Stim of the Day

I've always been what someone would call a melancholy person, it's a well told tale in my family that at the age of six I was in the room when a news report about depression came on and I asked my parents if I had that. It is also a well told tale that I'd first said I wanted to die at age four. An event that apparently put my mum on antidepressants from the shock and sorrow that her young child would say that but I didn't get help until I was seven. I was informally diagnosed as on the autistic spectrum at nine and formally diagnosed at 10 with mild autism after I failed the IQ test that determined whether you had asperger's as this was before it was a defunct diagnosis. I still remember the disappointment that hung in the air in the psychologists room. I was clever, but not clever enough. They then said I was too young to diagnose as depressed, and with time and The Book I would adapt to the world and no longer be depressed by it. And with that diagnosis and The Book, me and my parents were cut adrift to 'deal' with my mind.

The Book was a horrible thing that explained how to cope with autistic traits and train them out of your child. It wouldn't be until I was 19 that I found and read The Book for myself and recognised all the ways my parents had hurt me had come from this very book.

I never did get less depressed and I still never got diagnosed, therapists telling me everyone has depressive symptoms these days.

My mum has never had a good body image, in truth she should have probably been diagnosed with dysmorphia long ago but she refuses to go to the doctors about it, instead wallowing in the cruel world of diets that insist she just has no willpower. But somewhere in her mind she is angry and used that anger like a knife to carve me into her idea of perfection. I remember well at age five finding a key ring from weightwatchers that was fun to play with and she told me one day I'd have to go there because I had her genes. But as my autistic tongue refused more foods and I became old enough to fight back from being pinned down to my chair and force fed, and instead left hungry, because that way I would learn to be grateful for my food, it was clear I was very thin. And my mum loved this. She dressed me in all the clothes she wished she could have worn as a child and told me as my sensory issues begged her not to put the itchy sparkly tights on me again and my dim first pangs of gender dysphoria screamed as she said to do things ladylike.

Unlike some, when I reach the crushing depths of depression, I find no comfort in food. My mouth goes dry and so all I eat feels like sand and sawdust and tastes much the same. My mum loved this, though she would never admit to it consciously. As I got older and bought my own food at school or on days out, my body would plump up and I seemed to be less interesting to my mum but then the depression depths would pull me down again and I would shed weight and all of a sudden I would be beautiful, clever and deserving of presents at random because I 'was special'.

At eighteen I met someone who would become my partner for three and a half years. Some of you from my old blog would remember them. I loved them and parts of me, much to my shame, still do.

I most likely have OSDD. But for whatever reason the NHS doesn't like to diagnose this. In the course of my therapy I have taken the dissociative quotient about three times with very consistent scores that lay between that of C-PTSD and DID. So rather than diagnosing me with the disorder that sits between those two disorders, OSDD, I've been diagnosed with C-PTSD with extreme depersonalisation.

The first person to recognise this with in me was my first ever partner and whether consciously or unconsciously, they used my dissociative symptoms against me. It's hard to type but I was abused by them. I loved them, still love them sometimes, so much. I would have given them the world but they hurt me and then threw me away like I was nothing when they found someone younger and in the same country. I won't say what they did to me, only my closest friends and my therapist know, and I wish to keep it that way. It was a quiet abuse and with my dissociation that I couldn't recognise, I couldn't see the hurt until around six months after they left me.

So in the time my dissociation painted the world as bright and sunny, the parts experiencing the abuse locked away from my knowledge, I gained a lot of weight. I was an adult now, free to choose my own meals. I actually love being fat, I felt warm and happy and my body was so lovely to stim with. That's something that makes my heart sing about Aziraphale, from Good Omens, he enjoys food and I can really empathise with feeling like he's doing something wrong when people point out his enjoyment.

But my mum didn't like that, not one bit. I became the family disappointment. 'Weight problems' were discussed like a family curse. And I was uplifted as the exception, like I was there to break that curse. But my body after years of being under fed clung to the happiness of eating food I liked and showed it in my body.

After my partner left me I fell into a deep deep depression. They had hurt me in a way and used my brain in such a way that I felt like air had been taken from me. I felt like was going to die. I wanted to die. They told me I would die without them. I lost a lot of weight very very quickly and my mum was so happy, she could barely disguise it as she attempted to comfort me about the hurt my ex had done to me as I slowly realised it.

She finally bought me a new binder after using the same one for over a year, new trousers and other things. I was interesting again.

I got with another person, far too soon. He was sweet but also out of his depth with the trauma I was only just realising I had. I broke up with him after seven months, something he didn't understand at all and I felt so guilty, I felt like my abuser. But unlike my abuser I tried to remain friends, I knew how strong love could be and tearing it up was too much I knew. But in those seven months, I regained a little weight. My parents, both of them now, didn't like this.

So began now, the months of teetering on the edge of starvation. Some days I have only a snack to get me by, other's I'm allowed two hot meals. Without a job and disability benefit since 19, I have had to just resort to here. But this weird food restriction that is there some days and then gone the next has really taken a toll on my mind. I've been in this position since September 2021. Two years now of this. My dissociation is worse, my depression is worse. I don't feel real most days. And still I have flashbacks to my ex and early childhood on top of this. I don't know what to do.

That person around April and May I was talking about? I wanted to be boyfriends with him so badly but my parents made me stop dating him as I'd already put on five pounds. He was so sweet and I had to lie to him and say I didn't see the relationship going anywhere as my mum stood over me to text him. I'm fucking 25 and I can't date a guy because he keeps me happy and plump. My mum hates fat so much that I can't even explore a relationship with a guy beyond a couple of months anymore because it makes me too happy for her liking. Because with my body happiness is being fat.