It's not your fault

Today I am excited to be alive.  Excited to write. Monday I admitted to myself that I have Munchhausen syndrome, now called factitious disease.  Tuesday I struggled to want to be alive. I was fantasizing about ways to kill myself without anyone knowing it was a suicide. Or how old would my kids need to be before I could without totally screwing them up.  Answer of course, never. I felt like I couldn't bear the pain of knowing that I had this horrible thing true about me. That I couldn't bear how ever many years I needed to live, if I had to feel this terrible anxiety.  Then I got up and decided that I would need to bear it at least one more day.  That's what I do.  Break it up into manageable chunks.  Sometimes it's minutes. Sometimes it's breaths. I knew I could totally do one more day.

Later that evening, after a quarter dose of a sedative and a lot of being out of my negative thought cycle, I had a thought. Why am I spending so much time trying to figure out how to die? Aren't there so many more things I could work really hard on? That doesn't really say it.  It was a realisation that I was giving so much more energy to wanting to die, then trying to live!  There were so many ways to try to work on living than the not-an-option dying.  

I knew that I couldn't do it. That it was just a fantasy like thinking about finding my ex husband and strangling him until he fell unconscious. Not anything I would take steps towards doing it.  I was choosing again to stay mentally sick, instead of choosing to be well. Then I could see the other paths. I think that is the tricky part. Seeing any other option.

 I get so terrified that I can't see any other choice other than staying exactly where I am, trying to fight off the fear. Talk myself out of it. Getting up is actually what I should do most of the time, but sometimes I am so fatigued that I really need to rest.  I'm probably partly anxious because I am so fatigued. But I haven't yet gotten skilled enough at getting out of my negative thought loops while resting. I'm working on it.

I started out yesterday being in a fog about this new diagnosis. Self realization. How could I ever tell anyone about the Factitious disease. How could anyone understand the exaggerating? People would shy away from me or worse.  I couldn't handle thinking about it.  I kept saying to myself that I didn't need to tell anyone.  As long as I'm as I'm not actively faking disease, no one needs to know. That didn't feel right to me though.  As hard as I am on myself, as much as I find it disgusting behaviour, as practically impossible it was to admit out loud, I knew it wasn't a dirty little secret. I chose a close friend I trust to talk to about it. He knew about a few occasions that I had faked things. One of first things he said was that it wasn't my fault. I had already started coming to that conclusion, but that was really good to hear.  He couldn't understand why I would choose to be sick to get attention, but he knew that it wasn't something that I had really chosen.

I guess that's where I got to with it's not my fault. I must have felt that the only way I could get the attention I really needed, was to be sick. There's no way I can blame a 6 year old girl for getting sick. I can't blame my parents for not being able to give me the attention I needed. They did the best job they could with the skills they had been given (or lack of skills). I guess it was just a perfect storm. I was very sick, a lot of the time, my parents were raised by parents that were missing some basic emotional skills, my older sister resented my being born, and I some how didn't gain the skills I needed to deal with the things life had thrown at me from any other source.  I was sick, I was alone, I was scared, and no one knew to tell me that I was loved and that I would be OK.  Except in a way, the nurses and doctors.  

Imagine you are one of four children, a bit socially awkward, and then all of a sudden, you are a STAR!!  People bring you presents. People come to see just you. You get to share a room with other little girls like it's a camping trip. You get a toy room with a TV.  You get to order your food off a menu, and then it is brought right to your bed. Especially for the severe asthmatic I was, I felt great in the hospital!  I felt better than ever. The medications gave me lots of energy, I was able to breathe better, and all my pain was gone.  Heaven.

I'm wondering right now how much the knowing exactly what was expected of me was a factor.  You have nurses that completely structure your day.  You know when to eat, when to shower. When to be resting, when to be out of bed. You know what you're supposed to do, and if you do something wrong, you'll be corrected quickly. Not a lot is expected of you, so it's easy to be really good at it.  Don't complain. Be cheerful. Be accommodating.  The only problem I was, was that I was too happy and well, hyper. I got asked to go to another room for a while a couple of times because I was being entertaining and the other girls needed to rest.

I know that is a big factor in why I was so religious for so long. Knowing exactly what you are supposed to do. And when. And when you were doing something wrong.  

I do believe that there is something in me that isn't just made out of cells. A soul, or a spirit. How much was I born with wanting to be reassured. Was I already insecure? Was I aware from the womb that my mother was worried about me living? Was I already receiving messages that I wasn't OK, and being not OK is something unbearable? Was this from a previous life?

I know that I have the ability to give myself the love I need. I can choose whether or now I panic. I can change the way I think, and feel, and act.  And this time, I'm not giving up from fear.