…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.
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