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.

01:36 – A confused and messed up girl

My head is still pretty messed up and sadly the regrets over self harming so severely on Sunday night still haven’t kicked in. Last night was pretty horrendous,  I became extremely emotional and sat with my little angel’s memory box on the bed and cried for what seemed like hours. After putting his memory box away I became really angry, angry that this is my life, that the most precious thing in my life has been lost.

My behaviour after that became ridiculous. I started pulling all the bandages off my legs and sat with a blade in my hand, shaking and desperately wanting to cut out all twenty something stitches. I shook, I cried, I threw the blade angrily on the floor then picked up the TV remote control and began smacking it off my face, whacking my cheeks with it over and over again. Then I was down on the floor and  hitting my head off the wall like an angry child. Then the blade was back in my hand again and I was going to cut but I truly could not have faced more stitches. So I repeatedly lit my lighter until the metal was red hot then pushed it down deep onto my skin all round my ankle. And then ended up in tears again.

I was really starting to get quite terrified of where this was all heading. My thoughts were so negative that I began to feel quite suicidal. Then I cried some more when I remembered yet again I can’t commit suicide because I can’t put my parents through the pain I carry about every day of having to bury your child. So whether I like it or not I have to keep on going and that made me angry and upset and frustrated that I felt in the moment like I was only alive to spare others pain. But then of course there is always that little evil laugh inside my head saying “they wouldn’t care anyway, they’d be glad you were gone” even though rationally I know that is completely untrue and that my parents love me very much. I don’t deserve their love, sometimes I wish they loved me less so it would be easier to put an end to things

Everything was just going bonkers. I couldn’t hold myself together any longer and ended up phoning the mental health helpline breathing space and spent the next hour on a non stop ramble about how I just want to completely self destruct, how much I deserved to be in this pain, I deserved to suffer, I was/am a bad person who doesn’t deserve good things in life. I told the call handler I wanted to rip all my stitches out, that I couldn’t stop thinking about hurting myself more and more. After about an hour I finally got so tired from everything and broke down in tears on the phone, I couldn’t keep talking and just hung up. I felt a bit bad for not even saying thank you or goodbye to the person who had sat and listened to me all that time but I was completely mentally exhausted. With a slight bit of self medicating I did finally manage to semi-sedate myself and fall asleep only to wake up every couple of hours in a state of panic. I think I was having nightmares, I’m not sure.

I sent lovely support worker from rape crisis a text message yesterday telling her I’d had a bad night on Sunday and she messaged me this morning to ask if I wanted to see her today instead of waiting until tomorrow. So I said yes and we had a long chat together. I was honest with her about everything I did over Sunday and Monday night, I was honest with her about feeling like I just want to make myself hurt and hurt and not stop hurting. I told her I was scared about where this was all heading and that I didn’t know when or how to make it stop. I don’t think it can stop until I do something really bad to myself. And that I was terrified I was going to end up in the psychiatric hospital again if I keep going like this. She asked if that might be a good place for me right now and I very firmly said no. There is no way I am ever going back to that place, it is awful, truly awful. It would make the sanest of people feel like they’d gone bonkers in just one week of being there. The thought of that place makes me feel anxious as hell and physically sick.

Oh I forgot to mention that for the first time since this whole arrangement was made with A&E a year ago that they would let the CMHT know when I had attended – well yesterday for the first time I actually got a phone call from the duty CPN (albeit it was just before they were closing) but yes someone did actually phone and ask if I was OK as she’d read the A&E notes. I told her I wasn’t sure how I felt and she asked if I thought I could keep myself safe. I said I’d try my best, I said the same when I was leaving my support appointment this afternoon.

I went to the A&E department this afternoon to have a wound check and dressing change done. I was supposed to be going back again tomorrow to get last Wednesday’s stitches out but I asked her if they could just come out a day early. That wound looked like it is starting to heal well so the nurse took those stitches out. Now I have to wait until a week tomorrow before I can get all these other ones out. I don’t honestly know if I can go through the next 8 days without doing it again. I don’t even know if I can go through the next 8 hours without doing it again at the moment. My head is well and truly pickled it really is.

Tomorrow I have promised to spend some time with best friend and her kids. I haven’t told her about Sunday’s self harming and don’t plan on telling her. I don’t know why, I just don’t want to talk about it with anyone close like friends or family. I haven’t mentioned it again to the friend who came with me to A&E either. It almost feels a bit like a can of worms being opened if I tell them, if I admit to those nearest and dearest to me that I’m not coping and constantly trying to hurt myself then it makes it that little bit more real that I really am falling apart. It’s easier for them not to know. For now anyway. Even with all these stitches in I still don’t feel like I’ve done enough damage and I have no idea how long that state of mind is going to continue for.

I haven’t felt this much of a mess in a long time and I can’t seem to make it stop. Maybe I don’t want it to stop. Maybe I need to feel this level of self loathing at the moment. I don’t know why… but maybe I just do. Nothing really makes a great deal of sense at the moment. I’m one very confused and messed up girl.

00:02 – Truth be known, I’m struggling… a lot

[Warning - there is a graphic description of sexual violence in this post]

Since my last post in the early hours of Friday morning I have been quite busy but also, if I’m honest, struggling. On Friday afternoon I went to see my Mum for a little while and to see best friend. We were all going out on the Saturday night for best friend’s birthday and I was trying on my outfit I was planning to wear out up at Mum’s. Seeing their eyes quickly scanning the extent of the scarring on my body felt horrible but then they both started telling me how proud of me they were that I was now being trusted with a month of medication again and how proud they were that I’d stayed out of hospital for so long. They were nice about the scars but I felt utterly hideous and very uncomfortable with them on show so quickly got covered up again.

Saturday night we all went out. All the girls had short tight dresses on – I on the other hand had my legs fully covered and my arms fully covered. I felt a bit out of place so took just a couple of diazepam whilst we were all getting ready at best friend’s house followed by at least four pretty strong vodkas. By the time we got to the first pub around 10.30pm I was feeling a little tipsy… by the time we left the last pub and began to head home at 2am I was very drunk. But it was a strange kind of drunk, I just couldn’t seem to relax properly all night. I couldn’t get hyper-alert-suspicious-paranoid-brain to shut up. I didn’t join in on the dancefloor, I didn’t let a single person buy me a drink, every guy who got within a couple of feet of me I quickly walked away from. I tried to join in with the laughs but my head was somewhere else all night and all I seemed to do was watch the clock and count down the minutes until I could get the hell out of there and back to my safe little house.

Sunday I felt absolutely awful all day. It seems I’m at that age where hangovers don’t feel too bad when you first wake up but as the hours pass you feel worse and worse, not any better. So yeah, Sunday was pretty much spent lazing around doing nothing. I know alcohol is a depressant but this weird state of mind has been on the go since Wednesday when lovely GP decided to trust me with a month’s worth of medication. Every time I open my cupboard door I hear ‘male voice’ telling me I’ve got them there for a reason and it’s not to prove how responsible I can be with them. But then I hear Mum and best friend in my head, telling me how proud they are of me and I hate myself for even giving the tiniest bit of attention to ‘male voice’.

But ‘male voice’ has been very much present over the past week mostly being insulting telling me things like I’m a dirty whore who deserves to be raped again… a stream of laughter by him every time someone said I looked nice on Saturday night… telling me it would be a good idea to take all of those Diazepam and just fucking knock myself out… telling me me I’ve not made my body ugly enough for him yet and to get a blade back to my skin. He’s angry with me that I walked past the DIY store today and didn’t go in and replace my empty box of blades and it is all I keep hearing from him tonight that I WILL go buy more tomorrow or else I’m going to make him so mad that he will have me [insert warning here to very graphic horrible instructions] “cut my tits off” or his other favourite is “someone’s gonna rape you [between the legs] with the sharpest knife I can find” . Pretty fucked up I know but that is the way he speaks, that’s his vocabulary, that’s his way of showing me he is in control, not me. He is particularly violent in his threats and comments and I am not a violent person, but he says things in ways that flash images in front of my eyes of either me mutilating my body badly or hurting someone else. I’ve never really hurt someone else, I’ve had a few bitch fights, hair pulling and that kinda shit… I’ve punched a couple of people in anger… but I’ve never really properly hurt someone to the point where I could do them permanent damage. And I can’t imagine me ever doing something like that but the things he is saying to me scare me, I can’t deny it.

So with all this going on in my head and his voice talking far too much I haven’t been able to sleep again. I stayed up all of Sunday night, all day yesterday until I finally took a handful (not an overdose) of diazepam this morning around 11am and at finally around 1pm I fell asleep until 4pm. I had promised best friend and her kids that I would go out and see them today now they are back from their dad’s, I promised Mum I would go for a walk with the dogs with her and maybe go for some lunch or coffee or something. Neither of those things happened and other than going out a few times today with the dogs I have done absolutely nothing.

I am very very much at crunch time with regards to my part time university course. I have failed the 20% part of the module. The essay part makes up the other 80%. Normally the lowest pass mark of an essay is 40% but because this is only making up 80% the pass mark is 60%. If I was able to spend the remainder of the week studying like crazy there’s a chance I could throw some sort of an essay together but I have an appointment with my rape crisis support worker tomorrow and then it’s best friend’s actual birthday on Thursday. And to be completely honest I have lost all motivation. I’ve lost interest. But then I’ve lost interest in everything over these past few days.

My head feels like it’s going a bit mental again and I am lacking in strength to fight back. All I seem able to do is lie on the sofa or in bed and battle back and forth with the intrusive voices and crazy thoughts. I feel like I have all this invisible pressure around me: be responsible with the medication, prove to them all I can do this, keeping mum and best friend proud of me, keeping ‘male voice’ happy, knowing I’m probably going to be kicked off the uni course and fail at yet another thing.

I am shattered right now. It’s midnight and I pray I can sleep through the night. I need a little bit of energy back, it all feels like it’s been zapped out of me. I am so scared I’m going to let everyone down… things feel slippery yet I don’t know why. I have no plans to take the medication to hurt myself but the self harm urges (cutting) seem to be getting stronger again. If only to shut him up. And not even the remembrance of the major regrets I had after doing it a few weeks ago are enough to keep me certain I won’t do it again… I think in all likeliness I will give in… because I’m weak… pathetic and weak.

Why oh why can life never just be straightforward? Why does it always have to end up mental again in the end?

01:37 – A long but good day

It’s been a long but pretty good day today. I’m pretty tired and planning to head off to bed shortly but thought I’d have a little ramble about my day first. My day started when I woke up absolutely freezing cold on the sofa around 4am. I got up and put the heating on and then got into bed but couldn’t sleep even though I was totally shattered. I sat in bed playing about on my new phone until the room was nice and warm and then around 6am I finally fell back asleep. I woke up at 9.30am and decided I better get up and face the day.

Had a shower after entering personal hygiene fail status again, got dressed, took the dogs a walk, took my medication… seemed like the start of a good day but then I came back home to kill a couple of hours before my appointment with my rape crisis support worker and in those couple of hours I turned into an anxious mess. Anxious about quite a few things, some things there was no need to be anxious about but I began to realise that what I was really anxious about was the unknown. For example, we are all going out on Saturday night for best friend’s birthday and they are all wearing little skimpy short dresses whereas I have to keep my body completely covered up. Even though my outfit is nice I still can’t help but feel like the fat frumpy covered up one of the group. I don’t particularly want to go out drinking, I can’t enjoy a night out these days as I spend the whole time on hyper alert mode watching everyone and suspicious of everyone and I can’t ever seem to relax and join in when everyone is a bit drunk and hitting the dancefloor… instead I hide in a corner and if any man comes within a couple of feet of me the look I give them makes them quickly turn around and walk away. Sometimes I wish I could be fun and carefree and dance and laugh and drink and flirt but I just can’t. I am shit company on a night out these days and if it wasn’t best friend’s birthday I wouldn’t be going.

So yeah, by the time I was leaving the house to go to my appointment I was feeling panicky and anxious and was wanting to just cancel it and hide indoors all day but I fought back and went to the appointment. It took a while for the anxiety to calm down but it did and we got some good talking done. I left the appointment feeling a bit calmer and then went to meet best friend. I asked her a couple of weeks ago what she wanted for her birthday but she kept saying she didn’t know and then yesterday she said she would really like it if we could go somewhere nice for a meal and spend an evening just having a laugh and some adult conversation as her kids are staying at their dad’s this week and we NEVER get to go out for a lunch or dinner without the kids. And even though the kids are pretty well behaved you can’t completely relax as you always have to keep one eye on them and do the whole “if you don’t eat your food you aren’t getting any sweets afterwards” speech. So I’d asked her if she’d like me to pay for us to go somewhere and pay for a nice meal in a nice restaurant as a birthday present and she said that would be lovely.

It was really nice to spend the evening together with no kids and I’d left the dogs at home so it was just me and her talking about everything and anything. The restaurant we went to was lovely, quite expensive and we had a half hour wait for a table to come free but the food was so tasty it was worth it. We ended up having a really good laugh talking about lots of random things that have happened to us over the past seven years we have been friends. Reminiscing and stuff… it was good… and the hours just seemed to fly by

I’ve been home for about an hour and I am so so tired. Tonight has to be a proper full nights sleep, my body badly needs it. At the moment I don’t have anything planned for tomorrow although my Mum has the day off work so I might try and spend a couple of hours with her. I’m still feeling very nervous about going out on Saturday night but I’m trying to just think about the here and now and not think about Saturday until it is Saturday… easier said than done though!

And as it’s now 1.30am I think it’s time to watch a little half hour of TV then head off to bed. I can feel my medication starting to kick in and the yawns are starting now as well… so on that note I shall say goodnight.

Overall, a good (but long) day

21:25 – Trying out sandplay/sandtray therapy

Today I actually dragged myself off the sofa and got some things done. I can now tick off my list:

• Bought Easter card for parents
• Bought and posted Easter card for my Gran
• Bought and took Easter eggs to best friends kids
• Returned book to best friend that I borrowed
• Paid a cheque into the bank
• Put clean clothes on
• Went to appointment with support worker
• Dogs have had 3 walks so far today in between all of the above

The only things left to tick off my list is:

• A shower
• Studying
• Read university emails
• Send email to personal tutor to explain how much I’m struggling

So I got a few things done today and I guess I feel glad. The only thing to write about today that is of any interest is my appointment with my support worker (that I see through Rape Crisis). We talked for a while and I told her about the continual urges to self harm despite the regrets I have about doing it last week. I told her I wished I’d just got the proper stitches put in because my wound is very painful where the deepest part is still healing. We talked about some other things – one which I will write about on here at some point soon but right now I’m still trying to make sense of it myself. The first half hour of the appointment we touched on quite a few things, but for some reason my eyes kept on diverting to a tray on the table that was full of sand. Also on the table were loads of little miniature toys like animals and people and scary looking things and happy looking things. Support worker told me it was for something called sandplay (or was it sand tray?) therapy and asked me if I’d like to try it. I told her I felt a bit silly as it looked like something for young children to play with but she encouraged me to try it so I did.

She left me alone in the room for about ten minutes and I sat there and stared at the sand. I didn’t know what type of “scene” or “picture” I wanted to create. I felt stupid and like I couldn’t do it properly because I don’t have the creative imagination of a young child. So I just sat there swirling my fingers in the sand for a couple of minutes then decided to have a look at all of the miniatures. I found some gates, like the kind a kid would use if they were playing with toy farm animals and created a gated in corner of one side of the tray. I picked up a miniature toy wolf but it had three heads and had an evil look about it, and at either side of the wolf I put lions which were roaring and also evil looking. They all went in behind the gate.

Then at the other side of the sand tray I put a miniature Church minister holding a Bible and lying by his feet a little baby with a blue nappy on. But I started burying the baby into the sand until only his head was visible. I surrounded him with pretty things, little crystals and pretty buttons.

I thought that was all I could do. There were no other miniatures that I wanted to put in my scene but where the two empty corners were I dug all the sand out of them to make a big hill in the middle so one side of the tray miniatures wouldn’t be able to see the other sides miniatures. But then in the empty space I found three miniatures that were just little heads with faces on and hands held up. The first head I left sitting up properly, the second falling down into the sand, the third face deep and underneath the sand.

Then I told support worker I was finished and she came back in. We talked a little about why I picked each object – the wolf felt like inside my head – the three different heads on it, like me with my head but the voices as well. It looked angry – a lot of the time the voices are angry. I wanted them gated in because I feel like I have to hold things back all the time and constantly try to prevent those I’m close too seeing me interact with the voices and look totally bonkers.

The church minister looked kind and I believe in Heaven and believe my little boy is there. The baby figure I guess was representative of my little one, why I buried him under the sand (apart from his head) I don’t really know. Maybe because we had him buried. I don’t know.

The falling faces – guess they reflect how I feel – like I’m constantly falling downwards and it is so difficult to lift my head up high when inside I feel as though I’m trapped in some sort of cycle of always ending up falling flat on my face, head first, head deeply buried in some sort of shit that I don’t want to be buried in.

So yeah it felt a bit weird doing it and I don’t know if I’ll ask to do it again but I can see how it would be helpful if someone was having trouble saying the words out loud or expressing their feelings and emotions or experiences through creating visual scenes rather than talking. This evening I have been thinking that maybe there are some memories that I have suppressed so much that maybe expressing my memories of them in a sand play session would be easier. I don’t know. Even though some things are incredibly painful to think about there are some specific details of some memories that I don’t seem to want to share with anyone. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to from the wide range of professionals I’ve seen over the past few years but some little details I have always kept to myself. Shame maybe. I don’t know.

I have another appointment with my support worker next Wednesday. I also need to try and see lovely GP next Wednesday rather than just handing in a prescription request again but it’s a case of waiting until Wednesday morning then seeing if I can get an appointment on the day and that might be a bit hard as they are closed for a couple of days over the Easter bank holiday weekend so there will probably be loads of people trying to get same day appointments on Wednesday. Maybe I’ll just hand in a prescription request again this month but see if I can make an appointment to see her next month. Surely she can’t be completely booked up for the next month.

I also need to get an appointment with my social worker but I’m guessing she will be off tomorrow and Monday so will try and contact her next week sometime.

So that’s been my day. Best friend said she is going to pop by tomorrow morning and that I’ve to be up and showered and dressed for 10.30am and meet her for a cuppa, but the way my sleep is at the moment I have no idea what time I’ll end up falling asleep then waking back up. I could fall asleep at 12 and be awake again by 3am and that will be me up all day and night. I could fall asleep at 3am and be awake again a few hours later. I could be up until 6 or 7am and asleep when she calls at 10.30. I have absolutely no regular sleep patterns at all just now but I won’t start moaning about that again…

If I don’t post back before then I hope you all enjoy your Easter bank holiday weekend and get lots of choccy eggs

15:33 – Just a little moan about life

In the last five days since I last posted nothing much has changed.

I still feel miserable, I still want to self harm again, I’m too tired to actually do it though. Also I’m beginning to wish I had just let them put proper sutures in last week, but because I was so anxious and wanted out of the hospital asap I asked them just to use lots of skin closures. And they have closed the wounds quite well but because one of them was pretty deep it is so painful where it is obviously still healing under the actual cut. I’ve never had pain in a self harm wound 8 days after doing it when I’ve had prope stitches in, but I don’t think it’s infected or anything, I think it’s just taking a good bit longer to start healing.

Anyway… what else can I moan about…

My sleeping. It remains completely shit and I am absolutely exhausted.

I still haven’t done any of my course work for this university module, in fact I haven’t even looked at my uni emails in about two weeks now.

So yeah… I just plod on through each day, doing very little, making sure the dogs are fed, walked and happy… other than that I’ve been caring about very little else.

The good news of this week is I have now cleared the remaining £50 that was left on the balance of Charlie dog’s vet bill – so I’ve cleared all the excess and the insurance company paid all the rest of the rather large bill.

Hmm what else? Oh my parents have returned from their holiday now so knowing they are just a phone call away again helps a little bit.

Like I say I’m just too tired to feel any enthusiasm for anything. It’s been weeks of this nonsense now and it’s really starting to get to me. I feel on the edge of tears all the time because I just feel so drained.

Yesterday I met up with best friend and my two little ‘nephews’ which was nice as it had been weeks since I last saw them. We went about an hour away from home (even with a fair few Diazepam the anxiety was still pretty bad on the way there) but by the time we got to our destination and I saw it was nice and quiet I managed to stay relatively calm. The kids are of course a great distraction – every time my head would start going into crazy mode they would start asking for something and I’d be pulled back into the moment. First of all we let the kids burn off some energy in the soft play area for about an hour. They are only 2 and 4 so they loved playing in the ball pool and going up and down all the slides and stuff. After that we went for some lunch and then before heading home the kids wanted to play in the outdoor swing park for a while. It was so cold and the snow was on and off all day but I think it probably did me good to get out of the house for a 3 or 4 hours.

Well it’s almost 3.30pm and I need to go and collect my prescription. Not really got any plans for the next few days – just an appointment with my support worker tomorrow afternoon and that’s about it. Think I might go to the parents on Sunday seeing as it’s Easter and enjoy a nice home cooked meal there. That reminds me, I need to go buy my little ‘nephews’ (best friends kids) an Easter egg each. Also I have no food in the house. I think whether I like it or not I’m going to have to face a supermarket today. Blah… I’m just totally not in the mood to be going outside at all but I need my medication so I guess I don’t really have much choice.

Mood wise things are in the ‘crap’ category. Voices are ‘very vocal’. Thoughts are no longer racing, they are slow… too slow… so slow I can’t connect anything together right…

Sorry for all the moaning… hopefully next time I post will be a happier/more positive rambling… who knows…

22:25 – Insomnia. Grr.

I am really tired as I didn’t go to bed last night and it’s now nearly bed time 24 hours later and I’m still awake. I was having real problems getting to sleep despite taking medication to help so after a couple of hours of tossing and turning I got up frustrated and decided that at 2.30am I was going to force myself to study. I sort of had the hope that I’d get so bored with not being able to concentrate and bored by reading the course materials that are making no sense to me right now… and that my eyes would get tired looking at the screen… but no… my body wanted to stay awake.

I sat up until around 7am studying and got last week’s work finished and one report (80 pages long) read with notes taken. Haven’t got a bloody clue what half of it means but it’s now ticked off the list. Around 7am I stopped to take the dogs out nice and early then we all had breakfast. I sat and watched some utter crap on TV and the yawning started so I tried to go to bed again after taking my morning meds but again there was no sleep happening. Frustrated I got back up about 9am and went to the shops to buy a Mothers Day card for my Mum and one for my best friend (from her two little boys in case no one else remembers to get her one) and a bouquet of flowers for Mum. I’m going to my parents house tomorrow night for dinner as it’s Mothers Day… another day that is another sad reminder that my little man is way up in Heaven.

Anyways… I opened up the course materials again about lunch time and sat for another five hours studying. I have now got all of last week’s work done and all of this week’s work done and am ready to start the new week on Monday. I still have to go and make the first of my debate posts but to be quite honest I still haven’t got a bloody clue what half the stuff I’ve been learning is about. Me and sociology really aren’t getting along at all. However, I realised today that there are only another six weeks and then this module is over and done with so now that I have caught up a good bit it is looking slightly more realistic that I might be able to see it through for the last stretch. Whether or not it will make enough sense by then for me to write (and pass) an essay on it remains to be seen.

This evening I had a late dinner, took the dogs a long walk, came home freezing cold and finally had a shower. Personal hygiene win at last! I hoped cuddling up in fleecy pyjama’s (that had sat on the radiator getting all cosy and warm) would start to make me sleepy but my head just doesn’t feel ready to switch off yet. I’ve taken my bedtime meds and feel tired yet awake. Maybe if I put a DVD on I’ll start to fall asleep on the sofa and then drag myself through to bed. Or maybe I’ll still be sitting here wide awake come the early hours… who knows… since being awake since Friday morning (just from my prescribed meds) I’ve had 1500mg of Quetiapine, 60mg of Mirtazapine and around 40mg of Diazepam – and here I am still awake…

There was some drama today mid afternoon. Whilst I was sitting here studying I heard a loud crash outside and went over to the window. Two cars had somehow smashed into each other and one of the cars had come right through the metal railings and was literally inches away from my downstairs neighbour’s window. Luckily no one appeared to be hurt – an ambulance came but didn’t take anyone away – I have no idea how it happened because the car that had come right through the railings was on the wrong side of the road AND facing the wrong direction. So yeah, a lucky escape for those people today and two pretty wrecked cars. And a lucky escape for the elderly man in the ground floor flat, he must have got some fright if he was in at the time seeing a car flying towards his window!

Right I think it’s time to put a DVD on and see if any sleep is going to happen tonight. Hope you’re all having a nice weekend.

 

 

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.

23:36 – A stressful day

Today started off with me being stressed out from the moment I opened my eyes. My mobile phone was ringing and it was only about 8.30am but then I noticed it was the vets calling so answered it straightaway. She was phoning me with some bad news – she’d been having a feel of Charlie dog’s stomach and could feel what felt like a hernia – so she was phoning to tell me he needed operating on immediately. I was so worried, it was still within 72 hours of his major surgery on Tuesday afternoon and still very much in the danger zone and they were going to have to cut him back open and operate again.

I just lay there in bed crying and cuddling into my other little dog. These past 7 days since he got really poorly have been so stressful and after he had looked so well yesterday it really felt like one step forward two steps back. But thanks to his amazing vet the operation went well and she said that what had happened was a couple of his internal stitches had pulled open and a bit of bowel was poking through but she said it was easy enough just to put some new stitches in internally and then used staples externally. I went to see him at 5pm and he was a little bit tired with the painkillers and from the anaesthetic but he seemed happy to see me and his tummy looked a lot better, it was really swollen the last couple of days but after operating again it was much flatter.

So… if he is well enough to come off his IV antibiotics and fluids tomorrow and manages to take his medications in tablet form (hidden in his food!) then she said I could bring him home for a couple of hours in the afternoon if I want to see how he gets on. But I told her I was really scared because every time something has started going wrong with him it’s all happened pretty suddenly and I’m also scared that if I bring him home for a couple of hours then take him back to the vets to sleep there overnight that it will confuse him. And even though I know the vet wouldn’t be saying I could bring him home if she didn’t think he was ready I’m worried he’s not quite strong enough yet. But we’ll see how things go tomorrow.

I’ve had another busy-ish day today. I need to stay busy at the moment because as soon as I sit down and have nothing to distract me my head starts going bonkers – worrying about everything and then the thoughts start to race and then my head gets all busy and noisy and I end up feeling like I’m about to fall apart… so I have to keep doing things. Whilst I was waiting to hear back from the vet on how Charlie’s operation had gone I went to see lovely social worker and took along the work capability form to get some help with it. It was nice to see her and have a little chat, I’m glad that even though I don’t work with her any more she will still give me help with things like these forms when I need it, and to be fair she probably still knows me better than any of the other people I’ve worked with/work with.

After I left the CMHT I did intend to come home and have a shower seeing as I haven’t had one in about 3 days. But it’s now almost 11pm and I still haven’t had one because best friend phoned me when I was on my way home and asked to meet up for a little while. So I ended up meeting up with her then we went out to her Mum’s for a bit, then we went for a drive and we had a good chat which was nice. Her kids are away to stay with their Dad for the weekend so it was nice to have the peace to be able to talk to her and tell her how stressed out I was feeling and how sad I was feeling about not being able to go to my cousin’s wedding tomorrow. The afternoon went by pretty fast and before I knew it it was 5pm so we went to see Charlie at the vets for a little while then decided to go and get some takeaway food and go back to hers for a while. While we were waiting on our food I heard a man shout “fucking whore” but there was only me, best friend and one other woman in there. Then I heard it again but it sounded closer, louder, clearer. And I started to feel extremely anxious because I just knew that I was the only person hearing it. Why the fuck does my head need to be so shitty and cruel? Am I not dealing with enough at the moment without yet another voice to deal with as well? When we got back to best friend’s house it had changed from “fucking whore” to “I’ve pissed on that” when I opened my food. So I couldn’t eat it and it went in the bin. I tried not to let best friend see that something was wrong and just said I didn’t really have much of an appetite. The last thing I wanted to say to her was “I’m hearing a voice telling me he’s pissed on my food” whilst she was trying to enjoy her dinner… plus she worries that I’ll end up doing something like self harming if the voices start to make me feel distressed. So it was easier just to keep it to myself.

I think it was about 8.30pm when I left hers and came home. I’ve been trying to stay distracted watching the soaps on TV and hanging washing up and playing games on Facebook. For the moment my head feels quieter and I’m feeling quite tired so I think I’m going to take my medication and a couple of sleeping tablets then go and stand in a hot shower until the yawns start. Then I’ll get myself off to bed. I don’t want to lie in bed tossing and turning and overthinking everything – I really need a proper night’s sleep tonight.

So… fingers crossed Charlie dog has a good night and hopefully there will be no scary phonecalls tomorrow morning. I’m not sure what I’m going to do to stay distracted all weekend, I really really need to do some studying as I’ve done none all week and am going to end up really behind, but it’s just so hard to concentrate at the moment. OK before I start to ramble again I’m going to say goodnight and go for a shower.

Goodnight!

20:06 – Planning and plotting again

It’s been a few days since I last had a ramble and I can’t say I’ve done a great deal in that time. I admitted the self harming from last Thursday to best friend when I saw her this morning and then I spent the afternoon with my Mum and admitted it to her as well. I don’t like seeing them upset and I tried to just mention it then brush over it but I also had to admit the voices are back and really troubling me at the moment. I didn’t want them to know but they had probably already guessed something wasn’t quite right when I told them my Quetiapine (Seroquel) had been put back up to the max dosage again.

I have only had one appointment so far this week and that was yesterday (Tuesday) with my support worker from rape crisis. I cannot express how supportive that woman has been and with every week that passes the more and more I realise that a hell of a lot of my opinions about myself and some of the behaviours I do are all interlinked with the various types of sexual abuse I’ve experienced at different parts of my life. She really seems to understand the whole self harm thing and at the moment she is probably the person I am opening up to the most and feeling most benefit from seeing.

Today has been a fairly busy day. Best friend appeared at my door around 11am and we just sat and chatted for about an hour. She saw my appointment card for A&E sitting there with “Please attend to have your sutures/staples removed on: 24th January 2013″ so obviously I had to admit to cutting. She asked why I hadn’t told her until now and all I could tell was the truth – I hadn’t wanted anyone to find out. I wanted them to think I was doing well. I didn’t want to disappoint them. She said she wasn’t disappointed in me and we chatted a while longer then she went home whilst I got dressed.

I met up with my Mum who treated me to lunch and we were going to go a big long walk with the dogs but it was so so cold that I was shivering like mad so Mum said we’d just take the dogs up to her house and let them run around the garden while we had a cuppa and warmed up. I ended up staying at Mum’s until 5.30pm when I realised I had 30 minutes to get to the pharmacy to pick up my weekly medication. So it was a bit of a mad rush to get there before they closed but we made it!

It was nice to spend time with my Mum and even though I kinda opened up about the voices, the cutting, and my head struggling a bit, I didn’t want to depress her or worry her so I tried to balance it by telling her I’d passed my first university exam and was starting back on Monday so I would try and use it as a distraction tool again as much as possible. Unfortunately they were just words to stop her from worrying… In reality I’m wondering what the point is to spending a total of 8 years of my life doing this course… I don’t even know if I will still be here in 8 years!

Tomorrow I have to go back to A&E at some point and have my stitches removed but I kinda don’t want to go. Then I have new CPN on Friday (who still hasn’t made any contact with me since A&E left her a message last Thursday) and well… it just all feels pointless… does it really matter if I leave the stitches in another couple of days? Does it really matter if I go and see new CPN this week? Does it really matter if I cut again?

I told support worker yesterday that I’m becoming aware of the fact that I’m “planning” again. I’m thinking up plans and deciding on ways and acquiring the means. I know this isn’t good but I’m feeling very troubled with what I’m hearing and it is distressing me a fair bit. I don’t want to admit this because I’m on the max dose of Quetiapine and every other anti-psychotic I have tried have had horrible side effects. I don’t want Mr Psychiatrist to say the Quetiapine isn’t working and that I need to try something else. I feel like the Quetiapine is really trying to help but there is just something missing, it feels more like I need something else (maybe a new mood stabiliser or something) added into the mix than to have the Quetiapine taken away. I still have two weeks exactly until my next appointment with Mr Psychiatrist and I’m not sure I’m going to be able to move onto the next section of my university course whilst my head is so noisy.

Blah… I’m not sure what to do… My head is just a playground for all these people and their voices… I don’t want to hear them any more… They are slowly starting to break me and quickly turning me into a completely paranoid wreck BUT this time I have recognised all of this in advance… therefore I can make my plans (purely as a safety blanket) just in case I’m unable to outrun/escape/hide from the head crazies.

Sometimes you just need to know you have options and sometimes I just need to remind myself that the off switch is an option which is right there waiting to be pressed.

(For the moment, however, I don’t think I need to press it just yet)