This is why I need a notebook

In hospital on Wednesday night, I found a pen in my bag and I wrote. I wrote on every scrap in my handbag. No wonder the psych thought I was nuts. All the time he was speaking to me, I was scribbling, while giving him defensive one-word answers.

I wrote on a leaflet, an envelope, a few till receipts. I wrote about how I felt degraded, humiliated, lost. I find it so hard to talk to people. But so easy to write.

Is there a book in me? Can I turn this into something readable? Something that someone like me might pick up and find herself in?

I don’t know.

I am scared of how bad I feel just now. I’m finding myself cancelling social arrangements left, right and centre. I just want to hide away. And yet I want to write.

It’s so pretentious, all this writer rubbish. As if anyone wants to know all this messed up stuff from my head. ‘I’m a writer.’ I never used to describe myself like that. I used to be a journalist. I need to get over myself.

I also need to find another outlet that doesn’t involve hurting myself. I know I can’t risk it again but I am really struggling to know what to do instead.

This is so hard.

So hard.

So that’s that, then.

Community mental health team.

Officially mental.

Social services.

My children.

And all because of my own stupidity.

Me and a Stanley knife and a midnight A&E trip and a psych assessment and a locked hospital room and intrusive questions and nine stitches to try to repair the damage I did.

Everything in danger.

Marriage, work, kids. Me.

I never meant to hurt anyone. Only myself.

They won’t see the good bits. The theme park and theatre and beach visits. The fact that my children are well fed and cleanly clothed and want for nothing.

Except for a sane mother, of course.

The worse it gets, the more alone I feel. It has to stop. Yes, of course, it has to stop. Easier said than done, though.

I feel like I’ve lost everyone I love. Taken it a step too far. Pushed people further than they can cope with.

I’m not surprised. I wouldn’t know what to say to me.

So that’s that. Me. Mental. Scared beyond belief. Psych patient. Arm full of stitches. Known to social services. Out of control, out of my depth. Fearing for my marriage and my family life and my friendships and my work and just everything.

How on earth do I get back from here?

Stopping to take stock

Part of the reason (I think) that I’m feeling so low at the moment is that I keep contrasting the way things are at the moment with how they were this time, last year. I can’t put my finger on when this downward spiral started, but it was sometime during the autumn term. Twelve months ago, give or take a week or so, we were holidaying in France and I felt great. Better than I had in years.

It’s a bit different now.

I feel like I’ve been in this pit for such a long time. I keep thinking that maybe tomorrow will be the day that I wake up and the trend begins to reverse. I’ve had occasions, over the past 10 months or so (10 months… it feels like it was yesterday that it was six months, or even two…) when the journey upwards has lasted a few weeks and I have dared to hope that I was seeing the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. But it’s always been followed by me slipping backwards again.

Am I further on than I was at the beginning of the year? Yes and no. Every day is still a struggle. The lows are terrifying, really truly scary. Much deeper than they were at the start of this process. My finger hovers over the self-destruct button all too often. I am not proud of it. I have moments where I seriously wonder how I’m going to get through the day. What does it actually mean to have a breakdown, I wonder? How bad does it have to get before someone lets me check out of this world for a few weeks? The nurse who patched me up last week said that if things got that desperate, I could go to A&E and ask to be admitted. Part of me thinks that would actually be better, if it meant I could come back fixed, or at least with a plan for getting fixed.

But.

I am further on than I was, I know. Because despite how lost and alone and frightened I feel a lot of the time, I have flashes where I can laugh, enjoy, smile, live in the moment.

Last night was one of those times. I took Tom into London to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I’d had a dreadful night’s sleep the night before (confession: I have stopped my new tablets, as I felt they were making me even more mental, and as a result, I have stopped sleeping again). I had been working all day. I was exhausted and stressed and tearful and when Ian got home, I almost begged him to take Tom instead.

He said I should go, and he was right.

Being in Covent Garden, re-energised me. I love London, feed off its vitality. I get some weird sense of importance from not being a tourist, from knowing my way round. I loved sharing that with Tom.

I watched his face while he sat, transfixed, watching the street theatre. Remembered how I felt on my first trips to London when I was a child.

We had a mother-son dinner date. It felt good to share some time with him on his own.

I felt him need me. Instead of railing against me as he so often does, complaining that I favour his sister, accusing me of treating him like a slave by asking him to put his clothes in the laundry basket, he was all little and insecure in the big bad city, insisting that I hold his hand at all times.

I had the honour of taking him to see his first West End show. Seeing his awe at the sheer size of the theatre, as seen from the cheap seats at the top of the balcony. His bemusement at how the set moved around all by itself, as if by magic. Best of all, the literal jaw-dropping moment when (despite the fact that he *knows* the story) he saw Charlie unwrap his bar of chocolate and discover the golden ticket.

I needed last night. I needed to feel like a good mummy – a mummy who could arrange a lovely night out for her son. I needed to feel like a responsible mummy – a mummy who could take her child out in London and get him home in one piece.

It’s given me confidence. Tomorrow, I’m taking the children to the beach. We’ll paddle in the sea, skim stones, go to visit the lifeboat station for Tom. That’s a massive deal.

I know I am not better. I know this is one of the ups among the downs. But I also know that I have to enjoy these ups when I get them. And I hope and pray that they’ll become more frequent, last longer, start joining together until I am up more than down, until I beat this illness.

Everything aches

One of the (many) strange things about depression is how a mental condition can have such profound physical effects.

I feel really unwell at the moment. Bodily unwell, as well as unwell in my mind.

The combination of guilt, anxiety, fear, sadness and bone-numbing exhaustion is taking its toll physically.

I am conscious of my heart racing. I feel light-headed and nauseous. I have a great big ball of heaviness in my chest, the sort you get when you’re about to sob. No doubt a good cry would help, but I feel locked in. I am shaky, worn out. I have all this barely-suppressed panic inside me, just waiting to burst out.

I am barely functioning.

I am at the point where I just don’t know what to do. I have moments of clarity when I think, ‘This is not normal. This is not right. Despite what I told the doctor a couple of weeks ago about feeling better, I am not anywhere near better enough. I can’t go on like this.’ When I’m in that headspace, I know what I need to do. I phone up and make an urgent doctor’s appointment, determined to go in there and be totally honest and not go anywhere until I have at least the beginnings of a plan in place for feeling human again.

But 20 minutes later, I’ve cancelled my appointment. ‘Get a grip, Lucy, you’re being ridiculous. You’ve got tablets. You’ve had counselling. There is nothing more the doctor can do for you. You have got to pull yourself together and shape up otherwise your whole life is going to fall to pieces and it will be all your fault.’

I am trying so hard not to let the way I’m feeling impact on the children. I want them to have a good summer holiday, and I don’t want their memories of this time to be defined by my depression. I’m trying to make it fun for them, taking them to Legoland and London and the beach, but it’s so difficult when I feel so ill all the time. Even getting up in the morning is a challenge, let alone spending seven hours at a crowded theme park on a hot summer day.

I’m making myself do it for them. I know they deserve far better than this.

All my prayers at the moment are fuelled by guilt and desperation. I’m sorry for being like this, Lord. Please help me to change. Please stay with me and bring me through this. And please don’t let me ruin my children’s lives along the way.

I know it’s my responsibility to sort myself out, but I am just so scared that I can’t do it. Scared and sad and sick sick sick.

Square peg, martyrdom and who am I really?

This was the Bible verse on my home page today:

‘The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.’

I am thankful that he knows me, because I don’t know myself.

This weekend, I have – through my own stupidity and martyrdom – managed to push even my reliable bunch of mostly mental but always supportive friends to the limit (a long story cut short: I wanted to get out of a family occasion; I had a chance to because I was actually sick; I had a parental guilt trip laid on me and went anyway, only to spend the weekend shut away upstairs for fear of infecting people).

My own shortcomings are standing out in proud relief.

I thought I was doing the right thing, but everyone apart from me thought I was doing the wrong thing.

I know I am on a downer because I can’t even write properly tonight. I keep typing and deleting and typing and deleting, even though no one need ever read this but me.

So I will go for brief and disjointed instead.

Ha. I’ve deleted again.

All I can say is that I’m rapidly crossing off the places where I can go for help. There is nowhere that I feel I fit in. I think I’ve lost the sympathy and empathy and compassion of pretty much everyone who has supported me through this so far. I don’t blame them. They give me advice, and I ignore it. But I wish I wish I wish it were as simple as taking advice. Even when I know they are right, my messed up head skews things so much that I end up being so infuriating that I’m left alone.

This is possibly the most rambling post I have written yet. I haven’t touched on the fact that I’m scared that my feeling unwell this weekend is connected to my cuts. I was warned that sealing them after more than 12 hours risked infection, and I do have some of the symptoms. I haven’t touched on so much more. I wish I wish I wish I had been at my own church this morning. Probably the only place where I still feel secure. The worst of it is that I am sitting here talking myself down from what feels the only outlet to this situation. I know I cannot and must not do it again but it is SO HARD not to when it delivers, in one short sharp shock, the punishment and release I need.

I need to shape up and get a grip. Everyone is *this* close to being done with me.

How I hate myself.