Feeling a failure

I’m feeling a bit rubbish.

It was supposed to just be a routine review appointment. I was supposed to breeze in, say, ‘Everything is great, thanks very much,’ and breeze out again. Instead, after a couple of weeks where I’ve felt myself sliding rapidly downwards, I found myself shaking and crying in the GP’s surgery. Admitting to hurting myself. Admitting that I’m struggling, feeling lost and hopeless and lonely. Admitting that everything at home feels like a total mess.

I know I had to do it, and I know the outcome – a referral for more counselling (with the same person; no need to start again from scratch, thank goodness), and a continuation of medication – is what I need. But I feel like a total failure for having taken such a big step backwards when, a few weeks ago, I was doing so much better.

I don’t know why I am still not ‘fixed.’ I feel guilty for wasting people’s time. I feel guilty for making my family and friends worry about me. I feel guilty that I’ve used up everyone’s resources, drained their time and energy and patience to the point that I don’t feel I can even ask for a hug or a cup of tea and a chat. I feel guilty that I can’t just sort myself out, get back to normal for the sake of my husband and children.

I know I’m not right back at square one, but feeling that things are slipping out of my control scares me. My sleep is all over the place. My patience with the children is non-existent. My focus for work has gone to pieces, to the point that I’ve had to ask for deadline extensions.

I don’t want to be back here again.

The guilt factor

I am struggling.

I spent last night in A&E with my little girl. I was getting her out of the bath when I discovered she was covered with a non-blanching rash. I knew instantly that I had to get her checked out, and drove her straight to Watford General.

She was triaged by a Sister. Then checked by an A&E consultant, who called a paediatrician. The paed then ordered blood tests. We waited 45 minutes for the numbing cream to work, my baby dressed on both hands and both inner elbows. Then the bloods. Katie coped better than me. I went faint and had to sit down at the sight of my precious girl’s blood, spilling out onto the white sheet. Then an hour’s wait for results. All clear, thank God. Home at 11.3opm. Kit went straight to bed. I lay there, semi awake, all night, too scared to sleep in case she suddenly became unwell.

As I lay there, I was overwhelmed by guilt. Katie was perfectly well in herself; I shouldn’t have taken her in. I wasted NHS resources, subjected my poppet to horrible, unnecessary procedures, and kept her awake way beyond her bedtime. I misjudged it.

And that misjudgement has made all my others flood back. I’m hit by all the wrong things I’ve ever done. I could list it all out, but there’s too much. From nicking Copydex at primary school to make those rubbery pellets, to quitting my governor role because I’m so pathetically useless.

I even feel guilt about the things I didn’t do. The time I got a bit drunk at a leaving party and fled before I got worse; I was then accused of stealing someone’s handbag, thanks to my swift exit, and felt as guilty as if I had done it.

The worst guilt is having cut again. I can’t even blame the Katie crisis because I did it again for the first time on Thursday night. As soon as I did it, I felt wretched and stupid, but that didn’t stop me doing it again tonight.

I feel totally alone. I want to ask for a hug but I can’t. I have to keep pretending.

I am a complete mess.

Slipping

I’m slipping. I have been telling myself that I’m not, but I’m getting scared. 

I know it’s more than just having a bad day – a bad few days – because I find myself doing my Moodscope score – something I haven’t felt the need to do in over a month, and even then, it was to prove how good I was feeling – and discovering that I’m heading rapidly downwards again. I find myself baking cakes to give to people, because I can only earn their favour through what I do, not who I am. I find myself Googling things like, ‘depression relapse symptoms.’ 

And when I do, everything rings alarm bells.

Withdrawing from social contact: check. Speaking to people feels so hard. I feel false, artificial. I don’t know how to relate. I’m either closed in and silent or overly buoyant and giggly. 

Sleeping problems: check. Katie is going through a phase of having bad dreams, and while she can get back to sleep afterwards, I lie there awake for hours, heart racing. Last night I took a sleeping pill for the first time in weeks, and it felt like defeat.

Fatigue: check. I feel I’m moving slowly, thinking slowly. Yesterday, as I was about to leave to pick Tom up from school, I lay on my bed and knew that if I shut my eyes, I was going to be late late late. I have never been a day sleeper, even in the midst of sleepless baby exhaustion; the only time I feel like this is when I’m in a bad way mentally.

Most of all, negative thoughts. Thoughts of hopelessness. Lack of self-worth. Guilt. Check, check, check.

Yesterday, I was mildly reprimanded for something I should have done, and didn’t. It was a misunderstanding, and the person who told me off is not renowned for her tact. It wasn’t a big deal, I know. But having intended to come home, curl up on the sofa and watch a bit of TV, I went straight upstairs to bed, feeling utterly guilty and utterly useless. 

It’s a feeling that has been recurring over the past week or so. I have tried so hard to address those thought patterns, but I feel like it’s all unravelling. The smallest comment makes me feel so completely wretched about myself. A woman walking across the park muttered under her breath about Katie ‘weaving all over the place on her scooter.’ I felt awful. Bad, bad mother for not controlling her child. The ballet teacher told me off for bringing my daughter into the classroom a few minutes early (I followed someone else in, thinking we were about to start, and not realising that the other person needed to speak to the teacher about something). I walked out almost in tears.

This is not right, is it? This is not normal. I know it’s not normal because I found myself looking at my doctor’s surgery’s online booking system earlier, seeing if I could bring next week’s review appointment forward. I can’t – and I will be okay until next Friday – but the fact that I feel that I need to says it all.

I must try to see the positives here. I am acknowledging that things are not great. I am identifying the thought patterns in myself that I know are not helpful. I know I need to be honest with the GP next week.

But I’m scared. And I feel really alone. I feel like I have used up everyone’s resources. I feel like there’s no one to talk to. No one I can even ask for a hug. My friends have been so good to me through this episode of depression, but to admit that I’m sinking again feels like I’m overburdening them, that all their love and support has been in vain. Most of all, I’m afraid that my dearest friends are not going to stick around sad, miserable, introspective Lucy much longer. 

I know I am no fun to be with. I know I am a liability. I am trying so, so hard not to be; I want to be fun and kind and caring and selfless and good company. But as I am at the moment, I wouldn’t want to be friends with me.

I’m scared.

 

Slightly floundering

Yesterday, I had my final counselling session. 

It’s just typical that it had to come during a week where I’ve felt my mood dipping a bit.

Had it been last week, I think I’d have been totally fine with my therapy finishing. I was feeling better than I have in months. Mission accomplished. But to end at a time where I feel like I could go either way doesn’t feel right.

My counsellor agreed. It was obvious to her that I had slipped back a bit since my previous appointment. She said it wasn’t a good place to stop. Especially as in literally the last few minutes of the session, I had a bit of a breakthrough and said the words that I have been keeping in.

I feel guilty all the time. I am not good enough.

More to the point, I realised that I have always felt like this. Always. Even at my happiest, there has always been that sense of underlying guilt, shame. It’s why I dwell on every single past mistake and failure. Why I can’t forgive myself for anything. 

It’s frustrating. Deeply frustrating, to finish counselling at the point where I felt like a piece of the jigsaw had just slotted into place. And now I’m left feeling lost, floundering, abandoned, almost. I imagine that this sense of – of loss, I suppose – is fairly common after finishing a course of therapy. I feel on my own again, with nowhere to share and explore the feelings that I’m still struggling with.

Counselling has been more than an outlet; it has given me a wake-up call. Given that I almost didn’t go back after my first session, I have been amazed at the truths I have discovered about myself, my life and why I am the way I am. As my counsellor said, ‘Counselling doesn’t create feelings that aren’t there.’ Those feelings were always there, but consciously or unconsciously, I was keeping them buried. 

So, what are my options? I could pay for open-ended counselling, but that would be with a different therapist, and I really don’t feel I can start the process from scratch again. I can draw a line under it, accept what I’ve learned and get on with living. Or I can go back to the GP and ask if I can be re-referred to the same counsellor. That’s my preference right now, but then I don’t know. Although I feel unfinished, I know that dragging the process out and continuing to ruminate over every little thing could, in the long-term, be unhelpful. Maybe, having got to a certain point of recovery, this weekly navel-gazing is almost justifying my depressed state and stopping me from moving on. 

Honestly, I’m not sure what to do. I don’t feel ready to give up that safety net, that security blanket, but will I ever?

Perhaps I just need a break of a few weeks, to see how I get on without counselling.

To see if what I’ve discovered about myself is enough to keep me going.

To just ‘live’ for a bit and see whether this new normal is normal enough. 

 

Pollyanna and recovering from depression

It is so good to be feeling better.

So, so good.

But I feel like I’ve forgotten how to be normal.

Like I have to overcompensate for my past months of misery by being relentlessly ‘up.’

I feel like people are watching me, waiting for me to slip again. Thinking it’s all an act.

And that makes me worry that it *is* all an act.

If I’m feeling a bit ratty – and don’t we all? – I feel I have to consciously stamp out those feelings. Put on a smile. Be chirpy chirpy cheep cheep.

If I’m feeling snappy hormonal – and yes, it *is* that time of the month – I feel like my husband is watching me, waiting for me to flip out. Overreacting when I rant at the kids.

It all feels fake.

I feel like I’m being too perky, too ditzy, too Pollyanna. Slightly manic. Slightly fake. And I feel like people are watching me and judging me for that, thinking it’s a sign that I’m going mental again.

Maybe I am. But I don’t feel like I am. I don’t feel sad or desperate or desolate. I don’t want to hurt myself. I just feel like I need to put on this show, this big show that I’m okay. And I don’t know how to do it. I’ve lost touch with how I usually am. What I am like when I am being me. So I’m being this exaggerated version of me. Which is stupid, because I’ve never been super-confident and witty and outgoing and flippant and silly. It’s not me.

And the other dilemma – hot weather. Hot weather that means I am melting in a cardigan. My supposedly well-placed cutting, placed so no one would see it, didn’t factor in summer. So what do I do? Keep my cardi on? Be uncomfortable, and have people wonder why I’m not stripping off? Strip off, and keep my arms artificially pressed to my sides so no one sees what I did to myself? Put a plaster on the worst bits and pretend I’ve had a mole removed? Throw caution to the wind and just let it all hang out, so to speak?

I think I will do the latter on holiday, with my own little family, among people I don’t know and who I will never see again. I think I could even do that with a few close friends who knew what I was doing. But in front of my parents? The playground? That’s where I flounder. Is it better to be honest? Part of me wants to be. But a bigger part knows I will be judged, talked about. The kid gloves treatment will extend even further. And actually, I don’t *want* everyone of my acquaintance to know I’ve been unwell – just as I wouldn’t if I’d had piles. It feels just as shameful. More so, perhaps.

I am so thankful to be so much better, but I’m just beginning to realise that my recovery is only just beginning. I’m not entirely sure how I’m going to navigate it.

Thanksgiving

It’s weird.

When I was in the depths, at the lowest of the low, I was horrified at the thought of people knowing what I was going through.

Now I’m recovering, strangely, I want to tell the world.

I want to stand up and give thanks.

To my family, for bearing with me while I was in crisis.

To my friends – a couple of very special ones in particular – who were there for me without fail, even if they felt helpless or useless or just plain frustrated.

I want to stand up and say – this is why I was how I was.

To the people I offended through being arrogant and self-righteous.

I was covering up deep insecurity.

To the editor I ‘took the piss out of’ (her words) by regurgitating the intro to a feature.

I was so torn up I couldn’t think of new words – but was too scared to say no, I can’t do it.

To my children.

I failed you in every sense. Yes, I got you to school and pre-school. But I know I was completely disengaged for months on end.

To my husband.

I didn’t want to talk. Be touched. Anything.

Most of all, I want to give thanks to the Lord.

I have always trusted in Him. There have been times when I have been close to him, and times when I have been further away. But this period of illness – which sounds pretentious for a few months of misery, but I do feel I have been ill – has truly drawn me closer to God.

I prayed out of desperation – not just for him to heal me, but to look after my family while I was falling so short.

I prayed for his love, compassion, kindness.

I prayed for healing.

And now – I find myself healing. Maybe not completely healed yet, but healing. And in the process of healing, the Lord has granted me so much.

Friends.

Love.

Compassion.

Kindness.

Humour.

Forgiveness.

This illness, this madness, this horrible time that I wanted to conceal from everyone – now I want to stand up and shout about it. Because I truly feel the Lord’s deliverance. Through fellowship and friendship and His own great love, I feel I am healing.

I am amazed.