Tag: depression

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

 

How do you keep on trusting?

I’m really struggling at the moment with the fact that whenever I’m really counting on something it gets taken away. When I’m already at breaking point, things that should be simple are made incredibly difficult so I don’t get help I need or have to go through complicated, draining processes I can’t cope with.

I’m not even talking about more “abstract” ideas like complex relationships or values but very basic things like urgent appointments repeatedly being cancelled, having appointments for support booked but being told the wrong time or the booking not being made, completing lengthy forms for Benefits only for the wrong decision to be made with the wrong information, on and on. I suppose the apparent rejection, lack of care, implication I am undeserving and not allowed help, behind all this, makes it worse.

Most recently it was being discharged from 2 days in hospital after I’d overdosed at the weekend, having had a lengthy assessment with the duty psychiatrist, who discharged me on condition I would be seen by the psychiatrist at the personality disorder team the next day and my CPN within 24 hours, a report had been sent straight to them, and that I could hope for more support. So off I went to the PD team at the hospital on Monday. No report had been sent. The psychiatrist would not see me. The report has now been sent this afternoon. There is still no intention for the psychiatrist to see me despite the duty doctor and actually also my GP requesting it. They actually asked why did I think the psychiatrist needed to see me! No more support is forthcoming although I have had telephone support. The duty workers say haven’t I got any friends I could stay with to be safer. My 2 friends who are nearby have made it clear this is not possible.

There is an absolute pattern of this happening over and over, week after week. I can guarantee that if I’m desperate, just trying to hold on, relying on my next therapy appointment – I’ll get a call to say it’s canceled.

How do you cope with this kind of thing?

It feels like a cruel trick or a sick joke and spikes my anger and hurt out of control and I disintegrate and the feelings I was struggling with already explode as well.

I do not think it’s only me it happens to. In fact someone else in another online forum was saying a very similar thing and that it’s as if we’re never allowed to rest, it’s always the next test and the next thing to go wrong.

How do you keep trusting when you feel like this? How do you stop resenting and being consumed with anger? Becoming more and more self centred?

It is really hard to try to keep trusting the hospital and the doctors when I can’t count on anything and repeatedly hope then bang, it gets taken away again.

I shouldn’t put my trust in anything or anyone and I should detach from the need for it and not depend on anyone or anything. But how do we even start to reach that point?

Ginny xxx

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.

Stupid little things like coffee

Stupid little things like coffee

It’s evening. I got to the end of the day at work. I told myself if I got through my shift I could get a nice vanilla latte on the way home. Not always the coffee I choose but the kick and the warm sweet milk is comforting for some reason.

It doesn’t really make sense. I’m still feeling confused and like it isn’t quite my life. It doesn’t seem to make sense. Not that it didn’t end exactly. But just that it doesn’t make sense. Therapy and the crowded bus stuck in the traffic; getting out and feeling I couldn’t make my legs work right because the balance and weight was all in the wrong place and I wanted to curl up and hide; pushing and pushing;  work – faster than I thought it would go, though staying listening to the real world was hard; out; coffee. It doesn’t make sense. How can this be when yesterday and Saturday and Friday were what they were, when it so “was” the end. I’m not expecting to get an answer to that or not right now anyway. It’s just a state that doesn’t seem to make sense. I suppose. ..the answer is that even the worst passed. The answer is I was helped. God is merciful and I have such need of His mercy.

Ginny xx

Somehow

[TRIGGER WARNING FOR SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AND ACTIONS, SELF HARM AND OVERDOSE This post may be disturbing please read with caution if this may be unhelpful for you. ]

Somehow it’s nearly morning. Well, it is morning. I’m numb and “out of it” like it’s not really me, but everywhere at the same time. I thought I came to the end. That was supposed to be it. But I’m still here.

I’m scared to write this because it makes it real. What I did. And what is. And that I’m still here and that it’s morning. No question.

(“The watchman counts on daybreak and Israel on the Lord” I can’t remember what Psalm that is right now. ..)

I’m scared to write because I don’t want anyone to hurt and it was noone’s fault but mine and no one’s doing but mine and my responsibility. I lost it, I snapped and gave in. I didn’t deserve it but they cared for me.

I know I was so nasty to someone who has only cared for me. I needed too much. I still do. I’m so sorry.

But I have to write this. I have to write this in order to go on. I’m scared and I can’t remember chunks of time.

So…

I got to the end on Saturday. I screamed. I smashed things in the kitchen. I cut. I took an overdose. A lot more this time. This time it was the end.

But it wasn’t because I’m still here. And I have to get up soon. I have to get up and get dressed and go out and get something to eat and then go to the hospital to see the psychiatrist and my therapist. I promised I’d do it.

I’m okay. I don’t want to scare people. I’m okay physically. I got help. I’ve been in the hospital Saturday and Sunday. I came home late last night. They monitored me – blood tests and ECG and blood pressure and everything – so I’m fine physically. They were kind. They looked after me. I ate. I saw the duty psychiatrist. They’ve sent a report to the personality disorder team. I already had an appointment set with my therapist this morning and I’m to go early to see the psychiatrist too. So I’m safe. I don’t want people to worry.

I’m going on. Nearly time I can get up. It’s cold this morning. I have to decide what to do about work and what do I tell them. I’m meant to be in this afternoon.

“The watchman counts on daybreak and Israel on the Lord.” Keep saying that and get up and it’s morning.

Ginny xx

Walking this Borderland #8: when it costs to smile

I don’t think that the saying “it doesn’t cost anything to smile” is true. It can cost a very great deal to get up, step outside, meet anyone’s gaze, smile, speak, even keep breathing, when you are crippled with anxiety, voices in your head, emotional pain, traumatic flashbacks and hurt or sadness that hits you any time, anywhere.

I believe in still trying. Through this cost, keep on trying to smile. Through the awful feelings, trying to do one little kind thing for another person and one little kind thing for ourselves. We may not succeed but the will is there. Only we ourselves and God may know the huge cost. Yet good will surely still come of the action, however small. We have taken an action opposite to our illness, opposite to the inclination of our anxiety and hurt, choosing goodness and strength.

This is a small victory and a small step forward in hope.

I emphasise that I do not mean we should try to push away what we are feeling, deny it or tell ourselves we mustn’t feel it or aren’t allowed to. Far from it. We should do quite the opposite. But every little action done in love – for others and ourselves – is a choice for good. When we are suffering very much and when it costs very much to smile, then every smile and every action is worth all the more because it is necessarily done with greater effort and greater love.

What makes you feel loved?  How do you love?

Ginny xx

What do you hold onto in the darkest times?

I’ve posted before about how, like many people with Borderline Personality Disorder, one of the things I find hardest when I feel really bad is to hold on to any knowledge that it will not always be this way. The overwhelming emotions – especially fear, sadness, loneliness, anger, pain, frustration, self hatred, self disgust, hurt, distress, longing or needing, or the feelings I can’t yet name that come with flashbacks – they eclipse everything else and become all that exists.

I wonder if their power is greater if I fear the emotion I sense. But the totality of the experience, their consuming nature, makes them the more frightening.

Descriptions of this emotional experience in BPD often term the feelings intolerable or unbearable. It is that but it isn’t quite either; it’s not all of it. Intolerable, more than I can stand, yes… but it’s not something I can’t stand because it’s me. In that state there is nothing but the emotion and there is nothing of me but the emotion. I cannot stand it but neither do I exist apart from it.

I hate it so I hate myself. I must get rid of it, purge it, so I must get rid of myself and cut away the bad – so I cut.

I can name some of the emotions afterwards. Maybe the therapy is helping me to do that. But in the experience, I cannot. I cannot recognise anything but hurt and pain and hate and evil (me); I cannot hold in mind anything but the impulses to cut, run, scream, end it, reach back for numb. .. and I am gone. ..and I spin between cut off and unable to feel and any attempt to engage being painful, and the state of total emotion, of only existing as that pain.

I cannot control it. I cannot bridge that gap. Therapy is helping me identify what feelings are. But it doesn’t separate them from me, from time, from permanent reality, from right and wrong. It doesn’t tell me how to feel, rather than be, the emotion. It doesn’t tell me how to bridge the gap between the different people I become – the cut off numb one;, the one that hides everything to cope day to day and do what I’m meant to and fulfil my responsibilities and pretend and hope I could ever be good but knowing all the time that everyone really knows how fake it is and how evil I am deceiving everyone; the frightened needing child; the angry, vengeful and impulsive one. More and more they seem to be separate personalities. I am fragmenting. I am more unstable. I lose more periods of the day – when I’m in one state I cannot “access” the other and I can’t remember things that happened (though I may remember the state). I flick so quickly between states without being able to engage my rational mind and try to employ any grounding techniques or DBT techniques to control my behaviour or my experience.

I guess it’s good that I can start to be curious about the process, from the temporary relative stability of my “coping” state. It must show I do have some ability to learn to mentalisa about what’s going on in my mind. Usually my “coping” state would be trying to suppress what I’m exploring right now. Perhaps eventually I’ll be able to build a more curious and stable personality at least alongside these others.

What do you hold on to when your whole reality, your whole existence, is unbearable sensation and emotion? It sounds utterly stupid. It sounds utterly out of proportion. It sounds self centred and I am forced to admit that though it’s the very last thing I want and one of the things I most hate in myself, in a way it is, though at the same time self has got totally lost in the feeling and emotion coming from everywhere.

What do you hold on to when you can’t access your coping strategies or even your most rooted beliefs and deepest cares? I love my God and know God is mercy and compassion, but in the bad states I can only conceive of a vengeful God or a God casting me out. I love my godchildren, I care about keeping my commitments at work,  but in those states I can conceive only that I do everyone harm and everyone knows I’m bad really and would rather I weren’t around. The centre of my beliefs and values warp according to the state I’m in.

What to I hold on to?

Ginny xxx

Turning on the light

Turning on the light

“Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light.” – Albus Dumbledore, “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban”

J K Rowling / screenplay by Steven Kloves

I think I’m still stumbling around in the dark banging into things whilst I’m looking for the switch, but I’m trying…. 🙂

xx

Blessings of friendship

I’m thankful for the visit of a special friend tonight. She came for tea and a catch up and we exchanged much belated little Christmas gifts. We’re going to meet again in a couple of weeks.

It always amazes me that she wants to be my friend. It amazes me she wants to meet up again soon. I’m not good enough to have friends – I’m not any good to be around – that’s what’s in my head.

I’m very thankful that she has kept in touch and continues to want to meet up,  when I’m well and when I’m struggling and when I’m very sick. Very few people stay around in all those times.

Ginny xxx