Elisabeth Writing

TW: addiction, suicide, suicidal ideation, mental health.

As a massage therapist, I see a lot of people. And I like to think I make their day a little more bright and a little less painful. But my favorite part of the job isn’t the actual massage; it’s when my clients feel they can open up to me. In the past week and a half I’ve had 4 clients open up to me about addiction, mental health, and grief. The interesting thing is, they don’t know anything about my story or who I am. They don’t know that I’m bipolar 1, that I’m a recovering alcoholic, and that I lost my dad almost 4 years ago. I wonder if they sense it about me, if I wear my pain like a pendant. Sunflower petals wilting on my sleeve, my heart tattered. Don’t worry, I’ll fix it with the snapdragons and foxglove in the gardens, and I’ll be ok.

I’m grateful for the things I’ve gone through, if only to listen to someone and be able to offer my own thoughts and resources. Some of these stories bring me to my knees. Yesterday when a client began to cry, I cried with them. I wanted to bring my wand, my athame and my power to fix the story, cure the sorrow, wipe away the fear and terror with a flick of glitter and magick.

But the world doesn’t work like that. I wish it did. I’d be a badass faerie godmother.

Since I can’t, let me talk about my own story. I struggled with depression as a child, and the bullying only made it worse. I still remember packing my tiny little backpack and “running away” to the woods across the street from my childhood home in Florida. I sat among the jungle-like fauna, my lips trembling and my eyes welling with tears. I was in plain sight. I just wanted to see that someone would notice if I was gone, that someone would care. My parents did, of course. I think my dad picked me up in his strong arms and my mom stroked my hair and made peanut butter fudge. I was blessed with wonderful parents and a sister who was a bright light (though at the time and up until our late teens we vacillated between the best of friends and the worst of enemies). I’ve always been a runner. Running from my problems, running from my addiction, running from love – but I don’t want to run anymore.

I’m privileged and I’ll never argue that. My family is idyllic despite some hardships and trauma of my own. I was brought up with a family who let me stretch my wings, who encouraged me to write and talk about the Fey in the gardens, who listened to me when I spoke about the Darkness that sometimes took over every waking moment. Sometimes I couldn’t see the stars, and so they cut some out for me and pasted them on my ceiling. If you’ve ever suffered from depression, I’m sure you can understand how in those black moments, in those dark nights of the soul, you wonder if you’ll ever see the light again. And no, this isn’t me exaggerating for better writing… at times, I really did believe that I would never get away from the crippling pain of that shadow world. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to be.

And one day I found a way to numb the pain. Not only to numb the pain, but also to a way to make me less shy, more free, more alive! — Or so I thought, anyway. Looking back, it’s easier to see that that was certainly not the case. I smoked pot and / or drank until the world tilted and turned in a pleasant way, until magic seemed like it was fizzing in my veins. In my eyes it was beautiful. In my eyes I was beautiful. None of that was true, not really. It was so easy to whitewash the times I threw up in someone’s yard, or woke up not knowing where I was, or the times my things were stolen from me (so many times). I didn’t care about the people I hurt. I didn’t care that I kept hurting them. I can say I did, but I clearly didn’t because I didn’t stop. I didn’t stop even when they begged me. I was an alcoholic by the time I hit 17. Sometimes I wondered why I just couldn’t stop? What was wrong with me? Was I so weak? And then I’d drown those thoughts with Jack Daniels, burning away the pain and the shame until it burnt holes in me.

I insisted from the time I was 15 that I had bipolar disorder, but it was nearly impossible to get a diagnoses at that age because I was a teenager: so many raging hormones running wild within my youthful body. To be honest, I loved the manic episodes… usually. I couldn’t stop talking, I was bursting with ideas and creativity, and who needed sleep anyway? I wrote pages of poetry and stories, forgoing the sandman and his dreamland. Even as the skin beneath my eyes grew thin and purple, even as I began to count the ribs that now showed, even as I tore the house apart for one single journal and scared my friends and family, I held onto those brief and fleeting highs. This was the real me. This! This wild and free faerie girl. Wasn’t it? Wasn’t she?

I lost a love that meant the world to me. He begged me to stop, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was an addict, and I wasn’t ready to stop. I had a problem. I knew it. When I burnt my leg and had to run home in shame, I realized I had to try to stop drinking. I had to try. I made it 30 days without drinking that first time. When my dad was diagnosed with cancer, though, I threw my newly found sobriety out the window. I took the bottle from my friend on that warm summer evening. I drank until the fear of his mortality seemed to disappear, hidden beneath thick gauze fabric, until I could only see the silhouette of my fear. And then, I drank until I passed out.

It took 2 years. 2 fucking years of pain and hell. It took watching my father shrink into skin and bones. It took sobbing with my mother in the car time and time again. It took hearing that fucking feeding tube beeping all night, a reminder that the cancer had almost won. It took losing my friends, losing love, losing myself. It took looking out at a bridge and the deep waters below, and wondering how long it would take to die if I just angled my car a little to the right and let myself free fall. It took a fateful night, pills, and a suicide attempt. It took seeing the anger in my father’s eyes, that I would throw my own life away when he had fought so hard to keep his.

I was put on suicide watch and I called off of work. Mom and I got Indian food and I tried not to weep into my curry. Don’t you understand that when you get to that point, you think you’re doing everyone a favor? Don’t you understand that you feel you’ve become such a burden, and that their life will be easier without you? Don’t you understand that I was living in Hell? Don’t you understand that I was drowning in all that melancholy and numbness, inky pools dragging me down until I couldn’t even see the stars my family had lovingly pasted to my ceiling? Don’t you understand that I would have traded my life and my health for my dad’s because I wasn’t fucking worthy? I went to AA the next day, at everyone’s insistence. I give it to my psychiatrist Dr.Jammu. She essentially blackmailed me with my fear of abandonment to get me to that first AA meeting. I never would have gone without her. My mom took me the next day. The first time I held the “big book” with all those numbers and names, I felt that there was true acceptance among those women. And I met my sponsor, after my mom dragged me over and forced me to ask if she’d be mine. I wouldn’t be here without my friends, family, AA, and my psychiatrist

I’ve been sober for 11 years but I’m still healing. I still hurt the people I love sometimes, despite my best efforts at becoming the best version of myself. I ran headfirst into bad decisions, and fell into trauma-bond arms like I was seeking another high, another addiction. I sliced off little pieces of myself and stitched on photos of Instagram influencers and people who had their shit together. I hoped no one would notice that I still felt like I was dying inside, sometimes. I will struggle with this darkness my entire life. My healing will never be over. I don’t think anyone should ever give up on healing. But the difference now is, I have loved ones who hold me accountable. My Fey guides, Cernunnos and Venus will call to me using the tarot cards or pink feathers. My life and my pain has a purpose. What that purpose is, I don’t know, but I know it has to mean something.

These days I meditate in front of my altar, snuggle with my dog, and write the pain into words. These days I put crystals in the windowsills and talk to the Fey and the ghosts in my apartment. These days these ghosts are spirits and not splintered off slivers of who I once was. These days I practice magick and invoke the goddess, make little satchels for my loved ones, jars of hope, or freezer bags filled with ink and red string. These days I hug my friends, loved ones, and sometimes my clients. I hold them tight enough that their broken pieces feel whole, even if only for a moment. Aren’t we all just petals and broken glass? Aren’t we all just looking for someone to love those shadows and floral murals? I am. And I love you. I love you. All of you. I’m here if you need to discuss your heartbreaks or your joy. I always will be.