17:37 – I don’t deserve a compassionate mind

I thought I better write a little post as a few people have sent me emails and dm’s on twitter to check I was still alive. I am, although there have been a few occasions over the past couple of weeks where I have wished that wasn’t the case.

Since I last posted I have got my new washing machine, seen very little of best friend as she’s all loved up with a new man in her life, gone to my appointment with the dietician, gone to one appointment with CPN#2 (but then didn’t turn up to my appointments with CPN#2 or support worker this week).

Where to start? Hmm… Well I have taken a lot of advice on board that the dietician gave me. She told me she had gone and done some reading about my medications and their side effects and I was pleased that she said she wouldn’t be expecting me to lose weight as fast as other people as the combination of 750mg Quetiapine (Seroquel) each day, the Mirtazapine and the Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) would all slow my weight loss down. She weighed me and said I am about 3 and a half stone overweight (around 50lbs for my friends across the pond) but she is only expecting me to lose at around 1lb a week, normally she’d aim for 2-3lbs a week. So it’s going to be slow and steady. I have another appointment with her on June 14th and hoping to have lost a few lbs by then.

I have completely changed my eating habits over the past week and have been eating only fresh fruit, vegetables, salads and wholegrain breads and cereals. I haven’t had one single chocolate bar or packet of crisps since I saw her which has been hard going at times especially on the days I’ve been feeling crappy because I don’t feel like I deserve to make myself nice foods, I deserve to eat junk and be fat and disgusting and it’s very very hard to fight back against that. I think that is another reason why I didn’t go to my appointments this week, because when I did see CPN#2 last she had spoken to the psychologist (that I’m on the waiting list to go back and see) and psychologist wants to try the Paul Gilbert ‘Compassionate Mind’ program with me again, now that my life isn’t so chaotic that I’m a psych hospital revolving door patient.

The idea of being compassionate towards myself is so fucking alien. It is natural for me to think negatively towards myself and I really don’t know if I’ll be able to do this compassionate mind stuff. Deep down I know that no matter what treatment we try or what help I get I’m still going to be the same ugly horrible person who deserves nothing good. And in a way I sometimes think I don’t even want any help just in case I do get caught letting my guard down and for a tiny moment think that maybe I am worth something. Nobody seems to understand that it is instinctive to punish myself and make myself suffer, thinking of being nice to myself makes me feel anxious and horribly uncomfortable.

My mood states seem to be changing between seriously depressed and feeling ‘ok’ every few days if not every few hours. Sometimes I just find myself sitting here and for no obvious reason bursting into tears. I’ve been really quite emotional for a good couple of months now, never in front of people, but the smallest thing on the television or even reading a friend’s Facebook status will set me off. Then I get frustrated with myself because I don’t even know what I’m crying about and angry at myself for thinking it is OK to cry. It’s not OK, I don’t deserve to express my feelings that way, I deserve to express my sad feelings by dragging a blade through my flesh. To be honest it is actually easier to cut than to cry, cutting just doesn’t seem to have as many emotions attached to it yet it seems to clear my mind for a while, whereas crying just leaves me even more of a mess than when I started.

Anyway… moving on…

I got some good news this morning. I got my essay results back for my university module that I have been struggling so massively with. They weren’t due until the first week of June so it came as a bit of a surprise. I passed with 65% which is a good grade B, although because I didn’t take part in the other assessed part of the module it pulled my overall pass mark down to 52% which is a C. I’m just relieved it is over and that I am now on my Summer break. When we start back at the end of August I have opted to try and do two modules per semester so I still get my six first year modules completed within two years. I don’t know if I’ll manage to cope with that workload but I guess I can only try it and see how I get on. I think it helps if the modules are about something you find interesting and enjoy learning about, the first module I did I really enjoyed so it made it a lot easier to understand but this module I’ve just finished I wasn’t remotely interested in, so it all felt like it just went over my head most of the time.

I was going to start talking about something else that’s been going on lately but I’m already rambling and it probably needs a blog post all of it’s own, the short version is that I have been thinking a lot about finding a faith again. I know it wasn’t that long ago that I was talking about going to church and finding God but I keep on coming back to the same point again. I decided to speak to a devoted Christian a few days ago and the first thing she asked me was why I wanted God in my life. My answer was simple, I want to believe my baby son is in Heaven which means that to believe in a Heaven I have to believe in a God. She answered just as simply back -

“your baby boy will be in Heaven, there is no doubt about it because he was pure and innocent and never sinned – if you want to have any chance that you will be reunited with him then you have to live your life as God would want you to and only then will He decide where you will go when you die – but make no mistakes, if you don’t live your life for God then you have no chance of getting into Heaven”.

So that feels like a massive pressure on me now. There are so many things I do which would be classed as sinning. I definitely don’t live my life in the way that God would be pleased with. If he is real and his son Jesus died on the cross for us then what must he think when I cut up the body He created or even try to kill that body? What must He think when I’ve been in times where I can’t cope and have turned to drink or drugs to block it out? What must He think when I’ve been a bit manic and spending money recklessly or having sex with some random person? There are sooo many things I do wrongly, in God’s eyes and I have found myself on more than one occasion asking for His forgiveness. But again I come back to ‘what I deserve’, and I deserve to hurt and be punished. I deserve to suffer. I don’t think I even deserve God but the idea that I may never be reunited with my beautiful little boy is too painful to bear, it really is (oh here we go, tears running down my face again).

Anyway… I guess I have rambled on long enough and also I’m finding it hard to stick to a point I just seem to be blabbering on all over the place. My head’s a bit pickled, it’s up then down, up and down. I don’t know what I’m going to feel from one moment to the next. The fact that I’m self isolating again is a sign things aren’t great, the constant thoughts of self harming probably also show things aren’t great. But I am keeping it very superficial purely because I cannot face A&E right now. I barely leave the house apart from to walk the dogs and I try to see people the smallest amount possible. I’m making excuses up all the time as to why I can’t do this or go there and it’s funny because the less texts I reply to and the more times I ignore calls, the less and less those texts and calls come through. It’s as if people can see I just cannot be bothered so they are just leaving me alone. Which is good and it is what I want, yet it does make me feel even more isolated and lonely. And that feeds the ‘I don’t deserve it anyway’ thoughts more and more.

So it looks like it’s going to be a quiet bank holiday weekend for me. At least we have some sunshine at the moment and I can go and hide sitting on the beach while the dogs play around and have no one bothering me… Speaking of the doggys it is time for them to get their dinner and go another little walk soon so I’ll stop rambling now and and wish you all a nice weekend instead…

00:31 – A little dose of the head crazies going on

Today I’ve had that same sense of ‘blah’ about me that I had yesterday. I have spent the day in my pyjamas and only changed into clothes to walk the dogs and to go and pick up my weekly prescription. I looked a right mess when I went into the chemist, hair not brushed and all hanging in a greasy mess. No make up. Wearing the same clothes I wore yesterday. Don’t even think I had brushed my teeth at that point. But I really didn’t care.

I finally dragged myself in for a shower this evening and ended up getting my dressings soaked so had to change them. One of the wounds started bleeding again but it stopped after a while and still seems to have stopped so I think it’ll be OK.

What is really annoying me is that I have a massive sense of regret about self harming yesterday and my leg is actually quite sore as well; and yet for some reason I keep thinking about doing it again. I actually threw out the rest of the blades in the box yesterday after I cut so there were none in the house but yeah, the urge to go and buy more tomorrow is there. I don’t think I will though, the feelings of regret outweigh the desires to do it again.

I had hoped that I would maybe get to meet up with my social worker either tomorrow or Friday but I still haven’t heard back from her so I have a feeling that isn’t going to happen which is a little bit annoying because I have a query about my benefits and I find it really difficult to phone and talk to these people so had hoped she could have called them for me. Maybe I’ll hear from her tomorrow and get to see her on Friday… be optimistic!

The only thing I have to do tomorrow is take one of my little dogs to the vets for his annual vaccination. I still haven’t heard anything from my insurance company about how much of Charlie dog’s bill they are going to pay, although they did say it takes about 3-4 weeks to process a claim. And I also wrote on the form for them to deal directly with the vets so maybe they won’t even write to me. I don’t know. I’ll ask the vets tomorrow if they have heard anything or received any payments.

I’m also getting pretty fed up with this stupid sleeping pattern that’s been going on for a good couple of weeks now. I’m not getting to sleep before 3am most nights then waking back up between 6am and 8am then I take my morning Quetiapine dose and spend the rest of the morning feeling like a total zombie because I feel so tired. Then I seem to wake up a bit as the day goes on and by this time of night – midnight – I should be ready to go straight to sleep but instead I’m wide awake. It sucks.

I guess I’ll go find a DVD to put on and see if I can get some sleep in a couple of hours and try to distract myself away from all these urges to do bad things to myself… it’s hard though… when you feel like you have a little demon sitting on your shoulder whispering in your ear “just one more time, just a little deeper, you know you deserve it”. It’s irritating, annoying and soothing all at once. I know that probably sounds a bit nonsensical but that’s how it feels.

Off topic, I have been having a somewhat mixed day with one of my voices. He has been talking quite a lot today about rainbows and rain puddles. It has made for some interesting (and occasionally quite funny) little rambles inside my head as he has been telling me absolutely everything he likes and dislikes – in very specific details – about the existence of both rainbows and puddles. Strange but mostly amusing. But then, the exact same voice would change his tone and start on at me again about how I’ve failed to start serving God properly, I have let my mission to find a faith slide away and he has made it quite clear he isn’t very happy about that and it is something that I must try harder with. So yeah, occasionally annoying but I suppose it’s helped a bit to distract from those little demon thoughts that just want me to hurt myself.

Definitely got a dose of the head crazies going on…

Goodnight folks x

 

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.

22:02 – Busy day, absolutely shattered

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

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

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

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

“you need to bare your soul to Christ”

“declare your sins!”

“pray for his forgiveness”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Not an exact quote but close enough)

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

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

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

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

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

Goodnight.

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

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

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

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

I want to live

I want to die

I can’t go on living

I can’t end my life

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy…

20:06 – Planning and plotting again

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

18:44 – It’s over (and I survived it!)

I went to the CPA meeting. At the meeting there was:

• Me
• My Mum
• CPN guy from last week
• Addictions nurse
• Social Worker
• A&E Senior Charge Nurse (bitchy one from Tuesday)
• Psychiatrist via video link

Whilst people were arriving I heard my social worker ask my Mum how she was doing. I mentioned a while back that my Mum was being made redundant from the company she has worked for, for about 16 years. Then the company decided she could work from home on a part time basis until April and it would be reviewed again. This morning she found out that her redundancy was definitely going ahead and that’s it all final now. She finishes up in a couple of weeks. I just sat there and stared at the floor, I had no idea and I suddenly felt incredibly guilty that she had just lost her job that morning and was still there, by my side, at this bloody meeting about me being mental. That I still needed my Mum there for me when she is going through her own shit but is still more concerned about me. In the car on the way home she told me she wasn’t going to tell me until after the meeting because ‘she should be worrying about me and I shouldn’t worry about her’. Fucking hell, I’m such a bloody burden. I don’t deserve her worrying about me! Argh!

So for the first fifteen or twenty minutes of the meeting I barely said a word. I couldn’t really concentrate on what was being said because my head kept thinking about my poor Mum and how rubbish she must be feeling knowing she has to say good bye to all her colleagues of so many years. And my Mum was damn good at her job. I felt angry and sad for her. The voices were making everything sound a bit mumbled as well. My leg kept shaking and I felt sick with anxiety.

The CPN guy then started to go through the minutes from the last meeting then I pushed my bit of paper in front of him where I’d written that I felt totally unsupported at the moment. This is because I have not met my new CPN yet and had been told to use the duty system in a crisis as my social worker was no longer part of my care team. So I found my voice and said that I didn’t want my social worker out my care team because she is the only person (other than the psychiatrist) who has been there consistently. I told them I find all these staff changes stressful and uncomfortable, like I just start getting to know someone and then they leave for one reason or another. I also said I find the duty system hard because I find it hard having to explain why I feel the way I do over and over again to different people. So it was agreed that my social worker would remain part of my care team with appointments on a monthly basis (which is what I asked for) so I’m glad that for now I’m going to be able to keep the only therapeutic relationship I’ve got. Who knows, maybe once I get to know my new CPN and if I work well with her then maybe I will be OK just with CPN support.

We talked a little about how much I’ve been struggling lately, I apologised for not attending my appointments in the past month and explained it was mostly due to anxiety. So the CPN guy said he would speak to the support worker boss guy and ask if I could get a little bit of help with getting to appointments when they are at the CMHT. That brought up the subject of paying to see a support worker now, which the psychiatrist commented was “ridiculous” interestingly. So I will wait and see if they are going to let me get support from a support worker until my new CPN starts. My social worker also said she would come in for my first meeting with my new CPN so that should make it slightly less anxiety fuelled.

Hmm what else did they talk about?… The addictions nurse said that although she hadn’t seen me for a while she had no concerns of me using heroin again and was sure it really was just a two week mistake so that was good. The A&E nurse took a copy of my crisis plan and we mentioned the self harming over the past couple of weeks. I told my Mum about it in the car on the way there so she wasn’t shocked. The A&E nurse didn’t say much, just that she thought it would be helpful for them to have a copy of my crisis plan and she said thank you to me as she was leaving for ‘being so honest’ about the stuff in my head. She still remains the bitchy nurse though compared to the rest of the A&E staff!

I told them about the voices and about Satan controlling me. I asked for an increase in Quetiapine which the psychiatrist agreed to so I can put my dose up  by 50mg a fortnight and hopefully the voices will start to subside again in a while. I only hope I can last that time without doing something crazy if they start to command me!

So the meeting came to an end. We went through the keypoints which were something like:

• Medication to be increased
• Monthly appointments with social worker
• Start seeing new CPN
• Stick to crisis plan
• Resume sessions with addictions nurse to do relapse prevention work
• Appointment with addictions nurse on Tuesday 2pm
• Sometimes I might need help to get to appointments
• Possible support worker until new CPN starts
• See psychiatrist in May
• Another CPA meeting on July 5th at 4pm

I can’t believe I just remembered all of that. I must have been listening to more than I thought! Which is really strange because when I was in there it was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, some parts seemed blurred, some parts I’d suddenly notice Mum’s hand on mine and her whispering to see if I was OK. With the anxiety there were a couple of times I did that thing where you are like holding your breath without realising it then suddenly you exhale and it seems really loud, the CPN guy picked up on that and checked I was OK.

I guess all in all I’m glad I went. It was horribly anxious and yet at the same time it was productive. I just hope all the things we talked about actually happen and don’t just end up as words on a couple of sheets of paper somewhere. Things are still pretty fucking rocky and I’d really like to be able to try this approach out before things hit the next crisis point, I’d like to avoid there being another crisis point, but Satan is the one in control and all I can do is walk quietly alongside and try to steer things in the right direction.

00:19 – Trying to find the right path

I’m scared about tomorrow. I’m supposed to be going to two appointments, one with my CPN and one with my psychiatrist. I think I need my Quetiapine increased, my head is in a strange place right now, mostly a pretty scary place. I know my Mum is off work tomorrow and said she would come with me if it would help me get there but I just don’t think I can face it. I don’t even know what times they are at as I threw the letters in the bin as soon as I got them.

I went to my parents for dinner last night and Mum said she had received a letter inviting her to my next Care Plan Approach meeting which is on the 5th of April. I told her I didn’t think I would be going to it, I can’t really see myself attending any further appointments now. I know my Mum was getting annoyed with me saying I needed the help that’s being offered to me but it’s just not going to happen.

There are a lot of things that don’t make a great deal of sense right now, all I know for sure is that I have to keep on trying to walk the right path and that path is the one to be at war with the devil and only allow Jesus and the Angels to guide me. They are the only ones who can guide me to safety and away from this paranoid hell hole the devil has created.