Please sit with me and hold me. I'm doing everything I can right now.

Last night, when I found myself in the bad place again, I wrapped up in my blanket, grabbed the healing rock and my headphones and went outside to the deck, sat on the swing and rocked…feeling the cool air on my face, listening to Whitney Houston’s new song, “I didn’t know my own strength”... crying (but not sobbing), trying to just breathe. But then I started thinking about how the bad place leaves, and then there is a moment, just a moment, of relief, and then the bad place comes back…and I started to think, “Is this all there is? Is it ever going to get better?” And that’s when the voice inside of me told me that she couldn’t do it any longer…couldn’t hurt any more, it was too much, and she was way too tired to fight the darkness anymore.

She took over my mind, I couldn’t fight her, and like a caterpillar eating a leaf, she began to eat away at the coherent part of my brain…she is now in control, she controls us, her decisions rule, I cannot fight her.

She went inside and locked herself in the bathroom. The fighting began again…the little girl was shaking, and rocking and crying, afraid in the dark, afraid of what was going to happen but unable to stop it. She sobbed and begged for the strong one to help her, to hold her, to come back. But then another voice, the one who has had more than enough of this pain, the one who sees no way out grabbed the scissors and held them tightly. And it was so loud, the arguing, the crying, the pleading, the begging…the little girl, so scared, sitting on the cold tile, curled into a ball, rocking and crying…the hopeless one, holding the scissors, wanting to cut. And me, watching this girl from above…as she struggled…holding the scissors to her wrist as the little girl fought to live, shaking in her fear, crying out for the strong one to come to her, to hold her, to comfort her.

Eventually, the struggle ended without bloodshed…and I found myself sitting on the cold bathroom tile, with scissors in my left hand, poised at the artery on my right wrist, shaking, and crying, and rocking myself...they must have fought until they wore themselves out – and physically and mentally exhausted, I picked myself up, put the scissors away, wiped my face, and crawled up the stairs.

I’m doing everything I can right now. And I need to know when it will get better? I hurt every day. And tonight, I curl up in my chair, with a heating pad on my hips, wrapped in a blanket…feeling the darkness fall upon me. It will get better soon, right DT? Because it’s not that late here and I feel it…and it hurts…

Please, sit with me tonight? Because I am small and frightened…. Please? Sit with me and hold me…