Fiery Pen

My mind has been completely hijacked. As usual, by itself.

I have had body dysmorphia and an eating disorder since probably the late 90s. Hell, they were standard issue being raised back then. But it all masked very nicely under being “healthy” or “losing weight”. I even went to get treatment for it years ago and managed to run the therapy sessions. I am so painfully high functioning with it that it took going completely bald for it to break me.

And it has broken me. It has taken over my mind in a way it never had opportunity before.

It feels like the past decade has been tagging one physical suffering for the next. I had a miserable pregnancy, rough birth, and terrible recovery that ate a couple years. Then I tore my hip, which took over two years to just get properly treated. I had a major surgery, and the fix only lasted a few months. Then I got sick. With whatever all this has been.

As that (allegedly) recedes, it leaves me feeling a bit like a broken husk.

My appearance has always been a source of fixation and distortion, creating a rift between my sense of self and physical vessel. It never looked how I wanted (not that it could with my cracked lens), so I hated it. Now, as my body has literally turned on me and itself, it feels like it is all backlash from the years of abuse I delivered to my flesh.

The health details and symptoms and side effects are incidental. Things have been managed enough to alleviate the daily misery and anxiety, leaving me in the aftermath. Better but not good. Between survive and thrive. Relieved enough to focus on the undesirable and annoying.

My eating disorder, my dysmorphia had been flowing like a current all along. I was aware of it, but no one else needed to be. It was pacified with enough restriction, dieting, starving, and compulsive exercise. I never realized how deep it ran until I was staring at a bald gremlin in the mirror, until my body dissolved into foreign landscape.

My body does not feel like mine. Ironic, since I always drew such an illusory line between myself and it. It does not look, feel, or function like mine. No longer in the killing me way but in a way that constantly grates on my nerves. I feel every thread in my clothes, every fold in my skin, every ache in my joints.

I feel consistently and constantly uncomfortable.

And with that static in my brain, I can’t think of much else. My body feels like a sinking ship. It feels like the water is rising, cresting my chin, flirting with my mouth, and I am about to be suffocated by my own flesh. And my mind is compelled to catalog and broadcast that in real time every moment of every day.

I want to work. I want to write. I want to experience. I want to escape. But my mind has been completely hijacked by these relentless sensations.

So I am working on it in specialized therapy. Therapy I could have used 10-20 years ago. I’m not new to therapy or treatment. I know how this works. As we trench up these pervasive, deep rooted, dusty issues, their true form and extent are revealed. The carefully constructed walls and masks are revoked, and it all get so much worse. The monster feels untamed and bigger than ever.

But that is the only way to actually deal with and change it.

I haven’t had to do a full, retrospective unpacking since my bipolar diagnosis over two decades ago. I have been spoiled into complacency, coasting by on functionality. Opening these wounds has me vulnerable, insecure, off balance. That fucked up, lost kid again.

I’m old enough to know THIS TOO SHALL PASS is the truest thing someone can say about life. But I’m also dumb enough to forget it every time the situation swallows me. Last year, I was barely struggling through. I would have given anything to get this far. Pragmatically, I can understand this is another step, another transitory thing. Yet my emotions mire me in the suffering.

I want my life back. I want my mind back. I want to reclaim all the space this is taking in me. Even if it’s just enough to get lost back in my stories again.

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies