dependence.

So I haven’t written much on my blog lately. In all honesty, it’s because I’m having quite a difficult time right now. My emotions are everywhere, I can’t keep up with eating because I have no money for food half the time. I wound up in hospital after yet another overdose. There are things going on within my family that are really difficult, a lot of which involve my brother, and when he goes, who is there to help me? My brother is my safe place. In mindfulness and meditation more generally, thinking of a safe place to try to calm your mind is thinking of a safe location. For me, that’s alone, in a mac, with bare feet and legs, writing in my diary on a stoney beach, somewhere in England, during a storm. The rain and wind whipping up my hair and the sea, whipping against my skin. That’s just in my mind. In reality, it’s Joe. He ‘s there for me always and when he melts down, I melt down even more.

I’ve been actively suicidal for about a week, cutting holes in my body, drinking, taking drugs, etc.. I’ve been falling apart. It’s partly to do with my attitudes towards sex, which is entirely fucked. Being sexually abused for years makes you feel like you are nothing unless you are fucking someone, I sleep around and it means I exist. If I didn’t, I’m nothing. Logically, I know it’s isn’t true, but emotionally, I don’t. However, if I can make myself that image first, no one can do it for me. Another thing is that I’m poor. So poor I can’t keep up with my friends. And now I think I feel jealousy and fear towards them. I’m losing them. I can’t go to their birthdays and no one ever seems to enjoy my company. I feel like all my friends are gone and all think I’m a lazy waster with no ambition or hope. I’m jealous because they are better than me, and I’m scared because I’m losing them. I feel completely isolated. I’m also starting to get back into uni, and that in itself is hard. Working on my MA again is a lot for my brain to take in. It’s doable, but just hard. And my motivation is low because use every time I think about my life, I want to die. I’m not safe.

So obviously, because this makes all the sense, I decided I could have no friends and everyone had to go away because they all hate me and I need help and needed to shout really loudly so that everyone would come and help me. So I blocked all my friends on Facebook, and anyone that linked us, so they’d all think I’d run off dramatically. This, by the way, is a ridiculous idea. Telling everyone to fuck off doesn’t get you attention, it’s gets people fucking off. Just praying someone realises that what I’m doing means I need help is believing in blind faith alone. I don’t have blind faith in anything else in the world, just about how to ask for help. So shout and scream and text people to tell them I’m leaving and telling everyone they hurt me, or just plain blocking (which they don’t notice anyway). Rationally, this is ridiculous.

The thing is, I think I’m ok when I know what I need. I ask, and it’s fine. Now though, I don’t know what I need. I don’t know what will help. I know I can’t mind read, but that means that anyone could lie. Everyone could hide whatever they want from me. That’s why, however an obvious choice this may be, my super power would be mind reading. Not knowing is the hardest, and sometimes all people can do is listen to me tell them their wrong until I run out of steam. Then I need people to sit with me and watch silly television till I fall asleep, just so I’m safe. I don’t really know how to articulate my emotions and I’m kinda sure that no one can fix them but me. Sucks right?

So on Friday, I cried a lot, threatened to kill myself and wound up with friends who couldn’t fix it because how can they?

Which all kinda leads to my point – dependance and attachment in BPD. I think that a common part of BPD includes unhealthy attachments to people. You need them and their attention more than anyone else does, or at least on some subconscious level you do. You need them to belong to you in a sense. You don’t want to own them, but for them to be yours. For them to invite you to everything, for them to contact you the most, for them to be there when you need and never pick someone over you. It’s ridiculous and irrational, but I think it’s true. All I can say is what’s true for me, but I constantly feel like people are like mice or something. I’m always trying to keep them in my shoebox, but they are always trying to escape.

So you cry for help in any way you know how. Whether that’s sitting alone, self-harming, hoping that maybe someone will help, but then hiding it anyway so the whole affair was futile; screaming at people about how much you hate them and ruin their lives (again, futile); or hurling stuff around, breaking things and ripping things to shreds (notice the futility? It’s a pattern).

Forming healthy relationships is hard for me, and maybe it’s hard for other people with BPD. I don’t know. I can’t speak for everyone. What I can say that I’m not sure any of my relationships are healthy. I adore or despise people. I will listen to someone tell me they need space, then fall to the floor and literally beg, holding on to their legs. I’ve covered rooms in blood so that people will stay. I’ve also ignored people, glared at them, never explaining why. I will sit alone for weeks because I hate everyone. The middle ground doesn’t really exist for me and I think it exists for everyone else. The part where not everyone is your best friend or your worst enemy. I know that exists, just I don’t know how to access it. So I cry a lot and cut myself to shit and take overdoses which wind up with me in hospital. Maybe I should have paid more attention in interpersonal effectiveness skills groups.

Right now, people are hard and I need them and I need them to not judge me for getting fat and ugly or being a waste of space or living on benefits. I need them to understand me in a way that I don’t. I suck at understanding myself and I suck at listening to others opinions. I need a lot of opposing ideas to come together and make sense out of who and what I am. I need to be more than obsolete. I need to stop being a moody cunt, but let’s not lie, that’s never going to happen.

hospital wards.

So I said I’d try to do blog posts from the past and from now. The last one was a now one, and this one is about inpatient. I’ve had a pretty bad little while so have put of posting this. It’s a kinda sad post, and I didn’t want to think about the sad. Re-reading it, it’s ridiculous how emotionally detached I become when trying to explain how I’ve felt. Everything is a load of facts and logic. I was told by a social worker that it’s actually a problem for me. Emotionally connecting to events. I emotionally feel things and think other things. The emotions and the facts don’t connect. I duno if that’s true, but this is from early December 2013. It’s probably not that enjoyable, but it’s there to read if you want.

So I tried to kill myself. A shit load of diazepam and a shit load of alcohol. I wound up in A&E, in and out of consciousness. When I was medically stable, I talked to the psych staff in the majors ward and was asked to go to an inpatient mental health ward.

After 13 hours in A&E and several instances of self harm (some requiring stitches), I was put in an ambulance and moved to a mental hospital. There was another girl there with her Mum, but I didn’t want anyone to come with me. I wanted to be alone. She looked scared though, so I’m glad she had someone. I was scared too.

I’d already hidden razor blades in places where no one found them. And lighters. When they searched me, they found nothing. I gave them one one blade to look genuine, but kept the other eight. I’m not going to go into hiding places because it might give ideas, but I had them on me, as well as a stocks of first aid stuff from A&E, so I could still self harm there, and I did. Even though I was on every fifteen minutes, then moved up to twenty four hour supervision after I spoke with a consultant. They tried to take my shoe laces and the strings out of my hoodies, but I convinced them style was too important to me, even though I knew it kept me the option of killing myself.

It was terrifying to start with. Being searched. Being made to wait with people you’ve never met. I met this great BPD girl though whom I’m starting to make friends with. She made me feel safe. I respect her for that, regardless of her issues, but I guess that’s because they are basically mine. She’s safe though. And made me feel safer.

The first ward I was on was the first with a bed, although technically I shouldn’t have been there due to me not fitting into its catchment area. The ward itself wasn’t so bad. The beds were a bit uncomfy, but it was clean and you had your own en suite bathroom. You could still have electronic devices like phones and laptops, though the chargers were kept in a locked office and everything had to be charged in there so you had no access to cords. The lack of music was depressing, especially as it’s one of my main self soothe techniques and I was seriously distressed. My allocated nurse was lovely and really helped me with my orientation and said she’d work to keep me on that ward as I’d find it distressing to move. She also told me that if they did move me, she’d put on my notes that I’d need access to music for soothing anxiety and my macbook for uni purposes. Although we weren’t allowed lighters, we could smoke every hour, and often in between because the nurses were pretty safe. I began to feel I could be ok spending a week in that ward.

Then on my second night, whilst I was sleeping, a nurse came in and told me a bed had become available in the ward that took in those from my catchment area and I had five minutes to pack up and move. I was distressed, tired and crying. My lovely allocated nurse had gone home so I couldn’t even look to her for help. Luckily, the girl I arrived with and the girl I’d made friends with had to be moved too, so I wasn’t alone in my shock and distress.

Once I got down to the other ward, everything got worse. They took my phone, my iPad, my macbook, my 3DS. All because they had cameras. They also took my make up because most of it had mirrors in it, and my perfumes because they came in glass bottles. They wanted my shoe laces and hoodie chords. All the time I was crying because I though my original nurse was supposed to help me in this scenario and I was tired and confused. I can admit my behaviour was quite extreme, but still, what do you expect from someone in an inpatient mental health ward. I asked to see the consultant because I couldn’t comprehend what was going on, but he just shouted at me “Rules are rules. You are causing too much distress. Either you discharge yourself right now, or I’ll discharge you right now.” So I got my shit together and left.

Having no where to go, I sat in the hospital courtyard crying. I ended up self harming to try and make it better, but it didn’t help. I just wanted to die. I watched the blood pool on the pavement and felt the release, but still just craved for it all to be over. I can honestly say I was on the cusp of running away. Getting out of London, maybe to the sea.

Luckily, I saw someone I knew from the Home Treatment Team (HTT) who’d always been safe to me. I called him over and he gave me a big hug and took me to A&E. I was hardly there any time, but this great guy had made some calls and got my family to agree to take me home and to be under HTT care whilst I was still in “crisis”. My Daddy came and got me. My family had tidied my room and bought me comfy pjs and tried to make me feel homely. I just wanted to go to sleep. It’s hard to sleep on a Valium detox though. It’s three thirty am right one and I’m still going.

Since being home, I’ve been seeing the HTT and they’ve been giving me the appropriate detox for my addiction so I can’t hoard tablets. They still don’t seem to have picked up on the fact I have enough aspirin to kill myself. I’ve gone back to self harming once or twice a day and am plagued by suicidal thoughts. No hope. No belief. Each day is a challenge to not just do it and get this all over with, but as I’ve said before, I have my thread of logic. I just don’t know how long that thread can last before it snaps.

The HTT are beginning to worry about not being able to keep me safe, especially as my self harm is escalating in severity and quantity and I am still actively suicidal. For now, they think it’s best to keep me in the community, but they are definitely considering putting me back into the inpatient ward from hell. It’s talked about most times they visit.

I don’t know what tomorrow holds. Maybe it’ll be great, but it’ll probably just be more of the same. I don’t believe it can be better.

supported accommodation.

So I’ve decided that, at least for a bit, I’m going to alternate between posts of where I am right now and posts from before. The last one was obviously from October and times have changed a lot since then. I’m in a way better place and right now isn’t the worst.

Right now, I’m lying in my own little garden at the back of my own little flat. It’s sunny and I look like the 80s happened all over me. I have some wine, a good book and a blanket. And I’m preparing my bee grenade. It’s summery and nice and I’m in a good mood. Today is a good day, although I am a little bored. So this is me trying to be productive. After this I have something really important and even more productive to do so I’ve gotta get on it. But I’m going to try keep to my blog for a bit as I think it’s important for me to focus my energies on creating things as well as just absorbing them. There was a long time when I stopped creating. I used to write in my journal everyday, blog a few times a week, sketch, draw and create digital art and it mostly just stopped. I think the only thing I created in like a year was like a picture of a dying rose and a girl in tears. I guess all consuming, unhealthy relationships which turn your life upside down do that to you.

Things have really changed though. Firstly, I love my little flat. I’m so house proud it is unreal. Maybe I’ll do a post of pictures in a bit, but right now, my camera and laptop are inside and the sun is happening. It took ages to get this flat sorted, but now I’m in a self contained, supported little home. And it has rooms. Multiple rooms. And a hall. I lined all my shoes up in the hall so that everyone who visits will see how awesome my shoes are. And I have nice, colourful things all around. And I like to put flowers on my little dining table that I don’t think I have ever used.

Supported housing is weird. I had housing issues for a while, so I organised seeing my psychiatrist at the CRT (previously the CMHT, now the Community Recover Team) who referred me to the social work part of the team. It took weeks, but I got this awesome social worker called Helen. She took one look at me and said that council housing was probably not a good first step, but that I should probably wind up in low support accommodation. Then there was a suicide attempt, but that’ll but in a different, from before post, and she changed her recommendation to high support. I was put at the top of the list and then it was a waiting game.

Anyway, she left and I wound up with a new social worker called Bonnie. A flat came up in medium support and she recommended I go for it, so I did and here I am a couple of months later. Bonnie’s left too now, so I’ve got a new care co-ordinator called Shagufta who’s an occupational therapist. I don’t really know what they do, but hopefully she won’t leave and hopefully she’s nice. I’m meeting her on May 23rd so I guess we’ll wait and see.

Back to the flat though. It’s nice. Its on the ground floor, at the back of the building, so I can see the garden through my windows. It’s in a block of five flats, all supported for people with mental health problems. I’ve not met anyone from my block yet, though I’ve seen two of them. One is really hot and I saw him this morning all pretty and in the hall and topless. He knows he’s pretty though and that annoyed me. The other guy is really old and wears a bowler hat. He lives in the flat next door so I can sometimes see him through the windows at the front of the block. He does not look like he’s having any fun. Trust. Oh and there’s these two brothers, one of whom lives here, who always leave the back gate open and I see in the garden all the time. They walk past my windows and look in like the alien from signs when they’re filming the kids birthday party and it comes out the grass. Creepy. I’m sure they’re not. Maybe I just need net curtains. But then I won’t see the daisies.

At first, I was really apprehensive about the supported aspect. I think this was mainly due to fear of the unknown. I mean, I know how to cook and clean and all that, so I didn’t know what help they could be. It’s not like they can stop me self harming or prevent me from doing any damage to myself. Actually though, I really think it’s for the best. I have to floating support workers, a main one called Angela and another one called Miuri. Angela is a bit odd. She’s got a kinda fleeting thought process that she likes to speak out load, but she’s nice and is actually really helpful. She comes to my CPAs, doctors appointments and things, helps me sort out bills etc., and makes sure that I’m comfortable, safe and doing ok. I don’t think she can tell if I’m safe or doing ok, but she can help make sure I’m comfy. Like if something breaks, she helps me out. I like her a lot, even though she’s a bit ditzy. And she swears a lot, which I like, but she always reprimands herself for. Miuri and me mostly just chat. We talk about cooking and hair and boys and I teach her recipes and things. She’s such a sweetie. I think they’ve only seen me freak out once, even though I’ve freaked out way more than that, I just don’t tell them. Maybe I should, but I don’t see how that’d help. I duno.

The one big downside to all of this is that I’m flat out broke all the time. Bills on your own are hard. At uni, everything was split six ways, but all alone, it’s not. And I’m still waiting for my PIP assessment so god knows if my income will improve at all. Benefits is not an easy life, but I’m still pretty unstable, I’m still a student and I’ve still got a long way to go, so no one seems to be thinking a job so soon is the way I should be going. I’m on housing benefit, ESA, council tax benefit (though I still have to pay them £15 pound a month – you’re not exempt unless you’re on PIP) and it’s still hardly enough to get by. Money bums me out.

But do you know what doesn’t bum me out? Where I live. Not just the flat either. I love the area. It’s got a proper community vibe. There’s a lot of social housing around here. Lots of estates, lots of streets of council houses. All around this one, proper high street. You can achieve really good chicken. Like painfully good. And it’s got really nice shops and things. I love it here. I don’t want to move, though I’ll have to in a year or two. Supported housing isn’t forever, you either move to higher, lower or no support after a one or two year tenancy.

All in all, life isn’t exactly easy, but things have really improved. I love putting little decorations up and making myself a little home. Living alone can be hard, but for me, I think it’s worth the effort. I don’t have to hide away, deal with unwanted advances from housemates, feel like I’m excluded r from my own home. This is now my home and I love it. I couldn’t ask for more. I can have who I want over, when I want. Or not. It’s great.

I’m lucky in some ways. A lot of people need social housing and right now, there’s a social housing crisis in London. I’m not lucky to have been put in the position where I got accommodation so quickly, but a lot of people aren’t deemed vulnerable enough to even get emergency accommodation in the borough. The right to buy scheme means that there are less council houses ever year, affordable housing and local authority housing isn’t being built quick enough and people wind up waiting in the system for years before they can get any help all. It’s pretty fucked. From here, once my tenancy is up, I’ll be one of the top priorities for council or LHA flats, and although I’m seriously grateful for that, I can’t help but feel horrible for all the people that don’t get the same opportunities because they’re not “sick” enough or don’t have children or haven’t yet been made street homeless, but are waiting on pending evictions. The system is broken and, although it has worked for me, the housing crisis is out of control. I’ve been unlucky enough to be prioritised, but it just gives me guilt for all the people that are so much more unlucky that they aren’t.

Fucking welfare cuts. Fucking welfare cap. Fucking Conservative bastards making those with hard lives have to fight all that much harder. Fucking Atos and their stupid assessments. Britain should be proud of its welfare state, not undermining it at every chance. And don’t even get me started on NHS cuts. The affects of that in my foundation trust for mental health have been uncontrollably damaging. But that’ll be for another post.

I’ll get off my soap box now. I’m going to go back to reading a beautiful book (The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman) and listening to some beautiful music (The Blank Project by Neneh Cherry and produced by Four Tet).

Hope this wasn’t super boring.

Lovelove x.

 

the worst month of my life.

I wrote this in October 2013, so it’s a bit backdated, but I guess it gives a quick overview of where I’ve been and, my mental health history for anyone that might read this and not want to track back and starts to show how I got where I am I guess. Hopefully it’s not too self indulgent.

Ok so maybe this isn’t quite the worst month of my life, but it’s definitely top five. I think it’s actually quite hard to tell sometimes just what was the worst thing ever, especially in the moment. Loads of things are awful. Bereavement sucks. Being dumped sucks. Not having enough money to buy the shower gel you really wanted sucks. Maybe when you’re really old and looking back at your life you work it out. All I know is that this month has been monumentally tragic, even in comparison to a lot of my other awful times. It’s almost laughable, if it wasn’t me, In this post, I’m going to explain why.

Within the month of October 2013, I’ve been dumped by a boy I loved (who had the emotional maturity of a grapefruit), who I then got back together with for a total of four days, only to be dumped again and have him steal my pitiful amount of money. I then made that fantastic choice of fucking him, just to let him tell me how much I suck and how crazy and sad I am. Followed by him leaving the country. My housing situation is tenuous I think. Some major disagreements with the family led to me living with said boy, which has now left me living half with my family, which is difficult for them as much as for me, and living half with a drug dealer who can set me up with some tasks when I’m more than my average broke. Being broke should go on this list, but that’s pretty much a permanent. My treatment has increased – I’m now, I’m in treatment for mental health problems almost every day and I’m being offered NHS funded private rehab for at least three months. All of which means I have to face the highly likely prospect of taking yet another year out of finishing the one year masters degree I’m already in my fourth year of. Even so, I’m still barely coming to terms with the fact that I have something labelled “complex needs” by essentially all health and social care workers. This is not exactly how I imagined my life would be at 24.

Getting where I am right now has been a painfully long process. In reality, everyone’s life is just a painfully long process from birth to wherever they are now I guess. I could start my story in childhood, which my therapist says probably was invalidating and hindered my emotional development or some next drama, but it’s not important. I had a nothing but lovely childhood. My conscious awareness of some sort of emotional issue probably started in my teens. At around 13, I started drinking, smoking, getting high, liking boys and self-harming. Self-harm at that point wasn’t weird. My friends all did it too, I just took it further, and never really stopped. I think looking back, I probably was a little more nervous and a little unhappier than my peers, but at the time I wasn’t emotionally capable of looking outside my own world and hindsight is often a fallacy. I got good at self-harming, and even better at hiding it.

By 15, no one talked about it, but I still did. I also started having panic attacks all the time. I went to my GP and got my first mental health diagnosis – depression and panic disorder. Off I went to some fairly dull and pointless counselling, which may have been great if I’d engaged with it, but at 15, how many people can be fucked?

I got through college with a lot of cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, self-harm and boys. I got through it well and did really quite good considering, but that life had its toll. Too many nights of too much excess in clubs I was definitely too young to be in led to me completely crashing emotionally. Just before my exams. I spent weeks in bed, ran away to Yorkshire, spent more weeks in bed and was dragged to my GP again. Again, the diagnosis was depression. This time I was prescribed Prozac (and later citalopram), told to go to the surgery counsellor and sent on my way.

I didn’t go to the counsellor. Instead, I ran off to Bristol for university. My first year of uni was properly batshit cray. Antidepressants, a change in contraceptive pill, dropping all my hobbies and friends and family to enter the horror of finding new hobbies and friends was all a little much. My self-harm and generally crazy behaviours went into overdrive and behind closed doors (but in front of my unfortunate, but ultimately a prick new boyfriend), I became the most dramatic crazy person ever. Inefficiently executed suicide attempts, blood and sharpie markers all over me and my dorm, running away, cold showers with all my clothes still on, half a litre of vodka each night, drugs wherever I could find them. It was messy, but with no follow up from my GP, it all went unnoticed. 

When I finally cold turkey gave up the antidepressants at the end of summer, I was fucking miserable and doing seriously terrible at uni. I hated myself, I felt like a failure and I didn’t know what to do. Lucky for me, I quickly found losing weight. I focused myself on to eating healthy and going to the gym and found something I was good at. I was bloody fantastic at losing weight. It made me feel good. It made me feel proud. It made me feel in control (finally). So I did that, and I dropped self-harm, got substantially less trashed, was able to focus on university and slowly became more and more focused on losing weight. That went on for the next three years and I ended up seriously underweight and trapped in anorexia, obsessing over food and exercise. Still, I did good at uni and I graduated well, so started and MA.

Halfway through my MA, I became so critically ill that, after being shipped around various primary care therapy services, I was referred to a specialist eating disorders unit (EDU) and started actually getting treatment. I was so unwell, my uni boyfriend from Bristol wound up dumping me and we spent the next year and a half breaking up. Turns out he was an abusive bastard and I couldn’t see it. Years of domestic from someone I loved is pretty hard to deal with if you don’t have an eating disorder to escape from it.

For a while, I was still too unwell with anorexia to really noticed what it was providing me, so I was still focused and obsessed enough to complete all my taught units in my MA, but by my last assignment (two years after starting my MA), I was almost out of treatment with my EDU, emotionally disastrous, self-harming everyday, on and off of antipsychotics and mood stabilisers, back on antidepressants and in and out of hospital for stitches, glue and lethal overdoses (I’d got smarter since I was last like this, so way more efficient. Intelligence isn’t always a good thing). It was around this time my EDU diagnosed me with borderline personality disorder and referred me to my local Community Mental Health Team (CMHT). By this point, I was too ill to even contemplate a dissertation so decided to defer my assessment.

This last year, I’ve been in dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT – specialist therapy for people with borderline), but I’ve also been honing my alcohol and Valium misuse to block out all my difficult thoughts and emotions, and topping them off with whatever other substances head my way. I went into another relationship with yet another person who doesn’t know how to treat their partner and wound up homeless, scarred, broke and an addict. I hadn’t realised I was an addict until a few weeks ago when I was told. I thought I was going to be able to finish my degree this year, have some time off and hopefully start a PGCE and I was finally letting myself get some hope that I might be able to catch up to my peers and actually set up some sort of life I can be proud of. That’s suddenly looking less likely right now. I’m now in a drug and alcohol treatment program 3-4 days a week, individual DBT once a week, group. DBT once a week, my day programme key worker once a fortnight, my Community Drug and Alcohol Team (CDAT) case worker once a fortnight, my Community Recovery Team (CRT – previously my CMHT) psychiatrist once a month and my CRT social worker at some point and some amount. And you know I might be in rehab in a few months.

So here I am. Worst. Month. Ever. I’m actually pretty fucking unhappy right now, but I’m sure that’s not exactly hard to guess. Apparently (according to mental health workers), I suffer ‘severe and enduring’ mental health problems, I’m ‘high risk’ of serious injury, physical illness or death, I’m ‘low functioning’ and have a limited ability to independently thrive within mainstream society and I have ‘complex needs.’ I guess I have got a kinda complex case – you can tell by the amount of people involved in my care (it’s got to the point where it’s overwhelming and confusing).

Still, I’m smart, articulate and jokes, plus try so hard to be nice to people. For some unknown reason, I fully believe this pessimist shit sells me short. I don’t want to be in treatment or care or whatever all my life. I think I’ve got potential. I’ve got through a lot and still have a load more to do, but maybe I can be more then all these unhelpful labels.

Anyway, I’ve blogged before, mostly about my recovery from anorexia. I didn’t realise it’d get more complicated after that and I let a lot of my real life friends read it. I’m not all that sure about sharing addiction and self harm problems with my real life friends yet is a good idea, but I don’t like hiding away. I found it really helpful blogging though, and I think maybe blogging more would be useful still. It might not be though. Or maybe I’ll be too high to look at it. We’ll see I guess.

If you got this far, thank you for reading. Wish me luck.

skyrim.

So I thought I’d maybe do an opening post on where I am now. There is only one real answer to that, and that is Skyrim. I know I know I am super late because it’s so old now and everyone’s already played it yarda yarda etc., but I wanted to do a post about how video games can really help me improve my mental health. They are obviously not for everyone (only for those of us who are slightly more inclined towards the geekier side of things), but since moving, Skyrim has been a seriously special thing to me.

I used to game a lot when I was little, but I had this absolutely horrendous, abusive boyfriend when I went to university who essentially told me I was rubbish for doing it because I wasn’t paying him enough attention. He’s a douche and waaaay out of the picture. But anyway, by the time that was over I was totally locked in anorexia so gaming was still a really difficult thing to get into again. It was only once I gained weight and recovered from anorexia that I was able to game again. I started out with some old classics like Metal Gear Solid and moved on to Tomb Raider Survivor, Uncharted and some Resistance: Fall of Man. I found these super cathartic as I was so engaged with something else, visually, physically and audibly, that I could escape my own feelings and emotions and put them to one side whilst distressing emotions within me calmed down. However, the situations I found myself in meant gaming became harder and harder. I installed Baldur’s Gate on my iPad (if any of you are old and naff enough to remember this) so I could game on the go, but my life was really hectic.

There are other was to calm down your emotions obviously. I could have a nice bath, or read some Neil Gaiman, but, you know, I could beat some dragons to death with a war-hammer. For me, it’s the dragons that work every time.

See, I find books difficult to engage in when I’m stressed. It’s uses like, one sense, and that just isn’t distracting enough, and if I’m in a bad place, the last thing I want to do is stare at my body. I don’t hate it, but like basically any girl living in a world in which unrealistic expectations are expected of or bodies, I don’t think “wowzas – what a hottie.” I need to find something with a story that can engulf me, something complicated enough to engage me in puzzle solving, and something beautiful enough to stare at for hours. Enter Skyrim.

Since moving, I’ve had no internet. I’ve not been able to binge watch tv series till I’m blue in the face. I’ve not been able to sit and let something mildly entertaining wash over me. I think this has both pros and cons. I find it incredibly easy to let my emotions run wild when I’m just casually watching something, and I also find that the background noise has become a part of my ritual for self-harming. Stupid, but true. Nothing grabs me enough. When I first moved, I watched a lot of shit T.V. – me and Parking Mad became good friends I won’t lie. I’d watch reruns of T.V. shows I hated on Dave at three am. No fun for anyone.

One evening, I had my brother and a mate over. He’d previously given me Skyrim (the legendary addition with all the DLC already on the disk) and that night he installed it. I’d like to say the next day I was suckered in, but that’d be a lie. I spent the whole day not sleeping and ended up watching Dirty Weekenders in France (the one with Richard E. Grant), under a duvet, on my sofa, eating Super Noodles. The next day, Skyrim happened.

You start the game, pick your gender, race, hair colour, makeup (fuck make up – my Wood Elf has war paint bitches), spend a while giving them some sort of maybe acceptable face and giving her some kick ass curves then off you go – in to the world of Skyrim.

Skyrim is part RPG, part soap. There’s like a main storyline involving dragons and shouting and all this crazy stuff. I’ve been playing it for over 75 hours and I still don’t really no where that’s going except for the fact that, at some point, imma have to merk some proper badman head dragon with all my shouting. I get most of my fun in the side quests. I just finished the Thieves’ Guild side quest (which took many hours) and now I’m really good at pickpocketing, lock picking and being super stealthy. I am Queen of the sneak attack. I play the longest game in the longest way. I hide, shoot a boss with an arrow, run away till I’m hidden, then go back and do it again. See, the Thieves’ Guild had lost it’s reputation as being proper hard thieves, and I had to restore it back to its immoral street cred. Now I am MASTER OF THE THIEVES! This has nothing to do with the main story, it was just fun.

It isn’t just big side quests. There are miscellaneous, teeny tiny quests too. Like finding someone a book. One time, I had to find three, flawless amethysts for this lizard dude so he could make an engagement ring for his wife (as per lizard customs obvs). And you can buy a house! You can buy a few houses, but because I have the DLC stuff, I’m saving my p so I can build a fucking huge yard once I get the 100,000 gold achievement, so my one house is pretty shit. It’s full of cobwebs and hay, but fuck that. Imma build a mansion and then get married and adopt some children. Because you can do that in Skyrim. You can get married, pimp your house out and adopt some kids. Complete and utter soap opera drama. Except every now and then, a dragon pops up you have to deal with. My weapon of choice here is my Nightingale bow and my elven war hammer. Beat them to the ground and absorb that dragon soul init fam.

It is so addictive and so engaging. It’s actually hard to write this post because I want to play it more now and I know my Mum is sleeping over tonight to watch lots of Avatar (the last air bender variety – don’t get twisted). I only have five hours to play it and I need to get dressed and stuff. Urgh. People get in the way of my Skyrim dreams.

But back to my main point. Yes, I admit I am a bit of a geek, but it’s one of the best ways to distract myself from my own distressing emotions. I get to engage in all the ridiculous lives of made up characters and I temporarily forget my own ridiculous life. Yes it is an avoidance thing, but in all honesty, distraction as a technique is better than cutting yourself in a moment of severe, emotional distress. You can deal with the problems once you’ve got your emotions back under control and through the use of emotional regulation skills like building mastery (a.k.a. getting shit you find hard to do done, even if it’s the washing up) so you feel like you’re achieving and making progress forward. It’s so much easier to do once you’ve let your emotions calm down a little by engulfing yourself in this mentalist world of ridiculously silly fun. And also, you can not play video games when you are off your face trashed on Valium. You just get shit at it, so it’s a really good way of distracting from addictive thoughts as well. Honestly, Skyrim has been so good for my mental health that I’d recommend anyone going through a rough patch to get themselves involved in some seriously addictive gaming.

Just be wary. You may end up forgoing sleep all together. Then you’re not really addressing your problems, you just play it till 10am then sleep all day, the play it again. Avoiding avoidance is something DBT tries to encourage. My support worker hates me because I’m never awake. Sometimes, you have to plan to not play it so you can be awake. I had to take a week off to be productive, be social and have a bit of a life. I was a little sad. No lie.

So this is what I’ve been up to recently. I can be more detailed in how I got here. Or not. You decide.
And remember – you have been warned.

differences and change.

So it’s been a while since I last posted and a lot has gone on. I’ve written a lot of posts and I’ve written, lots of diary entrances when I haven’t had access to computers, but like, after being kicked out, evicted, sponging off my best friend, being dumped, gaining a social worker, a suicide attempt, hospitalisation, running away from hospital, a lot of time under the HTT, losing a social worker and gaining a new one, graduating DBT group and finishing individual therapy, completing level one addiction treatment at Turning Point, more time under the HTT, completing an Intuitive Recovery course with Turning Point (getting me a level one qualification in health and social care as well!), finally getting my own flat at the end of March (all be it through the council and it’s medium mental health supported) and yesterday I finally got internet! It’s been really bloody hectic but I have some posts. I don’t know whether I should even post them as it’d be backdating so much. Or if anyone would read this. Or if I should start a new blog. This began as an eating disorder recovery blog and has definitely changed direction quite a lot, but I’m trying really hard to build up a life outside of my mental health problems, and maybe this would tie me to them, or maybe this could help me see how far I’ve really come. I duno. Maybe it could help others who have gone through similar stuff. Maybe that’s just arrogance.

If there are any readers out there, lemme know what you think.

Lovelove x.

(ps. Sorry I haven’t been keeping up with everyone. I’ve not had internet access and I’ve gone through a lot the past few months. I feel rubbish. I hope you’re all ok x.)

things in the last few days.

Wednesday 14th November 2012

So I’ve been having a bit of a blog break. My world has been a moody, hectic and stressful. I withdraw from the blog world when things are rubbish. Things are a bit rubbish right now.

The biggest rubbish thing is that Juno is very, very unwell. She started vomiting everything she ate and got really weak and feeble. The Fam took her to the vets last night and she needed an emergency operation, which she had in the middle of the night last night. Turns out, she’d swallowed a peach stone and it’d got stuck in her intestine. It’d completely blocked her gut and her gut had started to grow around it, so it was becoming a part of her. If we’d left it any longer, her gut would have probably ruptured overnight and she would have died, but she’s healthy and young and got there in time so she looks like she’s going to be ok. They had to remove six inches of her gut, and they also spayed her so she’s pretty unwell right now. She’s still at the vets to be monitored, plus she’s super doped up on painkillers, but me and the Brother got to visit her today and she seemed pleased to see us. Her bat ears stuck up and she rested her head on us and ate a little food and drank a little water. Hopefully she’ll be home on Friday (if everything goes as smoothly as it seems right now), but we won’t know for sure if she’s fully healed till a weeks time. Luckily, they don’t think there’ll be any lasting complications. Fingers crossed.

Juno at the vets, snuggling the Brother

So yer, right now I have no dog and I’m worried and sad and have no one to look after me in that way that dogs look after you. They really do save you sometimes. I miss her and she’s only been gone a day. I hate not having a dog around. So much.

On top of this, our kitchen has just started being redecorated. This is stressful in an eating disorder way (obvs.), but also because my house is full of people and its loud and hard to feel comfortable. They turn up, bump into HTT, smash things and generally lead to me hiding away. I hate people in my house, especially when I’m meant to be home alone. I like my alone time. It’s important to me. I like empty space sometimes.

The £2,000 peach stone

There are good points to it though. In one of my more hyper moments, I decided to create an incredibly selfish Facebook event in which I invite myself to people’s houses for dinner so that they can cook me nice foods to make the transition a little easier. I’ve been struggling with food a bit recently and I’ve lost a couple of kilos, so I think it’s important to try keep my eating up regardless. I figured what better to kick an eating disorder sneaking back in than letting other people cook me normal people meals. I used to find other people cooking for me horrific, then uncomfortable, but now fine. I figure this way, I’m less in control and will probably at least maintain a vaguely healthy weight for a while. Maybe I’ll even gain some weight. That’d probably be a good thing if it does happen. It’s only two weeks. Plus I’ll get to spend a little more time with my friends, which is always fun. Yesterday I saw a couple of people and their aces gecko Ricardo and we ordered Thai and drunk wine and gin and I had a nice time. It was good to see people. Especially people I don’t see enough and actually really like.

But yer, the kitchen makes life more difficult. It’s annoying and makes eating hard. Especially with Valium withdrawal. Valium withdrawal symptoms come and go in varying intensities, but it basically sucks out. I occasionally break and end up taking more than I should, but it is so hard you have no idea. It’s like the worst flu ever – tremors run through your entire body, you’re exhausted but can’t sleep, you get extreme fluctuations in body temperature and mood, my brain is louder, my appetite is just gone, there’s dizziness and generally feeling like you could collapse at any point, your head gets foggy and everything gets less real, you shake and have that not sleep you get with a fever, nightmares, increased urges self-injurious thoughts, anger, irritability, feeling like you literally might be about to die because you can’t breathe, feel nauseous and so dizzy you literally cannot stand. It’s shit. Another reason blogging has been a little rubbish recently.

Another stress had been the major amount of life admin I’ve had to go through recently. Sorting out my freedom pass, upgrading my phone with O2 and Carphone Warehouse, sorting out the Ma’s new phone contract, switching banks, sorting out a new student bank account, trying to work out uni, sorting out deferring my Professional Careers Development Loan due to being in benefits, having no money. It basically means I’ve spent what feels like years on hold. On hold to O2, Carphone Warehouse, NatWest, Co-Operative Bank, Tesco Mobile, Job Centre Plus, university etc. Urgh. I actually feel like I’ve done so much, but it’s probably haven’t done all that much really. I still haven’t decided if I want to insure my iPhone and iPad, so that might be a little bit more admin, but it’s like the least important bit left.

Treatment is also really bringing me down. I’m hating on the HTT, arguing with CDAT, telling the Psychologist I hate him more than anyone else and how he can’t help me, telling everyone off, shouting at the IMPART group that I’m never coming back because they suck. I don’t even know if I need help, but everyone thinks I do and I don’t know what to do about it. Double urgh.

Thursday 15th November 2012

So I did my finish my post yesterday – I got too Valium ill. Sorry.

Things are a bit brighter today because I got to pick up Juno from the vet because the recovery has been going so well. She’s going to need special food and special medications and special walks for a week, but she’s doing well. She’s very confused from all the painkillers and I think they make life a little difficult, but she’s beautiful and home and the vets all really like her and she doesn’t even have to wear a cone on her head because she’s been so good and isn’t even touching her stitches because she’s so well-behaved. I love my puppy so much. I’ve been appointed supreme pup watcher for the next week so I’m going to be well on watching her to keep her safe. She makes me so happy. I’m still scared, but it looks like she’s going to be ok. I now have a purpose again – keep Juno safe and healthy and happy.

I also actually went to my IMPART group today. It wasn’t as bad as the past few weeks, but I think I’ve realised that I’m actually quite behind where a lot of others in the group are right now. I’m pretty sure I’m the youngest and I’m pretty sure that I’m not as good at managing my emotions and impulses as most of them. What they are showing us seems impossible right now. Today, it was anger and anxiety management, but it was all like “in between the trigger and the behaviour, you have all this time to intervene and stop your thought processes etc.”, but all I could think was “what time between trigger and behaviour? There is no time between trigger and behaviour.” It made me feel pretty useless. I don’t think I can stop my impulsive behaviours. I honestly don’t know how. In showing me how, I got to listen to what other people do and it was all like “exercise” which I can’t do without going overboard, or “learn to be assertive” or “step outside the situation.” I am really not good at being assertive and have pretty poor interpersonal skills. I do ok with the people who know me really well, but not so much with new people, and even when the people I’m in love with make me feel too much, I often react in the wrong ways. They deal with it though. I think there’s a general feeling within my friendship circle that I’m not actually the problems, which makes my friends super aces. I’m just realising I really don’t have any coping mechanisms for managing my emotions. Except self-harm, spending money, not eating and getting fucked. Way to go Ellie – fucking useless at self-regulation. Triple urgh.

I am actually complying with treatment though. Kinda. I struggle with the Valium thing a bit, and I drink too much and smoke too much, self-injure too much. I know this, but I’m not trying to fix it because I don’t have any other ways too. Still, I actually went to all my appointments. On most days, I do actually get dressed and out of bed, even if I haven’t slept much. I am really trying to be budget and to eat lots and to stay as safe as possible. I don’t call the HTT as much as I should, but I don’t like them as a whole unit. They can’t keep me safe from myself and I won’t let them really. Maybe I’m half complying.

The thing is, although I’m taking some action to get better, I’m not sure if I believe I’m ill or deserve help or need to get better or have the motivation to. Intense emotions suck out, but sometimes they are great because intense love and intense happiness and intense excitement are really fabz. However fleeting and uncontrollable these emotions may be, I honestly believe I feel them stronger than other people. I know black and white thinking can be bad – everything is all or nothing. However, I have a strong sense of right and wrong and I like that. When applied to myself, it sucks, when applied to outside circumstances, I have a strong opinion and without the grey, I gain passion. Sure, my identity and opinions can change rapidly depending on my surroundings, but I think it means I am more able to empathise with other people sometimes as I really do absorb their views so whole heartedly. My impulsivity around things like drugs and alcohol and shopping etc. make me more fun to be around sometimes. Sure, the dissociation, negative self-beliefs, parasuicidal behaviours, impulsivity when alone etc. suck, but there are positive things about the way I am now. And that’s the thing – this is who I am. I don’t know if I want to be anyone else. I’m taking action, yet I see the positives and don’t know if I’m ready for change.

Still, being unable to work and being unable to do the things I want to do and struggling every fucking day might make this all worth it. I just don’t like knowing what’ll be left of me when this is all done. Will I even be me? I hate not knowing.

But finally, some other great news – my uni have decided to waive my fees and make me a part-time student so I can access all the support I need. This makes me supez happy. It’s also scary as it means I’ll actually have to finish my degree this year, but I have a whole year to do a dissertation so hopefully it’ll be ok. I’m scared, but at least I’m able to access any support I need. Fingers crossed. Once my freedom pass shows up, I’ll be back at uni to try sort it all out.

So goods and bads and lots in between. This is some sort of update I guess. I hope you’re all well.

Juno having a nap – home again :)

angry.

I guess this could be a trigger. Sorry.

So last night I called the HTT crisis line because I was so worked up and distressed and I’d just got off the phone to the Ex and I felt out of control and fast and mean and basically the whole world sucked and I blamed treatment.

I literally have nothing normal left in my life anymore. Since starting treatment over a year ago I’ve only lost things. I’ve lost thing after thing till now I’ve got nothing nice left. The only thing I’ve gained is a bunch of professionals that are paid to pretend to care about me, but make it pretty fucking clear they don’t give a fuck. I didn’t feel safe.

I told them I never wanted anyone to come to my house again. The guy I was speaking to is actually nice and he got worried. I told him I’d lost everything and that having people barely conceal their contempt for me only hurt me more and I didn’t want any part of it ever again. I told him I wanted out of it all and I didn’t feel safe and they weren’t helping and everything in my life has just be getting worse and worse. This went on for a little while and he eventually agreed to the HTT calling me instead of visiting this morning and told me he cared and was worried and would listen and I should call him back if I needed to.

I didn’t call back. Instead I self harmed. It was quite severe, but I managed it with my now expert injury first aid and eventually felt better enough to fall asleep at about 4am.

I then get woken up by the HTT knocking on my door, and not just them, but also my new key worker from CDAT. I got so angry and told them over and over I didn’t want them there and had been told they wouldn’t come and they refused to leave because I had to talk to the CDAT woman and I hate her and I hate them and they lied and I wasn’t dressed and I hate every single part of my mental health treatment.

After they left, I called the HTT and asked them never to come back again and I didn’t want anymore treatment from them. They lied to me and didn’t care and they make me hurt more. Apparently they’re going to call me this afternoon, but I don’t even think they will seeing as they are full of lies and don’t give a shit. They talked about sectioning me if I didn’t comply with them, but I can’t even see how they have the power to do that. You need like two psychiatrists to section someone, and it’s not like any of them talk to each other. Like this morning I was told they’d come back this evening, then on the phone I was told they’d come back tomorrow morning. None of them have any fucking clue what the plan for my treatment is. I doubt they could get two psychiatrists in the same fucking room.

I then called the CMHT to asked to be discharged from them. The Psychiatrist is on leave so I can’t leave them till next week.

Following that, I called the Psychologist and left a message for him to call back. He didn’t, so I left a subsequent message saying I never wanted to see him again. He eventually called back and said he “hopes I turn up and he won’t discharge me yet” and said he’ll leave it in my hands to contact him if I don’t go. I’m most angry with him because he pretends better than everyone else. And if he didn’t tell me the Ex was a cunt, I’d probably still have someone to love me. If he hadn’t told me it was ok to take time out of uni, I’d probably have a fucking degree. If he hadn’t told me I needed further help, none of the other fucking teams would be involved. And he called my fucking parents. How am I supposed to trust him?

I can’t get in touch with IMPART because I didn’t save their number and I’ve swapped phones. Imma try get their number from someone else, but I don’t know who yet. I fully intend to leave their services as well.

CDAT can go spin to be honest. I told her as much, but she made an appointment for me anyway. I’m not going to go. She said if I don’t go, she’ll call, but it’s not like I have to reply. Calls from mental health treatment places always come up as private numbers so its pretty easy to know which ones to ignore.

I then called uni to ask to formally drop out, but I have to talk to my personal tutor before I can do that and he’s not in so I emailed.

I want to be out of treatment now. Out for good. All I’ve got from treatment is a worse life. All I had left was my fucking degree and that’s gone now so fuck it. If I’d never started treatment, I probably could have aced a dissertation by now and be finished and not care that all my friends hate me and my family think I’m disgusting because I’d be pretty and small and that would be enough and I’d have a boy and future. Instead, I’ve complied with everything asked of me and have essentially lost everything. I make the Fam cry, the Brother always chooses others over me when I really need him, my friends all think I’m rubbish and weird, the Ex treats me rubbish and I hurt him and the DVIP people keep calling me to tell me how shit he is and he calls me to tell me how shit they are and now I’ve lost uni. The one fucking normal thing I had left.

So fuck them all. I did as I was told and tried and now I’m angry and alone and have horrendous withdrawal symptoms. I keep having panic attacks and can’t focus or sleep and get tremors all over and I fucking hate every part of ever having entered treatment. So I no longer have an eating disorder? It’s not like I have anything else.

It hurts me more to be surrounded by people who pretend they care then it does to be alone. It’s better to not have it rubbed in your face that the most important thing you do is provided by people who think you’re worthless. Fuck them all. Seriously.

crazy 24 hours.

Last night was really bad. I tried to distract myself, but it didn’t work for long.

I duno what flipped in me, but I flipped and got really agitated and distressed. I wound up on the phone to the HTT at midnight or summin with a bottle of aspirin and the full intent to die. Because they’re in and out of A&E at night, they had bad signal and promised to call me back in 10 minutes. It took me about 3 minutes to decide I couldn’t just sit, so I self-harmed pretty badly down my already gnawed up arms. Nothing that needed A&E, only steri-strips. That lasted about 45 minutes till I called them back again and there was no answer. So I then called the Crisis line, which was also useless and just burst into tears until they found someone to connect me to. He talked to me for about 45 minutes and persuaded me that yes I should take my meds rather than try to hoard them and I calmed a little, but still felt unsafe.

I got the Brother to come and sit with me. I told him how I felt honestly, even that I wanted to just die because it all burnt so much. I think that was brave of me. He made me some apple squash, put on Time Trumpet and watched it in bed with me and Afiq (my teddy). I even took my zopiclone, though it didn’t work so well. We got through the whole season before I felt sleepy, but he left me falling asleep to the Armando Iannucci Shows. The Brother was good and picked things that made me giggle and lifted my mood up a lot. He looks after me better than anyone else in the world. He doesn’t cry or tell me how he doesn’t understand or ask questions. He accepts it and goes “Right – let’s do something nice together right this second. For as long as it takes.” I need that when I’m feeling so desperately lost and low. I can’t find a way out myself, so asking me anything and expecting positive outcomes is ridiculous because I can’t find the answers.

I woke up not too drowsy and a little bit more hungry than I have been the past few days. I think the initial side effects of the zopiclone are wearing off a bit now. I was able to eat breakfast, a cookie and a big lunch, though I feel too sick to eat right now so I duno how dinner will fare up. I was in a foul mood though. I was angry. Like really angry. I was fuming at the HTT for not making it better and not taking me seriously. Sometimes I think I should just kill myself so people will finally believe I’m not making all this up. I get paranoid that everyone thinks I make it up so they don’t listen to me or take anything I say seriously. Then I start to think that I am making it all up and I’m fine, so I need to make myself less ok. Then I realise I’m not ok in the first place if I’m thinking of doing serious harm in order to get other people and myself to believe me. It’s a cycle of thought with no clear exit. Anyway, I was planning on shouting at them and telling them that they don’t care and don’t listen and don’t understand, but I managed to keep myself marginally acceptable when they came. I was argumentative and rude (which I regret), but I didn’t tell them how much I fucking hate them or anything. I don’t even hate them. I just felt like they didn’t care, which made me hate them at that moment in time.

Keeping my anger in didn’t last long though. I’ve been getting angry lately that the Pa wants to walk Juno all the time. We share care for her. He gives her breakfast and a quick morning walk, I give her a long daytime walk and lunch, the Ma feeds her dinner and the Pa gives her a quick evening walk. This works out well for me because generally, I’m home alone during the days, so I can walk her whenever and we get lots of bonding time. Granted, now the clocks have gone back, the walks will literally have to be earlier, but I have trouble motivating myself to do anything for hours once I wake up so I generally walk her between 3-6pm (now it’ll have to be 2-4pm. Fucking daylight savings). The Pa has some time off work because it’s half-term for the Ma and it was Eid on Friday so she had that off too. He’s kept asking me if he could walk her or saying “I’m thinking about walking Juno now” at like 1pm, whilst I’m probably still in pajamas. I’ve got it into my head that he hates that she’s not his dog and his dog only. I think he’s trying to steal her from me. My walks with Juno are one of my favorite parts of the day because I have music and my pup and autumnal weather, so this has been really getting to me. Juno looks after me and I love her and I don’t want her to stop loving me (some next level abandonment issues. I mean, come one – She’s a dog. She loves everyone). Anyway, I went downstairs to give her a hug and she ignored me calling and just sat by the Pa. Now I know she’s a dog and has no bad intentions, but this really really hurt me anyway. I then told the Pa he could walk her and he’d won and he’d got her all to himself now. I then ran upstairs and started hitting and biting and ripping etc. Obviously I had to go upstairs because I didn’t want Juno to feel stress in the household as it would upset her.

Anyway, the Brother came to talk to me and suddenly I was devastated. I was crying about how no one loved me and the Pa had stolen my dog from me and I had no one to care for me and even my dog can’t love me and blah blah blah. I was angry and devastated and confused. Mostly, I was just way too emotional. The Pa came into my room and I shouted and cursed and cried some more. Standard. He told me to just hug my puppy, but I told him she doesn’t love me anymore and I didn’t want to be rejected again etc. You know the drill. So I told him off, cried, and kicked him out my room. He threatened to send Juno to Battersea because he “doesn’t want a dog to tear a family apart” (which I think is a bit dramatic, but I know I was being dramatic too). I told him that I love her too much to let her go. It was a bit of a scene.

Once left alone to my own devices, feeling like death and wanting to self-harm, I checked the Daily Puppy (I know I keep going on about it, but still), just to see whether they’d accepted or rejected her. I did not expect to see my beautiful Juno staring at me as the puppy of the day 27th October 2012! All of a sudden, my mood changed entirely. I was ecstatic. I called the Pa and ran downstairs with my laptop to show him. I read all the comments, told everyone how many biscuits she had, started scouring twitter for all the Juno related tweets, ‘liked’ the Daily Puppy facebook page and shared their picture of Juno and commented on it and linked her profile on my page and was just really happy. As of right now, over 1,000 people on Facebook have ‘liked’ her picture and 54 have shared it, she has 1,611 biscuits and 52 comments on her Daily Puppy page. People are even putting her on Pintrest. I got major excitement. Bouncing off the walls excitement. We went on an extra long hour and a bit walk today so I could show my whole neighbourhood the puppy of the day. She’s a local celebrity, even though no one recognised her. I’m generally not someone to show off their pets like this, but with Juno I just feel so compelled. She’s too adorable.

Suddenly, I love everyone and everything and today is fantastic and I complied with the HTT treatment and took my medications in front of them. I promised I’d call again if I have another minor crisis or need to self-harm again tonight. The CMHT Psychiatrist (who will, at some point, be just the Psychiatrist, but I’m taking a transition period to not confuse people) emailed me this morning and told me I should go to the local Community Drug and Alcohol Team (CDAT) for help with my Valium issues. I emailed him back to tell him it was stupid this morning. I already have four teams involved in my care – adding another seems a bit much and a bit confusing. IMPART + CMHT + EDU + HTT + CDAT = waaaay to many acronyms. Plus, I’ve already been working on it myself to get off it. Then this evening I talked to the HTT about it and now I’m going to go tomorrow. I have to be there at 9:30am to get seen quickly as they only offer drop in sessions and the later you get there, the longer the wait, which sucks, but they’re in the same building as the HTT so I can kill two birds with one stone in that trip. Plus an extra hours walk is an extra hours worth of headphones so it’s not so bad. Still, at least group is cancelled this week so I don’t have that to cope with as well as all this other treatment malarky.

What is rubbish though is that, with the HTT coming twice a day (due to my tablet hoarding compulsions), I had to miss dog training today. The Pa can show me it all tomorrow so I can catch up, but I hate missing it, but it’s only one class and its session two, which is the same one I saw when I visited the group to see if it’d be good for Juno. I reckon I can figure it out better with the HTT by this time next week (if they’re even still seeing me twice daily. To be fair, if they are, I’d prefer them to come evenings anyway because I can’t got out in the dark as it is, but I can get them to come earlier).

This might sound all positive, but I’m not sure it is. Right now, I’m less excited. More lonely and sad. That’s probably because I just had some Valium though. The problem is, as I’m lowering my Valium intake or as more life stresses build up (having to repay my Professional Careers Development Loan, broke without a job for instance), my personal life gets more complicated and painful or my duloxetine needs to be upped or for whatever mixture of reasons, my emotions are becoming increasingly volatile. Both in a good, and bad way, they are getting more and more intense. More and more difficult to manage.

I’m getting more obsessive over little things too. Right now, I’m obsessively trying to decide between an iPhone 5 or a Galaxy SIII. I’m also obsessing over the Daily Puppy thing. It’s not like I mind being obsessive, but I find it hard to do anything else. Especially the things I need to do (like sort out how to pay off this loan and try to change my student bank account to Co-op so all my accounts are in one bank, thus easier to manage and getting the Psychiatrist to sort out my freedom pass etc.). I look over the same webpages again and again and I can’t not do it. Everything else becomes secondary to whatever I’m obsessing over. I’m also starting to get hyped up about my iPad 4 turning up (I had a major breakdown in Sainsbury’s, so even though it was against store policy, they gave me a refund so I pre-ordered the new one. Not a mini one though. I don’t want a mini one). I’m counting down days. Literally. It’s arriving on Friday and I cannot contain myself. Then on Monday I can upgrade my phone and well…. that’s its own minefield. These things cost money I shouldn’t spend, but I figure I can deal with it at some point in the future.

I’m also getting more irritable. Little things are triggering anger, rages and hate. Like the fact that it’s half term and the Fam are all around and I get irritated when they speak to me because this is my time and if they try to hard, I get angry and hate them. Of course, they are all trying too hard because the Psychologist told them about my increasing level of risk and stash of painkillers. I’m self-harming more and more, and it’s getting progressively worse. None of this is really that good. I’m not trying to stop it either. I don’t know how to and even if I did, I’m not sure I have the motivation for change. I’m acting as if I’m ready to change. I’m taking all the right steps and trying to do what I’m asked sometimes,  but if they don’t watch me take my meds, I hoard them. I’m not trying to cut down on self-harm. I’m not giving the HTT my stash of pills like they keep asking. I’m perfectly aware of the fact that it’s dangerous to have them there as I tend to act on impulse, but I want to keep that option open and I know that if I gave them away, I’d just buy more the same day and not tell them.

So I don’t know if I’m doing good or not. I don’t know if I’m being compliant with treatment or not. I don’t know what I want to get out of it or if I’m ready to change. I don’t even know if I even need help or not. If I’m acting or I really feel like this. I don’t know what to do or if I’m doing everything wrong.

All I know is that no one hears me screaming and I’m desperate to find a way of letting the whole world know how much my insides burn so that someone will understand and make it better. I don’t even think that’s possible.

“i’ve never been so alone.”

I know I’m being a spam queen, but I’ve now decided on my next unproductive, yet kinda productive task to keep me as distracted as possible to keep myself safe so I don’t care all that much.

I listen to my iPod whilst walking my dog. I love my iPod and it’s absolutely huge headphones because it isolates me from people and sounds. I’m hyper alert to sounds when I’m out alone, so instead I choose music. I get scared when people talk to me, so I just pretend or actually don’t hear them. I use it in less good situations too. Like at uni, I would wear my headphones and blast my music as loud as possible for as long as possible so no one would try to talk to me. Hence having made no new friends in a while.

The contents of my post dog walk coat pocket tipped on the bed. Big headphones and iPod included.

Anyway, I had my iPod on shuffle and this song came up:

This song reminds me of being really, really young. I don’t think many people will like it particularly, but bear in mind that I sincerely wish I was born a decade earlier so that I could have been 16-20 in the 90s and had the most fun on all the pills with all the dance and trance and euphoria in all the clubs. This song isn’t that old, but it’s in the same area of music for me. It makes me really sad, but it also makes me want to dance about. Dancing makes me happy.

This led to unproductive idea of the day number two: Make a playlist of songs I want to listen to when I’m sad because they make me feel sad, but will eventually make me happy because they’ll make me dance and jump about and that makes me really excited and happy and good.

(the task should have a shorter, snappier name than that, but I can’t think of one).

I have a few so far. Three of the best other ones I have are:

This song is really, really sad, but I really defy you not to jump. Plus it uses sciencey metaphors to describe heartache and pain and science makes me happy. I literally cannot help but jump when this comes on my headphones in the street – so much so I have a routine where I jump/dance when I’m walking. I love Darwin Deez so much. I only found this album in the last 6 months or something, so I was late to the party, but still. Heartbreakingly happy.

(credit to Nat for finding Darwin Deez for me. So much love. Mostly for Nat).

I know lots of people think that she’s all hipster and I get that hipsters like her, but I don’t care so don’t judge me. I love her. Granted, half the time I have no idea what she’s saying, but she too makes me feel like I should be in the 90s. I always dance to Grimes. Even when I’m sad. Even on the tube. I will especially stand up to dance to Grimes. Such big tunes from such a tiny woman.

And finally…

See? I really do just love the 90s. And Space. I love Space so much I’m seeing them live in a few weeks, even though no one even likes them anymore. This song is jokes, but also sad. I think a lot of Space songs are jokes, but sad. I’m really excited about seeing them soon so they were in my brain – thus they enter the playlist.

That’s all I’m going to give you from this playlist though.

I am going to give you one more song though. This is for a playlist I’ll make some other time because I actually think this is a good idea and I have lots of tracks buzzing in my brain. This one will go on the “When I’m really angry and I hate everyone and I need to cheer up and dance” playlist. It’s especially good when your anger is directed at someone.

I think everyone needs this song in their life. Seriously.

(And Nat gets an extra special thank you for this one because he put it on a CD of happy songs for me and he is right – lyrical genius).

Hopefully I’m done with spamming now. I think I’m gonna playlist then read some blogs to catch up a bit then hopefully the HTT will be here and I’ll have someone to talk to.