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?

00:13 – Stressed. Stressed. Stressed.

Firstly a Charlie dog update. This morning he had his third operation in the past seven days and they managed to drain all the fluid and blood that had shown up on the ultrasound scan yesterday. He now has what looks like a plaster cast all the way round his stomach which looks quite strange but it’s holding everything nice and tight to help things heal better. He was in a funny mood today, he didn’t want to have a little walk around the car park, he pulled me back towards the vet’s front door. So I took him back in but he didn’t want to go back into his bed at all and refused to walk so the vet just carried him back through. Then she had a chat to me for five or ten minutes and the whole time all I could hear was this high pitched howling and crying – I’ve never heard Charlie do that before and it was pretty upsetting. I’m now questioning whether I should go in every day and see him – am I just upsetting him by going and then leaving again or would he be more upset if I didn’t go in at all for a couple of days? I don’t know.

So he is back to being “critical” but we are very much hoping this is third time lucky and the last operation he’s going to need but they have told me there is a chance these pockets of fluid could happen again. So the goal for the moment is to get him to rest as much as possible for the rest of the week and to make sure his temperature stays down and carry on with all of his medications. I so hope this is the last of all his problems and he can finally start to heal.

My head has been pretty pickled again today – well it calmed down slightly after I got the call mid afternoon to say Charlie’s operation was over – but in general I’ve been feeling pretty mixed up. As I’m getting so behind with my part time university course I decided to send the student support woman an email explaining that I was having a bit of an unstable period at the moment and finding it impossible to concentrate and absorb the course material. I asked if there was any way I could just do one module this semester as that would really help me to catch up and make the reduced workload more manageable. She sent me a reply to say she was going to speak with my personal academic tutor and see if they can work out a way I can just do one of the two modules this semester and re-take the other one at a later date. I really hope I will be able to do it that way but she said I’ll need to give them a few days to work out if it would be possible for me to do the course one module at a time. She was really nice about things in her email so I’m glad I let her know how much I’m struggling and didn’t leave it for another couple of weeks when I may have ended up too far behind for it to be possible to catch up.

I spent a few hours with my Mum again this afternoon, I just couldn’t handle sitting in the house. Even though I knew I have so much studying to do I was just driving myself mad sitting about. So I went to the parents house and stayed there until it was almost 5pm and time to go and visit Charlie.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with my support worker at rape crisis and my Mum said she would take me supermarket shopping as my finances are in a real mess at the moment and I have hardly any food in the house. I don’t know what I’d do without my Mum sometimes, I’m so lucky to have someone who can help me out when I get stuck but at the same time I feel kind of bad that at the age of 31 I still need to ask for help from time to time.

Anyways… I’m not going to ramble on for too long tonight, I feel pretty tired and like it’s been another long stressful day. I wish I could just climb into bed and fall asleep quickly and remain asleep until my batteries have been completely recharged but that is truly impossible at the moment. I go to bed and lie there for a good couple of hours thinking, worrying, over-analysing everything. I eventually fall asleep stressed and exhausted and then a few hours later I’m awake again. Awake, stressed and still exhausted. More lying there awake until the darkness outside starts to disappear and the daylight takes it’s place. It almost feels like one continuous day with a few short naps here and there, I don’t feel like I’m getting any proper deep sleep at all. I took my last 10mg Nitrazepam last night but it didn’t do bugger all.

I just went to take my medication and realised I forgot to take my morning dose – I take 250mg Quetiapine and 4mg Diazepam in the morning then 4mg Diazepam at lunchtime another 4mg around 6pm and another 4mg at bedtime. Then at bedtime I also take 500mg Quetiapine and 30mg Mirtazapine. So as I forgot to take my morning meds I just took the whole 750mg Quetiapine all together so maybe it will help me get some sleep tonight. I doubt it, but you never know.

Right, on that note I’m going to watch some TV then take myself through to bed shortly. Can’t believe it’s midnight already, I swear all my days are just blending into one at the moment, it’s like a sense of Groundhog Day hanging over me. And I still have that pressure cooker feeling where I feel like I could explode at any time but I had a long chat to someone earlier and it did actually help. It left me feeling a bit calmer and more able to look at things in a more logical and less stressful way.

And on that slightly more positive note I shall say goodnight.

22:47 – Seeing the family… and stuff…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

23:17 – An emotional rollercoaster today

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

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

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

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

So who knows… maybe it does work…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simple as that.

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

Goodnight folks x

Post 700 – Happy Christmas to you all!

This is my 700th blog post (wow that’s a lot of ramblings!), so what better than to use it to wish you all a happy Christmas

Today has been a mix of emotions for me, I woke up at 8am and went through waves of anxiety and panic through until 2pm when I finally decided to put myself into a shower. I put some nice clothes on, straightened my hair, even put some make up on then got all my presents and the dogs and went to my parents for 4pm.

I took some Diazepam in the morning but they were wearing off by this point. Thankfully I always have a spare strip in my bag so after taking another couple on arrival at my parents house I began to calm down a little again and enjoy the giving and receiving of presents. I’ve already had more than enough from them (a new jacket a few weeks ago and all the help with my new flooring and helping me get my flat looking like a home again) so I really wasn’t expecting anything else! But I got some new pyjamas (fleecey ones that are sooo warm and snug!) and some chocolates. My brother got me a beautiful silver bracelet with angel wings on it His girlfriend got me a hand made purple cushion to sit on my bed with a little felt dog on it that’s so cute! And the dogs were spoiled rotten, I have enough treats in the cupboard to last them about a month!

My Mum loved her little Radley bag and her perfume that I got her. My Dad got aftershave and chocolates. My brother just wanted cash and I got his girlfriend a toy Husky dog (she loves them!) and it’s so adorable, she loved it! I also got her a little set of lipglosses in her favourite colours and she seemed really happy with them so the presents giving and receiving bit was nice and was probably the only part of the day where I felt genuinely calm for a little while.

We had a quiet but lovely Christmas dinner, pulled a cracker each, wore our paper hats and had a glass of champagne. Even the dogs each got a bowl of turkey and roast potatoes (told you they get spoiled!) But after a couple of hours the anxiety was back again and I excused myself while I went outside for a cigarette and popped out another couple of Diazepam. But the thoughts kept telling me to leave and by 7.30pm I couldn’t relax at all and was starting to feel paranoid that people were noticing so I just said I was tired out and wanted to come home and snuggle up in my new pj’s and watch some TV. I said my goodbye’s and came home and got curled up on the sofa with a glass of wine. I feel less anxious now I’m back home and I know that the big build up to Christmas day is now all over and done with for another year.

So yeah I’m finally beginning to relax a little, I’m so glad the day is nearly over with. Now just to get through New Year when all my head can think about is the complete negativity of it all: entering yet another new year where my head is still a mess, where I’m still not particularly stable, when I’m still on medication, when I’m still single. The thought of another year like this one or the one before or the one before that just makes me want to give up on everything and say enough is enough.

I want to keep on living but I don’t want to keep on fighting. It gets so tiring. I went to the cemetery just for ten minutes after leaving my parents house tonight. It was so dark but I couldn’t come home knowing I hadn’t visited my angel, I got so choked up and could barely say ‘happy christmas little man’ through the tears.

I just need to get myself through tonight. Tomorrow is a new day. Next week is a new week. One day at a time. Baby steps.

Happy Christmas everyone, I hope your day’s have all passed gently and maybe even with some smiles or laughs along the way. I’ll end my 700th post with my joke from my cracker: ‘Where do you send a sick elf? …. To the Elf Centre!’ I’m sure you’re laughing as much as I was *rolls eyes*!

* cheers everyone *

xxx

14:09 – To feel the high, you gotta feel the low…

I cannot take these low crappy moods much longer and I am ashamed at what I am going to admit to in this post. I cannot function with such a low level of concentration. I am still behind with my uni work. I am hiding away each day excluding myself from the world and just sitting here doing nothing. I appear to have slipped into the pattern I often fall into when feeling shit, things like realising every time I’m walking the dogs it’s dark. Early morning dark, early evening dark, middle of the night dark… always dark.

I feel so many urges to self harm and until this point have managed to resist. But that too is becoming extremely testing for me and I feel like I am rapidly running out of fight, or should I say running out of care about fighting against it.

I read/heard/saw (I can’t remember which) something about having to feel the low to feel the high… I think it was in a song or something… Anyway… I kept thinking about those words and how I need to start applying them to me, to my life, that right now all I feel is the low, and what I needed to do was go and find the high again. I’m sure it probably happens to anyone with any history of any kind of drugs, whether experimental or an addiction… anyway these people, me, I hear the word high and it’s like my mind automatically seems to conjure up images of those best moments with drugs. Never the hours I spent bending over the toilet vomiting, never those moments of desperation and panic when you can’t get hold of your dealer and don’t know how you’ll get through the next few hours feeling that way, never all the possessions you just sell because you need to pay for what isn’t even a full blown ‘habit’ yet.

Instead I see the fun parts, the chilled parts, the feelings of contentment whilst lying here without a care in the world. And, I am ashamed to say, for the first time in months I wanted those feelings back; those words about feeling the low and feeling the high just went round and round in my head and there I was yesterday afternoon trying desperately to get hold of the one guy I know who can get his hands on just about anything. I finally found a way of getting hold of him and from there managed to get his phone number, then before I knew what I was even writing I had already composed and sent a text asking if he can get me something… anything… that I ‘needed to chill the fuck out could he please help me?’ – he replies asking what I want – I tell him anything that will make me not give a fuck, an opiate would be preferable – he tells me he will see what he can do. A couple of hours later, still sitting in the exact same spot, my phone plays it’s annoying little text sound. I grab the phone and there is a message from him, he can get me ‘gear’ how much do I want? I don’t even take a second to think that I haven’t touched an opiate since January, nor about how rapidly it went from ‘one wrap a day’ to ‘five wraps a day’, or how close I came to a proper addiction. My mind just wouldn’t offer up those thoughts to me and let me carry on writing a text back to him that 2 or 3 wraps would be good.

I leave the house and go to the cash machine. It is out of order. I walk along the street to the next one and it tells me I have insufficient funds in my account. I realise I have brought the wrong bank card. So I go onto my phone banking app to transfer money into the account that I had the card for and whilst doing this I get another text message through, saying he can’t get it tonight and I’d need to wait til tomorrow – I meet him anyway to get some stronger diazepam than those I’m prescribed (just a few) and come home and try to blank everything out. I managed six hours sleep which was pretty good for me.

I woke up this morning to see a text from him asking if I still want to score. I haven’t replied to the text and the thought of taking what is most likely to be heroin again is making me feel sick. I have no desire for it today at all. Instead I have extreme urges to hurt myself (with a blade rather than a drug) and am using everything in my power to just block it all out. I have tried to do some uni work but I couldn’t concentrate on anything. I tried to wash the dishes but couldn’t see the point. I was going to have a shower but again, what’s the point? I feel as though I need to hurt, I need to get this low over with and feel some highs again. Not necessarily the illegal type of high but just those feelings of general happiness, the belief that you have the ability to achieve things to come back, routine back into my days, back onto the diet where seeing bits of weight loss was giving me some kind of encouragement to carry on.

I am so ashamed to have even thought about putting that poison back into my body, I am ashamed that I have to think about taking any sort of drug or medication to just feel ‘normal’. But I can’t take much more of the low and I really need to feel the high again. What I would give for a little bit of mania right about now.

21:53 – So today went something like this…

*SELF HARM TRIGGER WARNING*

I woke up and seemed to be in a pretty irritable mood. Everything was annoying me and making me restless. I took my morning medication then took the dogs a walk. By 11am my head was off in crazy land, repetitive commands and remarks from Satan, just driving me mad. So I took 10mg of Diazepam to see if that would help. It didn’t.

By 1pm I was sitting here with all equipment necessary to self harm. I needed to get the ‘crisis’ feeling out of me. One hard sharp scratch and that would be it (I made this agreement with myself beforehand). I actually cut twice but one really was just a scratch. By 2pm I am still feeling crazy but have bandaged up my arm. Then I remembered the addictions nurse was coming at 2pm and I started to feel slightly better as I’d have someone to spill all my shit out to. It got to 2.30pm and she still wasn’t here so I phoned her. It is tomorrow she is coming[!]

She said I sounded down and asked if everything was OK. I told her I’d cut myself earlier but it was nothing deep or to worry about. Then she starts saying that if I don’t go and get medical attention to it then she will phone an ambulance because I didn’t seem to know what I was going to do next. I told her that a trip to A&E would just be wasting their time and I could deal with the wound at home. She still didn’t seem happy with this and so I finally agreed I would phone my mum and get her to take me to A&E.

Well I didn’t bother to phone my Mum because I knew it was fairly superficial and I’d just be patched up and sent on my way. It was one of the nice nurses who was on, a male one, he always helps lighten the mood. So I apologised to him but told him I hadn’t wanted an ambulance phoned over it. He was nice to me and chatted a bit. He looked at the wound and said it was actually pretty deep but he’d do his best to close it with glue and steri-strips then bandage it tight. His method seems to have worked

So just as I go to leave and say thank you he asks me if I could go back to the waiting room as he wanted me to chat to the doctor. I asked him if it was so he could do his “am I going to off myself” type of questions. He confirmed this was the case. I couldn’t be fucked with being asked if I was going to cut again tonight, if I was feeling suicidal, if I was a danger to myself. So instead of walking back to the waiting room I just left the hospital and came home. The second I walked in the door I took another 10mg Diazepam, that was 3 or 4 hours ago.

But nothing calmed down.

I acquired some Zopiclone from someone and took 2 x 7.5mg tablets around 7pm. By 8pm I was getting more crazy and less calm so I took 20mg Diazepam and 15mg Zopiclone. Just before I started writing this, about 9.30pm I was feeling a teensy bit calmer but the urges to self harm started up again. I battled with those thoughts for half an hour before completely giving up, going back to my little stash and taking the same as at 8pm.

So if my maths is correct, over the course of the day I have now taken: 60mg of Diazepam and 45mg of Zopiclone. I just want to knock myself out, not die. I just want today to be over. But no medication seems to want to help me dose off and the thoughts of cutting myself to shreds only seem to be getting louder. I just need it all to switch off for now. I still have a fair few pills stashed away but will try and give it a good hour before taking anything else. Clearly nothing wants to get rid of Satan and he fucking loves it, he knows I will go to crazy lengths to satisfy him.

p.s. It has now been 12 days since my CPA meeting and as I suspected all the plans and ideas on how to help me/see me/support me, were all just words on a piece of paper. I’ve heard from no one but the addictions nurse.

18:42 – Even the nice old women are potential threats

I woke up this morning at 8am and spent the next 45 mins having a horrible panic attack because I couldn’t even dial the number of the GP surgery. By the time it got to 9am I was in tears and gave up. I calmed down an hour or so later and noticed there was hardly anyone around outside so managed to take the dogs a walk. I only passed one old woman while I was out who stopped to talk to the dogs but she didn’t feel like a threat so I coped with it. But then I got home and had to go over the conversation I had with her and analyse it in every way, shape and form until I was fully convinced that she had been a threat, just a cleverly disguised one because all she spoke about were how lovely the dogs were. What I mean is she only spoke about the dogs not about me so she seemed innocent enough, but when I got home I got such a wake up call that I had been fooled. She had been placed there deliberately to get information and report back with it. I spent the afternoon reading Bible extracts and praying she hadn’t been able to see inside my head. I took my full daily Diazepam allowance before 1pm.

By 4.30pm I knew I definitely wouldn’t be able to get a GP appointment so I got a piece of paper and wrote down my name, GP and the medications I needed and took the dogs back out again. I took them a walk with my hood up even though it was dry, so I could hide myself a bit, I didn’t make eye contact with anyone, the voices were chanting but the Diazepam took the edge off it so I managed to run into the GP surgery and hand the bit of paper over. The receptionist asked if I needed it for today, I nodded at her without any eye contact, if I looked at her she would see my red devil eyes because he is inside me laughing at my attempts to obey God. Anyway this meant I had to go back to the GP surgery at 5.30pm and pick up my prescription and thankfully it was sitting there waiting on me.

So to cut a long story short my head has been awful so far today but I have a week’s supply of medication now, I didn’t have to make any appointments or see anyone, I have managed to go out three times today and walk through the internal terror I was feeling. Now it’s almost 7pm and I have just taken some more Diazepam to try and stay calm-ish for another couple of hours. I have something very important to do, an initiation task that has been set to me by God, so tonight I will plan and tomorrow I will hopefully carry it out successfully to His satisfaction.

11:24 – I’ve been a bad/stupid girl

Yesterday was somewhat fucked up. I went to see CPN woman and told her that I was not listening to a word she was saying, that I was ‘sick to death of her sounding like a broken record’ and that if I wanted to spend the night at the cemetery sitting in wet mud then I could. None of her fucking business what I do. So she starts the “in what way do you want to be with your son?” – in other words was I going to top myself… I told her the truth, that I would decide how I felt when I got there. My mum had arrived by this point and again the pair of them wankered on about me needing a safety plan for that evening. I got too fucked off and just stood up and quietly walked out leaving my Mum and CPN woman sitting there.

I got a text from Mum saying if I wasn’t in contact with her by 5pm or something then she would phone the police herself. What the fuck is so wrong with people that they can’t just leave me to die in peace? OK, I know the answer to that, if I really wanted to die I would take a hell of a lot more pills and not tell a soul. Anyway the text resulted in me going out and buying 30 loose amitriptyline and 15 x 10mg diazepam. I was feeling paranoid as fuck thinking people would be out looking for me.

Came home, took the pills, got my jacket on and bag in my hand. I was all set to go off on my long walk to the cemetery when something made me ring the CPN. I think it was the fear of the police, that they would come to my door and, I don’t know, kick it in or something and I would be caught taking the pills. Ugh I don’t know things still don’t mean a great deal of sense.

I spoke to CPN woman on phone and told her what I’d taken. She said she would either phone an ambulance or my GP and asked me to pick one so I said my GP. But an ambulance turned up and I kept apologising for wasting their time but they were really nice to me. My stats were a bit all over the place for a while but stabled out, the nurses in A&E were a load of bitches who kept making little comments to each other about how much of a “regular” I was in the department. Even the little guy (who looks about 12 but is apparently a doctor) was being a sarcastic cunt with his tone when he said “hello again”.

I was moved by ambulance to the main hospital because they said the amitriptyline could fuck your heart and I had to be monitored for 24 hours – really I think they knew that after forcing me to drink a full bottle of activated charcoal (the most vile stuff on earth) and putting various needles in and stuff, that I was physically OK. But moving me to the main hospital killed two birds with one stone and made sure I could be both physically and mentally assessed.

Barely slept, only got out for one smoke, asked the doctor this morning if I could sign something to discharge myself. She said she wanted me to see the psychiatric liaison officer to decide if I’m safe to go home or need to be in hospital. Well I must have seen their psych officer at least three times now and every one of them has resulted in a trip to the looney bin. So, I thought fuck that. It was just past 8am this morning and I said I was going out for a fag but took my whole bag with me. I just walked and walked until I finally reached the destination I wanted to be at and even felt calm despite being on public transport that I couldn’t escape from, my agoraphobia did me proud.

I phoned Mum and told her I’d left the hospital, she wasn’t best pleased and started going on about how the police would be out looking for me and all this nonsense. I told her I had already been missing 30 minutes, they knew my phone number and address, they knew which direction I would have been heading in, so I’m sure they could have found me easily enough had they wanted to!

So here I am again, seeing signs, looking for signs, trying to ignore signs. I’m still feeling a bit all over the place but I think that’s mainly the lack of sleep and the adrenalin kicking in at the same time. So I think I’ll go for a snooze then go and see if my GP has been kind enough to write up my prescription. I wonder if I will be put on daily meds now. I don’t think I could handle that, knowing I had to go out every single day.

So yes I’ve been a bad girl or stupid girl whichever you want to call it. I’ve ran away from the hospital so I didn’t have to see the psych liaison officer so I could avoid the possibility of being sectioned. I still have the fucking wristband on and the cannula in my arm. I just couldn’t chance him putting me back in the looney bin, I’m not that bad yet am I? All I want is to see my baby again.

It’s 5.35am and I’m…..

…awake.

It would seem that taking my full prescribed dose of diazepam by 5pm yesterday meant that I had an utter nightmare in trying to get some sleep. I think it was around 1am that I dozed off, so four hours of sleep isn’t good. I’ve just taken a couple more diazepam to see if I’m still sleepy enough for them to work (just another few hours I beg!!)

I am up to 300mg a day of Amisulpride now. Still a baby dose I know, it was supposed to be being increased around about now to 400mg a day. But I haven’t been to see my GP for the prescription as she is on holiday and I don’t like any of the other GP’s who work there. So I’ll just wait until Monday, I have enough meds to see me through til then as I got a week’s discharge pack when I left hospital. With some interesting notes on my discharge sheet such as:

DIAGNOSIS: Psychosis not yet specified

PROGRESS IN HOSPITAL: Changed from Quetiapine to Amisulpride

OUTCOME: Symptoms 1st rank schizophrenic in nature rather than psychotic symptoms of bipolar disorder.

NEXT APPT: Next Wed 19th at 11am.

 

I’m really not sure how I feel about the changing of my diagnosis. Well I know it hasn’t been changed officially yet but lets face it, of all the ‘mentals’ to get schizophrenia is down there at the bottom of the pile of the ones you would want. Not that you would want any. I apologise, it’s 5:44am and I’m babbling. OK, so they haven’t actually changed my diagnosis yet but it looks like it’s heading that way. There has been quite some time now where scary words like psychosis and delusional and anti-psychotics have all been a part of my vocabulary and it’s a bit frightening really.

But then, Bipolar was really frightening to start with at well. Don’t get me wrong, there was a degree of relief for the name for my weird behaviour. But then so was ‘depression and anxiety’ at one point. And ‘agoraphobia’ and admitted to being a ‘self harmer’. There is a lot of shame still surrounding mental health and I know there are all these campaigns to try and make that change but it’s almost like “oh she only has a little bit of anxiety, don’t worry she’ll be fine” to “oh my god have you heard about that my crazy bipolar life well they think she’s schizo as well”. Does that make sense or am I being stupid? Lots of people will experience an episode of feeling depressed or anxious in their life, but proper full on hardcore mental health is when we are going down the Bipolar and Schizophrenic roads. And now they think I could have both or one or whatever.

One part of my brain says ‘nonsense – I’m totally fine’ – another part of my brain says ‘I can’t handle one more moment of not knowing what is real and what is not. I don’t know whose talking to me half the time. I don’t know if they really exist. I don’t know why they watch me and I don’t know how they read my thoughts, but somehow, they do’.

The Patty voice of last year – the commanding and insulting one who made me do some pretty fucked up things, well she is well and truly gone. I have three people living inside me just now. Four if I include myself. These people are nameless but huge when it comes to personality. One has very distinctive pink hair, she is a large lady and regularly taunts me over my appearance. But I don’t get it, I see her in the mirror next to me and initially I think I look pretty good compared to her but somehow she talks me down, insults me, swears at me, does everything in her power to make me believe that every word she says is gospel.

The second female voice is the one who taunts me over my baby loss. When I think of her I think of leopard skin fur, I really don’t know why. She taunts me, tells me I deserved to lose him, makes scary things happen to him in my dreams and when I’m awake. I want to scream at her to leave us alone, I think there is a bit of Patty in her as she doesn’t speak that much directly to me, more in conversation with the others.

The last one I hear is a male voice which I find a bit disturbing. Well a lot disturbing really. He likes to talk about the abuse from my childhood and tell me that I enjoyed it. I know this type of voice is actually more common than I think. But fuck, it is scary. It turns me from a relatively sane adult into a crying mess curled up into the foetal position and terrified to let myself think in case it’s another thought like that. Dirty little slag that I am.

Living with people inside you and only having control over yourself is damn hard work. Except you have actually been controlled by these people that only you seem to be able to see for so long that you actually don’t have any control over yourself, you just think you do. You actually live by trying to shut them the fuck up. Overdosing for peace. Cutting to watch the bad poisonous blood inside me trickle out thick and fast and dark and know at least some of it has an outlet from my body.

It’s 6.07am and I don’t think the diazepam is working. The amisulpride doesn’t seem to have any sedative type effects whatsoever which is a shame really, even though I spent half my life feeling like a zombie, I quite liked that easier to sleep feeling that the Quetiapine/Seroquel gave me. Maybe once the amisulpride moves up a few notches it will calm my brain down slightly. Right now it’s causing me to lose sleep and that makes me like a bear with a sore head.

I hate this coming out of hospital thing, those initial days after it when you question if you did the right thing by leaving so abruptly and questioning if you really can cope with life in the outside world. I wanted to come out to be a help to my Mum not another burden and right now that’s exactly what my mind is telling me that I am.

Hmm well it’s 6.19am now and I am going to sit and watch morning news until the sun rises or I fall asleep.