Circles.

I hate this feeling like I've spent years going in circles.  A week and a half ago, I got out of the hospital...again.  After sinking into depression...again.

It's like.. I always want to change, I always want to get better.  And for a while, I do get better.  But then I stop working on getting better.  I don't know if it's because I get bored, or because I get lazy, or maybe recovery just plain scares me.

To be fair, actually allowing myself to finally recover.. allowing myself to finally rid myself of these demons that I've been dealing with for years.. would be a really big change.  It requires facing things head-on.  It requires honesty...complete honesty...with myself.

Facing things head-on is probably one of the hardest things for me, because usually, my first instinct is to run the other way.  Deny, deny, deny.. pretend they don't exist.  Because in the moment, it seems easier.  It means I don't have to deal with it in that moment.  But later.. later, it all starts to sink in, and everything is there in front of me.  It's real.  And I have to face it all at once, and it overwhelms me.  So I try to go back into that comfort zone of denial.  But it doesn't work.  So then I start fighting myself, and then I start spiraling back into old thinking patterns and old habits.

That's usually when I start cutting myself again.

But I don't want to cut myself anymore.  I want the last time to be the last time.  Except that I know I say that every time, so I feel like it doesn't have any meaning anymore.  I keep promising myself these things... over and over and over.  I've been promising myself that the last cut was the last cut for more than eight years now.  That's more than a third of my lifetime.

Looking at it that way, it breaks my heart.  I feel like I've wasted so much time fighting this.  Why can't I just give it up? 

Because it's a fucking addiction. 

That's why.  Because I've reinforced it over and over to a point where I don't know how to live without it.  The thought of living without ever again cutting myself absolutely terrifies me.

It terrifies me, but I'm trying.  I'm trying because I want better for myself.  I don't want this to be my life.

So right now, even though my mind is spinning, even though I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin, I will not cut tonight.  Because I don't want that to be my life.  I don't want to look back someday when I'm old to realize that I lived my life for a razor blade.  I want better for myself.

Even if it takes a long time to get past this, I want better.  And even more than that, I want to get to a place emotionally where I feel like I actually deserve better.