Cry. Smile. Cry.

My relationship with food is starting to worry me. The last two months I have been skipping meals on and off, there have been a couple of days I didn’t eat at all and I have been unable to make myself cook when my flatmate is home. And today I caught myself thinking that there would be so much food over easter that I probably shouldn’t eat today. I realized the ridiculousness of that thought and ate anyway, but this is making me worried. 

I don’t think this is body related. I am realtively satisfied with my body. Sure, there is stuff I wish I could change but we all have that and I am not generally bothered by the way my body looks.

I think it is partly self-harm related. Hunger is almost a form of pain and so going hungry has maybe become a substitute for making scratches. Partly, I think it is because of the indifference and lack of initiative that comes with a depression, cooking is just too much work and food is unappealing. And lastly I think it is partly a control issue, I feel like I am losing control over everything else.

I shouldn’t overdramatize. This isn’t a problem. I am eating enough to be healthy. But I really don’t want it to become a problem.

Which shouldn’t feel like as much of an accomplishment as it does, because i only self-harmed once, then didn’t for over a year, then did for about a month. But it is oh so very tempting and it is really scary that all of my scratches ar scars now. I even daydream about self-harming. It scares me how quickly I got addicted. I really want to stop now before the addiction gets any worse, but it is really, really hard and even for the year I didn’t self-harm the desire didn’t go away completely even if I had only done it once.

But the point: Two weeks!

This is going to be a long and rambly confused post about my sexual orientation and  related issues. You’ve been warned.

Read More →

Not really looking forward to easter. Or, yes, kind of, a week off will be nice, but still. The thing is, I am staying with my parents for over a week. And that worries me.

I have to tell them I have dropped out of one of my classes and explain why and tell them I am running for the central board again next year rather than starting a “proper education”. I am dreading this conversation. I am so anxious it is affecting my ability to consentrate on anything else. 

I was in Bergen yesterday and unexpectedly saw a friend of mine who studies in England who was home for easter. She is the one regularly refered to as the most amazing person ever. She pretty much saved my life last year. I think I can say that without lying.

After I left I sent her a text and asked her if she was staying in Norway for all of easter and if so if I could call her if things turned bad. She told me I could. She also said she thought I could do this with or without her help, but that she’d like for it to be with her help. That helped a lot. I now have somewhere to turn if my parents go into crazy mode. I have a lifeline. I really don’t know what I would have done without her.

I am still dreading this. I don’t think it will be very pleasant. But it helps to know I have someone who will help me back on my feet. 

She really is way too amazing. 

Sometimes I wish whoever writes the scenes between Kurt and Burt on glee (mostly Brad I think?) would write a book and send a copy to my mother. 

The weather is being crazy. Today I went for a walk to a lake close to where I live. I wore shorts and a t-shirt. I wasn’t cold. The lake still had a several centimetres thick layer of ice covering it.

I am happy lately! Such a nice feeling. I didn’t realize how much I have missed it until I felt it again. 

I think it started with me feeling like I had produced an acceptable grammar essay. Feeling like I could do something useful made me a little happier wich made me even more able to be useful which made me even happier and so on and so forth.

It obviously doesn’t hurt that I visited two wonderful people in Berlin last weekend. They are fun and nice and clever and I have really missed them. I had forgotten how gender essentialist one of them is, though, and that annoyed me a little bit, but it was still super great to see them again. Plus Berlin in itself was amazing.

I have decided to discontinue one of my classes and I am very confortable with that decision. That class caused me so much stress, I rarely managed to go because of social anxiety, which made me feel guilty and made me fall ages behind. Deciding to drop it was just a great relief. 

So, basically, happy! Also, the sun is shining, it is kind of warm and I have eaten ice cream outside. Life is good right now.

I am having a great day. So far it includes wonderful, warm weather, getting up early, working effectively on my literature assignment, ice cream, getting lots of positive feedback on my decision to run for the central board again, seeing the most adorable gay couple walking in front of me holding hands and the wonders of the university library.

The entire central board of the organization I keep going on about had this bet with ourselves about how many new members we could regruit in a period of time. We chose ourselves what would be our punishment if we didn’t make it. I chose the bottle of wine because I reasoned that my principles and my fear of drinking would outweigh my social anxiety so that I could actually talk to people and convince them to join. It didn’t. I failed miserably. So I had to drink a bottle of wine.

It was at the same time both worse and better than I had expected. I had expected to lose a lot of my social inhibitions and as a consequence doing stuff I would be really embarassed about later, thinking slower, saying things I would have otherwise kept to myself and losing balance as well as being terribly hung over the next day.

That wasn’t what happened. In stead I was very aware of my loss of balance and my slower thought process, exactly as socially anxious as usual. I danced, talked and generally enjoyed myself a lot less than I would have had I been sober, because I realized I couldn’t trust my balance or ability to think straight and hence might regret talking or trying to dance. Also because being dizzy is really uncomfortable. And because wine really doesn’t taste that great. On the plus side I felt completely fine in the morning, not at all hung over. Which is just plain weird.

The fact that I actually went through with it, though, I feel good about that. I made it. I kept my promise, I didn’t emberass myself and I finished the entire bottle of wine.

Still, I am very happy I never have to do that again.

I feel surprisingly good this morning. 

Internally freaking out. 

I have to decide what I want to do next year this week, and I really don’t know what I want.

And I lost a bet a while ago and now I have to drink a bottle of wine. I don’t drink alcohol. Ever. Partly because of principles, mostly because of social anxiety.

The national board of the organization I kind of work for is meeting this weekend. Which means I have to be in meetings from Saturday through Monday. And have two of them sleep in my apartment. And right now I can’t find the energy to leave my bed or the courage to be around people. This is going to be hard. 

Doing grammar homework and actually kind of enjoying it. It’s nice to know I still have the capacity to enjoy something. 

It is not so nice that the apartment looks really bad, my flatmate expects me to clean it, which I absolutely should as I have done far less than my share lately, and I just don’t seem to be able to force myself to do anything about it. Also that I should be at least two other places than where I am right now.

Giving up on going to uni today. My social anxiety is getting worse and I can’t stand the thought of meeting people eho will ask where I have been lately and speaking French in front of people and my heart rate goes crazy just thinking about it and I just can’t. I guess that means I will have to drop out of one of my subjects. I don’t know. I just know that I can’t do this. I can do my other two subjects I think, I’m not so far behind there and there is less interaction required. But I can’t do this. And I have to meet my parents today because they are ine Oslo for one night before going to Cape Verde and I don’t want to explain to them and I don’t want to act and I just don’t want to. 

On the plus side I made and ate a good brunch and have done some laundry. And I have an appointment with my psychologist tomorrow. 

I am skipping too many meals lately. Also, I need to stop rescratching my scratches. Well, I guess tomorrow is a new chance.

Goals for tomorrow:

• Actually go to uni
• Eat three meals
• Make proper dinner
• Read 30 pages in Candide ou l’optimisme
• Leave my scratches alone
• Go to sleep before midnight

The Norwegian minister for children, equality and social inclusion resigned from his post today following a “scandal”. His minstry had given money to a self-defence class for women run by his party’s youth party. The way they went about doing it was not in accordance with rules and regulations. He says he did not know about all of this, but that the responsibility is still his since he is the leader of that ministry.

I like that he takes responsibility. But I still wish he had continued. He was my favourite minister. He is young, honest and still idealistic and he has many political views that I share. He was the only politician in the current government I believed was in it because he wanted to make a difference and not because he wanted power. 

In addition the organization I kind of work in lose a lot of our contact points with the government. We had a dialogue both with him and with other people in the ministry who will most likely follow him.

I really want to post a link to “8” on facebook, but I don’t dare. I feel like a coward.

Save the Children in Norway had a seminar for volunteers working with refugees and asylum seekers this weekend. I was there. It was a great seminar. It also made me cry quite a lot.

One of the lecturers was a man from an organization that works with helping youth who have ended up on the outside of society in some way. He spoke about the importance of having at least one person who believes in you, about the nature of confidence, about being an outsider, about being lonely and about how dangerous loneliness is. I cried the entire time. More like sobbed, actually. Both because thinking about kids feeling that way is incredibly sad. And because a lot of the time it felt like he was talking about me.

He used some quotes form kids he had worked with. One of them is the title. Another quote came from a boy he was helping who was really depressed. He had tried saying they would go to the amusement park tomorrow, to cheer him up. He had gotten no reaction. When he asked about that later, he got this answer:

“It’s like lying in the water, panicking, not being able to swim and then hearing someone yelling from the shore that you are going to the amusement park tomorrow.” 

That really struck me.

I handed in my French assignment! I will probably fail, but at least I finally wrote something and handed it in. If I fail it, I will have to do it againt, which I don’t really mind.  I know I can write one that passes if I can just force myself to work on it.

staff:

Last Thursday, we posted a draft of a new policy against blogs that actively promote self-harm, along with some PSA-style language to appear next to searches associated with self-injury. The reaction was overwhelming. The post itself provoked more than 25,000 likes, reblogs, and replies; and more than 2,500 of you sent in comments by email. Thank you.

By far, the most common comment was some variation on this:

This is really great, but what about people who just talk about it? They aren’t promoting it in any way, but like some of us just express ourselves through posting about it. I don’t promote self-harm or eating disorders or anything, but I do talk about my experiences with these things. Do those count as something that’s going to be banned?

That’s an important concern, so we want to be totally clear: While we won’t allow blogs dedicated to triggering self-harm, we will not act against blogs engaged in discussion, support, encouragement, and documenting the experiences of those dealing with difficult conditions like anorexia, bulimia, and other forms of self-injury. We absolutely want Tumblr to be a place where people struggling with these behaviors can find solace, community, dialog, understanding, and hope.

We will apply this policy on a blog-by-blog basis. There won’t be any wholesale suspension based on tags or text. We’re not under the illusion that it will be easy to draw the line between blogs that are intended to trigger self-harm and those that support sufferers and build community, but, thanks to the tireless efforts of our amazing Support team, we will do our best.

With the benefit of all your input, we’ve written a new draft of this policy, changing some wording and adding some clarifying language:

Promotion and Glorification of Self-Harm. Don’t post content that actively promotes or glorifies self-harm. This includes content that urges or encourages readers to cut or injure themselves; embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other eating disorders; or commit suicide rather than, e.g., seeking counseling or treatment, or joining together in supportive conversation with those suffering or recovering from depression or other conditions. Dialogue about these behaviors is incredibly important and online communities can be extraordinarily helpful to people struggling with these difficult conditions. We aim to sustain Tumblr as a place that facilitates awareness, support and recovery, and to remove only those blogs that cross the line into active promotion or glorification of self-harm.

In addition, we got some helpful suggestions from the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) to improve the language that we’ll start showing alongside searches for tags associated with the promotion of self-harm, such as “pro-ana”, “pro-mia”, “thinspiration” and “thinspo”. Here’s an example of the revised language:

Eating disorders are not lifestyle choices, they are mental disorders that when left untreated, can cause serious health problems, and at their most severe can even be life-threatening. For treatment referrals, information and support, please contact the National Eating Disorders Association’s Helpline at 1-800-931-2237 or www.nationaleatingdisorders.org.

We’re working with other health organizations to help us craft similar language around pro-cutting and pro-suicide search terms.

After the jump, we’ve pulled out several thoughtful messages from the community on both sides of this issue:

Read More

I am liking the sound of this. Obviously, we will still have to wait and see how it is enforced, but I agree with the principle. 

Okay, this is not cool. It is currently the middle of the night. Obviously, since I didn’t write my paper yesterday, I had to stay up tonight to write it. Only problem is, I am not writing. I am sitting on my bed, staring at the computer screen and feeling miserable, realising that I should either get something done or go to sleep and in stead making a new scratch. I don’t even really feel that bad. I just don’t know how to deal with not getting this paper done and thus failing and thus having to pay back my entire student loan in stead of 60 % of it. Okay, maybe I feel that bad. I don’t know. Also, I wish my actual friends didn’t live in Bergen, Berlin and York while I live in Oslo. And I worry I will lose contact with them. And I really want a hug.