A new low

This evening I spent an hour and a half in Minor Injuries getting patched up from my own self-inflicted wounds. I had to leave my husband to put the kids to bed while I had, I don’t know, 50 odd steri-strips applied to hold my cuts together.

I was terrified, walking in there. So bloody scared. I feared a telling-off of the sort I get from my husband. But I didn’t get it. I got genuine compassion and care and understanding.

I know this has got to stop. I know that the point at which I need hospital treatment for my cuts is the point where I have gone too far.

Even without that, my eight-year-old son has started asking why I always wear a long-sleeved top in the swimming pool. ‘I don’t want to get sunburnt,’ I say. ‘You and Katie wear sun suits; this is mine.’ But he doesn’t buy it. I have never worn one before.

I hate this.

I hate that I am not the friend I should be.

I hate that I am not the mum I should be.

The wife I should be.

I hate the way self-doubt colours every piece of work that I do.

I hate my shoutiness. My low moods. My fake happy-because-that’s-how-I’m-meant-to-be.

I thought I had been to the bottom of the pit and climbed out.

I was wrong. I still have a huge ascent in front of me.

And as time passes, I lose faith. Am I ever going to be okay again? Will I ever be normal and light and carefree and that elusive happy?

The worst of it is that the people I really want to know, the people I really want to love me and tell me that I will get through this, are the people that I have to hide it all from.

I need to stop this decline. The nurse’s warning – ‘You were not far from an artery there’ – scared me to death. Even a rubbish mum has to be better than no mum, doesn’t it?

I just feel so lost.