Category: The emotional and the physical

Punished for hope

Go on then. Smash me into the ground and kick me as hard as you can.

That’s what they do to me.

I was promised “victim support” when I went to the police about the abuse. I was promised support from the victim support team’s specialist CPN and to finally get help with the trauma, flashbacks and PTSD. A phonecall with the CPN was booked in for today by the support team. The police officer who took my statement knew.

I got the call from the CPN who told me she is employed by the same mental health trust as the hospital I’m seen at for my personality disorder. Oh good,  I thought, that should help, shouldn’t it? She’ll know my mental health background and have my records. Wrong! She said that she’d organise support for people who aren’t currently seen in the mental health trust and get them therapy to help them deal with the trauma of what they’d had done to them but because I’m seen in the personality disorder service I’m “already in the most appropriate pathway” and she can’t help me.

But the personality disorder service specifically don’t address trauma and PTSD. The therapy I have there doesn’t deal with flashbacks, memories, hallucinations etc.  It deals with here and now. Which is great and important but leaves all the trauma untouched. I need help with that.

Why am I not allowed that because I have personality disorder, when a victim who does not have personality disorder, would be allowed to access it? Why am I denied help with one condition because I also have another diagnosis? You wouldn’t say to someone who had been in a car accident and fractured their leg as well as aggravating a pre existing back injury, “oh sorry we aren’t going to get a surgeon to set your leg to heal because you’re already being seen in the spine clinic.” So why is it deemed okay to deny me victim support because I have BPD?

The CPN said I should make a list of all my unmet needs and take it to my appointment with the psychiatrist next week. Oh my days have I not already begged for help with all the “unmet needs”! She just didn’t seem to grasp that the personality disorder service simply do not address the PTSD area. Which in itself is fair enough, it’s a specialist PD service – but it’s not okay if you’re denied access to other specialist services!

Why was I promised psychological help from this victim support team and this CPN if this is the outcome?! Everyone knew I am being seen in the PD service.

Then the CPN said oh they just don’t offer this help in the community teams. Yes and don’t you think I know, after fighting for 15 years plus. … and that’s why it’s speed to be coming from her!

This is yet another kick and yet another betrayal. Yet another thing I held on to snatched away. Yet another desperate hope gone. Yet another trick, this time effectively from the police, it feels like, though it isn’t the officer’s fault, he was nothing but supportive and this victim support team is separate…. but this is the last hope of people believing me and allowing me any help. And it’s now gone.

It’s absolutely proved everything my mother threatened. People would think the fault was hers, if they ever found out, and they’d take her away. Nobody would imagine a child could do all this. But really she’d know and I’d know that it was my fault all along, and what I’d done (and how evil I am, the voices add). I told. They found out. They think the fault is hers. But I must remember, the voices say, really it’s me all along, really I don’t deserve anything because I’m so evil. It’s confirmed it. 

It’s the hardest kick and tightest grip of the terror and memories again.

I was promised support when I went ahead to make the statement. Now I’m left and left more raw than before. I don’t regret doing it but can’t cope and I’m not okay and I’m not safe.

To top it all off I called the personality disorder service to be told there are no calls back today because the team have gone on an away day. Shame the voices and flashbacks haven’t gone on an away day. Shame the planning for how much hurt I can cause myself hasn’t.

 

“It’s all grand and it’s all green…”

“It’s all grand and it’s all green…”

I’m trying to give myself permission to eat better foods. When I’m filled with self loathing thoughts it’s very difficult for me to allow myself to eat proper prepared food and meals, partly because of thoughts that I’m too disgusting to deserve it and partly because I’m just so tired I have no energy left for cooking after getting through the day.

Yesterday I decided to get some nice fruits and greens and I got my juicer out, which I haven’t used for months. As you can see, the result was a somewhat alarming colour and might have fitted in well in Oz*. However, it actually tasted very nice.

It’s a small start. 

[*Title from “One Short Day in the Emerald City” from the musical “Wicked”.]

This week, I will…

I’m trying to turn things around. It feels as though things have been spiralling down and down since Christmas. Since I spoke to the police, I think things are starting to shift almost imperceptibly. It is true it hasn’t been easy and I cannot change the hurt, but I think there are a few positive things I can try to keep doing, which I have given up on in the last months because it was just too dark and painful.

Inspired by one of a2eternity’s posts (you can visit her wonderfully frank and brave blog at https://a2eternity.wordpress.com/ ) I am making a list of some things that I am going to commit to trying to do this week:

  • Every day before bed, I will write down 5 things that I am thankful for in that day.
  • I will do something creative every day – a bit of my colouring books, make a card, take a photo, write a card to a friend, whatever it be.
  • I will do something positive for my body every day (like do my makeup, have a nice bath with some bath foam, put on some moisturiser) even when I am hearing voices telling me how ugly, foul and disgusting I am.
  • I will choose a passage from the Bible that encourages me with hope in God’s unconditional love for us. Whenever the voices tell me to hurt myself, whenever I hear them saying I’m evil and a fake, when the flashbacks come, I will repeat this line in place of what the voices say.
  • Something that I have meant to do for a long time: I will think about what I could put in my memory box and find a box to use (I’ll post again about what this is for, later in the week).

Here’s to thankfulness.

Ginny xxx

Shattered

I feel so drained. Every part of me aches. Even the joints in my hands. It takes a stupid amount of effort to do a tiny thing like hang the laundry or wash up. I want to stay wrapped in blankets and pillows in the safety of my sofa. I stayed there all morning clutching my stuffed animals that for some reason I still find childishly comforting. It felt like I was shaking and couldn’t calm and just wanted to cry.

It took an immense effort to go outside, but I did because I had to meet someone. My movements felt wrong and unsteady, my body going from sweaty to chilled and back again and so so tired.

Since I told to the police I feel a more vulnerable sadness. This is a new feeling I am even less able to control. Sadness separate from anger. Sadness of loss. Is it sadness perhaps for the first time separate from self disgust and self hate? Sadness of the little child part of me, that’s always with me, although she’s also lost.

Inexplicably disturbed

Near the end of the day at work today, someone was apprehended in the store for shoplifting. She looked young, about 14 or 15 or maybe younger; a small,  plainly dressed girl, who would have been almost studious looking in another context.

Something had been going on all day because all afternoon whilst I was working on the till, our security staff were on the shop floor in much higher numbers than usual, all apparently observing a particular area of the shop. It was one of those situations where your gut tells you “something is not right” – apart from the security presence my attention kept being drawn to a similar area of the store as if clocking something unusual that was slightly off.

I get those feelings. I group them with the way I pick up too strongly on others’ emotions and sense and know things others don’t. It can be a help, empathising, or sensing danger faster, but it’s so draining and an aching weight too.

For some reason as I watched a policeman and two security guards handling this young girl and escorting her, gripped tightly, off the shop floor, suddenly I felt a surge of fear. Not just anxietybut fear. I was completely disturbed. I wanted to run. It took a massive effort to concentrate on helping close down the till and complete my tasks. I can still feel this fear now over an hour later.

Why? Why was I frightened? What of? Was I frightened for her? She was silent but struggling and clearly very strong. I couldn’t read fear in her eyes exactly but something was wrong, not there. After some time the conscious thought occurred to me that she wasn’t alone shoplifting, she was someone’s marionette.

Admittedly I was stressed already, tired and feeling physically ill from the latest OD (don’t worry not life threatening or anything) and I’d had several difficult interactions with customers already.

Yet I can’t understand the level of fear I felt. Perhaps I was reminded of the police having to forcibly “escort” my mother into the transport to hospital, restraining her, with her alternately violently struggling or “playing dead”. Did I remember that? But I didn’t see and hear it although the level of emotion was the same as in a flashback.

Can you have a flashback only of emotion?

Ginny xxx

Utter betrayal and a sick joke

TRIGGER WARNING FAIRLY MASSIVE I GUESS

My friend has left me. Hates me and thinks I’m a selfish demanding b*tch making drama over nothing.

My PD service have basically chucked me. They’ve been playing a cruel game for a while. I beggedand begged them for help again today. I am not safe. I cannot go on. I’m cutting daily and overdosing more than every week. I cannot get a single simple little thing promised to help me even a phonecall. The game of deceiving me and shoving me nearer the edge has gone on for a while now and thoroughly broken me and ripped the wounds apart.

Now I’m utterly unable to go on and falling over the edge they will not catch me just watch me fall and laugh. I begged and begged for help. I won’t detail everything here because it would cause distress but I made it clear if I do not get help – and I need hospital or someone with me all the time now – I will seriously harm myself as much as I can and can’t be sure I won’t harm others because I’m utterly out of control.

It became crystal clear they don’t believe me and think I’m a liar and a fake and doing it for attention and don’t need help and don’t really feel these things. That was the final twist of the knife. I had known all along they thought that really but today was the ultimate proof. Nobody thinks you need hospital, they said. It’s fine for you to go. Let’s leave it there. No help. .. I want you to ring me when you get home when you’re going to take the overdose, he said. Why on earth would I do that? I had spent 2 hours telling them that’s what I’m going to do and begging for help and they didn’t help me and sent me off alone. Why on earth would I phone them to go through all that again?

Do they literally just not believe me and think I’m faking or do they think I’m such an evil bitch that I deserve this punishment and pain and they hope I do it, hope I die?

When I tell them what it’s really like and beg for the help I need they think I’m a fake. So that’s the truth. I’m evil sh*t and I do deserve hell.

WHY. (This ends tonight.)

I have been wondering for a couple of days whether to post about this or not, considering various thoughts about whether this would be too triggering or disturbing and whether potential dangers would outweigh the benefits.

However, I think this is so personally specific that I hope it isn’t triggering, if you see what I mean. Also I’m bearing in mind the advice that acknowledging and talking and asking about suicidal feelings doesn’t cause people to become suicidal.

Something else prompted me to post this tonight, which I’ll explain momentarily.

This post attempts to describe a tiny bit of what I was feeling on Saturday when I overdosed and why I did.

Someone I know has just essentially described my overdose as drama because of a cancelled coffee date. This is so incredibly far from the truth of what led to my overdose and what I felt. It was massively painful to realise that is what it was for her. She is not by nature a judgemental person. She has herself suffered with mental health problems. She is highly intelligent. She is medically trained.

I’m not posting this to tell her she’s hurt me. I don’t understand how she could possibly think that’s why I overdosed.  Perhaps my “why” is equally incomprehensible to her. I do wonder if anyone wanting to understand more about why people overdose or attempt suicide may be interested to read this. But as I said, it’s only very personal to me. Every person’s story and pain is different.

I want to be very clear I am not glorifying overdose or self harm – I am describing what I felt. I am not describing a solution. At the bottom of this article I’ve listed a couple of details of organisations that I think can help towards getting support.

In italics below I’ve tried to describe some of what happened to me in the days and minutes before I overdosed. Though factors and thoughts had been multiplying over days and weeks and months, the actual “1000th last straw” kind of feeling and the final loss of control and “snap” came very suddenly that night.

I guess this comes against a background of mounting external stresses – numerous cancelled appointments, lost support, lost relationships, lost job, financial hardship, threats from my landlord, debt, endless difficulties with numerous benefits and being stuck in hopeless inextricable messes with error after error on the authorities’ part despite my best efforts, poor physical health and constant pain – as well as the internal stresses of my mental health like hallucinations, flashbacks, reexperiencing, voices in my head, memory gaps and dissociation.

Because:

Because everything is utter pain and nothing else exists. All of me is lost outside it. Because nothing, no cutting, no purging, no screaming voices or obedience to their call, is enough to rid the sick evil inside me.

Everyone knows I’m a fake, a liar, foul, ugly, greedy, everyone knows what I’m really like. But I can never stop the evil.

Because the voices do not stop and I so badly need to sleep.

No matter how much more you say, just one more day, one more hour, there really is a limit somewhere, don’t they see? And I know it’s weak but I passed it long ago. It’s true when I say in tired. Let me sleep.

Because I’m screaming, crying, and no one ever came and no one hears today either.

Cruellest – every person has left me when I was most raw. They tricked me to trust, they got at the most bad and vulnerable – then they left. [Like my abuser.] First this hurts with utter fear. Utter loss yet again of all I am. Loss of any hope.

Then rising anger boils and it is just one sick joke or cruel game too many, where they delight in punishing me, I can never win, tricked and tricked again, delighting in hurting me – like HER abuser] – and God delights in my downfall and hurt and he has crushed me to the ground and taken all of me.

No good is visible, no hope exists; no caring is possible, only no more; no more; only sleep.

Then in one moment, comes blinding rage and tears. From numb, dissociated, to intolerable existence to exploding anger, cutting and smashing, no hurt enough. Fears of this exploding monster turning outward now, to someone else, no longer just assuredly to me?

This is all now. ..

In some vague place in another part of my mind, knowing and hoping my heart will stop now I’ve taken the pills.

Running.

Blank.

Slowing.

Tired and the screaming pain is silenced and the voices gone. I can sense my heart, my breathing high and caught and slow but rising. ..

So. This is it now. After that unbearable state consuming – …. the end seems very simple.

 

Of course, it is not at all simple. One most bitter thought in my mind right now, after the comment that it is drama over a minor thing and can’t be dealt with, is that having reached this absolute end point of not being able to go on, even in this I am causing anger and harm and manipulating without wanting to, because to others it’s not real, just drama, trouble, unnecessary, manipulative, can’t be dealt with. I cannot go on and I cannot even stop. Twisted, but definitive, proof ending it isn’t the solution.

FOR HELP, THE FOLLOWING NUMBERS AND SITES COULD BE OF USE:

Samaritans, call for help 24 hours – 08457 90 90 90

http://www.stopsuicidepledge.org

http://www.mind.org.uk

http://www.b-eat.co.uk (eating disorders support)

Ginny xxx

 

Losing time

I know we all lose track of time and sometimes time flies by, other times it drags.

When my emotions are very high or when I’m rocking between dissociated and cut off and very distressed, I lose time. It’s not the normal “time flies”. I do not know what I have been doing. Impossible-feeling amounts of time pass and I don’t know how or what I’ve done. Or large periods (maybe half a day or sometimes as much as 2 days) vanish from my memory. It usually precedes and/or proceeds a time of intense distress. It’s frightening. 

I thought it would get less as therapy progresses but if anything it’s more.

Also, I feel a greater dissociation between different states of need or emotion and rock between them more precariously. I thought the distance would close with therapy, not widen.

Does anyone else feel in this way? If so do you mind me asking what do you do to cope with it?

Ginny xx

I’m so sorry but so angry too

A relationship I cared about very much has fallen apart. Another one. I had started to trust someone. I cared and still care very much for her. I’ve hurt her. I am so sorry for this, ashamed and guilty and disgusted with myself. Yet I’m also hurt too, angry, left, and in a lot of pain because of just how I was left this time. How I can feel both those things makes no sense and doubly emphasises to me how bad I am.

Not only is this friendship apparently over but even worse, I don’t think anything that I counted on or any good I thought I could do in it was actually real. That hurts even more.

I hate the girl in the mirror

 

The Ladies’ facilities at work have mirrors all along the walls right above the sinks. Inescapable. Two more full length mirrors in the locker rooms, one of them again inescapably right by the door out to the shop floor.

I hate what I have to see in the mirror.

Fat first of all.  Fat, ugly, just Too Big. Too Much. Ugly, wrong.

Nothing matches up and I don’t fit together.

Hate. Look at yourself. Hate. Fat, bulging, disgusting. Foul, no wonder they don’t want you, no wonder, who’d want you?

Remember they’re watching. Remember they know. Everyone knows really. You’re a fake. You’re a liar. They all know how weird you are and what a nasty little thing you are. Listen –

No. Stop, please. I don’t want to hear it again. I wish I could cut the evil out. (Go on, purge, get it all out.) I wish I could go back. Disappear. No more demands of my disgusting body.

Rationally I know these thoughts are always strongest when I’m unstable for a long period. But it still hits me every time I have to look in the mirror and hate.