In the past week I haven’t posted because I’ve been feeling so low and if I had written anything it would have made for some pretty depressing reading. Not that this post won’t be but it feels like time to ‘check in’ with my little blog again. One nice thing I noticed was that in the week I’ve been gone my little blog hit the 100,000 views mark, which I know isn’t a huge amount compared to some of the wonderfully written blogs out there but it did give me a little smile to see that nearly four years on people still pop over and read my rambles!
So yeah… this past week I feel as though I’ve been triggered left, right and centre. I know that it’s been over six years now since I lost my little angel but when I see people announcing pregnancies, birth announcements, even just random posts on Facebook that people make about their kids still seem to have the ability to upset me.
I went to see the gynaecologist last Wednesday and she was actually really nice, we decided on a treatment plan of Metformin and Provera (a tablet that is used for a variety of menstrual problems and given to me to induce a bleed as I don’t have periods by myself). She had actually taken the time to read some of my file and she chatted about my loss for a little while and was really gentle and empathic about it. She asked me if I was in a position at the moment to want to try and conceive again but I told her quite truthfully that I’m not even in a relationship let alone a sexual one and that the idea of ever trying again absolutely terrifies me. But she said if a time does come where I’d like to try again she would be more than happy to see me again and go through my fertility treatment options with me. In the meantime she’d like me to try and lose a bit of weight, get my body a bit healthier and see how I get on with the metformin this time round.
Even though she was really nice and helpful, I still left with thoughts of my angel, my limited fertility and my very real and very scary fears for the future. I was literally out of the appointment all of ten minutes when I got a text message from my cousin telling me she is three months pregnant with her second baby. Of course I replied saying it was wonderful news and how I was “delighted for her”… but as I typed the words tears rolled down my face. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for people that they have happiness in their lives and I would never ever wish a loss/stillbirth upon anyone, but sometimes it just all hurts so much. It’s tiring always having to bite back tears and swallow down the lumps in my throat to put on a smile and congratulate people. Then the following day best friend innocently wrote on Facebook something like “my life is perfect, I have two beautiful little boys and the best boyfriend in the world, life just couldn’t get any better” and that set me off again… all the thoughts of why is everyone else so happy with their perfect lives and I’m so miserable with mine. I’ve practically got no confidence at all, I’m overweight, I’ve permanently scarred my body to quite extreme levels, I barely have any friends and the thought of ever being intimate with someone again absolutely terrifies me. I’m 32 next month and none of this shit was part of my life plans 😦
So I spent the weekend near constantly in tears. I hid away from the world. I refused to look on Facebook (my own personal one not my blog one). My head has been full of thoughts and urges and niggling voices telling me just to cut… cutting would make things all better again. But I know what I am like with self harming these days… I find it almost impossible to stop at a ‘superficial’ level… once I start it has to go deeper and deeper until I’ve made an absolute mess of another bit of flesh. And of course this results in a trip to A&E. I haven’t had to attend A&E since April and I’ve been really determined for things to continue that way. But then other things started to trigger me… stupid things like the fact my parents are going on holiday this coming weekend and this resulted in me having to beat myself up over the fact I can barely travel anywhere. Then on Monday I was supposed to have an appointment with CPN#2 and even though I really cannot stand the woman and find her worse than useless, I dragged myself out of bed and walked in the pouring rain to where the mental health team is located. A male CPN showed me through to a room then appeared back about ten minutes later to say that CPN#2 had actually called in sick and wasn’t there so that was a wasted trip and off I went back out into the rain. Would a phonecall to have let me know really have been that hard? I know I have a cheek to talk when I miss so many of my appointments with her but she’s supposed to be the ‘professional’ after all…
I walked home with the only thoughts in my mind that no one gives a fuck about me. I can go 10 or 12 weeks not attending a single appointment and no one ever asks why… no one phones to check if I’m OK… I’m just left on my own… which to be fair is what I always say that I want.
So yeah, the thoughts about cutting just seemed to get stronger and stronger every day from last Wednesday. My part time uni course that I do from home started back last week and I have barely looked at any of the course materials yet. I don’t know if I can do it, I don’t know if I want to do it, I just have no belief in myself right now nor any motivation. I just feel completely and utterly shit.
Now that I’ve rambled on for 1000 words I should maybe get back to the title of this post: I lied to the doctor. Actually I will correct that… I lied to the nurse, to the doctor and to my Mum. Today was meant to be a good day – my new phone arrived and I had been looking forward to getting my upgrade. I decided to get the Samsung Galaxy S4 in red as I loved my S3 and before that my S2. I have to say however that the S4 really isn’t that much different from the S3 and I’ve only had it one day and so far the battery life is proving to be pretty bad, even after disabling all applications and stuff that I didn’t need. I’m not really sure if it was worth the upgrade but maybe I just feel completely blah about everything right now. I can’t seem to get excited/happy about anything. Sorry… I’ve gone all off topic again… my head is just all mixed up and everything I’m writing is all coming out all mixed up as well.
This afternoon I just couldn’t take the constant urges to self harm any longer. Everything came to a head and I was having a complete and utter meltdown. The tears wouldn’t stop, the need to feel pain wouldn’t stop, the memories and flashbacks of so many things wouldn’t stop and I felt like I was starting to seriously lose the plot. I tried taking some Diazepam to calm down a bit but it did nothing to help. I forced myself to take the dogs a walk because I was becoming scared of what I was going to do to myself if I allowed myself to sit and think for one minute longer. The walk didn’t help either though, as soon as I got outside I began to feel extremely anxious and just wanted to run back indoors and hide again. I think that was the point that I realised I couldn’t fight it any longer, I had to cut, it was the only thing that was going to bring me back to reality and ground me again. But I also knew that if I started then I really didn’t believe I’d have the control to stop.
I’m not going to say where I cut but it was somewhere that I’ve never cut before and I will be honest from the start with you guys – I did it that way because I wanted to make it look like an accident. At the back of my mind that was the lesser of two evils if you will… I had to know that if I lost control and went too deep that I could pass it off as an accident and not admit that after going five months without cutting I ended up doing it again. Trust me when I say that the scarring I have on my body… all over my body… is horrendous. I wouldn’t want to trigger anyone but sometimes I think about posting some photos of scars that are several years old – not to try and shock anyone – but to educate them that this is what your body will look like if you walk down the path of self harming. Sorry, I’m going off at a tangent again, back to the point…
I cut. I started and I couldn’t stop. I didn’t make lots of cuts I only made one. One in a place that would be one of the most unlikely places that someone would cut. I went over it and over it and over it until there was a real mess staring back at me. And then I cried. A lot. And then I panicked. This was going to need medical treatment and I had to come up with a story to tell the nurse/doctor at A&E to convince them that an accident had happened… I couldn’t tell them the truth. A couple of hours after I’d cut I decided I had a story to explain my wound that seemed plausible. So I forced myself to go to A&E around 7pm and the nurse who took me through to the treatment room was one I’ve seen a couple of times before (for self harming). The first thing she said was “have you cut yourself?” and somehow I managed to keep my voice steady and replied “yes, but it was an accident”… she replied with “an accident that you went too deep or an accident that caused the wound?” and I lied… “I haven’t self harmed… honestly… it was an accident”. She looked at the wound and said she’d need to call the doctor as it needed stitches. Where I live is a very rural area, the hospital is small, there aren’t a huge amount of staff there, and in A&E pretty much every doctor and nurse knows me. Most of them greet me by my first name and they all know I will just tell them straight out if I’ve cut myself. But tonight something was different, I just could not say those words. So I stuck to my story and when the doctor came in the room I lied to him about what happened as well. He straight out asked me if I was 100% sure I hadn’t self harmed and I looked him in the eye and said “yes, I’m 100% sure”. I felt awful, really awful and really paranoid that somehow he would just know that I was lying. And maybe he did because whilst he accepted my story of how I got the wound he continued to ask me at least another dozen times about my self harming behaviours… when had I last done it… how often am I doing it these days.., what kind of things trigger me off to make me do it… all that kinda stuff. And when he wasn’t asking then the nurse was asking. I kept thinking maybe he could tell from looking at the wound that it didn’t look like an accidental injury and he spent far more time talking about self harming than he did about ‘the accident’. At one point I started to feel like I was going to break down and just admit the truth but I excused myself to the toilet and took a couple more diazepam out my bag then returned to the treatment room and carried on with my bullshit lies.
After an hour or so I was cleaned up, stitched up, bandaged up and quickly jumped up and thanked them then went to leave. The doctor asked me to wait for a minute so he could tell me when I’ve to return to have the stitches taken out. They want me back on Friday for a wound check and dressing change then back on Tuesday for the stitches to come out. I really don’t think either of them believed my made up story but neither of them came straight out and said it, but there were far too many ‘mental health assessment’ type questions going on for an ‘accidental injury’. Hmmm. Then again, it could be possible that the doctor remembered me from the night where I really did almost die after taking a massive overdose and very nearly ending up intubated… maybe that was why he asked so many questions about my mental health and state of mind because he knows what I’ve been capable of in the past. Oh… I don’t know… maybe they did believe me or maybe they didn’t… I’ll probably never find out for sure what they really thought unless I ask to see my notes which realistically I’d never ask to do as I think it would be a total head fuck to see what some people have said about me on paper.
So there we go… after five months of only very superficial self harming I have again done it badly enough to require stitches. I’ve lied to a doctor and nurse. I lied to my Mum when I spoke to her earlier and told her the same ‘accidental injury’ story.
Do I regret cutting? No.
Do I feel better for cutting? No.
Do I think I’m going to do it again? I really don’t know.
Is my head still a fucked up mess? Unfortunately yes. Very much so in fact.
😦
My Crazy Bipolar Life 
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