Book Review vol. 2

I'm back with another review of a mental health memoir. I'm hoping that you like these posts as I have a shelf full of these books waiting for me to read. I've already managed to read more books in just over a month than I was able to read in the entirety of 2015. Depression has really affected my concentration levels, even when it comes to watching TV or flipping through a magazine. I tried to distract my mind with fiction books last year but I couldn't keep up with the plot. Whilst reading novels I'd end up spending an hour reading and re-reading the same two pages because the information just wasn't going into my head. I seem to be having more success with non-fiction, particularly these books written about personal experiences of depression. It might sound like a tough read, but they've really helped reinforce the message that I'm not alone in feeling the way I do.

This week's review is on 'The Devil Within' by Stephanie Merritt. This book covers several stages of Merritt's life, through the brutal bullying she experienced in school to the alien world of extravagance in her sixth form and through to how earlier problems effected her in her adult life. Merritt shows how much strength she had as a teenager. Initially she avoided confronting her bullies and sought refuge in some of the quiet parts of her school. Bullies target the strange, the abnormal, sometimes things we are deeply insecure about and also things we'd never noticed about ourselves. Merritt eventually realised that no matter how many physical changes she made to her appearance, the bullies wouldn't relent. Instead of letting them pick her apart she stood up to them and removed any power they once had. She could have left the school, it was an option at one point but she decided to tough it out until she could leave and progress to sixth form. It was when she started sixth form that problems started to arise. She found herself attending an all girls sixth form college, one in which a uniform of luxury labels were worn and a certain body image was present across the school. What initially began as a way of attempting to fit in whilst also improving her health, Merritt developed an eating disorder. Her parents thought that she was going through a faze and was claiming her independence through cooking separate meals from the family. When she didn't see the results she had hoped for, her diet became even more restrictive and her exercise regime became obsessive.

An interesting dynamic of this book is that she grew up in an Evangelical Christian community. This was something that she once embraced and enjoyed. As the church started to develop and turned towards new practises she became skeptical of the church. The adults of the community started undertaking exorcisms which involved speaking in tongues over someone writhing on the floor as the devil within them was extracted from them through their mouth. Her parents believed that she needed the help of a church counsellor for guidance with her 'difficult' period believing that she required an exorcism due to her acting out. I wasn't expecting to be able to get through this part of the book, I wasn't sure I'd be able to process the religious content. I was happily surprised to find it very interesting.

Merritt's memoir also discusses her experiences of loss, her own depression as well as the secret illness of a friend, alcoholism and depression during and after pregnancy. Anyone that has experienced eating disorders or alcohol dependency might find some of the content difficult to read and could be a trigger. Although I've never had a problem with alcohol I have had an eating disorder and found some of the writing to be a slight pull towards those practises again. If anyone is interested in reading this book but would like to avoid that content I will happily tell you which pages to avoid. The reflections upon her time being pregnant were particularly interesting to me. Although I'm not ready to start a family just yet, I have worried about my increased risk of developing depression with pregnancy. There aren't any tips and tricks provided to avoid it, but her account enabled me to think about the environment and support network needed to help mitigate any symptoms of depression whilst pregnant and after the baby is born.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I purchased it based on reviews on Amazon. From reading those reviews I knew that she discussed her issues with alcohol but I hadn't expected some of the other issues she dealt with in her life. I found her account of her life at university particularly helpful for my peace of mind, it seems that we encountered similar difficulties. As well as being a fantastic memoir of depression, this book is also an engaging coming of age story, one which most of us will be able to relate to in some ways.

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 Image from https://instagram.com/colourpopcosmetics/

 Image from https://instagram.com/colourpopcosmetics/

 I saw the images from Colour Pop Cosmetics a few weeks ago. Perhaps it's just my mind and vision that made me see something different. Usually make-up swatches are done on the back of the hand to show how the colours look against skin tones. Perhaps I was in some bad head space but it reminded me of something different. This isn't a bad thing I think if that's the intention (as mine was) and as a creator you are looking to produce a strong image, you've got it right there. I am sorry if this causes offence or provokes negative thoughts for anyone. I will now warn you that the following post is on the subject of self harm. I have been working on this post for months. I've created numerous drafts but was never entirely satisfied with the outcome. Unfortunately it took a relapse (last Saturday) for me to be able to create a balanced piece of writing on the subject; I have been both the outsider seeing the scars of self harmers and the participant. I have looked for too long and also been looked at by others. It is my hope that I've discussed the subject sensitively and hopefully it won't trigger any negative thoughts for those who have self harmed in the past or currently still do so. I know how damaging it can be to come across pieces of writing composed in the wrong way about self harm. I have refrained from going into detail on my experiences of self harm to avoid producing triggers or relapses. I hope that people can benefit from reading this. If you are concerned that you could be triggered, I'm sorry, but please try to scroll to the bottom of the post and find the 10 bullet points that I hope will be motivational and inspire happy thoughts.

Self harm isn't an easy topic to talk about, it's a complex thing to experience and to fathom. Some people may believe that self harm is limited to a certain group of people, wrong. These people may also believe there is only one method of self harm, also wrong. It was something that was associated as being "emo" whilst I was in high school (six years ago), the words "depression" "depressed and "depressing" were used colloquially; used casually and didn't mean that those people were genuinely depressed. When I was 16/17 years old I wasn't entirely sure what it meant to be depressed, I knew that I was sad, alone and feeling empty. Somehow I manage to walk around and muddle through life at that time, but at the time I felt like an empty shell, I allowed people to talk to me in ways that aren't acceptable, I was treated badly and I just took it. I didn't process what was happening, the damage had already been done prior to this, they'd beaten me into submission with their words, shunning and not allowing me to pass by without acknowledging them in some way. The damage was done, they'd hit a home run but weren't satisfied with that, they continued to swing away and the balls just bounced off my empty shell.

After a while, I became desperate to feel something. I had felt a lot of pain before, but now it couldn't touch me. I was invincible or indestructible, I was scared that I didn't feel human any more and just didn't feel anything. The Internet is a fantastic resource for many things, in an emergency we can look up how to put a spare tyre on our cars when one is flat, we can search for how to remove certain stains when our parents aren't available to help us with their wealth of knowledge. It's a fantastic resource, but in the hands of someone feeling depressed and desperate to feel some kind of emotion it can become a dangerous tool. I went searching for answers about what was happening to me, why did I feel like an empty shell? How could I feel something again? Type a question into Google or any other search engine and an enormous amount of information is churned out in front of you. I managed to find myself on a website that was essentially a wordy tutorial of ways to harm myself. If I couldn't feel anything why not inflict pain upon myself to feel?

I'll never provide exact details of what I did to myself, partly because I never want anyone to stumble across this blog and see it as a tutorial to harm themselves, I don't want to became part of that system I discovered. It's also a very private thing to go through, I do get asked questions about it and sometimes I will begrudgingly provide some answers to reassure people. Self harm can occur for a variety of reasons. People harm themselves because they desire to feel pain, some people enjoy the pain and crave it, others use it as a form of punishment for things they've done or failed to do. It's associated with a variety of health problems including (but not limited to) depression, anxiety and eating disorders. I self harmed for a combination of reasons, mostly because I longed to feel something, but also as a form of punishment. Strangely enough I punished myself for thinking certain things about myself, the depression was whispering in my ear and more often that not I believed the degrading things it churned out in my mind. Sometimes I felt the need to combat these negative thoughts by punishing the dark monster of depression, its words cut me deep. I inflicted pain upon myself and subsequently said 'monster', and it would go away for a time. I was temporarily slaying the beast.

When I am in that mind frame it's difficult to think good things about myself, I am the queen of put downs for myself. Not a title anyone should strive to achieve. I've struggled to believe that I deserve happiness, friends,  or a future. I struggle to accept compliments because of the hate and put downs I was pelted with by bullies. Perhaps the voice of the dreary dark monster is the bully or at least echoes the voices of those bullies. Do they now exist within me? As is struggle to be kind to myself I find it hard to follow my own advice. A very wise person told me to write down things I'd say to someone who had self harmed so I present you with those musings:

1. Don't listen to the people that say you're doing it for attention. 
2. I know you are hurting right now, but you are strong.
3. When you are ready to do so, make sure that you take care of your wounds, wash them, pop on a plaster if need be (a super awesome colourful one if you can) and carry on. 
4. If anyone asks about the plasters just say a) its an awesome plaster, why wouldn't I wear it? b) tell them the truth about whats its covering, c) say you scraped yourself on a tree branch or make up some badass war-wound story and be the legend you deserve to be known as!
5. They aren't really staring at you, your brain and the illness is making you a wee bit paranoid and wants you to hurt some more. DON'T allow it to!
6. Perhaps they are staring, or they've drifted off into a day dream and their gaze just so happened to rest upon your badass plasters. 
7. If they genuinely are staring and you feel confident enough give THEM the look up and down, "yeah, what you looking at punk?".
8. It's not a sign of weakness, you are not weak. Yes you harmed yourself and I'm sorry that you felt so badly and that this happened to you. I think you are strong, you may have been sad, angry, desperate but you didn't try the alternative. You were so determined to feel something, you are determined to live and to survive this. 
9. Cuts and bruises will fade, the biggest wound of all would be if we lost you. 
10. Wear your scars with pride, you survived, you've healed and you've defeated.