Out of sorts, out of place

The hardest thing at the moment, I think, is feeling like I have nowhere to go.

The school scene has always been difficult for me, and is worse than ever at the moment. I can’t get out of there quickly enough. Interestingly, I had a conversation with one of Tom’s classmate’s mums today, and she told me that everyone just thinks that I’m painfully shy – which is better than the alternative, but still doesn’t make it easy to fit in.

Church has, over the past seven years, been the place where I felt I belonged, but I’m feeling less comfortable there than ever. It’s partly because I know my depression makes me a very poor Christian (can I even claim to be one any more? I don’t know) but also because I don’t have a Christian husband.

When I first started going to HT, I think there was a lot more diversity in the congregation. I certainly wasn’t the only mum-with-kids-and-no-partner. Now, 90 per cent of the time, I am. And it marks me out as different.

I feel really sad that I don’t have someone to sit next to during the sermons. Sad and envious.

I feel sad that we don’t feature on the Sunday lunch circuit.

Then again, I blame it on Ian, but it’s more likely to be me. Who’d want me round for Sunday lunch?

Yeah. No one.

Whatever the reason, though, I feel increasingly out of place, and it’s hard to bear.

I don’t feel I should be involved in anything – Sunday school, Hotshots, reading, praying – any more.

I’m not what they want, and I know I’m only still involved because of logistics – because there are so few people to fill the gaps that even a useless failure of a Christian with an unbelieving husband has to suffice.

That’s not a good feeling.

And it presents this huge conflict. I want to stop doing Sunday school – at least short-term – because after getting through the week, I feel so awful by the weekend that even if I’m just there being an extra pair of hands, it’s too much.

But I don’t want to stop doing Sunday school because I feel I need to prove that I’m not just a seat filler, a waste of church space.

Oh, it’s all messed up. I’m all messed up. There is just nowhere for me.

I feel so poorly.

Couldn’t even make myself go to church this morning.

Ian has done everything with the kids. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Taken them out to fly kites.

I have only left the bedroom to go to the toilet.

Katie has been the sweetest creature ever. All she knows is that I’m feeling poorly, but she brought me all her hedgehogs to keep me company while they went out, then came home, got her doctor’s kit out, checked me over, decided I was cold and needed a blanket, told Ian to bring me a drink.

She is adorable but it’s really not good that my four-year-old is acting as my carer.

Tomorrow I have to start a new week, a week of work and other important stuff.

I don’t actually know how I’m even going to get out of bed.

Mess

I’ve been lower this week than I have for quite some time.

I guess I should be praising God that I’ve got through it – even if it has involved throwing myself into work all day and then going to bed at 7pm each evening.

I’ve cried more than I have in months, but I’ve stopped myself acting on the self-destructive thoughts, even though they’re always there.

But I’ve also bailed out on interviews that I really should have done, and let people down. Left Ian to do everything with the children as soon as he walked through the door. Done no housework whatsoever. Completely forgotten my nephew’s birthday.

Worst of all, made a huge mess of things with a very special friend.

I spent my hours of lying awake in bed last night telling myself that this is God’s plan. That he’s teaching me a lesson for being too reliant on earthly people and not reliant enough on him. Forcing me to draw closer to him by drawing friends away.

I know he didn’t promise an easy life, or that I would like his plan, but although I can see what he’s trying to do, it’s hard to bear. I feel lonelier, more lost, than I ever have before.

I know in my head that he’s always right beside me, but my heart is not feeling it. And despite all his power and greatness and grace, he can’t actually sit with me, hold my hand or give me a hug.

Even Ian said, last night, that he’d never seen me look so sad.

He’s right – the sadness is just overwhelming.

I know I’m putting all my eggs in one basket but I am so desperate for the ACT group to actually be useful, to help me start to turn things around. Because just at the moment, everything is an enormous mess and I’m not sure I can find my way out of it.

Ashamed

It’s really not good that this morning, I had my second minor injuries trip in a week.

I very nearly walked out when I realised I was likely to see the same nurse who patched me up on Monday.

I am so ashamed of myself.

In the end, I saw a different nurse, but she had to get Nurse 1 in to discuss whether the cuts could be steristripped or needed stitches.

Steristrips (and glue) were enough in the end, but it took both of them to do them: one holding the wounds closed while the other stuck the strips on.

And while I nearly passed out from the pain and had to be laid down and given water.

Nurse 2 was so very kind.

I felt – feel – so very guilty.

I went straight from there to church.

Feeling like I had no right to be there.

Feeling like the sermon – about how we can’t defy God, can’t hide from him – was speaking directly to me.

Sin is sin is sin – but mine feels so much bigger.

I’m so conscious of it all the time. So conscious that God has plans for me and that I keep turning away from him and taking things into my own hands.

I don’t want to be like this.

I don’t want to take comfort in hurting myself.

I couldn’t have a bath with Katie this evening because I have bandages from wrist to elbow on both arms.

I couldn’t parent them at all this afternoon.

I want to stop.

I want to be well.

I don’t know how.

So what do I do now?

I just don’t know.

I just know that I hate the way I am, I hate everything about this stupid ‘illness’ and everything about me.

I’m doing a sterling job of alienating everyone.

Perhaps, subconsciously, I’m doing it on purpose because I know I don’t deserve love, friendship and support.

 

People should really just give up on me. That’s what I deserve.

 

I honestly don’t feel I can keep doing Hotshots and Sunday school, not because of how I feel but because I know I’m the worst possible person to be witnessing to kids.

How can I stand in front of them and talk about things like joy and peace when I don’t feel them myself?

Singing the fruit of the spirit song earlier, I felt such a hypocrite because I don’t have any of them.

I don’t know how I’m going to get through tomorrow, when my parents come and visit, or Sunday, when I have to sit in church and hold it together, or Monday, when I’ll have to work, or any of it, really.

 

 

 

At breaking point.

No longer useful or welcomed where I once was.

No surprise. Who would want their kids learning from me?

I don’t want *my* kids learning from me.

Oh God take me home.

When ‘trying my best’ isn’t enough

It must be pretty difficult for anyone to believe I’m trying my best at the moment.

On Monday morning, I ended up in Minor Injuries needing to be steri-stripped.

On Tuesday, I burst into tears in the school playground.

The past two nights, I’ve gone to bed earlier than Tom – not to sleep, but just to be on my own, away from everyone, not having to think or interact or smile or fake it.

It doesn’t look like I’m trying.

I am, though – but it’s not enough.

The longer this goes on, the more I sense that people’s patience is running out.

I sense that no one actually believes that I’m putting any effort into keeping going or getting better. It’s getting harder and harder to talk to people about the way I feel because I feel increasingly ashamed of the way I am.

It’s like being trapped in this cycle. I feel awful – I want to talk to people – I talk to people – I feel like they’re sick of me – I stop talking – I feel even worse.

This is what I want to say:

I don’t want to feel like this.

I would do just about anything to be better.

Self-harm isn’t a choice – it’s a coping mechanism. It’s messed up but in some stupid way, it helps.

I’m just as sick of myself as you are with me.

I want to wake up in the morning and not dread the day ahead.

I want you to listen – to try to understand – to be there.

I wish I could get a grip too.

I am trying. Even when it looks like I’m not.

I really am trying.

It’s just sometimes, it’s not enough. Sometimes, my best falls woefully short.

Right now, this beast is stronger than me.

Useless me

I really, really hate myself for how completely useless I am.

I have no idea where this low has come from, but anyone who says depression isn’t a weakness is wrong.

It is a weakness. It’s entirely a question of mind over matter and my mind isn’t strong enough.

My life, honestly, is a walk in the park. I have a loving husband, two gorgeous kids, a warm, clean, big-enough house, a job that I (mostly) love. I have God’s love and the promise of Heaven through Jesus.

There is nothing at all for me to be depressed about.

So why can’t I be stronger than it? Why can’t I fight back and squash it right back down?

It’s weakness, pure and simple.

Two afternoons in a row, now, I’ve spent lying on my bed, tying myself in mental knots. Hearing Ian entertaining the children and knowing I should be joining in but completely paralysed by my own hopelessness.

This evening, with Katie all wrapped up in a towel after her bath, I asked her if she’d still want me to bundle her when she was 15.

She asked, ‘Won’t you have died when I’m 15?’

The innocent question of a four-year-old who hasn’t grasped time concepts, yes. But my goodness, it made me feel awful. Has she picked up on the suicide attempts? If not the fact that I wanted to die, the fact that I was in hospital, where people go when they’re sick enough to die?

And I’m beating myself up over friendships again. Over being the weak, pathetic, needy, energy-sapping one who everyone dreads seeing.

I slipped up yesterday. Ian and the kids went out for the afternoon; they had left me in peace to have a bath after the four-hour ordeal that was tidying Tom’s room. I got in the bath and then got so possessed with the urge to hurt myself that I got out, dripping wet, and ransacked the house until I found something that would work.

There is something really, truly shitty about a 36-year-old mum disembowelling her child’s pencil sharpener and using the blade to self-harm.

I have come nowhere since I was a depressed 15-year-old doing exactly the same thing.

I feel so awful about myself, I can’t express it.

Lindsey says to keep praying and keep talking, but how can I keep talking when I know everyone thinks I’m a complete liability, a mess, a drain, a waste of time and energy?

It is SO HARD to resist what every instinct is telling me.

Suddenly, hard and scary

When I had my psychology assessment back in December, and was doggedly trying to convince the psychologist that I had no need to be there, and no need for further therapy, something she said in the course of persuading me otherwise really hit a nerve:

‘I know you’re feeling better at the moment, but I think that when it hits you, it hits you suddenly and hard – and it’s very scary.’

She was spot on. The lows, for me, seem to come out of the blue and hit me like a ton of bricks – and I rarely have any idea what triggers them.

It’s happened again in the past 24 hours.

Despite feeling wobbly around New Year – which I didn’t worry too much about, given the amount of reflecting I was doing – I got through the whole Christmas period feeling reasonably okay. And I was feeling reasonably okay even yesterday, up until lunchtime.

Then the low hit me head on.

It’s completely blindsided me. I’ve gone from feeling fine to crushingly low within the space of 24 hours.

It’s sudden. It’s hard. And it’s very, very scary. Especially as I’ve fallen straight back into that awful compulsive need to hurt myself, that sense of complete panic, desperation and loss of control that only cutting can relieve.

And now I can’t write any more.

 

The weirdo in the corner

I read this quote the other day and it absolutely hit the nail on the head in terms of how I’m feeling at the moment:

‘Although I was still shaky, I knew I had emerged into light. I felt myself no longer a husk but a body.’
— William Styron, Darkness Visible.

The few days either side of New Year were really difficult as I reflected on the awful, awful experiences of the year just gone and looked ahead to the new one with trepidation; for a brief while, I felt pretty out of control, and slipped up with the self-harming.

But on the whole, I do feel like I’m mostly walking in the light again now. The past two days, in particular, I’ve woken up feeling okay – rather than being engulfed by a sense of dread as soon as I opened my eyes. And the way I feel in the morning often seems to set the tone for the day ahead.

The main difficulty at the moment seems to be the hangover that it’s all left me with. I’m intensely aware at the moment of feeling like a bit of a freak, the weird one in the corner, the one that no one really knows how to relate to. Depression is like this huge elephant in the room and nobody wants to mention it – even if I’m okay with mentioning it myself.

Why is it? Is it the stigma? I’m trying hard not to be ashamed of it, and to treat it like any other illness (no one would stigmatise me if I had a broken leg), but it’s not easy when other people want to avert their eyes and change the subject. It makes me feel like I *should* be ashamed of it, and by definition, of myself.

Is it that people are worried that if they talk about it they’ll somehow trigger me, set me off again? I’ll admit that some things *are* triggering – I had a hard time watching the suicide scenes on this week’s Silent Witness – but if I’ve brought the subject up, that means I’m okay with talking about it.

Is it that I’m just a bit too messy, too raw? That I don’t fit into the nice little Christian mum box? Even when we’re praying at Bible study, I sense that people don’t want to pray aloud for me. Maybe I’m reading something into the situation that isn’t there, but I detect a caginess, an unwillingness to call a spade a spade (or depression depression…), everyone hoping that someone else will pray it so they don’t have to.

I don’t know. I know I’m far from the only one in this position; mental health stigma is rife and as a nation, we are so far from comfortable in talking about it. It just makes life kind of difficult because – having tried to conceal my depression for so long – opening up about it was a big step, but despite everyone’s positivity when I did, it still feels like I shouldn’t talk about it.

I feel obliged to keep quiet, keep laughing, pretend that it doesn’t matter – when in fact it’s still a massive part of my life and, even though I feel fairly well at the moment, has left its mark on me and shaped who I am forever.

It would just be nice if people could say, ‘How are you feeling?’ and actually be willing for me to tell them honestly.