Ready or not…

I had my last CATT visit this morning. On Wednesday, I’m being discharged and will be back under the community mental health team.

I’m not sure how I feel about it.

By Wednesday, I’ll have been under their care for four weeks. That’s pretty much the maximum time allowed; it’s a short-term intervention, intended to bridge the gap between hospital and home, and I always knew that.

But I’m not sure I feel ready.

It’s not so much that I’m gaining anything in particular from the visits; there’s nothing they’ve been able to say or suggest to make me feel any better. But it’s been reassuring to know that someone was looking out for me. Someone was taking me seriously. Someone was acknowledging that I’m still unwell.

When they discharge me, I’m on my own.

Okay, that’s not strictly true. There’s my care co-ordinator, although, having been let down her on many occasions, I don’t feel at all certain that I could pick up the phone and say ‘help’ if I needed to. There’s the duty number and the mental health helpline. But there won’t be anyone checking in on me, making sure I’m keeping going, getting better rather than worse.

It’s a pretty lonely and isolating feeling, especially as it’s so hard for me to tell Ian, friends or family how I’m feeling, now that the crisis situation is over and everyone assumes I’m on the mend.

Am I on the mend? Well, the CATT nurse this morning asked whether I feel any better than when I was first out of hospital, and when I reflect on it, I know I must be.

Four weeks ago, I couldn’t have spent a day at Legoland. I couldn’t have gone to Sainsbury’s to buy a birthday card. I couldn’t even sit through church.

But on the other hand, I still feel there’s a long way to go before I’m anywhere near back to normal. I’m still using PRN meds every day, still exhausted, still going to bed before Tom, still getting into a state about the simplest things like cooking dinner.

And I’m still finding it very hard to feel glad that I was found on the riverbank that day, not even two months ago.

At my psychology appointment on Thursday, I was challenged to write a letter to myself listing all the reasons I mustn’t take my own life.

It’s something I don’t feel able to do yet, because if I do, I’ll have to face up to the fact that there WOULD be consequences of me not being here any more.

I don’t feel I’m in a place where I’m ready to let go of that possibility.

But despite those thoughts, despite the fact that every day feels like a mountain that has to be climbed, despite the ongoing urges to self-harm and worse, on Wednesday, I’ll be discharged.

It’s another step, the next step. And it’s coming, ready or not.

Exhausted

That pretty much sums up how I feel right now.

I was told when I left hospital that I needed to take things easy, not go straight back to life at 100mph.

But that’s easier said than done when you have children, are self-employed, and it’s half-term.

Wednesday, we got back from the Isle of Wight. Yesterday we went to Legoland. Today is Tom’s birthday party. The past few days have been a blur of unpacking and washing and catching up on work and baking cakes and shopping and filling party bags.

I’m so, so tired and feeling perilously close to breaking point.

I know I’m doing all the wrong things here, but I don’t know what other options I have.

I can’t let the kids spend all half-term glued to their screens.

I can’t let Tom’s birthday go by unmarked; as it is, the fully catered trampolining party is the easiest option.

I can’t just pretend work doesn’t exist.

I got through yesterday with PRN meds, no doubt more than I should have taken; that’s probably why I’m in such a fog today, despite 12 hours’ sleep.

I’ll be taking more to get through today, especially as it means seeing people who are going to want to talk about how I am.

Gravity Force is not the place to talk about my mental health, so I’ll have to put on make up and paste on that smile and pretend I’m doing fine, when I’m not, I’m not, I’m really not.

I want to spend the evening relaxing in the hot tub but I can tell already that I’m going to feel too tired and too damned low to even do that. That all I’ll want to do is take zopiclone and sleep sleep sleep.

And then next week, the kids go back to school, but that just means more work, more housework, more ferrying them around.

The lady from CATT told me off last week. Advised me to take some time out, go and stay with a friend for a few days so I could give myself a bit of space to recover.

She told me that if I carry on like this, I’m going to end up back in hospital.

I know she’s right, as I’m feeling more and more tired and ill by the day.

But what else can I do than keep on keeping on?

When you’re mentally ill on holiday

When I got out of hospital – not even three weeks ago, although it seems much longer – one of the first things we did was book a holiday for half-term.

It was a knee-jerk reaction to having been confined for the best part of a month; an attempt to buy ourselves some freedom and quality time.

It was a mistake.

The thing about being on holiday is that you’re not supposed to be depressed.

It’s obvious from the way people speak about it: ‘You’ll have a great time.’ ‘It’ll do you good.’ ‘Enjoy the rest.’

As if a few days in a different place is going to do more for your mental health than months and months of medication and appointments and therapy.

But it doesn’t work like that – and when it doesn’t, it just makes you feel even worse.

I KNOW I’m supposed to be enjoying myself. I KNOW I’m supposed to be having a fab time with my family.

But I just can’t do it.

At the moment, even going to the shop to buy milk is a big deal, so coming away from home, away from my own bed and my own comforts and my friends and my routine, away from CAT team visits and calls, was a mistake.

I’m not really managing very well at all.

Yesterday, I went to bed almost as soon we arrived here on the Isle of Wight. I took meds and was asleep before Katie went to bed and slept till 8 o’clock this morning.

It’d be fine if I felt better for it, but I don’t. I still feel exhausted, brittle, broken, vulnerable.

Good for nothing, essentially.

And I feel guilty, because I should be having a good time. Holidays are supposed to be fun. They’re supposed to be big enough to surmount anything else that’s going on in life.

I can’t message friends and tell them how I feel because a) they’re all fed up with my whinging and b) it’s just damned ungrateful.

It doesn’t help – although it could have done – that we’ve come to a place that we’ve visited many times before, a place that holds lots of happy memories.

Comparing now with then has just reinforced how dreadful I feel.

Even the sky is dark this time; no spectacular island sunsets to be seen.

I know I should have known better than to attempt a holiday when I’m still all too close to crisis point.

I know I should have accepted that it was going to be difficult.

I know I should cut myself some slack for not feeling well and wishing I was home.

But I just feel so very bad about it.

In 48 hours we’ll be home. The rest of half-term won’t be easy but at least I’ll be in my own space, in touch with the CAT team, surrounded by home comforts.

I should try to make the most of the time we have left while holding onto the fact that it’s not for long.

But the fact remains that no one should be depressed on holiday, and I am.

I can’t even get this right.

Uphill all the way

Sometimes it just feels so very hard to keep going.

Most of the time, it’s just a matter of gritting my teeth and getting through it.

But today it’s feeling incredibly difficult not to just give up.

Today I’ve learnt that although I can go back to organising craft for Hotshots, I can’t be considered a part of the children’s team.

Diocese policy, apparently. Despite the fact that the social services investigation has been closed with no action required, and despite the fact that nothing has changed my DBS clearance, I’m too big a risk.

I can be there, I can cut out bits of paper, but I can’t tick people off on the register any more, I can’t welcome people (and where does that end, exactly? If I’m there first and say ‘hello’ to people, is that welcoming, or just being polite?), and I’m absolutely not allowed to be on my own with kids or have any responsibility for them.

I understand (sort of). But I feel completely heartbroken about it.

I’m not allowed to serve in one of the few ways I know. I’m not considered safe around people. And I feel even more marginalised in church terms than ever before.

I don’t consider myself a risk to my own children, let alone anyone else’s. But in the eyes of the Diocese, clearly there’s a sliding scale of how sinful we’re allowed to be (despite the fact that all sin is equal, in Biblical terms) and I’ve passed the cut-off point.

I feel like a freak.

Tomorrow, we’re meant to be spending the whole day at a wildlife park with Ian’s family. I’ve told Ian how difficult it’s going to be, and apparently he’s spoken to his mum and she will understand if I don’t come.

But I spoke to her this morning, and I don’t think it’s quite as okay as he made it out to be.

I feel under massive pressure to be there. I’m the ‘problem one’ of the family anyway, the one who doesn’t fit in, the fat ugly daughter-in-law, the one who’s not good enough. I don’t think I can cope with providing another reason to be hated – but I don’t think I can cope with a whole day of being smiley and sociable and pretending to be well, either.

Ian says ‘if you really can’t come…’ and that piles on the guilt even more. Because of course I ‘can’ come. There’s nothing physically wrong with me. There’s no reason why I can’t take all the anti-anxiety meds and paste a smile on and be there, even if I feel like complete crap for the entire day.

But introducing that word ‘can’ makes it very clear that he, they, everyone thinks I have a choice about this, and if I’m not there, it’s because I’m choosing not to be.

Both of these cases – the church thing and the family thing – have made me realise even more clearly how big a difference there is still in the perception of physical and mental illnesses.

If I had recently been in hospital with a diabetic crisis, no one would consider me too risky a prospect to be involved with church work.

If I woke up tomorrow hypoglycaemic, no one would judge me for not being able to make the family day out.

But because it’s brain not body, it’s different. It becomes risk. It becomes choice. It becomes not trying hard enough.

It was kind of validating yesterday when the psychologist described me as severely depressed; it reassured me that this is real and it’s serious. But today, that diagnosis feels like a millstone.

I want to stamp my feet and cry and say IT’S NOT MY FAULT! Just because it’s in my head rather than below the neck, it’s not my fault!

Oh, and just as a little added extra, the CATT doctor decided to increase my antidepressant a couple of days ago. But for the past two days, my blood pressure has been high, so I’m now not allowed to increase the meds.

It’s a tiny thing, but I was clinging onto that medication increase as a little bit of hope, something that could possibly make a difference to how I’m feeling.

Now that has been taken away, too.

So yes, everything feels bleak right now. Seriously bleak. Hard to keep going bleak.

It’s becoming more and more difficult to have faith in things getting better.

 

It’s so hard to say ‘help’

I feel dreadful.

Okay, I know I’ve felt dreadful for the past six weeks or so. I felt dreadful when I went into hospital and I’ve felt dreadful since I came out. But today I’m feeling really, really dreadful.

I went to the post office earlier to send a parcel – and I won’t even go into how hard it was to make that small, simple trip – and my eyes drifted to the shelf of first aid supplies and medications inside the door, to the packets of paracetamol neatly lined up there, calling to me.

I considered it for a moment, a moment too long, before I got myself together and left, drove straight home before my thoughts got out of control.

I stopped myself, but I knew in that moment that I need help.

But help is so hard to ask for.

The obvious people to call are the CAT team. But their phone is going to voicemail. They’re not due to visit today; in fact, I don’t know when – or even if – they’re next visiting at all. At yesterday’s visit they said they’d ask the doctor to see me and would phone to tell me when that would happen, but no one has called.

I can’t reach out to friends again. I already feel like the hugest burden on them all. I’m doing the opposite of what I should be doing and trying to put them off speaking to me, seeing me, because I just see myself as this big problem in their lives, a dead weight, taking everything and giving nothing.

I’m shooting myself in the foot because I know that just having someone to listen and be with me would help me cope with these scary, out of control feelings, but I can’t keep doing this to them.

The same applies to Ian. He needs to be able to live his life, go to work, play table tennis and football, without me always being on his mind.

So now I’m sitting here and I don’t know what to do or where to turn next. I’ll try the CAT team again. But in a couple of hours I have to get the kids from school, take them swimming, pretend to be okay, pretend that I’m not fighting the feelings that tell me to surrender, give in, see things through this time.

I need help, I know. But it’s so hard to admit it.

Plodding on

Everything feels like such a struggle at the moment.

The CAT team came out this morning and I had to admit to slipping up over the weekend.

I self-harmed – not badly – but still.

And as soon as you say that to CAT, alarm bells start to ring.

Suddenly I’m ‘high risk’ again.

Then I get told off.

‘Have you looked at the anxiety booklet we gave you last week? Why not? Is it because you don’t think it would help?’

Why not? Because I’m exhausted. Because my brain is full of fog. Because I’m using my scant reserves of concentration for the work that can’t be put on hold just because I’m not feeling well.

They’re going to get the doctor out to review me. But what’s the point? I already know what they’ll say. My problems are all psychological. Changing my medication won’t help.

We talked about my psychology assessment on Thursday and how I feel it’s become a line drawn in the sand, that when I cross it, everyone is expecting me to be Better.

The CAT guy agreed that it won’t instantly make me better, but apparently it should give me Hope.

He pointed out that I’ve been unwell before and recovered, so I should also have Hope that I can again.

But when I’ve been unwell previously, it hasn’t culminated in blue lights and motorway bridges and being hospitalised under the threat of section. This time, unwell has reached whole new heights or depths or whatever I should call it.

I have no prior experience of recovering from things being this bad, and it’s becoming increasingly hard to believe in the prospect of recovery.

In my better moments, I try to accept that this is God’s plan, and that it doesn’t actually matter if I never recover in this earthly life as I have the promise of a new brain and body in Heaven.

But at other times, I seriously doubt my ability to keep living like this for however many more years.

I know it’s a sinful thought, and that I should have enough faith to get me through even if things don’t get any better.

That makes me feel even worse.

I also feel guilty for feeling on my own in this, but I do. My head may know that God is with me, but my heart is struggling to feel it. And actually, what I want and need right now is someone to sit beside me, hug me, hold my hand.

God’s arms might be around me, but I can’t feel them. I need an actual human being, someone who actually cares.

But already, this period is becoming something ‘past’ in people’s minds, even though to me, it still feels very ‘present.’

When I’m up and showered and dressed and doing the school run and work and swimming lessons and cooking dinner, no one realises how much I’m struggling, and having used up so much of their time and resources during my hospitalisation, I don’t like to say.

No one knows that I need to go out to the shop and buy a birthday card, and I’m so anxious about the big wide world that it feels impossible.

No one knows that I’m dreading the few days away we’ve booked for half-term, that I want to cancel it, that I don’t think I can cope with being away from home.

No one knows that I want to book a massage but am scared that I’d freak out and embarrass myself by having to leave halfway through.

No one knows. It’s lonely. I’m lonely. I’m scared.

 

 

The deadline

It’s become very obvious today that the deadline for my post-hospital recuperation has past.

A week has gone by: time to snap out of it and start functioning again.

It’s in stark contrast to what Ian said yesterday.

Then, he told me I could take all the meds today, stay in bed as long as I needed.

But today, he was on my case from the moment I opened my eyes, bringing me tea, asking me again and again if I was going to get up and have a shower.

So I am, and I have, and I’m losing it.

To him, it may look as if I haven’t done anything this week. But from where I’m standing, I’ve tried SO BLOODY HARD.

Okay, I’ve been going to bed early, but other than that – and, by default, him having to coax Tom into the shower and into bed – I really don’t think I’ve inconvenienced him at all.

He’s been to work as normal. He played football last night. I didn’t make him come to the secondary school tour with me. I didn’t cry off any school runs. I haven’t made him miss out on anything, change plans, make decisions based on my health.

But obviously I haven’t done enough, and that’s why I’ve been chivvied out of bed and very clearly made to understand that enough is enough.

To me, though, it feels as if the deadline has come way too soon. I’m struggling hugely today. The negative thoughts are overwhelming. The answer – short-term – is to take meds, hide away and sleep, but it’s been made clear that that’s not an option.

While Ian is telling me this, everyone else is telling me a different story.

I’ve tried really hard not to burden my friends with messages this week, but when I have, they’ve told me to take my time, rest when I need to, that I don’t have to do anything on my own.

I do, though, because no one is here for me any more, no one is walking beside me and holding my hand, now that the crisis of suicide attempt and hospital admission has past.

The CAT people, when they’ve been round, have told me not to push myself too hard, to go easy on myself, but how can I when, in everyone else’s eyes, I should be back to normal.

I’m tired. I’m lonely. I’m sad. And I feel really unwell.

But the deadline has past and so it’s back to business as usual. Until I crash again.

And then what?

One week

It feels like a lot more than a week (and a day) since I got out of hospital.

Already, the whole experience, the whole of September and the beginning of October, is beginning to feel unreal.

And a week on, the ‘just got out of hospital’ excuse feels like it’s wearing a bit thin.

If I’m being kind to myself, I can see that I have achieved things this week.

I’m back at work, have kept on top of daily deadlines and have written five articles.

I’ve survived on my own all week, with Ian at work, and got the children everywhere they needed to be, on time and with the right things.

I’m on top of the washing, have cooked meals for the kids, and although the house isn’t spotless, it’s just about clean and tidy enough.

I managed – after an abortive attempt on Monday – to do a secondary school visit with Tom yesterday.

Small achievements, yes, but achievements nonetheless.

But on the other hand, I feel useless, hopeless, pathetic.

I’m still struggling hugely to get out; the three hours taken up by the school tour yesterday was the longest I’ve been out of the house (or hospital) since the beginning of September.

They were hard, so hard that by the time the tour had finished, I was shaking and so desperate to get home that I couldn’t even stop at the Co-op for milk on the way back.

I’m still good for nothing by the time Ian gets home in the evening, and going more or less straight to bed.

I’m yet to muster the courage to face people, avoiding Bible study and Hotshots.

I’m still feeling far too reliant on PRN meds, meds that turn the volume of the world down a bit, make everything feel quieter and fuzzier and less intense.

I *know* that I can’t carry on like this indefinitely. At some point, I have to rejoin the world, stop using ‘I’ve been in hospital’ as an excuse.

But the thing is, nothing has really changed. Being in hospital kept me safe at crisis point, but it didn’t do anything to tackle or treat the illness. My symptoms, physical and mental, are no different from when I went in.

Next week I have my first psychology assessment. Everyone seems to have latched onto that as the answer, the solution, the thing that’s going to make me better and help me get back to ‘normal,’ whatever that may be.

But it’s not going to work in one appointment, is it?

And yet it feels like it’s being set up as the turning point, the point where the CAT visits will probably stop, where it’s considered that I’m ‘being treated’ and therefore can start living again.

I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to use my depression as a lame excuse for not doing anything, for being lazy, for opting out of things that I should be doing.

I have to face people at some point, and I know that the longer I leave it, the harder it will be – but I don’t feel physically or mentally strong enough to do it yet.

My hospital admission has made me feel different. Properly mad, rather than just run-of-the-mill depressed. An outsider. Other.

And, yes, ashamed. That’s probably the biggest barrier of them all to me overcoming this massive fear of getting back into the world.

I’m bitterly ashamed of who I am.

 

 

Home alone

The return to normality continues with Ian back at work for the first full day since I got out of hospital.

It’s nearly 2pm; I’m more than halfway through my day on my own.

I’ve done the school run, done a few hours’ work – only emailing and editing, but work all the same – hung out the washing and unloaded the dishwasher.

And now I’m struggling.

Maybe it’s having been on my own for six hours. Maybe it’s because I told the CAT team they didn’t need to come over today (possibly not my best decision ever). Maybe it’s anxiety about the upcoming school run and then the stress of swimming lessons: never my favourite activity. Maybe I’m just tired.

But it’s feeling pretty tough. The feelings of bleakness, hopelessness, are creeping up and wrapping themselves around me.

What can I do? Well, not much.

I can’t take a diazepam and still be able to drive the kids to the swimming pool.

I can’t skip swimming without disappointing them and making myself feel even more of a let-down than I am already.

I could call Ian home from work but I’m a grown woman with responsibilities; I shouldn’t and won’t ask him to come and take over just because I can’t be bothered to carry on.

So I guess I just keep going. Grit my teeth, plod through to the end of the day, to 6pm when he gets home.

I know how ridiculous it is to be finding normal life so hard. I don’t WANT it to be like this. I want to be a proper, functioning mother/writer/wife.

But I still feel so unwell. It’s almost as if the world is turned up too high, too bright, too loud. I feel so raw and vulnerable. I want to hibernate, to take all the meds and escape into oblivion.

I should be glad to be at home, and in some ways, I am.

But in other ways, it was so much easier when I was in hospital, when all my responsibilities and duties had been taken off my hands, when I didn’t have to pretend I could cope, when it was okay to spend all day curled up on my bed in a tranquilliser haze.

I know I have to take each day at a time, but for all that everyone says to take it easy, go slowly, I do have to function.

Today, that’s feeling really hard.

Guilt

Despite the fact that when the crisis team came out yesterday – part of the plan for the next few weeks – they pointed out that I should try to think of this time as like being in hospital still, I feel really bad about how hard I’m finding it to get back to real life.

Yesterday, I was full of good intentions. I started the day well; I got up and did the school run, then went to church to set up for Hotshots, which I was also planning to go to.

But then it started to go downhill.

I couldn’t find it within myself to stay for Bible study; it felt too hard to face people (stupidly, given that everyone knows what’s been going on, and has been entirely supportive).

I couldn’t go to Hotshots; I said I’d go and pick the kids up afterwards and help tidy up, but I couldn’t even manage that.

By the evening, I was a complete mess. Restless, unable to settle, heart racing, desperate to talk to someone but equally desperate not to bother anyone.

I lost it with Tom for coming downstairs and ‘hassling me’ while Ian was at football. He wasn’t hassling me; he just wanted to hang out.

I even shouted at Katie for waking up needing a tissue.

Today isn’t going much better.

It was 11.30am by the time I managed to get out of bed and into the shower.

I’ve made tomorrow’s lunch and cleaned the bathroom, but that’s a fraction of the things I should be doing.

The thing I should be doing most of all is spending time with the children, and yet that’s the hardest task of all.

I love them so much, but I’m exhausted – despite 10 days of doing nothing but resting and sleeping. I have no patience. No energy. I’m not giving them even the tiniest amount of the love, time and attention they need. I’m leaving everything to Ian and I feel awful about it, but it’s just all too much.

I saw the look of confusion and distress on Tom’s face when I blew up at him last night.

That’s not fair and not right.

Neither is it fair or right that Katie’s little heart is breaking over the fact that I can’t mother her properly.

As as I was saying goodbye when they were leaving to go out earlier – needless to say, I haven’t gone with them – she laid her head on me and asked, ‘Why do you sound sad?’

Yesterday, as I was helping her with her pyjamas, she put her arms around me and said, ‘I can’t live without you.’

The thought of what I’m doing to them kills me. They deserve so much better than this, so much more than I can give them.

On Monday morning, I have to go and look around a potential secondary school for Tom as I missed the open day.

I know I can’t jeopardise his entire secondary education just because I can’t face an hour’s visit, but I have no idea how I’m going to get myself there.

This is pathetic. Honestly, truly pathetic.

And yet I can’t seem to do anything about it.

I’m home alone now and I don’t know what to do with myself. The crisis team aren’t coming out today, as we figured it would be too awkward with the kids around, but I’m seriously regretting that decision.

I could call them, but they’d just tell me to take it easy, have a bath, read a book.

It feels beyond that.

I feel totally and utterly despairing. Bleak. Lonely. I’m trying to pray but all I can say is, ‘Help, please help.’

Things have never felt so hard.