No children awoke before 8am.
Katie survived the school fete, despite being full of cold.
Tom was amazing at the fete – independent, responsible, helpful.
I have had two compliments on my children’s behaviour this weekend, one of which came from a very cantankerous source.
I had a really nice time chatting with a new friend – or maybe acquaintance – while manning the craft room.
I had a lovely long bubble bath with Katie.
Tom and I had a long overdue play fight.
I feel like me again.
I know this is a safe place but I don’t trust that it is any more.
Back to the old notebook and pen.
I am wondering tonight, will it ever be the same again?
Is there ever a way back to normal after a major depression, a suicide attempt?
Things are so much better. So, so much better. But I still feel so vulnerable.
In some ways, my parents knowing has lifted a weight, but in others, I now feel under more pressure than ever to be chirpy, upbeat, positive, giggly, to prove that I’m okay. Don’t worry about me. I’m doing just fine.
Ditto with friends. I’m finding it really hard to find a middle ground, a ‘just okay’ ground, without this slight edge of hysteria to it.
I don’t want people watching me. I don’t want all the, ‘How are yous?’ with a meaningful look.
But in other ways, I do.
I am not okay. I am not sure I will ever be okay again. Yes, the scars – physical and mental – are fading, but at the same time, I still feel so raw. I know it will ease in time – it has eased so much already – but will it ever not be there? Will I ever have a day where I don’t think about how I tried to kill myself, and wonder what if…? Will I ever be able to walk past the paracetamol in the supermarket without having to give myself a talking to?
It’s worse now I don’t have this safe place, since my parents discovered it. I used to be able to use this blog to say what I couldn’t say out loud to a few people I could trust. Now I can’t do that, because it’s privy to an audience that I don’t want to see it.
So, by dint of silence, everyone thinks I’m okay.
But I’m not.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be.
Yesterday, I had my nose pierced. Yes, at 35 years old, I now have a nose stud.
Why now?
Because it marks a turning point.
The past year has damn near killed me. No exaggeration. But I think there’s some truth in the theory that you have to hit rock bottom to be able to start coming back up again. And that’s what has been happening over the last few weeks.
The first month after my overdose, I was broken. Just in pieces.
The second month, I was wobbly, but feeling a lot more normal.
Now, the three-month anniversary is approaching, and I have been doing really, really well. Better than I have for years, to be honest.
Then there was a setback. A few days where I found myself feeling anxious, low, out of control again. Followed by my parents finding out what has been going on for me over the last 12 months – something I had tried so hard to keep hidden from them. The morning after, Sunday, at church, I felt like I’d taken about 365 steps back to where I was this time last year. Sitting on the floor in the resources room, supposedly watching the children, but actually lacking the energy to stand, the strength to make small talk, all of it.
It was frightening. Really frightening. That feeling of desperation, after a period of feeling like I had turned a corner, seen the light. I did not want to be going back there, but I was so scared that I was.
But – I have turned it around. Not through any of my own strength or effort, but I’ve gone from thinking, ‘Well, I’ve let everyone down; what else is there but suicide?’ on Sunday evening, to having a conversation with my baby girl about how I don’t intend to die until she’s really, really old within the space of a few days.
I really didn’t want my mum to know what has happened to me. I am still finding it very awkward to know how to handle it. My whole identity has always been built around being the strong one, the capable one, the organised one, the level-headed one, and it’s very hard to have to admit that none of that is true. It makes me feel like a huge let-down.
But in other ways, it has been liberating.
It has made me realise that I’m a grown woman, my own person, with my own free will and thought processes and hopes and dreams.
I had my nose pierced because it’s something that I always wanted to do, but have always put off doing because I was afraid of upsetting the people I love or making them disapprove of me.
I had my nose pierced because it’s a sign that I am finding confidence in myself to make my own decisions and live by them.
I had my nose pierced because I want to be true to who I am.
I had my nose pierced because I can see a future.
It’s not going to be straightforward. There are going to be ups and downs. I know that depression, like cancer, goes into remission but is never cured.
One of the biggest hurdles with my nose piercing is that it is unbiblical. Leviticus says that any piercing or marking of the body is sinful. And while I have done plenty of that recently, there seems a difference between doing something to myself because I’m ill and doing something to myself because I just really want to.
But – you know – I think God understands. I think God gets that my nose piercing is not an emblem of vanity or an attempt to deface what He has created in his image. I think he gets its significance in my recovery, and He’ll forgive me for it.
This is the point at which I am saying, ‘Yes, I have a lot to live for, and I am going to live it with confidence and self-belief.’
This is my turning point.
Being a burden. It sucks.
Especially when other people have much more right to be a burden.
Seriously fighting bad urges tonight. And why? There is no good reason.
What is the matter with me?
Just like nothing had changed to make me feel better over the past few weeks, now I can’t pinpoint what has changed to make me feel like I’m slipping again.
A couple of days ago, I was thinking that maybe I’d go to the doctor and ask about weaning off my medication.
Today, I filled the prescription for the next few months that I’ve been carrying around in my handbag since last week.
I should get some perspective here. I’m okay. I’m a long way from where I was. But I do feel like I’m being pulled back again.
Anxious.
Sleepless.
Short-tempered.
Tearful.
Guilty.
Over-reacting.
Over-compensating.
Things that I thought I was coping with, that I had moved on from – now they’re right there at the front of my mind again.
I know I need to take responsibility. I am fighting against slipping backwards. I’m doing all the good mental health first-aid stuff that I know I have to do: fresh air, exercise, five-a-day, etc etc etc. Plus the things that may not be NHS-prescribed, but that help me: prayer, Bible, reading supportive Christian Stuff. But I don’t know how far my own resistance can go.
I’ve said before how much I love 24 Hours in A&E, and how pleased I was to be enjoying this series, despite the fact that it has massive triggering potential. Tonight, I was well and truly triggered. I switched it off. There wasn’t anything particularly sensitive going on, but the whole thing gave me flashbacks.
I have no right to be disturbed by flashbacks when it was by my own hand that I ended up in there, but there it is. Everything – the navy blue vinyl mattresses, the cellular blankets, the curtains, the drip stands, the ceiling as viewed from a trolley, the guy on permanent floor-cleaning duty – put me right back there.
It’s not a place I ever want to be again – physically or mentally.
So. Four things I am going to do, right now, this evening, to try to stop myself falling back into the pit.
1. I am going to pray.
2. I am going to follow the advice in this amazing blog, and tell myself that I am precious, loved, forgiven.
3. I am going to kick back against the urge to avoid social contact, and stand next to someone in the playground tomorrow morning.
4. I am going to tell someone (real life) how I’m feeling.
It may or may not work. But I am putting up a fight.
I’ve had a lovely weekend.
I’ve really enjoyed having some respite from my biggest troublemaker while he was on Cub camp (yes, I know, bad mummy).
I saw a dear friend getting married in church, and helped with the cakes and drinks reception afterwards.
I heard my little girl saying, ‘I want to get married in that church, just like Jo,’ and had a real heart-warming moment when I realised that that was a real possibility.
One of the things Ian said to me when I was in the pit was, ‘Katie loves weddings. Don’t you want to be at her wedding?’
At that moment, honestly, no, I didn’t care.
I’m taking it as a good sign that I felt all weepy when she said she wanted to get married at HT.
I had a great time dancing and chatting and laughing at the wedding reception.
It really made me want to shout from the rooftops about how amazing my church friends are, and how amazing God is to have put them in my life at the time when I most needed them.
I welcomed my muddy, overtired boy back from camp, and sat at the table eating a roast dinner when he said, ‘I like us all being together.’
My family is good. My friends are good.
God is so good.
The fifth of November… Bonfire night, three days after my boy’s ninth birthday, and – as I only remembered in passing, on the way home from school today – two months since I got into bed with the intention of not getting up again.
The fact that I didn’t remember immediately says a lot.
One month ago, I was in meltdown, remembering where I had been four weeks previously.
Now, though – I’m okay.
I’m slightly discombobulated (how I love that word!) about how things are going to pan out from here. Yesterday, I received a letter inviting me to the second instalment of my psychotherapy assessment. I can’t make the appointment, but aside from that, I don’t want to go. Feeling as I do just now, it feels like it’s only going to set me back, open up wounds.
I’m reserving a decision on that until I get a callback. If they can offer me a convenient appointment, I will go. If not – I don’t know.
There is no doubt, though, that I’m feeling an awful lot better. I have worked my socks off this week, which has meant neglecting the house, and I actually don’t feel guilty about it (much). I have even considered that it might be worth paying a cleaner to come in once a week, at least for this next year while Katie is still only part-time, so I can use all my child-free hours to work without stressing about the dead daddy-long-legs in the corners.
More to the point, working my socks off has felt good. Okay, I was all keyed up lying in bed last night, and it took ages for me to switch my brain off. But I have written comprehensive to-do lists for every day this week, and got through them, and even moved onto the following day’s list if I’ve had spare evening time. I had a brilliant work day in London on Monday, which made me feel like part of the human race again, strolling along the South Bank to our meeting venue with my take-out coffee.
It’s not all about work. It’s about family, enjoying my children, being proud of them, making them laugh.
It’s about reading and baking.
It’s about feeling like a proper mummy, labelling my son’s kit for Cub camp.
It’s also about acceptance. I’ve been trying hard lately to contact one of Katie’s godmothers, my childhood friend, who has recently moved to a new house in the back of beyond. She has next to no phone or internet signal, so I’ve persevered with sending messages – I still have her daughter’s birthday present sitting here from August. I’ve even messaged her husband. I know they have seen my messages (good old Facebook), but they haven’t replied, and I have accepted that I need to draw a line under that friendship.
I have also – bad person that I am – chosen to not pursue other friendships. The person who used to be my next-door neighbour contacted me at the beginning of the summer holidays. I forgot to reply – head was elsewhere – and felt bad about it, but I have made the executive decision that it was not a worthwhile friendship for either of us, and haven’t tried to reestablish contact.
But I have refused to accept losing my nearby friends. The playground is a hostile place anyway, and I need to know that there are people I can stand with and chat to and engage with.
I hope that’s happening again now.
It feels like it’s been a fairly dramatic turnaround from feeling awful to feeling okay. Not much more than two weeks ago, I spent an entire Saturday on the sofa, trying and failing to make myself move. Today, I have done a load of work, been shopping for tights and jogging pants (neither of which are for me), hoovered, done laundry, cooked dinner, washed up, worked some more.
Why?
I can only praise God for it. Nothing else has changed; I’ve not had any more therapy, or changed my medication, or ditched work, or suddenly acquired nice, polite, well-behaved kids.
God doesn’t promise that we won’t suffer, but he is with us when we do. He cares. In the worst depths, I never stopped calling on him, crying out to him. I trusted him, not to heal me, but to be with me, and I am absolutely sure that he is with me now.
It may not be forever. This upward turn may last a few days, a few years, the rest of my life. But now, with the clarity of hindsight, I can see God’s purpose in what I have been through. He has forced me to draw nearer to him, and my love of him is so much greater as a result.
Lucy's Depression Diary 