21:09 – CPN appointment and a ramble

Today has been pretty busy and it’s only 8.30pm but I’m already thinking about going to bed. My sleep last night was ridiculously bad again and I felt like a zombie when I got to my appointment with CPN#2 at 1pm. I can’t even remember what we spoke about as my brain was like mush. I do remember her filling out a sheet for the front of my file with details of allergies and stuff on it. And she said something about meeting with my psychologist before we next meet to find out from the psychologist what kind of therapy she will be planning to do with me and then use the sessions with CPN#2 to get me into the right headspace for the more structured psychological therapy. Also she mentioned arranging another CPA meeting for me as I’m well overdue one but right now half the people who should attend it are off for one reason or another so I think we’ll probably wait until June or July before the next one, which is fine by me as I don’t particularly enjoy them.

After my appointment with CPN#2 I met my Mum and we went for a look at washing machines. I’ve narrowed it down to three, they are all pretty expensive so I’m now just trying to work out what the best payment method for me would be. My Mum said she will put it on her credit card and I can pay her in instalments until the balance is cleared. The alternative is that I could buy it from my catalogue and pay it off over 52 weeks interest free or the third possibility is getting it from a local electrical store who offer the same 52 weeks interest free for payment. There are a couple of offers I saw that were quite good as they included the cost of delivery, disconnecting and removing your old appliance then connecting up your new one so it saves a lot of hassle – especially when you live two floors up. Mum said I should have a think about which one I want tonight and we can meet up at some point tomorrow to get it ordered.

Tomorrow is going to be another busy day as I have to go to a&e to have the rest of my stitches taken out (which as usual I am dreading), attempt to get a repeat prescription when my normal GP is off on holiday and as this was my first time in years getting a monthly prescription instead of a weekly one I don’t know if I’ll get put back on weeklies until my GP is back. I also have an hour of tattooing booked in the afternoon and have to buy a birthday card for my Dad then go to my parents as we’re having a little birthday dinner for him. I’m not sure how he’s going to react to his present – usually it’s a boring bottle of aftershave or something like that – but this year my brother decided it would be fun to get him a flying lesson – yes – to fly a small plane! It was pretty expensive so I hope he likes it! I wasn’t planning to get him a big present this year as next year it’s his 60th but before I could have much input into it my brother had already gone and booked it!

Anyway, I don’t really have much more to say for myself, I really am trying not to write about all the bad thoughts in my head. I told CPN#2 today that I just feel numb at the moment, I don’t feel happy or sad, I don’t feel quite as desperate about hitting the self destruct button but still want to hit it. I told her I’d pulled a couple of my stitches out myself in some sort of anger/frustration the other day – she asked what stopped me from pulling them all out and I’m not sure of the answer – probably because I knew if I pulled them all out I’d be back at a&e again and I just don’t think I could face going in there for more treatment – just going to get my stitches out tomorrow makes me feel anxious enough. Why? Because I don’t know how long I’m going to go before my next trip for more stitches. I don’t know if it will be days, weeks or months. The urge to self harm again is extremely strong but with having an hour’s tattooing done on Friday, another hour tomorrow and another hour booked for this coming Friday I’m trying my hardest to somehow trick my head into believing that the pain that comes with tattooing will be enough to stave off the urges to cut for another little while.

Well it’s now gone 9pm and I’m going to watch a little television, take the dogs a walk then medication and bed. I’m totally shattered and need some proper sleep tonight. I can’t even do a bit of self medicating as I only have one night’s medication left. So hopefully the sleep fairy will come along and be nice to me tonight.

Goodnight folks xx

 

22:14 – Another pathetic ramble of self pity

Today has been a bit of a strange one. My sleeping was awful last night, I didn’t even go to bed, just grabbed a couple of hours on the sofa. My head was bouncing all over the place from one destructive idea to the next. Best friend phoned about 10am to ask if we could spend the afternoon together and I so so wanted to make up an excuse but I think I knew this afternoon could be the one where I completely lost it if I stayed in by myself all day just thinking and thinking. So I agreed to meet her at 12.

I have been kind of self medicating with some of my tablets. Not in any extreme kind of way, just adding an extra one here or taking one out at another time, but I do (99%) of the time take the prescribed dosage each day without going over it by much. It’s more like this – as an example – one of the medications I take is Quetiapine and I currently take 750mg a day. I am supposed to take it as a 250mg dose in the morning and 500mg at night. Well if I wake up and my head is fucking bonkers and there are voices present I might take it the other way around – 500mg in the morning and 250mg at bedtime. Or if I’ve had fuck all sleep and am absolutely shattered I’ll skip my morning dose so I have enough energy to keep on going throughout the day and then when it starts getting close to bedtime I’ll take the full 750mg as one dose to try and help with my sleeping.

And to a certain degree I do that with my diazepam as well. At the moment my daily dose is 16mg a day. This is to be taken as 4mg four times a day. But some mornings I feel massively anxious when I wake so I will take 8mg and then later in the day or in the evening another 8mg. Sometimes (although this is very rare) I don’t feel too anxious in the morning and my Quetiapine is enough so somedays I just wait and take the 16mg as one dose at bedtime. Sometimes it’s the opposite and I’ve taken my full 16mg by lunch time. So I don’t self medicate so much as play about a bit with the doses and the times I take them, but I feel that way works for me. Whenever I’m in the psych hospital I have no choice but to take my medication properly at 8am/12.30/6/10pm – and I hate not being able to tweak the doses to suit how I’m feeling at that time. I do understand the importance of taking medication properly and I do try to… it just sometimes is easier to do it ‘my way’.

Anyway… what was I about to say? Oh yes… I agreed to meet best friend today and spend time with her and her kids (my little nephews). But I was incredibly anxious to the point where I couldn’t leave the house so I took a little extra Quetiapine and my full daily dose of Diazepam. I still felt quite anxious when we first met up but the medication did kick in and I went into this weird headspace of ‘I’m hurting so much there is nothing else that can make me feel any worse than this’ so I agreed to attempt to go to one of the places my agoraphobia considers a very scary place. I had three small panic attacks en route but we got there and I bought my first McDonald’s burger for about 7 or 8 years. I have had a McDonald’s meal in that time, I’ve had friends bring them back for me and had them reheated in the microwave but today I actually stepped foot in one and ate a burger that was freshly cooked.

Best friend was so proud of me. She was smiling and cuddling me and saying “well done, well done” but I just felt numb. I didn’t feel hugely anxious, I didn’t feel happy that I’d achieved something new, I just felt like I was in some sort of blur… my head was saying just order some food and then go home. I didn’t particularly enjoy the food, half of it is still sitting in a bag on the table.

So yeah, everything is still a bit blah really.

CPN#2 gave me a quick phone this afternoon to ask how I was as the duty CPN from Monday had left her a note telling her about Sunday night’s self harming. The phone call felt a bit pointless, she sounded pretty uninterested which made me pretty uninterested in telling her about what’s been going on. It was awkward to talk anyway in front of best friend as I still haven’t told her about the self harming.

The only other thing that happened today was that I got a phone call from my personal tutor for my part time university course. She was phoning because she had been notified by the module tutor that I hadn’t logged on to read any course work in weeks nor had I contributed to any of the online discussion postings that make up 20% of the overall module mark. I tried to explain my head was all over the place but that I was going to try and submit some sort of an essay in the next couple of weeks so even if I fail I have something to resit. We could apply for mitigating circumstances but I don’t think there’s much point. I’ll either be able to write something and move on to my next module or I’ll fail and be kicked off the course. Right now I don’t really care which one happens.

So that’s been my day. I wish I could feel happy and like I’d achieved something, I’d challenged the agoraphobia harder than ever before, but I just don’t care. I don’t feel like I care about anything. I still want to hurt/cut/die.

I don’t see CPN#2 until Tuesday. I have no support between now and then other than the duty system through the CMHT which I think I’ve used twice in about 6 years. My support worker through rape crisis is off on holiday next week.

So yeah… I guess I just plod on and see where I end up.

01:36 – A confused and messed up girl

My head is still pretty messed up and sadly the regrets over self harming so severely on Sunday night still haven’t kicked in. Last night was pretty horrendous,  I became extremely emotional and sat with my little angel’s memory box on the bed and cried for what seemed like hours. After putting his memory box away I became really angry, angry that this is my life, that the most precious thing in my life has been lost.

My behaviour after that became ridiculous. I started pulling all the bandages off my legs and sat with a blade in my hand, shaking and desperately wanting to cut out all twenty something stitches. I shook, I cried, I threw the blade angrily on the floor then picked up the TV remote control and began smacking it off my face, whacking my cheeks with it over and over again. Then I was down on the floor and  hitting my head off the wall like an angry child. Then the blade was back in my hand again and I was going to cut but I truly could not have faced more stitches. So I repeatedly lit my lighter until the metal was red hot then pushed it down deep onto my skin all round my ankle. And then ended up in tears again.

I was really starting to get quite terrified of where this was all heading. My thoughts were so negative that I began to feel quite suicidal. Then I cried some more when I remembered yet again I can’t commit suicide because I can’t put my parents through the pain I carry about every day of having to bury your child. So whether I like it or not I have to keep on going and that made me angry and upset and frustrated that I felt in the moment like I was only alive to spare others pain. But then of course there is always that little evil laugh inside my head saying “they wouldn’t care anyway, they’d be glad you were gone” even though rationally I know that is completely untrue and that my parents love me very much. I don’t deserve their love, sometimes I wish they loved me less so it would be easier to put an end to things

Everything was just going bonkers. I couldn’t hold myself together any longer and ended up phoning the mental health helpline breathing space and spent the next hour on a non stop ramble about how I just want to completely self destruct, how much I deserved to be in this pain, I deserved to suffer, I was/am a bad person who doesn’t deserve good things in life. I told the call handler I wanted to rip all my stitches out, that I couldn’t stop thinking about hurting myself more and more. After about an hour I finally got so tired from everything and broke down in tears on the phone, I couldn’t keep talking and just hung up. I felt a bit bad for not even saying thank you or goodbye to the person who had sat and listened to me all that time but I was completely mentally exhausted. With a slight bit of self medicating I did finally manage to semi-sedate myself and fall asleep only to wake up every couple of hours in a state of panic. I think I was having nightmares, I’m not sure.

I sent lovely support worker from rape crisis a text message yesterday telling her I’d had a bad night on Sunday and she messaged me this morning to ask if I wanted to see her today instead of waiting until tomorrow. So I said yes and we had a long chat together. I was honest with her about everything I did over Sunday and Monday night, I was honest with her about feeling like I just want to make myself hurt and hurt and not stop hurting. I told her I was scared about where this was all heading and that I didn’t know when or how to make it stop. I don’t think it can stop until I do something really bad to myself. And that I was terrified I was going to end up in the psychiatric hospital again if I keep going like this. She asked if that might be a good place for me right now and I very firmly said no. There is no way I am ever going back to that place, it is awful, truly awful. It would make the sanest of people feel like they’d gone bonkers in just one week of being there. The thought of that place makes me feel anxious as hell and physically sick.

Oh I forgot to mention that for the first time since this whole arrangement was made with A&E a year ago that they would let the CMHT know when I had attended – well yesterday for the first time I actually got a phone call from the duty CPN (albeit it was just before they were closing) but yes someone did actually phone and ask if I was OK as she’d read the A&E notes. I told her I wasn’t sure how I felt and she asked if I thought I could keep myself safe. I said I’d try my best, I said the same when I was leaving my support appointment this afternoon.

I went to the A&E department this afternoon to have a wound check and dressing change done. I was supposed to be going back again tomorrow to get last Wednesday’s stitches out but I asked her if they could just come out a day early. That wound looked like it is starting to heal well so the nurse took those stitches out. Now I have to wait until a week tomorrow before I can get all these other ones out. I don’t honestly know if I can go through the next 8 days without doing it again. I don’t even know if I can go through the next 8 hours without doing it again at the moment. My head is well and truly pickled it really is.

Tomorrow I have promised to spend some time with best friend and her kids. I haven’t told her about Sunday’s self harming and don’t plan on telling her. I don’t know why, I just don’t want to talk about it with anyone close like friends or family. I haven’t mentioned it again to the friend who came with me to A&E either. It almost feels a bit like a can of worms being opened if I tell them, if I admit to those nearest and dearest to me that I’m not coping and constantly trying to hurt myself then it makes it that little bit more real that I really am falling apart. It’s easier for them not to know. For now anyway. Even with all these stitches in I still don’t feel like I’ve done enough damage and I have no idea how long that state of mind is going to continue for.

I haven’t felt this much of a mess in a long time and I can’t seem to make it stop. Maybe I don’t want it to stop. Maybe I need to feel this level of self loathing at the moment. I don’t know why… but maybe I just do. Nothing really makes a great deal of sense at the moment. I’m one very confused and messed up girl.

00:34 – Just back from A&E

It’s just after midnight and I’ve just got home. I text a friend and asked if they could come to A&E with me. I was hugely anxious and couldn’t stop shaking, I couldn’t even write my name on the form, my friend had to fill it out for me.

The nurse on duty was really nice and the doctor was one I hadn’t seen before. He asked me the 101 questions to determine how crazy I was then once he was satisfied I wasn’t suicidal they took a look at the damage. By this point the blood had soaked through all of the bandages and through my jeans, it was everywhere. Thankfully they kept the curtain round me so my friend didn’t see the actual damage.

It was the worst self harming I have ever done. Including Wednesday’s stitches I now have a total of 24 stitches in which is more than I ever have had in before. The A&E experience was one of the more positive ones, they were non-judgemental and friendly but also professional. I did accidentally almost hit the nurse at one point as she was trying to control the bleeding whilst the doctor was putting the stitches in but he went to put a stitch into a bit that he hadn’t injected with lidocaine and I almost shot off the bed, hands flapping. He was really apologetic though. After being stitched up and cleaned up and dressings and bandages on the doctor could see I was still really anxious and still really shaky. He checked my pulse and then asked to get the machine through that does the pulse, sats and blood pressure. My pulse was 126, BP 153/103 and o2 sats 97. So they could see I was really genuinely very anxious and the doctor went and got me 2mg of Lorazepam. [That same lorazepam that the doctor who stitched me up on Wednesday told me they didn't give out to people, despite me having had it on multiple occasions there before - so that confirmed he was talking shit].

I was treated really well, gentle and empathic. I have to go back to A&E on Tuesday for a wound check and dressing change, then back on Wednesday back for the last week’s stitches out and these new stitches have to be in for a minimum of 10 days due to the depth of the wounds.

I did tell a little lie to the doctor that my friend was going to stay with me tonight – anything to avoid being kept in hospital – and I am now home alone and the lorazepam combined with all my other nightly meds are all starting to kick in. I’m starting to feel quite drowsy so I think I’ll get a good sleep tonight.

At last I feel regret again. I do feel better for doing it but I wish I hadn’t done it so badly. I regret knowing they are going to be quite nasty scars. But it’s done now. I’ve been to hospital, it was horrible, I felt hugely anxious despite them being really nice to me, I’m ready to sleep but not looking forward to the pain I’m going to be in tomorrow. I can already feel the lidocaine local anaesthetic wearing off and the pain starting.

Do I have any more plans to do it again? No. Not at the moment anyway. Not even if it’s given to me as a command. I am bandaged from ankle to knee on each leg so I’m kind of running out of places to cut as well. I think the urge might finally be out my system.

Goodnight folks x

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…

19:09 – A surprise phone call

Today has actually been quite a busy day for me and I’m feeling pretty shattered after yet another crappy night’s sleep. I met my Mum and my Gran at 12.30 and we went for lunch as my Gran was going back home tonight. It was nice to have spent a bit of time with my Gran this time as I haven’t seen her since Christmas and didn’t get much time to talk to her as all the other family members were around and I was also really struggling with anxiety so didn’t really stay for that long.

However, I painted on the fake smile last night and went for dinner with them and done the same today for lunch. As I was saying my goodbyes my phone started ringing – private number – usually they get ignored… But something made me answer it and I was surprised to hear temporary CPN #2 from last year on the phone. She said she was back working in my area again (probably temporary again but I don’t know for sure yet) and asked me if I would like to meet up with her tomorrow. I’m not sure where the call came from – maybe lovely social worker who hasn’t been able to support me asked her, maybe Mr Psychiatrist contacted the CMHT to find out what was going on, maybe A&E contacted the CMHT, maybe it was just sheer coincidence… but yeah she called to offer me an appointment tomorrow which I agreed to go along to.

After lunch I had to head off to my appointment with lovely support worker from rape crisis and we had a good long session today. We talked about everything we possibly could regarding the self harming on Wednesday… I told her that I had no regrets this time and felt like I could potentially do it again quite easily. We spoke about my appointment with Mr Psychiatrist, about my trip to A&E and then about CPN #2 getting in touch. I have decided that whilst I will go to the appointment at the CMHT tomorrow I will also tell her the truth which is that I haven’t found working with any of the 3 cpn’s I’ve worked with over the past year helpful or beneficial. They don’t have the time to try and help me with graded exposure for the agoraphobia. They don’t care or get in touch if I’ve self harmed and gone to A&E as according to cpn #3 they know it’s a coping mechanism so they don’t need to get involved. They only ever seem to want to talk about “positive” things I could do with my life, they never seem to want to hear about the shit. And there is a lot of shit. And there is not much “positive” so it ends up just frustrating me.

I will ask her tomorrow what involvement she is going to have with me and will tell her that I would rather try and do structured work with the psychologist once she is back. I think that would be more beneficial in the long term if I could really properly learn coping skills for moments of intense anxiety or horrible flashbacks or evil voices. So maybe cpn #2 will just be someone to touch base with once a week or something to let them know I’m still alive. CPN #2 was the nicest out of the 3 cpn’s by far but she was also the one who kept trying to push all the positive things on me like starting the college course so that’s going to be fun tomorrow telling her I’ve fucked that up now. Part of me doesn’t even want to go to the appointment with her, I don’t think she can say anything I haven’t heard before, I don’t think she can offer me help in the times of crisis which is when I need help and well… I don’t want to start “working” with her and bringing up painful emotions if I’m only going to be seeing her for like a month or something. Anyway, I guess I wait and see what she says tomorrow. I must remember to go into A&E at some point whilst I’m at the hospital and have my wound check done.

So overall it was a good and productive session with support worker today but I felt pretty tired by the end of it, I’ve been feeling pretty drained all day from lack of sleep but we also did lots of talking. Then after that appointment I had to take Charlie dog to the vets for a vaccination and a little check up. Everything is fine with him, he is doing well and has put a bit of weight back on as well, he’s now 9.1kg and should be around 10kg so he’s getting there

After the vets I took the dogs a walk and then had to go to the supermarket. It seemed really noisy and everything sounded weird, like as though it was distorted somehow. I couldn’t concentrate and there were too many people and I started getting all anxious so I just grabbed dog food and then came home.

Mood wise I’m not entirely sure how I feel tonight. My head is noisy, male voice keeps offering “helpful” suggestions on how to next hurt myself. I’m trying to ignore it but quite simply I can’t. I don’t know if I’ll cut again tonight or not, if I do I will have to keep it superficial and not on my legs, I don’t want the A&E nurse tomorrow to see any fresh wounds. I find myself flicking my lighter a lot today…. heating the metal around the top of it then pressing it against my arms. It hurts a lot and yeah it leaves a sore mark for a while but it won’t lead to me needing more stitches and I can hide it easier. I have so many suggestions from male voice and ideas of my own on things I can do that will hurt but not require A&E and I feel as though I’m on a bit of a mission now to tick them all off the list one by one (and to see what other methods apart from cutting and burning give me that feeling of a release).

Before I start getting in to all that shit again I’m going to go and watch some TV. My head is properly pickled at the moment… just bursting full of ideas, thoughts and voices… all bad ones of course. But they seem like good ideas at the time, I guess that’s why we do them… we know we’ll regret it in the long term but when you’re in “that moment” you would pretty much do anything to make all those head crazies just leave you alone. I’m sad in a way that I don’t have any regrets over self harming yesterday but I also know that male voice is right, I haven’t done enough damage yet, I deserve much more pain and head fuckery before I’ll have done enough to make him happy. He’s right, I do deserve to hurt… I just wish he would fuck off with all these violent ideas and images… I am 99% sure I would never act on them if they involved hurting another person but there is that 1% of me that can’t help but wonder if this is all a build up to me totally losing the plot again. This little saying (below) very much reflects how I feel about everything right now… And I hope everything doesn’t keep going downhill but right now I have no idea what way I’m heading and I’m not even sure if I care…

15:15 – Last appt with Mr Psychiatrist and a trip to A&E

Trigger Warning – graphic talk of self harm in this post

All I have been able to think about for days now is cutting. Cutting, cutting and more cutting. The more I try to distract myself the more graphic the images in my head become. The more I try to ignore, the louder male voice gets and that triggers him to start spewing out vile evil instructions in my head. What hasn’t been helping is the lack of sleep. What also hasn’t been helping is all the pressure I feel that everyone thinks I’m doing so well and coping so well and I am shitting myself that everything is going to fall apart and I am going to let down every person I care about. I’m terrified of being back in that place where you feel so worthless and then can’t even manage to take your own life properly… got to fail at that too just to rub that extra bit of salt into the wounds.

Last night I fell asleep on the sofa around 1am. I quickly woke back up just after 2am as it was freezing. But instead of putting the heating on or getting into bed I just covered myself in a blanket and lay on the sofa thinking about things. Wondering why my life turned out this way. I had a bit of a cry for a while, they were sad tears, tears of all the times in my life where things actually looked like they were going well then ultimately they all fell apart. Why do they all fall apart? Why can’t something nice just remain consistent in my life? I don’t want this life. I wanted to try and better it by doing the part time uni course and not even a year into it and I don’t think I can do it any more. I have no belief in myself whatsoever. I want to run and hide and curl away. I don’t want to speak to anyone. I don’t want anyone to see me… but this morning I had no choice.

Around 6am I was still awake and was starting to feel very anxious and sort of like I wasn’t fully in control. My thoughts felt like they had been taken over, I was so tired I just went with it. The voices told me to cut, told me it would fix things… male voice told me to just “fucking make yourself uglier you fat slag”… again I tried distraction techniques but just got nowhere.

By 8am I was pacing, anxious, heart racing, feeling sick, tired, emotional, feeling really bonkers crazy, seeing flashes of me going outside and just attacking any random object or any random person. THAT IS NOT ME. I DO NOT DO THAT! EVER! I don’t know where all these violent urges are coming from but they are so fucking terrifying. It’s not even as though I’m angry at anyone or about anything… angry with myself that I can’t bounce back to being the fun person I once was once upon a time… but that’s more of a sad angry than a violent one. Needless to say I ended up getting out everything required for self harming – a pack of clean stanley knife blades, a towel, some dressings and sat down cross-legged on the bathroom floor. I made a deal with myself that I could cut once then I would clean it up, cover it up and go no further. But of course that didn’t happen… those little cuts looked too much like scratches… those visuals flashed in front of my eyes again wanting to see gaping wounds… I felt like I couldn’t even do that right. In the end I got a fresh blade from the packet, closed my eyes and just pressed down and dragged it through my skin. It felt like my skin was burning from the pain and I expected to see a much worse wound than what I did see… however it was pretty gaping so I decided it would be OK to stop cutting then. I got myself patched up and tried to stay distracted through til 10.30am when I had to leave to go to my last ever appointment with Mr Psychiatrist.

The reason it’s my last appointment is that he is retiring and he explained he didn’t know who would be taking over from him yet but there would be a locum in place for a while until someone permanent takes over. I swear no one with a professional mental health background seems to want to work for our NHS trust, all these permanent positions never seem to get filled for what seems like forever. I told Mr Psychiatrist about self harming this morning and told him that when I left my appointment with him that I would go along to the A&E department and have them check me over. He asked what had led to me cutting and I told him all the shit I rambled about at the start of this post – these feelings of pressure and these horrible horrendous images I keep seeing. He knows it is a coping mechanism of mine and he’s told me a million times it isn’t a helpful one but I think he’s come to realise there is no point in telling me that any more.

We didn’t talk about a lot of things in detail today, I think when he realised I was sitting there with a wound needing medical attention he tried to just whizz through everything as quickly as possible. He said that he still feels that even though male voice is male (and I am female) that the things male voice says to me are things which I actually feel about myself deep down. Almost like it’s my thoughts and beliefs but being heard in a male tone. I kinda see his point but I also know it’s not as simple as that, male voice can come out with things that have never even crossed my mind before. Plus there is a big difference between a voice and a thought (even racing horrible thoughts) and I think you can only know this and understand this if you have actually experienced it.

What else did we talk about… cutting – voices – male voice – pressure – images – violence – lack of support – and a referral which I requested to another psychiatrist, one who specialises in trauma therapy and who told me a couple of years ago that he believed the EMDR treatment could be beneficial to me but at that time I was considered too unwell and too unstable to try it out. Mr Psychiatrist said he didn’t want me working with lots of different people and lots of different approaches (he said this because psychologist is supposed to be coming back at some point over the next few weeks and she is likely to want to do the compassionate mind and mindfulness program with me). However he agreed to write to the other psychiatrist and see if he would be willing to give me an appointment to assess my suitability for EMDR.

Before I left the appointment he asked me what help I was getting through the CMHT (mental health team) at the moment and I told him pretty much none. That I had 3 CPN’s who have all left now and that I was supposed to have lovely social worker as someone to see until psychologist returns back to work but that we’ve only met up once, so that bit isn’t going so great. In fairness I haven’t tried to make a great deal of contact with her but I had hoped we would have been able to stick out the once a fortnight meetings just for a month or two until psychologist returns… but it hasn’t worked out that way. Instead I’ve just been seeing my support worker through rape crisis pretty much on a weekly basis but at least I am actually trying to deal with some of my issues with her – the childhood abuse/the assault/the self harming/the feelings of worthlessness. But she shouldn’t have to deal with all my mentalness stuff as well, that should be someone from the CMHT but it never seems to work out that way.

God this post is getting long…

I said my goodbyes to Mr Psychiatrist and muttered thank you to him for the support he’s given me over the past 4 years or so (even though he’s also been a total wanker to me in that time!) but it’s just what you do isn’t it? Say thanks, smile, make them think they have helped you get a bit better when really what they have done is remove power and control from you, detain you, make you like a human guinea pig with all the varieties of medications they insist will make you better, tell you that even voices are still a product of your own mind, try to make you believe things will get better if you just have good sleep patterns and distract yourself 24/7. But still, I was brought up to be polite and so it was only right to just say thank you to him as I left.

I walked along to the A&E department and thankfully it was two of the nice nurses on, the female charge nurse who has come to a couple of my CPA meetings and a male nurse who is very gentle and non-judgemental. Even though I knew in my head that I had met the male nurse before and knew he was always nice and knew he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me it still felt weird being in a room alone with him. I was in a room alone with Mr Psychiatrist but the whole appointment kept my coat on and sat in the chair pointing the door (always got to have my escape route planned out as soon as I enter a room)… so yeah it had felt safe enough with Mr Psych. And I did feel safe with male nurse but more exposed and vulnerable I guess as the coat had to come off and the shoes off and one leg out of my trousers…. like I couldn’t just jump to my feet and leg it out the door if I wanted to… so that was making me pretty anxious.

He took a look at the wound and decided it definitely needed stitches so he went to get the doctor. It was a doctor I hadn’t seen before and I didn’t like him very much, he had a bit of a patronising tone and I just wanted him to fuck off back out the room. Plus having two men at either side of me while I lay on the trolley bed was making me very very uncomfortable. I asked the doctor if he could please get me some Lorazepam and he said “we don’t keep lorazepam at this hospital” – BULLSHIT!! – I have probably been given a couple of lorazepam on at least 20 occasions from that A&E either for anxiety that’s led to self harm or to get me into the ambulance if they have been moving me to another hospital or the psych hospital. So I asked again if I could have Lorazepam because I needed to calm down and he very firmly said “you cannot have Lorazepam” – argh I hate when I know people are lying to me. Had he said something like they didn’t have any left or something then I would’ve dealt with that, but I knew fine they had it and knew fine that if it was one of the doctors who have seen me before then they would have given it to me asap to calm me down so they could put the stitches in. He said I could have a Diazepam if I wanted (despite me telling him I’ve been on daily prescription Diazepam for years and it does FUCK ALL when I feel as anxious as I did then, but he went and got me one anyway and like a good mental I shut up and took it.

I got seven stitches put in and a little glue and steri-strips on the non-gaping cuts and have to go back in 2 days, so Friday, for a wound check and dressing change. I told male nurse that usually I would be feeling regret pretty much immediately after cutting but today I don’t. I don’t regret it, I don’t care that I’ve got more scars on my body now, I don’t care that the one bit of leg that I had kept scar free is now mutilated as well. He said to me if I felt like cutting again to go up and see them and they would try and get someone to sit and talk to me which I was very grateful for, but I don’t want to talk, I just don’t fucking care about anything. I feel so low and so emotional and so tired and all I want is to have a few hours of feeling normal…whatever the hell that is… and I would much rather not do anything which may leave me having to see that doctor again as I really didn’t like him much at all. It was something about the way he spoke to me… there was an obvious power balance thing going on and he spoke to me the way I speak to best friend’s four year old.

Anyways….

My Mum phoned me as I was leaving the hospital and said my Grandma is staying with them for a couple of days and they were all going out for dinner tonight so she was phoning to ask if I wanted to go. As the restaurant they are going to is directly opposite my flat I couldn’t really say no but I am so tired and am really not in the mood at all to sit through a long meal and listen to all the chitter chatter at the table… plus it’s a kinda posh restaurant and I hate trying to get dressed up when I feel so fucking ugly and awful. However, I love my little Gran and don’t see anywhere near enough of her so I will go. The table is booked for 7pm… ugh that’s less than 3 hours away… I just realised I started writing this at 15:15 and we are now on 16:18 … an hour of ramblings… no wonder this post is going on forever.

And on that note I suppose I had better go and find something to wear tonight. Hope you’re all having a bit of a better day than me xx

15:33 – Just a little moan about life

In the last five days since I last posted nothing much has changed.

I still feel miserable, I still want to self harm again, I’m too tired to actually do it though. Also I’m beginning to wish I had just let them put proper sutures in last week, but because I was so anxious and wanted out of the hospital asap I asked them just to use lots of skin closures. And they have closed the wounds quite well but because one of them was pretty deep it is so painful where it is obviously still healing under the actual cut. I’ve never had pain in a self harm wound 8 days after doing it when I’ve had prope stitches in, but I don’t think it’s infected or anything, I think it’s just taking a good bit longer to start healing.

Anyway… what else can I moan about…

My sleeping. It remains completely shit and I am absolutely exhausted.

I still haven’t done any of my course work for this university module, in fact I haven’t even looked at my uni emails in about two weeks now.

So yeah… I just plod on through each day, doing very little, making sure the dogs are fed, walked and happy… other than that I’ve been caring about very little else.

The good news of this week is I have now cleared the remaining £50 that was left on the balance of Charlie dog’s vet bill – so I’ve cleared all the excess and the insurance company paid all the rest of the rather large bill.

Hmm what else? Oh my parents have returned from their holiday now so knowing they are just a phone call away again helps a little bit.

Like I say I’m just too tired to feel any enthusiasm for anything. It’s been weeks of this nonsense now and it’s really starting to get to me. I feel on the edge of tears all the time because I just feel so drained.

Yesterday I met up with best friend and my two little ‘nephews’ which was nice as it had been weeks since I last saw them. We went about an hour away from home (even with a fair few Diazepam the anxiety was still pretty bad on the way there) but by the time we got to our destination and I saw it was nice and quiet I managed to stay relatively calm. The kids are of course a great distraction – every time my head would start going into crazy mode they would start asking for something and I’d be pulled back into the moment. First of all we let the kids burn off some energy in the soft play area for about an hour. They are only 2 and 4 so they loved playing in the ball pool and going up and down all the slides and stuff. After that we went for some lunch and then before heading home the kids wanted to play in the outdoor swing park for a while. It was so cold and the snow was on and off all day but I think it probably did me good to get out of the house for a 3 or 4 hours.

Well it’s almost 3.30pm and I need to go and collect my prescription. Not really got any plans for the next few days – just an appointment with my support worker tomorrow afternoon and that’s about it. Think I might go to the parents on Sunday seeing as it’s Easter and enjoy a nice home cooked meal there. That reminds me, I need to go buy my little ‘nephews’ (best friends kids) an Easter egg each. Also I have no food in the house. I think whether I like it or not I’m going to have to face a supermarket today. Blah… I’m just totally not in the mood to be going outside at all but I need my medication so I guess I don’t really have much choice.

Mood wise things are in the ‘crap’ category. Voices are ‘very vocal’. Thoughts are no longer racing, they are slow… too slow… so slow I can’t connect anything together right…

Sorry for all the moaning… hopefully next time I post will be a happier/more positive rambling… who knows…

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?????