Post the First: A Headache-Inducing Experience

It was loud enough to wake him up.

I feel so bad that I did that to him. Woke him up, and scared him with what he woke up to. And maybe I wasn't fully in my right mind, but that doesn't change the fact that I am the one who did it. I don't understand how he can still be with me, but I'm so glad that he is.

But after all, it's not every night that you wake up to find your girlfriend hitting herself in the head.

Oddly enough, I haven't had a lot of people ask me why I chose that particular manner of self-harm. Maybe two, out of the 10-ish people I've told. And one of those two was my therapist, so that doesn't count. So that's maybe 10% who asked that question. Which is a really low percentage when you look at it that way.

But self-harm makes people uncomfortable. If you haven't been there before, in that particular mentality, you don't understand why you'd want to purposely cause yourself pain. Really, it's simple though. The external pain distracts from the internal pain.

That week, I had been listing to podcasts to help me sleep, to make my brain calm down enough. But I couldn't exactly do that when my boyfriend was lying asleep next to me. I didn't want to disturb him. So I eventually started hitting myself in the head. It was similar to rapping your knuckles on a table or door. It was a nice focus.

The irony that I did this to not disturb my boyfriend and that he was definitely disturbed isn't lost on me. I don't know exactly how long I was doing it. I counted each time I hit my head, and I did it probably a couple hundred times. Then I sped up, so it was a constant thing.

 By the time he woke up and turned on the light and made me stop, I had a nice little lump on my forehead. I cried a little when he grabbed my arm, and fought him too a little. Then I admitted that the antidepressant wasn't working, and that I would need to talk to my parents and psychiatrist about what to do in the future.

He didn't ask me any more questions, he just wrapped his arms around me, turned the lamp off again, and held me as he fell back asleep. And I fell asleep too eventually.

So, lesson learned. Antidepressants, when they don't work, really don't work. And you can wake someone up by hitting yourself in the head.

And if the person you wake up doesn't freak out, they're important.

This is what keeps me up at night.