Cleaning, Pain and Self-Mutilation

I feel:: anxious
What song is on a loop in my head right now:: Tori Amos~Baker Baker

I've spent the last two days cleaning house. I've mananged to do all of my laundry (even though I ran out of hangers), clean my bedroom and my tv room. I still have to vacuum. I got out all of my Christmas presents and looked through them and finally put away all the Christmas pillows. (I still have Christmas lights stapled to the insides of my windows though. Yeah, I'm pathetic. Although, there is a family around the block from me who still has their Christmas lights hanging on the outside of their house, so I guess I don't feel too bad.) I have a 32-pair shoe holder that I still have to put together. In the meantime, most of my shoes are in a pile in front of my closet. At least they're all in one place now instead of scattered throughout the house. (I think I brought 6 pairs out of my bathroom.) Well, all that cleaning and rearranging got my cyatic nerve irritated and my hip was hurting really bad. I also had shooting pains down my right leg. I was laying in bed with Ryk last night when I got up to go to the bathroom. When I was in there, my back said,"I'm going to hurt you now. Badly." I couldn't breathe or move. I just stood there gasping for air and grimacing in pain. I think I stayed in the bathroom for about 15 minutes. I made it back to Ryk's room and told him through gritted teeth that my back had gone out on me and that I was going to go home to lie on my heating pad. He said,"Are you sure you'll be able to drive like that?" I assured him that I could, even if I couldn't have I really wanted to be alone with my pain. I am one of those people that holes up when I get sick or am in pain. I don't think Ryk understands that. He loves me and he wants to be there for me. He wants to help me. I love him for wanting my pain to go away, but I just can't stand being around anyone when I'm like that. I drove home wincing in pain everytime my car hit a bump or took a curve in the road. When I got home, I fell into my bed and tried to get comfortable. Well, that was a thankless task. No matter what position I moved into, my back hurt. I eventually fell asleep for about an hour. I woke up gasping for air again. I lay in bed for a few minutes trying to move to some sort of semi-comfortable position. I couldn't manage it, so I got up, came into my tv room and vegged out with a news program until about 4am. I did fall asleep after that for about 3 hours. I've been up and down ever since.

I have mixed feelings today. I feel good about myself for finally getting my rooms clean. They look so nice now. I'm also sort of depressed because I really wanted to go to church this morning. I thought about it, but when I started to get out of bed, I thought to myself,"You can't even change position in bed without pain. How are you going to drive to church much less sit in a pew for two hours?" (We also stand for the praise and worship. I couldn't have done that either.) It just seems like everytime I start to make progress, something happens to set me back. I guess I did too much yesterday. Whose back goes out on them cleaning house, for Pete's sake? My back sucks.

Reading the Scripture has been on my mind all day. I keep telling myself that I'll do it later, but it just gets later and later. I realized that I'm afraid to do it. I'm afraid of what I'll feel. I'm afraid to face myself. What I really want to do is hide my head under the covers and go back to sleep, but I know that I can't because 1) my back hurts too much to be able to go to sleep and 2) if I laid down and tried to go to sleep, all of this would be on my mind and it would just keep cycling through over and over again. I would never be able to get to sleep. Avoidant behavior, anyone?

The goal set in my last therapy session was to take a bath everday. I have managed to do that. I forget how much I like being clean. I guess when the depression takes over, I just don't see anything else and I forget a lot of things. I have also gone back to the very bad habit of pulling skin off my fingers and toes. I pull it down and down until it starts to bleed. My fingers and toes look like they've been gone over with a cheese grater. I'm ashamed to wear sandals or to show my hands much. I also have started to pull the skin off my top lip. Same thing. I pull it until it starts to bleed, which means that my lip always looks mangled. I have discovered that I do this unconciously. Tanya, Sally and Ryk have all mentioned it and caught me in the act of doing it and told me to stop. I don't know why I do this. I do notice, though, that this happens when I'm stressed or agitated. I'm pretty much always depressed, but I don't always pull the skin off my fingers, toes and lip.