Robbed

My opinion about what the worst thing about depression is changes from day to day, depending on what I’m doing.

Sometimes it’s the self-doubt, when I’m up to my eyeballs in work and feel like every single word I churn out is rubbish, or when I’m absolutely 100 per cent convinced that I’m ruining my children’s lives.

Sometimes it’s the exhaustion, when I simply can’t go to that prayer meeting or stay awake beyond 9pm.

Sometimes it’s the paranoia that makes me think that my friends are not my friends, that people only speak to me because they pity me and that they’d all rather – as I would – I just didn’t exist.

Sometimes it’s the sense of sheer terror and dread that settles over me, even if all I’m doing is waiting in a queue in the chemist.

Today, it’s the feeling of being robbed.

I have so much. So, so much.

I have a husband and two amazing children.

I have a house that, while not big or impressive, meets our needs.

I’m paid to do something I love (or at least something I love when I’m feeling well).

I have friends – although, as above, I question their authenticity.

I also have a life that – even in the next few short months – is full of fantastic experiences.

Wales with friends. Katie’s ballet show. Tom’s drama performance. Center Parcs. Fun things at church. The icing on the cake: three and a half weeks in Singapore and Australia.

But I am dreading every minute.

Every single minute.

And it’s not right. I should be excited about all of these things. I should be embracing an opportunity of a lifetime to travel to the southern hemisphere and see my baby brother get married, my precious baby girl his flower girl.

All of these things should be exciting, things to celebrate and make me happy.

Instead, they fill me with fear and dread.

Even today I’ve felt it. I went into school this morning for Katie’s reading morning.

I clung to her, while we were reading, as if she were my anchor.

I should be holding her up, not the other way round.

I went to see her make her Rainbows promise.

Thankfully I wore my sunglasses, because I cried. Not out of pride or happiness, but because all I could think was, my beautiful, smiley, happy poppet deserves someone who can get excited about these things for her.

So today, the worst thing about depression is that it’s a thief.

It’s taking all these experiences that should be fun and exciting and life affirming, and making them frightening and overwhelming and unbearable.

How I wish it would leave me alone.

So now what?

Yesterday’s psychiatrist appointment ended with me being referred to the crisis team again. I didn’t want it, but it was either that or the day unit, and there is no way I’m going back there. The psych said he had to do it so he knew I was having daily contact while I get through this hoop.

The crisis team came out yesterday afternoon – and surprise, surprise, decided that I didn’t need their involvement and discharged me.

They said, though, that they’d ask the CPN to get in touch with me and sort an urgent prescription, and to step up the contact.

Today, I haven’t heard from anyone. No one at all.

I find it all so hard to get my head around. I know that psychiatry – probably more than physical medicine – relies on people’s subjective interpretations of a situation, and that those interpretations won’t always be the same.

But I’m struggling to see how, in the space of 48 hours, I’ve been seen by a psychologist, who referred me to the psychiatrist, who referred me to the crisis team in an attempt to keep me out of hospital, then the crisis team deemed me not ill enough to warrant their attention but referred me to the CPN – and now nothing.

How can things have gone from crisis point to, ‘meh – don’t need to bother with her’ so quickly?

And what exactly am I supposed to do now?

It’s Friday night. I now have no hope of seeing or speaking to anyone until Monday at the very earliest. If I do need help, the only option is the mental health helpline – the helpline that I spent four fruitless hours trying to get through to on Wednesday evening.

I’m safe at the moment, but I don’t necessarily feel confident of staying safe. The dark thoughts are very close to the surface.

Everything just seems so disjointed and I don’t know where I stand. Is it that I’m not actually unwell, and that I should just be able to get a grip? The crisis team made me feel like that (‘You should pamper yourself a bit, do some gardening, cook a meal’). And yet the psychiatrist seemed to think that I needed urgent intervention to keep me safe. Who’s right?

It all leaves me feeling very confused, and lost. Very, very lost.

Unravelling

It’s all gone from more or less okay to pretty much rock bottom so quickly.

Saturday, we all stayed the night at Lindsey’s. We ate and we drank (not too much) and we watched Eurovision and the children dressed up and danced and it was lovely.

Okay, so it was a high point in what had been a couple of pretty low weeks, but it was perfect. A bad night’s sleep followed – unsurprising, being in an unfamiliar bed and having had an ill-advised post-midnight cup of tea – but that was a small price to pay.

But then it all fell apart.

I can’t even summon the energy to write about what’s happened since. But I can sum it up in a few short sentences.

I self-harmed yesterday in the most desperate fashion: scorching my skin with a red hot teaspoon and rooting through the shed by torchlight and resorting to rusty hacksaw blades.

I spent the night, with Ian away, curled up on my bedroom floor, trying and failing and trying and failing to get through to the mental health helpline.

I slept eventually – from 4am until 5.45am. That was it.

I cried on three people on the school run.

I went to what was meant to be a routine psychology appointment this morning and couldn’t speak. The therapy side of things was aborted and instead attention shifted to whether I was at risk of suicide in the next 24 hours.

I now have an urgent appointment with the psychiatrist tomorrow. I’m so bloody scared. I’m scared that he’ll get my children taken away. I’m scared that he’ll threaten me with a section.

I’m scared that he’ll look at me and see a huge fraud who just needs to shape up and pull herself together.

I need someone to come with me. I need a hand to hold. There’s no one. Ian is away in Glasgow with work. Everyone else is either working or has children at home.

I have to do it on my own.

People tell me to be honest, but when I’m honest bad things happen.

This is just a living, waking nightmare and I want it to be over.

Where now?

Not so long ago, Ian and I would have been distraught at the thought of spending nights away from each other.

This morning, he left for two nights in Glasgow.

He didn’t even say goodbye to me.

Okay, he did in the end. But it was after he’d kissed both of the children and was on his way downstairs with his suitcase.

When I asked him if he was going to say goodbye, he came back up, gave me a half-hearted peck on the top of the head, and left.

This evening, he phoned and straight away asked to speak to the children.

He didn’t want to speak to me.

It’s not even that he’s planning to phone and speak to me properly later, now that the kids are in bed. He’s out dining and drinking with his colleagues and he knows that I’ll be in bed by the time he gets back to his hotel.

It’s incontrovertible proof that he’s at the end of his tether with me. I mean, I knew it, really. We’ve had some very tough conversations lately about my depression and its consequences. They invariably end up with me in tears and drowning my sorrows, which makes him even angrier, understandably – but it all hurts so much that I don’t want to feel any more and drinking a bottle of wine helps with that, helps me get the sleep that won’t come otherwise, that deep, dreamless sleep that doesn’t refresh me in the slightest but blanks things out for a few hours.

I have broken us. I didn’t want to or mean to, but I have. And now I just don’t know what I’m meant to do.

Ups and downs and ups and downs

What’s REALLY hard to deal with at the moment is the unpredictability of my illness.

At the beginning of the week, I’d come to the conclusion that I was right back in the grips of depression. Everything was too much: working, sleeping, cooking, cleaning, reading, socialising, talking to Ian, everything.

Hence why I begged my editors for a respite from work – a reduction in what they wanted from me this week. And why I emailed my CPN and asked if I could see her this week. And why I cancelled everything social that wasn’t absolutely essential.

I was fighting seriously dark thoughts and foreseeing another period of being really, really unwell.

And then today – I’m fine.

Not just better than yesterday, but feeling pretty much normal. Instead of having been curled up on my bed since Katie’s bedtime, I’m downstairs, watching TV, being human. I’ve not done any dramatic outpourings of emotion on anyone today. I sat in the park for an hour and chatted to people. I’ve done work that I’d said I couldn’t do this week because I felt in the right mental space for it.

I’m thankful for it, I really am. But I’m also confused. What is happening to my moods that I can swing from suicidal to perfectly okay within the space of 24 hours?

Okay, so maybe part of it is *because* I’ve done the right things this week in giving myself the mental time and space I needed. But I’m sure that’s not the whole story. And it’s really unsettling veering from one extreme to the other like this.

Apart from anything else, I feel like a total fraud. Last Sunday I was in tears at church. I had people offering prayer, visits, all that stuff. Tomorrow, I’m going to walk into Bible study with those same people, completely back to normal. It makes me think that everyone is going to think I’m putting it on for attention.

I’m 100 per cent certain that I’m not bipolar as my good times are nowhere near mania. But I just don’t know what’s going on. It’s something to discuss with the psych next week, I know – and I must make myself do it, and not just say everything’s fine. I’ve no idea whether this is a normal part of recovery, whether it’s indicative of a different diagnosis, or what.

I just wish I could wake up in the morning knowing how I’m going to feel.

Facing up

It’s beginning to feel like what I’d hoped was a blip is in fact a proper downward spiral.

It’s not just that the sense of dread has settled over me; I’m also absolutely wiped out to the point that I can’t cook the kids a proper tea or put the washing away. We had people over for lunch yesterday and when they left I ended up curled up on my bed for two hours. Just getting up and into the shower this morning was a huge effort. I nearly cried when I realised I needed to unload the dishwasher.

It’s pathetic beyond belief.

The worst of it is that the children are noticing. I shouldn’t be surprised, really; they can’t really help but notice the contrast between how I was a month ago and how I am now. Tom keeps asking me if I’m okay. Katie, on the way to school, kept turning around and smiling at me with this worried little look in her eyes that made me realise she was desperately trying to make me feel better.

I need to stop this, I really do. Melodramatic though it sounds, I’m scared that I’m not going to get through it.

Today I’ve done two things that felt pretty terrifying but also necessary.

I’ve emailed both editors and asked if I can have the week off work. I can’t completely (unfortunately I didn’t have enough notice of losing the plot to allow for them to plan to cover me) but they have agreed that I can scale right back to take the pressure off a bit.

And I’ve texted the care co-ordinator to ask if I can see her this week.

I now have that sick feeling that I’ve done the wrong thing, that I’m a failure for not being able to cope with normal life. But I’m trying to tell myself that I’ve done the right thing. That maybe a week where I can take things slower will help to stop this slide before it gets any worse. That asking the professionals for help will stop me being such a burden on Ian and my friends.

It’s really hard, though. I look into the future and all I can see is myself trapped in this recurring cycle of feeling better for a few months then plummeting again.

It was so good to be feeling well. If only I could work out how to sustain it.

Struggling

Yesterday, I went to bed knowing I had to pick up my prescription from the chemist.

I decided I’d buy their OTC 32 tablet packet of paracetamol at the same time.

And then buy the same again from Co-op.

And again from M&S.

64 tablets failed me last time.

96 surely wouldn’t.

I didn’t.

But I wish I had.

What is depression, and what is real?

I just don’t know any more.

Am I imagining that people hate me, or is it true?

Am I overreacting to my son getting upset about school stuff and smashing his head against his bedroom wall, or is he starting out on the same self-harming path that I did at his age?

Am I reading too much into why a friend would rather cycle in the dark than get a lift with me?

Am I being over-protective when I’m upset about my son having to miss his entire break time because he missed out a full stop in his written work, or is he a lazy sod who deserves the punishment?

Objectivity is so hard when you feel like crap.

 

Thinking positive – or trying to

This weekend has been hard. I always struggle to be away from home when I’m not feeling well, and a weekend away seeing the parents was not what I needed.

By midnight on Friday I’d worked myself up into a total state about the visit and was absolutely certain that I couldn’t do it.

I did – but it was really difficult. Everyone has been so pleased that I’ve been feeling better so I felt under so much pressure to act normal.

I’m not sure I did a great job, but I did it.

I’m trying to find the positives in things like this, even though that doesn’t come easily.

This morning, I was meant to be meeting up with an old school friend, but she cancelled because her son wasn’t well.

Positive me told myself that it was probably a good thing as the day was looking hectic anyway and I was, truth be told, worrying that I’d bitten off more than I could chew.

Negative me thinks that the sick child was a handy excuse for her to avoid seeing me.

The thing that I’m finding it hardest to think positively about is Australia. The whole thing just terrifies me. I can barely cope with a weekend away from home at the moment. The prospect of three and a half weeks away, on the other side of the world, surrounded by people at all times, is massive.

Everyone was talking about it on Saturday evening and making plans, and I just don’t know how I’m going to get on the plane. I have visions of getting to the airport and having a huge breakdown.

I guess this is something I need to discuss with the doctor, see if I can get him to prescribe me some diazepam just to get me over that hurdle. Because as much as I want to be able to do this, I’m so scared that I’m going to let my family down.

Someone posted one of those memes on Facebook earlier, along the lines of ‘When things get so bad that I don’t know how I can endure them, I remind myself that I have a 100 per cent track record of getting through them so far.’

All good positive stuff. But I read things like that and think, well, I only have a 100 per cent track record because I got packed off to hospital and pumped full of antidote. I can’t really claim that as a victory.

I’m trying very hard to keep my head above the water but I’m pretty frightened at the moment. I can recognise lots of signs that things are beginning to spiral out of control: feelings of overwhelming guilt, of desperately needing support but then hating myself for being a burden when I ask for it. Disturbed sleep, thoughts of self-harm.

It’s hard to think positive thoughts when my brain is trying to do the opposite.