23:45 – Put simply, I feel like shit

It’s been almost a week since I last had anything to say for myself. Since I last posted the desperation and the urgency and unpredictability of my destructive thoughts has all quietened down somewhat. I’m not really sure why. What has replaced those thoughts is a feeling of numbness, I feel almost detached from everything and I don’t want to be around anyone and I don’t want to do anything. My brain feels sluggish. I can’t think properly so I give up trying. My ability to concentrate or focus on anything is shot to shit at the moment.

If I could, I would just lie in bed all day and all night, not bothering to get dressed or go outside. The only thing that prevents me from just doing exactly that is knowing the dogs need to go out for walks, they don’t need to suffer because of my state of misery. So I scrape back my hair and I put on the same clothes that I wore yesterday (and probably the day before that as well) and we go out. They get a walk and to do the toilet, I stay hidden with my hood pulled up and stare at the ground. And this repeats itself several times a day.

In between times I pull my pyjamas back on and lie in bed or on the sofa staring into space, not even thinking about anything really, just lying there feeling numb and empty. I found a box of stanley knife blades in the drawer yesterday and had a very brief urge to self harm but you know what? I couldn’t even be bothered. It was too much effort and too much energy to do it. The blades got thrown back in the drawer and the drawer closed.

I’ve gone from barely being able to sleep at all to just wanting to sleep all the time. I can’t sleep all the time, my body won’t allow me that privilege. My GP was off on holiday last week and I needed a repeat prescription but because my last prescription was the first month long one in years the other GP said he wasn’t comfortable to give me another monthly and so he put me back on weekly dispense until I can get an appointment to see my normal GP. Then she can decide whether she is happy for me to get monthlies or whether she wants me to remain on weeklies. I think it was probably because the other GP had seen all the A&E trips from self harming episodes over the past month and probably wasn’t sure if I was a bit of a risk. Maybe it’s for the best that I’m on weeklies at the moment as it means I tend to take my medication properly as I don’t have enough tablets to mess around and do a bit of self medicating here and there. At least I’m doing one thing properly.

This week I have an appointment on Wednesday with my support worker from Rape Crisis and an appointment with CPN#2 on Friday. Other than going to them I expect this is going to be another week of hiding from the world and living in my pyjamas. It’s not as if I haven’t got things to be doing – I have a washing machine to order and I have an essay due in at the end of the week if I want to have any chance of passing this module… but I just can’t seem to do it. I keep putting everything off and delaying everything, telling myself I’ll ‘do it tomorrow’ then tomorrow comes and again I do absolutely nothing. If I don’t meet this essay deadline and pass it with a pretty decent grade then I will have to re-sit and I just want this module over and done with. I’m going to try and take an early Summer break and try and get my head back together for the increased workload that September will bring. Hopefully by September I will have done a fair bit of work with the psychologist and be armed with some better coping tools than cutting myself to shreds.

I just feel this complete sense of misery, a big black cloud right above my head threatening to start pissing down on me at any time. Numbness and emptiness and a sense of detachment from everyone and everything. Quiet and in full hibernation mode. Self harm is too much of an effort even though I know I deserve to be covered in more cuts. Thoughts of ending my life have passed through my mind a few times, but they are just that, thoughts. I don’t have a clear enough head to do anything. I don’t have the energy either. I don’t even know if I have the energy to go to my couple of appointments this week – I’ll see how I feel at the time.

I hate myself for writing such a depressing post especially after writing about all the sad news I’d learned last week and how it had put life into perspective a bit. It made me feel like I shouldn’t take life for granted so much and that I should be doing something happy and something positive every day. And I hate that I can’t adapt into that mindset even when I try. Any time I’ve tried to laugh or smile this sense of darkness begins to loom again. So I don’t try. I just sit and be miserable and wait to see what is going to happen next.

I’m shit. I deserve to feel this way. Honestly, if you really knew me you would say the same. The people who tell me nice things about myself like my Mum or best friend just say it to try and cheer me up, they are biased… If people could hear the stuff in my head they would have no hesitation to tell me that yes, I am shit and deserve nothing more than to feel like the piece of crap I am.

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.

00:12 – Impossible

Why it’s called impossible – I can’t stop listening to the UK X Factor winner James Arthur’s song. Didn’t watch X Factor, Impossible isn’t his song, but something about it makes sense. I guess life feels pretty impossible right now.

‘Tell them I was happy,

And my heart is broken,

All my scars are open….’

Should you wish to listen to it whilst reading my ramblings of today here it is:

I woke up this morning and couldn’t remember if my appointment with new CPN was at 1pm or 2pm so thought I better phone the mental health team and find out. To my (pleasant) surprise it was my the social worker whom I was once very close to who answered the phone. We chatted for ten minutes and it was nice to hear her voice but it also made me feel a little bit sad afterwards.

I try not to think about it so much any more because I have accepted now that I am never going to get to work with her again. If I see or speak to her these days it’s more a case of bumping into her in the mental health place. I feel like I can’t ask her for anything any more, not even a chat and sometimes that feels really shit because she was still is the only professional who I’ve ever felt understood me. She totally understood why I hate Christmas so much, she came with me to my little man’s headstone up at the cemetery one time and put flowers down with me. She probably doesn’t remember that because she’s probably dealt with that many crises’ since then that little memories like that are likely to be long forgotten. But at least I can smile looking back on that, even if it also makes me a little sad to know that’s pretty unlikely to ever happen again.

If I think about it all now it just makes me angry. And sad. I still don’t properly understand why they couldn’t just leave me to work with the person I was comfortable with and trusted. I don’t understand why or when or who decided it should be a CPN I work with instead. I felt like I was making progress working with her and I don’t know who decided I’d make better progress with a CPN but I do feel that their decision was a wrong one. I’ve gone from working with someone who I felt like I could tell anything to and who I trusted enough to do graded exposure work with for my agoraphobia, to two temporary CPN’s and now a third but permanent one and I feel like I have achieved nothing by working with them. Besides starting the university course, the second temporary CPN gave me encouragement to apply for it, but mood-wise things have remained pretty unsettled.

Anyway I vowed the last time I wrote about the whole social worker situation that it would be the last time I wrote about it because reading my posts back made me feel a bit pathetic that I was getting so upset over one member of my care team being changed. But you know what, when you work with someone closely over a long period of time you build some form of relationship, you build a trust and that person feels like someone safe to you that you can confide in and be honest with, even when you’re telling them about the brain crazies you feel OK because you just know that they truly aren’t judging you. And when someone comes along one day and says ‘right you’re going to be working with person X from now onwards and not this nice social worker that you’ve built a relationship with any more’ it kinda does feel like a bit like you’re being rejected of a punch in the gut.

Hmm what was that word I started with again… oh yeah… impossible.

Anyway I’m not talking about this any more, I sound like a fucking broken record!

I went to see new CPN at 2pm. I couldn’t seem to express myself very well at all today. I’d start saying something then totally lose my train of thought. Then be sitting there aware that I was talking but with complete mind-blank about what I was saying. In the end we just talked a bit about the uni course, I told her I’d submitted a final assignment but that I was far from happy with it. I think I will pass but probably just scrape a pass and to be honest I’d rather fail and get to rewrite it completely than get a D.

We also talked a little about my appointment last week with Mr Psychiatrist and I told her about his little speech about my ‘negative thought patterns’ which I guess there is some truth in… and how he is still annoying me by asking at the last few appointments I’ve had with him for reasons why I’m feeling depressed. He is a consultant psychiatrist. He has been a psychiatrist for many years. He makes diagnoses and has the power to take all control away from a person and detain them. My point is he is an experienced and I dare say very intelligent man in his field… so why the fuck does he insist on asking someone with a mood disorder (that he diagnosed) what it is that’s going on in their life to be making them depressed? I don’t have one particular reason. There is not one particular thing in my life making me feel this way. Sometimes it’s just the fucking Bipolar Disorder that makes me this way – surely to God he can understand that?!

Again… Impossible…

New CPN agreed about the negative thought patterns and started saying something about mindfulness and being compassionate and I pretty much said straight out that I just can’t even begin to think about being compassionate to myself right now. I want to cut myself, hurt myself, bleed, drain out the bad blood in me, these little scratches are not helping, it needs to be done properly. But then I look at my arms and my legs where bad wounds and stitches have been before and some of the scars really are a pretty horrendous sight. More than anything the main reason I feel I need to do it is because (a) I deserve it and (b) I need the huge rush of release I get from it. The reason I haven’t acted on it properly yet is because I am terrified that if I do it then I’m going to completely lose control and start slipping down that spiral at a ridiculously fast rate. But the racing thoughts, the whispers and giggles racing around my brain make me want to explode at times… I need things to slow down…

My brain… impossible…

I came out of the session with new CPN actually feeling really quite confused for some reason. Conveniently right across the road from the mental health team is a DIY store and even though I knew I still had half a pack of blades in the house I wanted more. I began to head in that direction when my phone started ringing. It was my Dad wanting to know if I’d like him to come and measure the rooms in my flat and go to look at flooring again. He probably called at just the right time and I agreed to head back home. He came down shortly after that and measured up then we went to the carpet shop and I got a couple of cheaper off-cuts for the hallway and bathroom, a gorgeous carpet for the bedroom, wood effect vinyl flooring for the living room and a big shaggy rug. It came to almost £550 (that includes fitting) and Mum is putting it on her credit card for me to pay off bit by bit. So it looks like it might take two days because I’ll need to move all the furniture out one room and into the other and then vice versa but they are coming to definitely fit the first carpet on the 18th and I’ve been assured it will all be done by Christmas.

(Christmas in my bed… sleeping in my bedroom again… impossible?)

They are trying so hard to make me happy and get me safely through these upcoming tough couple of months and it makes me feel a little bit mixed up. I feel like I’m constantly putting on an act when I see them and when I smile it feels so fake and pretend. I don’t want them to worry about me so I’m keeping this bout of head crazies to myself as much as possible. I also feel a bit pathetic that at 31 years old I can’t finance my own ‘home improvements’. I feel thankful that I have such loving parents who are in a position to be able to help me. I feel emotional and sad that at 31 I haven’t achieved anything that I thought I would have achieved by this age. Well I have achieved some of them… they just tore my heart to pieces didn’t turn out as planned…

I really didn’t mean for this to turn into such a self pitying post. Sorry. Anyway that’s my ramblings over with for tonight, that’s been my day, as for tomorrow I have absolutely nothing planned. There is no studying for me to at least attempt, there are no appointments to attend, maybe it will be a day for lying around in my onesie doing nothing apart from over thinking no doubt.

Writing a happy blog post, that’s what’s fucking impossible…

Goodnight folks

23:08 – My heart hurts

Like the title says really…

Why can’t I just feel normal?

Why have I spent today hiding from the world, ignoring calls and texts and spent a large proportion of the day in tears. I don’t even know what I’m crying about.

I’m having one of those days where you sit on youtube and watch music videos with lyrics that somehow touch your soul and move you to a point where you end up replaying it over and over and over again and just letting the tears roll down your cheeks.

I have an appointment with new CPN tomorrow. As usual, I don’t want to go. I also have to see lovely GP on Wednesday and support worker on Wednesday. I don’t really want to speak to anyone, I’m more in the mindset where I really just want to be left alone to discreetly make my exit.

This evening I have phoned the Samaritans about four or five times and not even managed to say hello when they answered. I just end the call and start crying again.

If I really must go to these appointments this week then I think when I see GP on Wednesday I’m going to go ahead and ask for my Quetiapine to be increased to 700mg. It can’t make me feel any worse and maybe it will just help enough to keep me from acting upon these thoughts that are getting worse and worse by the day. I’m just really scared that I’ll admit to lovely GP how utterly crap I am feeling. She just has a way of making me feel like it’s OK to tell her the truth and I don’t have that with new CPN (yet?) and to be honest I really wish the social worker I was once really close too was still around because lovely GP tends to panic and mentioned the dreaded H word when I’m too honest with her. At least lovely social worker understood, or so I thought back then.

I feel so miserable. I feel lonely even though I don’t want to be around people and I just want to shut everyone out whilst I nurse my crazy head through these horrible dark and gloomy days. My heart feels as though it’s breaking over something, but I don’t know what. But that is where the pain is when I cry, my heart feels like it aches. I know that sounds a bit dramatical but it’s true. My heart hurts. And I feel very empty and very sad.

Goodnight folks

 

22:44 – Still in a crappy place

I have spent the past two days in a bit of a blur. At the back of my head I’ve had the constant nagging thought that I had to get my essay written so I decided I wouldn’t bother sleeping last night and sat pretty much from 8am yesterday morning until 10pm this evening just writing. Then deleting. Then writing again. When it reached 10pm tonight I almost broke down in exhaustion after being awake for about forty hours straight, the only breaks in between were those to walk the dogs and to go to the shops for half an hour. Anyway, some kind of essay has been written and I have just hit the submit button so it is now hovering around in cyberspace somewhere until one of the course tutors decide to mark it. So that is this module completed now (providing I pass my essay assignment) and somehow I need to keep myself distracted over the next three or four weeks until the next module starts.

My reward for getting it done is a bottle of rosy wine. I am on glass number two and can feel it starting to make me yawn. Alcohol, lack of sleep and a very warm room (the heating is turned up to the max as it’s freezing here in Scotland) are all making me sleepy. I very much hope that when I take my medication I’m going to fall into a nice slightly tipsy sleep and sleep right through to late morning tomorrow.

I still have not showered and really need to do something about that. Well personally I can’t really see what difference it makes but I guess I might not smell too good to be around.

Self harm… well it’s been happening but I’ve been managing to keep it very shallow and not requiring any medical attention, but the urges are far from out of my system and I think there is probably quite a high chance of a bad wound happening when I start losing the plot with the ongoing whispers in my head to “do it, do it“….. “stupid“….. then that fucking giggle again.

Like the title says, I’m not too sure how I am. Right now very tired and the mix of medication, wine and sleeping pills had better knock me out til the morning.

I’ve had enough of being awake now. I’ve pretty much had enough of everything. I want to go back into hibernation mode and hide from the world. I’m getting really tired of feeling so low all the time, just functioning on auto pilot and at the minimum level necessary to scrape through another 24 hours. What is the point to it all? Really… what is the point? We are nearly at the end of another year and I really do not know if I want to let myself enter a new one or if it has finally reached the point of saying I’ve had enough.

19:01 – And it’s all fucked up again

Mood: Shit

Thoughts: Paranoid (I believe a new neighbour has moved in next door, I heard a lot of commotion all day that sounded like someone moving in – who are they?)

Feeling: Anxious and Ill. Have run to toilet at least fifteen times in the past twelve hours thinking I’m going to vomit. Actual Vomiting: Once.

Personal Hygiene: Fail

Studying: Not Completed

Essay Writing: Not Started

Accomplishments Today: None

Times I’ve Thought About Self Harm: 1000000+++

Times I’ve Actually Self Harmed: To Be Confirmed…

What I Should Be Doing Tonight: Writing A Very Important Essay

What I’ll Actually Be Doing Tonight: Failing. At What? At Everything…

 

 

18:36 – Seeing new CPN and a visit to Mr Psychiatrist

Yesterday I actually went to my appointment with new CPN. This was the third time we had met but the first proper ‘session’ together. I found myself falling into a very anxious state of mind as I entered the mental health building and spent the first half of our session together pacing around the small room and apologising for it, trying to explain I was just very anxious. My stomach is always one of the first things to start going funny and is usually my first sign that I’m becoming very anxious or panicking about something. So as I pace I tend to rub my stomach to try and somehow settle it down. New CPN asks me what is wrong with my stomach – I say again it’s just the anxiety making me feel half like I’m going to be sick and half like I need to run to a toilet – it’s a horrible feeling especially when it’s combined with a very anxious mental state of just needing to escape, to run home and close the door on the world, the feeling that something awful is going to happen if I stay there. Eventually I did begin to calm down and sit for a little while.

As expected she asked about the house swap and I nervously told her that I wasn’t going ahead with it. I was trying to explain my reasons but the anxiety in me was still high enough that it was mostly irrelevant rambles that came out my mouth. Somehow we got onto the subject of weight and dieting and how I had been doing so well (lost 20lbs… then put it all back on again) and this somehow led onto me telling her about why I choose to low-carb when I diet because cutting sugar out of my body completely works best especially for people like myself who have PCOS which usually messes with your insulin levels, weight, etc. From there I remember her talking about the contraceptive pill and how there were a couple of good ones for women with PCOS and then she asked me if I wanted her to phone my GP and say I’d like to try one of them and I was like “erm, I don’t even know if I do want to try one of them, I’ll just think about it for now thanks”. I told her I’d be going to see my GP next week anyway and we left it at that.

I have total mind-blank going on at the moment and can’t remember what else we filled the hour talking about. I mentioned the stresses of studying at the moment, I mentioned the self harm urges that seem to increase in intensity with every hour that passes. She responded by simply telling me that if I cut myself then I cut myself, that it wasn’t a new behaviour and basically not something that would worry her. I sort of felt a bit like I was trying to ask for a little bit of help, like I was trying to tell her that I haven’t done it in a couple of months now and I would actually really like it to stay that way but the words just didn’t seem to come out so we left it at that. Before I left the building she gave me an appointment for next week and a copy of my latest care plan that she’d typed up. She encouraged me to attend my appointment with Mr Psychiatrist (which was today) and said bye. I don’t know if I’m going to get on with her, I still haven’t warmed to her and when I’m severely lacking in motivation and have pretty much no interest in anything, making a new ‘relationship’ is the last thing I can be bothered with doing.

So I wake up this morning and think I really should shower before going to see Mr Psychiatrist. I seem to be thinking this a lot lately but not actually doing it. Rather like studying, I talk about it, I intend to do it, I think about it a lot, but it just doesn’t seem to happen in the end and another day passes by with nothing much achieved. My appointment was for 10.30am and my alarm went off at 8.30am. I hit snooze every ten minutes until 10am even though I was just lying there wide awake. I couldn’t really see the point in having a shower (I think I’m currently having 1 or 2 a week instead of one every day) so instead I lay here smoking and waiting until the last minute when I knew I only had enough time to walk the dogs then would have to go straight to the appointment. I sat in the waiting room for 15 or 20 minutes and was then called through.

To be honest, even though it was only this morning I can barely recall what we talked about. I told him my mood wasn’t great, that looking back on my blog posts it hasn’t been great for a good six weeks or so now. I told him I’m thinking about hurting myself a lot and even find myself thinking that this is how it’s always going to be and if that is the case then what is the point in trying to complete a University degree or move to a new house or attend appointments or have a fucking shower because I would rather die than continue with this as my life.

He asked me what was going on in my life or what has been going on lately to make me feel that way. I told him that it was nothing – that sometimes I just feel very very low and it has nothing to do with anything external – it’s all internal and just how I feel. He told me this wasn’t very helpful thinking and that if I always follow negative thinking patterns then inevitably I’m going to feel depressed a lot. He said that whilst medication has it’s role, that I need to engage in talking about how I feel and trying to change the ways I think about things, from negative thought processes to positive ones. But then said I should try increasing my Quetiapine (Seroquel) from 600mg to 700mg a day and see if that helps…

He asked how the Uni course was going and I told him that whilst I find the workload hard when I’m having issues with being able to concentrate, I *think* I am glad I’m doing it. Sometimes I feel like I’m doing it for other people, sometimes I think I’m doing it for me. But then that voice/thought/whatever it is tells me I’m ‘stupid’ and that I ‘won’t succeed’ and that I’d be ‘better off dead’. And then it laughs. It laughs a lot. Mr Psychiatrist again said I needed to find a talking therapy that worked for me and try to learn ways to stop thinking in such negative patterns. He says that like I have a choice, when things are dipping this low there is no other option but to think this way.

Anyway he has decided he is happy to leave me for a bit longer this time so instead of seeing him next month I will see him early February instead. The longer between appointments the better in my opinion, I don’t particularly enjoy them.

After leaving the hospital I met my best friend and the kids and we went for a wander round the shops, getting some Christmas presents and I bought little Santa ornaments and Snowmen ones and some silver and gold sprayed flowers and little tiny Christmas tree. After best friend went home I went to the cemetery and made my little angel’s headstone all nice and Christmassy. It was thick with snow up there so it took me ages to clear enough space to put his little things down. I cried a little when I was up there, I miss my little man so much especially at this time of year. And I just can’t help but want to be wherever he is, no matter what it means doing to get there.

For you little man:

18:51 – Where I am and where I should be

Where I am: Hiding in my flat. Still in my pyjamas. Greasy hair. Unwashed. Massive amounts of anxiety coming in waves and trying to suffocate me. Depressed. Feel sick. Stomach hurts bad. More anxiety but accompanied by pain. Heart feels all fluttery. Don’t like it. Can’t control it. Can’t get it to stop. Too many thoughts all racing at once. Not sure which ones are distressing me the most and causing this ‘attack’. Is it the ones from the past or the future or the here and now? I don’t know. They are all coming at once. Thick and fast. All I can do is curl up and lie in the dark room alone waiting on it to stop. If it ever will.

Where I should be: In the cocktail bar with my cousin celebrating her ‘hen night’. In the health spa relaxing. (How can I ever go to a health spa or swimming pool again when my whole life story is written all over my body and told in scars?) I should be with my cousin tonight. My Mum is there. My Aunt (mid cancer battle) is there. Friends have travelled from all over the UK to be there tonight. And I, the only female cousin she has, and with only six months apart in our birthdays, the girl I grew up with the closest thing I’d ever have to a sister, the girl I went on holiday with every year. I should be THERE. And I’m not. And it hurts deep inside, it hurts my very core. My Mum phoned me last night to ask me for some funny stories to tell about my cousin from when we were kids (the head bridesmaid asked everyone to think of a funny story about her to embarrass her, just for fun) and I probably have more funny memories to speak of than anyone else there besides her Mum. And that makes me sad. Ok. That makes me cry it would seem. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. We always said when we got married we would be each other’s bridesmaid. And not only can’t I be that, I can’t even be there on her big day, I can’t be at the hen night tonight, instead I am consumed with crazy thoughts and phobias that I don’t know how to fight… I don’t know how to make them stop. I feel so very sad that I’m not there with everyone and instead of being there to enjoy her hen night with her and to be part of it, I will learn of all the fun and frolics from facebook statuses and from my Mum when I next speak to her on the phone.

This just wasn’t/isn’t the way things were supposed to be. And it is killing me imagining them all enjoying their night, having drinks and sharing stories, silly party games and nice food. I imagine laughter filling up that room tonight and I feel so alone. Quiet. Dark. Alone. Lonely yet I don’t want anyone near me. I ask myself again and again. When is this going to stop…

17:22 – I’m ok… (I’m not ok)

I got a text message from rape crisis support worker yesterday asking me if I was ok as it wasn’t like me not to reply to her. After two hours of just sitting here looking at it I finally managed to write four letters: I’m ok.

I don’t think I really am ok if I’m honest. Why did I tell her I was? It was easier than to tell the truth. I kept thinking that if I didn’t reply then she might get more worried and send someone (I don’t know who but someone) to my door to see if I was ok and that would really freak me out at the moment. But I don’t think that she would actually do that to me, I think she would keep anything I said to her confidential but what if it all starts pouring out, how much I need to cut, how much time I’m spending either hiding and doing nothing or reading about and looking at images about death.

I don’t know why I lied to her, I can trust her, she is nice, she isn’t part of my mental health team. I guess I thought that if I just added that extra word in to read ‘I’m not ok’ then she would ask what was wrong and maybe I would end up telling her how bad everything is and how I’m really struggling to cope and maybe it would end up with her contacting the mental health team or something. And for some reason I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to see anyone. I think that’s actually the biggest thing stopping me from cutting, because I know it would be a bad one and I know I would end up eventually breaking down and telling someone the truth.

It was easier just to say… I’m ok…

I also got a letter from new CPN offering me another appointment for Tuesday morning but I don’t know yet if I’ll go. She wrote on it that she would encourage me to attend this appointment as it has been ‘identified that regular support is helpful to me’. I’m too consumed by negative thoughts and ‘what’s the point?’ thoughts right now. All (and I do mean all) I can think about is hurting myself. I feel that I deserve to hurt and I constantly seem to be visualising blood running down an arm or leg and thinking about how it would feel and the release that it would give me.

I’m very stressed about my uni work, I feel as though I can’t understand this particular section, it just makes absolutely no sense in my brain. It’s about epidemiology and it’s just frazzling my brain trying to make sense of it all. I need to understand it and I need it to make sense so I can move on and get that week’s work finished and keep trying to catch up to where I should be at the moment.

I managed to get to the chemist yesterday for my weekly prescription. I went in ten minutes before they closed, when it was dark outside and the chemist was pretty quiet. I was in and out in five minutes as it was all made up and waiting for me. Afterwards I managed a long-ish walk with the dogs, staying in dark areas away from street lights and houses. I took them another walk around 11pm then another around 4am then I fell asleep for a while.

Something potentially good did happen today. Someone I know phoned me to ask me if I was still awaiting a housing transfer to which I said yes. She lives in the area I want to move to (nearer my parents) and has a little one bedroom house with front and back garden in a little row of bungalows with mainly elderly neighbours. Anyway, she has decided that she would like to move closer to the little town area as her sister is moving a few miles away and where I live is on the bus route to her sister’s new house. She wants to be closer to her sister and not two bus journeys away so yeah, she phoned and asked if she could come and see my flat tomorrow and if she likes it (and is sure she really wants to move) then we will do a house exchange which would be so good and I think I would be a lot happier living where her house is.

So that should have cheered me up but again I see the negatives. I think she will come here tomorrow at 2.30pm and decide she doesn’t want to live in a flat again or realise it’s quite a bit noisier here (mainly just with passing traffic) and I think she will decide not to go through with it and just keep her little house. Not that I could blame her. So I’m not getting my hopes up, I will see what her first impressions are like tomorrow. I really need to tidy up a bit, the place has become a bit of a mess again lately as the pile of Christmas presents are starting to pile up.

But I don’t have the energy. Seriously all I can do is sit here in this spot and over-think everything and look at and read probably the most unhealthiest things ever for my current state of mind.

When is all of this ever going to end? It’s like it just won’t pass until I have acted on the urges, the same urges I spend the whole time trying not to act on. It just seems like there is no way out of this other than to just do it and get the urge/need out of my system for another little while. I’ve been in this place so many times before, I should know by now that the only way to make it stop is to listen to it and act upon it, then things would maybe begin to calm down a bit again.

18:25 – ‘Early warning signs’

Things really aren’t good at the moment. I remain behind with my uni work, completely unable to focus on it or concentrate. As soon as I open a textbook page to start reading my head starts thinking about everything else that I’ve messed up. The diet that started off so well, the start of the weight loss and then gaining it all back again. Not going to the gym for a couple of weeks now. Missed my first two appointments with new CPN, she left me a voicemail after missing her again yesterday asking me to phone her before she sends out another appointment but I just can’t see the point.

I feel very low. Very depressed and very unable to do anything. My days consist of nothing. Well nothing apart from my racing thoughts and the thoughts are so fast and strong that I just can’t do any one single thing. Those hopes and goals I had that by Christmas I would be a dress size smaller and would have completed my first module exam and they both seem like they are impossible to achieve now. I have three weeks to write a long detailed essay and complete module #1. Then Christmas break and then two more modules between January and June. Then Summer break then back to it all in August/September time.

To get an honours degree you need to complete 6 modules for each year, so 24 modules in total and a dissertation and that would take you 4 years to achieve. I’m doing it part time, 3 modules a year so it’s going to take me 8 years to achieve. By the end of my first year I’m only really six months in, will still have 21 modules and seven years to go. It’s such a long time. I don’t know that I have the belief in myself that I can do this. Only 11 weeks in and already so behind with everything. We are just starting week 11′s work tomorrow and I’m only on week 9. I just can’t seem to do it, do anything in fact at the moment.

I don’t know why I’m sitting here feeling sorry for myself when I should be opening one of my textbooks and reading and taking notes. I should be blasting my way as fast as possible through week 9 and 10′s work and getting myself up to date. If I get any further behind I’m not sure if it will actually be possible to catch up. And I have had all week, every day as full days to be doing this work, I have no one to blame but myself. I haven’t even been attending appointments so it’s not like I’ve been in and out with having to go to them. I have seen my best friend once in the past couple of weeks and it was for no time at all. I don’t think I’ve seen my parents since my birthday at the end of October so I said I would go there for dinner tomorrow.

Everything just feels like it’s slipping away and I can’t catch it. I need to get back on course for uni work, I must not fail this exam, if I do then that is going to knock my last tiniest bit of confidence that I have left in myself… cannot let that happen… Best friend commented how proud she was of me for not being admitted to hospital yet this year as it usually starts around my birthday when everything goes downhill then finally starts to perk back up around March/April time. And it is all going downhill but I will not be hospitalised this year, I’m just going to have to deal with it all… I don’t know how yet but there must be a way…

Now the sensible thing to do would be to say to myself that I am going to do an hour or two of studying tonight and then the same tomorrow afternoon but I just know it won’t happen. Last night I just lay for hours staring at the ceiling, not even watching TV or listening to music… just lying here and staring. That’s all I seem to do.

I’m still no further forward with my housing transfer request either, I submitted a new form with more detailed answers a few weeks ago and heard back from them saying I still had the same low amount of points so that was quite disheartening… I don’t think I’ll ever be able to escape this flat, this sofa sleeping situation, the cold sheets of mdf that currently act as flooring.

I’m back to that place again where I want to give up. This same place I always arrive at over these “risky months” where I just can’t see the light or the future in anything and start to get sucked right into the crazy world, the fucked up thoughts, the bad behaviours and reaching that breaking point yet again. Can I stop this from happening? I guess that remains to be seen. I still haven’t self harmed, I’m still resisting the urge, but this now scares me as I have held it in for that long that I know if the time comes where I do it – and do it with my head being in a crazy place – then the result is going to be a bad injury.

I’m sorry, I’m rambling and full of some sort of self pity, feeling sorry for myself, I need to get a fucking grip and turn things back around to the way they were at least semi productive (even if not particularly happy) a couple of months ago.

In my crisis plan which I revised for new CPN a couple of weeks ago (but haven’t gone to see her since) – in my “warning signs” section it says -

• anxiety, panicking and worrying about things
• lose interest in the future/have bad thoughts about the future
• lose concentration, focus and motivation
• not able to sleep properly
• feeling very irritable
• self isolating/don’t want to see anyone
• ignore phone calls/texts
• everything feels very negative
• don’t attend appointments
• self harm, suicidal thoughts and racing thoughts occur

Looks like I could put a tick next to every single one of them right now.

What do I need to do differently if I encounter these situations?

• contact someone and share how I’m feeling rather than trying to cope alone and self isolating
• try to speak to someone before acting upon thoughts that lead to self harming or other dangerous behaviours
• try to do something that makes me happy and contented – try to calm down and diffuse the situation in my head

I don’t think I will see anyone tonight but perhaps I could make a call and get some things off my chest. I don’t know I guess I’ll see how tonight goes. I know I will probably not be honest with my parents tomorrow over dinner, I’ll probably admit to being a little bit behind with stuff and admit to that stressing me out but I doubt I will tell them the full truth about being two weeks behind, not attending my appointments, not going to the gym, not going out the house apart from when it’s dark in the late afternoon, evening, during the night, early in the morning. But then they will probably find out about not attending appointments when they ask how I’m getting on with new CPN and I either need to lie and say fine, or tell the truth that I’ve only seen her once then missed the second and third appointment.

And when one truth comes out then a second one is usually close behind until I realise I’m back there again… Or should that be back ‘here’ again…