I am alive, sorry guys for not thinking about posting to tell you. This blog is going to be abandoned for a while with a view to getting some of my coursework written and successfully becoming a hermit.

It was suggested today that maybe the things I believe to be true at the moment are me giving myself an excuse to self harm. When have I ever needed a reason to self-harm? She claimed to understand but then so did he, neither of them do. They don’t understand this constant dread that bad things are going to happen, that people might die because of me. They don’t know it because it touches them without them feeling it. She says I doubt these beliefs, I only agreed with her and appeared to be unsure so that she’d feel better. This is all my fault. I am working this afternoon- what if someone dies? I have already betrayed it by talking to people about it. That makes it worse, makes it angry, tells me I need to be hurting more to protect them. I can’t protect everyone forever but I want to. It’s not about taking responsibility for other peoples troubles it’s knowing that this eviil has spread from me to them, although not as much because they can’t feel it, and is rubbing off on people beyond them, people I can’t know how badly they are affected.
I want all the hurt to stop, to protect everyone. I know I can quiet it by cutting so I will continue, even if it is just a small comfort to myself that if I am hurting then maybe it won’t affect other people so much. I know what I need to do, I just can’t do it. I need to make it stop, or at least stop it spreading and making everything worse. What I really need to do is kill it, but I don’t know how possible that will be as it is a part of me. I just don’t know it’s all so confusing and people trying to convince me it’s not true by asking for proof are just making it louder, making me look for links that it is true. I know it is. I just know. I just can’t prove it…yet.

People are scared I am going to kill myself.
I am ok just now…I will be safe for a while.
My deepest fear is I am scared they might be right.

It has always been there, an inner evil. Chipping away at me. It has awoken and has brought a pickaxe. Slowly breaking me, telling me to destroy myself. To cut and overdose. It is seeping from my pores into everyone around me. Destroying everything. I can’t tell anyone as they will think I am mad.

I am an evil being, I try to cover it up and usually succeed. It is there though. It wants to destroy me and everything I touch. It is the reason everyone around me is suffering. It is probably (definately) travelling down my modem as I type this. It is seeping quietly out and by reading this post part of it is probably touching you. Everything will slowly turn to shit.

It is incessant and nearly invisible, like little radioactive particles. It is alive and huge within me. It is not the devil but pretty close. Probably more evil, it will kill me, maybe not now but eventually, after it has finished with me and spat me out. I am sorry.

I have never been ill merely just overexaggerating what is only slightly abnormal therefore not justifying any real psychiatric treatment.
I have never self harmed merely messed around with blades for 10 years, making scratches which don’t scar much.
I have never made a suicide attempt merely been stupid and hysterical and wasted people’s time.

I have never been as strong as you thought I was

I am sitting here having a nice break from packing.  Having hinted to my parents several times about wanting to return to my flat before the new year they have finally agreed to drive the 5-6 hour round trip to drop me off and buy me some shopping.   truth be told I am so so so so glad I am going.  I have had a good run and it is time to go before things deteriorate and taint my memories of being home.  Things with my sister have been steadily going downhill and today she called me a whore for the final time, there is only so many times one can be told to “fuck off” before losing the rag completely.  She is counting the seconds until I go but is not waving me off at the door oh no, she is coming up into my flat so she can retrieve items I borrowed from her, despite the fact she has stolen so much stuff from me over the years that I have given up keeping count.

Saying that though, we went to the carnival together and my sister and I got on fine and actually had fun going on the rides.  I am actually beginning to think that the meds (yeah the fattening ones) are doing some of their job.  I though it was a fluke but on boxing day I went for a walk with my Dad and enjoyed it – yes that warm fuzzy feeling that you get when you smile without thinking about it.   It happened again today I actually felt some enjoyment for life, not the conscious “I am having a good time” but an internal unspoken enjoyment which is hard to explain in words.  It’s complicated trying to explain it.  I haven’t felt or enjoyed anything wholly and honestly in a long time, in such a long time that I forgot what it was like to enjoy things.  Recently I have remembered again and it feels, well it feels strange.  Good strange but strange all the same.

It is like the past many months I have been walking around with a sheet of very fine netting around me that stopped happiness getting in but still allowed me to feel everything else.  Filtering out the good stuff.  It has 0nly been brief flickers of enjoyment so far but hopefully, maybe it will continue or the flickers may become something bigger.  I can only wait, but there is hope.

Christmas has been and gone and the next big step is the new year although I don’t celebrate new year so just need to wait for it to come around.  Santa came and to be h0nest I got a lot more than I deserve and am very grateful.  I got everything I asked for and more and am now more than set with my new pajamas, slippers and dressing gown.  Yes I am a little bit of an old lady asking for those things but that was all I really needed so that’s what I requested and is what I got.

Xmas day was a bit of a blur, we had my Gran, my Aunt and two Uncles over for Xmas dinner and it was a lot better than I expected.  There were no fights and everyone seemed to have a good time.  I didn’t even stress as much as usual about the food.  On boxing day my Nan and Aunt and her boyfriend dropped in for half an hour and to be honest that half an hour was more than long enough.

This post is probably really incoherent and I apologise.  I have been ill since Boxing day night and am still feeling pretty awful. I spent the whole day in bed yesterday and although it helped a little I am still not fully recovered.  I have to confess I haven’t been taking my medication as prescribed and although I feel a bit guilty for it there is no point in me taking it just to throw it up.  I am not off it completely though.  I am still at the prescribed 30mgs of antidepressant and am taking 100mgs of mood stabiliser instead of 200mgs.  Part of me is hoping that my mood will go up taking the antidepressant without as much mood stabiliser but that wasn’t the intent behind decreasing the medication.

I can’t wait to come off this anti-depressant, yet another drug that I will not have lasted very long on.  I do feel a little better and am sure if I leave it longer it will start helping more but at the same time I have put on a stone in weight and have sore legs at night.  I am a bit torn so I have decided to stay on it until the appointment on the 7th of January.  I always allow for a little weight gain over Xmas, after all it is the holidays and you are entitled to let yourself go a bit and enjoy it.  My brain is constantly telling me that I am hungry and I think the reason that I am ill now is that my body is having to cope with this huge constant barrage of food that it is not used to and has decided that it cannot cope.  My head is also despairing as I am at my highest weight EVER and I cannot allow the numbers on the scale to keep creeping up.  It is as if overnight my stomach has went from being flat and me being able to feel my hip bones and see them when I lie down to literally looking as if I am about three months pregnant.  I literally have a round belly and it’s weird.  My stomach is sore and swollen and bloated, my head is fucked and basically I just want to hide in bed.  I need to shift this weight but I cannot employ any emergency measures whilst living at home.  I need to get back to my flat asap.

I am going to stop typing now as I am aware  this is incoherent babbling rubbish.

I am n0w back at home for the holidays.  Home is good because I don’t have to be arsed doing the essentials- my food is cooked and my washi8ng is done.  Home is bad because I have to see people , eat lots and pretrend all is well.  So in general being at home equals major stress for me.  Things are alright here so far my sister and I haven’t argued yet which is impressive given that she’s been at home since yesterday pm.  That must be a new record for us!

The quiet family xmas I was hoping for is not to be, my gran an aunt, two uncles and possibly another aunt and uncle are all coming to ours for dinner.  As if boxing day wasn’t shit enough my Nana is coming to spend the day with us then.  Sucks.

Our xmas tree and decorations went up today as our family arew horrendously disorganised.  I left my flat with not an xmas decoration in sight!  Bah Humbug.

On the mood side of things I am feeling a little better.  This is I think due to the fact that I am now sleeping thanks to the new meds.  I have decided that I will give the meds a months trial but at the moment it looks like they will be binned at next psych appointment.  It has been a week and a half, things have improved a little as meds have improved sleep = GOOD.  I have put on a stone…what’s that I hear you ask…is it even possible to put on 14lbs in 10 day?s.  Yes apparently it is.  Putting on weight= VERY VERY BAD END OF THE WORLD TYPE STUFF.  I am currently 3lbs away from my highest ever weight.  I try so hard to keep it under control and had just managed to get my weight to a nice acceptable number where it was hovering nicely but not precariously.  Now it is like someone attatched a rocket pack to that number and sent it skyward.  Weight gain is acceptable over xmas though so I will not dispair but will keep a not too obsessive eye on it. If the weight touches 10 stone they are going in the bin.

Having read this it sounds very much like I have an eating disorder.  I don’t but I like to be in control and right now there is nothing within my control if my weight goes up.  Argh. Stress.

Today has been a bit of a non-event really.

The talk yesterday at a and e went ok.  We were in a really small office with 5 nurses and a nursing student.  The student came in first which kind of set of my nerves as she is at the same uni as me and there is a chance I could bump into her in the future.  The talk given by my support worker pretty much covered everything and I did manage to add some things to give a different perspective on things .  On the feedback forms several of the nurses said they found it useful to have me there and to hear my experiences.  I did freeze up a bit due to nerves and feel I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity as much as I could have done.  I came out feeling a little bit disappointed that I didn’t give as much as I could have done.  My support worker said I did well but I am still unconvinced.

Out of the 7 nurses I met 5 of them had treated me in the past.  Thankfully none of them recognised me but it is funny how faces stick especially given the state that I have been in when I have pitched up at a and e.  It was very interesting for me to hear their opinions and how they treat people who self-harm.

They had everything sorted in theory in relation to treating everyone as individuals, being supportive and knowing the basics about self-harm.  It was easy to see that they knew it but that due to no fault of their own that it all tended to go out of the window when the department was busy.  One of the points we made was checking that people are ok when they are waiting in t he treatment rooms.  They said that they do keep an eye on people and will calm someone down if they are obviously upset and crying.  I just had to say to them that sometimes when people are quiet and appear calm they can be going over and over things and potentially be more distressed than someone who is having a crying fit on the floor.  I don’t know if this was the correct thing to say but I felt that people who potentially felt really bad may have been overlooked on the support front as they were quiet and compliant – These people being the ones that are internally beating themselves up and feeling unworthy of the staff’s time.  So yeah, I said my bit and need to hope that some of it sunk in and will be helpful to them.

Yesterday and today I have been a bit preoccupied with the events of four years ago.  At this time four years ago I was just pitching up at a and e.  I feel like I have wasted the four years I have been given.  That I haven’t achieved anything meaningful and that I have seen the bottom far too many times, more than a lot of people will see in a lifetime.  I haven’t seen the sky nearly as much as I want to and the elusive aim of stable has slipped from my grasp far too many times.

Yesterday there was a meeting between myselof and the head of my course.  We have a provisional placement arranged for the start of January which hopefully I will be able to get medical approval for.  I forever seem to find myself totally ransom to the medical profession telling me whether I am well or unwell and what I can and cannot do.  It is really quite frustrating as I like to be in control.  So basically we have the year roughly planned out, very roughly.  The one good thing to come from this is that my two assessed placement in the summer have changed order which means that my elective (where we choose where we go) is going to be 6 weeks after everyone elses and I will be the only one going on placement then (or pretty much the only one).  This basically means that I can choose where I want to go, this is good because I was unable to get an elective for the weeks we were supposed to go as everyone else found out before me and all of the good ones were gone.  So hopefully I will be able to work in the area I want which is child and adolescent mental health.  My tutor is not convinced that this is a good idea but is willing to be swayed if I can get a letter from my consultant saying I will be a beneficial member of the team and that I won’t be trying to solve my own problems or find myself overwhelmed by dealing with issues that are too close to home.  There is one other problem if I do thast placement in this city as bitch registrar will have rotated CAMHS.   I guess I will just have to cross bridges as I get there.

Speaking of solving problems I saw my psychologist today and it seems we are finally settled on using schema mode therapy.  Today was spent mainly going over the basics of the model, which I already had a basic understanding of and then going through the modes which I had very little knowledge of.  Basically I have been given homework which involves recognising when I am slipping into schemas so that if I have an understanding of when and why that I might be able to change my behaviours.  I think.  Much easier said than done.  We looked at the questionnaire I had filled in a couple of weeks ago.  He had highlighted the three things I had scored highest on, although this was strictly untrue because I scored highest on the “healthy adult” and third highest on the “happy child”  so I do have some positive features and am not quite as fucked up as there was the potential for me to be.

I am going to head off to bed now though because depite sleeping from 4-8.30pm I am still exhausted – sucks.

Well I survived 4 years I wasn’t supposed to.  I can’t really say I lived for fours years because a lot of it has just been scraping by.  There have been good times, amazing times, lots of OK times and many times where I am just at rock bottom.
At the moment I have kind of managed to catch myself before I got to rock bottom which is good because in the past with every episode of depression I have found a new level of rock bottom and have come increasingly closer to committing suicide with each episode.

So today I have a meeting with uni to see where I go from here, what my deadlines should be and more importantly how realistic they are and what support I will be given to help me meet them.

This afternoon I have the talk at A and E which I am surprisingly not too nervous about but come 1pm when I pick up my support worker I am sure I will be shitting bricks.

So all is well so far although I am just up.  This is the earliest I have been up (aoart from the nights I couldn’t sleep) since I dropped out of placement.  The mirtazapine is making me foggy and I’ve lost count of the amount of furniture I have walked into the last few days.  About three things already today- 45 minutes in.  At least my sleeping is starting to balance out- I hope.  I slept 9 hours last night and was awake 15 minutes before my alarm went off.  As opposed to swinging between not sleeping at all to crashing for days this is an improvement.  Hopefully things will continue to get back into a balance.  Here’s hoping.