Mad

I’m so fed up of being mental.

This is not how I ever imagined my life to be.

But I don’t seem to be able to stop it.

If it’s all just subjective feelings and emotions, I should be able to.

It’s not a ‘real illness.’ It’s just stupidity and self-indulgence.

An excuse for being a crap wife and crap mother and crap writer and crap follower of the Lord.

I look at my arms, with all their scars, and I’m sickened by myself.

In six months’ time, I’ll be in Australia with my whole family. How the hell am I going to deal with the fall-out?

I can wear long sleeves to the wedding, sure. But three weeks of not swimming or beaching or sunbathing…

I don’t want to go. It’s stressing me out so much.

I’ve had enough.

The inconsistency of mental health services

Yesterday evening I watched a BBC documentary following two women suffering with postpartum psychosis. Not necessarily the best thing to watch when feeling mentally unstable, but anyway.

Both women were in a mother and baby unit. One was in a manic episode; the other, severely depressed.

It was the depressed woman whose story struck so many chords with me. But it also made me feel very, very sad – and more than a little let down.

This woman was acutely unwell, but the care she was receiving was amazing. Her psychiatrist (an amazing man, who was brimming with empathy: a rare trait among mental health professionals, in my limited experience) was so obviously on the ball with her treatment – not afraid to change meds, increase doses, add different things in.

I wish I had someone like that in charge of my care.

The part that made me saddest, though, was when the woman broke a jar of baby food and used it to cut her throat and wrist.

Straight away, her MH team upped their game. Twenty-four hour support, ECT, psychology, the lot.

A few weeks later, she was stable, at home, enjoying her baby and her life.

Why, why hasn’t that happened to me?

Okay, I’m not suggesting for a minute that I want ECT. But this woman made one suicide attempt and was immediately pushed right to the top of everyone’s treatment lists.

I, however, have taken four overdoses – two of which could have killed me. I’ve had hospital treatment for self-harm injuries more times than I remember, and am scarred from wrist to elbow. I’ve called the crisis team in the middle of the night and begged for help.

And no one has taken me seriously.

I don’t know what help I need, but I haven’t got it. I’m on three-monthly appointments with a psychiatrist who doesn’t do anything. I’m dithering around in group therapy. I’m still struggling with intensely dark thoughts and suicidal urges. But the last time the crisis team came out – a referral having been made by the hospital where I’d gone with self-harm injuries – they told me that they would follow up with me the next day, and that they would tell my care co-ordinator to contact me.

I’ve heard nothing since.

I know MH services are hugely under-resourced, and I know that it’s a postcode lottery when it comes to accessing help. But I feel short-changed, let down and yes, really quite angry about the ‘help’ I’ve received.

Why are some people’s suicidal feelings more deserving of support and treatment than others? Why have I been patched up and sent home every single time with no real ongoing help?

I can’t help wondering whether, if someone had taken things seriously the first time, admitted me to hospital and sorted out my treatment properly, I’d be well again now, instead of still fighting self-destructive urges every single day.

I’ll never know. But I’ve lost two and a half years of my life to this illness now, and I can’t see much evidence of things improving.

The psychiatrist on the programme last night said something that I’ve often thought – but never said, because it sounds so ridiculous.

He said that depression was worse than cancer, because with cancer, there is still a will to live. With depression, there’s just suffering.

Obviously I can’t compare the two. But I do wonder if things would be easier if I had an illness where I was desperate to live, rather than one that’s telling me to die.

 

Birthdays and therapy

Yesterday we celebrated Katie turning five.

I say celebrated, but actually, it was a day of mixed emotions.

This time last year, I’d only been out of hospital a week or so on the day of her birthday and party. It was all a bit of a blur. Reading back over this blog yesterday, I found what was, essentially, a suicide note from Feb 5th 2015. It wasn’t, in that I published it privately and never meant for it to be read, but my intentions were clear.

This year, I really, really wanted her birthday to be a happy day – for me as well as for her.

It didn’t start well. L was going to help with the party, as she did last year, but on Wednesday M came down with a cold and temperature. I had a feeling that she wasn’t going to be able to help, but I prayed so hard that she would. I didn’t honestly know how I was going to get through the party without her there – and aside from that, I wanted Katie to have her godmother there, too.

My prayers were’t answered, or at least not in the way I’d hoped. L didn’t come to the party. It made me very, very sad, and I spent Katie’s birthday morning fighting back tears. It also made me feel that L was thoroughly glad and relieved to have a genuine excuse not to be there.

But I got through the party. It went smoothly, and Katie and her friends had fun. I’ll admit that I did see God’s hand over what had happened – he wanted to show me that I could do it without L, that I didn’t have to be so needy and pathetic and reliant on her, that I could manage it by myself.

Not that that made me feel any better.

It was a lovely day for Katie. After the party, we opened presents at home, then went out for pizza, then came home and had a bath together with a pink bath bomb and her new mermaid Barbie.

But once she was in bed, I crashed.

I ended up in bed, sobbing in Ian’s arms.

Because my little baby is five.

Because I’ve lost half of her life to this stupid illness.

And because I feel so alone.

Ian asked me about the ACT and whether that was having any impact on my mood. The honest answer is, I don’t know.

I get the acceptance part: accepting that I am going to have these feelings (I’m a terrible mother, I should try harder to be well, I have no friends, I’m letting my children down) and not trying to change or deny them.

I’m doing that.

I get the commitment part: the fact that I need to push on through and do what I need to do without letting my feelings stop me.

I’m doing that – it’s why I didn’t end up staying in bed yesterday morning when L said she couldn’t help with the party, and sending Ian to run it instead.

But for all that I’m accepting and committing, I still feel absolutely awful. Yes, I can accept the feelings, and I can push on through them, but they’re not going away – and they haven’t stopped me hating myself, making me feel like I want to die, like everyone would be so much better without me here.

I looked at all the photos we took yesterday and deleted just about every single one of me. Not because I’m so fat and ugly – although I am – but because I look so tired. So completely worn out and broken.

I told Ian that, and he said, ‘Well, that’s how you look.’

I guess the camera doesn’t lie.

On self-harm

The idea of telling anyone to stop and think before they self-harm for the first time is a strange one. For most of us, I’m guessing we haven’t weighed up and the pros and cons beforehand and then decided to do it; it’s an act of impulsivity that’s hard, if not impossible, to resist.

But here is what I wish I could tell everyone about self-harm.

Whatever drives you to do it for the first time, it’s always the start of a slippery slope.

I don’t know the statistics, but my guess is that people who self-harm once and then never do it again are few and far between.

I first self-harmed as a young child when I would hit myself until I bruised. I first drew blood as a teenager, when I took apart pencil sharpeners and razors to use against my own body. I first needed hospital treatment for self-harm injuries at the age of 35. I’ve needed stitches, steri-strips or glue more times than I can count since then.

My experience shows that once you start self-harming, it’s very, very hard to stop.

When I first self-harmed during this episode of depression – an episode that still has me in its grips over two years on – I thought I was bigger than it. I thought I was in control. I deliberately chose a place to cut that could easily be covered by short sleeves, even in summer. I restricted it to a small area and I convinced myself that I wouldn’t go any further than that.

But self-harm is an addiction, and like all addictions. it escalates. It gets its claws into you. It removes your control.

I don’t think you CAN self-harm ‘just a little bit.’ It’s all or nothing. As I’ve found out over the past 24 months.

I thought I was in charge of it, but it’s in charge of me. It’s why I now have scars from armpit to wrist. It’s ugly and disfiguring and makes people wary of me. It’s why I’ll have to find a long-sleeved dress to wear to my brother’s wedding in Australia this summer.

It’s shameful and I hate it. I hate myself for not being strong enough to resist it. I hate that I can’t go swimming without being stared at. I hate that my children, and my friends’ children, ask questions that I can’t answer.

It makes me feel like a freak. And yet it is SO HARD to stop.

I wish, I wish so much that I had never made that first cut. That I had never thought I was big and strong enough to keep it under control.

I wish I could tell everybody who’s tempted to self-harm – whether they’re 13, 30, 60, whatever – not to do it. Because the relief and the release is only temporary and when it wears off the temptation to do it more and bigger and harder is so difficult to resist. And those best laid plans to keep it small, neat and contained just don’t work.

You won’t be able to keep it under control.

You won’t be able to limit it to a nice, discreet area.

Soon, you’ll be compulsively buying razor blades and hiding them from the people you love.

You’ll be shutting yourself in the bathroom while your children are playing outside the door and cutting yourself to a soundtrack of their giggles.

You’ll be wearing long sleeves on the hottest summer days.

You’ll feel like everyone is staring at you wherever you go.

You’ll be making three trips to the hospital within a month and will end up with social services on your back.

It’s an evil, evil habit, or addiction, or compulsion, or whatever you want to call it.

It makes you ashamed, and that only makes you feel worse.

How I wish I had never, ever started.

A year ago

A year ago today, I came very close to taking my own life.

It wasn’t my first suicide attempt, but it was the biggest. It was when the resus doctor told me that they’d get me on the drip and then talk about surgical support – i.e. liver transplant – that I realised how close I was to dying.

I didn’t die. A year on, I’m still here. And still wishing I had.

Suicide is a strange thing. When I took that potentially fatal overdose, I was trusting fully in God. I was sure that if I died, I would be in the Heaven described in the book of Revelation.

But even though I was trusting in God, the act of trying to take my own life – taking things into my hands, not leaving them to God – was a big enough sin to condemn me to Hell forever.

I didn’t find out which way it would go because I’m still here.

Have things moved on in a year? No, not really.

I’ve had three Minor Injuries visits in a month with self-harm cuts.

A crisis team visit last weekend.

I’m holding it together all week and then falling apart spectacularly every weekend.

The crisis team promised to get my care coordinator to phone me, and to get my psych appointment moved forward. I’ve had no contact from either all week.

I just don’t know what to do.

What it feels like to me

It feels like:

Wanting to go to sleep and never wake up again.

Being at the bottom of a muddy-sided pit with no obvious way of getting out.

Screaming and no one hearing.

Being so completely, utterly exhausted and yet unable to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time.

Suffocating, drowning, being crushed.

Looking at the world from inside a shroud.

Being a huge burden on everyone who has anything to do with me.

Ruining my children’s lives.

Knowing absolutely, with 100 per cent certainty, that there is nothing in me for anyone to love or even like.

Nothing I ever do right could ever make up for everything I’ve got so wrong.

They’d all be better without me in their lives.

Being so full of sin that it’s hard to see grace.

Panicking in the playground.

Holding it together all week only to crash and burn at the weekend.

Needing friends so very, very much but not wanting to put anyone under the pressure of having to be with me.

Faking it all the time.

Like I’m clinging on with my fingertips.

Like a fraud.

Like every day is getting harder and harder to get through.

Like I’m beyond love, friendship, forgiveness.

Like I almost want someone to put me in hospital so I just don’t have to face the world any more.

Like I just want to stop existing. Just stop.