Tag: suicide

Losing her

Warning: this post contains one very brief mention of suicidal thoughts and overdose.

(Also I’ve a feeling it’s a load of rambling junk. Sorry.)

I’ve lost my friend. It really feels like a loss and hurts like she’s gone away, disappeared, except it’s worse because it’s entirely because of me that she’s chosen to go. She doesn’t want to be close anymore, she said; not close like she says she tried to be or like she says I wanted us to be. My personality disorder, me, my thoughts and needs, have made our relationship something stressful she doesn’t want.

I really care for her, I still do. My feelings for her haven’t changed. I still love her as a friend, want to thank her for all the times she has been there, want to do something to make right the hurt I caused, want to be able to be there for her when she wants or needs me – except she didn’t and doesn’t.

I don’t know exactly how long she’d been feeling she didn’t want to be close anymore before she told me. I’d suspected it for a long time. I really hate what I’ve done to her and that I’ve stressed her and been no good to her. I hate that my illness, essentially, me (my thought, my feelings, my needs, my actions) have been too much. Another person has gone away. Another relationship has gone. I’ve hurt someone else.

You can read a bit morehere (around paragraphs 5, 6, 7) and  here and here about some of the history of what happened with N. Our contact had been strained for several months.

After another period of not hearing from her following my last letter, call and texts, last week before my operation I decided to be more open than usual. I sent N an email, thanking her for forgiving me and explaining I was still really worried about the hurt and upset if caused her, and saying that as I wasn’t hearing from her and she hadn’t said anything beyond that she forgave me,  I was not sure if she wanted to stay in touch. The way I see it, N forgiving me for the hurt I caused did not have to mean she wanted to have contact with me going forward. I directly said I wasn’t sure what she wanted, and asked her.

Also, I took quite a risk and explained to her some of the thought process I talked about in my last post on this topic. I explained how when I don’t hear back from someone I really care about, when they stop communicating, or cancel plans, or don’t show without making any contact,  my thoughts are instantly either: that this proves how they can’t possibly want me around really (who would?) and as soon as I start trusting they leave because all along they knew I’m an evil fake really;  or that they are seriously hurt, or ill,  or got in an accident, and it’s my fault. Often both one after the other. Usually I never admit to these thoughts. I know it’s crazy. I know it’s weird. I know it doesn’t make sense I have these thoughts then get angry with people. I don’t want my friends to feel obliged to take into consideration my weird ill thought processes and make allowances for them in what they do. For example, I don’t want them to feel they have to be more careful what they say to me or to keep in touch more regularly with me than they would with another friend. (Paradoxically I don’t know if, in the way I think and what I need, I do require of people an abnormal level of contact. I’m diagnosed Borderline but I think I have features of dependent personality disorder too!) However things had reached such a point with N that I felt I had to be explicit about what I was feeling and why I had found it so hard to cope when over a few months she stopped keeping in touch and seemed to be restricting contact and canceled or altered several plans to meet (this was one of the things we first fell out over a few weeks ago).

I explained all this as well, as my hesitancy to explain it because I didn’t want to pressure her. I said I know that I make it too complicated and I need too much and my illness makes it too hard to be friends. That I really wanted to be there for her but it was clear I totally failed at that and it’s my fault there’s nothing good for her in the relationship. I said I’d rather know straight if it would be better for her not to be in touch with me.

I’ve never been that open with someone about my thought processes about my relationship with them, outside of my therapy group.

N wrote back a few days later. She was empathic – she said she is sorry there is so much distress going on for me. She said she doesn’t keep in touch regularly across the board when she’s busy. She said it’s stressful for both of us to communicate, when there is so much meaning for me in each interaction. She thinks it’s too distressing for me to cope with the likelihood of her changing plans. She said she can’t be as close a friend as she tried to be or as I want her to be. She offered that we can still meet sometimes or email – which surprised me, actually.

I know it isn’t a total end of the relationship. I’m hoping we can in some way keep in touch and I can remember she doesn’t want to be as close. I hope I can do that and not need too much. But I always need too much. Maybe this whole thing wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t. Never would have happened if I didn’t.

One of the things that hurts the most is that I can never now make right the hurt I’ve caused N. I have made her and needed her to be closer than she wanted to be. I have made her stressed and upset when she’s done so much for me. It has been as I feared. I was too much, yet again;  I needed too much, asked too much, my thoughts and my behaviour made everything too much for the other person.

I told N some of that briefly too, and I thanked her for telling me honestly. I tried to tell her I’m sorry and thank you. I fear it appears it has little meaning now. I really meant it. I need to thank her for so much over the years I’ve known her. I don’t know if she knows. It seems to me all I’ve done is stress her. I don’t know exactly how long I’ve been making her be closer than she wanted. She doesn’t know it but she has possibly literally saved my life. One night I was on the brink of a massive overdose. She happened to call me at that time and as we spoke, she and her husband gave me some hope back and pulled me back from the edge. She knew I was distressed but not how close to ending it I was. I didn’t tell her explicitly at the time or afterwards, because I didn’t want to scare her or make her feel responsible for keeping me safe from that in the future if she knew how unstable I was and the potential influence ordinarily insignificant interactions and events could have on me. Now I wish I had told her.

Some while ago someone I care about told me, “look at what your friends do for you, why isn’t it enough for you? It’s nobody else’s responsibility to make you feel better,” and they told me I have to be more together so my emotions don’t dominate everything. Yet again I’ve acted on the basis of my weird thoughts, I’ve needed other people to do more than they wanted to, more than normal, and I’ve needed them to make it better.

I’m going to stop now. This post is a mess. I’m feeling so empty, hurting for losing N, hurting and angry for the harm I’ve done her, desperate because of how my PD and just …me….wrecks relationships and makes me too much.

Ginny xxx

 

One of the most dangerous ways to react to someone with BPD who is asking for help when they are suicidal or self-harming

 

 

TRIGGER WARNING: fairly massive warning on this one that this post discusses suicide and self harm and issues around getting care in crisis…

Yesterday I was met with one of the most punitive, ignorant and dangerous reactions I have had from a medical professional. I wonder if people who react like this actually do not realise the genuine danger patients are in and how much further into danger this kind of reaction pushes us.

As I write this post I want to be clear that I am now safe and have received help and I am not posting this to alarm or worry readers about me. I’ve been seen in emergency services and eventually had very supportive care, which I will post about in due course. Please don’t panic about me. I am now safe and have had help. I just think what I experienced earlier is a massively dangerous issue that needs to be highlighted.

Yesterday I was absolutely unable to cope. The pressure of my housing situation, financial problems, threat of losing my flat, trying to discuss things with my landlord, my physical help, repeated errors from benefits services and other supposed sources of support, the lack of help over the past 5 months or so when I’ve been at my lowest points, the voices and flashbacks and nightmares – everything boiled over and again I was in the place where the pain and emotions and loss and guilt blocked out any ability to carry on.

I lost it and I was at the point of trying to end my life. I knew how I was going to do it. I had tried and tried but had nothing left.

I spoke on the phone to the GP Surgery. Somewhere, I guess some part of me was still wanting some kind of help or at least daring to tell someone. (They had called me over issues with a mess up over the prescription i should have had; I’d again been left without my medication. ) I admitted what I was feeling. I begged to see someone. I don’t know what made me do that, ask for help when the decision was already made in my mind that this was it now and I’d come to the end. But I did.

I admitted that I wanted to end my life and that I was self harming. I admitted that I had the tablets to overdose. I asked to be seen and that I needed help now, could they see me or get the crisis team? I said how all the mess ups with my prescriptions and benefits and no help in crisis were piling things onto me and making it more and more impossible to cope. I was having hallucinations and flashbacks. I had been asking for help for months. Now I could not go on anymore, I was going to end it. I needed help.

The GP spoke over me from the start. She told me that “you have to be extremely careful about how you are coming across” if I expected to get any medication. She then told me repeatedly, in response to me admitting that I was suicidal and self harming, that “that is not a fair threat to make to people” that “you will find I do not respond to threats” and that I am a responsible adult able to make my own decisions and there is no reason that I should take an overdose. She then announced that she was going to end the call and hung up on me whilst I was begging her to help me.

If Someone with Borderline, or any other mental health problem, admits to suicidal thoughts, plans or intentions, or self-harm, it is the most incredibly ignorant and dangerous reaction to treat them as though they are making threats in order to manipulate and must be punished accordingly. The stereotype that people with personality disorders or any mental health problem are manipulative, or that being suicidal or struggling with self-harming  is attention seeking,  are extremely dangerous. It is all the more dangerous when it is trusted healthcare professionals acting on the basis of these stereotypes when their patients have dared to ask for help, meaning that when we are in immediate danger we are dismissed, punished and rejected.

Experiencing suicidal thoughts is not attention seeking. Self harming is not to create drama or cry for attention. Admitting that you are in danger and want to end your life, that you are absolutely at the end of the road and can’t go on, that everything being piled on you is pushing you nearer and nearer the edge, is not making threats. The attitude shown by the GP today makes it impossible to ask for help when we are most in danger. I now know that if I admit to the terrible thoughts and feelings, I’ll be treated as though I’m manipulating people and will be rejected. If patients are treated like this, suicide and self harm is made something that must never be admitted to or talked about and for which help can never be sought. If patients are treated like this, all the feelings and events that have brought them to the point of suicide are dismissed in an instant, as our position is made out to be manipulative fabricated threats rather than complete brokenness.

Yes, I am an adult. Yes, I am responsible for my actions. If I self harm or attempt suicide, it is my action alone. If I cause myself harm that is done by me alone. That does not mean that the experiences and emotions behind my actions are not real, that I am not in danger,  that I am fake. No longer being able to carry on doesn’t mean I am manipulative. Asking for help and admitting to the horrible things in my head doesn’t mean I am making threats. Asking for help doesn’t mean the feelings that make me want to end it aren’t real. The fact that if I do something to hurt myself, it’s my action, doesn’t mean I’m not in danger and don’t need help.

I’m terrified of manipulating or hurting people I care about. That’s why I hide my self harm and did not tell anyone for years, why I usually don’t ask for help after overdoses… I’m scared that people may feel responsible for saving me… and the self-harm itself started in order to punish myself and hurt myself to turn it all in and not let the horrible things in me hurt anyone else, and overdosing  is sometimes about utter pain and sometimes utter rage and loathing at myself and fear of who I’ve hurt.

People who are self harming and/or on the point of attempting suicide are not nasty manipulative frauds, they are in massive pain and massive immediate danger. They do not need punishment and dismissal. They need a place of safety and compassion and they need desperately for the hurt and the danger they are in to be believed.

It is terrifying to admit to things like how close you are to suicide or that you’re overdosing. I never say it to friends (though two friends have sometimes guessed) because I do not want to make them feel responsible to keep me safe or worried I’ll do it again. That’s one thing.  But it has to be possible to admit it to healthcare professionals, if there is to be any way to get help.

Yesterday, my life was saved by a police officer who recognised the danger I was in, and by the emergency team who assessed me when he took me to them, and by the mental health workers at the safe haven I was taken to. I owe them my life. Thanks be to God.

The safe haven is a new organisation that has been running for just two weeks in my local area and I think massive good is going to come of it. I’ll post more on that going forward. Please God can that be the support other people find when they are in the state I was in yesterday, not reactions like the one I got from my GP. Sadly I think I’m not alone in what I encountered. And this isn’t the first time. I’ve encountered similar and worse lack of recognition or response to the danger I was in, and accusations of making threats or being manipulative,  from within the personality disorder service and in crisis teams.  If i am ever recovered enough to be able to somehow try to help other sufferers or explain to people what BPD is like and how to help someone in crisis, tackling this would be a massive priority for me.

Ginny xxx

Scared I’ll lose it again

Tomorrow I have my usual weekly group therapy, then I have my monthly care coordination appointment (it’s supposed to be monthly but has been canceled more often than not since October last year). It’s challenging at the best of times when this appointment comes round, especially when it closely follows therapy group on the same day, which is draining in itself.

I’m very worried about the care coordination tomorrow. Last month I was really upset and desperate in the appointment, didn’t get the help I felt I needed to stay safe and left wanting to end my life and overdosed. There was a complete lack of understanding between me and my care coordinator.

I’m scared something similar may happen. I’m scared that I might lose it like I did a couple of weeks ago. I’m so so ashamed of that and I feel dread when I think of it. I’m scared I won’t be able to control what I do and it’ll happen again because I’m so unstable right now, flicking into distress and hurt and anger so quickly.

Also, I’m scared because there are really difficult things I want and need to say. I can’t say everything’s good and fine or that I’ve made progress; I can’t say I think I have the support I need because there are massive issues and have been huge failures in communication and so many things promised have not been acted on. I now operate by expecting nothing from the service and expecting whatever is arranged not to happen. It’s “safer” that way. It doesn’t open me up with hope and trust then twist the knife with another let down or betrayal. It means I don’t ask for help either.

I need to communicate these things. I never do, usually, but if I don’t there’s no going forward. So I’m going to try to say at least some of them and write a letter as well in the next few days.

I do not know how to stay calm whilst I do it. How do you stop yourself losing it? How do you control the aftermath of feelings without harming yourself? How do you keep your emotions level when things that are really deep hurts to you, are unanswered or ignored?

I’d be seriously thankful for any suggestions!

Ginny xxx

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.

 

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

 

Aching and doubting

I’m aching. I want to curl up right now and I probably will soon under my blanket… literal comfort blanket. ..

I wish someone would hold me. So much it hurts. I’m scared. Of these feelings and just the state of hurting and all the thoughts and voices.

It’s very raw and very childish.

I don’t expect anyone to believe me. I know everyone thinks I’m fake. I can never be sure I’m not evil and I think I am and everyone knows but I can’t stop it hurting everyone. Some little part of my head knows that’s maybe psychotic.

Longing is dangerous. I’ve really really hurt someone who is good and who has been generous to me beyond what I deserve because I needed too much and asked too much and though I know I don’t deserve it, I really needed help. I know it’s her choice to not be there and that’s her right and I’m not her responsibility but in my version of trust she always absolutely left me. At the very point I trusted and needed most. How can I have those two ideas? Knowing she had no need to be there and the choice had to be hers but also desperate longing turning into violent hurt and anger and consuming desperation when I was left? How can I be guilty but still angry?

She hasn’t contacted me. I have no idea what to do. I’ve hurt her so much and I need to make it right and I need to tell her it was my choice alone and my responsibility alone what I did. I need to try to make the hurt right. But what about the fact that I’m still angry? She hasn’t contacted me and she knows what happened the last couple of days I think. So that means definitively she doesn’t want contact, I think. All at once it’s very final. If she knows I was at the end and she says nothing? Doesn’t come? That means she definitely doesn’t want to know anymore. And she shouldn’t. I’m almost sure, despite hurting, that now I’ve done this I mustn’t contact her again and I must stay away because now everything has too much risk and meaning and I would manipulate her without wanting to because I was and am so out of control. I’ve needed too much. Always that’s my wrong.

I was so angry when she said I can’t have anyone now, some point in the future I’ll be able to have normal relationships. That i have to learn to be independent. I’m not allowed anyone there now? But I think she’s right maybe. I always need too much and cause hurt.

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

Victim roles – holding on tight and falling faster

Victim roles – holding on tight and falling faster

A couple of posts ago I said it is very hard not to be bitter. This week it continued to feel like a twisted game someone is playing. God, perhaps, and I have to keep looking back at the Cross to remember my God is not vengeful, twisted, scornful or delighting in our hurt.

This last week, things continued to snowball and I clung harder and harder to the smallest things. I felt completely alone and the importance of every tiny possible bit of help or hope increased.  The pattern repeated relentlessly that every time I counted on something, inside I built up to, “if I can just hang on to xyz, maybe then I can just manage, maybe then there will be help, maybe then I won’t die” and just as that had started to give me some security, whatever xyz was would be snatched away.

Whatever xyz was didn’t matter so much. I went to the Housing Benefit office to try to get some questions answered. I got some answers but also found out my Benefit will be suspended for weeks because of a 2-hours-per-week change in my working hours, likely putting me further in debt with my rent. I got another 3 page long form to fill out and supplementary statements to write. The time I’d counted on to rest to be able to work the next day was then filled with more anxiety over debt and more form-filling. In pieces losing it I phoned the hospital. We agreed that I could cope with telephone support until my care coordination appointment on Friday. 30 minutes later someone else from the hospital phoned to say that my appointment was cancelled (second month running) because my CPN is on training. I insisted I needed to see someone else.  My friend cancelled our meet-up for the second time within a week (not really for any fault of hers). But I snapped at this point.  The last thing I was hanging on to had been snatched away from me and I couldn’t take any more. Then Friday came and the day of the “replacement” appointment to try to talk about support I needed to cope with finances, Benefits, the threats from my landlord, the mountainous paperwork that needed to be completed and numerous telephone calls, and the effect all the confusion, delays, stress was causing to me, to the point that I was overdosing and cutting several times per week. I admitted that I’m not safe on my own, especially at night, and can’t manage simple things like cooking or keeping my flat in order, because the strain of trying to keep working, therapy, then all the financial problems, combine to be too much and leave me with nothing to go on with. The first person I was speaking to appeared to understand and suggested that there would be help available to me and that we could look at whether more social care support could be available. She asked one of the hospital social workers to see me straight away. The social worker came in and said I wouldn’t qualify for any help, that nobody gets anyone to intervene on their behalf or do forms etc for them, that I wouldn’t qualify for personal independence payment as they don’t recognise BPD and I’m working, and that I’m just “in a bit of a pickle” and that everyone has to deal with problems with benefits, tax and so on. She had no conception whatsoever of the extent of my distress, my self-harm, the danger I am in. I lost it totally and walked out.

At that point, yes it was a twisted game. In my mind, someone was delighting in my hurt, laughing at me, seeing just how far they could push me before I broke totally. And they were going to win that day. I was going to take an overdose or maybe I’d walk onto the train line because that was it and they had finally won. They’d had everything they wanted of me and there was nothing left. Everything had gone beyond possible to absolute desperation and this was the end. Everyone who was “supposed” to help me or whom I tried to rely on, was doing me the most harm when I had most hoped and could least take more hurt.

Obviously, I didn’t go and end it,  because I’m here writing this blog post. I can’t really remember exactly how I didn’t, though I’ll write another post about that later.

Something hit me today.

Vengeful. Ridiculing. Laughing at me. Hurting. Snatching from me. Hitting me when I’m most vulnerable. Rejection when I most need help, by those I most trusted. Scornful. Delighting in hurt. Delighting in making everything my fault and taking no responsibility. That’s what I find I meet with when I most need help and they push me to self-harm and suicide.

My abuser was all those things. Now the world takes that role to me and I am in the same position of being hurt. I’ve got away from my abuser, physically (though not in my head), but now the world takes that role to me and I am trapped and still its (her?) victim, not allowed to be saved. I got away (bodily) from her when I walked out, shut the door, got on the train, hung up the phone. That was hard enough and took over 20 years. Getting away from this abuser’s force in the world is going to be much much harder and the leaving I must do this time is going to take much much longer, I think. I don’t think it’s leaving, exactly, but changing something in me so as to receive something other than abuse.

Ginny xxx (Very confused)