00:21 – Terrified of the wrong side winning

“Do you know what I’m really terrified of? The wrong side winning. It’s as though my mind has split in two and I have no control over it. And the thing is, I’m beginning to get confused about which side is right and which is wrong.”

(Victoria Leatham)

 

That quote above couldn’t be more true right now. My mind is split in two and it is driving me mad, it’s tormenting me constantly, it’s trying so hard to pull me backwards and make me fall with an almighty bang. I have two things going on inside my head right now and the voices keep cropping up as well, making sure that my head is constantly busy.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been finding it incredibly difficult to watch television. I feel as though everything I watch is trying to trigger me, like the programmes are being deliberately controlled by someone to make sure just about anything I try to watch either leaves me feeling panicky or in floods of tears. There are two reasons for this, one is that I can’t seem to watch anything even a tiny bit upsetting or I end up in these moments of intense sadness and tears. The other is because there have been so many alleged cases of historical sexual abuse by soap stars and TV presenters reported recently that I feel as though every time I see a news report it is trying to fuck my head up. I start to wonder if this is a deliberate attempt to see if watching TV could send me properly bonkers.

I don’t know if this will make any sense, but some of the men accused I associate with happy childhood memories of seeing them in kids TV programs and others I have kind of grown up with as TV soap stars. And because my childhood wasn’t always happy as I was abused myself for a large part of it, when I see these news reports this noise starts up in my head just of laughter, a sick laughter that goes on and on until I switch the TV off. It’s not good enough just to put it on standby, it must be switched off at the wall. When I see/hear these reports I feel as though the evil laughter in my head is just one final way of reminding me that even the innocent happy memories of my childhood can be tarnished so easily.

One part of me reacts to it all angrily – very angrily – and I find myself sitting here thinking that all men are complete wankers, that I will never have another relationship because at the age of 31 I’ve had so many bad experiences with men that I genuinely do not believe I could ever trust one again. Even in the last week I have seen yet again just how much they can leave me feeling dirty and ashamed. I got talking to a guy online and after a few nights talking online he asked if he could have my number. Like a fucking idiot I gave it to him and he called me for a chat. It was pretty awkward at first as I sort of clammed up and didn’t feel like I had much to say for myself – I fucking hate phone conversations, they make me feel really anxious when it’s someone I don’t know. But I stuck with it as I’d had my medication and waited to see if I would calm down a bit and be able to chat away to him. Eventually I did start to calm and we talked about loads of different things. It was him who said he had just seen someone posting one of those stupid sick jokes that always go round when the media report that well known people have been arrested on rape or abuse charges. He asked me what I thought of it and as I’d already been honest about my mental health problems I figured I’d try telling him the truth. So I told him I hated hearing about it all as it triggered a lot of memories from times I had been abused. He sounded a bit sad when I said that and asked me what had happened. I didn’t go into great detail about the adult experiences but told him I’d been abused by an older cousin throughout my childhood. He began to ask a lot of questions and I thought it was just his way of asking to understand what I’d gone through, he sounded like he was asking it in a caring sort of way, and even though it felt a bit weird to be having such a deep conversation with someone who was still a stranger it also felt nice to be able to be open from the start with someone. He began to ask more details – how old was I when it first happened? What did he make me do to him? What did he do to me? How did he get me to keep it a secret? I answered the first couple of questions feeling OK but the more questions he asked the more I started to feel a bit uncomfortable. I could hear his breathing going funny when I was talking. At one point I thought he had fallen asleep as the breathing became so loud. And then it dawned on me what he was doing on the other end of the phone. I didn’t want to believe it but I couldn’t ignore it, I had to ask him what he was doing? Why was he breathing like that? Had he fallen asleep? How I wish he had fallen asleep because I was completely unprepared for his upfront answer that he was “getting off”, what did I think he’d do if I started “talking like that”?

I hung up immediately and burst into tears, went over to the wall and stood there banging my head against it over and over until the tears stopped. I had allowed it to happen. I was to blame. I made him aroused by telling him about some of my most painful experiences. I felt so stupid. So fucking stupid. But it is just another incident to remind me that apart from my Dad and my brother, I must look at every man like he has the potential to hurt me even if it starts making my head go crazy. I’ve been getting these rushes of ideas going through my head, things that could land me in serious trouble if I were to act on them, like carrying some kind of weapon so that if I ever get caught off guard I’d be protected. But obviously that is highly illegal in this country. Usually when I am in some type of depressive or paranoid episode I prefer to go out during the night when nobody is around. The dark makes me feel safe and protected, the day time busy-ness makes me paranoid and anxious. But this time it’s different, the daytime busy-ness protects me and keeps me safe. At night time I am vulnerable and terrified. I might not be allowed to carry any type of weapon to protect myself but I do let one of the dogs off his lead and walk with it wrapped tightly around my hand, I hold the thick metal end tightly as images rush through my head telling me to make sure I’m ‘ready’ if anyone tries to hurt me in any way. Thankfully there is only one walk a day that I have to do when it’s dark but it is getting harder and harder because I have to stay so alert to anyone else whose around. I can’t relax, my heart beats so fast I can hear it in my chest and I keep one of the dogs next to me at all times because I know they will bark like mad if anyone approaches us, especially in the dark.

When I’m not thinking of all possible scenarios whereby a man could hurt me I am thinking about all the possible ways I could hurt myself. It’s not enough just having these violent thoughts towards potential ‘abusers’ – my thoughts race off in another direction telling me that I clearly deserve to be hurt and abused because it’s happened to me by so many men at various ages throughout my life. I must attract it somehow. They must be able to tell just by looking at me that by slipping something into a drink or by acting all caring and sweet to get me into a conversation with them that they’ll be able to make me do things for their perverted pleasures. They must just be able to tell by looking at me that they’ll be able to use me for what they want then fuck off and leave me to pick up the pieces. I told my support worker at Rape Crisis all of this on Wednesday and she told me it’s not uncommon for women who have been abused in some way to go on to have a string of abusive relationships or experiences. I think the sick fuckers can smell vulnerability and just have to try their luck. So yeah, along with the thoughts of wanting to castrate every man who has ever hurt me there are also a lot of thoughts and urges to self harm. I want to see the rivers of blood trickling out of me, I want to grab a blade and cut and cut and cut. But I don’t want to go to A&E, my legs are still in an absolute mess from the last self harm episode, I’ve got an area on one of the cuts where I think I’ve done some kind of nerve damage as there is a bit about the size of a 50p which is completely numb, I can’t feel a thing when I press down on it, even with something sharp.

It terrifies me to have thoughts about hurting other people and I have to keep telling myself over and over that I’m just being overly alert and that it IS safe to keep going outside. I know I would never act on them unless I was put into an extremely threatening position by someone. But then one part of my head screams so loudly that I deserve for another man to hurt me, I deserve to be used and abused and left even more broken than I am just now. And that just feeds the images and the urges to self harm again, because I believe I deserve to be cut, scarred and to look as disgusting as I do. I should look even more disgusting than I do now, I should be covered from head to toe in self mutilated wounds. Then no-one would ever want to come near me again. By making myself less and less attractive I can protect myself, or so the racing thoughts and occasional voices blurt out to me.

What was the quote I started with again?

“Do you know what I’m really terrified of? The wrong side winning. It’s as though my mind has split in two and I have no control over it. And the thing is, I’m beginning to get confused about which side is right and which is wrong.”

Which is the wrong side? I guess it’s the thoughts of hurting someone. I can’t control the thoughts, but I can control my actions. I think. And like the quote says, I truly am terrified of this side winning.

So which is the right side? I wish there was a side which believed that one day I will recover from all of this and achieve some things with my life. I wish I could believe there is a right side and it is going to be a place where if not happy, I’m at least content. But I don’t believe that is going to happen so instead I have to wonder if the right side is actually all these thoughts and encouraging voices telling me to hurt myself? Hurting myself feels right. It’s what I do. It makes me focus on a different kind of pain, a physical ache feels so much better than an emotional one. After all, I can see what is causing my pain when I can see that I’m covered in stitches and the variety of wounds all at various stages of healing.

I simply do not believe that I am ever going to escape these intrusive thoughts or escape from the self harming behaviours. I have been self harming for 17/18 years now. The voices have come and gone so many times I’ve lost count over the past 4 years or so. Feeling different in every way from every one I know has been a part of my life for too long now, and whilst I may have avoided any psych hospital admissions for over a year, my head is still very messed up. I don’t feel in control, I feel like something dark and sinister is controlling me, something that only gives me very occasional glimpses of feeling normal or even the tiniest glimpse of happiness, and then snatches them away from me… coming back every single time to ensure they can torment me a little bit more.

I still have so much more to say but I think I better end this post now, it’s got pretty long and the more I write the more messed up my head gets. I was also going to mention that whilst I did go to see my support worker on Wednesday, I phoned up with an excuse not to see CPN#2 on Friday. I think I just didn’t want to take the chance of opening up and all of the above pouring out because I already know what her response will be. It will be the usual bollocks about how I “will get better” and “will get through this” I just need to “learn coping techniques” that will work for me and then my life will somehow miraculously be cured of any mentalness. Plus there is the risk if you mention even having violent thoughts towards others – even if you know you wouldn’t act on them – that they still might get concerned enough to start assessing if you could really be a risk to others. And I’m not… well so long as no one tries to hurt me I’m not. Isn’t that a complete contradiction? I don’t want anyone to hurt me yet the only way I know to cope is to hurt myself? It might not make a great deal of sense to anyone apart from me.

On that note I think it is time for bed. I might try and write some more tomorrow if I feel like I can write something that makes a bit more sense. I don’t know if any of the 2500 words I’ve just written even make any sense at all. But my medication is kicking in and I need to try and sleep… I’m sure I’ve been writing this for over an hour now.

Goodnight folks, and I hope you’re all having a good weekend xx

21:20 – 24 hours in my crazy head – What do I do now?

This post was started around 9pm on Saturday night (the 20th) and goes on through to tonight – it’s very long – graphic in places – so *insert trigger warning here*

I don’t understand why I feel this way I am feeling at the moment. Or maybe it’s more that I don’t understand why it’s suddenly hit me with such force. All I can think about is hurting myself and I’m trying so fucking hard to fight it but I can’t. It’s winning. I’m trying so hard to distract myself, I’ve used just about every suggestion on my ‘distractions’ tab at the top of the page. Nothing works.

Nothing.

Nada.

I am completely stuck in this horribly miserable depressing state of mind. I feel so empty yet in so much pain. And now I’ve had to go and trigger myself haven’t I… my stitches from Wednesday were itching like mad because they had put layers of some special material between the stitches and the dressings. When the pressure bandage was on I didn’t notice the itchiness so much but since it got taken off yesterday all I’ve wanted to do it scratch and scratch. So the couple of extra dressings I had are now also gone because every time that material touches my skin I end up ripping it back off. And that was me fired straight into Trigger Time.

Seeing all the cuts, seeing the stitches, looking at both legs that are in a complete mess just makes me want to do more and more damage. At the back of my mind all I keep thinking now that I’ve made this much of a mess I might as well just keep on going. The usual regrets that come in the aftermath of a self harming episode have not come… it’s almost as though I didn’t do a good enough job to release everything on Wednesday and so I need to cut again to get back into that ‘regretful’ headspace. When I’m regretting what I’ve done then I generally don’t do it again for a while.

But this is getting bad, if things continue on this way I know I am going to cut badly again, what the fuck will A&E think of me/say to me if they need to put a second lot of stitches in so soon after me last doing it? How do I know how the doctor will react? In my head I think and feel and know that it’s all just about needing to cause more pain, it’s not really about wanting to die or anything remotely suicidal no matter how disgusted in myself that I am. I just want to be able to take a deep breath and feel calm again.

One minute I feel rational and think “well, if I cut and if I do need to get medical attention well they will just patch me up as usual and send me on my way”. I’m not psychotic, I’m not suicidal, it wouldn’t be a suicide attempt. I know if I can say those things to the nurse/doctor then everything should be OK regardless of how true that really is.

But I’m becoming more and more agitated and irritated and the only one thing stopping me from cutting is the fear that this time if I have to go to A&E they will say “fuck it’s the weekend we better put her in the bin”… OK so that has never happened to me, I have never been hospitalised for self harming but that new doctor on Wednesday seemed like the type who’d take no nonsense and not help with giving any meds to calm me down which is likely to get me more and more worked up until I start behaving in a less rational manner.

I don’t know how to stop these thoughts. I don’t know how to make the voices shut up. My iPod isn’t helping. TV isn’t helping. I can’t go for the long hot shower thing as I can’t get my stitches wet, especially now they have no dressing over them. I don’t even know what I feel. Emptiness? Numb? Messed up? Confused? Depressed? Scared? Like I’m about to lose it? Very very scared of ‘losing it’.

It’s 9.40pm now and I can’t even sit still to write this. I need to walk or pace or something. This is driving me mad. I’ll save this as a draft for the moment and come back to it later.

UPDATED – 11.30pm Saturday 20th

It’s now 11.30pm. Two hours have passed since I wrote the ramble above. I have taken my medication, a few extra diazepam included. I have half had a shower (I tied a plastic bag around my leg to cover my stitches) but feel cleaner now, my hair is clean, my leg isn’t itching so much either. I have also been out for a late night walk with the dogs and got some fresh air but there were a load of drunk people staggering between pubs so I didn’t stay out for long.

Where is my head at now? Still in the exact same frame of mind as it was earlier unfortunately. Perhaps the restlessness and irritability have calmed a little with the medication starting to kick in, and my thoughts are going at a slightly slower pace. It’s the exact same feelings of impending doom that I had for a couple of days at the beginning of the week before I cut. Knowing it will happen, just not knowing when it will happen. It could be tonight, it could be during the night, it could be tomorrow or I might even manage to fight for a few days but the longer it goes on for the more of those feelings of being in a pressure cooker with the lid about to blow go on for. Yet because that immediate desperation has calmed slightly it is giving me the space to reflect upon what the consequences of my actions will be if I do go ahead and cut myself:

I will have another scar or two.

I will have to face A&E.

There is the possibility of them being way too busy with drunken people who’ve been fighting and what not and me having to sit for a long period of time making me more and more anxious.

There is always the fear of being judged or someone not understanding that I’m either appearing completely silent or talking non stop due to anxiety, not just because I’m a bit mental.

OK it is now 11.45pm and I’m going to go and lie in bed and just see what happens. I have no idea how tonight is going to pan out, it really could swing either way. I’m so so so confused and messed up at the moment, I just want it all to stop. Will one more cut make it stop? I don’t know. I really don’t.

I’m not going to publish this post yet as I have a feeling it’s going to be a night of having difficulty sleeping so I’m going to keep adding and updating until my mood makes a real change or until the urges win and I collect another scar.

UPDATED – 4.22am Sunday morning

4.22am I’ve been awake for about half an hour I feel horrible and very emotional. I think I woke up crying or at least it felt that way. That urgent desperation to hurt myself has calmed but with the calm it’s like that big black cloud of doom is now sitting over me instead. I sort of wish I had just cut earlier and got it out my system but will one more cut get it all out this time? I don’t know. I feel all messed up, all I deserve is to lie here and completely absorb all this misery.

UPDATED – 1.55pm Sunday afternoon

I feel calmer. I have stopped looking at triggering things online. I have put all the blades back in the drawer. I am going to take the dogs for a walk and try to clear my head. I need to get out of here and away from sharp objects that I can’t stop thinking about using. The thing is that I don’t want to see anyone at all, I have already lied twice today and send two texts saying I wasn’t well and was staying in bed to avoid them asking to meet up.

I just want to be on my own even though it’s probably the worst thing I could be doing. I don’t care. I just want to be left on my own until these urges finally go away

UPDATED – 7.30PM SUNDAY EVENING

Ok I have fought and fought. I can’t fight any more. The blades are back out the drawer and my spot on the bathroom floor is ready and waiting for when the moment is right. The towels are there, the blades are there, the dressings are there. Maybe I could just do lots of little cuts to get that intense stinging sensation. That way I could avoid A&E completely. I don’t even have any skin closures at home though, just some bandages.

I think that I’ve fought against the head crazies for long enough now. It’s time to just give in, let them win and hope they fuck off. There is no certainty that they will though and I’m scared that I end up being right back in this very position within another few days. I’m supposed to be going back in to A&E tomorrow for another wound check and to have the dressings changed, I can’t go in tonight and tomorrow and then again on Wednesday to get these stitches out then possibly a few days after that again to get more out. They will think I am completely bonkers. I’m just so terrified of the unknown. The unknown being – which nurse/doctor will see me and how they will assess me. In a way it would help if I took someone with me, when someone is with you then they think you have support so are a lot happier to just treat you and let you go. But where I live we don’t have crisis teams or out of hours mental health people so the judgement on whether or not you are “a risk” lies with the A&E staff. And that is fine when it’s someone who knows me a bit, but is extremely scary when it’s someone I’ve never seen before.

I have to do it. I have to get it out of me. It is tormenting the hell out of me now and I want to shout and scream at the top of my lungs – I want to throw a tantrum the way a toddler would and just scream and throw things around for no real reason other than it feeling like the right thing to do. I am ridiculous. Pathetic. Weak. Ridiculous.

UPDATE – 9.10pm Sunday night

I did it. I couldn’t stop myself. I couldn’t cope with the urges and thoughts and voices all joining up and making me feel so mental. I had to get it out. I just had to. Three fairly nasty cuts. Three cuts that are all probably going to need stitches. My dilemma now? I honestly don’t think I can go to A&E. I can’t face it. Regret has finally kicked in. It’s a shame it took a bunch of new scars to get there. I don’t know what to do now, I don’t know where to turn, I don’t want to tell anyone and even though the cuts are all deep and gaping, the bleeding is under control. Best friend will be at home with the kids in bed, she can’t leave them so I can’t ask her to come to the hospital with me. My other friend who has come to the hospital a couple of times with me thinks I don’t self harm any more and I’d like it to stay that way. There is the option of my Mum but she has just finished a long shift at work and will be having dinner, probably enjoying a glass of wine and I don’t want to phone and tell her what I’ve done. So that leaves two options: go myself or don’t go at all. I’m scared that when this blurry trance like feeling passes and the physical pain starts kicking in that I will have no choice but to get medical help and I’m also aware that wounds not cleaned or dressed properly which are gaping open are far more likely to become infected. I feel sick with anxiety. I’ve never felt like this after self harming. I feel really really weird. I wish I had just fought on a bit longer. I could have won. I didn’t need to let it win. Why did I let it win? I’m so stupid.

I don’t have a fucking clue what to do.

00:50 – Feeling seriously low tonight

I went to my appointment this afternoon with CPN#2 (maybe I should think of a better name for her – but there has been 3 cpn’s I’ve worked with over the past year and she was number 2 so cpn#2 seems like the best suited name for her). It was actually nice to see her again and I managed to tell her most of the things I wanted to including not finding having a CPN helpful, the frustration about the lack of consistent appointments through the CMHT and the frustration of people coming and going and coming and going and never being able to move forwards with anyone. She told me she is there on a temporary basis but will be there for a minimum of three months and that she would like to work with me on a weekly basis alongside psychology when it re-starts.

I basically brought her up to date with where I’m at with everything in my life at the moment and told her about the self harming and how much I’ve fucked up my uni course. I told her I’ve been feeling pretty unsupported again lately apart from lovely support worker at rape crisis. She did tell me that lovely social worker who I was supposed to be seeing until psychologist returns is actually off on long term sick leave – it would have been nice if someone from the CMHT had decided to tell me that rather than me just sitting here thinking I’d been forgotten about. I hope she gets better soon.

After my appointment I went along to the A&E department to have my wound checked and a dressing change, everything looks like it’s healing well and the stitches are nice and neat. I almost felt OK for a little while when I got home – maybe because it had been lovely and sunny all afternoon and maybe because I’d got some of my frustrations out… but yeah I felt OK for a little while but as the afternoon went into evening my mood has taken a serious dip. I’m sitting here with a clean blade and really badly want to do some damage to myself. I don’t want to go to A&E though, so this time I really do need to be in control of it and keep it reasonably superficial, but sometimes that really is easier said than done.

My head feels really fuzzy like I can’t think straight, I don’t know what I want, I’m irritable and restless, I took my medication about an hour ago and my thoughts seem to be getting worse and worse. Lots of images in my head of what I’d like to do to myself but genuinely fighting back simply because I’m too tired for one, and for two I *know* I won’t be able to keep the cutting under control. Yet I can’t put the blade away. I keep it sitting next to me and occasionally pick it up and do some scratches on my skin then put it back down again. I hate this, I hate this frame of mind when you so badly want to do something really bad… something worse than self harming but you don’t even know what’s making you feel that way. The voices are a constant source of negativity and keep the stream of negative thoughts flowing.

Head just feels a total mess. Need to take slightly more than normal amounts of medication to try and sedate myself. Really scared I’m going to do something stupid tonight if I can’t get myself off to sleep soon. This favourite quote of mine does a pretty good job of summing up how I feel right now…

23:37 – It’s not going good at all

[Warning - Graphic Descriptions of Self Harm in Post]

It’s just getting worse. Worse and worse. I feel really low and the only thought revolving around my head is to cut myself. I want to make it clear that I am NOT suicidal, I do NOT want to die, I just can’t distract myself from the constant flashes in front of my eyes of me doing something harmful to myself (or other people which is very out of character for me). The constant thoughts are about cutting mostly.

I sent an email to rape crisis support worker tonight and basically sent her the stuff I’ve written on here for the past couple of nights. She knows I write a blog but she isn’t very technical minded so I’m not worried about her coming across my ramblings here.

I have taken too much medication this evening but it was sort of by accident. Well it wasn’t really an accident at all, it was more a case of realising I’d forgotten to take ANY medication today so around 8pm I just took my full day and full night’s tablets in one. I thought maybe a big surge of medication in my system might make everything feel much less fucked up but I just feel a little groggy… This could be a good thing as it might mean I will sleep tonight. It would help a lot if I could get a full 7 or 8 hours uninterrupted sleep.

Back to the self harming. The cutting. Male voice is very prominent and has insulted every single thing I’ve done today. He has a broad Scottish accent and whilst I haven’t seen him I have an idea of what he might look like from how he talks and certain little quirks that he has. I am a bit scared of this next impending self harm episode because he wants me to leave marks that will be even harder to explain, he wants me to draw certain symbols into my flesh with blades, he wants me to cut so deep I can truly see the inside of my body… not just some yellow globule like bits of flesh but proper muscle, bone and tendon. I’m not going to lie, that does actually scare me a little. I am well aware that it doesn’t take that much of a slip of the hand to do permanent irreversible damage but the urges, the orders, the ideas… they are all sucking me in.

I’ve done so well to have only had a couple of slip ups in the past year and I most certainly do not ever want to re-visit the place I was in a few years ago. I’m genuinely terrified of the psych hospital and genuinely scared of how I would react if I was ever faced with that situation again.

Anyway… I’m sorry it’s not been a more cheery post… I did send an email to my support worker at rape crisis earlier and she replied saying all nice and supportive things but male voice just laughed loudly throughout the whole time I was trying to read. He knows he’s going to win and I know he’s going to win. The only plan I can have is to somehow try and very much limit the damage so it’s only one more scar to deal with… if he has it his way I won’t even be able to see the flesh on my limbs he wants that much of my ugliness cut away.

I wonder how many hours/days/weeks it will take before I reach the point of doing ANYTHING to shut him up once and for all.

21:25 – Trying out sandplay/sandtray therapy

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

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

The only things left to tick off my list is:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

21:27 – I gave in… I’m so pathetic… Argh!!

Just to let you know this post has a lot of talk about self harm

Well I think I lasted about half an hour after my random shizzle post before I got up, started pacing around, went to my ‘hiding place’ and retrieved the blades I bought last week. Before I knew it I was sitting cross legged on the bathroom floor and feeling that rush of everything leaving my system, every time I pressed down on the blade and sliced through my skin I felt calmer and calmer and calmer. I sat with my back against the wall and closed my eyes for a couple of minutes before looking down to see what the damage was.

The one thing I’ve written about on here over my past couple of ramblings has been about the regret I feel in the aftermath of self harming. The regret didn’t flood in straight away because I thought the two cuts were reasonably shallow. I had only made two cuts but just kept cutting into them so I was expecting to be greeted with two big gaping wounds but the damage didn’t look too bad. I didn’t feel glad that I’d done it but I didn’t feel regret either. I think this is because at that point I felt like I’d actually cut but managed to keep in control of it. And on initial inspection the wounds didn’t look too bad. But then once I started to clean myself up I realised that one of the cuts was actually a bit deeper than I’d first thought and straight away the feelings of regret started to flow through me… because I knew I hadn’t got away with some shallow cuts after all… and then started the debate in my head over whether or not to go to A&E.

At that point it was probably around 2pm and as I sat there trying to decide what I should do I got severely anxious. I put a bandage around the wounds and began pacing again. Every time I sat down I’d feel restless and irritated and anxious and had to continue to pace around the room. I had an appointment with my support worker from Rape Crisis at 3.30pm so I decided I would go to the hospital and get the wound treated and then go to my appointment. But every time I went to walk out of the door I’d get a horrible sinking feeling in my stomach that stopped me in my tracks and again the anxiety would kick in bad so I continued to pace around until 3.20pm then left for my appointment.

I had initially decided that I wasn’t going to tell anyone I had done it. I kept thinking that OK the cut probably did need glued, possibly a couple of stitches, but also that it wasn’t the worst of cuts I’ve ever done and whilst the scar would probably have been extra nasty I’m pretty sure I could have just put some steri-strips on it and a dressing and it would have healed in time itself.

So when I got to my appointment my head was all over the place. Support worker asked me what was wrong as I told her I needed to pace around because I was very anxious. I didn’t want to tell her but I did. We sat for about half an hour and debated the pro’s and con’s of going to A&E to have the cuts checked and treated. She could see that I really didn’t want to go and was making up any excuse I could think of to prevent having to go but I then began to calm down a little bit when she said she wasn’t going to force me to go. I relaxed a bit knowing that and then I was more able to talk rationally. I told her I regretted it and didn’t have any urges to do it again and I think she believed me. It was/is the truth, I do regret it.

My support worker asked me if she was to come with me would it make it easier for me to go? At first I said I didn’t mind either way but then she said to me that we could go in and if I changed my mind then we could just keep walking and I wouldn’t need to speak to any of the nurses if I didn’t want to. So I agreed to this and decided it was probably best just to go and get it over and done with. I was fairly confident I wouldn’t need any stitches so just kept thinking to myself that in half an hour it would all be over and done with and I could be on my way home. With a deep breath I got in her car and off we went.

On arrival at A&E the nurse who saw me was someone I’ve seen before (also for self harming) so that helped to calm me down a little bit. I still found it really hard to speak but did tell her I regretted it and had no urges to do anything else to myself. She asked if I wanted her to contact the mental health team but I said no thank you. It’s not like they ever turn up or call anyway!! The nurse got me up on the bed thing and had a look at the wounds. She agreed one just needed some steri strips but the other she said could do with a couple of stitches in it. I asked if she could just glue and steri strip it but because of where the cut is means that every time I move my leg walking I’d be pretty likely to burst the glue. I said I’d prefer not to have stitches so I have ended up with about 20 steri strips all going in different directions to hold the cut closed nice and securely. I think it will heal just as well as it would have had I had the stitches as it wasn’t too deep but it’s deep enough to leave another scar. Pfft.

Why the fuck do I do these things to myself?! Argh!

Anyway, the nurse was pleasant enough to me and didn’t make me feel judged or any of that stuff. She just cleaned me up, patched me up, reminded me of signs of infections and asked if I wanted to go back in a few days for a wound check. I declined the offer and said I’d just care for it myself and start removing the top layer of steri strips in about a weeks time. She seemed happy enough for me to do that and gave me some clean dressings and let me leave with support worker. Funnily enough the whole time my support worker was there the nurse didn’t even ask who she was. Guess she just assumed it was a friend or something.

When we left A&E we went back to the centre and had a chat for another half hour or so. We made an appointment for next Tuesday and I left a message for my social worker to see if I could get an appointment with her later this week as it’s been a couple of weeks since we met up and with my parents being away this week and not having them just a phone-call away I feel like I could do with being able to have another chat and little bit of support again in a few days.

Since I got home I’ve been feeling in a weird mood. I don’t know if it’s because of the self harming but I just feel a sort of numb sensation throughout my body… numb everywhere apart from where I cut which is pretty sore. And that’s like the only feeling I can feel… everything else is just blank.

Well I’m going to go and walk the dogs now and see if I can find something on TV to watch and distract myself for a while. My sleeping is still shit so it will probably be another long night, another long night of mentally beating myself up for giving in and cutting, for causing another scar, for not being strong enough to ignore those urges!!

Weak… Pathetic and weak…

Will I ever learn?????

13:53 – Tired, emotional and (still) wanting to cut…

As you may have guessed from the title this post contains talk of self harm

I’ve not posted in a few days as I’ve had very little to say for myself. Following on from my previous post in the early hours of Friday morning I still have very strong urges to self harm. But as yet I am still hanging on and still haven’t done it.

I was awake again most of the night between Thursday and Friday. I have taken to going onto a free site (www.king.com) and playing free puzzle games all night in an attempt to make the screen brightness give me tired eyes… and with the hope the last of my brain battery juice would be sucked out. Alas, it doesn’t work. Just like lying in a dark room all wrapped up in my cosy bed doesn’t work. Nor does reading a book/having a milky drink/taking extra medication. It’s as if my body doesn’t want to rest even though I badly need to.

Due to the extreme tiredness and shitty weather combination I’ve spent all weekend indoors (besides a few short walks each day with the dogs). Friday night I watched Comic Relief all night and despite having fuck all money in the bank I did do the donate £10 by text so it can just get added onto my next bill. It was a good mix of entertainment as well as some utterly heartbreaking stories of kids all over the world living in poverty, dying from such preventable diseases. I did shed a tear or two

Saturday morning I woke up with really bad pains in my tummy. Don’t know what the fuck they were but they hurt a lot. Located some strong 30/500 co-codamols in the cupboard and they did the trick to get rid of it. But they left me sleepy and not wanting to move so I sent a text to my Mum and cancelled meeting her for lunch. That’s the parents away on holiday for the next week which for some reason leaves me feeling quite vulnerable and alone. I might only see them once a week at times when I’m hiding from the world, but I do feel safer when I know they are close by if I need them.

Then last night or was it Saturday night? (I can’t even remember what I did less than 24 hours ago my brain is so pickled) I decided to traumatise myself a bit further and watch the catch up of One Born Every Minute. In this week’s episode one of the labouring mothers-to-be delivers a beautiful baby boy. Then her Mum (baby’s grandmother) comes in the room once the baby is born and as she cuddles him she says “welcome to the world Lewis” … cue the lump in throat… followed by tears rolling down my cheeks… followed by giant heaving snotty sobs and crying into a pillow… **flashback** me holding my little Lewis (he was stillborn for those who don’t read here often) … me wondering did I welcome my little Lewis to the world??… **flashback** my mum holding me as I sat between her and my (ex) fiancé with my little Lewis in a tiny moses basket on my knee and the hospital chaplain reading out a blessing… wishing my Mum had been able to hold our Lewis and welcome him to the world as a proud grandmother… **flashback** the confusion.. it didn’t make sense.. why had it happened.. why wasn’t my baby alive????

I wanted to cut so badly at that moment. I was angry with myself for letting myself watch the program, why do I do it to myself pretty much every week? Why do I sit and trigger myself watching programmes and documentaries about things that leave me so upset? It’s bloody ridiculous. Why can’t I ever just learn to change the channel… argh! I was also hurting really badly with memories and flashbacks. I was over tired and very emotional. I was mixed up with too many emotions running around so I decided to go to bed and try playing some mindfulness tracks on my iPod to see if it would help me to calm down a bit. The first couple of tracks I sat and cried through, but by the third track I was starting to breathe a bit slower and the tears were drying up. By the fourth one I was actually listening to what the woman was saying and trying to follow her instructions. By the last track I felt OK again and ready to sleep. And amazingly I did fall asleep soon after but unfortunately I woke up at 2.20am and have been up ever since. So yep.. still shattered.

Today I had planned to be a study day but I don’t know if I’ll be able to focus on it. I need to have a shower as we are back in ‘personal hygiene fail’ territory again. It’s just after 1.30pm and I need to find some motivation to do something.. anything.. to distract from those little fucking head crazies that keep on at me to just get hold of a blade, slice it through my flesh and just get it fucking over with. They know, I know, we know, you know, everyone fucking knows it’s going to happen… why not just do it??!! I need that outlet, I need to be able to release all the emotional headfuckery, the sadness, the hurt, the anger, the frustration, the confusion, the… everything. I need to let it all out and unfortunately the only way of getting it all out at once tends to mean I seek that rush and calmness that self harming gives me. If only for a moment.

And that’s what the problem is… like I said in my last post, as time passes and more years go by I now tend to regret self harming pretty much immediately after doing it. I am aware of the consequences. I don’t want the consequences. I want the ‘quick fix’ feeling but I don’t want the aftermath of it. It’s like medication vs talking therapy – you know certain medications work quickly and provide a temporary plaster over the wound…. talking therapy on the other hand is a slow drawn out process that takes ages to see results but is the one that is going to help you most long term. Do I want the long term answer or the quick fix? Am I prepared to deal/live with the consequences? I think this is the first time I’ve actually stopped and thought about self harm wounds before just diving in there with a sharp blade cutting mindlessly lost in my little trance then returning to find myself back in the moment and in a total mess.

Everything just feels pretty blah right now. Scared of the consequences yet scared to ignore what feels like the ‘natural’ thing to do. All of my thoughts and feelings and emotions are rolling into one and bringing back the pressure cooker feeling of everything getting so close to just blowing the pressure cooker lid. Last time the lid eventually blew… will this time be the same? Who knows…

00:05 – Need sleep. Need to cut. But need no regrets?

Today I had an appointment with my support worker from Rape Crisis. I nearly didn’t go to it as my sleeping is still utterly shit and I seem to have well and truly fallen into a pattern of falling asleep somewhere between 3 and 5am then waking up again between 7 and 9am, leaving me feeling pretty shattered. But I decided to go along to it and we spent the hour talking about the self-harm-that-hasn’t-happened-yet-but-I-know-is-likely-to-happen-pretty-soon.

I should probably put a trigger warning in here, this post talks about self harm and is a little bit graphic in places.

I talked about my reasons why I don’t actually want to do it but how I know that the thoughts surrounding doing it are getting faster, more frequent, more graphic, more persuading. I could throw the blades in the bin, but it would only take me two minutes to acquire more. I talked through a typical self harm episode with my support worker, how the build up to doing it is so intense, there are so many thoughts and emotions all dancing around encouraging me, making me think of that feeling of complete numbness and total release, it’s almost like the feeling a junkie gets knowing the hit, the rush, is going to happen any time soon. In a way I can’t wait for it just to happen and for it to engulf me and submerge me all at once.

But then there is this little irritating thought that reminds me of the hatred that I feel towards my scars, the loathing I have for them and how much they affect my self confidence. That’s the long term consequences. Then there is the short term consequences which (usually) involves a trip to A&E. By the time I’ve got to A&E a couple of hours after self harming I am sitting there in shock at the damage I’ve done to myself. I find it really hard to go into the A&E department and be able to speak. The anxiety makes it very hard to get my words out and then there is the sitting in the waiting room knowing that you are going to be called through to the doctor and have to admit to self harming. Having to expose the old scars and the new wounds. Not knowing if you are going to be judged or treated kindly. The mixture of both hope and dread about seeing a nurse/doctor that you’ve see before (for the same reasons). In a way you want to see someone who you know has treated you before and done it nicely, on the other hand you don’t want them to see that you are still doing this same shit to your body.

And if I’m in a situation whereby I don’t know the nurse or doctor on duty (I live in a rural area with a small local hospital so have met most of the A&E staff) but if it’s someone I haven’t met before and I am in a room alone with one or two of them with them assessing my wounds I tend to clam up with anxiety. I can’t speak and I start looking frantically around the room making escape plans in my head. I get scared of the questions they ask me in case they think I am lying – for example – they ask me if I still want to hurt myself and I shake my head to say no but I’m also shaking with anxiety, not speaking, eyes searching all round the room, unable to have eye contact with them… well then I fear they are going to be looking at me and thinking I’m crazy and not be able to just walk straight back out the door. I don’t often feel like I’m in control of a lot of things in my life so the fear of losing my control scares me… a lot.

Most of the time I regret self harming in the days afterwards, sometimes the regret starts within hours of doing it. Fucking hell sometimes within minutes I’m regretting it. But whilst I’m in the act of doing it it’s almost like being transported to a different world – a different headspace – where I feel no physical pain from it and become almost entranced by the blood, the depth, the severity. It’s like how can I be doing this yet not feel it? So in a sense it almost doesn’t even seem real because if I can’t feel any pain then how can I really be doing it?

After my appointment with my support worker I came home – still completely confused, still with these urges to cut, still with the same debate going on inside my head making me remember all the unwanted consequences that come along with doing it. And whilst there are loads more reasons for not doing it than doing it I still know that I will do it. It always wins in the end and the feelings of release it gives me is like an addiction that I must feed every few months (at the moment) – it builds and builds until I can’t take it any more and eventually it will become the only thought in my head until I can’t take stand hearing it one more time and so, I begin to cut. It’s been part of my life as a coping mechanism on and off over the past 17 years of my life. 17 out of my 31 years spent harming my body. That’s more than half my life. Hmm.

So that’s been my day. I am seeing my support worker again on Tuesday and am hoping to see my social worker towards the end of next week to touch base.

It’s after midnight now and despite taking my meds just after 10pm I don’t feel even slightly sleepy so it looks like another night of being awake til fuck knows when. I’ve just taken some extra Diazepam but I doubt they’ll do anything. Tomorrow I’m hoping to find some concentration as I still haven’t written a single post for my course’s weekly debates. But with a mind that is already in a constant debate with itself ‘to cut or not to cut?’ it’s hard to focus on anything else. Especially when you feel like a zombie from the lack of sleep and large doses of Quetiapine. Speaking of Quetiapine makes me think of the voices, I’ve heard snippets of some pretty funny conversations this week, one or two which have made me just roll my eyes in a kind of WTF confused sort of way… and another couple which have actually made me LOL. They are funny things voices; sometimes pure evil, sometimes pure genius, sometimes just hilarious.

Anyway… if I don’t sleep well tonight then I think I may treat myself to a bottle of wine tomorrow night, if I drink alone in the house where the heating is up full blast it is pretty much guaranteed that I’ll fall asleep in front of the TV. Then again alcohol would be something that would likely fuel the self harm thoughts and urges. It’s a no win situation, I should just get it bloody over and done with and hope the usual pattern follows where I don’t think about doing it again for another month or two. But it is impossible to do without the regrets that follow.

Oh well. I guess we’ll see what tomorrow brings. Come what may… (and all that jazz).

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…