sisters – a poem

~ Rosie Bogumil ~ 1 Comment

me and my sister never really got along. but we were civil enough until something happened that just fucked with my head a little too much. she didn’t ask me to be a bridesmaid at her wedding. and i was just really fucking hoping that she would use it as an opportunity to repair our relationship, because i had been working on myself a lot, and i had tried to be a better sister, but no. i can’t forgive her. since then, we basically haven’t spoken at all. it was really getting to me last night, and i cut a bit, but i also wrote a really angry poem about it. i don’t really know what to call it yet. some mix-up of the typical sayings about sisters. like instead of “sisters are flowers from the same garden” maybe like “two weeds from different plots” or something, i dunno. anyway, yay, a poem. i also intend to perform this one so if i can figure out how to upload a recording you might actually get to hear me read my poetry… but only if you don’t judge my bogan west aussie accent.

it was supposed to be the done thing

the sisterly thing

the siblings walking side by side sort of thing

the playing princesses in old bridesmaid’s dresses

acting like we actually got along sort of thing.

i had already picked a perfect gown

the burnt orange one

the one the colour of rust spots

or our collection of stolen ochre rocks.

C the synesthete had always said

my voice was rust coloured

so for once the inside of my head

would pair well with how i acted instead.

everything i know i learned from books

but books could never teach me

how to be a good sister,

they taught me only stigma.

they taught me to be ashamed of myself

so when you repeated the words

on that glossy white cover

the dangerous strokes of scarlet

warning of the lies

that would soon smother

my story into a smaller size

when you told me that it sounded just like me

and then i fucking evaporated

you never could quite connect the dots.

you never could quite remember things

the way that i could, the way that you should.

well K, i have a long fucking memory

and here are some of the things i remember.

after i got that detention

you mocked me for my bravery

without daring to ask

why i had needed saving

after you saw my scars

you stopped speaking to me

as if my shameful past

stopped our future trajectory

after buying a house in which

to start your family

you neglected to tell me

probably because you thought

i would be a shitty aunty.

well here’s the final touch

the cherry on top

that will seal away our sisterhood:

i will never remember your wedding.

and that’s probably because

i won’t

fucking

be there.

“you’re too unstable”

~ Rosie Bogumil ~ 3 Comments

someone in my professional supports finally had the balls to say what i’ve been waiting to hear: you are too unstable to be treated in the community. you need to be in hospital.

lol, okay.

but this is what i wanted right? this is what i’ve been waiting for someone, anyone to recognise. it’s taken sixteen suicide attempts for someone to finally fucking saying it.

“if you’ve spent 5 out of 7 days of the week in hospital – you shouldn’t be leaving the hospital”

and i don’t know how i feel about that. i’ve been saying for a long time that i’m sick of the constant emergency-discharge-emergency-overnightadmission-discharge-emergency cycle.

but

i still

don’t know

how i feel

about finally hearing what i’ve wanted to hear. it’s weird.

in my last post i said i was going to wait a little bit before bringing before the blogosphere the trials and tribulations of my latest crisis. it’s not very pretty. trigger warning. like, seriously, stop reading here if you find explicit mentions of self harm, suicide, hospital or police triggering.

so i can’t remember much of what happened. i mean, i can’t remember much most days anyway, which my psychiatrist thinks will improve when i start stimulants, since i show other signs of adhd and the one time i did try stimulants (as every uni student does), i couldn’t understand how other people were getting high. i had never felt more normal in my life. so yeah, i can’t remember much. it’s all snippets, chip chop all over the shop. chunks show up here and there. in between i know that things happened but i don’t know what. i don’t know if i blacked out or if i was asleep or if i was dissociating or if i just cut it from my mind. it could be any of those options.

i took a second insane overdose of a medication i will not name here. it didn’t land me in icu this time (because i didn’t tell them i took anything at the time whoops), but it did land me in restraints, again. so yeah, i had four (five? six?) police officers holding me down, one on each limb and one over my face cupping my neck because i bang my head when i’m distressed and they really don’t like when i do that it turns out. my friend C (she’s a legend. she agreed to be my emergency contact since i have such a weird and gross relationship with my parents) read to the bible from me as i tried to calm down and it really worked. god is good. but i still got sedated, cause i dunno, they know i have a history of running and shit? i wasn’t even trying to leave. like yeah, i was hurting myself, but i wasn’t not cooperating. whatever. it seems to be the new normal now. attempt suicide / self harm, police are called, police schedule me, police restrain and/or handcuff me, ambos arrive, ambos restrain and/or sedate me, ambos take me to hospital, hospital takes care of any physical damage and/or restrains and/or sedates me, i chat very briefly to someone about the mental damage, schedule is lifted, i am discharged from hospital.

repeat.

this was the first time i properly slit my wrists with the intention of killing myself – i have never self harmed and wanted to die before, because i study anatomy (ironic hey) and i know how deep you have to go to hit something important. but this time, for the second time, i did hit something important. and this time, for the first time, it was on purpose.

wow. i do not recommend. i mean, wow. there was a literal spray of blood.

so. much. fucking. blood.

you know when you have a leak in a hose? a small leak, the size of a pin, but the hose is under such high pressure that heaps of water comes bursting out? it was like that.

and fucking hell, can i not wait to it again.

rosie bogs loves her blog

peace out

she’s still alive, let’s take five

~ Rosie Bogumil ~ Leave a comment

if you saw my last post, you will know i attempted, for the sixteenth time, to take my own life. which is pretty fucked. i don’t want to put myself through it again, but you know how it is – i’m a borderline bitch *shrugs*

i do feel a need to vent about it, and i will, and this is my space for that sort of emotional vomit. for now though i need to let myself relax, apply for extensions for my two final essays of the semester, and focus on staying safe.

i’ll be back soon blogger buddies

primary herder of cats,

rosie bogs

x

number 16

~ Rosie Bogumil ~ 10 Comments

i survived suicide attempt 16 a few days ago. it was an almost lethal one apparently.

i was in icu for about 48 hours. had a seizure or two. was restrained multiple times – by the police, in handcuffs, in the ambulance, by six doctors and nurses, in a four point fabric one at my wrists and ankles to the side of the bed. honestly, i would rather be restrained than get sedated. droperidol is a fucking nightmare. it knocks me out for a while and hangs around in the system for a day or so too.

i still have some drugs left. not much. but some. i checked against the lethal blood concentration (like, the mg/L dose) and if i calculated it correctly this will be 300x as much. still not convinced i did calculate it correctly cause that seems like a massive difference.

but that’s good.

i need to go.

so tonight i am trying again. using a combination of a few things + alcohol (gotta get that central nervous system depression) and i will probably self harm for good measure. i hit a superficial artery by accident once so i know where to aim. i can see the wonky scar because it was a tricky place to suture. a few parallel cuts along that and i should be fine. i hope no one finds me. i have no commitments until monday when i am meant to see my doctor and then wednesday when i am supposed to see my psychiatrist. i have no work commitments until next weekend because for some reason, despite all the covid stuff and schools closed, nobody wants tutoring right now, which makes me feel pretty useless. so my next shift at the pharmacy (lol, i find it super ironic i work at a pharmacy actually) isn’t until next weekend, which is plenty of time, if for some reason this attempt is unsuccessful AGAIN and i get the mandatory 3 day invol stay.

they didn’t admit me to psych this time which was kinda weird, considering how lethal everybody was telling me the overdose was.

lol.

okay, bye.

for real this time.

if for some reason i survive tonight, i’ll try and update as soon as i can. some of you guys have been awesome supports for me. thanks for everything.

sketches from the psychiatric word

~ Rosie Bogumil ~ 3 Comments

disclaimer: this is a repost, from when i first became blogger in chief

i’m struggling to articulate the mess of my loud thoughts at the moment so i have decided to return to my most popular post of all time, sketches from the psychiatric ward. as you’ll read, this was the first time i had picked up a pencil for many years, and since then i have been doing more and more art. would you be interested in seeing more? leave me a comment below. so here they are, the first ever set of sketches i did to cope with my first ever stint on the psych ward.

they’re strangely aesthetically pleasing.

in 2017, i was admitted to three separate psych wards, for a total of six weeks. it might not seem like a lot, and sure i had 46 weeks of non-psych ward living, but these were my first three trips to the emergency (ever), and first three admissions to hospital for any reason. in my hometown back in regional western australia, it is much more difficult to seek help for depression, never mind bpd. if i had gone to my local emergency department before leaving geraldton, it is likely i would have been turned away, told to stop attention-seeking, or sent five hours away by ambulance to the nearest psychiatric facility in Perth.

IMG_2339

which is sad, because the psych ward is not what i had expected. And not what most people would expect, i imagine.

let’s talk about that third and final admission for the year. i was discharged exactly one month prior to writing this. i was suicidal, and this time i was going to do it. fortunately, i was already at the hospital for an eating disorder assessment, and was admitted from there, which made things simpler, and far less anxiety provoking.

being admitted involved a lot of tears, emotional exhaustion, silence, withdrawal, scratching (a form of self harm), anxiety, screaming (not from me), locked bathrooms (because of the bulimia), quiet conversations in side rooms, and meetings with various doctors, nurses, psychologists and occupational therapists. it wasn’t much fun, and hospital is certainly not a place I ever want to be, but it kept me safe. (and since then, further admissions have continued to keep me safe, as shitty as it is to have my rights removed as an involuntary patient, i can mostly see the benefits of hospital retrospectively). i gained a lot of insight into how my depression, borderline personality, self-harm, and eating disorder function and protect me.

the psych ward also involves a lot of dissociation, board games, card games, drinking tea, sharing with other patients, making good friends with other patients, watching television, doing sudokus and crosswards, and drawing.

drawing is my lifesaver. i hadn’t picked up a pencil or a canvas since year 10 of high school, because i channelled all my energy into the single most powerful distraction in my life – study (and i still rely on this distraction today). but now that i’ve picked up my pencils again, i can’t put them down.

these drawings are raw, they are real, and they illustrate my mind in it’s most distressed state. behold, sketches from a psychiatric ward.

they’re strangely aesthetically pleasing.

your primary herder of cats and struggling artist,

rosie bogs

i’m getting real tired of triggers

~ Rosie Bogumil ~ Leave a comment

most of my triggers escape me. the only ones which i know for kinda certain are the ones which produce panic attacks: social situations and loud noises and being out of control and public transport.

i returned to my parent’s property (temporarily) because i was feeling unsafe and couldn’t get the support i needed while covid is already limiting resources. i wasn’t able to get an admission at this time, because the wards – even the psych ward – is quite restricted right now.

so yeah i returned to western australia for a little bit. it reminded me of all the reasons why i left. the suppression i must actively must force upon my own personality, because i am different to the rest. the words i must choose carefully, selectively, lest some intelligence leaks out to be taken as an insult. under this roof, i am reminded of emotional abuse. i am reminded that i will never be good enough, that i will never quite be enough – thin enough, smart enough, pretty enough, relaxed enough, happy enough.

i am reminded of every single moment that i regret, that i chose to leave behind on the other side of the country for a reason. i am haunted here by photographs in which a gaunt face stares back at me, the traces of a depressed, skeletal being who clung to life with only tea and fruit and vegetables. there are remnants of my past scattered everywhere: in the furniture, the garden, the boxes of books that i can’t bear to sell.

a wall of suppression hides painful times in my mind, but the past is being clawed out from the mortar. it is gauged from my soul even as i watch, dissociating impassively, and re-live all the anguish hidden beneath the surface.

even just being here causes my eating disorder to flare up. i return to old habits. i cry into plates of carrots. i hurt myself the way i used to: secretly, shamefully. i hide the bloodied towels. i flush used dressings and bloodied guaze down the toilet.

i keep dreaming about my trauma. i can’t outrun these triggers, even in sleep.

they’re inescapable.

a long overdue update

~ Rosie Bogumil ~ 5 Comments

it’s been a few months. a lot has been happening. i need to vent, and this blog has become a safe space for me to do that, even if i have been away for a while. i don’t know if any of the friends i made through the blogosphere will see this, or even care if they do see it. certainly none of my friends irl give a shit about me right now, which is exactly why i am venting here, instead of screaming at them. also because it’s shitty of me to scream at other people when i can scream somewhat anonymously into an internet abyss instead.

i lost two very good friends. and i don’t mean lost to suicide, although honestly, that is still a likely possibility, in both their cases. more accurately, i hurt two very good friends, and they abandoned me. isn’t it ironic that i never thought i experienced abandonment issues until somebody decided to abandon me? only now am i truly a fully inducted borderline, i guess.

another central irony: i haven’t been this small since i was sixteen, but i have never felt fatter. my boss noticed my forearms cuts / scabs / scars so i’ve had to go back to slicing up my thighs. i forgot how fucking easy it was to shred thighs to pieces.

rediscovered the best self harm quote on the internet: they see no scars, they think she lies. but they check only her wrists, and never her thighs.

made my own best self harm quote on the internet: i didn’t need to be told / that people were afraid / of those of us / led astray by blades. / it’s not our fault / we say. we’ll see / better days. / we’re braver than those / who avert their gaze.

i became an ‘insta poet’ (ugh, so cringey). @rosiebeepoetry. i was paid to perform some pieces of my choice. i was honoured to have others share their stories with me, in exchange for sharing my own so publicly.

i had two (three? four? i think four since my last post) quite serious suicide attempts. spent some time in hospital. and somehow i am still existing, even if i hate it.

i started uni for 2020. it’s probably the only thing keeping me alive and out of hospital, at least for the next seven weeks until break.

i am unsafe tonight. i want to slice my stomach off. it’s probably the only way i will ever lose weight since i don’t have enough fucking self control to do it any other way apparently. i’m not sick enough to deserve treatment, whether in hospital or out. i’m not sad enough, irrational enough, hurt enough. i’m not cutting deepest enough. who gives a fuck if i slice up my thighs, but don’t reach anything subcutaneous? they say all self harm matters, but does it really? i was convinced that some cuts recently (practically scratches) should be seen to by my doctor (who is great, btw) and all i could think was that i was wasting her time and resources on something a fucking cat could have done. i hate this. i hate cutting but i love hurting myself. i hate anorexia but i love being in control. i hate binge eating but i love losing control. i hate being alive but i hate failed suicide attempts. i hate hospitals but i want help. i hate hospitals but i need help. i hate myself and so i need help.

i was also reminded of this quote by blythe baird: when people asked what i wanted to be when i grew up, i said

small.

//

your blogger in chief

rosie bogs

bright girl, dull future

~ Rosie Bogumil ~ 2 Comments

i used to be the girl who everybody talked about owning the world. the one who would be the boss of all her bullies one day. the girl who could be anything she wanted, with all the opportunities life could afford her. she could be a doctor, a vet, a physiotherapist, a surgeon, an astrophysicist, a chemist, a writer, an actress, a make-up artist, a painter… anything.

the world was my oyster, but the pearl never formed.

i think maybe, that the constant, relentless weight of expectation contributes more to my mental health than people may perhaps realise. it’s the sense of relief from receiving a high distinction, before realising that people will only ever focus on the 3% of mistakes, not the 97% of knowledge. i love learning. i love studying. i kinda even love exams, in a very nerdy way. but i despise the comparative competition.

it hurts.

for the 97% of my life to be ignored, and the 3% ostracised over and over again.

lately, i’ve given up on things. i still study, because who would i be if i wasn’t studying, but i no longer give a fuck about that 3%. it could be 50% for all i care. because i can be fucking anything. the world is my oyster and if it hasn’t formed yet then i will damn well force it to solidify.

i can sense the disappointment in the air. as if the bright girl has discarded her future for writing poetry, and body art, and self harm.

they think my future is dull but i don’t care. i have seen and done things in my short twenty years that most people will never experience in a lifetime (thankfully). i have been ridiculed, i have been restrained, and hospitalised against my will, and attempted suicide ten times, and am having a relapse with my casual love of self harm. and i’m trying to convince everyone that i’m struggling.

but all they see is the dull future. they refuse to see the bright girl down there. they would rather be disappointed than intervene. i have survived, and i am surviving, and i am slowly learning how to live and if that doesn’t make my future seem fucking bright then i don’t know if anything will.

This was supposed to be a city

synonymous with starting over.

Somewhere to reinvent myself

with ink and piercings and an undercut,

with the kinds of things a bright girl

would use to dull her future.

Not only did I remake myself,

I redesigned my body,

ploughing furrows over

the fertile flesh of thighs,

burning crop circles

into flammable forearms

and transforming wrists

into rivers and rivulets

running scarlet.

This was supposed to be a city

of embrace, of exploring

the beautiful brutality of being.

Somewhere to learn

that worth is not earned

with grades and blades

and perfection hunting,

with the kinds of things a bright girl

like me relies on to build her future.

Cuffed, battered, and bruised.

~ Rosie Bogumil ~ 3 Comments

As with the other times I have been forcibly restrained, being handcuffed and held down by four (five? six?) police officers against my will was not a pleasant experience.

My hair is (still) full of leaves. My mind is full of trauma. Not only is my body a patchwork of pink and silver scars, but now purple and green and brown patches mar its surface too. There are rings on my wrists from fighting against handcuffs, before they were replaced with softer restraints in the ambulance. My eye is black from punching myself repeatedly in the face before the police held my arms by my sides. My elbows, sides and thighs all ache from attempts to wriggle free. My throat is hoarse from screaming at them to stop, to let go, to just let me die.

They didn’t let up, not until I was “more compliant” after being sedated.

On a somewhat lighter note, the police thought I was very strong, which apparently I was supposed to take as a compliment even while their palms pushed at my body and hands held down my head. I could hear them joking about it. It didn’t feel good to be laughed at, laughed about, while my rights were violated at the same time.

The next thing I remember is waking up on Monday morning, hungover, and drowsy from the remnants of sedative coursing through my circulation. I remember ambulance officers, but I don’t remember getting in the ambulance. I remember being restrained, but I don’t remember those restraints being taken off. I remember talking to the mental health team, but not what I said.

What I do remember, very clearly, is the anguish of being restrained once again.

Just another traumatic chapter added to my life story.