XX Trauma

[Part I: Why post this now?]

These first weeks of March 2025 have been good. I’ve had a few low moments, but mostly I have felt okay, and sometimes better than just ok. It is nice to go to bed expecting to wake up in a positive frame of mind the next day. I am compelled to add, of course, that I could easily wake up feeling like shit tomorrow. But that doesn’t seem as likely to me anymore.

An interesting aspect of my depression is that when I am feeling bad, it seems like I have always felt bad in the past and I always will in the future. I know, with the rational part of my mind, that this is not true. But it feels true nonetheless.

On the other hand, when I feel better I also feel more sane, and it is difficult to remember exactly how bad things were and why those types of thoughts were so convincing. Which is a blessing, mostly.

This makes writing about my depression a little tricky. If I write while I am thoroughly depressed I have no perspective. If I write when I am feeling a little better I risk tumbling down the steps into the dark basement again. But if I wait too long, I won’t be able to reconstruct my mood and my thoughts accurately anymore.

So I am going to relate some of the worst things that have played out in my head over the years in the hopes that my recovery is more stable this time and someday soon I will not be able to remember what it was like to think things like this.

[Part II: Trauma]

I have a lot of recurring thoughts that are like “inverted fantasies”–like daydreams, but instead of winning the lottery I am jumping off the roof or throwing myself in front of a car. I replay these scenarios over and over in my mind obsessively. I know I shouldn’t but I can’t stop myself. I think it is my version of self-harm: I am too paralyzed to get a razor blade and cut, so I slash myself inside my head.

One of the worst is from a decade or so ago–I fantasized about nailing my hand to the doorframe. I would lie in bed, staring at the ceiling, feeling nothing but pain, and imagine myself with a hammer in one hand driving a nail through the other. I wanted to film myself doing this, too. It was important that other people witness my agony. At some point I began thinking that I would not have the guts to go through with this, but I thought maybe if I drilled a hole in my hand with my power drill first… This thought would occupy me for hours, over a period longer than I want to think about.

There was a period of time when T would ask me what we should have for dinner and I would immediately think “why don’t I just take a shit on a plate and eat it?” It wasn’t really the thought itself that bothered me, it was the automatic way it would pop into my head, unasked for, as if on some level I really believed that was what I deserved.

I used to imagine tying tourniquets around my thighs and cutting off all the circulation to my legs. Eventually the flesh would die and have to be chopped off, and I would be in a wheelchair. Then I would be free from the weight of my responsibilities and other people’s expectations. Which mostly existed only in my head.

I think the self-mutilation fantasies are more damaging than the suicide rehearsals. With suicidal thoughts there is at least some element of kindness, of release, of freedom from pain. Thoughts of self-mutilation are just self-loathing visualized.

I often wonder if thoughts like this, and the virulent feelings of hate that accompany them, have traumatized me. That some of what I feel is akin to what is experienced by victims of abuse.

But what do you do when the person who has abused you is yourself?