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‘I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them.’

Susan Sontag

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I became convinced that there were video cameras watching me wherever I went. I

did wonder how it could be true- who would want to watch me anyway? But it was hard not to

think that when I saw my life as though it was a film or a game with no sensations for the

viewer. I found it hard to tolerate my boyfriend when he would try and reason with me that

the video cameras couldn’t possibly be in the places I showed him because you’d be able to

see something there. Sometimes, like the little voice in my head, I felt violated by the

cameras, and scared. But at other times I liked both the cameras and the voice for protecting

me and always being with me.

Eventually I realised that there was no need to be self-conscious in front of my

cameras- I didn’t know who watched me so there was no-one to feel embarrassed in front of.

I would still often get changed under the covers though! When I thought about it I would

often get anxious and gradually I had a twitch. I realised that the twitch would mean that my

fears that everyone hated me and was laughing at me would certainly come true.

 So I tried not to be anxious about it because of what that fear could lead to.

I’m not sure where my fear of being watched originally came from but the first time the

niggling thought popped into my head was when I was babysitting and ate one of the biscuits

they had left for me. I was ashamed of eating, wishing that I would just stop. I was accepting

that I had a body and the needs that it brought with it. I also felt guilty for eating someone

else’s food, thought that they were recording me so that they could see how greedy I was,

taking what didn’t belong to me.

Going into school scared me because I felt that everyone was talking about me an laughing, at

times I could almost hear their thoughts. I was terrified when I became convinced that all the

teachers hated me and they spent all the time in the staff room laughing about me. Although one of

my teachers said they had better things to talk about than to complain, or make fun of me,

teachers would always say mention that they had been talking about me and had heard I was

depressed, or that people had being going up to them to say they were worried. So they were

talking about me, and therefore undoubtedly all laughing about me together. It seemed an easier

option to hide away where they might forget about me.

I would always look for clues that people hated me, listening to how they spoke to me

and what they did or didn’t say. To me everything they said that wasn’t about how much they

loved me was a sign that they despised me. Even if they did say nice things then that was

due to an ulterior motive, often because they wanted me to like them and trust them so that

they could laugh at my secrets or so that they could suddenly reject me to hurt me. I would

try not to get close to people because I knew that they were trying to hurt me but

unfortunately I always like people just too much.

I was terrified of being murdered - by a stranger, my brother or my teddy (!) I kept a knife under

my pillow to try to protect myself against any eventuality. But these terrifying fears would only last

for one night at a time, in the morning or in a few days I would see how irrational I was being -

how could my brother poison me? how could my teddy strangle me?

Once there was a power cut at half past eleven at night. I was immediately terrified,

convinced that a murderer had cut of the power to our house and was going to kill us. After

about quarter of an hour stood paralysed with fear I decided that since he hadn’t come yet he

was obviously going on a murderous rampage down the street. So I stood shivering by the

window for another half an hour, eventually plucking up the courage to light some candles. I

desperately wanted to wake my parents up and make them drive us far away where he

couldn’t get us. Soon I decided that since he was not within my sight range I could get

downstairs and get a knife before he would reach our house. And I did. Then I sat on my

floor, curled up in the corner so that no-one could sneak up behind me. I must have made

quite a scary sight huddled in the corner shivering, surrounded by candles and holding a

massive kitchen knife! When he still didn’t come in another hour and a half I decided that he

must have been caught by police with no sirens on. I still wasn’t all that convinced though so

I went to bed still clutching the knife (with the point under my pillow).

Now I wonder if that was all displacement, I was so afraid of death because I was

afraid of what I could do to myself. Or perhaps a fear that I could kill my family. I don’t know.

Sometimes I could see that I was being paranoid but still could not stop the words

going round inside my head: ‘what if?, what if?’ If the parents whose children I was

babysitting weren’t home within half an hour of the time I was expecting them to be back by

then I would already be wondering how the children would react when they were told that

their parents had died in a car crash on their way home. If my friend did not immediately

write back to me or answer my text messages I would straight away ‘know’ that she was

dead. If there was a mosquito in my bedroom then it had malaria.....

I was particularly afraid of losing my mind, the one thing that belonged to me and the

place where I could live. If I found anything at school difficult, I would see it as proof that I

could no longer think at all, that my brain had disintegrated or that it was all an illusion to

start with. I wrote everything down because I just couldn’t trust myself to remember it. Most

of it was stuff that I wouldn’t have needed anyway but at least I could see and hold onto my

memories. For a time I even wrote down how many times I cut myself each day, in case I

lost my memories of it, quite possible considering that reading over old diaries reminds me

of major events which I had forgotten.