22:14 – Another pathetic ramble of self pity

Today has been a bit of a strange one. My sleeping was awful last night, I didn’t even go to bed, just grabbed a couple of hours on the sofa. My head was bouncing all over the place from one destructive idea to the next. Best friend phoned about 10am to ask if we could spend the afternoon together and I so so wanted to make up an excuse but I think I knew this afternoon could be the one where I completely lost it if I stayed in by myself all day just thinking and thinking. So I agreed to meet her at 12.

I have been kind of self medicating with some of my tablets. Not in any extreme kind of way, just adding an extra one here or taking one out at another time, but I do (99%) of the time take the prescribed dosage each day without going over it by much. It’s more like this – as an example – one of the medications I take is Quetiapine and I currently take 750mg a day. I am supposed to take it as a 250mg dose in the morning and 500mg at night. Well if I wake up and my head is fucking bonkers and there are voices present I might take it the other way around – 500mg in the morning and 250mg at bedtime. Or if I’ve had fuck all sleep and am absolutely shattered I’ll skip my morning dose so I have enough energy to keep on going throughout the day and then when it starts getting close to bedtime I’ll take the full 750mg as one dose to try and help with my sleeping.

And to a certain degree I do that with my diazepam as well. At the moment my daily dose is 16mg a day. This is to be taken as 4mg four times a day. But some mornings I feel massively anxious when I wake so I will take 8mg and then later in the day or in the evening another 8mg. Sometimes (although this is very rare) I don’t feel too anxious in the morning and my Quetiapine is enough so somedays I just wait and take the 16mg as one dose at bedtime. Sometimes it’s the opposite and I’ve taken my full 16mg by lunch time. So I don’t self medicate so much as play about a bit with the doses and the times I take them, but I feel that way works for me. Whenever I’m in the psych hospital I have no choice but to take my medication properly at 8am/12.30/6/10pm – and I hate not being able to tweak the doses to suit how I’m feeling at that time. I do understand the importance of taking medication properly and I do try to… it just sometimes is easier to do it ‘my way’.

Anyway… what was I about to say? Oh yes… I agreed to meet best friend today and spend time with her and her kids (my little nephews). But I was incredibly anxious to the point where I couldn’t leave the house so I took a little extra Quetiapine and my full daily dose of Diazepam. I still felt quite anxious when we first met up but the medication did kick in and I went into this weird headspace of ‘I’m hurting so much there is nothing else that can make me feel any worse than this’ so I agreed to attempt to go to one of the places my agoraphobia considers a very scary place. I had three small panic attacks en route but we got there and I bought my first McDonald’s burger for about 7 or 8 years. I have had a McDonald’s meal in that time, I’ve had friends bring them back for me and had them reheated in the microwave but today I actually stepped foot in one and ate a burger that was freshly cooked.

Best friend was so proud of me. She was smiling and cuddling me and saying “well done, well done” but I just felt numb. I didn’t feel hugely anxious, I didn’t feel happy that I’d achieved something new, I just felt like I was in some sort of blur… my head was saying just order some food and then go home. I didn’t particularly enjoy the food, half of it is still sitting in a bag on the table.

So yeah, everything is still a bit blah really.

CPN#2 gave me a quick phone this afternoon to ask how I was as the duty CPN from Monday had left her a note telling her about Sunday night’s self harming. The phone call felt a bit pointless, she sounded pretty uninterested which made me pretty uninterested in telling her about what’s been going on. It was awkward to talk anyway in front of best friend as I still haven’t told her about the self harming.

The only other thing that happened today was that I got a phone call from my personal tutor for my part time university course. She was phoning because she had been notified by the module tutor that I hadn’t logged on to read any course work in weeks nor had I contributed to any of the online discussion postings that make up 20% of the overall module mark. I tried to explain my head was all over the place but that I was going to try and submit some sort of an essay in the next couple of weeks so even if I fail I have something to resit. We could apply for mitigating circumstances but I don’t think there’s much point. I’ll either be able to write something and move on to my next module or I’ll fail and be kicked off the course. Right now I don’t really care which one happens.

So that’s been my day. I wish I could feel happy and like I’d achieved something, I’d challenged the agoraphobia harder than ever before, but I just don’t care. I don’t feel like I care about anything. I still want to hurt/cut/die.

I don’t see CPN#2 until Tuesday. I have no support between now and then other than the duty system through the CMHT which I think I’ve used twice in about 6 years. My support worker through rape crisis is off on holiday next week.

So yeah… I guess I just plod on and see where I end up.

22:03 – Feel like my head is about to explode

Today has been one hard day and my head is a mess. I didn’t get to bed til gone 2am then was up again just before 8am to start off Charlie dog’s medication for the day (and to take my own). I was pretty emotional and just sat here going through my little one’s memory box, crying into his little blanket, looking at my scan photos and my photos of my baby. Really can’t quite believe that six years have passed. People say time heals but I really don’t think it does.

I went and bought some flowers and met my Mum to go to the cemetery. On the way there I asked her how my cousin’s wedding had been and could feel my eyes welling up as she told me all the emotional moments: the father of the bride speech, the wedding vows, describing my cousin’s dress… I wished I hadn’t asked because it made me feel so sad I wasn’t there to see it all for myself.

We got to the cemetery and tried to make his headstone all pretty with nice flowers. There may be more now if his Dad went up later in the afternoon. I hope he did.

My little man’s headstone

After we had put our flowers into the little pots Mum started to talk about how different life would be if little Lewis was here, how she didn’t think my mental health would ever have got so bad if things had just turned out differently. And I kind of think she might be right. I’ve been so empty and lost over the past six years. Even more so in the past four years since my relationship with his Dad ended and my Bipolar diagnosis being made. On the one hand I really hope my little boy looks over me from Heaven and on the other I hope he never sees me when I’m doing bad things to myself and feeling so depressed and traumatised all the time.

Mum took me for a hot chocolate after we left the cemetery and most of the talk was again about my cousin’s wedding. Don’t get me wrong it was nice to hear how happy my cousin was and hear how family members I haven’t seen in years are doing. It just hurt because I felt so left out from it all even though it’s all my own fault for not having the strength to fight this fucking agoraphobia. Even after it ruining my quality of life for so many years I’m still too pathetic and weak to overcome it. That’s what really felt shitty.

Once I got back home I got the dogs and headed off to the vets so Charlie could get a check up and have the cannula taken out his paw. He was jumping about with what looked like excitement as we went in and all the staff started making a fuss of him and saying how he had certainly sprung back to life. But when we went into the consultation room I asked the vet if she could just check his stomach because it had looked pretty flat on Saturday and seemed a little bit swollen again. But I wasn’t too concerned because he’d been going to the toilet normally and not passed any blood or anything so it seemed that everything inside him was working properly. But she took his temperature and I could see her face starting to look a little worried, it was sky high again after being back to normal on Saturday. So she did an ultrasound over his tummy and could see pockets of fluid everywhere. It looked like his tummy was full of bubbles.

She said she couldn’t tell on the ultrasound what the fluid was, it could be that because he just wouldn’t rest yesterday and kept running around at his usual crazy speed that he’s burst a couple of internal stitches again and something is leaking or it could be that he’s started to bleed into his gut again. As she spoke she must have seen the worry on my face as the vet nurse who was also in the room started to give me a cuddle. The vet said he would need to stay with them tonight and would be operated on first thing tomorrow morning. That’s going to be three operations in seven days, major surgery that we didn’t know if he’d survive on Tuesday then reopened to repair burst stitches and a hernia on Friday and now reopened again tomorrow to see what this fluid is. I was really fighting back the tears and they asked if I was OK. I mumbled that it was my little boy’s anniversary today and my head was feeling pretty pickled and now I was so worried about Charlie again. Is he strong enough to get through all of these operations? Are they going to be able to repair the affected gastro-intestinal organs that are so damaged? The answer is that no one knows. So of course I am terrified all over again that I’m going to lose him. It really does feel like one step forwards and two steps back.

When I left the vets I went to best friend’s house for a couple of hours. I couldn’t come home because I was having really bad thoughts going round in my head, I felt that same pressure cooker feeling that I felt a few weeks ago when I ended up self harming pretty badly. And I didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to tarnish my little one’s anniversary by cutting over and over until I needed stitches again. So even though I am now 8 days behind with my university work I tried to do the sensible thing and go somewhere I could talk, somewhere I knew the kids would distract me for a little while and somewhere where I couldn’t start hurting myself. I came home around 7pm and for the past two and a half hours I’ve just sat here staring blankly into space, my thoughts racing around too fast and to be honest it feels like my head is about to explode. I feel so stressed and worried and emotional. I keep bursting into tears and I’m not even sure exactly what I’m crying about.

I guess it’s about everything. Today has been extremely hard and I am shattered but I know I’m not going to sleep tonight. I still have two Nitrazepam left that lovely GP gave me last week and could take them and see if they help me get off to sleep. I doubt they will though, it doesn’t matter how much I try to medicate myself, everything in my head is just going way too fast and too erratically for medication to do much good. I have to try and prepare myself for another tough few days ahead but I am truly struggling to know where I’m going to get the strength from. I find it hard enough to function properly on the various medications that I take and when you throw in sleep deprivation and racing thoughts and worries (the outcome of which I have absolutely no control over) it makes it very very hard to keep on going.

I know that self harming isn’t the answer and yet I keep thinking over and over of that feeling of everything starting to release… that moment when I have finished cutting and just sit with my eyes closed for a few minutes feeling like all of the worries have rushed out of my system… it’s hard to describe it in words… I guess if you do it then you’ll know what I mean.

I can’t lie. My head is absolutely pickled tonight. I can’t slow my thoughts down so I have no choice but to let them race around until sheer exhaustion kicks in and I can get some rest. I guess it’s going to be another long night.

22:02 – Busy day, absolutely shattered

I started writing this post this morning but had to go and meet my Mum for lunch before I got the chance to finish it so there’s a few [updates] added in!

Firstly a Charlie dog update: his condition is still “critical” and he is still extremely unwell but yesterday late afternoon when I went into the vets to see him he tried to pull himself forwards to cuddle into me and licked a tiny bit of food from the vets finger so things were looking as good as what could be expected so soon after such massive surgery. But then when I phoned this morning the vet said he’d had a bit of a dip during the night and been sick so that wasn’t such good news that he didn’t manage to keep even that tiny little bit of food down. So today is going to be another long day of hoping and praying he hangs on in there and I’ll go and see him about 5pm again so I can give him a cuddle and see how he’s doing.

[update - saw him at 5pm today and he managed to walk about for five minutes and ate a couple of spoonfuls of food - if he's still doing well around 5pm tomorrow (72 hours post op) then I *might* be able to bring him home for a few hours on Saturday afternoon and see how he is but I told them I'd be too scared to keep him here overnight, even though I desperately want him home and even though there is a 24 hour on call service I just feel safer knowing he is being checked every few hours by the vet. But yes, for now things are going as well as we could hope for and he's being such a little fighter]

Now… what’s been happening with me? Well I didn’t go to bed or get a wink of sleep on Tuesday night. I was extremely upset and couldn’t stop the tears. The voices were going on and on…

“you need to bare your soul to Christ”

“declare your sins!”

“pray for his forgiveness”

“lie on the floor and give yourself to God!”

And on it went. So when I went to my appointment with Mr Psychiatrist yesterday morning I was exhausted and functioning on auto-pilot. I asked him if CPN had been in contact about increasing my Quetiapine from 750mg to 800mg (she hadn’t surprise surprise) but he point blank refused anyway and said that in his eyes 750mg is the maximum dosage he ever prescribes. When I tried to argue back that 50mg more could just be the little bit extra I need he said I had to make a choice to either stick on the 750mg dose or come off the Quetiapine and try another anti-psychotic. I listed all the anti-psychotics he’d already tried and reminded him of the reasons as to why they hadn’t worked for me but there was no changing his mind so I gave up trying, I was too tired to argue.

I filled him in on how ill Charlie dog is, told him about how shit I feel that I can’t get to my cousin’s wedding this coming Saturday and the sadness I’m feeling as it’s my little man’s anniversary on Monday. He said that it’s because of these circumstances that I’m feeling low and not a mood fluctuation as part of the Bipolar. I said I agreed with him that circumstances were making me feel very low but that these circumstances weren’t here a few weeks ago when I self harmed badly enough to require stitches. In fact this depressive mood and these horrible voices have been going on since October and none of these circumstances were there then either. To be honest I was too tired to talk to him and the whole appointment felt like a total waste of time. I did however tell him about new CPN telling me I was selfish on Monday for talking about having suicidal thoughts, he didn’t comment on it and seemed to change the subject so it was a completely unproductive appointment and thankfully I don’t need to see him again until April.

I also had an appointment with lovely GP yesterday. When I went into the waiting room I had to really fight with myself not to run back out the door. There was a baby clinic on and at least six or seven small babies and everyone fussing over them and coo-ing and saying how beautiful they all were and my head felt like it was about to explode. I was absolutely shattered, desperately worried about my fur baby and it was making me so upset being surrounded by babies and proud parents and when I was called through to see lovely GP I was fighting back the tears. I hate it, I hate that almost six years on I still get so affected by being in an environment with lots of babies, I think that was the first thing I said to lovely GP as I went in. She said I looked really tired and asked what had been happening. I went on a five minute ramble about seeing Mr Psychiatrist and it being useless, about CPN calling me selfish and feeling like my appointments with her were making me feel worse not better, about Charlie dog, about the wedding I can’t get to, about the little one’s anniversary… it all poured out and I told her I was feeling so unsupported right now. I told her that the only two ‘professionals’ that I currently work with who I feel listen to me without judging are my support worker from Rape Crisis and herself, lovely GP. I rambled that this wasn’t right, I should feel supported most from the mental health professionals, especially from my CPN but I don’t and that doesn’t feel nice at all.

Lovely GP said she was a bit worried about how I was going to deal with the weekend especially knowing that I have no family around for support and the mental health team is closed at the weekends not that they are much use anyway and she said I really had to sleep. I told her I can’t sleep for worrying so she gave me a few days worth of Nitrazepam to take at bedtime. I took 10mg with my other meds last night and did manage to get some sleep but it was quite broken and I still feel shattered this morning. Before I left my appointment she said that if I needed someone to talk to on Monday I was welcome to give her a call and she’d have a little chat to me. I think she has quite a calming effect on me as I left the appointment feeling like I’d got stuff off my chest. New CPN could do with some lessons in empathy from her!

I don’t think I mentioned this before but I got a letter from the dreaded Atos and a work capability assessment questionnaire through a week or so ago. Am I the only one who sees the word Atos on a letter and just feels their entire body sinking? I hate the waiting time after you send it off where you worry yourself sick that they are going to send you a letter saying your benefits are going to be stopped or make you have one of their dreaded medical assessment’s. With everything that’s been happening with Charlie dog this week I haven’t had a chance to get someone to help me to fill it out and there was no way I was taking it for new CPN to fill out. So I’m going to phone the mental health team and see if lovely social worker who I used to work with is around and see if I could maybe get an appointment to go in and have her help me fill it out.

[update - spoke to lovely social worker and she is going to help me with the form]

I’ve got to go and meet my Mum shortly for lunch and then we’re going for a wander round the shops as I want to buy a wedding present for my cousin and my parents are driving down to England tomorrow so they will take it down for me. I have no idea what to buy for them, I’ve not got a lot of money and they didn’t want to have a wedding present list, they wrote on the invites that as most people would be travelling quite far and having to pay for hotels that all they wanted was their family and friends there and not to bother with gifts.

[update - couldn't concentrate properly whilst wandering round the shops, was experiencing a lot of head noise and was just getting frustrated so Mum suggested I just buy some nice crystal champagne glasses and a bottle of champagne (a bit boring I know, but at least they'll use them) and I also got a lovely card and wrote a little message apologising for not being there and wishing her a day as special as she is... aww that made me tear up a little bit there!]

I also did something this morning which I guess you could call empowering. I decided to write my ex an email and tell him I wanted to do my own thing this year for the little one’s anniversary on Monday. Towards the end of our relationship I felt like I had absolutely no control over things due to him having two affairs within the last six months of being together. And despite splitting up almost four years ago now I have always met with him on the little man’s anniversary because I had this belief that our little boy would be looking down over us and happy to see Mummy and Daddy both by his stone together. But you know what? I realise now that all my little one would want is for us both to remember him but for us to be happy. And meeting my ex doesn’t make me happy, it usually ends up fucking with my head and I now feel like I don’t need that headfuck any more. It was time to cut the final thread and I did it. Me. I took control and I feel like something has lifted, I don’t have the feeling of dread about Monday any more because I know I’m going to try my best to celebrate his anniversary, to remember him with the people I love – my Mum and my best friend. And whilst I know there will be tears I’m sure there will be some smiles as well.

Anyway I better go now as I have five minutes before I need to meet my Mum. I’m tired and my head is a little bit noisy and to be honest I could do with going back to bed for a few hours but I’ve got a busy afternoon – lunch, finding a wedding present, going to visit Charlie dog at the vets, hoping lovely social worker phones back and says she can help with the work capability questionnaire, facing the supermarket as I have absolutely no food in the house and ugh I really am not in the mood right now for being awake today… maybe some fresh air will do me good.

[update - It's now almost 10pm and I have just realised I forgot to post this earlier, oops! So I've added a few updates in for the things that have happened since this morning. It's been a long day and I am ready to take a couple of Nitrazepam and try and get a better sleep tonight. Even the vet gave me a telling off today for not sleeping - but then admitted she hadn't been doing much herself because she's been so worried about my Charlie dog. She really is an amazing vet she looks after all the animals in her care with such genuine love for them all which makes going in there and seeing your pet really poorly that little bit easier So I'm going to take my other little dog for his bedtime walk and get myself off to bed. Goodnight]  :)

00:41 – “I never thought you could be so selfish”

I’m just going to briefly mention how my poorly dog is doing. I took him to the vet first thing this morning and he was kept in until 5pm on IV fluids and some other medicines. She didn’t think he was ill enough to need to stay overnight but also wasn’t happy to just let him go so I’ve to take him back in at 10am tomorrow morning to be checked over and if needed, another day on the IV fluids and maybe start some proper tests. He is very lethargic and didn’t even want to come out for his bedtime walk (then again it’s like a snow blizzard outside just now). So he is still a poorly doggy and still hasn’t eaten, so I’m still a bit worried about him. It’s at times like this I really wish they could talk to you and let you know what was wrong

Whilst the vet tried to make him feel a little better I spent my day with a couple of appointments. The first was with new CPN which was a fucking joy as always (yes I am being sarcastic). I went in there not knowing what to say and she didn’t even mention the self harming or me missing my last appointment. We talked a bit about the voices and I told her that I do think the Quetiapine is trying to help a bit but it just doesn’t feel like I’m taking quite enough. Now my psychiatrist classes the maximum dose of Quetiapine as 750mg a day, but from the reading I’ve done 800mg seems to be prescribed quite often so I told her I’d like to try another increase but wasn’t too sure if Mr Psychiatrist would agree to it when I see him on Wednesday. She asked me if I wanted her to phone and mention to him so he’ll already know what I want to talk about before I go in.

So all that bit was fine. Until I started talking about my cousin’s wedding next weekend and talked about how many things I have missed out on for 7 years, SEVEN fucking years all due to this fucking stupid phobia about travelling away from my ‘safe place’. And this is where the appointment fell apart. Whilst she was rambling on about anxiety and phobias and all that scary stuff my head was bouncing the same thought round and round: to tell her about my plotting and planning or not to tell her?

Well… I figured I’m not going to gain anything by lying to her or by keeping things bottled up. So I told her. I started to tell her that I’ve been having thoughts racing round and round my head of what a perfect opportunity it would be next weekend to put an end to everything. Now, I wanted to continue to say that of course I wouldn’t actually do anything because:

1. I’ve realised that I’m actually pretty scared about dying (as well as living)
2. It’s my little man’s anniversary next Monday and I definitely would be here for that.

But I got interrupted as she cut in and said “I never ever would have thought that you could be so selfish. This is your cousin’s wedding day and just think how much you would ruin it when all the family returned home to find out what you’d done. Every single wedding anniversary your cousin would have would just be all about when you killed yourself. That is incredibly selfish. I can’t believe you could say something like that”.

(Not an exact quote but close enough)

Now I don’t dispute for one second that it would be an incredibly selfish thing for me to do and I’m not even that bothered that she went on a little rant about me being a selfish person. Well she could have picked slightly less harsh words but what really annoyed me was the way she just cut in when it was clear I was still in the middle of speaking to start calling me selfish… she didn’t even hear me out and I had to wait til she was finished her little rant before I could tell her the reasons why I wouldn’t act on the thoughts.

To be honest I think what I found hardest about the conversation was that it was the first time of really talking about suicidal feelings with her and I guess I hoped that even though I moan about her all the time I still hoped that when the time came to talk about serious and difficult things that she would actually display some empathy. Not sit and criticise me and call me selfish. By doing that all she has done is made me feel even less like I can open up to her and I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen if I ever experience a real crisis and really need her help.

When the appointment was over and she told me she was taking a couple of weeks holiday so wouldn’t be able to see me again until the 20th of Feb I was quite relieved. I did get to say to her in the end that I had no intentions of doing anything to myself this coming weekend and mentioned the little one’s anniversary was next Monday and she didn’t even comment on it. I had to ask her if it would be OK for me to phone and speak to whatever member of staff was on duty that day if things got too hard (I probably wouldn’t phone but it’s nice to know there is that option if needed) and she was just like yes you can call if you really need it.

So I left that appointment wondering what the point to it had been, as is becoming the norm for when I leave appointments with her. Thankfully I had an appointment straight after it with my support worker through Rape Crisis and managed to get it off my chest. Support worker agreed that she thought new CPN had been a bit harsh the way she had spoken to me so once I had spoke about that for a few minutes I stopped feeling so annoyed and managed to have a good chat with her about some other shit that’s been on my mind, just stuff about my feelings towards men and how completely convinced I now am that I won’t ever have another relationship with a guy – partly because of how they’ve treated me and partly because I couldn’t ever imagine exposing my scarred body to someone again.

Right, before I go off into another ramble about all of that stuff I think I’d better take myself off to bed seeing as it’s nearly 1am. Keeping my fingers crossed that my poorly dog is a bit better in the morning.

Goodnight.

21:22 – Scared to live. Scared to die.

I don’t know where my head’s at. I have been trying to distract myself from the head crazies and unfortunately my poorly dog who I had to rush to the vet on Friday still doesn’t seem to be much better. He isn’t throwing up so much, but then he hasn’t eaten more than a few bites in the past week and for the last 24 hours has completely refused all food and drink so I’ve had to resort to syringe feeding him water every 2-3 hours. That meant setting my alarm every few hours during the night but to be honest I couldn’t really sleep anyway.

It seems like when I’m doing something like syringe feeding, going out walks, attempting to start my new university modules – we’re just about to go onto week 2 and I’ve only just started looking at week 1 so I’m already behind. But yeah, when I’m doing something then the head crazies are bearable but the second I stop it feels like this huge big black cloud just sinks over me and all I can think is ‘what’s the point?’. I sit here trying to study but the words just won’t sink in and I think why the fuck am I doing this? And then the head noise starts up and I start being pulled into conversations or hear my name being talked about and then the only thing I can do is give the head noise my full attention because I want to know what the fuck is being said about me!

I have been thinking a lot about death recently (well, I’m always thinking about it but recently it’s been a lot more prominent) and I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m scared to live but also scared to die. But this only fuels the head crazies because it gives cause for more debating back and forth like a bloody ping pong ball…

I want to live

I want to die

I can’t go on living

I can’t end my life

Back and forth, back and forth, the thoughts go quieter then louder, faster then slower and on and on it goes. Yet if I sit here and say to myself that I am not going to die then I become more anxious and if I say to myself that I don’t need to live I become equally as anxious. What the fuck is that all about? It makes no sense. Nothing makes sense. It’s all so contradictory. The thought of living for the foreseeable scares the crap out of me but when I really start thinking deeply about death it scares the crap out of me as well. It never did until the last serious suicide attempt I made and now I get the flashbacks of that one particular moment where my blood pressure crashed and they were all panicking around me and I knew those figures were seriously low and I was trying so so hard to keep my eyes open, terrified of what was happening to me and those words just slipped out my mouth “am I going to die? I don’t want to die” and every time I think of that and how I felt both physically and mentally in that moment is enough to make me pretty much guarantee I will never take another overdose (well not the cocktail I used that time) in my life. Of course there’s plenty other ways.

This coming week I have to see new CPN tomorrow which I’ve not decided if I’m going to or not. I missed the last appointment but to be honest I just don’t want to see her. But I also have an appointment with my support worker from Rape Crisis and I haven’t seen her in a couple of weeks either so maybe I should just go to both of them. At least I know if I leave the appointment with new CPN with any bad thoughts going round my head that I can talk to my support worker who I seem to get on with a lot better.

I also have to see lovely GP this week on Wednesday and also Mr Psychiatrist on Wednesday, as usual I’m not particularly looking forward to that one. But then again I’m seeing him first then lovely GP later in the afternoon so if he pisses me off at least I know she’ll be more understanding. I just don’t know what he’s going to say/do about the voices still being very much present despite being up on the max dose of Quetiapine again. I really really don’t want to switch to yet another anti-psychotic but at the same time I really don’t want the voices either, they are making me do all this planning and plotting, telling me how to do things, putting ideas in my head.

Next weekend my entire family all make the 200 mile trip down to England for my cousin’s wedding. The one I was supposed to be a bridesmaid for. The one the fucking agoraphobia is making me too terrified to attend. Every single member of my family is going to be there apart from me. Seeing the wedding photos is going to hurt really bad. But the voices start up and tell me what a perfect opportunity it will be, everyone gone for the whole weekend, it would be ideal. I could get all my plans in place then go to see best friend with a fake smile painted on, ask her to watch the dogs for a little while and come home. Perfect opportunity.

But… I can’t do anything then can I… because a couple of days later is my little man’s angel anniversary and I will be here for that. I will do the same as I do every year and spend a lot of time by his headstone, talking to my baby and crying lots of tears. Making his headstone look all pretty. A certain someone who I have a massive amount of respect for once told me that if I was no longer here then no one would keep my little man’s memory alive… well not the way that I do or the way I’d want them to. I am the only person who can do that and I can only do it if I’m here.

So basically I feel completely stuck. Scared to live. Scared to die. Yet this depression just carries on getting worse and worse. I continue to hear voices and end up quite distressed by them at times. I want to blank it all out. I want to escape from it all. I just don’t see how I can continue to live this way. It just feels like existing. The days just all seem to blur into one and every day it gets harder and harder to stay strong.

Tonight what will keep me strong is my poorly dog, making sure he gets fluids every few hours then first thing in the morning I will be phoning the vet, he needs to be seen again. I think he’s going to need to spend the day in there on a drip and get properly rehydrated. God only knows how much that’s going to cost me but I don’t think I’m going to have any other choice. He’s one of my fur babies and I have to make sure he gets better.

So, with a mixed up and tired head I’m going to try and get him to come for a little walk then get to bed reasonably early as it’s going to be another long night of getting up and down every couple of hours and then a long day with vets and two appointments tomorrow. My head feels totally pickled, I have too many thoughts and ideas and plans running through it and I’m too exhausted with them all that I can’t give them the attention that is needed. Things just feel like they are spinning a little bit out of control, the only button I seem to want to press is the self destruct one, to at least hurt and hurt by cutting. I need a way to release all of this frustration, I thought when I self harmed badly a couple of weeks ago that I had got it all out of me but clearly I haven’t. But just like not wanting to attend appointments I don’t want another trip to A&E, more stitches, more questions, more fear of being judged or control being removed.

Argh. I need to go find a quiet spot in the middle of nowhere and scream as loud as I can until I’m screaming louder than them and I can try to drown it all out. I’ve been listening to the new Rihanna album on my iPod (turned up full) whilst I’ve been writing this, very loud music through earphones is about the only way I can tolerate loud head noise and I still hear the voices over the music, they are just blurred out a bit. Anyway, this has been a bit of a depressing post so I’ll say goodnight and leave you with what I’ve been listening to… there’s something quite lovely about this song… it reminds me of a certain time in my life… there’s something quite poignant about it… and yes, as usual I prefer reading the lyrics than watching the actual music video…

Enjoy…

22:47 – Seeing the family… and stuff…

It’s been a few days since I last posted. On Thursday my Aunt and Uncle and my cousin and his girlfriend and my Grandma all went to my parents house for a little visit. Obviously my parents were also there as was my brother and his girlfriend. I  was feeling a mix of emotions on Thursday morning, I was anxious about being around people, having to stay for dinner and stay for at least a couple of hours and behave ‘normally’ so I took a couple of Diazepam as I was getting ready to go and kept half a strip in my bag (just in case).

It was nice to see them all again – especially to my Aunt who I haven’t seen since her cancer diagnosis, she looked exactly the same so that was nice, and the wig she was wearing, wow it was 100% real hair and styled exactly like my Aunt styles her hair – it was also lovely to see my little Gran again – but with the more time that passed the more the anxiety was starting to build up again and it came coupled with a nice dose of paranoia because I was hearing that constant giggling inside my head again.

It all kicked off when my Aunt mentioned my (female) cousin’s upcoming wedding on 9th February (the one that is hours away that I can’t get to) and just sitting listening to them all talking about what hotels they were staying in and how many guests were attending and even what the menu had on it… And I’m looking round thinking that even my brother’s girlfriend of a year is going to be part of a pretty huge family event for our small family and I’m missing my chance of being a bridesmaid as well as just being there to share in their day. At least they all seem to understand my agoraphobia and just accept that it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to overcome it, I wish my fucking psychiatrist would accept how much it affects my life grr.

So that put me into “escape mode” and I started making my excuses as to why I had to go. I was working myself into such a state internally that I completely forgot I had a few Diazepam in my bag that could have helped. I think I managed just short of three hours there which is pretty good going for me.

I haven’t answered the phone and have barely responded to text messages this past week. The only time I’ve really gone out the house (besides walking the dogs) was on Thursday to see the family. The rest of the time I’ve just been sitting in the house with the TV on that I don’t even watch, it’s just for background noise.

Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with new CPN at 10am. It feels like ages since I last saw her and I do still feel a bit let down over the whole lack of support over Xmas and New Year even after they had identified that I’m likely to need more support over that time. I don’t know if I will mention it to her or not, I’ll see if it’s something on my mind during the appointment. I know she is going to give me the “well done” speech for getting through a hard time of year without any crises but she doesn’t have a clue how hard it’s been deep down. And I don’t know if I have the words to tell her how hard it has been so I will no doubt end up just sitting there nodding my head and trying to remember to smile once every so often.

The main mind battle this weekend has been all of those self harm urges again. I keep getting so close and then something stops me at the last minute. I know I’ve said it a million times before but I truly don’t want to end up even in the local A&E department needing stitches because that will make the crumbling walls around me crumble even faster and give them the chance to see what sort of a fucked up place my head is really in.

And I just don’t want to talk to anyone about it at all. I just don’t want to talk to anyone at the moment full stop. I think best friend has given up on trying to call me as I have ignored every single call for about a week now. I still haven’t even said happy new year to her.

The pressure cooker lid is getting very very close to blowing off and I find it all a bit scary. The one thing that I have always believed that I was in control of (self harming) is fast becoming something that I have no control over at all and I can’t do it when I’m losing control because it escalates into a truly horrible place and usually does so pretty rapidly.

The longer I can keep the lid closed and keep everything tightly inside of me the better, I don’t even want to think about opening up to new CPN tomorrow, I actually feel like since I’ve just been left to get through the past few weeks by myself that I have now decided it’s best just to keep everything close to my chest, but like I say, we’ll see how things go during the appointment tomorrow.

Time to go and walk the dogs before bed. Hope you’ve all had a nice weekend.

23:17 – An emotional rollercoaster today

Today has passed at a snail pace. Every time I thought another couple of hours must have passed I would check the clock and it would really only be about half an hour that had passed. The only times that time has moved so slowly have been when I’ve been in hospital.

My thoughts began to spin out of control mid afternoon. I became very irritable and my best friend kept phoning and I kept hitting the phone onto silent, I just couldn’t answer it. I’m not sure why, I think it was because I was sure she would know there was something wrong and then start insisting I go out and talk to her or play with the kids to distract myself.

And you know what was crazy? Right there in that moment I didn’t want to be distracted, I wanted to feel every single horrible emotion, I wanted to feel them one by one and see how much damage it would do to actually sit and listen to everything in my head rather than try and escape it. So I sat and cried. I paced the room. I flicked through TV programmes. I took the dogs several short walks. I washed some clothes. I hoovered. I smoked a ridiculous amount of cigarettes.

I tried to make food but realised the few items in my fridge had gone out of date yesterday so I called for some Chinese food as it was the only place open. Started eating it then thought I was going to be sick with each big wave of anxiety that overcame me. That reminds me, a psychologist I saw once upon a time once said to me the best thing you can do is start eating something when you feel anxiety coming on because one of the very first things that happens physiologically when we become anxious is our mouth’s become dry so if you start to eat something (even some chewing gum just to produce saliva) somehow tricked your body into a state of confusion: you can’t be relaxed enough to eat and in fight or flight panic mode, so theoretically you should start to calm down (or give into the anxiety and dump the plate of food like I did). I don’t know if it works or if it’s just some old wives tale, I do know when I’m very anxious the last thing on my mind is sitting eating a nice plate of food when my stomach is churning, when I’m having hot flushes and my heart is palpitating like crazy and I have the overwhelming urge to escape.

So who knows… maybe it does work…

This state of anxiety and irritability/restlessness carried on through to the early evening despite me taking some Diazepam to try and calm down a bit. By this point the repetitive voice in my head was “cut”… followed by the obligatory giggle. It made me feel really quite distressed because I couldn’t make it stop and when it won’t stop I start panicking that it’s not “my voice” or “my thought” it’s one that’s out of my control again. I decided to not even fight it and went to my little hiding place and took out two brand new stanley knife/box cutter blades. I sat pushing the flat side of the metal against various parts of my arms and legs, then I turned the blade on it’s side and ran it across my skin (but without applying any pressure at all) just to get the memories to rush into my head of how it feels when I do push down deep and actually cut. And the more time the blades spent in my hands the more the anxiety began to build up thinking about having to go to A&E if I allowed myself to cut to the my usual level.

I put the blades back and guess what? I cried again. AGAIN. I lay here on the sofa a snotty sobbing mess holding a cushion tightly against me then sat up and just rocked myself until all the intense emotions seemed like they were finally leaving.

So it has been a pretty rotten day but one that is now almost over. It’s about 10.45pm just now and I’ve taken my medication and night time Diazepam. I’ve just been out giving the dogs their last walk of the night and I am now sitting here feeling totally drained. My head hurts from all the crying, my eyes are puffy from all the crying and my mind is emotionally shattered from all the crying.

The only person I have spoken to all day was the delivery driver who dropped my Chinese food off and that was just to mutter the words “thank you”.

I don’t know what stopped me from cutting today, mostly it was the complete state of fear I seem to be experiencing whenever I think of anything hospital related at the moment, but also because I got a text message from my Mum saying that my Aunt and Uncle and Grandma are all coming to visit tomorrow and asking me if I’d like to join them for dinner. I eventually text back saying yes I would go. Some time ago I wrote a post saying that my Aunt had sadly been diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer, well that is her just finished 6 months (I think?) of Chemotherapy as well as having had surgery to do a complete hysterectomy and removal of various lymph nodes and things that are also in that area. And due to the fucking agoraphobia and not being able to get to Big Scary City where my Aunt lives this is actually going to be the first time I will have seen her since her diagnosis. So if she can have gone through all of that and feel well enough to travel the couple of hours to my parents house for the night then I’m sure I can battle my head demons for a couple of hours and try to enjoy a meal with them. Plus it’s been ages since I last saw my little Grandma and I do miss her a lot. And she’s getting old now, I think she’s about 88 bless her.

So, as I was saying, getting that message to say they were coming was another thing that seemed to stop me from cutting. Even though the wound would have been somewhere they would never have seen, this is the first year for quite a while where I’m actually going to have something that I can talk about during dinner. And I didn’t want to be sitting there with a sore arm or leg knowing that there were a load of stitches just under my clothes. One advantage of doing this University course is that it gives people something to talk to me about and takes the attention away from my mental health. Every time I have to see people that I haven’t seen in a while I always get asked what I’m doing with my life and this time I’ll be able to tell them about my course and what I’ve been learning and where I hope it will lead. Even if the voice in my head is laughing at every sentence that comes out my mouth and starts mocking me I am determined I will get through one meal and actually have my family thinking I’m not a completely lost cause after all. I want them to finally hear about something positive in my life and not be like “oh she’s STILL not well” even if I don’t entirely have much belief in myself about the course, I still want to be able to say the words that I’m doing something with my life.

The only bit I’m not looking forward to is hearing about all of my cousin’s wedding plans or all the little stories about her little toddler. Baby type talk is a big trigger. The wedding that is too far away for me to go to because of the stupid agoraphobia but one that every single member of our families will be at, apart from me. That topic of conversation is also likely to be one that would make me feel quite anxious and upset.

OK I think it’s time for bed now. Please let tomorrow be a better day and run smoothly with no embarrassing anxiety attacks or similar mentalisms. I just want to be able to cope for a couple of hours, take part in their conversation, enjoy a meal with them and then come home again.

Simple as that.

(Nothing is ever simple, I should know that by now)

Goodnight folks x

15:58 – Quetiapine increase and seeing lovely GP

On Wednesday I went to see lovely GP as I needed a new prescription and also I haven’t been feeling too great (mentally or physically) either.

As mentioned quite a lot on here I’ve been experiencing high levels of anxiety over the past 6 weeks or so. It has calmed down slightly over the past week or two, well when I say calmed down I mean it’s coming in waves at the moment as opposed to being there constantly. So it’s slightly more bearable. Anyway… *I should probably say if talk about poo offends you, then you may wish to look away now*… when I become very anxious one of my first sensations is pain and churning in my lower tummy… this is quickly followed by the need to get to my safe place (i.e. my house) and use a toilet ASAP. During the anxiety attack I will almost definitely get hot flushes (especially if I’m around other people), my heart will feel like it’s beating too fast and sometimes out of sync, my thoughts will start to race and give me the feeling like something really bad is going to happen, I can’t think rationally, I pace around trying to calm myself down… You get the picture.

So when I started to get another sort of stomach pain – this time at the very top of my stomach, just below where my ribs meet – I first thought it was something anxiety related and tried to ignore it. Then that night (I think it was Sunday night) I woke up in the early hours with this horrible pain that was making me really nauseous and I struggled to get back to sleep. After a couple of hours of tossing and turning I went to the bathroom and bent over the toilet to see if I was actually going to vomit. I didn’t but the nausea was awful and in the end I had to use my fingers to force myself to be sick just to get that feeling to stop but once I started being sick I couldn’t stop again, everything had to come out.

Eventually I tried to go back to sleep but was in general discomfort the rest of the night. When it reached late morning the nausea seemed to have passed so I went to my appointment with new CPN on Monday at 2pm and then my appetite came back a couple of hours later so I had a light dinner. Within a couple of hours of eating it the nausea was back full force and with no forcing needed I again vomited repeatedly.

So Sunday night, then off and on throughout Monday, during the night into Tuesday, all day Tuesday, during the night into Wednesday, Wednesday morning this same pattern of pain/nausea/vomiting/eating/pain/vomiting continued and I decided to mention it to lovely GP during my appointment with her on Wednesday afternoon. She got me to lie up on the bed thingy and had a prod around my stomach – until she pressed down on the tender spot and I nearly hit her hand away – it really hurt!

Lovely GP’s diagnosis was that she thinks I have a stomach ulcer. She said to diagnose it for definite would mean sending me to big scary hospital for what I presume would be an endoscopy but she knows such a referral is pointless because I just can’t get to big scary hospital yet. But she decided to treat me for a stomach ulcer anyway so she must have been pretty sure and I have to take a course of tablets for 4 weeks and see if the nausea and vomiting stop and if I can start to eat normally again. I’m only on my second day of them and unfortunately still quite nauseous but hopefully they will begin to work soon.

Whilst at my appointment with GP she said she had a letter from Mr Psychiatrist and after seeing me last week he was recommending my Quetiapine (Seroquel) be increased from 600mg to 700mg a day. GP asked what I thought about this and I said it would probably be a good idea. She asked if I wasn’t feeling so good and I confided in her that I had massive urges to self harm and felt like I was sitting in a pressure cooker just waiting to blow because I’m not letting myself do it to the level I want and need to

With regards to the increase, I’ve been up to 750mg before so I knew I would tolerate 700mg OK, I just hate thinking how close I am to the maximum dosage again and whilst it doesn’t work 100%, it is the most effective of all the anti-psychotics we’ve tried and has the least side effects for me. So now I just hope that the extra 100mg is just enough to help keep things manageable and not let the head crazies get any worse. My hope is that once we are through the Winter months I might be able to drop back down to 600mg but we’ll see how things go.

I do still have the opportunity to increase my Mirtazapine (Remeron) dose, I can go up one last 15mg increase before hitting the max dose. And I guess there is still always the opportunity to add a ‘mood stabiliser’ back in. Sometimes I wonder if quitting the Lamotrigine was a good idea, it didn’t give me any bad side effects at all but equally after two years of taking it I didn’t think it had done anything to help so stopping it seemed like the right move. I assumed we would just start another one but I also told Mr Psychiatrist back then that I had been on the same anti-depressant for about five years and asked him if he thought it would be worth changing it as well. Unfortunately I’ve already tried just about every anti-depressant there is without success so we decided to give Mirtazapine a try. Then when I had been on it for a month or so I thought we would introduce a new mood stabiliser but instead we increased the Mirtazapine. Then when I suggested it again after another couple of months it was recommended that the Quetiapine was increased as well. So I’m still just on the three medications but at higher doses: Mirtazapine, Quetiapine and Diazepam.

I keep thinking that I want to ask lovely GP if I could maybe go back onto monthly prescriptions instead of weekly ones and I was planning to ask her on Wednesday, but then I ended up telling her about these horrible urges to self harm and I knew there would be no point in asking her then, I know they only do it to keep me safer but that must be two or three years of weekly prescriptions now and I want to be *trusted* again. The only problem I can think she might have is prescribing me a month’s worth of Diazepam at a time as, I’m currently down to 16 mg a day (4 x 4mg doses) so although the tablets I get are only 2mg in strength I take 8 of them a day which is 56 I’m prescribed every Wednesday, which would be 224 (or 8 boxes of 28) per monthly prescription and I don’t know if they would ever be happy to give me 8 boxes worth at a time when they’ve made it clear they’re not particularly happy giving me 2 boxes each week, but they do it anyway.

Who knows, maybe one day they will be able to trust me again… maybe I need to show somehow that I trust myself first… and yeah if I’m honest I don’t trust myself much at all at the moment so I guess, realistically, it’s going to take quite some time yet to be trusted again by ‘t3h professi0nalz’.

Well I suppose I better go out in the wind and rain, walk my little dogs, go to the shop and then decide what I’m going to do with myself this evening. I don’t envisage much of a fun Friday night ahead, probably a boring one on my own in front of the TV (although, to be fair, that is about all I can be bothered with at the moment). I am also going to be on a very tight budget over the next couple of weeks as I finished off my Christmas shopping yesterday and paid some bills and have left myself with next to nothing to live off for the next two weeks. Maybe it’s just as well the only thing I can stomach is plain cereal or toast at the moment, at least it’s cheap!

18:50 – My Crazy Bipolar Life is 3 today!

Today the 13th of December 2012 marks my little blog’s 3rd anniversary. I can’t quite believe that what started off as me just needing somewhere to write down my thoughts one lonely day back in December 2009 has lasted this long! I have started a lot of diaries in my life but this has by far lasted the longest and it has certainly been quite a journey since that first post I wrote…

I wonder if I would actually have believed anyone if they had told me back then that over the next three years I would make attempts at ending my life, experience some of the darkest, most bleak and miserable depressive episodes, that I would permanently scar my body quite badly through self harming, that I would experience psychosis or that I would experience a number of hospital admissions both voluntary and being detained under the mental health act.

There have been some laughs along the way, although unfortunately they have been pretty few and far between. There have been a couple of hints of hypomania but the various anti-psychotics have kept full blown manic episodes away. If only they could be so effective at controlling the voices that never seem to properly go away, although they do kindly whisper from time to time.

I’ve experienced the frustrations of getting to a place where I felt like I had a good care team round me to losing one member of it who I valued enormously,  then trying to work with temporary staff, to then getting back to a place where I have someone permanent to work with again. In the last three years I have dealt with psychiatrists, psychologist, social workers, CPN’s, GP’s, hospital nurses in A&E, hospital nurses on medical wards and hospital nurses and doctors in the psych hospital.

I have caused a lot of upset to people I care about, I have scared them by being so out of control with my emotions and actions, I have occasionally broken down in front of people and shown my tears and tried to share some of the pain inside of me. I have felt guilt and shame because of my behaviours but once or twice had a ‘meaningful’ hug with someone, where for a brief moment I have felt like they understood and actually they weren’t judging me.

Have I made any progress over the three years I have been writing my ramblings and random thoughts down? I’m really not sure. In some aspects yes – for example – the part time university course I’ve been doing over the past 3 months has given me something positive to try and focus on. But it’s hard, not so much the work itself than the complete lack of concentration I experience so often which makes studying extremely frustrating at times.

The other positive is that my agoraphobia has improved very slightly. I can travel further now than what I could three years ago, although not massively, but when my head is feeling calm I can now travel for about an hour in quiet areas that I’m familiar with. Three years ago even a journey of five minutes could have me starting to really panic. I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever overcome this phobia completely, although it would be lovely to think that by the time we reach 2015 (in another 3 years) I could be in a place where I could go shopping in cities and go on holidays and attend family events and so much more.

I know having two positive things is better than having none, but in many ways I don’t feel as though I’ve made much progress at all. I still haven’t found the ‘right’ combination of medication or talking therapies and sometimes I wonder if there will ever be a day where I will be the person who is helping someone with a mental health problem rather than be the person needing the help. Will I stick at the university course over the next three years? By then I could be a good way to getting my degree. Will this little precious corner of cyberspace that I ramble in still be here in three years? I really truly couldn’t imagine not having it now. I have ‘met’ some amazing human beings through writing this blog – there are a couple of people who I have never met but would most definitely consider a friend for all the support and encouragement that they have given me even when they have been trying to deal with their own head crazies. Three years ago I had no idea that such a supportive mental health blogging community existed and I’m so glad I found it; even though I write some posts when I’m unwell that I go back to read some time later and think “oh my God I sound completely bonkers” very few people have ever judged me, the majority have been incredibly supportive and made me feel like I ‘fit in’ somewhere.

I never thought that anyone would have been interested in reading what I had to say and even now looking at the screen and seeing “79,634 visits since December 09″ – I just think wow – of course I know there are blogs out there with hundreds of thousands and even millions of hits, but I genuinely never even expected to see 80 people read my little blog let alone almost 80 thousand. And even though a lot of posts have been full of self pity, there have been many more where all I’ve wanted to do is to have a place where I could express what was going on inside my head and it’s quite touching that so many people have followed in my little journey with me and even more so that so many of those people have said that they understood or could relate to what I was talking about. Much as that makes me sad in many ways (I wish no one else ever had to feel like this) but through writing this blog I feel a little less alone and a little more accepted for just being me.

Sometimes I really wonder about the future, sometimes I really wonder how much more of a future I will have but every so often something or someone will come along and will give me just the tiniest bit of hope or strength to fight on through another day.

The next three years… I don’t expect them to be easy and I reckon it’s going to be another long journey… I don’t know if one day things really will all get too much or if one day they will start to get easier… but maybe, just maybe, I’ll manage to come out the other side of this a stronger person. Who knows what the future has in store… I guess the only way to find out is to stick around and see where it all ends up…

Thanks for sharing the last three years of my life with me, it really does mean a lot. Every comment means a lot, just to know that someone has taken five minutes out of their day to read what I’ve rambled and then taken the time to offer advice, to say they relate, or just to give words of support… Without it I would probably have given up on ‘My Crazy Bipolar Life‘ a long time ago.

Now who’d like to blow out my birthday candles?

Don’t forget to make a wish xxx

 

 

P.S. I’ll write a ‘proper’ post later about seeing lovely GP yesterday, medication increases and some other ramblings…

22:11 – So nervous about seeing new CPN tomorrow

It’s been a strange sort of day. I got to sleep relatively early last night which was good as I was awake throughout the daylight today, but I woke up incredibly anxious again this morning. That continued all morning and I kept trying to distract myself from it, I watched some old sitcoms on TV, I opened up some textbooks (but had no concentration and closed them again). I got my essay result back from the piece of utter crap I submitted a week or so ago that I would have marked as a fail but it passed with a C. Not great, but better than I thought it would get. So for our 3 smaller assessments I have passed one at a B, one with 35 out of 35 and one at a C. Now I just have to finish my coursework, do a shit load of reading and do the final ‘big’ essay with the hope I pass this module.

As I couldn’t concentrate and the anxiety was really getting to me I spontaneously decided to clean. So I scrubbed the kitchen, the overflowing pile of dishes have now been washed, all the surfaces have been cleaned and then I went and scrubbed the bathroom. Anyone who knows me will tell you I am useless when it comes to cleaning up, I hate it, I find it so boring and tedious and get no pleasure from it at all… but today I just impulsively felt like I had to clean up a bit.

After I did that I made a big decision. I was going outside today in the daytime. I was up and dressed by then, it was about noon, the dogs were looking at me with their puppy dog eyes so without giving myself a second to change my mind I put my jacket and boots on, put the dogs on their lead and went out.

And it was fucking horrible.

There were people everywhere. I had to walk past people and I could feel people looking at me, it felt like they were talking about me, I really really wanted to run back to the house but I kept going a bit further with my stomach in knots and feeling like I wasn’t breathing properly. I managed about fifteen minutes before I couldn’t take it any longer and the anxiety won – I speedily walked home with my head down.

At least the dogs got some fresh air and a run around.

I then dealt with another couple of hours of extreme anxiety, tried to distract myself by trying to do some reading again but it wasn’t happening. I washed some clothes and dried some others. I put the TV back on. The girl who I may be doing the house exchange with text me and told me she was going to go and speak to someone at the housing department about it and has got a form to fill in. I’m going (well my plan is to try and go) to the housing department myself tomorrow on my way back from seeing new CPN and see if they need me to fill anything out. The panicking started to spiral out of control during the texts back and forth and I finally had a good hard word with myself, told myself I was being pathetic, that there was no need to be getting myself into so much of a state, that if I want to stay here I only have to say no and if I want to move then the opportunity is looking like it’s there. I was actually speaking out loud to myself saying over and over that this is ridiculous and there was nothing to be so scared of.

Then, as if in some sort of test to myself, I pulled my jacket on and went to the supermarket. I walked around mostly looking at the floor, only looking up to see what I needed off the shelves, felt the anxiety rising as I got to the queue at the check out. My heart started doing that thing where it beats and you can hear it in your ears getting louder and louder then you can feel it beating in your throat. I felt like I was being watched by everyone and wanted to run from the queue, leave all my stuff right there and just run.

Somehow I forced myself to stay right where I was and then something made me look up. A familiar voice. My ex fiancé and his partner at the check out right next to me. It was so uncomfortable and my crazy head started going completely into overdrive at this point. All I could think about was how he was dressed all nice and she was in this nice dress and I was standing there in my jacket that really needs washed and no make up on and my hair scraped back and there I was panicking again, putting all my stuff into bags as quickly as possible, grabbing them, and walking as fast as I could back home.

I hate seeing him. But I live in a small town and it’s inevitable that I’m going to bump into him from time to time. I wish that it got easier with all this time that’s passed but it doesn’t. Just knowing I have to see him that one day each year on the little one’s anniversary is more than enough. It still hurts when I see them together even though my love for him is long gone. But yeah, I’m probably still bitter, even now when I see her I get little flashes of her back on that day close to 4 years ago now when she was jumping out my fiancé’s bed half dressed. That older, married mother of two, a boss in the company he worked for, her husband was our friend, and there they were… having an affair without a care for anyone but themselves.

Anyway, enough about that. I got home, I again began to panic, I tried again to study and after 3 attempts today I decided to give up for the rest of the day and try again tomorrow. This evening since about 7pm I’ve just been watching TV, trying to watch happy programs, funny ones, comedies… trying everything I can think of to try and keep the crazies at bay for a little while longer. And I’ve just managed another walk with the dogs but it was dark, quiet and cold and I coped with it a lot better than the two other times I’ve been out in public today.

And now it’s getting late again and coming to the end of another day. And the anxiety is beginning to rise inside me again because I have this appointment with the new CPN tomorrow morning and I know she’s going to ask me why I ignored the last two appointments and I don’t have a reason for her other than that I’ve been really suffering badly with anxiety and been pretty much housebound in the daytimes, that I can’t even deal with a phone call when I’m like that and that I’m sorry I didn’t get in contact. That is, if I actually make it to this appointment. I have a feeling she may not offer me any more appointments if I miss the third one as well so I’m thinking I have to go and if I’m an anxious mess then she’ll just need to see me as an anxious mess and see for herself how bad it is. But whilst I can think like that, I can also think about how much I really don’t want someone that I’ve met once to see me pacing up and down, holding my stomach when it starts churning and going in knots, taking my jacket off as I get hot flushes, the urgency to get out of the environment I’m in and come back to my safe place.

Whilst I wasn’t sure what to make of the new CPN the first time I met her I guess I have to give her a chance? I wasn’t sure what I made of the last CPN the first time I met her but she turned out to be quite nice in the end. Maybe this one will too, I just have to get there and see her to find that out. Ugh. Twelve hours to go and it will be appointment time. I guess it’s good that it’s early in the morning, even though the anxiety seems to already be there, waiting on me to wake up, at least I don’t have to sit about all day working myself up about it and can just get up (try and have a shower) put some clothes on and just go. I just keep telling myself even if I can only manage ten minutes before having to say to her that I’ve had enough and want to leave, I just need to get there and see her and maybe I’ll be able to get her to understand how much I’m struggling right now.

And if I manage that appointment then on my way home I will pop into the housing department and see what the next step is in doing a house exchange. Ugh, my stomach is going all funny just thinking about having to see and talk to two different people and both in the day light. I did it today, not the talking to anyone part but the going out part, I can do it again tomorrow, right?

*Positive Thinking*

Goodnight folks xx