Other People.

*Language & self-harm*

 

 

Today was so bad. It links into my previous blog post about instability too…. one little thing can totally switch your mood….. I didn’t see this coming. I went into work (I volunteer), in as good a mood as I could muster, given how life has been lately. I didn’t want to go in. I never do at the moment. But I keep pushing myself. I knew it was the last time before having a couple of weeks off. So I went in… in a helpful, hopeful state of mind… ready to do whatever anyone wanted me to do. I wouldn’t call it a good mood. It was a fair / decent mood. It was mainly a front – a mask I wear at work.

 

I didn’t anticipate how other people would affect me. I wasn’t prepared for them to not be in good moods. The trouble is when others are in a bad mood, sometimes they can’t help but take it out on me. It might be unintentional and no harm is meant, but I can feel those vibes. Empaths pick up on energy. I was receiving a lot of negative energy today. Everything I did was wrong. Filling a bag too much – when I was explaining I was getting to the end of a bag of stuff as I was so close to finishing, and then I was going to get a new bag and move some stuff over – but they didn’t want to listen to me. Then it was me moving something a few inches from where it was left. Then I kept getting in the way. Then I put things in the wrong sort of bag. Every single thing I said and did seemed to piss this person off. I almost left. I wish I had now. But I didn’t know how to excuse myself. I felt trapped there. So I’m afraid I opted for hurting myself in order to carry on. Every minute there was excruciating for me today. I could feel the energy being sucked out of me.

 

I know it wasn’t my fault. I know I did nothing wrong, and it was the other person. I know this because when I was working backstage, it was silent outside – the other staff weren’t talking at all. Usually if these things happen I might consider it’s ME in the bad mood, as everyone seems in a bad mood – but at those times they at least talk to each other! There was a very definite atmosphere today and I didn’t like it. Even with a customer they seemed off. So I did my best to treat them in the way a customer should be treated… even though I felt like hell myself and didn’t want to be there. I hated this other person today and couldn’t muster up any sort of conversation or anything for them anymore. But the customers don’t deserve to have it taken out on them too. So I did my best.

 

I was praying for home time. I now don’t want to go back after my break. I’ve never experienced that before. It wasn’t me just being sensitive. I was being spoken to as though I was one of the new volunteers who can sometimes be a nuisance. So either I was really pissing them off, or they were in a foul mood and taking it out on me. I’ve been there a few years now. They’ve never spoken to me like they did. They spoke to me like other staff members once did, where I once considered leaving because of them.

 

I understand if they have something going on. Maybe they were having a bad day or not feeling too good themselves mentally, but even when I feel like shit I don’t take it out on other people. It’s like how people deal with headaches differently – I take myself off away from others and rest until I feel better. I don’t inflict myself on others. Whereas some people bark at others… they snap and take out their temper on them. Why can’t more people be more like me? I’m not meaning to sound big-headed by saying that. I just mean why do people take their shit out on me when I don’t deserve it, and when I wouldn’t take my shit out on them?! It’s not fair that I try and take others into consideration when I feel shit, yet they don’t do the same for me, so end up taking their shit out on me when I’M feeling shit myself. They take it out on me and seem completely unaware that that’s what they’ve done. I think that’s what it is – awareness. I KNOW when I’m in a foul mood, and I wouldn’t take it out on others. Maybe some just lack self-awareness, that’s why they take their moods out on you and can’t understand why you respond with upset or hostility yourself.

 

The trouble I had was these little things built up very quickly. And then I reached a point I couldn’t come back from. Once I’ve got to that ‘I’m not wanted here, I might as well go home’ stage, I can’t come back from that. This person triggered off my paranoia among other things. I felt every syllable from their mouth and every action, was full of annoyance and disdain towards me. I could sense a different tone towards me than to other people. I could’ve imagined that but what I’m saying is my paranoia kicked in, and I didn’t want to be around them or say anything, as I felt all I was, was a nuisance and thought anything I said or did would be wrong. I felt mentally and physically absent after that. I couldn’t reconnect with my settings. I was scared to be near customers as I wasn’t grounded. I felt sorry I existed today. Sorry that I was in the way. Sorry that I was breathing. I wanted to come home… but I was scared to say anything to excuse myself. So I had to just tolerate feeling like a worthless piece of shit.

 

Oh well…. I had one of my emergency pills when I got home, as the thoughts and memories around it were too intense and causing worse self-harm urges. So I’m not so bothered now. It is such a shame though that at a time when everything’s rubbish and I have nothing left, the one thing I had is now problematic. That it came just before my break, which will make me not want to go back. Right now I’m not sure I will go back. Not for a few weeks probably. I’m too delicate at the moment. Too many more wrong moves by people and I won’t be here anymore. It’s safer to stay away from everyone, at least until I can get some level of help. My confidence at work was knocked a couple of years ago now after my breakdown at therapy. I didn’t go in as much and felt like I was starting all over again. I didn’t feel as capable of doing things. I didn’t feel useful. I felt more of a burden than anything. I’d recently started to feel a bit better there, but after today I feel I don’t belong there. I didn’t feel like one of them anymore. That upsets me greatly.

 

But never mind. Seem to be losing everything at the moment, so what’s one more thing? Need to stop writing now, as it’s erasing the effect of the pill I took. Best not to think on it. Just need to enjoy my break and not think about that place or the people in it. None of it matters.

 

 

100% Done.

*Self-harm reference*

 

 

I’m 100% withdrawing from everyone now. The last few days have been tough. I’ve posted things then deleted them as I remember nobody cares. I don’t exist. Wednesday was a bad one. I posted a video about how alone and suicidal I felt. I got a message in response. It was actually a good message, but my mind being scarred by traumatic experiences with others, felt threatened by it. I felt guilty for sharing it. I thought I had yet again upset and offended people. I was so ashamed of myself. I felt like the past with my best friend was repeating. Every minute detail was replaying and I seriously couldn’t cope with it.

I felt so horrible about myself that night that I got my self-harm kit and tipped it onto the bed, ready to punish myself. Luckily I was tired and put my head down on a pillow for a moment, to think, and woke up a while later. So falling asleep saved me from harming myself.

I now know the past wasn’t repeating itself. I wasn’t under threat. Everything’s ‘okay’. Only it’s not. I’m filled with self-loathing. I’m still alone. I’m still suicidal. And the anxiety I’m experiencing is affecting me physically. I can’t cope with friendships anymore. I so desperately don’t want to be alone, but I don’t want to take what shitty ‘friends’ did to me, out on innocent people.

I hate that I was ranting about nobody caring, when the reality is that they all have their own stuff to deal with. It makes me feel so selfish. I just find it upsetting because I was dealing with my own stuff, and missed that Liv needed me. So always hearing that everyone’s too caught up in their own stuff to deal with me, it’s hurtful, and I feel like screaming at them – that’s what happened with Liv. I just don’t think anybody understands exactly how lonely I am.

It’s also a fact that people I have on Facebook are not as close to me as I thought. I think in my mind I exaggerated their role in my life. Because I only allow people I like and trust on my profile… people I want to talk with, I place more value on them than they would with me. I’m a nobody to most of them. I’m an acquaintance at best. Many people have hundreds of online friends. So they won’t see my posts. They won’t notice my existence or if I didn’t exist anymore. I need to learn to not take it so personally. I just don’t mean as much to them as they did to me. I’m just not meant for ‘social’ media anymore.

It’s a difficult situation because I have lost the two best friends I had left. One abandoning me for being too mentally ill, and the other ending her own life. They both happened this year. Two friendships of over thirteen years… gone. I have nothing left now. I guess I hoped these less close friends might support me after I lost everything… but I can’t hold it against them that they haven’t. They have more important things and people in their lives than me. I have to just accept I’m alone now. Completely.

I have to continue grieving my granddad, without support – Liv was my support. I have to now grieve the loss of Liv, with nobody to help me do that or bring light back into my life. I have to grieve and cope with the loss of my best friend and my Godchildren. I lost them for reasons I do not understand. It’s unfair the way I have been treated. But I have to accept what’s happened, and that I am totally alone in all of this. It’s just the way it is. I used to be alone all the time. I didn’t have friends. The difference is I didn’t have so much pain to deal with back then. I was young. I had my mental illness, but I didn’t have the life experiences I have now. That’s why I’m so desperate to not be left all alone again. Because I’m not sure I can survive so much traumatic stuff, by myself, unsupported.

But no matter how loud I scream for help….. no matter what I say, how much I beg, I will never get true care out of anyone in my life right now. If they honestly cared they’d have said something to me by now. They wouldn’t have left me in silence, suffering, wanting to end it all. I’d get more than apologies and excuses…. I’d get care, love, support and all other things friends are about. I’d get it without having to ask for it. The second I have to explain what I need from friends, is the second I realise they’re not my friends. Friends know what to do. If I have to ask for it then I won’t believe it when it happens – the words will be insincere.

The thing that upsets me the most is seeing other people reach out at crisis point and getting supported. Being noticed. People caring. But me? Nope. I’m invisible. And the thing about feeling invisible is that it makes me feel extremely violent towards myself. Because it’s like I don’t exist. So if I don’t exist then surely it will cause no pain if I stick my fingers into my ribcage and tear my own heart out…. it won’t hurt if I scratch all my skin off and rip all my hair out. It won’t hurt it I smash my head through a brick wall. I want to violently throw myself around and cause myself so much pain and destruction, because I shouldn’t feel it….. I’m not real am I…? I’m a ghost. And if I actually screamed, nobody would hear me. So I feel very close to making quite a spectacle of myself sometimes, from the frustration of not existing to others, and being in such intense pain through it all.

I know I don’t matter to anyone. I’m understanding now that I’m not as close to people as I thought. But I still don’t understand how anyone could keep quiet when someone is visibly not okay. Even whilst being in the worst state ever, I try to reach out to people who need support. I’m getting a bit of a complex now though. Because anytime I do that, it’s either dismissed or completely ignored, as though I said nothing. Even people disappearing… going offline, leaving me thinking it’s something I said…. not only do I feel invisible, like I never said anything, but I feel that it’s not appreciated, and actually not wanted. It’s a rejection. And it hurts to be honest. I don’t have a problem with anyone at the moment. But I am finding myself in the situation I was in last year with my paranoia and anxiety, and I can’t take it anymore… not at the moment.

So I need to distance myself from everyone. Don’t reach out for help. Don’t reach out and help others, because I’ll be rejected. Basically I don’t want to do anything where I could get rejected anymore. I’m not going to. Let’s put it that way. I have to protect myself. It means being alone. But I am alone anyway!

No more ‘attention-seeking’ online, fishing for care. No more chit-chat. No more advice / care from me. I’m sorry that means not being there for others… but I feel it’s not appreciated anyway – people tend to have lots of others offering them support anyway, not like me. So hopefully everyone will be okay without me.

My paranoia makes me feel physically sick. I’m aware that people on my profile do not deserve to be casualties of my mental illness. I’m not sure that I can recover from this illness now. I feel that this paranoia can never go away. I will never trust anyone. I will never like myself again. I will never believe that anybody truly cares. I will always feel people are out to get me and hurt me. I can’t see a way past that now.

It’s like my former best friend probably thought she could push me to the back of the shelf and bring me out again later, when she’s less stressed and I’m ‘better’. But this is flawed thinking, because how anyone can expect someone to recover when they’ve just lost everything and everyone, in very traumatic and violent ways… and to have to do that recovery whilst totally isolated – it’s insane. It’s never going to happen. How could she ever think I’d get better without her friendship? Yeah I ‘took a step back’ – or at least was going to, that was because she refused to make up her mind whether I was worth anything to her or not. It was to try and help my paranoia and preserve our friendship, but she didn’t give a fuck about that. She blocked me without a word. As you would expect, this increased my paranoia – as I didn’t understand such passive-aggressive behaviour… I didn’t know her motives. I assumed she never wanted to hear from me again. I still assume this. Everything surrounding the loss of her makes me feel sick. In fact life just makes me feel sick right now.

If by some miracle I recover from this intensely dark period of illness, I won’t want her back in my life – she walked away when I needed a friend the most. She left me with none. She saw the worst of me and turned away. I can’t just forget that. Likewise, how am I meant to forget the pain of nobody being there for me? How do you recover from a breakdown like this? How do I learn get over everything that has happened? Some would say you don’t ‘get over it’ you ‘learn to live with it’. But how can I possibly learn to live with everything the last year has shown me? How do I live without Liv? How do I live without my best friend and Godchildren? How can I ever be okay with myself when everyone abandoned me in the depths of my illness? How can I ever trust anyone to care about me enough to not leave me? I’ve seen a different world – one that isn’t safe. I can’t un-see that.

I feel so scarred by everything, I feel I can’t forgive anyone for their contributions to my state of mind right now. I feel upset and angry at a lot of people, and then guilty for feeling that way. That’s why I have to distance myself now. They don’t deserve it, and I’m not getting what I need from them anyway. So what’s the point if there’s only bitterness and resentment? Everything feels toxic now. Plus I’m analysing everything people say and don’t say…. nothing they do is good enough – that’s because the damage done is too massive…. I don’t believe it can be fixed. I don’t know what it would take to fix it all. To fix me. I feel I’m beyond help now. Yes I’m angry that people let me get to this point without intervening. They only had eighteen months to do so….. I was begging for the them to help me as I was going down a one-way track to hell. They all sat back and watched me drown. Now there’s no way back. It feels too late. I feel lost, powerless, hopeless.

I feel I will not recover. It feels like a fact. This is my life now. But there’s no sense bringing everyone else down with me. So I’m done with them all, as I’m done with myself. It’s better this way. For everyone. There was never any hope anyway… that they could save me…. not really. I’ll fade away quietly. Hopefully this way the rejection will stop. There’s nothing worse than silence, to a heart in pain and a mind in despair…

It’s just me now. Me and my blog.

 

 

 

 

What’s Real??

 

 

*Self-harm mentioned*

 

 

Struggling so much at the moment. People probably wouldn’t know this. I’m not really opening up about it as much. I’m battling with my own mind.

 

I’m paranoid that the mental health services are fobbing me off. Despite what they said at the assessment, that they’re not doing that, and that I could access DBT in the future, just not right away – that I have to follow the ‘pathway’ by doing the Wellbeing Centre first…. I can’t help feeling they’re lying to me.

 

I was told they won’t diagnose BPD and that I don’t need a diagnosis. Then how come so many people ARE getting diagnosed with it? And are on waiting lists for DBT and yet I have to start at the bottom? Is it because I’ve done it before in the past? Does everyone have to follow this pathway? Or is it just me, being told something different to everyone else, as usual?

 

This isn’t helping my paranoia. I can’t let go of this feeling like they’re lying to me just so they don’t have to help me. Look, they got out of having to do so…. I’m off of their caseload already, after one assessment. I’ve been directed elsewhere…. yes, it could be because that’s the pathway… I have to try this other thing first…. but I cannot shake the feeling they are telling me that to get out of helping me….

 

And that they’re telling me they won’t diagnose what’s wrong with me, and that I don’t need that diagnosis, because they know that once I have that diagnosis, they will have to offer me more intensive help. Not diagnosing it means they aren’t expected to do anything. This might not be the case, but I have paranoia about everything in my life right now. And when I see other people seeing psychiatrists, and getting diagnosed and I’m being told the opposite and directed elsewhere, I can’t help but feel angry, resentful and rejected…. like they’re picking on me ….. like they don’t want to help. Nobody wants to help.

 

Having read the assessment letter I feel they minimised everything – the self-harm… saying it was ‘minor’ – how do they know?? They didn’t see it… they didn’t ask….. ‘minor bruises’ – actually I’ve still got great big lumps (hematomas) left on my arm from two months ago! I’ve deformed parts of my hands, and I’ve possibly even fractured things along the way but haven’t sought treatment for any of it…. I don’t personally think that’s ‘minor’. Do you?? It’s like when they say your cuts are ‘superficial’. This does SO much damage. My response to reading ‘minor bruises’, was to violently attack myself again, saying ‘I’ll show you ‘minor bruises’!’ … it’s as if they’re saying it’s not bad enough to warrant help or to be taken seriously…. it makes you do it worse. It’s like with the cutting – that’s not ‘superficial’. If I’m bruising tendons and having to steri-strip my wounds then I don’t think that’s superficial. The language around self-harm has to change. I will write separately about this soon.

 

But I felt like they tried to paint a better picture of me, to present at the team meeting, than was true. My eye contact was good because I couldn’t understand what he was saying…. his accent was too strong, that I had to look at his face to lip-read. I may look better than I am and relate well to people, because a part of my problem is I don’t let anyone see my reality. I always try and be nice, polite and friendly to everyone. I’m the girl who had her BCG injection at school, got up afterwards and said ‘thank you very much’ for God’s sake! How I appear has nothing to do with how I am and what I’m experiencing. I won’t go outside the house without putting my make-up on or doing my hair. Yes, I did that for my assessment. But it overlooks the fact that 90% of the time I don’t even go outside the house, so do not bother with these things.

 

 

He said I was present etc. – but what about when I told him that I didn’t feel I was really there…..? That it didn’t feel real…. I felt disconnected from everything. I said that. He also obviously didn’t notice me digging my nails into my hand. He didn’t mention the fact I burst into tears, which he robotically ignored at the time… distressing me further.

 

Yes, towards the end of the assessment I felt we understood each other more and I started to relax a bit. I helped him with trying to get the printer to work…. I may have even laughed a little. Is this the snapshot he took, to report to everyone else? Overlooking the rest of it? That seems unfair to me. I’m a people-pleaser. I don’t like to make others uncomfortable.

 

I felt he played down the self-harm and the suicidal feelings. Why do people do that? Every single time in the past, when I’ve been asked whether I would act on my feelings I have, I’ve said no…. because I’m a people-pleaser! And I was scared of their reactions. This one time I was prepared to be honest and say ‘I don’t honestly know if I would act on it or not anymore…. because I don’t feel as in control of myself as I used to…’ and I don’t feel that opportunity came up…. so I don’t feel they had the full picture when making the decision….

 

But would the decision have been the same regardless? Were they always going to turn me away?

 

And it comes back to… would I have been given more help there and then if I had the diagnosis? To be honest I don’t feel that ‘BPD’ is my only diagnosis…. I feel more and more in recent times, that perhaps C-PTSD fits my life. I would have liked them to look at that side of things…. to understand that everything is traumatising me…. and it feels like a great mountain of pain, loss and trauma that I can’t get over… it just gets higher and higher with each hurtful or difficult event in my life. When I talked to him about what I had experienced in the past he said they didn’t want to know about that – that they wanted to know what my problems were in the here and now….. this is what made me upset in the assessment – they were invalidating my experience and my feelings….. they were saying my past is gone, it isn’t important. But the fact is that my past is why I am in such distress in the present. I needed them to help me with that. I’m not sure they will. I’m not sure anyone will. Even the IAPT service made it clear they deal with the here and now, not the past – WELL WHO THE FUCK CAN HELP ME WITH THE TRAUMA OF MY PAST???? If people keep telling me the past is not the issue, then soon I’m going to kill myself. Because it proves nobody understands what I’m going through. If nobody will help me heal the past then how the hell am I ever to have a future?

 

I wanted help with that. I wanted help with the paranoia too… but I feel that was glossed over. It’s a huge problem for me. It’s new. I don’t know how to cope with it. And as you can see, it’s now causing huge problems for me with mental health services too. I feel stranded at sea to be honest. And feel sick from all the waves of uncertainty and doubt.

 

I also have to make a personal decision soon too… and I’m struggling to do so, as I’m splitting and paranoid with that situation too…. I have nobody to discuss it with. So I can’t make a decision based on facts. I have to base it on how I feel. But my feelings are not centred in reality necessarily…. I don’t know what’s true and what is paranoia. So how do I decide? I also don’t feel it’s my place to decide…. the whole point is I want someone else to make the choice for me…. I need them to take the initiative… be pro-active… choose me and make the effort. I have to know they’re willing to do the things that are needed. But I’m seeing doubt and inaction. I know they may not know what to do, but it feels odd that I have to tell them. I feel I’m in this friendship alone… playing both parts. It’s crazy. And given that things are so unreal and uncertain for me at the moment anyway, it’s frustrating to have to convince someone to make an effort for me when it should be forthcoming.

 

Things are uncertain in every way right now. My mental health feels out of control. With the paranoia, splitting … and then the CMHT stuff and the friendship stuff too…. All of this and life generally feels too uncertain, unstable and unsafe since I lost my granddad two years ago. My grief was delayed. This is how it has manifested. Nothing feels the same anymore. I’m struggling to cope with this new reality. It’s not reality to me yet. Nothing feels real. So having to cope with anything extra is very hard to do. Making choices with friends…. knowing what’s right about mental health services…. being attacked online last year so many times, and then by a friend too after it all… it’s broken me. I’m struggling to adapt to life after loss… I’m paranoid…. I don’t feel safe in this world… and I need people to be supportive, caring and to make me feel safe and secure. I shouldn’t be sat here, having to decide whether someone can do that for me or not…. I should see it in their actions and their words…. I should be given these things without asking for them…. so I’m beginning to think I have my answer…. but then I come right back around to paranoia…. am I assuming things because of my illness? And then straight back to – ‘but if they wanted me in their life they would make the effort on their own’….

 

I am fighting between my head and my heart…. between reality and paranoia…. I don’t know what to do about anything …  and it’s making me sick.

 

 

I have moments where I feel more positive about things, but they’re so fleeting….. before I know it I’m self-harming and a ball of anxiety about life. I do feel alone at the moment. Even if I do occasionally talk to other people… I feel isolated and like I have to cope with what I’m experiencing all on my own. And when people misunderstand you and you doubt your own mind, that makes it all the more isolating…. Being stranded and isolated in a world that doesn’t feel safe or stable anymore = dangerous. But what more can I really do…?