Cut adrift

It’s funny how things change.

I took an overdose on September 5^th.

After four days in hospital, I was discharged with the promise that I would be seen urgently by the community mental health team.

That ‘urgent’ appointment came through for September 22^nd.

Those closest to me were outraged. ‘That’s ages!’ ‘Is that what they call urgent care?’

Anyway. I survived until that appointment, and on the heels of that came many more. Over the following six weeks or so, I had appointment after appointment. Psychiatry assessments. Psychology assessments. GP reviews. Etc etc.

Then, at the beginning of December, ‘they’ decided that I was a suitable candidate for long-term psychotherapy.

As much as that was a difficult and scary concept to embrace, it was a relief, in some ways, to know that something was happening.

The problem is, it’s not.

Two months on, give or take a few days, I am in limbo. I’m on this waiting list – but no one will tell me how long it is. And in the interim, it seems I’m completely on my own.

I don’t feel equipped to be on my own.

I am fully aware of how precarious my mental health is at the moment. I’m enjoying more good days than I was six months ago, but there are still many, many days that end with very dark thoughts. I still wake in the night and have to talk myself down from the edge. It was only a few days ago that I was having cuts dressed by the practice nurse.

It just feels strange that a few months ago, I was in hospital after taking an overdose. Supposedly a crisis case. And now? Now no one wants to know. Even the GP, having summoned me for a review, metaphorically shrugged and told me to wait it out.

What has changed? Nothing. If anything has changed, if I’m feeling in any way better, it’s purely down to hormones, seasonal variations, chance. But as far as the NHS is concerned, nothing has changed. They haven’t done anything to make things better, and yet it’s fine for them to let me to wait. And wait. Maybe they’re hoping that if I wait long enough, I will decide not to bother any more, and withdraw from their lists, and reduce their client load. Maybe they’re hoping I’ll disappear from their lists in a different way altogether. It’s something I think about often.

I guess it’s good, in some ways, that they don’t consider me critical. But I still feel so far from better.

No one would let me go untreated with a life-limiting physical condition for this long. Is it really unreasonable to expect someone to help?