Lost Inside This Broken Mind -

Was originally going to post this on the 28th, but since I'd already posted it on my writing Tumblr, I figured it'd be okay to share it now. My first piece in quite a long time.

Thoughts and comments are always welcome.

-Cali

Lost Inside This Broken Mind: My life after December 28th, 2009

She’s sitting on the floor, phone in hand. She doesn’t know when she hung up or who hung up first. All she knows is the pain, the anger, the hurt flooding through her.

He’s really gone. He’s dead. It’s not a lie, he’s dead and you’ll never get the chance to see him again.

Her mind babbles incessantly, carrying on without another thought to interrupt it. The haze drifts in like an unclearable fog. The numbness takes over her body, leaves it tingling without a single nerve left to feel the nails she’s digging into her palms.

The tears are hot and endless. She doesn’t know how they got there. Doesn’t know how to make them stop.

He’s fucking dead. Dead.Dead.Dead.Dead.Dead.DEAD.DEAD.DEAD.

She throws the phone across the room, flings it into a picture and smashes the glass. She grabs both sides of her head, crouching on the floor and screaming in pure fucking agony like she’s being burned alive.

OH GOD NO! PLEASE GOD, PLEASE! NOT JIMMY! PLEASE NOT FUCKING JIMMY! GIVE HIM BACK! YOU MOTHERFUCKER, GIVE HIM BACK!

She’s hardly aware of her surroundings. She’s too lost in the void of disbelief and anger. Her throat burns and cracks and threatens to fade out with every hard, heart wrenching scream.

The tears are like acid now, falling down her face and leaving little marks in their paths. The eyeliner burns like hell, but she can’t bring herself to reach up and rub her eyes. She can hardly move from her spot on the floor where she lies broken and bleeding from the inside.

JIMMY! JIMMY! JIMMY! JIMMY! GIVE HIM BACK! JUST TAKE ME AND GIVE HIM BACK! PLEASEPLEASEPLEASEPLEASE I’M BEGGING YOU!!!!!!! I NEED HIM! WE FUCKING NEED HIM!

She knows God isn’t listening. Even if he was, would he be able to grant her wish? Would he take her life and spare the one he’s already claimed? Even if it’s impossible, she can’t stop screaming and begging and pleading, bartering her own life for his.

Her fists ache and she wonders when she started punching the floor. Her knuckles are swollen and red and there’s a faint hint of blood bubbling to the surface. She stares at it, amazed she can’t even feel it.

Numb.

Numb from head to toe without a hint of sensation anywhere, save this horrible pain in her heart.

Numb.

Her rapidly unraveling mind brings back just enough of her sanity to remind her of what it is she does when she can’t feel. It tempts her. The loss, the pain, the dreaded fucking ache tempts her into doing it.

She pushes up from the floor. Her feet carry her into the kitchen for the knife she never intended to use in this manner. She takes it from the drawer and pads back to her spot, lying back down and staring at the blade.

Shiny. Silver. Sharp. Salvation.

She dwells on the thought of how it will feel to do this. She tries to ignore the voice in her head that tells her how wrong this is and that he wouldn’t want her to do this to herself. Not for him. Not for anyone.

She ignores it.

It takes a long time before she can summon the strength to press the blade to her wrist and when she starts to drag it over the skin, the numbness fades into a dull pain that zips through her.

She doesn’t acknowledge it. Instead, she sits there, marking her arms until a puddle forms beneath the wounded arm.

Her breathing is ragged, but she’s calm. She’s quiet. Her body shakes as the endorphins rush through her and fill her with that sweet euphoria she’s become addicted to over the years.

She closes her eyes.

He’s standing there. Those blue eyes of his are soft and sad. He silently questions how she can do this to herself, how she can want to destroy herself like this when there are so many reasons for her to live and carry on.

He steps close enough for her to touch him, but she’s too frightened to try. It’s an illusion. A simple hallucination. A product of her grief and pain.

But he looks so fucking real.

His eyes stray to the marks and she wants to cover them in shame. She can hear herself apologizing under her breath, babbling on like one who has lost her mind.

She thinks she feels his touch on her hand, but refuses to open her eyes and see. There’s a warmth in her palm spreading through her body and she can hear him whisper so faintly…

It’s going to be all right. You’re going to be all right.

She wants to argue, but the rational part of her reminds her how pointless it is to argue with a hallucination.

She just nods.

She isn’t sure when he fades out, but she can still feel him there. A presence that will never truly leave. One that will stay by her side until the end.

She wakes in a cold sweat to find the blood is dried and her tears are gone, but that ache is still there. She reckons it will always be there. She gets up and cleans herself off, looking in the mirror.

She hardly recognizes herself. She seems to have withered into nothing in a matter of a few hours.

She drifts along like she’s lost in a dream, her mind hazed by the slight insanity the loss has brought about. She stays in this state for weeks, forgetting everything she knows except the pain.

It takes a tattoo needle to snap her out of it and make her realize what she’s done to herself. She studies the new scars on her arm as the tattooist fills in the letters with ink as blue as Jimmy’s eyes.

The moment the gun is switched off, she makes a silent promise to him that she won’t do this again. She won’t harm herself ever again.

She keeps that promise for three months.

Until something shatters her world again.

++++++++

Note: This is a recollection of what I went through after Jimmy’s death. I’ll be completely honest in saying that I don’t remember much more than this. I walked around like a zombie and sometimes didn’t leave the bed at all. I closed myself off from so many people, including myself. I didn’t want to believe it and I still don’t, but I somehow knew that I had to wake up and face it at some point.
The day I got my memorial tattoo is the day I opened my eyes and realized how much I have to live for. I want to make Jimmy proud, not sadden him with my unholy actions against myself.

I’m still fighting this battle between what has become instinct when I get depressed, but I’m slowly working my way out of it.

This is my story, the way I remember it. This is completely Non-Fiction. This is the story about how I lost my mind.

I’m still waiting for it to come back.

A letter to myself

Dear Me,

What has happened to you over the last week? You've turned into someone I don't even recognize anymore. The thoughts and feelings that you let control you when you were a teenager are back in full effect and I fear that we may be losing the strength we've built up from the pieces you were shattered into.

I know things aren't the best right now, and I understand that you're hurting, but honestly, the thoughts of slicing yourself open to feel better are just that. Thoughts. We've been over this a million times and I know you know that this isn't healthy. The pain can only numb so much before it becomes pain again and causes you to restart the process all over again.

You're letting your mind wander into a place it shouldn't be and I'm trying like hell to hold you back. I feel like I'm losing. This battle has been long and hard and we've both emerged with scars, physical, emotional and mental.

Things will perk up. I promise they will. You just need to find that place inside of you that knows you will make it. You have to reach for it and grasp it with a firm hand and hold on for dear life because I fear that if I let you continue to behave this way and think this way, you will bury yourself deeper in this pit of pain and despair.

Put the past behind you, dear, take these thoughts and feelings and turn them into something good. I know you can do it because I AM you and I know you better than you know yourself.

Something was lost. Many something's were lost. But with something that is lost, comes something that is gained. Think of the things you have now and be thankful for them. Hold on to them. If they choose to fade away, keep reaching for new things and people and places.

You are better than this. I love you. Please, do not turn on yourself. Do not turn on me. I'm counting on you because I need you.

Love you with everything in this heart we share,

You<3

The thing about Death...

This is a blog post that I came across while sifting through one of my thousands of LiveJournal accounts. I don't know why I felt like sharing, here it is. This is my first (and only) experience with a funeral.

------------

July 27, 2007

Well, this was my first ever funeral that I've actually gone to and what can I say except... wow.

It was the most disturbing, scary, mind numbing thing I have ever witnessed.

I knew the moment we stepped into the Funeral Home this morning, I was going to have a hard time.
It started when my mom (who was in front of me) asked: "Why is it Open Casket?"

Of course, like someone who has just been told there is a grizzly accident coming up on his way home from work, I looked and damn near threw up.

There she was.
Dead.
Lying in the coffin like she was just sleeping.

Hell, I half expected her to wink at everyone in the room like a child playing a game.

No.
No, she just laid there, dead. Not moving. Nothing.

I couldn't handle it.
I took two steps into the room designated for family and made sure to find a seat where I would not have ANY sort of view of the coffin.

I sat there and started having a mild panic attack and actually left the chapel thing with my aunt, who managed to talk me into going back in, even though I knew very well I wouldn't be able to handle it.

But I kept my eyes on my feet and sat back down and just stared at the wall.

I don't remember a lot of what was said about her, I just remember staring blankly at the wall, thinking about a fan fic I want to start writing.

Well, some time passed and I noticed my mom was getting up.
I thought she was heading outside for a cigarette and followed her.

No.

No, she went straight for the damn casket and like an idiot, I followed her.

The moment I took my momma's hand, I damn near broke it.

Just looking at Grandma Jean made my heart race and my chest hurt.
I made it a point to bury my face in Mom's shoulder so she would get the hint and let her take me outside.

I tell you, I have never cried so hard in my life.

It's all so surreal.
I mean, I keep thinking that it's a dream and I'll wake up eventually, but I also know better than that and you can't wake up when you weren't sleeping in the first place.

So yeah, I'm completely numb from head to toe and I have been since we left.

What I wouldn't give to be able to feel something.

But I have nothing to use and I would get in trouble with several ppl and I'm in no mood to be bitched at.

Anyway, there's my traumatic tale.
Hope it doesn't freak you guys out.
Just be happy you weren't there....

♥

Cali
------------

FoREVer yours,

Cali B. Diamond-Plague

Darkness has kept the light concealed

This is now your life.

What’s it feel like?

Die, buried alive.

The line from Buried Alive seems to stick with me, amongst others. I don’t know what it feels like. It feels like loneliness. It’s a cold, painful feeling I can’t seem to shake, no matter how hard I try.

As the release date for Avenged Sevenfold’s Nightmare gets closer and closer, the feeling seems to be multiplying into something I can no longer control. My own nightmares are getting worse and a thousand times more confusing than they were. I think that reality is attempting to slap me in the face and tell me that this is real, Jimmy’s really gone and I still don’t want to believe it.

I’d rather live in my safe, fictional world where he’s still alive and well and I’m just as happy as ever. God knows there will be something or someone that ruins this for me. I don’t want that. I’d prefer to stay locked in this delusion that keeps me comforted and sane. Though I’m far from sane anymore.

If you could see the thoughts inside this head of mine, you’d wonder how it is I manage to function in the real world. Truth is, I don’t even know. I know that I’m still dazed, even seven months later, and I’m still screaming for God to give him back. Not just to me, but to the guys and the fans and everyone else who loves Jimmy. I know that I’m not healthy, physically and mentally.

And as my 23^rd birthday approaches, I seem to be regressing back to that sixteen year old me with enough mental problems to fill an entire book. I only hope that it stops and I am able to keep pushing forward day by day until I can support myself and finally leave this hellish place I’m living in.

These are my thoughts, my everyday wonderings. I question my sanity and my will to live every single day and go to bed thinking that maybe, just maybe, I will wake up and the answers will be there.

So far, this is not the case.

Yours foREVer,

Cali B. Diamond-Plague

Rose Petals and Razorblades: The Journal of Dayna Ravanelli

This is a journal I kept between the age of 15 to a little before 19. It’s completely unchanged, except for a few spelling mistakes and the last names of certain people have been removed to protect privacy and shit.

Please note that this is an uncensored account of my thoughts and feelings as well as my battle with Self Injury. It’s a little disturbing in some parts, but I wanted to keep this as raw as it is on the pages of the notebook it was originally written in.

Quite a few entries are unfinished and my thoughts sort of bounce around from one topic to another, so you may get a little confused and I apologize.

You will also notice that I signed the bottom of most of the entries with several different names. Some of them are just nicknames while the others are my real name with a few extra last names tacked on.

I tried to include some of the random tidbits between entries, but some things just can’t be typed up, like the blood paintings mentioned in a few entries.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this little journey into the twisted inner workings of my teenaged mind and do try to remember that everything you read here is REAL. None of this is fiction. It all really happened to me and I put it to paper the way I lived it.

FoREVer yours,

Dayna Ravanelli (Cali B. Diamond)

NOTE: This will appear in the entry containing the journal as well.

 
              Click the image to read.

Below are some photos of the journal. They include the front and back covers, a few blood paintings that I did and some doodles. This is my proof to you that this journal exists and I'm not bullshitting any of this.

FoREVer Yours,

Cali

View Full Album

Trashed and Scattered

Dear fake motherfucker with nothing better to do with his life,

I hope you’re happy with yourself, pretending to be someone you’re not and making so many loyal fans believe that you were the ones we idolize. How dare you do this to us! You used our love and die hard loyalty for Avenged Sevenfold for your own twisted pleasure and left us all feeling raped.

Yes, raped.

I should have known that contest was too good to be true. I should have known that Syn Gates would not randomly contact me because of a silly status update, no matter what it said. I should have known that Brian Senior wouldn’t lie to us.

You used my gullibility and my love for Avenged Sevenfold against me and you tricked me into thinking that I was being rewarded for my dedication.

Shame on you.

Shame on me for falling for it.

I wanted so badly to believe that those fucking profiles were real, contest or not, and I went so far as to bash other fans for not believing in them just to prove myself to someone who isn’t who they say they are. I feel horrible for doing that. It’s because of you that I acted that way. I treated members of my A7X family like dirt and now I’m paying for it with guilt. Thanks, asshole.

I am ashamed of myself, but I will pull through this. After all of the crap I’ve dealt with not only recently, but my entire life, this will be a piece of fucking cake.

If your goal was to publicly humiliate over thousands of fans and the guys themselves, then congratulations, you’ve succeeded. I hope you rot in hell for this, you prick. I hope the guys find you and sue the shit out of you because what you did could be considered identity theft and I know for damn sure it’s a serious case of stalking.

I hope you get stopped by a real fan one day and have the living crap kicked out of you because you fooled them and you hurt them with your lies.

I hope the people you had by your side to help you with this scam get the same fucking treatment you do. You all deserve it.

If A7X hears the extent of the shit you pulled, and I hope they do, I hope they publicly humiliate YOU so you can see how it fucking feels. You shouldn’t call yourself a fan, because you’re not. You’re nothing more than a fucking stalker hell bent on ruining people’s lives. You and your friends have all shit on Avenged Sevenfold and their fans and there’s gonna be hell to pay. We don’t take this shit lightly. You don’t fuck with A7X and you don’t fuck with A7X family.

And you really shouldn’t try to play innocent when confronted. We all know it was you. We have the fucking proof and I hope Facebook actually does something about you and people like you who make these fake profiles and feed off of the fans’ love that isn’t for you.

I don’t want to know why you did it or how you managed to get away with it for so long and I don’t want to know how you got a hold of the information and pictures and things that you did, I just want you to pay for this and pay fucking dearly. I want you to suffer the agony of trusting something with your whole heart and having it turn out to be a fucking lie. Death would be too good for you. You should be made to suffer at the hands of those of us you hurt, including A7X and their wives/girlfriends.

It sickens me that you went so far as to make profiles for the girls. Did you think it would make the others more believable? And that bullshit about Matt and Avril Lavigne, that was smart. I hope Matt finds you and kicks your ass for that. You caused a lot of drama and you deserve to be fucking punished for it in the worst way.

I kick myself for seeing the signs of a fake and not going with my gut. I just wanted to have something to believe in and you’ve taken my ability to trust anyone and you’ve shattered it in a million pieces. I fucking hate you for this.

Fuck you.

That’s all I have left to say is a big, fat FUCK YOU.

I’m done wasting my breath and my time on you. You’ll get what’s coming to you and when you do, I’m going to laugh and cheer with the rest of them.

I’ll see you in hell, asshole.

FoREVer hating you,

Cali B. Diamond (Dayna Ravanelli)

Sweet Addiction No More

Let me start off by saying that March is National Self Injury Awareness month and I would just like to take a little time to share a bit of my personal battle with this addiction with you.

It’s no big secret that I’m a self-injury addict. I tell anyone who will listen, plus the scars on my arms and legs are a dead giveaway. Ever since I discovered at the tender age of fourteen that the simple act of running a razorblade across my skin would bring me a kind of relief and bliss not attainable by most drugs, it has been my go-to solution for when I’m feeling less than content about my life.

For nearly nine years, I have defended, hidden and flaunted my addiction, telling anyone who asked that I wasn’t trying to kill myself, just trying to deal with the everyday stress of being a teenager/young adult. I joined Pro-SI communities on LiveJournal, took and posted pictures of my wounds and scars, got my story uploaded to a place called Psyke.org, even wrote a few letters to talk show hosts asking them to touch on the forbidden subject of Self Injury. I would get lots of feedback, some positive and some not so positive, but I never felt satisfied. I wanted more people to know that I did this to myself and that while it was beyond ‘normal’, I wasn’t the only one who did it.

It went from being something that helped me feel less stressed out, to a full blown addiction that kept me locked in its arms for the entirety of my teenage years. Everything I did revolved around my Self Injury. Anything could trigger an episode for me. A fight with my mom or little brother, being left out of plans with friends, even opening up the newspaper to see that someone’s house had burnt to the ground made me want to cut. Sometimes, there was no trigger. I just felt like doing it because it gave me something to do.

I couldn’t make simple decisions, such as wearing short sleeves or hanging out with certain friends because I was afraid someone might see and get upset. I’d already had several people who knew about it threaten to slap my cuts or stop being my friend, but it didn’t help. I figured that if they weren’t going to love and accept me for who I was and what I did, then I didn’t need them either.

I was wrong.

I lost several friends and even a boyfriend because of the things that I did. It made it hard for me to want to attempt quitting because I figured, what’s the point? If I quit just to make these people happy, what the hell was in it for me without my trusty, relief bringing razors? The promise of winning back friends and loved ones just wasn’t enough to quit. I didn’t just want my friends back, I wanted to be able to go out and do things and be happy about those things instead of locking myself away in my room to cut and browse Pro-SI sites on the internet, which had become a trigger all in itself. But I never got motivated enough to try. I was never willing to give up the pain and relief that a simple strip of metal could bring to me.

I quickly got sick of hiding it, too. I wanted to share my solution to the pain people brought me. Some twisted little voice told me that it would make them feel bad for abandoning me and make them run back to make everything all right. So, I stopped wearing long sleeves around anyone who wasn’t my mother or my little brother.

One day, after a heavy cutting session the previous night, I went to school without wearing my signature arm warmers. I thought I was helping myself by showing it off when really, I was causing people to look at me like a freak. Some of my peers were truly concerned for me, but others just thought it was for attention and in a way, it kind of was. One of my teachers, who at the time seemed to be trying to get me to conform to the ‘normal’ ways of society, unwillingly kept my secret for a long time, often checking in to make sure I wasn’t causing more harm to myself than usual. She made it a point to check for infection and things like that, until one day, stressed out by the actions of a friend, I ran to the girls bathroom and cut myself out of pure spite for this person.

I made the mistake of going back into the classroom with a paper towel pressed to my arm that was quickly becoming saturated with blood. My teacher asked me to show her what I’d done and I resisted until she told me that she would call the campus security to have me escorted to the office. I showed her and she called the vice principal anyway. He suggested that I take the next few days off to de-stress (when really, he was sugarcoating the fact that he was suspending me) and then proceeded to tell my mother.

Ever since, my mom kept an eye on me, asking to see my arms on a daily basis until I finally had to switch to cutting in places she couldn’t see without asking me to remove my clothes. This continued for a while until she realized I wasn’t going to just wake up one day with the idea of stopping in my mind. She stopped asking unless I sported a set of fresh cuts or scabs.

Over the years, I’ve attempted to get help for my problem, finding that I just didn’t want to hear what anyone had to say unless it was to compare stories or to tell me that I wasn’t a freak for doing it. I tried anti-depressants and reading books about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, even got myself a therapist I actually liked. But the cravings would only subside for small periods of time and then come back to hit me full force. I quit taking the pills, stopped reading my books and had parted ways with my therapist when she moved back to the city to resume her job as a Probation Advocate.

I started trying to cure myself, which worked temporarily, mostly because I didn’t want to hear any shit from my friends. I still cut myself in secret and just kept it to myself. Occasionally, I’d slip up and someone would notice and just tell me that if I needed to talk, to let them know. I always promised that I would, but never actually got around to doing so when I did feel the urge to do it again.

For a while, I stopped almost completely, finding other ways of dealing with my pain and emotional distress that were just as unhealthy, but didn’t leave visible scars.

Then, right before I was about to turn twenty one, I started having suicidal urges again and the cutting came back in a full blown wave that startled me to the point where I attempted to put myself in a hospital for treatment. I lasted about five hours before I begged to go home and they almost didn’t let me go without permission from my mother. They said because I was brought in under the threat of suicide, I couldn’t be released unless my mother felt confident enough for me to be home alone.

About a month later, feeling much better than before with two friends that I loved dearly by my side, I got my first tattoo.

Holy shit.

The pleasure pain of the needle was more than enough to stem my cravings for the next year and it helped that the tattoo was of something that had always made me feel better at my worst moments. I had no idea that the simple Linkin Park tribute tattoo would bring me such relief that I was actually happy for months afterward.

Up until March of last year, things weren’t bad, in fact, I was at the happiest I’d ever felt in a long time, but something triggered my depression and I began cutting in secret again. Nothing like before, which were always a mass of small, insignificant wounds that healed with in a week, but smaller batches of deeper wounds that have left me with some pretty big scars.

The feelings faded a little until October, when my best friend took off to Oregon without so much as a goodbye and it just got worse as time went on.

When The Rev passed away after Christmas, I fucking lost my head.

I literally have periods of time that I cannot recall because I was so out of it from crying and screaming and pleading with God to give him back. I really felt as though I’d gone insane. I wanted to make the pain and heartache of the loss go away, and I wanted to make sure I was still alive, still real, so I did what I do best and reached for a razorblade. The cutting continued until one night, maybe a week after it happened, when I was sitting in my room, thinking about Jimmy, and the thought of what he must think of me for doing these things to myself in my haze of grief, well, it got to me.

I decided then and there that I would get a tattoo to honor him instead of just marking myself with more scars that would just draw the attention I had begun to hate. I used the $100 I got for Christmas from my father to pay for it and the experience was almost twice as exhilarating as the first time I’d sat in the chair. The buzz of the machine and the sting of the needle and ink put me into a sort of hazy, endorphin filled euphoric state that washed away the feelings of my misery.

On my way home I made a silent promise to myself, and to Jimmy, that I would no longer harm myself when I felt trapped and lost. The aftermath of questions and shame just wasn’t something I wanted to deal with anymore. Tattoos would be my new addiction and my new solution to pain, when I could afford them, of course.

For nearly two months (two months on March 16^th) I have refrained from even scratching myself to relieve the stress. I’ve turned to writing more and listening to loud music to stem the urges. Occasionally, I’ll get really upset and contemplate the action of cutting myself for hours, only to find myself not wanting to bother.

I really hope to be done with cutting before the end of the year, but I’m not going to hold my breath because that’s not how addictions work. I know that if I do end up breaking down, I won’t just be harming myself, but breaking the promise I made to Jimmy and I don’t want to do that.

It would kill me to know that I had done something to disappoint him, even in death.

So for now, I’m keeping a good grip on my recovery and checking in periodically with a few friends that truly care about my well being and fully support me on the road that lies ahead.

Hopefully by this time next year, I will be able to say I’m recovered and that the urges no longer control me the way they did when I was younger.

If you know someone or if you yourself are dealing with this addiction, please know that you’re not alone. You don’t need to check yourself into a mental hospital or a rehab clinic to learn how to recover, either. There are plenty of books and support groups out there to help. My suggestion to start your own recovery would be to find a therapist or someone you can easily talk to without fear of being judged or having them spread your secrets, and check in with them occasionally. A sponsor, if you will.

Deal with it as you would with any addiction. Don’t try to do it on your own because it won’t just go away.

Please, be safe and know that there are people who really do care, even if it feels as though you’re the only one in the world who cares about you.

#FoREVer Yours,

Cali B. Diamond