feel like I can't open my mouth wide enough to allow them to escape. I find myself unable to get through sentences without stopping to yawn at least once. Seeing as how I'm off work, and no longer need to stick to any sort of schedule, I will often lay down on the sofa for a crafty nap, what with being so tired and all. But as soon as I'm horizontal, I'm wide awake. I'm still yawning wide enough to make my dentist proud, but my eyes won't close. My mind won't switch off.

I've had depression before. I've gone through (fairly long) stages of self-harming before. I've dealt with all sorts of personal issues and mental upheavals and untold stresses. Until this point, my way of dealing with things getting too much was just to sleep more. When I was depressed or stressed or upset or felt like I didn't know who I was any longer, I would just sleep more. Sleep has always been my way of coping with problems. Perhaps not strictly the best or most effective way of dealing with one's problems, but it always worked wonders for me. I would often sleep 9 or 10 hours a night. To be in this position now, and to be unable to sleep it off, is destroying me. The insomnia is the worst part of what has been happening with me lately. I feel very strongly that, if only I could sleep properly, the rest of it wouldn't seem to bad. I can think of nothing more appealing than taking to my bed and staying there for a long, long time. Nothing bad can happen if I am under my duvet.

Nobody should be this intimately familiar with 3am. By now I know all the sounds of this estate as it wakes up in the mornings. Each morning I lie in my bed and listen to the succession of odd noises. I think to myself that perhaps I'll get up, go out and find out where a particular noise comes from. But I never do. That's apathy for you.

I feel like I've reached the end. I've admitted defeat and there is no going back. There's nothing left to fight with, and I don't think I want to any way. I may start to respond to the drugs and get over it this time, but it'll always be lurking in the wings, waiting for my back to be turned. It will always come back. Like in Harry Potter, where Voldemort is defeated at the end of each book, but we all know he'll be back by Chapter Five of the next one, and worse than ever. I'm not Harry Potter; I can't keep fighting this over and over again. I'm tired and I just want to sleep now. I'm awake at 3 every morning, and before I'm even conscious of my thoughts, I'm thinking about how to die. I talk about suicide constantly. People pull concerned faces and ask me to promise I won't do anything "stupid." As if my word means anything. As if I think killing myself is a stupid idea. Idiots.

Since I first started getting ill, I have lost over a stone without trying. My clothes hang around my waist. I love the feeling of being skinny. I don't want to tell the doctor I'm not eating, in case she does something to make me fat again. At the back of my head there is a little voice saying, come on, you've got enough to be going on with, without developing an eating disorder too. But I can't help it. I like being skinny.

I read The Devil Within by Stephanie Merritt, and feel a certain resonance with this passage:

Thin, I would still be me, and what I loathed and wanted to punish was not this rebellious body that so defiantly refused to look like a picture n a magazine, but the me that was inside it, the essence of who I believed myself to be - someone who would always be standing on the outside looking in. But I didn't know how to express this hatred except by inflicting damage on what was visible. Something had descended on me, and I could not explain it; it had entered through my ears and nostrils like vapour and wrapped itself around my brain; it clouded my vision and made me retreat into myself, fearful of company and the sound of my own voice.

A friend's mother dies, and I wear a tight black dress to the funeral. It's been in my wardrobe for years, but I've never been able to get away with wearing it. This time I put it on and it's too big. I like to think I look stylish, but I probably don't. I've not reached the stage yet where I could actually be referred to as "skinny" or "gaunt;" I think people only notice my weight loss because of the way my trousers hang off my hips. But it makes me feel better. The only positive thing in my life at the moment is a pair of shorts that I can pull down without unbuttoning the fly. I realise that for my entire life, I have loathed my body; my existence has been a series of events where I've needed to suck my stomach in. I feel fat and unattractive. I have always thought, if only I was skinny, if only I didn't have this pot belly, my life would be so much better. And then one day I am buying a bra to cheer myself up, and I catch sight of myself in the changing room mirror. I realise that these days I don't need to suck my belly in; it is fairly small, now that I'm not eating. It no longer protrudes over the top of my shorts.

But I still hate myself. My life still sucks, and I still want to die; I just wear a smaller size of clothing while I'm feeling wretched. I am the most miserable, apathetic and devoid of hope I have ever been. Having less of a belly and skinnier thighs makes absolutely no difference to this feeling at all. I feel like a fool for ever thinking it would. But if being skinny won't solve my problems and make me happy, what the hell will? I'm running out of other things to try here.

Perhaps there really is nothing.

The next part of this story is here.

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