Tag: overdose

Silly post, but just to hold myself to it!

This is a pretty silly post but I’m writing it here in order to hold myself to it, because if I write it here I’ve made the commitment to all of you (lovely readers) as well as myself.

I went to group this morning. I’m so boiling with feelings and hurt and loss and anger (not with group or anyone in it but with the whole PD Service). I desperately need to shut off and the best ways I know without help are things that hurt me. And it’s very possible I could just go home and do that and dissociate or literally knock myself out. I am going to try to make myself take another action instead.

I commit that this afternoon I will write a card to send something to my step-sister that she needs. Then I will clean in every room in my flat. It is in a complete state as i have not cleaned or cared for it in the state I’ve been in in the last two weeks. I may not finish all of it but I will vacuum everywhere and I will clean at least three things in every room (it’s a small flat!).

And to keep going in the promises I made in my commitment to getting better, 5 things I’m thankful for today are:

  • I have a flat of my own to live in (well I say my own; it’s rented but it’s home and I’m blessed to have my place and my safe space).
  • I went to therapy today and talked about horrible feelings and the other members of the group listened and didn’t treat me like a freak. They actually seemed to understand.
  • I saw an old friend yesterday who I have not met in years. She seemed happy and well and she’s having a baby very soon.
  • My step-sister and I are getting in contact with each other more.
  • Um… I didn’t have to wait ages for the bus back to town after therapy, does that count 🙂 ?!

I’m wishing for something good to happen to you today.

Ginny xxx

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

 

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

Snowballing. Not the white fluffy kind.

It feels like breaking over and over at the moment. I hang onto something then it gets taken away. I don’t know why I’m quite so stupid and childish that I keep hanging on to things and people. Last week it was trying to get my tax credits sorted, so things wouldn’t be so tight. Resistance and obstructions all the way. Then it was trying to negotiate a payment plan for my rent arrears. No response (again) to my phone call and letters, so another letter to write. Then trying to get the harassment and discrimination at my last employer investigated. Dismissed without any consideration whatsoever by the regulator. Another complaint to write and my case to be presented again. Then plans with a friend – cancelled. Then hanging on until my appointment with my CPN on Friday – cancelled, because he has to go on training. I can absolutely understand he has to do the training, but I so needed that. Last month’s appointment was cancelled too. Letters I can’t understand about my Housing Benefit and yet another form to fill out to claim for a Discretionary Payment…terrified I’ll lose my home and so my job….

Snowballing, snowballing, problems everywhere there should be help.

Only able to carry on one day more, then one day more, and only by cutting and taking more pills than I should to knock myself out so at least then I can’t take even more and end it.

Hallucinations and flashbacks shaking me too much to breathe.

Hating myself for being so so weak and so childish and for hanging on to things I should by now have learned well not to count on. Hating myself for needing to be cared for and needing help and not being a proper adult, just a burden.

It is very hard not to become bitter and not to give up. I can only try to think, God is teaching me to trust in nothing and no-one except Him alone. “God alone suffices,” St Teresa of Avila wrote. It is right, of course. His Love is all we need and all we cannot lose. But it is very hard not to be angry, bitter, childish and wrapped in my own hurt.

Ginny xx

Hitting when you’re already down…

I really don’t want to talk as if I think the state or the world owes me something. It owes me nothing. However it does hurt when it seems that the systems that are supposed to help you actually hit you down hardest when you most need help.  On its own it shouldn’t be a big thing but when it seems to be the norm it gets too much on top of being ill already.

Recently I claimed for tax credits (for readers from abroad or who otherwise don’t know, this is a small benefit paid to those who are working but on a low income, have children, or have disabilities).

I had first claimed in Spring last year and my claim was rejected before they had even gathered all the information needed. I was so ill at the time I just let it go. I claimed again since starting my new job in November, because I am working part time on a very low salary. The first step is to fill out a form online to request a claim form, then to wait up to 2 weeks to receive the actual claim form.

Monday, I received an email saying that I am already in receipt of tax credits and if I believe this is not true, call this (expensive) number. I called this number and asked to be called back as the call was so expensive for me since I had no landline (can’t afford more bills) so had to call from a mobile. They refused and said they have no facility in the building to make outgoing calls, which I found very hard to believe.

I explained that I am not in receipt of tax credits. I was told that I do have a tax credits award and the award is nil. Right, so I’m not in receipt of tax credits. Yes, you have a tax credits award and the award is nil. Sigh….this could go on for a while. .. eventually I persuaded them to take the details of my change in circumstances. Then the operator’s computer froze so he transferred me to another operator without explaining any of the background and I had to repeat the entire process again. By this time I’d been on the call for about 30 minutes.  They repeatedly asked the same questions and did not listen to my answers. I repeatedly told them I couldn’t afford this call and needed to be called back. I have a few pounds a day to live on and the call had taken just about all my food money for the week. The operator actually told me that because my phone bill does not arrive for a week or two they hadn’t cost me anything! At this point even I could not quite believe their determination to prove they had no responsibility for anything.

Then came to trying to claim for the disability element of tax credits.  I was told that I wasn’t entitled unless I was already in receipt of PIP. I knew this was wrong – that is only one of the qualifying conditions. Online and paper documentation I had when I made my claim made this clear. The operator refused to budge. I insisted to speak to a manager. 5 minutes on hold. …

The manager immediately contradicted what the previous operator had said. But still insisted they would not consider the disability element unless I was in receipt of PIP. I pointed out that he, his colleague, the online and paper documentation each said something totally different, so I needed to know which was the case. He threatened to terminate the call and told me I was making things very difficult.

I suspect I was making it very difficult for him to continue reading from his script without listening to what I was actually asking…. :/ 😦

Then I had to insist that he give me a straightforward answer – was it essential to be in receipt of PIP as he was saying, or was the written information around having a disability which puts you at a substantial disadvantage getting work, correct?  He refused to answer and put me on hold. When he came back on the line he read a lengthy script about the qualifying conditions which confirmed that all the information I’d been given up to that point was wrong. Had I not insisted to this point, I would have been assessed incorrectly for the benefit. I still believe I will be assessed incorrectly because when I tried to tell him the reasons I qualified for the disability element and to ask what proof they needed of this, he talked and shouted over me and forbade me to speak otherwise he would terminate the call. 

By the end of this process I had been on the phone 55 minutes to a cost to me of £25. I still had not been able to get an answer as to how to submit the documentation that would support my claim (and that would have supported the claim I had been rejected for last year, had I only been given the opportunity to provide it). I had been given different information about eligibility from each person I spoke to and from all the written information I had.

By the end of the call I was so distressed, panicked, angry, for seeing yet more financial problems …. this was the very last straw this week and I couldn’t cope anymore. I went home, cut and took a handful of pills, not enough to try to end it, though that was what I wanted at that time, but in order to make it stop and knock me out. All through the next day I didn’t leave the sofa and took more pills to sleep.

Stupid and childish not to be able to cope I know but there really comes a point you can’t go anymore and when you meet obstruction even where you should be able to get help you’re entitled to, sometimes you just crumble.

Ginny xx

 

We’re applying to evict you… Happy Christmas!

Since I lost / was forced to leave my secretarial job at the end of October, financially things have been terrible. Not only had I lost my income for the future, I lost expected income – I was paid only SSP for the time I had been signed off, rather than my wage, and was not told this until afterwards; I was not paid all the holiday pay I believe was due to me; I was given neither a notice period as specified in my contract, nor paid the notice period salary, so I was left without a month’s salary. In the end this left me down about £2,000.

I have taken steps against my former employer, reporting to them to the regulator for how I and several other colleagues were treated, however I have no hope of seeing this money. I can’t afford court proceedings and would have little hope to win.

I was very fortunate to find my current job at a department store but it is fewer hours (this is all I can now manage around my hospital appointments and with the state of my mental and physical health at the moment) and much lower pay. I thank the Lord that I have any job at all. It could have been much worse.

I have to apply for several benefits and the process takes weeks at best before any money comes through.

I had problems paying my rent in November, whilst I was waiting for my Housing and Council Tax benefit to be calculated and to receive any money. I was paid very little in November from my new job, because the finance department’s cut-off dates meant that though I had worked nearly a month, I received only one week’s pay. I phoned up the housing association from which I rent and told them about my situation and they were apparently very helpful. They agreed that whilst I was awaiting the Housing Benefit, I should just pay what I could.

I rang them several times and had several conversations with them, as did the council who needed to confirm some details for my benefit claim. Each time I spoke to them I asked to arrange a payment plan to deal with the arrears of rent and each time I was told that I couldn’t do this and should wait until the Housing Benefit had come through.

Then on 23rd December, I came home from work to find a letter from the housing association saying that they were applying to the Court for possession of my flat!! I would be evicted and would be liable for their Court fees.

This tipped me over the edge. It was absolutely more than I could cope with. By providence I was on the phone to a friend when I opened the letter. I still went completely to pieces and was literally about to take an overdose. If my friend had not talked to me for a long time I believe that I would have gone through with it. Thankfully after speaking on the phone to my friend at length, I was then absolutely overwhelmed with exhaustion and slept til the morning, which probably again saved me from doing anything.

The next day I phoned the housing association first thing. They told me that it was not a notice of eviction that I had received and that “it might be possible to avoid going to Court”!! Why would I be taken to Court, I asked. They claimed that I had not contacted them since the end of October. They claimed that I had not asked to make a payment plan. They said that it was my fault, when actually I had done everything that they told me to do. I had asked to make the payment plan and they had told me that I could not. If I had made a payment plan, this would not have happened, they said. So why did they tell me I could not make a payment plan, when I asked to do it? They claimed they did not know I had physical or mental health problems, when the reason I was housed with them was because of my health problems, when the tenancy support worker who helped me at the start of my tenancy had discussed them with them, when I had declared them on the forms I had to fill in at the start of my tenancy, and when I had discussed my situation in full on all the occasions I had phoned them since I lost my job (which they claimed to have no knowledge of).

I told them that the letter I had received – a day before Christmas, basically – had caused me so much distress that I had been about to take an overdose. “Oh dear,” they said….

Yes, oh dear! And a bit more.

After a long conversation they agreed to suspend action until mid January and I now have to write to them with all the dates I contacted them and what was arranged each time. And I will certainly be sending a letter of complaint.

How is it possible for them to claim they have no record or knowledge of any of the conversations I have had with them? How is it possible for them to claim they did not know my health problems? I will certainly conduct all future correspondence with them by letter sent by signed for delivery, so that they cannot deny I have made contact with them. How could they take no responsibility whatsoever for having not recorded any of the conversations I had with them, and not sharing information within their organisation? They lady I spoke to on Christmas Eve just said over and over, “well, I didn’t know any of this, you’ve never spoken to me”.

This really was almost more than I could cope with. I now feel that it’s a immediate possibility that I will lose my home.

I felt so angry once the first terror had passed. I had just got myself out of debt when I lost my job and now I am out of control and thrown straight back in again. I know it is only my responsibility to resolve it but I do not know how I can get out of this. Everything else mentally is worse because this constant anxiety is bubbling and rising in the background. I so needed my home to be safe for once. It’s like I’m not allowed to be safe and secure because as soon as something improves for a little while, it’s taken away and crashes again.

It’s too easy to resent when I feel like this. I need to be able to keep hoping, keep doing all I can to sort this out, apply for benefits, keep working, keep praying. God does not test us more than we can stand. But I don’t see that I can stand.

Ginny xx