Superhuman?

I’ve just been watching a programme on brain injuries.  It was mostly about comas, but there was one guy who was in a car crash and lost his moods and feelings.  They said he was missing out on what made him human.  He can’t love, he can’t care, he can’t worry.  He says he loves his wife and son but he can’t explain what love feels like, he is totally oblivious.  When he talks he sounds as if he’s saying what he thinks he should say, based on what other people say and perhaps remembered feelings.  He says he doesn’t worry about anything, he feels zero anxiety.  He likes the feeling, but that’s reasonable.  But this means he can’t care about anything, including his family, his job and so on.  Can you imagine feeling so little?  He doesn’t feel and he doesn’t have moods, therefore he can’t possibly have mood swings.  And they say he’s inhuman because of this.  Does this make me, and other people with manic depression, superhuman?  The media is full of people saying emotions are what make us human.  I can’t think of a single example right now, but we’ve all seen them haven’t we?

Superhuman?  I don’t think so, but with emotions as out of control as ours, what are we?  I wrote a post on the old perfect defect blog about being a monster and a monster is what I am.  This does not mean that other people with manic depression are monsters, it is not completely the illness that makes me what I am.  I don’t know why I am what I am, I don’t know how to explain in what way I am a monster.  Here is an exerpt from that post.

I am a monster.  Not the sort that hides under beds and in wardrobes, more the sort that hides inside human skin, teeth forever bared under it all, just waiting.  The sort of monster that has no soul, because mine is gone if I ever even had one.  I don’t live now, I just exist.  Each day blurs into the next, each week into the next.  Time has no purpose when you’re waiting, but then again that’s all there is.  So what is this monster waiting for?  With teeth bared, claws sharpened and a mind in a state of dull alertness under the influence of too much seroquel.  This monster is a rabid animal underneath the human skin, and all rabid animals are subject to the same fate.  But here the human race and I are equal.  The monster waits, the monster lurks and the monster bides its time until one day it will tear its way out and then God help anyone who gets in my way.

Think what you will.  Perhaps it’s becuase I’m selfish, egotistic, reckless and impulsive.  Perhaps it’s the voice in my head.  Perhaps it’s my control issues and obsession with not being weak.  Perhaps it’s all of me.

Apologies

Ugh I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to go this long without posting, I just haven’t been in the mood to write.  I suppose I should start with a quick run down of the last week.  As you know, last Saturday night was bad, it was probably one of the worst nights I’ve had in a long time and it took all my will power to get through it.  The cuts weren’t that bad in the end, they’re superficial and healing nicely, just innocuous lines now in amongst the constellations.  Thanks for everyone’s support that night, it was good to know there were people there and good to know I’m not the only one to have been given useless information by crisis teams.  On reflection there were plenty more people I could have and should have called, Alex for one.  So it’s been a week, and in that time I haven’t been too bad at all.  You might almost call it normal.  I haven’t cut once, despite the temptations on a couple of days, I resisted and felt all the better for it in the long term.  This is me re-quitting.

I’ve been stressing about jobs, or the lack thereof.  I think I’ve applied for everything this side of London and still not heard anything from anyone.  I can’t even get a job in a shop over Christmas.  I’ve been applying for accountancy jobs lately, it’s a theme I keep coming back to and have now decided I really want to do, but still no luck with those applications either.  You’re supposed to train with a firm, but you can just do the qualifications by yourself apparently, so I may just do that.  There are pros and cons to this.  The pros are I wouldn’t be working at the same time, therefore reducing the amount of stress on me, it would make finding a job much easier and I wouldn’t be spending my days faffing around doing nothing.  The cons are that it would be hard to study on my own with very little structure or support, it could get quite expensive (five courses at £200 each, plus exam fees and textbooks) and…  I can’t think of anything else.  I’m meeting with an accountant tomorrow, just to talk about what it’s like to be an accountant so we’ll see how that goes.  Maybe I’ll change my mind.

I have nothing much else to report.  Sorry again.

What Karen Did

8:00 pm
I got home, both relishing and hating the fact that I’m alone tonight after all.  I fed the cats and the chickens and put on the Nightmare Before Christmas, again.  Then I counted the paracetamol, again.  I have 24g of paracetamol, 6.4g of ibuprofen and 9.6g of aspirin.  There is also a massive cabinet of my Dad’s kidney and angina meds that I haven’t counted, yet.  I took two of the ibuprofen, just because I have a splitting headache.

9:00 pm
Made a coffee, drank at realised that it was a very bad idea because now I’ll be awake longer and therefore suicidal longer.  Did I say that?  No I guess not.  Today has been an awful day and I really shouldn’t be alone.  I’ve been reading various people’s posts and it seems like we’re all depressed at the moment.  In my trawl of the internet no one is manic, no one is even happy.  Many are considering suicide.  I’m not sure what this means, maybe just that we all have seasonal fluctuations.  Maybe we get manic in the spring.

I’ve also gone through my Dad’s medicine cabinet and too many of those drugs don’t do anything in terms of toxicity, for example B12.  There are a couple that look as though they could do something.  Maybe I should just slit my wrists after all.

10:00 pm
I played Theme Hospital for a while.  I’m just trying to distract myself really.  I wonder if a film like the Shawshank Redemption would hold my attention at all or whether it’s too heavy duty for a night like this.  It’s better than nothing.  All my films live at Alex’s house. 

I broke my six weeks of non-self-harming.  My arms are all cut up now, and my wrists.  I cut over the vein in the hopes I’d be brave enough to go deep enough.  I wasn’t, but maybe I will be later.  It’s time to follow my rule and call for help.  Did I ever tell you my rule?  I stole it from someone, I can’t remember who, sorry if it was you.  If I think about suicide ten times in one day then I call for help.  I don’t know if it’s over ten times, but I’ve been thinking about it constantly today.

11:00 pm
I’m trying to get hold of the crisis team.  Easier said than done, they seem to be permanently on the phone to someone else.  The irrational mind is saying that this person deserves them more than me and I should just get it over with and kill myself now.

I got hold of the crisis team.  They sounded concerned, but also busy.  They said to put all the drugs in another room and go to sleep.  So here I go.  If you don’t hear from me again tonight it’s because I’ve managed to fall asleep.

03:00 am
I fell asleep for a little while, maybe 3 hours or so, it’s hard to work out with the clocks going back and my brain being fuzzy like it is.  I’m going to play theme hospital for a while.

04:00 am
Still here, still don’t quite have the will to live.  Theme hospital did not distract me for long I have to admit, now I have to find something new.  I suppose I could try to sleep again.  Only fourteen hours until I’m scheduled to see another human being.

 

I phoned the crisis team again, they repeated themselves and said to sleep, so off I went again and managed to sleep until 7am.  I made it through the night, now I just have to make until 6pm and people will be here.  I can manage that right?

Mood is What?

My head is spinning.  I barely know who or what I am.  I’m pacing the room as I write this; sit down, write a sentence, get up and walk around again.  I can’t sit still and yet once again I’m not euphoric, not elated, I’m not even happy.  Some would say I’m sad, I would say I’d rather be dead.  The urges to cut, to kill are back.  I want to do it, I want to self-harm, I want to give up all the hard work I’ve put in being such a good girl.  I want to slash my wrists slightly too deep and then not anything about it.  I want to die almost by accident, then who could say it was suicide pure and simple? 

I’m wondering how I got this bad this quickly.  Yesterday I was depressed, hearing voices and my mother was threatening to call the crisis team again.  Today I was mildly hypomanic but under control.  Now?  Now I have no idea.  I have no idea what a mixed episode is supposed to feel like, no one seems to be able to explain it.  The textbooks, the internet, the blog posts all say the same thing: it’s a mixture of manic and depressive symptoms.  This does not help me.  Yes I meet the criteria for a mixed episode, but that doesn;t mean I’m having one.  I’m frustrated.

I haven’t stopped thinking about death and suicide recently, it;s with me almost constantly, no matter what the mood.  I hate it, I hate me, i hate this illness, I hate feeling this way and I want it to stop.  This weekend I will be by myself in the house for three days.  I’m dreading it.  People being around to care is all that’s been stopping me and now I don’t think I should be alone.  Unfortunately being alone is unavoidable because there is literally no one around.  All I can hope is that my mood stays at a reasonable level and religiously take the meds as always.  Bad things happen if I miss a dose.

In other news, my hips are aching like a bastard and I will therefore not be able to sleep, serving to make this mood worse.  Maybe I should take a zopiclone tonight.

One Step Away From Evil

They were sat around the dining room table, those seven assorted people.  Karen was decked out in a grey hoodie and jeans, dressed to reflect her mood as always.  She and her mother were visiting Sam and his girlfriend way out west, where an aunt also conveniently lived.  They were at the aunt’s house this evening, being fed a roast dinner and meeting a couple of the aunt’s close friends and fellow dinner guests.  The evening wasn’t going badly at all.  Karen had managed to fake-happy her way through most of the meal, she’d smiled and made polite conversation until it suddenly it all went wrong.  Karen’s mother was talking about people they’d seen in A&E and suddenly Mr Dinner Guest interrupts saying, “so what were you doing in A&E?”  Silence filled the air, each family member sat tensely, waiting with baited breath, staring at Karen.  What would she say?  Mr and Mrs Dinner Guest noticed the direction of the family’s gaze and turned to look at Karen also.  She thought fuck it, I’m going to be honest for once.  “I was in A&E because I was hearing a voice in my head and threatening to kill myself,” she said and took a mouthful of peas.  The guests made a non-committal noise and everyone went back to eating.  Eventually normal conversation resumed and Karen learnt a lot about the guests’ house insulation.  Mr DG then went on to tell everyone about his job as a social worker.  He also highlighted some… interesting… opinions he held.  He said that people with mental “illnesses” are a drain on the NHS and should just “pull their socks up.”  The voice in Karen’s head started to stir, to stretch his wings a little, to begin to whisper that she was bad, that this guy was right, that there is nothing wrong with her except that she’s pathetic and weak.  Mr DG then went on, making it, worse, enticing the Voice and Karen’s thoughts to new, higher levels of self-loathing and hatred.  “They’re amoral,” he said, “one step away from evil.”  At this point the Voice takes a victory lap around the room.

Story over.  I really wanted to kill myself after this, but I wasn’t about to do it in someone else’s house.  It wouldn’t feel right.  I hate being this affected by other people’s opinions.  It’s hard when it’s three against one; Mr DG, the Voice and the irrational brain vs the rational brain.  Sam’s face when this guy was talking was some consolation, he looked absolutely furious.  Everyone else was very quiet, even Mrs DG looked pissed.  No one mentioned it again, we just got back on with dinner and pretended it had never happened.  It happened for me, the Voice has been on overdrive ever since and I’m feeling pretty low.  I hate this.

In other news, I’m getting discharged from the CRHT because my crisis is apparently over.  Personally I think my crisis is eternal, but never mind.  I still haven’t heard from the EIS, but they will theoretically be in touch on Thursday or Friday with their decision about whether I meet their criteria.  The CRHT people obviously don’t think I will because they’ve also referred me to mental health in primary care, who will eventually be able to give me a CPN or someone to see weekly and groups and things like that.  Unfortunately they have an eight week waiting list.  I’m on my own until then.

The Girl With Three Eyes

In the news today:  I went to see my GP to get refills and she refused outright to give me a months worth of meds because I’m still a suicide risk.  Although this seems fair, I can’t afford to pay for my meds weekly, nor do I want to go all the way into the town centre to visit her weekly.  As a result I am getting meds doled out to me weekly by the pharmacist having paid for the full month’s worth.  I’m not quite sure how I feel about this.  I think it tells the pharmacist, who now knows me quite well, rather more than I’d like him to know about me.  I like to have control over my meds.  Am I really going to be able to overdose on 420mg of abilify?  I really doubt it somehow.  They tend not to give really toxic drugs to people like me.  She also refused to give me any more sleeping pills, so I guess it’s back to four hours a night for me.  I would complain to the psychiatrist but I get the impression I’m not seeing him ever again since I’m getting referred out soon.  I am annoyed.

All I’ve heard about the EIS is that they’re having a meeting today to look more into my history to see if I meet their criteria.  I find out my fate tomorrow.

I think that’s about it for today.  Nothing much has really happened apart from minor annoyances.  Sorry to bother you.

Dark Days

I’m really struggling here.  The urges are overpowering, the urges to cut, to kill.  I accidentally counted the paracetamol in the medicine basket today.  There’s more there than I took last time, but I’m not sure if it’s enough.  A really big part of me wants to test it out.  A smaller part doesn’t want to in case it doesn’t work.  There’s an even tinier part that wants to live, fortunately it’s a strong-willed part.  Fortunately?  I suppose for other people, the people I’m still living for. 

The problem with only living for other people is that I’m slowly convincing myself, and being convinced, that they don’t want me around, that they don’t need me around.  I am a waste of space, a burden, a pointless use of oxygen, money, resources.  The Voice in my Head is here, he says “hi”.  He’s also telling me to go and get that new sharp knife and slit my wrists with it.  He’s just reminded me I have a crafting knife I never threw out during the Purge of the Scalpel Blades.  Now I can’t stop thinking about it, it would do the job nicely; strong, sturdy, sharp as hell.  Just what one needs from a weapon of self destruction. 

There’s also a little part of me reminding me that if I cut just a little bit, just a tiny bit, all of this pain will go away for a while and maybe I’ll be able to sleep.  But it wouldn’t be a little bit, it would escalate.  This is one of the reasons I had to stop; each cut was a challenge, how deep could I go, how close to my main arteries dare I go?  It had to stop or it’d just get worse.  It’s like knowing when to stop drinking, it is an addiction.

Today has been a bad day.  I’ve tried to distract myself with painting, cooking and watching the nightmare before Christmas again.  I cooked my lunch for the next four days, so there are no excuses for not eating now, although I did lose that 0.4kg I was stressing about, plus a tiny bit extra.  As long as the scales are going down I’m fine.  For the record I’m not even close to anorexic, just obsessing about being too fat at the moment.  I’ve listened to a lot of cheerful music in an attempt to force myself happy, but all that happened was I got angry and a lot of CDs got broken.  I’m now thankful I was listening too CDs and not the iPod.  CDs are cheaper to replace.  Today’s expedition into the world of Karen’s fake art involved splatter painting.  I’ll post it when I’ve finished, assuming I finish and don’t manage to die in the meantime.  I say fake art because I don’t consider my scribblings to be real art, not like Abysmal Musings is real art.

I’ve also been job hunting today.  A week on from my training to be an HCA I still haven’t heard from them about when my shifts start and my questions go virtually unanswered.  I’m not expecting to enjoy the job should I ever manage to start doing it and frankly if I’d been working today I would have spent the day crying in the corner.  People would have started and I would have got fired.  What do I do if I have a bad day when I’m scheduled to work?  I ‘ve never had to just get on with my life, I’ve been in education for 19 years.  What do I do if I can’t get out of bed for a week?  What do I do if I’m so crazy I’m reckless, what if I try to dance with the old people?!  What if I’m dangerous?  The Voice is encouraging this line of thought; telling me I’m a failure, I will fail so I shouldn’t even bother to try.  So back to job hunting, it’s the same old, scouring job and company websites.  Only this time I’ve been looking at graduate schemes as well.  This wasn;t really something I’d considered before because I never dreamed I’d get the 2:1 needed to get a place.  I spent two hours working on an application to Sainsbury’s and got an email back saying I’d got through stage one and now I need to do a verbal and numerical online test.  This scares me.  I think the online application I did was mostly automated, but there were a couple of text answers so I suppose someone would have had to have read them.  Maybe not, maybe that comes later.  Here I am second guessing myself again.

In CRHT news, it did look as though I was getting referred to the EIS, but after a discussion today I’m not so sure it’ll go ahead.  It eventually came out that the EIS deal with people that have been newly diagnosed, whereas I have had this label of doom, death and decay for the last two years.  So the chances are I’ll get referred to the primary care, who apparently have groups, CPNs and whatnots.  Hopefully it’ll be a more organised version of Reading’s primary care.  During today’s visit, as ever, there were a lot of questions about the Voice.  Is he strong, is he constant?  Is he still telling me to slit my wrists?  Yes, the answer to all three, yes.  What am I doing about it?  Trying to distract myself and not doing to well.  “I don’t know what else to do,”  I say, in the hopes that she’ll give me something else to work with.  I can challenge my own negative thoughts, but what about his?  I suppose, thinking about it, I challenge his the same way I’d challenge any other person’s opinion.  Would I disregard it, would I take it on board, would I dismiss it totally for being ridiculous?  The mood doesn’t help the thought pattern.

Adventures on Zopiclone

I took 7.5mg of zopiclone and had six hours sleep.  Is this right?  It still doesn’t feel like enough.  It made me slightly woozy, so I settled down to sleep alright, but then promptly woke up at 4am and couldn’t get back to sleep.  As for side effects, I don’t seem to have any whatsoever, not so much as a teeny headache.  It’s possible it may have reduced my appetite slightly, but that could equally be a side effect of feeling extremely fat having just put on 0.4kg in the space of two days during which I’ve been trying very hard to lose weight.  I don’t want to eat.

Alex, D and I went up to Reading yesterday to meet up with a few people, shop somewhere different and such.  I wasn’t exactly the life and soul of the group, you might even say I was quiet.  If you didn’t know me you’d never realise anything was wrong.  Even for those who did know me it can be tough to work it out sometimes.  I just told them I was tired, after all I had taken my first ever sleeping pill the night before.  The tiredness was, of course, a lie.  The fact was I missed Reading so much it was making me full on depressed.  I realised I had no  idea what I was doing with my life and I am definitely not cut out to be a carer.  I’m too inherently selfish, which I don’t say to put myself down, it’s just the way I am.

I’m feeling stupid, reckless and dumb.  I feel like I may break my resolution not to cut, but I’ve had this feeling before, fought it and won, so I can win again.  I just wish I didn’t want to die quite so much.

Abilify and Zopiclone

I met Dr Ten today.  He seemed ok, the same as every other psychiatrist I’ve seen.  He said I’m manic, he said I’m getting higher and so I need to calm down.  As a result, I have an extra 5mg of abilify, so I’m up to 15mg now, a normal person dose at last.  I also have 7.5mg of zopiclone, which looks like a terrifying drug.  Side effects seem to include cancer and death, but admittedly that is if you take it for a long time, which you’re not supposed to do, four weeks maximum apparently.  Other side effects include drowsiness and lethargy, which seems odd considering those are the desired effects and therefore not side effects.  There was a nice med student in the room too, she asked lots of intelligent questions and was generally quite sweet.  She got involved rather than the standard med student response, which is to be terrified of me.  I shan’t bore you with the questions they asked; it was the usual, plus trying to find out how psychotic I am and if I think people are out to get me.  For the record, the only psychotic symptoms I currently have are the voice in my head sort of on standby, buzzing quietly in the corner, and I’m utterly convinced that the songs I’m listening too are being sung to me specifically and the adverts on TV are aimed specifically at me.  I hadn’t realised this was a psychotic symptom until Dr Ten told me, I just thought I was special, still do.  He asked me if I felt I was special.  I said I did but I also felt this was justified because I’m good at what I do.  Grandiose?  No.

The CRHT team have referred me to the early intervention (not response, oops) service, however I might not meet their criteria, so I’m getting assessed.  They said they’d be in contact within seven days.  I’m still not clear on what they do exactly, the information sheet they gave me is one of the most ambiguous things I’ve ever seen.  It goes like this:

What will you get from E.I.S.?
We’ll contact you by phoning you, emailing you, texting you or writing to you, depending on what you prefer.  Make sure you tell the person referring you to us what your preference is

Who is E.I.S.?
E.I. is a service who work with young people aged 14-35 to support them in an informal and flexible way.  The service is made up of people from different backgrounds.

What does E.I.S. do?
We want to make you feel comfortable in speaking to us.  We’re not here to judge you; we’re here to help you.
What we do is listen to you and hear your story.  We then work out with you how we can help you best.  We can offer you confidential support with emotional things and practical things.

When?
We will contact you within 7 days of knowing that you’ve agreed to see us.
When we contact you we can give you lots more information about E.I.S and answer you questions.

Where?
We will meet you wherever suits you best.

How?
You can bring a friend or relative with you if you want to.
It is really important that people get help as early as possible, and we’ll do everything we can to give you the support you need.

I am confused.

The End of an Era

I quit.  In a good way.  I quit self-harming.  I’ve had enough of long sleeves, I’ve had enough of the furtive glances at other people’s forearms, I’ve had enough of the virtual panic attacks every time I have to change in front of someone else.  Alex included.  I’ve cut too much now, the scars extend too far round my arms and are too deep to hide with a crafty angle.  I’m fed up of taking change off shop keepers with my hand upside down.  They look at me like I’m some sort of loser who doesn’t know how basic personal contact works.  Which admittedly is half true. 

I bought some bio oil.  This is a big, big step for me.  I represents the fact that I’m ready to change, it’s just too bad it’s still so hard.  As I said last post, I haven’t cut in over a month and I don’t want to do it again, I don’t want to be this person I am.  God dammit, I want to wear short sleeves.  The bio oil represents a commitment, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t work, the point has been made.  I quit.

In other news, I’m still pacing, still banging my head against the wall, still getting caught out by random strangers as being a mental.  It’s too much to hide.  The CRHT team are visiting me today to talk about discharging me to the Early Response Team.  I’m not sure what this is yet, but perhaps they’ll explain.  Again.  On Friday I finally get to meet the hospital psychiatrist, he will be Dr Number Ten.  Good timing really, I took my last dose of abilify this morning.  Who knows it may end up being my last dose ever, but I doubt it.  Fingers are crossed for a nice non-Karen-manic-ising antidepressant like Prozac or citalopram.  But not venlafaxine, good god no.