The last few months part 4

Welcome to part 4...

Trigger warning........there’s quite a bit of cutting at the end of this. Please be safe and don’t read if this could trigger you in any way.

So back to August. I’ve got all this turmoil going on in my life. I’ve had a complete meltdown, discovered I hate myself, am slowly decreasing my dosage of all my drugs, and I’m still pretty bloody miserable.

Work stuff happens. So much work stuff. Stressful things like clients getting mad at me for things that aren’t my fault. Work piles up and I can’t get through it and don’t know what to do about it. I can’t seem to get anything finished and every day someone emails or calls to ask where another piece of work is that I haven’t finished.

Meanwhile, my daughter is having some issues of her own. She’s often very sensitive to my moods and for whatever reason she’s having some emotional issues of her own at the same time. She’s crying a lot, very clingy, wetting the bed constantly (not wholly unusual - she’s not nighttime toilet trained even though she’s 8 but she’s wetting through her pull-up) which is causing me a lot of washing, and she’s basically refusing to do anything she’s told. I know it’s a relationship/connection problem - she’s reacting to my mental unwellness But I can’t seem to get back on track to do anything about it.

Self harm is still calling to me all the time. Suicidal thoughts are constantly with me. I get in the car and think about what it would be like to gas myself in the garage. I drive down the road and notice stuff I could run my car into. I drive by the sea (which is everywhere as my city is a series of peninsulas) and think about drowning. I’m constantly thinking about cutting, drugs, electrocuting myself. It’s tiring, all these thoughts of self harm and death.

Alcohol is my nemesis at this point. My body physically craves a drink, but having one lowers my defences and is a slippery slope to doing something I’m trying so hard not to do. But, after achieving something at work I feel like I could do with a drink to celebrate. I call in to the liquor store on the way home on a Friday night and buy some vodka and e-cigarettes.

I always try to take the appropriate positive actions. This time I read books, had a bath, got someone to take my daughter so I could have some alone time. I tried to go to bed early and get more sleep, and listened to music I enjoy.

On Sunday afternoon my thoughts were all over the place. I would feel momentarily calm and then get worked up and agitated about something. At the time I wrote “I don’t want to be me anymore. All the stress and the constant struggle. I’m trying to do the right thing but it feels like no matter how hard I try I always fall short”.

One beer turned into two. One temazepan became two. I did some cleaning. Didn’t feel tired in the slightest so smoked, drank some vodka and had another temazepan. I was getting manic, cleaning the house and dancing around. This was the opposite of the sleep I was craving, so I took more temazepan and drank more vodka.

That’s when the blades came out. Just so I could get some relief. A bit of cutting, some more vodka and another temazepan or two for the hell of it.

Things get a bit crazy. I dance in the kitchen and the blood running down my arms goes everywhere. I for some reason think this is funny. More cutting, dancing, drinking and taking of drugs ensues. I don’t care about anything anymore. I don’t care anymore. I feel like I can see me from the outside and the absurdity of what is happening but I’m powerless to stop and I don’t want to anyway.

I start drinking vodka straight from the bottle and slashing myself randomly with the blade. Arms, legs and stomach.  Take handfuls of drugs with the vodka. I am still trying to clean up the blood but I keep falling and hitting my head on the cupboards. I suddenly realise I have probably taken too many tamazepan and have a bit of a panic. I won’t be able to wake up for work tomorrow. That’s how screwed my mind is. I don’t want to live, and in fact am deliberately harming myself because I can’t cope, and then the responsible part of my brain is worried I won’t wake up for work. Never mind that if I was dead I wouldn’t make it in...

I rang the crisis team. I didn’t want to but I am started to get weirded out. My thoughts and my body aren’t connected anymore. The ambulance come and take me to hospital. For a while I refuse to let them ring anyone but when I start vomiting I want my Mum. She comes and sits with me. A nurses glue up the worst of the cuts while we wait for the crisis team. About 3 hours later they finally arrive. “There’s no beds so you’ll have to go home”. I feel weird about this. I don’t want to leave the safety of the hospital. Home is where people are, and the means to hurt myself. Mum takes me back to their place, I have the day off work and then back to work on Tuesday. No one from the hospital or mental health calls to see if I’m ok. I don’t know what to do. I still want to die. I feel guilty about what I did but not enough to regret it. Life goes on. Nothing’s changed.