The Divine Feminine

I didn't go to Yemaya Festival this weekend to reconnect with my feminine side, I went to a bush doof, as usual, to dance. But the universe had other plans for me.

Adorned with feminine colours, designs, shapes and symbols, Yemaya was representative of the mother goddess of the ocean, the divine feminine. I like to look at the divine feminine at its core aspect - Yin.

Yin is feminine, water, earth, soft, night, dark, shadow, passive, receiving, yielding, gentle, slow, consuming, cold.

In contrast, I am a rather yang person. I am very upbeat, extroverted, bright, bubbly and energetic. I like to control, and I am stubborn and unmoving, unlike the soft, accepting and allowing qualities of the feminine.

But this weekend at Yemaya has changed how I use feminine energy in my life, and it all happened in an extraordinary didgeridoo healing session.

At 7pm on the Saturday night, our group was pretty high and we were in the process of figuring out what we all wanted to do (A mighty task while on LSD). I tried to dance at my usual favourite place at a bush doof, the main stage, with high energy psychedelic trance booming from the speakers. But after a few minutes by myself, I wanted to go back to my friends. 

My best friend declared that she would be attending a didge healing session at 8pm. I'd never participated in the healing spaces at a bush doof before, and was keen to try it out.

We entered the space a bit early to settle in before the healing. It was a large dome-like space, with pink silk sheets drooped from the middle of a ceiling, where a crystal chandelier hung like the crown jewel. I had seen a vagina sculpture in crystal healing space a bit earlier, and noted again the vagina-reminiscent decor.

To tell you the truth, this vagina stuff was quite confronting for me, even as a female (I wonder how my male friends took all of this in). It wasn't until later that I realized that our culture shames female genitalia, and this is why it was so confronting to see a vagina sculpture blatantly staring me in the face.

Despite this, the warm pink sheets and the mood-lit space were highly inviting. There were people snuggled amongst blankets and pillow, with my friend smack bang in the middle. Feeling like a deer caught in headlights, thanks to the overemphasizing effects of lysergic acid, I went straight over and sat with her.

There was a kind of open-mic thing going on, and a young dreadlocked woman named Megan came to sit up at the mic to share her poetry. I immediately thought that this was an amazingly brave thing to do, to open yourself up to a bunch of strangers and trust they would pay you respect. (And that they did, which is a wonderful thing about bush doofs.) Megan, with a strong spoken word and conviction, proceeded to read us multiple poems that are all beautifully blended in my memory, exposing her life with themes of womanhood, children, love, heartbreak, and the body. One that touched me in particular was about fat on the body. I have always hated my stomach fat, wishing it wasn't there, and at the end of the poem she encouraged us, with her soft, kind voice, to touch that problem part of our bodies, and tell it we love it. Light giggles echoed as the room filled with love for our bodies. And when I gently held my stomach and told it I loved it, unlike the other times I have tried, this time I actually meant it.

Megan had set the scene for the healing with her poetry, uniting the room with laughter and love. There was a sense of solidarity within the space as the didgeridoo healing man began to set up. We lay down with our heads on pillows, and a beautiful stranger covered my friend and I with a blanket. The healing ceremony started with a light drumming beat to ground the energies. And as I closed my eyes, the the man said "Let yourself fall into the earth"...

My breath flowing out let me fall deeper and deeper. I was restless at first, trying to relax to the abrasive sounds of the healing didge, which were unlike the more melodic sounds we usually hear from Aboriginal educators who come to schools and cultural centres. I kept opening my eyes to make sure I was still in the room, and my friends were still there. My closed eye visuals were confusing and full of colour. But after a while, I was deep within myself. Deeper than I had ever been before. My breathing was so slow, and with every breath, I felt my body let go of tension. And after the bodily tension was gone, my breathing was penetrating my very inner layer. My whole being was opened by my breath, my inner self expanding and expanding. I was seeing and feeling places so deep within my self that I was sure would take YEARS to access without the help of the LSD (which I like to think of as a spiritual lubricant). My breath finally reached a tiny red tent like structure right at the middle of my being. I was sure this was me, hiding away in there. By now, I had forgotten I was even on LSD, or that I was at yemaya festival, or that there was time. I was now in the deepest meditative state I had ever experienced.

It was about now that the didgeridoo sounds "clicked" into my body. I had started letting go of control and trusting, and my deep breathing had allowed the sound to enter my being and start healing me. But to heal, you first need to get the dirt out. I started seeing all this dark stuff being scraped out of the particles that I consisted of. I was far more than a 3-dimensional matrix, a vast rainbow pixellated like structure that was woven into the space around me and beyond. The didge sounds were like rakes on my being. It kept raking and raking the soul crap into a pile, until a climax was reached and the sounds gently brought us back down, releasing it all, and bringing us back for another round. I surrendered to the sounds which were now making my body arch and twitch, and my breathing got faster as the energy rushed through me and whirlpooled out, taking all the stagnant stuff with it. My gut even churned as if the didge was cleaning out my physical body! I had never experienced healing like this before. When doing more gentle, subtle healing in my old psychic development class, we were told that stuff would come up for us as it was released, but this was like everything was released through me at once. It was super intensive, and there was no denying that it was real.

All of this was uncomfortable at first, I had never experienced anything like this before, nor trusted anything to come so far into my being. I hadn't even seen this much of me before! My body is so much more than anything I could have ever dreamed of. On the very inside, it is as big as the sky, and all of this is contained deep deep deep inside the very center of me. But I never looked! We're always too scared to look, afraid of who we are and afraid of what we might discover. But by letting go and relaxing everything, I was able to peek in, and eventually, let the healing right into me at a deep soul level. I could feel the transformation happening. The didgeridoo reached right into my soul and pulled out chunks of darkness like they were thorns embedded deep into the skin. Now that I had gotten used to it, and I could literally see how beneficial this was for me, I could have stayed there for hours. But eventually I had to get up.

I got up way too fast, like when your alarm wrenches you out of a super deep sleep. I pulled myself out of the deepest parts of me, stood up, literally stumbled out of the healing space, disoriented, and was gasping from the intensity of the healing. It took me a while to be able to think clearly again but the most amazing thing I was feeling that I was VERY grounded. I was right into my body, I could feel every part of it and could feel my feet on the ground. This is a huge deal for me, as a double Aquarius who spends most of her time in her head and the sky. I was stomping my feet on the ground like it was the best feeling ever! And it was - I have NEVER felt to connected to my body, and the earth beneath it. Just, wow.

I was pretty spent and we all wanted to chill away from the intense energies of the party, so we all went back to our campsite. To my surprise, it was only 10pm. My estimate at this point was 3am or 4am. Long story short, I stayed up all night chatting with my dearest friends. I had a sleep, and in the morning, as I walked into the bush, the sun greeted me. I felt it all over my skin, bathing me in warmth. I walked, feeling all the movement in my legs and feeling the solid earth beneath my boots. I took my sweet time, gently stretching in the morning sunlight. So much peace filled me in all the places I had discovered the night before, in all the places that darkness had been removed from. I felt bigger, expansive, and deeply relaxed.

Later that day, I tried to sleep again. It didn't work, so I spent a good couple of hours just lying on my back in my tent, breathing deeply and stretching. I took my time that I never had before, and I stretched my body like I never had before, feeling every stretch as deep as it went, and observing how my body thanked me for it, for taking my time.

That's what I learnt at Yemaya. To take my time, like Yin, like the feminine, which is slow, and gentle, and soft. I learnt how to fully embrace myself, like a loving mother; embracing my body, my whole being, and embracing the chance to heal.
I learnt to yield, to be vulnerable, to let go, accept and receive. Like the vagina yields to the male, yield to the present moment; accept it, embrace it. Let yourself breathe, let yourself relax, and slow down.
Breathing IS acceptance! The deeper the breath, the deeper the acceptance. Slow down, breathe, and accept every part of yourself. Accepting is connecting... Slow down, breathe, and connect to your body and to the Earth. Allow yourself to feel, and be vulnerable, even though it is scary... Allow yourself to receive love and healing with grace, even though it is scary... Allow yourself to let go of control, even though it is scary!

When you let go, when you become soft, when you embrace all that is Yin, the feminine, you literally open yourself up to possibilities, knowledge, love and peace.

You open yourself up to YOU.

Sin and forgiveness

If you take the offical version of God to be true, then when you confess, you are confessing to a loving deity who will immediately release you and fill you with forgiveness. If you take God as I described it in my last post, then when you confess, you are admitting to the core of your being that you did something wrong. This is how I confess. I feel the guilt heavy in my gut, and I say to myself with no words, "alright, I did the wrong thing.. what now?"

The difficult thing about my type of confession is that it takes work to be forgiven. First you have to truly recognize and feel what you have done. Then you have to find the strength and love to let go of that feeling. You don't just say sorry and then your remorse is magically scooped up by the light and taken away. You have to fight your way past the ego, and the ego does not forgive. It wants you to suffer so you remember the pain you have caused yourself and others. This may be a protection mechanism, but it only holds you back from liberating yourself. Once you access the God self, the part of you that is everything, the part of you that loves you and knows you are worth unconditional love, you can forgive yourself and you can can finally let go of the past. You are freed from the pain by forgiveness, but you'll never forget that lesson. The day you can remember the lesson and not feel the shame and misery is the day you have truly forgiven yourself.

The thing about this is, how would psychopaths confess, if they don't feel deeply for what they have done? If they can't confess, they can't be forgiven. In my opinion, psychopaths, who have different brain structures in the areas of emotion and empathy, are the furthest removed people from their true selves. They are so far removed that they cannot even recognize when they have hurt another being, a being who in truth has always been part of them. They are so far removed that they would not ever be able to find a true and lasting love for themselves or anyone else. I wonder how a spiritual being could get so far away from themselves. I guess if you have had a parent with pain, or if your own life pain was so deep that it was unbearable to feel, then the ego would block out anything and everything to protect yourself. Even if it means blocking out your emotions, a release and expression of your energy. And the further they fall, the harder it is to feel again, and they become living demons; a human image of their dark, black hole energy. And you can see it in their eyes, the light has been extinguished.

I'm glad I'm not a psychopath, but I see why they exist. Feelings are hard to feel sometimes. Especially those of remorse and guilt. You can see why their ego protects them from it when you have felt it. I feel terribly guilty for a lot of things I have done, and somehow cannot find it within me to forgive myself for some of them. Maybe it is because I have not received forgiveness from the other person or being. I feel if they are still hurting then I cannot forgive myself. But being attached to their pain isn't doing me any favors. If anything it is probably binding them to their own pain at a deeper level. Still doesn't help, it is like my mind thinks I need to be punished.

Now that I think about it that is such a common mentality in western society... we want to see people suffer for what they have done. We see it as justice. We say "they deserve it". And the reason we can't forgive ourselves is because we treat ourselves the same as we treat others. Deep down we think we need to suffer for the pain we have caused others, rather than being loved and forgiven. Maybe the reason I beat myself up so much is because that's what I've been taught is right.

That is actually pretty messed up.
I guess that's why Buddhism focuses so much on compassion; compassion and forgiveness for others will help us liberate ourselves from our own guilt.

I think it's time to exercise that long lost spiritual muscle, and learn to forgive myself.

Word vomit of illusion and love

I have been doing some thinking over the past week, after a bit of a stint in struggle street, and today the spark has come back in a big way.

Something terrible and unexpected happened to someone close to me, and it snapped me straight out of the illusion I'd gotten stuck in. That illusion is the material world. Yes it's here, and we have to live in it and survive in it, but its not the very essence of our being.

The fact that we are in this amazing universe for a fleeting amount of time makes us insignificant in the scheme of things, and that insignificance brings with it great freedom. We all live in a world where no one can tell us what to do or give us instructions on how to live life. We just somehow evolved here and no one can ever tell us why. So why do we let anyone else on earth control what we do? They don't know any better than we do how life should be. When eventually our whole earth ceases to exist no one is going to remember us. So why do we strive to make such an impression? Who do we do it for? Ourselves? Why do we feel we need to impress ourselves? Is it because we are our own inner judge? The only judge, the only 'god', that rules your life is you. Your intuition is that god part of you speaking to you in a language which isn't tangible and therefore not valued or not deemed 'real' by a materialist culture. In this culture (Alan Watts describes culture as an operating system- a great analogy), we use the 5 senses, mostly the eyes, to determine what is real. A physical, tangible reality. How do you define feeling in those terms? We can describe what feeling is like but there's no way to show another person exactly what you're feeling because it comes from within, not from an external source. So Materialist cultures value those external, easy to see and easy to believe things over internal things. They base our reality on the material realm, thinking that because its real, it must be the source of happiness. And of course god must be some tangible entity external and separate to your own self.

We have so many problems trusting that god self within because our cultures have us so focused on the external that we don't even think that inner self is real, in a sense. I know if I had a physical entity in front of me telling me 'yeah you can do it!' I would be way more inclined to believe it than the invisible inner self that I sometimes forget is even there because I can't see it, I can only feel it in a way that I can't be taught about. You're sposed to get to know it and trust it from the beginning but culture distracts us and we begin to distrust it because it has become unknown, a stranger. A lonely wail at the bottom of your being crying out for you to listen and be friends with it.

Your inner self, is kind to you. Be kind to your self and it can blossom like a friendship. It will be the kindest and most honest friend you can get, and you will find that you will never be alone. You will learn to love your self.

So right now I am hearing loud and clear instructions to go out and make a difference in the world. To unplug myself from this material world and open up to the reality that we are free and nothing lasts forever. There's no need to feel so attached to the physical world, because the end of you is the end of the illusion. There is no need to fear. We are all scared and that is more reason for us to connect with each other. We are so scared of people, but taking chances and risks with people can lead to some beautiful and magical life moments which would never be possible if we didn't trust that foreign stranger who offered to fix our bag at the airport, if we didn't take a chance to do something nice for someone that you don't even know, or if we didn't talk to each other about our feelings. But that part of us is ignored, and we are too scared to connect with others, we were never taught how. Its because no one knows!! Except for ourselves...we already know how to connect. Trust that inner want, the want that seems to terrifying to do but the most rewarding! And helps other people access that deep forgotten part of themselves too. Two awoken souls recognise each other immediately, its that feeling described as 'connection', which is really a re-connection. True reality is that we are all one and even though we are physically separated by our bodies, our soul connection is stitched together like a patchwork blanket in an invisible realm layered right over our environment. Don't ignore that fundamental part of reality. You can't ignore the physical part too, but don't take it so seriously, because it will not be the thing that brings you true happiness.

That's it for Stoned Saturdays.
I'm the rainbow lady, signing out for a good nights sleep.

Peace and love
<3

The body hate epidemic

Today I'd like to tall about something that really pisses me off. The normalisation of body hatred.

So many words are thrown around about how to have a 'better body', 'dream body', 'goal weight', 'flat stomach', 'thigh gap', 'toned abs', 'willpower', 'tight ass' ... I could go on forever. You know what all these things have in common?

1. They point to a certain body type (one that a minority of people have naturally)
2. They imply a need to obtain it
3. They say you can obtain it with certain products or regimes

Also... They are so widespread, that you would think that wanting these things is NORMAL!!

I'm here to tell you this is NOT normal. These diet fads, your low fat pre-packaged meals, your skinny teas, your boot camps, your 30-day challenges, your flab shaping underwear... All of these products are not designed to make you feel better about yourself or create a 'better you'! They're designed for the exact opposite.

Companies make money through a supply and demand system. Weight loss companies need to sell their products, as do makeup and clothing companies. So what can these companies do to increase their sales? Increase demand. And how do you increase demand? You make people feel like shit about themselves by creating an ideal that is so unachievable that rarely anyone will never get it, so everyone constantly comes to your product like its the holy grail and the one thing that will solve all their problems. This self hatred is created in a web of magazines, newspapers and celebrity culture, who profit from the advertisement of these products. NONE of these companies want you to feel good about yourself.

After all, why would anyone want to buy these things if they felt really good about themselves? They'd be happy with what they have already.

These products and phrases masquerade as a normal part of life but what they are really doing is propagating a dangerous eating-disorder mentality. You think you don't have some kind of eating/body dysmorphic disorder? Think again. If you are hopping from one of these products to the next, there is a high chance that you have fallen into a trap. If you think your problem is just that you don't have enough willpower, think again. You can use your existing willpower to get out of the hatred cycle, rather than thinking its something you're deficient in and need more of so you can beat your body into submission.

So how do you get out of it? Develop your mind to think in this broader perspective.

You have been given this one body for your whole life. The atoms in your body were created in the heart of a dying star millions of years ago. The first life form on earth came from within the earth itself, from a rock. There are an infinite amount of possibilities of things that could have gone wrong in evolution, and in the womb. And yet here we are, many years later, miraculously, with one life to live, in a fraction of time that will go unnoticed to the rest of the infinite universe.

So why are you hating on yourself? Your body is a gift from the earth, and you only have one lifetime to use it. Would you rather waste those years punishing this creation that you have been blessed with, or would you rather love, nurture and care for it in all its natural perfection, so it can work its best for you to help you walk, eat, sleep and live your life?

We only have one body and one chance. Don't waste it.

Highs and lows

So I had my first "bad" week this week. I decided to try and take pills for the first time since I went off my antidepressants. The partying was amazing and full of love but I have been paying for it all this week with a big trip right into a depression pit.

Of course it has been a terrible week full of crushing darkness but today I can finally see the light again. It has been a hell of a learning experience too. I think the most important thing I learnt was no matter what activities I'm doing, I need to remember to keep up everything else that is important in my lifestyle - mainly eating healthy and nourishing foods, and keeping my surroundings clutter free. It's one thing to mess with your brain chemistry, but it's entirely another to mess with your brain chemistry and throw all other coping mechanisms out the window. I am convinced my diet has played a huge part in how happy I've been recently... especially considering that I developed anxiety and depression around the time that I started skipping meals.

Of course the drugs played the main role in this scenario, throwing me off balance and unable to go home, hence the shitty diet. So I'm not so sure that I will be choosing to participate in such activities for a while. And when (inevitably) I decide to do so again, I will be mapping out a safety net and bringing a whole fridge of food with me to wherever it is I'll be.

So I've had an interesting insight about serotonin the past couple of weeks as well. I have noticed that I have become extremely sensitive in my emotions since my antidepressants have well and truly exited my system. Not just negative emotions, positive ones too. I feel more connected and emotionally responsive to cues. For example, when I see someone do something nice or someone gives me a compliment, I feel a pang of emotion. It's easy to shake off but it's like something has hit me right in the heart. I don't remember having this kind of thing ever in my life except for the brief euphoria period after I quit everyday pot smoking. Removing the smokescreen of pot is extremely similar to removing the bubble of antidepressants. I am a bare me. Life has gotten a lot more raw and real. It has been truly amazing.

So anyway, back to the serotonin, psychologists don't really know exactly how it works in the brain and in relation to mental illness... Antidepressants were discovered by accident- and because they elevated mood levels, the theory of mental illness became that it was caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain. Mainly serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. The most popular antidepressants target serotonin. Recently, I have come to disagree with this theory. It's my opinion that my own natural serotonin levels don't make me depressed, they make me more sensitive, and therefore more prone to depression. But also more prone to periods of intense gratitude and positive emotion. Higher levels of serotonin did NOT make me more "happy", they made me less emotional. Less creative. Less connected.

Serotonin is a complex thing. LSD affects serotonin and norepinephrine levels just like antidepressants, yet scientists are not sure why it affects our perception the way it does (it does not make me feel like I'm on antidepressants, that's for sure!) MDMA also affects serotonin but it again, affects moods differently to antidepressants. Antidepressants certainly didn't make me feel warm and fuzzy and creative! These drugs actually make me feel extremely connected and sensitive, the opposite of what higher serotonin levels have done to me when induced by antidepressants.... So serotonin is a bit crazy and we may never find out exactly what it does. But in the context of natural levels, I don't think that low levels necessarily mean someone is going to be depressed, and that high levels mean that someone is going to be happier. I do think though, that extreme levels outside the middle zone, such as the extreme low I had this week and the mania that I had when my antidepressant dose was too high, can make us very out of touch with our reality. As with everything, balance is the key.


So excuse me as I go and cry over an article about strangers doing nice things for each other... This feeling is why I will never go on antidepressants again even if it gets worse than this week did... and it most likely will at some point.


Peace

Progress

Before I start my next blog post, I feel that I should address the fact that my two last blog posts severely contradicted each other. All I can say about this is that it shows that even though I think I am fairly insightful, I still find it hard to distinguish between head and heart, and hard to recognise what I really need for myself. It also shows how you can find reasons for any point of view if you try hard enough!! Holding two opposing points of view is really tough and that's something I'm struggling with in my journey, as I am both spiritual and learning psychology. There are a lot of contradictions between my beliefs as a result of the influence of these domains in my life, but when I follow my heart and gut instinct rather than strictly follow the books, that's where the magic happens, and that's where I can learn new things and make an influence on the psychology field in my own way.

Anyway, so onward and forward. I am going really well off my anti-depressants. I have had two incidents in the past two weeks where my thoughts have overwhelmed me. One was at work, I was still training and someone called in sick so I had to man reception by myself. I tried to juggle many customers and phone calls at once while trying to find answers to questions I didn't know. I gave a old disabled man the wrong directions and he was very grumpy. Then my coworker got annoyed at me for doing something wrong and I just went in the back and cried. After that my coworker gave me a big talk on how I should say 'no' to people and do what feels right for me, so that was nice... so I learnt a lot that day, I learnt how to recognise when I'm getting stressed, to take time out to have a breathe even if it's really busy, and that I don't need to answer everything, it's fine to say 'I don't know!'

After this, nothing negative came up for a while, but I prepared myself because I knew that life was always going to bring a challenge. Then the other incident was just this week; I was tired after a couple of days of demanding work and my thoughts started to overwhelm me a bit. I got caught up in the storm of worry and started feeling depressed and frustrated at my closest friends. I knew it was irrational at the time but I'm sure most of you would know how hard it is to get yourself on the outside of a thought storm once you're stuck right in the middle! Anyway, I texted my friends and promptly dropped my phone in the toilet, so I never got my answer. This issue came up again the next morning while I was working for my mum, and I was on the verge of tears for a good hour and a half worrying about what I had imagined in my head about my friends. I got to the point where I was like - okay, what can I do about this. Then my brain started telling me that I was too upset, I should tell my mum and go home. I noticed that thinking this repeatedly was making me even more upset!! So I struggled for a bit until I found my way out - I told myself that my mind was telling me the 'I can't do it story' and that they were just words - words can't hurt me, and they certainly aren't always true. Once I got my head around that, I focused on why I was there that day, I was there to help my mum and my other coworkers out because they were short of staff. By changing my view of my thoughts and also feeling that this wasn't about me, it was about my care for my mum, the storm in my head quickly quietened. I had no thoughts on this for the rest of the day, and got on with my work as I usually would.

The thing that helped me the most with this situation was a book called "The Happiness Trap" by Russ Harris. It's based on a psychological therapy called ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), and it was worked for me soooo much better than CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy). I got given this book back in highschool as a reward for good marks. And this week it has saved my ass! I highly recommend this book. It's easy to understand and makes sense for everyday life. It make take a tad longer to be able to implement the skills if you haven't been learning mindfulness like I have for a while, but it is well worth the read. On that note, studying buddhist teachings is also an amazing resource. An app called "Radio Dharma" is a great resource if you can sit still and listen for an hour. I usually listen to it in the car!

So other than that everything has been quite smooth. I have continued with all my activities including yoga, kung fu and new meditation classes, have not missed a day of work and still haven't had a coffee in a month, and not even a puff of a cigarette for even longer. (As these substances raise the heart rate and in turn, increase anxiety). This is such a difference from how I handled my depression and anxiety years ago when I would have just stayed in bed and quit things at the first negative thought. Even though I let it overwhelm me a bit I have managed to maintain my base positive attitude and enjoy most of the day, every day! Boo-yah!!

I haven't yet met up with my psychologist, but I'm so excited to tell her how I'm going and what skills have been helping :)

Thanks for reading, if you have any questions please shoot me a comment or a facebook message (if you know who I am!)


Peace

Four days

 **WARNING- may be triggering: contains ED themes**

A few years ago around the same time of year, a girl sat in her lounge room with her laptop open. Supposedly, she was doing homework, at least that's what her parents thought. She wanted to do it, but she couldn't focus. Hundreds of thoughts were distracting her, plaguing her mind. They never stopped, she was at their mercy. They always told her where to direct her time and energy, and today wasn't any different. She was to surf the web for 'thinspiration', determined that it would inspire her not to eat. She was to chat to other people in an online forum, to gain tips, tricks and insights into how to be that perfect person she had wanted to be for a few years now. Her parents were about to leave the house. This conjured up a few feelings, the main two being relief and anxiety. Relief came at the thought that she would no longer have to pretend to be so well together; for at least a few hours, she could indulge in her fantasies in peace and without fear of being discovered. Anxiety came stronger, as she knew this is where she could lose control. With no one around, she couldn't trust herself not to let loose on all the forbidden, delicious foods in the house. 

So close to the kitchen. 
Her heart raced. Time stopped. No longer fully focused on her pictures of girls full of bones, her eyes darted towards the fridge. She knew what was in there, she looked in there obsessively whenever she had the chance. "Just one piece of cake, and then no more eating for the rest of the day."
"It'll be worth it."
Anything to make the panic feeling go away.

Half an hour later, I'm on the floor, crying, wailing. What have I done? The world was ending. The cake was finished. I was devastated. I looked down, I saw a huge, wad of fat body below me.
The thoughts made me cry so hard I felt sick.
"You're worthless. Ugly. Stupid. Disgusting. Vile. Fat. Putrid. Fucking gross bitch."
"Get rid of it. QUICKLY!!!"
The voices never stopped until I did what they told me to do. 

****

A few years ago, my life was hell, and I was my own worst enemy. Everything was fine on the outside. I had a beautiful family who were well off, lived in a beautiful house, had a boyfriend who loved me... But I was the unhappiest I have ever been. That was the year that I decided I needed to go on antidepressants... and after 5 years, this is the week that I have started my journey without them, for good.

I have been thinking about this for a while, and I tried it a few times without really thinking of the ramifications. Needless to say, it didn't work, and I went straight back on them. None of the eating and body image problems had been present for a long time, but the depression and anxiety lingered around me like a black fog. But this time I am prepared to face my dark side, and I am prepared for any negative feelings that may come my way. For so long I have been scared of myself, scared of the thoughts I might have when I'm alone. But in the past couple of years I have learnt to love myself and cut myself a bit more slack. I'm far from perfecting this self-love, but I am so far from how I used to be. I feel like I am a different person now.

My main concern about going off my medication is that the person I have become is not the real me... What if I become a different person... what if people notice? What if I'm not as positive? What if my sense of humor is different? What if I'm not as outgoing?.... But then I do remember a time about 8 years ago, before I got sucked into my own darkness, when I was a happy-go-lucky, slightly naiive, fun-loving crazy chick. The world was my oyster. And then life happened.

Well now it's time for me to reclaim my life. I started tapering off my meds 4 days ago and although there's not a dramatic difference, I'm feeling more... alive. I'm feeling more me. I feel like a veil is slowly lifting and that more things are reaching me. I'm thinking more, but thinking and feeling slightly more deeply. I have had a tiny bit of anxiety, probably because I'm anticipating it, but I am slowly realizing that I don't need to let feelings affect me and control my life. I need to accept them and let them be, stop struggling to make them go away so I can get on with the important things in my life. I need to make peace with all of me, not just the pretty parts, but the ugly as well.

So I bid adieu to Lovan, or Prozac as it's called in America. It actually really helped me, at a time when I felt I was out of my own control. Under it's thought-numbing effects, I was able to regain a sense of control with my eating patterns, I was able to complete year 12 with a pretty high ENTER score, I was able to gain some peace in my life without being overwhelmed with vicious circles of thoughts and feelings interrupting my everyday experience. I was able to step out of my head and into the world. So it did help me, but I'm no longer that girl who hated herself and everything around her. I'm now someone who experiences the absolute love that binds this universe together, and who appreciates life for what it is. So it's time to let go of the security blanket and plunge into the unknown.

I still have a long way to go, so, here's to more growing.
I still have another week before I'm completely med-free, so watch this space, I'm going well so far, and I'm excited to see what changes and challenges it may bring :)