Moon Revenge

 

‘Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water.’ 

Christopher Morley

I feel half alive. I think the fact that I’m feeling something is quite good but then again a part of me wants to be numb because in reality it’s so much easier not to feel. Over the last ten days my moods have gone up and down but I feel like I am starting to gain some control back in my life. I’ve started working again, I’m trying to study everyday for my upcoming exams. However I’m soon to become homeless and everyday I get closer to that reality. I was first diagnosed with depression and anxiety after having no place to live, bouncing around hostels trying in vain to find somewhere to live whilst trying to keep up with my studies. That didn’t go well last year which it was so important to me to have a stable home environment this year but that clearly hasn’t worked and I fear that I will end up back like I was then. My memories are vague of those times because I wasn’t sleeping and was tired both mentally and emotionally. I was nothing. I was barely existing then and I don’t want to go back to that ever again. But I fear that history is going to repeat itself… 

Don’t Look Back In Anger…

  
I’m not doing good at the moment. In fact I things are pretty bad right now when it comes to my entire life. I’m having trouble looking forward, I can’t look towards the future as everything seems so hopeless. I’ve started to lose the will to live. I’m just so tired, you know? Just getting up takes so much energy out of me and I don’t want to feel like this the rest of my life. Last Thursday I was the worst I have ever known myself to be and so I called my GP’s and made an appointment for that day, I called at 8 and got an appointment for 10:30am. When I got there I laid it out straight for my doctor, I simply began by telling her that I didn’t want to live anymore. That I was too tried to go on anymore as my forthcoming homelessness along with my uni exams and financial problems was all to much to bare.

This really concerned my doctor. Usually my moods fluctuate, one session I’ll come on and I feel really down and a month or so later I’ll come back and I’ll be in a better place. I will have bounce back from the bad days I would have had. But recently that hasn’t happened much, the doctor noted that I’ve been coming in more frequently and dealing with bad bouts of depression that don’t seem to be improving. They just seem to get worse and my poor health as of late hasn’t been helping or my deteriorating relationship with my sister who called me a failure because of my problems and a burden to my family. Because of everything going on my doctor called a local hospital, one that is a psychiatric hospital and arranged for me to have an assement as apparently my mental state had become a real cause for concern especially in regards to my own safety.

I thought I was going to be sectioned. I wasn’t… Sometimes I wonder whether it would have been a good or a bad thing. I don’t know. I ended up having to talk for a while with a small group of mental health professionals who were rather sympathetic to what I’m going through. It’s been 5 days since then and I feel slightly better. I talk a lot more about how I’m feeling and try to be honest. But it’s hard to see sunshine when it’s constantly dark and raining and you have no umbrella.

Ghost

Firstly I want to say thank you to all the messages of support that to have received since my last post. This illness makes me feel isolated a lot of time and having people read this blog and tell me that I’m not the only one dealing with this illness and how I can get through this is all is just something I really don’t know how to describe. It does however make me feel less alone in the world and I am reminded of the kindness of strangers. Most of you don’t know me, we could walk past each other in the street and you would have no idea that the person writing this post just walked past you. But yet that doesn’t stop you from reaching out…

I’m okay, for the most part I guess and back in Edinburgh. Going home to London did me a lot of good and whilst I’m not fixed, I haven’t woke up in the last week suddenly cured of my depression but I feel less empty than I did before. I don’t know whether that makes much sense but then again I haven’t made much sense to myself in a very long time. I was in a really bad place last week, the darkest place I have ever known myself to be and it was scary. Never before have I ever felt that bad and wanted to do something about it as I like living, for the most part I like who I am despite my numerous problems. But the pain was too much, that sinking feeling was overwhelming and I was really tired that day. Tired that my life was falling apart again because it’s looking like history is going to repeat itself and I may be homeless again. This year was supposed to be different, I said that things had to be different because of I ended up in that same dark place I was in before when I was pretty much homeless and bouncing around places again then it would kill me. There are days I don’t want to wake up because then it means I have to deal with that fact again, plaguing my every thought along with my usual load of problems with money and my roommates not doing anything, leaving me to do it all. For a 22 year old whose depressed and trying to get my life on track, it’s a lot for me to deal with alone which is why I have thoughts like that…

That night I was a mess and after I handed my roommate the bag filled with all the pills I had in my room, I picked up my phone and called home. I spoke to my mum who has become used to her typical aloof middle child calling her in hysterics over the last 18 months. I told my mum I needed to come home as I couldn’t stay in Edinburgh, she was calm about it despite the late hour. My mum called my aunt and had her transfer money into my account so I could come home. I had my roommate give me just over a week’s supply of antidepressants and I took a coach home at 6:30am last Monday and it took me about 12 hours to get home. It seemed longer than that because it seems like my days are so long and my nights are barely existent any more. There was such a huge relief to be back home and that night I slept for 11 whole hours, something I haven’t been able to do in months. Going home meant I didn’t have to be the one who was in charge, forced to be the responsible one who had to deal with everyone because none of my roommates couldn’t be asked to help. I got to be carefree. I could be the one who was looked after. I didn’t have to have all the answers.

I saw my family for the first time in six months and I say that they drive me crazy but they are a good kind of crazy. The manageable kind of crazy and they made everything feel okay. They have been great about the whole thing and not smothering me about what happened, just keeping an eye on me from a distance. Being back home in London was somewhat liberating, I spent time with my family and caught up with my best friends along with other friends who I haven’t seen in several months. One of them is actually coming up in a couple of days and we’re going to hang out for the day and I’m looking forward to it. I can’t remember the last time that I looked forward to something and it wasn’t in a sarcastic way. That time at home seemed to go by very quickly and I had to come back to face my problems, when I was in London my family promised to help me out with the housing situation and money. Everything seemed to be manageable but then it change, pretty much as soon as I crossed the boarder it all came back. The fear and anxiety, almost as if it was waiting for me to comeback. I remember sitting on the coach and feeling the weight of my world on my shoulder and wishing that the coach would turn around and take me back to London as I just didn’t want to come back to Edinburgh.

It seems like I can’t escape my problems for long.

I know I have to deal with them. I have a doctors appointment in a couple of days and I’m going to tell my GP about the pill thing, about how I had the urge to take a handful of pills and swallow them. I know when I get there she’ll ask how I’m doing and I’ll admit that things haven’t been good. I’ll tell her why and things will go from there. My GP is a very nice lady and she wants to help, she’s one of the few people over the last year who I feel actually wants to help me. She doesn’t mind when I start crying in the middle of the appointment, I hate it when that happens, I hate crying or rather I hate it when I cry as I find it to be a weakness within myself but I think that she thinks that the crying is healthy. When I think all is lost and there is nothing left, she tells me that things will get better and I am strong enough to survive. It’s not hard to believe her but I lack so much faith these days that believing that I can get my life back is something that I’m not sure whether I can believe in any more. Part of the reason why I’m so messed up is because I worry too much, I over think and get myself worked up over things that shouldn’t involve me and my roommates play too much of a factor in my life. I get wound up over things that they have done. But it’s hard not when they dump everything on me, refuse to give me money for the bills or have their names put on the bills, go around telling my friends that I’m an alcoholic and in general take responsibility for anything.

I’m trying to not have a complete mental breakdown whilst trying to get my life back together and it’s not easy. I feel like I am constantly taking steps back. I know I have things to look forward to, things to be grateful for but I can’t be happy. I feel like I don’t know how to be happy any more. All over facebook university friends are posting that they have got their dissertation results back and now know the classification degree and posting sappy messages about how they couldn’t have done without so and so, thanking countless people and saying how they are looking forward to graduation. Every time I see a post about that I feel this void in myself. That empty feeling comes back and the self destructive tendency that I have within myself comes back. I’m reminded that I’m supposed to be there. I am supposed to be posting a dumb message like that because I am supposed to be graduating with them but I’m not. I am not graduating because I am repeating third year because I was too stupid to keep a grip on life and deal with my problems. I was that girl who couldn’t deal with reality, couldn’t get her crap together and ended up becoming depressed, failing most of my classes and being forced to repeat the year. That’s me. Complete and utter failure. I’m still struggling to get my crap together. It’s going to take me five years to complete a four year course. People try and put a spin on it, put an upside on it but there is no upside to that. You can’t make a massive failure like that seem like a good thing. I feel like my whole life is going to be defined by that. Not to mention my illness.

I have this post it on my bedroom wall, not to far from where my pillows are. It’s close enough that I can see it and read it fro my bed, without my new reading glasses. Several weeks ago I wrote down on a pink post it note ‘ I will not let this illness ruin my life’ but the funny thing is I think it has already ruined my life. It’s ruined my life just like my father and my stepfather have ruined my life. Having depression has opened my eyes and taught me many things, I’ve been able to see who I can really depend on but it’s ruined my life. Right now there are more bad days then there are happy days. It makes it hard to get out of bed and there are some days that I don’t get out of bed. I spent the whole of today in my pyjamas barely moving from my bed. But I did study. For several hours I studied for my upcoming exams in August, it wasn’t much but I tried. I’m also trying to teach myself French, I’ve downloaded apps onto my phone and maybe someday I’ll take myself to Paris. I guess the whole point is, that despite everything I’m still trying. I feel like a constant failure, my life seems a complete mess but I still want to get my degree. I wanted to hurt myself last week but I didn’t, I did something about it and here I still am. Trying to survive this illness.

I feel so lost all the time. But maybe a part of me on a subconscious level is refusing to let me fail.

 

Ashes/Demons

  

My heart doesn’t feel heavy. It doesn’t feel anything as there is just emptiness as that is all the I am now. I am just an empty shell of the person I used to be. I don’t even remember who that person is anymore. I can’t remember what it feels like to feel something positive for more than twenty minutes. I just know the bad feelings, the emptiness and the darkness that is constantly surrounding me. Today I reached my lowest, today for the first time I started having thoughts about hurting myself. I thought about getting a handful of antidepressants, sleeping pills and painkillers and just swallowing them. Hoping that it would stop the pain.

Having thoughts like that… Thinking of harming myself and has never really been part of my illness. I’ve been and I am severely depressed but I have never thought about harming myself as I always thought I had too much to live. Now I have too much pain to live with… Even now I don’t feel anything, there is no guilt or sorrow just the constant emptiness which never goes away. So much so it is literally killing me to the point where I am here at that moment of contemplating something like harming myself. Yet I knew it was wrong so I went through my bedroom and picked up every pharmaceutical drug I have and there is a lot and I put them all in a bag and walked out and handed it to roommate. I said to her quite simply ‘I need you to the this bag and hide it somewhere safe otherwise I will take a huge handfull of the pills in here and swallow them because I think I want to hurt myself’ and so she took them. She’ll leave out my citlopram every morning and my penicillin for my tonsillitis but apart from that I will have to ask her for anything drug related.

I still feel nothing. I just know I have taken steps to distance myself from doing something I may not regret. I’m going to call a doctor tomorrow. I will let my GP know what happened. I cried though, despite the emptiness I cried and called my mum and I told her I had enough and I needed to get away, that I needed to come home. So my aunt transferred money over for a bus ticket and I will be heading home to London on Monday. That probably won’t fix things but I can be in a different environment, be with people who care about me and away from all those people in glass houses who are throwing stones.

I never want to hurt myself, my life may be a mess but there are people who I need to live for and I can’t leave them.

I am just so tired.

Run.

  

 Can you hear me falling? Because I know I can… I’m starting to fall back day the rabbit hole and this time I fear that instead of threatening to consume me, it will just kill me. I am just so tired, I can’t fight anymore it’s getting too much. I may be homeless again in two months, the same time I have sit my exams and I can’t fail my exams. I can’t have a repeat of the year before when I was homeless and then failed my exams. I can’t go through that again. It was so hard the first time and I still haven’t recovered from it. I can’t pretend that none of this is happening, that the landlord is kicking us out and everything will be fine. I don’t have hope. I don’t know how to have faith anymore. I’m tired of having fighting everyday, trying to be strong and doing everything. It’s too much and the people who said they would step up and help haven’t. I’m tired of being sick both mentally and physically as it takes so much toll on my body and I don’t have that strength. Telling myself that it’s been a bad day isn’t working because I know it’s not just a bad day, it’s been more than that. It’s been a bad few weeks, perhaps even a bad couple of months. People will say that I am just going through a stressful time which is why I’m such a low mood and it will pass. But I am running at empty right. I feel nothing except tiredness.

I don’t see how things will get better if I am back in the situation that I used to be. My ditch the dog box is in the living room and I don’t have the energy to go and get it. Right now looking at happy pictures isn’t going to help. I can’t remember where my mood journal is and I am not going to look for it. The only thing I know is that I really want an orange, pity there is none in the flat and the shops are shut since it’s the middle of the night. Other than that? I’m just drowning again and I don’t know how long I can keep myself afloat for…

Stars

   
I can’t say it, can I ? Happy Mental Health Awareness Week? No. I didn’t think so because it sounds stupid as nobody asks to have a mental illness. I know I certainly didn’t. But whilst having my depression and anxiety is something I never wanted, I have learned a lot from it. My illness has changed my life in so many ways, mostly in a negative way but there are good things too. Not the daily medication but rather the support I have. People call depression an invisible illness but to the people around me; my support system it’s not invisible. They can see my illness within me, they know when something is wrong or if I’m struggling through a bad episode. They see me in my darkest days and they walk beside me as if they are battling this illness beside me. I find myself fortunate to have supportive friends and family but also good medical professions. I had an emergency appointment last week as I was falling apart, I didn’t mention it my last post because I was still feeling pretty emotional about then. Only two days ago but a couple of days can make a big difference.

My doctors are very supportive. They believe in me and know that I can beat this, they listen to everything I tell them and they are great about it. They tell that I shouldn’t be ashamed about my illness as I have gone through more than anyone should have to go through at my age. When I am a mess and fell too weak to carry on, they give me encouragement and tell me that I am strong and I will get through this. It’s nice to hear. It’s nice to know that someone has so much faith in me. If I tell them that I had a bad week but I managed to do something like get dressed and not stay in bed all day or leave the flat and go to the park, they tell me that I’ve done well. They aren’t patronising about anything as it’s like they understand that when I say there are empty days where I can’t even breathe because I feel so empty let alone get out of bed, I really can’t do it.

At my emergency appointment I saw a different doctor than my regular one but she was kind and supportive. I felt bad for crying so much but she told me that I had done the right thing by calling and asking to see a a doctor because I was at risk. Even though I had a downturn she was very supportive. The doctor asked the usual  questions like ‘Do you ever wish that you wouldn’t wake up?’ I answered yes, because there are days when my life seems to be falling apart so much that it would be easier not to wake up. The doctor then asked if I had ever wanted to harm myself and I said no, despite how ill I am, I don’t have any intent to hurt myself. According to the doctor it’s a good thing. The session went well, she put me in touch with someone who could help with the money situation. She also told me to look into this book ‘I Had a Black Dog’ by Matthew Johnstone. It’s basically describes what it’s like to be living with depression, using the black dog as a metaphor for depression. I watch or rather listened to it on YouTube and I cried. It felt like they had looked straight into my life and put it on the Internet – not like how I’m doing with this blog but you get the point. It’s really good and ideal for explaining to others what depression is like.

The video was informative. I took some tips from it such as ‘beat the black dog box, in which I took a box and I have started to fill it with things that make me happy such as photos, letters and cards. It’s just something to look at when I’m sad to remind me of the good in my life. I also have a mood journal which is pretty self explanatory and it feels good to write my mood down on paper. I’m going to take it to my GP and show her next week. I feel a lot better than I did over the last week, things are looking up as I may have a new job but I still feel slightly down. There’s been no crying for a couple of days but the insomnia, fatigue and lack of appetite are still here. But I’m still going to try. I’m hoping that others with mental health issues try to do the same.

I Had a Black Dog

^^ 

Link to video I was talking about.

Come As You Are

 

Things in my life have hit an all time low. In the last six weeks I have had several depressive episodes, ran away from home twice. Had an ugly confrontation with my father, needed to have an emergency appointment with a doctor because for a split second I thought I was a danger to myself for a small and brief time. It’s scary how my life seems to unravel at times. I feel so lost at times, I feel like I have this darkness in my heart that is threatening to consume me.

My home life is a mess. We had to kick one roommate out because she was making our lives hell and somebody else is leaving because I’m apparently an alcoholic who makes everyone’s life hell. That hurt. I know I ended up in A&E because I drank too much one night but I am not an alcoholic, at times I may drink too much but I do not have a problem. I know everyone says that but I don’t drink everyday and I certainly don’t drink my problems away. If I did, I would have probably needed a new liver or died from some alcohol related problem already given the amount of problems I have. Also how can I be making people’s lives in my flat hell when I do everything? I was making sure we had a roof over our head when we had a bad leak, I was looking for a new internet provider, paying all the bills even though nobody gives me the money for it. I test the fire alarm, I make sure everything is work and so on. Nobody else does that or anything and yet my snooby roommate who needs the broom removing on her says I am causing trouble. How can I be causing trouble when I am trying to make sure everything is working?

I had a big episode on the 4th of April because I couldn’t take anymore. I was tired of doing everything by myself, tired of pushing myself when I didn’t have the strength to get up out of bed let alone chasing up roofers or the money for bills. We were at a mediation session and I couldn’t cope anymore, the tears started and I just needed to flee so I ran away to the train station for a few hours. The roommate from hell soon delivered on her promise to move out and everyone else agreed to step up. The latter has yet to happen. About 10 days or so later the whole having too much to drink and trip to A&E happened, the next morning my roommate freaked out at me. I understand I had too much to drink but she has no concept of fun, for a 21 year old she is a rather plain person. She would rather stay home with all her Dalmatian items and watch Eastenders all night. She acts like we have to be proper grown ups and have our life in order and act like we’re sensible and borking middle age people. Rather boring. I’m trying to be like any normal 22 year old student and enjoy myself despite my illness. I don’t go out all the time and have an occasional bottle of wine at home so I am having difficulty understand how I am an alcoholic.

So that happened and I left to go visit my aunt for a week and she was furious about what had happened. Well I called her in hysterics and she drove down to pick me up. I remember her telling me that she knew something was wrong, that when she came to visit me a few weeks ago she could see I wasn’t well and that I was going through a hard time. My aunt gets me, she understands me and my illness better than anyone. My aunt took me back to her house and looked after, she let me sleep as much as I needed to, make sure I ate and everything. She looked after me, she allowed me to take a break from my life and not be the responsible one. I was there a week and everything was fine until my alcoholic father showed up apparently moving back to Scotland to get sober. However it’s hard to get sober when your first stop is a pub. I went to find him and we had this full blown confrontation and I said everything I never had the courage to say to him. I yelled at him for abandoning his family, for abandoning me. For never calling or remembering our birthdays and never sending cards or taking an interest in our lives. I told him how last summer I was falling apart after failing third year and my mother reached out to him because I needed help and he just didn’t care. My dad’s response? He should have never had kids because he doesn’t care. Such a classy thing to say to the daughter who you always used to claim you loved so much. That killed me, I always told people that my dad didn’t care about me but I never imagined he would actually say it. I was so upset about the whole thing that my aunt had to give me something to calm me down.

Safe to say I have problems? It gets worse because my roommates seem to forget/take forever to give me the money for the bills two different unpaid bills are being sent to debt collectors and because they have my bank details they are threatening to freeze my account and send bailiffs. No one is paying for anything except me and my funds are quickly depleting  so I’m not really surprised that the insomnia, lack of appetite, terrible moods, the crying and my black dog called depression has returned with a vengeance.

Sometimes I don’t want to continue to fight, I just want this all to be over.

 

Northern Downpour

  

So I have a concussion, a pretty severe one that I was kept on A&E for several hours and had a CT scan. This is the last thing I need given that my exams are in five weeks times and I have to rest for the next few weeks and not exert myself. My luck seems to be non existent.

Memory

 
So… It’s been an interesting few days although some of it’s been a bit hazy given the concussion. My timeline isn’t the best not or my dates but I know that I got into a screaming match with my roommate who thinks slavery still exists. It didn’t go down too well, there was screaming and crying, a full on domestic argument to the point I was worried that the neighbours were going to call the police. They didn’t thank god… But basically after yelling at my roommate for the better part of 40 minutes she agreed to move out, rather reluctantly I might add. Most of the time she said she wouldn’t leave – to which I counter argued by saying that she was willing to stay despite knowing she was making everyone’s life hell. She kept saying that she wanted to fix things but this whole situation was beyond fixing at this stage. A few months ago we could have all tried to make it work but o had enough, the insomnia was killing me and my hair falling out was the straw that broke the camel’s back. So that happened.

I also ended up back in A&E again because my concussion got 10x worse and I felt like crap. The symptoms were supposed to have eased down but they hadn’t. I’ve been diagnosed with severe post concussion syndrome – which is a thing! I can’t sit my exams now and I have to go to some place to get a neuro consult and rehabilitation. Apparently it could take me months to recover which isn’t good as my concentration span is all but gone, the concussion has made my insomnia increasingly worse and I am having pretty bad mood swings and I am very quick to temper and get irritated easily. Not fun at all.

Big Girls Don’t Cry

 My good friend Insomnia is back, not that I’m too surprised given the amount of stress I’m under. Things at home are at critical level and I am threatening to implode any day now. I have no energy anymore, I’m so exhausted of fighting and just trying to make things right. I feel so alone at home, I just want to sleep all day and be left alone so I don’t have to hear the bitching from one of my roommates about how one of them doesn’t clean up herself and how her cookery keeps vanishing. I’ve been trying to make sure that the roof doesn’t cave in on us due to a leak which seems to be getting worse by the day, a huge gas and electricity bill that is giving me a major headache, along with debt collectors wanting money for council tax that my non student roommate can’t pay. No one at home seems to give a second thought to all of these, which means I have to take care of it which is stressing me out. I feel anxious all the time and worrying about money and the difficult roommate is draining me so much that my hair has started to fall out. Not a good sign and so it’s easy for me to see why I have insomnia again. It’s impacting my uni work as I’m not going in, barely doing any work and I am terrified of failing the year again. If I fail the year again I am pretty sure it will kill me…