*triggered*

Hello everyone,

I am back. I know it’s been a while, I have been busy (luckily) helping out a friend, which felt good. Today, my help wasn’t needed. My muscles now all tell me I’ve been doing too much work but my mind doesn’t complain. It felt good. It really did. I am still waiting for a call, which I would receive at the end of this week (so I guess today or tomorrow) if I got the part-time job I have applied for. I am really looking forward to having a full-time job, but if I could get a part-time one to begin with, it would be good too. The last few days, it felt really good to be out of the house, working on something and seeing the results of it while I was working on it as well.

But I wanted to write this post about the anger attack I had last week, on the Friday to be exact. So it was exactly one week ago. And I have thought about writing this post, about the trigger and about what happened to me because of that. So if you’re interested, please read on. And of course, feel free to comment. If you haven’t commented before, please read my “guidelines”. You can find them on your right, under the blog info, called “About commenting”. Thanks!
I have written before about how important promises and appointments are to me. Some even are more important than others, because then I am really looking forward to it. It’s something I was gaining strength from and really wanted to do/go to/… And of course, if it’s something I am looking forward to do, I am always hoping the other person (the one who made the promise/appointment to/with me) is feeling the same way about it. Maybe not as much as I am, but still. There’s hope within me that he/she also sees how important that promise/appointment is to me and also knows me well enough to treat it and me with much respect.

But last Friday, I felt f*cked with. I wanted to help out a friend and in the end, the friend was helped out but it was also partly at my costs. And that felt bad. The promise was broken, I tried to help someone and I felt f*cked about it in the end. I lost my temper, got mad at me, the people who made me feel this way, at the world at everything. I got so angry and my head started to pound. I needed some relieve so well, I did what I “usually” do when I feel like this: bang my head. But even that didn’t work, didn’t help me like it usually does. And I couldn’t stop crying. I got my pillow, my cuddle sheep (I used to have a bunny, but after many surgeries, it was time to leave it on the nightstand before I would cuddle it to death, so in November 2006, my GF gave me a sheep…) and a blanket, I went to the couch and cuddled up under my blanket and just cried, yelled, cried and all that comes with that.

I felt so alone in this world. Even though our GF was at home, I felt alone and so warm. I didn’t want to come out from under the blanket. I couldn’t stop hitting my head with my fist at times, feeling so stupid for trying to help someone out. In the end, I only got used and feeling hurt because if it. I should have been selfish and just thought about myself. Me, myself and about I. I was so hurt, felt so used and insignificant and all.

I believe I have cried non-stop for over half an hour. Mumbling all the negative thoughts, slapping myself at times for being so stupid and silly and all. Then, my GF decided I had enough time to vent and went over to take me in her arms. I still cried, didn’t want to be held during the first couple of minutes. But she was persistent and held on, trying to wipe all the snot I had on my face (was too lazy to wipe and I didn’t really give a f*ck about it at that time). She tried to stop me from crying and she really wanted me to give in and just hold her too. I didn’t want to admit to it, didn’t want to give in. I am not sure why, but the crying and hitting myself on the head felt so good. I know, it may sound bizarre and sick even, but it felt so good to cry. The reason why I felt this way, the stupid trigger that caused something inside me to snap, that sucked. But WHY did the crying feel so good? Why didn’t I want to stop and just be held by someone I love and someone who loves me back, stupid me as I am???

So well, that question kept going on inside my head, over and over and I wondered about many things. About why I preferred to keep crying. About why I didn’t want to be held by my GF at first. About why I had been so stupid to think about others before I thought of the consequences it could have for me personally?  But also questions of why my GF wanted to be close to me, even if I was behaving so badly due to the ugly anger mood swing. I guess no one but me (and maybe my GF) would be able to answer those questions… But then, I would have to ask her and I didn’t want to say anything. I wanted to mumble the stupid questions over and over, keeping the tears falling, the snot gliding and feeling just horrid. Feeling awful and I wanted to hide and be alone with my tears and sorrow. I wanted to keep hitting myself for being so stupid and silly and all. I wanted to disappear and never be found by anyone again. Just be somewhere, where I can be alone. A place where I could live in peace with myself and myself alone. No one that I would have to think about but me. I am not sure if it would be helpful in any way, but it would leave me alone with no one who’d make promised and then break them. No one but me. If I would decide something it would be only for me. I was going over all these silly thoughts just before my (you know I mean our, but in this story it’s easier to write my) GF decided to get up from the chair she was sitting on and get over to where I was hiding under my blanket on the couch.

WHY? Why would she chose to get close to a crying daft cow, yeah that’s right, me? Why would she want to be close to someone who gets triggered this badly by a broken promise? To be close to someone who thinks that hitting herself on the head and smashing her head against walls will help that burning headache that comes from within…

I have tried to explain how I think the headaches that cause me to want to hit my head to my GF. It sounded really silly but still, it also got me wondering whether I was the only one who experiences the mood swings (as I call them) the same way…
And now I will try to explain it to you. But in English it’s a bit more difficult than in Dutch, so I hope you will understand me. If you don’t, don’t hesitate to ask through the comment box.

It feels like I have two glass jars inside my head. You can see them as a Yin and Yang. One jar, the Yin side, would be the mood swings/depression side. The other jar, the Yang side, would be my “normal”, happy me side. And when something triggers me, like on the first image above, the depression side gets flooded and drips over into my happy side. The happy side gets affected with that drop of depression and there I  turn mad, sad and all that comes with it. I can’t stop myself from gliding down the slippery side and well… I do believe that people who also suffer from mood swings (caused by their own triggers) may have an idea of what happens inside your head when that final drop went over the rim.

Of course I can’t be sure about this. That is why I am looking for honest, open comments on this post. I want to know if I am the only one who experiences it like this. When that drop jumps off the rim into the other jar, I get an enormous headache. And such a headache can’t be pushed away, can’t be intimidated by taking pills, the only things that “seems to help” is when I start banging my head. The bumps I get because of doing that, I can press hard on them and they suppress the original headache that caused it all…

I hope that people are willing to comment. I am really interested in how others experience this all….

I will be back later, I promise!

~ by Lonely Wallflower on April 3, 2010.