Play overview

Oh, on a happier note, the play I've been directing went SO WELL last night! I'm so happy with how it went - people came away feeling really moved by it, and I'm so proud of all my wonderful cast! The first night had a few hiccoughs, but last night went so much more smoothly. I'm really looking forward to tonight now, and to the afterparty, where I get to see lovely friends who've come up to see it, and have lots of fun and snuggles. Also, tomorrow I get to spend the day with a partner from London, which I'm really looking forward to. =)

Dreams and illness

Dreams can be really shit sometimes. I had a dream that my ex was really horrible to me, and despite me knowing that that didn't actually happen, the feelings from that dream are still staying with me and it'd hard to shake them. I'm also feeling ill at the moment, which isn't helping. Everything aches sooo much! My glands are all swollen, swallowing is painful, and moving my head really hurts. I'm also just feeling really emotional and weepy today. I don't know if that's to do with the dream, or maybe my time in my cycle. Either way, I just want to cry and sleep all day.

Freefall

Trigger warning: self-harm, suicidal ideation

From being stuck in a dip the other day, I feel like I've now just plummeted to the very bottom of the rollercoaster of emotions that my brain seems to enjoy putting me on. 

I feel like I just can't hold myself together anymore. Like I just can't go on like this. I can't do it. 

The other night I did cut myself quite a few times. Nothing deep, only breaking the skin to see the blood, but afterwards, I remembered just how addictive it was. I found a website of photographs of people's self-harm wounds, and morbidly looked through hundreds of them, wishing I was able to make wounds as "well" as other people did. I then bought some first aid supplies from amazon so that I could hurt myself again, as my first aid kit had basically run out. I managed not to buy any scalpels or blades, so I guess that was a plus. 

Today, I had to take rehearsals, and it was so hard. I was trying so hard not to fall apart throughout the whole thing. As soon as I got home I just lay on the sofa and cried. I then had a friend round to watch  some TV which helped distract me a little, but later on when he'd left to get us some food, I cut myself some more, but a bit deeper. The past couple of days I've just felt like there's less and less holding me together, and I've even started having suicidal thoughts again today. I don't know what to do, so right now I'm going to go to bed and take a sleeping tablet so I can't do any more harm to myself. 

Whiny self-absorbed angst

So, this post is going to make me sound horrible. Maybe I am horrible and this is just exposing the real me. Either way, here comes a teenagerish level of whiny self-absorbed ranting.

Today I was helpfully reminded by facebook that the ex I'm still not over is back with his ex. Sure, not a big deal, I hear you say. Well, this was the ex that my ex - screw it, I'll use letters to make this easier. My ex = A. His ex = B.

So, A told me that B is the person who caused his depression in the first place, and is someone he'd never ever want a relationship with again because of how much she hurt him. He had to move back in with his parents, and it took around a year before he could even think about working again. Then about another year working a little while living at home, before being well enough to work a full-time job and live on his own. It was a long, hard struggle for him. After a lot of hurt, and a long time, they became friends again. When I was going out with A, he was still struggling a lot with his depression. After almost 2 and a half years, he ended things because he felt he was too ill to be able to look after himself as well as trying to support me in my illness. So it was still pretty severe. When we broke up, we were about to go on holiday together. As in, in a few days time.

His family were amazing - for the first time I felt like I had a proper family around me who treated me as an adult and wanted me around. They cared about me and how I was doing, and It was ok to be completely honest with them. I'd never had an adult family member treat me like that - like I was equal, and they actually cared about what I had to say, and respected me and my opinions! There was no pretending to be someone I'm not, or avoiding issues. It felt like I'd finally found home.

Breaking up was losing this amazing new family I'd settled into and found my home with, as well as the person I was making plans with and wanted to spend my life with.

Since then, we tried meeting up occasionally to check in with each other, but every time it just reminded me of the family and partner I'd lost, and set me back somewhat in my own recovery. We left it for a while, and more recently, were going to meet up again. A had had a bad day and asked to rearrange, which of course I understood, and suggested that he should contact me when he wanted to see me. That was the 23rd September. I haven't heard from him since.

So seeing not only that they're back in a relationship, but that they're going on holiday now. Argh! It's like she's just taking over where A and I left off. There's also the fact that when we broke up, I asked if this was permanent or temporary, and A said he didn't know. He didn't want to tell me it was permanent when that might not be the case, but he also didn't want me hanging on thinking we'd get back together soon if it didn't happen. So of course, there was nothing really to do except hang on, because there was always a possibility, always hope, that he'd soon be in a good enough place to want us to get back together. So I've got all these angsty sounding things going round my head - Why is he back with B? Of all the people, why her? Why didn't he let me know if he was now ready for a relationship? Doesn't he want me? Was I that easy to just forget? Why hasn't he even contacted me? Doesn't he want me in his life in any way anymore? Why can't I just fucking move on and get over him already? Why am I being such a whiny child about this? Why can't I just accept this and get on with my life?

Poetry

Poetry. I've written some. It might be terrible. Here it is. 

Death's Cruel Machinations

It's not that I would welcome death,

though that way it may seem

to those who cannot read the thoughts

inside my mind. It teems

with overwhelming notions -

thoughts that suffocate and choke -

conspiring with Death's cruel plan

to trap me in his joke.

I've battled Death now countless times

while in my mind he's been,

but I can only fight so long

before I start to dream

of giving up, and leaving this

enfeebled mind forever,

with Death politely helping me

achieve this kind endeavour.

But yet, I know these tantalising

thoughts are not my own -

they're Death's cruel machinations, and

his plots I can postpone.

As long as I'm aware of this,

and I am in control,

I'll carry on this feud with him;

he will not reach his goal.  

Stuck in a dip

I feel like I'm in a bit of a dip at the moment. This week I've had to take one day off work because I just couldn't cope, and had two more days where I was constantly fighting the overwhelming urge to break down and cry while at work. Then today I've had that feeling for nearly 7 hours, just there in the background, sometimes coming to the forefront so it's all I can do to try and hold things together, and other times retreating a little way to a dull ache inside me. I feel like I can't cope with work anymore, and would really like to be able to quit and get some sort of disability allowance for a while while I try to put myself back together, but then I feel like such a fraud for thinking about going on benefits when I'm physically fine, and when it isn't a constant problem. Sure, this week I've been struggling to function, but a lot of the time I don't. I really don't know what to do about this or what would be best for my mental health. I also feel pathetic because I only work for four hours a day as it is, and I'm even finding that too much.

I'm trying to remember that I'm still a lot better than when I was at my worst, and that things won't be like this forever, but it's hard. Whenever I'm in the feeling, it seems like it's permanent. Hopefully I'm at the bottom of this current dip, and there'll soon be a bit of uphill progress to get me back to being able to cope with things.

Progress

I was about to write a blog about how things seemed to be going ok at the moment, and I found this draft that I wrote in May:

"I've been crying for at least an hour. One whole fucking hour. I'm so pissed off with myself for still being like this. I want to scream and shout and beat myself up for still being this pathetic, weak, useless excuse for a human being. I want to punish myself for feeling like this. I want to hurl abuse at this pathetic person who's taken over and bleed her out of my body. I should be over A by now. Wtf is wrong with me? God I hate myself so much. I wish I'd just die."


It's amazing how much better I've got in just 4 months. I'm now settled into a new house with a new housemate, both of which seem to be really helping me. I've been getting up, showered and dressed every day since moving here, getting out of the house to walk Dorian, and even getting my washing up done! Aside from the practical things though, mentally, I've been feeling almost normal again. Sure, I still have dips where I feel low, but they're nowhere near as severe as they used to be, and don't last anywhere near as long. I've actually started thinking about the future now, and have even begun planning things I want to do with my life! Yes, I still think about A from time to time and feel a bit sad that something so wonderful had to end, and there's still a part of me that hopes that we could be together again, but overall, I'm starting to get some of my life back. I'm enjoying things, and often feeling like a functioning human.


I've been using a website called moodscope to keep track of my moods, and looking at the overall graph since I started in July, you can see the improvement already!

So this is partly a reminder to myself, that despite feeling a bit low today, things are actually going lots better in the grand scheme of things. I might feel low compared to yesterday, but a couple of months ago I was nowhere near this level, and hopefully that trend will keep going. 

Update

So things weren't exactly great last time I blogged. Since then, I've been to my GP, who switched me onto a new drug. I was told to just stop the other one cold turkey, and start the other one. This resulted in me having intense withdrawal symptoms including vertigo and being unable to work for almost 2 weeks. I then saw my psychiatrist, who told me in not so many words that my gp had been an idiot, that from the high dosage I was on, no one should have stopped my dosage without tapering it down gradually. She also told me that the drug my gp had put me on wasn't useful for me, and so I've now stopped that, and am going back onto the ones I was on, only because my gp has messed with the dosage, I now have to gradually climb back up to where I was over a month and a bit. *sigh*

This means that I'm operating at a much lower level than I had been - I have much fewer spoons in any given day, and am much more quickly worn out emotionally as well as physically. Of course, this would be the week that I've got 5 hour long rehearsals coming up every day, so it'd be draining even if this weren't the case.

In good news though, my psychiatrist has referred me to someone she really recommends to help with my recovery, and has given me the names of other good people who I should hopefully be able to get NHS referrals for.

Well, shit.

Trigger warning: suicide attempt


I thought everything was going fine until a couple of days ago. I honestly did. I realised I'd been a lot more apathetic recently, and had felt a bit lovely, but it didn't seem too bad. The way I was feeling had become normal.

On Tuesday, I woke up from a dream which left me feeling really lonely and alienated from all of my friends. The feeling stayed with me all day, only getting worse and making me feel more down as the day went on. By 5 o'clock I had a dark grey fog filling my mind, and moving seemed to take a superhuman amount of effort. I decided that I'd just about be able to drag myself out of the house to drive to rehearsals, but only really sit and watch them instead of participating. I managed to text someone in charge to let them know that, but the fog was getting steadily darker. Something snapped and I just thought 'fuck it'. I took a load of tablets into the kitchen and swallowed them with a glass of water, and then went back to sit on the sofa. As I started getting drowsy, the healthy part of my brain seemed to come back to life a bit, so I called the ambulance and text a couple of friends to let them know.

A few hours in hospital later after having multiple tests done and being monitored to make sure nothing too serious was affecting me, I was allowed to leave. A friend of mine stayed with me that night and the next day and night as well, as the tablets had messed up my brain chemistry substantially, making it a lot harder to cope.

I've had to drop out of two operettas I was in, as I'm just unable to cope with anything substantial at the moment, and I feel absolutely terrible about letting people down. Things are still extremely difficult - I can manage about 10 minutes of 'work' (things like washing up, or putting clothes away) before feeling completely overwhelmed and wanting to cry, and I feel so pathetic for not being able to do more. Logically I realise that the feelings are all symptoms of the depression, but knowing that doesn't really help. My moods go up and down seemingly at random and without warning, which is incredibly frustrating, and the smallest thing can make me feel like breaking down in tears for no apparent reason.

I feel so alienated and disconnected from all my friends whenever I'm not with them - it's almost as if I forget what it feels like to have a connection with people when I'm not currently experiencing it. Because of that, I feel like I don't have friends, or that the people I used to think of as friends are actually not close to me at all any more. The loneliness is a feeling so strong I don't even have the words to do it justice - suffice to say, it feels like a physical ache in my body.

Making contact with people is a real struggle. I don't know whether to tell people, because I'm embarrassed about the overdose. I worry they'll find me pathetic or think I'm trying to get attention.

I'm in two minds about posting this because I really don't want people to judge me for it, but I do want my friends to know how bad things are so that they can (hopefully) help me. It's got to the point where the thoughts about self-harm and suicide aren't scary any more because they're not a surprise - they're around so often now. I just don't know what to do and I can't cope on my own any more. I need help.

Trapped by conflict

I'm feeling trapped. I have so many things I want to write down here but don't feel like I'm able to because I want to write about difficulties I've been having with a person who read, and might still read, this blog. I don't want to have to create a new blog again just because of this.

I've got so much weighing on me and no way to get it out at the moment, and it feels like there's a huge knot in my chest because of this situation. I just want to get it out of my head and write it down here in order to process it properly.

So I haven't written here in a long time for fear that the person I've been having problems with will read it, and either bad-mouth me to friends for writing about them online, or send me passive-aggressive messages filled with conflict and guilt-tripping. I just can't win.

I don't want to tell this to people face to face because I don't like spreading gossip, and I probably wouldn't be very good about keeping the person's identity private during a conversation. I know that the person in question has shown people all of our correspondence and has talked about me, but I don't want to be the sort of person who does that. I want people to be able to trust me with things.

God I hate drama.

Oh depression, it's you again!

Oh hello there, depression. Nice of you to stop by again, just in case I thought I wouldn't see you again.

Things were going so well these past few weeks. Everything was gradually improving, and while things weren't magically wonderful, I was certainly getting a lot better pretty steadily.

This week I've been performing in a show, which has meant 5 hour long rehearsals, late nights, and then 3 performances. It was pretty draining to say the least, but I was just about coping. Ok, so every time I was on my own I wanted to break down and cry from exhaustion, but I knew that after the last performance this evening things would get back to a more manageable level.

After the final performance, I was feeling pretty drained to say the least. I saw my ex-partner, who said it was nice to see me, and after helping to clear up from the show, I headed over to the after-party, with the intention of probably only staying for a few hours. I chatted a bit, sang some songs, ate cake, and calmed down a fair amount.

When my ex arrived, we chatted a little, and it was all going well until he started telling me about his sex life. It just hit me unexpectedly, and he realised as soon as he'd said it, and apologised, but the damage was done. I excused myself and went and cried in the bathroom, and then spent a while in a bedroom with friends trying to cheer me up, but the truth is, I'm only mad at myself. I'm pissed off at myself for still feeling like this, and for showing it in front of him. I feel like every time he sees me like this he must think less and less of me, and I don't want that to happen.

Anyway it was a house party, with only really one room, so there was nowhere I could be where I couldn't see or hear him, so I had to escape.


Trigger warning: self-harm

I got my stuff together and drove home, mentally beating myself up for being such a pathetic worthless creature and looking forward to being able to slice myself open to teach myself a lesson. To serve me right for still feeling like this. I thought about just crashing my car in the hopes of killing myself, but the usual fears stopped me - mainly, that I might survive and then have to deal with all the insurance crap. I considered driving to hospital rather than hurting myself, but then remembered that you have to pay to park there, and it's bloody expensive, so I just came home.

I didn't cut deep, just enough to break the skin so I could watch the blood flow, but I still really want to hurt myself. To punish myself for feeling this way. God I'm so stupid and worthless and a waste of a human being.

On speaking one's mind

I was in a group counselling session for depression yesterday. One of the men there was saying that he just needed to 'man up' about all this, in order to get stuff done.

Now as some of you may know, I have big problems with the phrase 'man up', but this was a counselling session to help each other, and I didn't think was the time or place to be bringing up issues of patriarchal gender roles, so I was just sitting quietly, wishing he'd stop using that phrase.

The therapist leading the session then looked over to me and asked what I thought. I debated whether to speak up about the phrase, and as I couldn't think of anything to say about the original question the man had been answering, I decided to say how I was feeling. I said that I had big problems with the phrase 'man up', because of the patriarchal gender roles it imposed, and how it implied that being a man was better than being a woman, etc etc. I then had to take myself out of the room for a minute or two because talking about that wasn't something I could handle at the time.

When I came back in, the man in question was still saying the same things, but he started using the phrase 'being pro-active' instead. I hadn't imagined that he would change his speech because of something I said, and was quite touched by that.

The following day at lunch, he told me that he liked that I'd said that, and he saw what I meant. He also said that the phrase 'man up' was more aggressive and put a lot more pressure on himself, which 'being proactive' didn't. He's continued using 'being proactive' ever since.

I was surprised that he hadn't just changed the things he was saying because I'd said I didn't like it - it actually got through to him and changed the way he looked at things!

I think I might have to start speaking up more often!

I'm a real boy!

I'm feeling optimistic. I am steadily starting to get my life back on the rails. I rearranged my lounge this week, tidied my bedroom, and even have a working boiler which gives me hot water and heating when I ask for it! I've also been attending job interviews for jobs I actually want to get, and this time round, instead of hoping I don't get any because I don't feel I can cope with one, I actually really want to be successful with these!

I've also gone back to attending therapy at the Priory, and this time round, it's really helping! I think I'm finally in a good enough place to be able to put all of the things into action. I'm using all the skills and techniques I'm being taught, and they're actually working! I've had thoughts which previously would have given me the desire to self-harm, and even suicidal ideation, and using the coping strategies I've been given, I've been able to stop the thoughts in their tracks, and think about something else!

I'm also starting to see friends more, and get a bit of a social life back.

Long story short, I feel like I'm actually starting to become me again. It's been a very long process - around two years or so - but I'm finally starting to feel like a real person again, and I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

Of course there are still going to be bad moments - leaves on the line, to carry on the metaphor - but I'm now confident that I'll be able to deal with them and carry on. I'll still need my support network from time to time, but I hope that those times will become less and less frequent as I become more adept at using the skills I'm learning.

New Year's Eve Rollercoaster

Trigger warnings - self-harm, suicide attempts

So, New Year's Eve. I think I managed fairly well, considering. It was a very up-and-down evening for emotions.

I went to a party at a friend's house. It started out fairly well: friends, drinks, laughter, chatting, etc. Lately however, alcohol and I haven't been the best of friends - it's often contributed to making me feel depressed. All was going well (even very well) until a little later.

First off, a friend made a joke about suicide. He looked over and apologised, and I smiled. I thought I was fine. Yeah...

A few moments later another friend noticed me being 'fine' and took me into the other room, where I had a bit or a cry. Ok, a lot of a cry. He was understanding and supportive and generally lovely, and made me feel good again. There may then have been some kissing =P

I went back into the room again, and everything was ok again for a while. I got rather sleepy for a bit, but perked up again with some more sugary drinks and chatting. When it came to midnight, people did the countdown thing, and went outside to watch the fireworks. As I stood there, I remembered my last new year, when I'd been with my ex, drinking champagne, kissing and cuddling, setting off fireworks, laughing and joking and generally being happy.

I tried to stay outside with everyone else but the thoughts just got louder until I was standing there with tears silently streaming down my face.

Again, a friend came and took my inside, and let me cry on him. I asked to be left alone, and for a while he stayed with me because he could see that I probably shouldn't be alone. Once I was alone in the kitchen, I looked through the knife drawer. I took out the largest knife and dragged it across my arm. For once, this wasn't intended as self-harm to try to prevent suicide. It was to cut as deep as possible in order to cut my veins open and bleed out. Well luckily the friend whose house I was at had really shit knives. It barely even cut through my skin! I tried another 4 knives, and the same thing happened. Seriously. I was pressing really hard! I finally decided it obviously wasn't meant to be, and I tried to carry on socialising.

I cried on a few other people, and eventually started to feel a bit better, and ended up staying up 'til 4:30 just chatting and playing with friends, and actually really enjoyed the rest of the evening!