Stop Seeking Reassurance.

*Self-harm and a lot of swearing near the end – sorry*

 

I don’t know where to start…. I don’t know how to put into words how messed up this week has been. I was originally going to write about ‘transference’, or basically having feelings for a MH professional…. I was going to write about the pain of that experience….. and then by Wednesday / Thursday I felt positive and was going to share that with you all… but now I’m completely broken, triggered and absolutely hate everyone at the Wellbeing Centre. I don’t want to go back there. I’ve been left triggered and in deep water with a weight around my ankle, left to drown for at least two weeks – and even if I then return, I can’t talk to anyone about any of this. They’ve messed up badly, repeated what the IAPT service did two years ago, so now I’m closing down…. I’ll resent MH services…. I won’t open up about anything…. I won’t engage positively with them as I had intended to in a couple of weeks…. it’ll all be for nothing. All they had to do was listen to me… to see that I recognised what would help me… if they could’ve done as I’d asked, I could’ve used the next couple of weeks positively and returned full of beans, focused on recovery and feeling happy and safe there. If they’d done what I suggested it would not only have solved the issue I’m currently having, but it would have healed the wounds of the past – the trauma caused by the IAPT service. But they chose to deepen the wound and further destroy my trust in MH services. I’m done.

 

Okay… I’ll try and start at the beginning of this week. I’ll try and be brief. I went to my group earlier in the week. I decided to say to X that I might not be coming back to the group, so wanted to thank him for all he was doing. I wanted to build him up and let him know he was doing a good job. I was dreading the three week break from the group. I said three weeks is a long time in my world, and anything could happen in that time. Part of me felt I might not survive the three weeks. Part of me felt it all depended on my discussion with Z the next day. I didn’t know what would come out of that discussion, and I might decide it best to not return. So I chose to ‘say my goodbye’ to X just in case.

 

Unfortunately during the group, before I had that chat with him at the end, there was mention of his partner…. I already knew he was off-limits. I knew about professional boundaries. I knew he could never be mine. I had actually begun to accept this and was trying to turn my romantic feelings towards him, into just being appreciative of him as a person. But hearing he has a girlfriend was the most sickening stab to the heart. And I had to sit there as if it didn’t affect me at all. When it came to the end and he said I’d wanted to have a quick chat with him, I felt like saying ‘no, actually it doesn’t matter’. It wasn’t like I was having the chat to try and seduce him or something… but the pain of discovering his relationship status just threw me, and I didn’t feel as appreciative of him all of a sudden. I also felt it really did mean goodbye. But I did talk to him for a couple of very awkward minutes. The things I wanted to say didn’t come out as smoothly as I’d intended. It was very forced. And I regretted it. But he seemed grateful for the positive feedback and hoped to see me come back to the group after the break. I said I’d see.

 

Wednesday I went to see someone at a different Wellbeing Centre, we’ll call her Z. This was to talk about the feelings I had, and the connection to my experience at the IAPT service. I won’t go into all the detail, but I discussed it at length with her – for almost two hours! She had said some helpful things…. She had said my feelings weren’t wrong to have. She just kept reinforcing the idea of the ‘boundaries’ and that it’s serious stuff, as ‘people can lose their jobs’ (which made me feel crap to be honest, as I already knew all that, and it seemed she cared more about their jobs than my distress). She said that MH professionals do care about their clients. They may not love them in that sense, but they think of them and want the best for them etc. She said he probably felt good that someone feels good things towards him. She said they agreed that I was brave / strong to share the truth with them. She said he wouldn’t judge me. She said he might feel hurt if I just stopped going to the group. She said all sorts of things…. I found it helpful at the time. It was overloading though…

 

So I went to the cathedral afterwards, lit a couple of candles for lost loved ones, and then sat in the Epiphany Chapel to quietly reflect. I’m not actually religious myself, but I asked for my heart and mind to be healed. I asked for the strength to get through this. I asked for help.

 

The next day I woke up and had a whole new outlook on the situation. I wanted to get the most out of the experience. I wanted to be positive, grateful and learn everything I could from X before I lose him. That way he’ll have made a difference in my life. That way there will be more to his presence in my life than the pain of losing him.

 

I had realised what would help me in order to move on and heal. Although she had said what he probably thought / felt, it wasn’t enough to convince me. They were only assumptions. I can’t be expected to base my beliefs on assumptions. The IAPT service never allowed me closure. I thought this place might be different. So I emailed Z and suggested that if I share a list of statements that would help me heal, could she share it with X and see if he’d agree with those statements, and then report back if he did. It was a pragmatic approach to the problem, that meant I didn’t have to speak to X again myself. And that I respected the boundaries, and would use her as a go-between.

 

The list included:

• Although he may not care about me, the way I care about him or wish he could care about me, it doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about me on some level – in a human way. Care doesn’t mean ‘feelings’. Care is care.
• Even if I feel a level of rejection from the whole situation, I’m not being rejected as a person. I’m still accepted and liked as a person and will be treated the same as usual.
• Even if I’m not valued personally by him, I’m still valued as a person.
• Maybe he does worry about me and wants the best for me – for me to stop hurting myself and to treat myself with more love and care than I do.
• Maybe he respects me and is proud of me for carrying on and trying to overcome this and everything else.
• He might even feel sad if I gave up and stopped coming to the group, because he wants to help people and wants to see me recover too. He doesn’t want me to give up.
• Maybe he appreciates the honesty, and appreciates being appreciated.
• He’s not disgusted with me.
• He doesn’t pity me.
• He doesn’t feel threatened by me or the feelings I have.
• He recognises I’m trying my best.
• Though a time will come where I will lose him and never see him again, he’ll know he made a difference in my life. And even if it’s only in the tiniest way I’ll have played a small part in his journey too, so I won’t be completely forgotten when it comes to an end.
• Even if I don’t matter to him like he does to me it doesn’t mean I’m ‘nothing’… (my friend who died last year, her partner got a tattoo with her initials and date of birth/death on his arm, with a quote saying “Every contact leaves a trace”… it feels like it’s all coming together and it’s a sign that even though I may lose people from my life, it doesn’t mean I never existed in their world. We all make a little difference to each others’ lives… feels like a message from beyond, that I can use now to deal with this situation).

 

These aren’t things that I DO believe. They are things that if I heard that he agreed with, would’ve allowed me to sit in a room with him again, comfortable that I’m cared for, appreciated, and that I matter, even if I’m still a ‘nobody’ in his world. I would’ve felt safe, supported and at peace, as I said to Z.

 

She didn’t respond, and I was concerned I might’ve gone into her spam folder, so I texted X to ask – and he also didn’t respond. He’s now off for two weeks. And she’s now off too. But she did reply to me last night….

 

Her response was that she saw X briefly and he assured her I’m a valued member of the group, he doesn’t feel anything negative towards me. She said as with all service users he wants me to succeed with my recovery and do well. So she successfully made me feel like a number. Like a nothing. A nobody. That was all she said on the matter. So after opening up and completely baring my soul and vulnerabilities to her, that was the extent of reassurance I got on everything. She clearly didn’t share my email with him or the sentiments in it. And then she said “I hope you can accept this and successfully manage your feelings without needing further reassurance” – WTF?!?

 

No, I cannot accept this and manage my feelings without further reassurance. I’m sorry that my need for reassurance is pissing you off and being a burden to you, but I actually fucking need it. So the moral of the story for me now is don’t seek reassurance from any of them. I feel I’m not allowed to speak to X anymore about any of this. I can’t seek his reassurance. She sure as hell isn’t going to reassure me, not anymore. She fucked that up. I don’t even want to hear from her ever again.

 

I’m now left feeling too demanding. But I knew in my heart what I needed to be able to move on. If I had properly been given that, then I could’ve used the next two weeks to get to a better place in my head, and everything would be fine when I go back. I’d never have needed to mention it again. Now I have two weeks of hating the guts of that place… I am splitting on them – and not just on Z, but on X too. It’s upsetting. I feel like they’re in it together, and he doesn’t want anything to do with me either. So I’m back to where I was on Tuesday – me, being in so much pain, whilst he’s out there with the woman in his life, happy as Larry, unaware of what Z has just done to me and my prospects of recovery.

 

When / if I go back, it will be more of the same I’m afraid. Any healing I could’ve done in this time off has gone down the toilet with that dismissive email. I now feel I’m on my own with it. I don’t want to talk to Z again. I feel I’m not allowed to talk to X anymore. Face to face Z had said I didn’t need to discuss this with X or his colleague again. I’ve been silenced. I sure as hell won’t bother opening up to anyone else at the Wellbeing Centre. So that’s it. It’s done. I either don’t go back and just live with the scars. Or I go back and don’t fully engage, because they fucked up. I’m trapped whatever happens.

 

If only Z could’ve accepted that I knew my own mind best, and what would help me. So often these bloody MH ‘experts’ ask their clients what help they need / want… I never know the answer – I always think ‘you’re the expert, you tell me!’ – but on this one occasion I knew it would’ve allowed me to accept that it could never be, but it would’ve probably healed the wounds that made me have the feelings for him in the first place. If I could’ve known he was proud of me, cared for me, appreciated me, and that I might’ve made a slight difference in his life (not personally, but just in some way that I wouldn’t be totally erased when it comes to losing him) – that would’ve made my time there and the impending loss a little easier. But fuck that. They don’t want what’s best for me. They want ‘boundaries’. They want to cover their own arses, no matter the cost to someone in distress. They want the power of being the professionals and knowing what’s best for me.

 

 

 

They’ve solidified the feeling of shame that came with being attracted to X. And Z has made me feel I can’t even talk to X anymore. So there’s even more shame. It feels like she’s holding me away from him, and denying me any sentiment that could help me. She is the obstacle to my healing. This is exactly why I didn’t want to see a fucking woman about this issue. Same happened at IAPT. So she’s triggered all that shit off too. I said I didn’t want to see a woman. That was for a reason. I was right. They didn’t listen. And she didn’t listen when I said what I needed. They don’t want to help me.

 

I now know my feelings ARE wrong. My NEEDS are wrong. They don’t deserve to be met. I therefore am nothing. I’m a statistic to them. So I might just turn up in a couple of weeks, as a statistic…. give my statistical feedback on mind-numbingly inane things that I’m not really struggling with… just to make them all comfortable with the situation… I’ll make up some things I’ve done well in this two week period. I’ll think of a minor struggle I can talk about…. I’ll lock my reality up inside my head and heart again, as though I never said anything – you know, I really wish I hadn’t said anything. Then I’d just have my feelings to deal with. Now I have my feelings, plus the trauma of IAPT opened up, and my trust in MH services completely yanked out of my system… and the negative feelings about them and about me, that this experience has left me with. I have to stuff ALL of that down inside me now, rather than just my stupid fucking feelings for a guy I can’t be with.

 

I never want to talk to Z again. Ever. Not allowed to talk to X. Now I’ve been burnt I won’t talk to anyone else. This is it. They blew the one fucking chance they had to help me. Just like the IAPT people did. Even back then I knew what I needed and they denied me it. The upset I felt at that – because I knew if they’d just listened to me and done what I knew my soul needed to heal, they could’ve stopped this situation ever happening again….. well now the Wellbeing Centre are just the same. They missed the chance. It’s too late to fix it. I don’t trust them anymore. They could’ve helped me change and heal. Now I will shove everything down and this will happen again in the future – only, I will probably never ask for help from MH services ever again as a result. I cannot afford to feel this way ever again in my life. I couldn’t afford to feel this way now. I was afraid to feel this way again. Now I do, I know I’ll never survive it happening again. Right now I’m not sure I’ll survive this.

 

Right now I’m angry. I may be crying, but I’m angry. When that anger dies down and the depression side kicks in, I’m screwed. I can survive with anger. I can’t survive the darkness and the hopelessness.

 

I feel very let down. This last week has been the worst, most intense rollercoaster, and I’ve ended up lower than I started. All it took were three / four days, to feel hope and to have it extinguished by the same person. I’m just done with recovery right now.

 

Yeah, honestly if I believed X wouldn’t want me to hurt myself, then it could’ve helped with my self-harm. As it is, I’m obviously just a number to him, so what I do doesn’t matter does it. Plus the way they’ve made me feel has only increased my urge to hurt myself. So fuck it. I won’t stop. I would’ve stopped for him. But as I’m that irrelevant, they won’t care if I don’t. I don’t exactly have any other way to cope with the shit they’ve left me in right now.

 

They might interpret it as ‘going to the group is making me worse’ – wrong. The way they’ve handled the situation is making me worse. Going to the group is fine. Feeling banned from talking to X makes me feel worse. Feeling watched makes me feel worse. Being told to stop seeking reassurance is making me feel worse. Being made to feel like a number, when I wanted to believe I mattered, is making me worse. That woman – Z is what is making me worse. But I bet they stop me going to the group, because they think that’s what is making me worse. Seeing X and everyone else has been the only thing keeping me alive this year. If they take that away from me I have nothing, and I’ll go. They’ll kill me. I just wish they could’ve handled it differently. I wish I never spoke to Z. I want to forget I ever did. I want to forget all of this. But it’s too late. It’s spiralled out of control, and now I resent them. If I resent them I can never make progress with them.

 

Maybe this will feel better when I’m not splitting on them like this. I’m aware that’s what’s happening. It doesn’t stop it happening though. I cannot see the good in them at all right now. I don’t even want to go to my course next week, which involves neither X nor Z, as I hate all of them in response to Z. But never mind. It is what it is. I have no choice but to tolerate all the negative thoughts and emotions that will be my existence this fortnight. My only hope might be the Samaritans again…. but given how I’m feeling about having opened up and had the response I’ve had, I’m reluctant to do it again, with anyone. Besides, I can’t talk… I feel too upset.

 

Time to hide it though, and pretend everything’s okay. Don’t want those around me to know about any of this. It will only add to the shame I already felt, and had confirmed by my encounter with Z. Silence is the way forward. This will be the only place I break that silence. Thank you to my followers who don’t judge me, and just allow me to air my feelings without making me feel shame. I appreciate you guys xxxx

The Past Is Never The Past.

*Suicide references near the end*

 

 

 

Nobody accepted me at school….. they couldn’t accept that I was quiet, shy and serious… they questioned it. They thought there was something ‘wrong’ with me. 

Nobody accepts me now …. they think I’m too sensitive, “negative” and intense…. they say I make life difficult for myself by letting things get to me… they tell me to just let go of things… they blame me for my mental illness and invalidate my pain.

 

…

 

My best friend in primary school, Laura, ditched me to be friends with the girl who was bullying me, Nicola. Nicola loved to rub it in my face.

 

My best friend Lou, ditched me and replaced me with my former ‘friend’, Hannah, who essentially bullied me. It feels the same.

 

…

 

In secondary school I was psychologically and physically bullied by a girl and her minions, in front of a whole class – nobody stood up for me… not one person – even the teacher let it happen.

 

Falling out with Hannah she broadcast it to the rest of our friends, and none of them stood up for me. Nobody defended me or told her to sort things out with me.

 

…

 

At primary school I had to beg to tag along with people at lunchtime, just to not be alone.

 

I have to beg people to talk to me, chase after people, and this year had to beg people to go with me to a gig, so I didn’t have to go alone – even offering a free ticket. It’s just as humiliating now as back at school.

 

 

…

 

At school I stood alone by the wall, watching everyone else have fun without me, feeling there was something wrong with me and I deserved to be alone.

 

I stand alone, talking to myself on my wall, watching everyone else live their lives happily, excluding me… thinking I must deserve it… it must be me, as anyone else would be included. It’s personal.

 

…

 

Hannah turned against me – I don’t know why… she blamed me, rejected my attempts to resolve things, then avoided communicating with me by bitching to Lou about me, and blocked me.

 

Lou turned against me – I don’t know why… she blamed me, rejected my attempts to resolve things, then avoided communicating with me and blocked me.

 

…

 

Hannah showed no interest in resolving things with ME, her original friend from school. She wanted to have my best friend in her life instead.

 

Lou showed no interest in resolving things with ME, her friend of thirteen years. She did however want Hannah, my former friend from school, in her life instead.

 

…

 

BOTH prioritised each other over me.

BOTH saw it as too much effort to fix things… giving up at the first hurdle… didn’t value me.

BOTH probably saw me as “negative” (aka depressed / mentally ill & needing support from friends!)

BOTH failed to understand mental illness.

BOTH refused to acknowledge they hurt me or discuss it.

BOTH wanted my silence on the topic.

BOTH preferred me as a doormat.

BOTH sat back and expected me to put in the effort after they were the ones who hurt me. Weren’t prepared to fight for me or prove they cared.

BOTH communicated how utterly worthless they think I am.

BOTH prefer positivity in others – which they could both have, due to their circumstances being better than mine, and not having my mental illness, and not being hurt and abandoned by their friends!

BOTH abandoned me because of things related to my mental health…. both shallow…. and disloyal.

BOTH chose to kick me after tossing me into the gutter.

 

Now they’re friends.

Now Hannah knows more about Lou and her life than I do.

Lou doesn’t know how broken I am about this.

She doesn’t know that all I wanted was a friend who saw me as worth the effort…

That goes for both of them.

I just wanted them to fight for ME… their friend.

I introduced all my friends to each other, and now my life is destroyed as a result of that stupid choice.

They’re all friends with Lou now. She has no clue how that feels now she’s dumped me too.

I wish any of them would be my friend again right now – but that requires communicating and dealing with the issues that broke things in the first place. They can’t just sweep it under the rug. I wanted to be worth it to them.

They don’t want me in their lives though. They only want each other.

It hurts that Hannah told Lou she never wanted to hear from me again, but they want to know each other. I was innocent in both cases, and somehow ended up being the one neither of them want to talk to. I feel they are the same person now. They think the same. I assume Lou thinks I’m ‘toxic’ too. This has ruined me more than I can put into words. It’s so messed up.

They’re both happily getting on with their lives of positivity, whilst I’m left behind, completely paralysed by all this. They would never choose me now, not how I am right now… but I’m that way as a result of their actions….

Just like guys in the past – they created the monster then ran from it. They made me who I am and then ditched me because of who I am, all the while making me think it was my fault and I deserved it.

They are both responsible for what happens to me now.

 

…

 

I just feel I cannot escape the past. I feel trapped… doomed to be excluded, abandoned, replaced, neglected, alone, rejected for the rest of my life. I cannot live a life like this.

 

If people continue to treat me the same as they always used to, what hope is there? I really must be worth nothing in this world. I really must be here to just be used by others and dumped as soon as something better comes along. The bullies taught me this. My ‘friends’ taught me this.

 

Nothing and nobody can undo the damage done. It’s too late. Therapy won’t even work now. It’ll only work for a few hours… days if I’m lucky, but my mind is so unstable now, all the work done is undone within that timeframe and everything is hopeless again.

 

Just like a week ago I started writing a blog about my appointment at the Wellbeing Centre, and the positive corner I’d turned regarding past friends…. I was going to move on, learn to love myself, forget them as they were never really my friends if they treated me that way…. Now my mind leaps all over the place regarding them. I hate them. I want revenge. I want to try and resolve things. I want answers. I want to just tell them how shit it was to end a thirteen year friendship over the damn internet. I feel I deserved to be ditched. I feel outraged that I was abandoned like that. I want to apologise and chase to fix things. I want to hurt myself. It just never ends, the sickening twists and turns in my mind at 300mph…. it makes me want to end my life.

 

My mind is too broken to be mended. The damage ‘friends’ did to me, and those who stood idly by, has ended any hope of me ever recovering. The only true friend I ever had was Liv. Now she’s gone from this world. And nobody seems to give a shit about that.

 

There are so many reasons to not exist anymore. The reasons to hold on are few and losing their strength and power every minute of every day. I can’t live in this mind anymore, and it’s completely hopeless that anyone can ever help me with it, because nobody understands how damaged I am. They can’t see it externally…. it’s all happening inside my head, with a stony look on my face. How could they ever understand the chaos in my head? Until they do, I won’t believe they can ever help me. Nobody even wants to help me. I cannot be helped. I don’t have the strength to help myself anymore. I’m giving up. Just living makes me feel sick at the moment. The past is never the past for me. It’s the present and the future. I’m scarred all the way through me because of these people. I can never forget. I can never heal. And that means I cannot survive here.

How can I even live in a world where those who were meant to care about me, hurt me and aren’t even sorry about the fatal wounds they left me with? They didn’t see me as worthy of a conversation. They just used the ‘block’ button and virtually told me to go fuck myself. That’s what they honestly thought of me and the friendship I gave them for all that time. And with that and losing Liv, and my granddad, and how terrifying, unsafe and uncertain life feels now, I just can’t carry on. Why should I? It’s all too much… the noise in my head… the memories…. the abandonments…. the pain…. the anger…. the questions…. all of it. I want it to stop. But it never will. Because those cowards never gave me closure. And then they’ll wonder why I ‘hold a grudge’. I just can’t do this anymore.

 

 

 

Soon.

*Suicide theme*

 

 

I never recovered from Adam disappearing on me.
I never recovered from the things Nick said.
I never recovered from the things Joe did.
I never recovered from Gill’s betrayal, and losing her and Sam.
I never recovered from how Hannah treated me.
I never recovered from losing Grampa.
I never recovered from therapy and my attachment to Matt.
I never recovered from being neglected on the first anniversary of my loss.
I never recovered from all the abuse online last year.
I never recovered from the way you treated me.
I never recovered from you ghosting me, like everyone else did.
I never recovered from you blocking me.
I never recovered from Liv taking her own life.
I never recovered from your absence in the wake of that.
I never recovered from losing Chloe and Logan from my life.
I never recovered from losing you.

 

I never recovered.

Not from any of it.

Do you get it now?

Do you understand why I changed?

Do you understand why I’m desperate to end my own life?

I never recovered from any of it. The experiences I had, built up and became too much.

I wasn’t just battling one thing at a time. I was being hit by all of these things over and over again, each time a new loss, a new traumatic event or anything remotely painful occurred.

I can’t recover from any of it. I never will.

And you turning your back on me when you did, that was the terminal moment of my life.

That was the moment I knew I’m destined to take my own life sooner or later.

When I had you I had at least the hope of recovery. I had something worth recovering for. I had the kids. I had someone I thought cared. I had someone who never gave up on me.

But you did.

You gave up on me too.

Now there’s nothing left.

To fight against that mountain of loss and trauma is hard enough.

To have to do it without your best friend by your side is impossible.

To have your best friend jump up and down on top of that mountain, increasing the load, is unbearable.

The worst part is that you never were to understand the layers of trauma and pain I felt.

You could never sympathise, as you didn’t know the mountain of memories and emotions on my shoulders.

You didn’t know the burden I had to carry.

I carried it alone.

I didn’t want to burden you or anyone else.

And somehow I still did.

Even keeping my distance from you, I was still ‘too much’.

You walked away.

In my mind and heart I feel you never thought of me again.

You were happier.

You were free.

You forgot all about me.

You were friends with Sam, with Gill, with Hannah – you replaced me with her.

What a win for them all… to know we’re not friends anymore… that you cut me out.

Eight months… eight months since you blocked me… the first time.

You blocked every way of me connecting with you again.

You moved house, and told me nothing of it.

Can you not see the pain that would cause?

What did I do to deserve all this?

I can’t recover.

I won’t recover.

This is too much.

I have no life to return to if I do recover.

Everything is gone.

Liv is gone. You’re gone. The kids are gone.

Everything has changed.

All the people who were once my friends have grown up and created lives for themselves. You would know – they’re your friends now.

And I’m stuck here. Powerless. Paralysed. Unable to change. Unable to survive. Because you all destroyed me. You all took my trust and my care and crapped all over it. You left me a broken mess on the cold floor. You left me too traumatised to even move anymore.

With you in my life I could see a little light.

Now there’s pitch black.

There’s only the desperate urge to end this life.

There’s silence.

No friends. No connections. Nothing.

Just emptiness and anticipation of death.

You did this to me.

I wish you could’ve understood the weight I carried in my heart and my mind, from all that’s scarred me forever.

I wish you would’ve helped bear the load.

I wish you hadn’t added to the pile.

I remember at therapy, with my attachment to Matt, saying that I knew I was facing another loss, which would add to the pile of loss and pain… the unresolved trauma. I was right. That’s what happened.

A lot has happened since then, to add to that ‘pile’.

You.

Liv.

So much more.

What makes it the worst is I didn’t want any of this.

I didn’t want to lose you.

I mentioned stepping back for my mental health and our friendship.

I never would have blocked you.

You made it permanent.

Why??

Why do you hate me so much?

Do you not understand what you’ve done to me?

Do you honestly want me to kill myself?

Is that it?

Because if not then you’ve gone about everything so utterly wrong.

Do you know that I’ve written you a note for when that time comes…. and something I wanted the kids to know too….God knows how I’ll get it to you, now I don’t know where in the world you live.

But do you really want me to leave this world thinking you mean me harm and hate me? Do you want to have to live with that on your conscience for the rest of your life? That you could’ve sorted things out with me and not pushed me towards this certainty with your cruel abandonment, when I was already breaking under the weight of everything else in the last ten years…

How will you live, knowing you could have done something to prevent this?

I deserved more.

I deserved enough respect to talk to me, and not just abandon me so casually.

Did thirteen years really mean so little to you?

Did I mean so little?

In the last three years a lot has happened…

I had to learn to live in a world with grief in my heart. Real grief. My first loss.

My world changed. I never recovered from that.

I had a breakdown at therapy and went down a slippery slope with my self-harm. I never recovered from that.

I was neglected by everyone… I was isolated whilst experiencing this new grief, and the breakdown of my mental health. I never recovered from that.

I felt you pulling away from me… a long abandonment over about a year. I was right to fear losing you. That fear affected me in ways I never expected. I will never recover from losing you and the kids.

I lost Liv…. five weeks before I was finally set to see her again in person. It would never happen. I’ll never get to talk to her again. I’ll never get over that….. now I want to be with her. I don’t want to exist in this hell of a world, where nothing is right, and nothing is left, and I’m buried under that mountain of hurt and loss. That mountain you stuck your flag in, to claim a victory over me, as you blocked me… taking all the power for yourself to decide when I may talk to you again.

You won.

You defeated me.

Well done.

You were in control.

All the good it’ll do you when I’m gone.

But I feel you don’t care an inch about that.

But let me tell you, from experience…. losing a friend to suicide is one of the most traumatic things you could ever experience…. all the words you never got to say to them…. the questions unanswered…. feeling you could’ve said or done something to stop it happening. It’s a brief moment and they’re gone. You can’t change it. You can’t get them back. You have to live with the burden for the rest of your life. It’s a burden I can’t carry…. not on my own…. not now I’ve lost you too.

But you’ll be alright. You have lots of other friends to help you carry ‘the burden’ of losing me, should you feel anything about it when it happens.

You’ll never have to feel what I feel now.

You’ll never know how alone I’ve felt.

You’ll never know the weight I carried in total isolation.

You’re lucky.

You’ll quickly recover.

You don’t have my illness.

You weren’t screwed over by everyone you ever trusted.

You don’t have my memories.

You’ll survive.

You survived losing me as your friend. You chose it. You’ll survive losing me forever. As far as I know this is it for us forever anyway…. that’s how it feels. So you’ve already adjusted to my absence. It won’t make much difference my being gone.

And you’d better not cry, or come to the funeral – not that I’d have one… nobody would be there.

You could’ve done something… all you had to do was care. All you had to do was put our friendship ahead of your pride. All you had to do was talk to me.

You just had to not walk away from me at the lowest point of my life and treat me like I was nothing.

But then I guess I really am nothing.

If I was anything to you then you would’ve stayed and fought for me, like I tried to do for you.

You wouldn’t have given up.

You wouldn’t have run away.

Everyone runs away.

It’s the biggest sign they never cared.

Nobody ever cared.

I was just a game to them all.

A game of ‘power’.

I’m done being a pawn in a game of ‘control’…. simply used to boost the ego or get something.

I may not deserve more.

I will never have more.

But I’m done.

I won’t be used anymore.

I won’t be ignored anymore.

I won’t be mistreated anymore.

I won’t BE anymore.

Soon.

 

 

 

* Just expressing feelings. I do feel all this, but it’s not imminent,
so nobody worry about me…. not that people tend to…*

Forget ’13’… My Endless Reasons Why.

Personal rant, will definitely involve much effing and jeffing. And dark and potentially triggering material.

 

 

I am so invisible it really wouldn’t even matter what I write anymore. I am literally SCREAMING at people to help me, to notice me, to care, to be my friend, to save me as I don’t want to exist anymore… I am constantly screaming my feelings out in writing about how invisible I feel, and nobody notices and says anything….. because I’m invisible. So fuck it. No holding back now. Might as well throw all my feelings out there uncensored, as nobody will fucking read them anyway. And if they do none of them plan to talk to me ever again anyway. They’re happy to leave me feeling like a ghost until the point I choose to become one. So FUCK. IT.

 

Life has been unkind to me. I was lonely growing up. I was bullied. Fuck the bullies. Anyone who ever made me feel like I was an alien for being quiet. Anyone who picked on me because I was an ‘easy target’. Fuck you. I hope life dealt you a few blows as you grew up. To the guy who teased me about my hairy arms… fuck you. I shaved them for years after that. But now I’ve grown it back in the last six months or so, so you can go fuck yourself. To those who called me ‘spot’ and made fun of my hairiness at school and for not shaving – I was a fucking child, not a slut – you may have been grooming yourselves to sleep with boys, but I was never that way inclined. Plus it might please you to know there’s a term for what was ‘wrong’ with me at school – PCOS. Look it up. Educate your children not to fucking pick on someone for things like that…. don’t want them turning out to be bitches like you. For the girl who bullied me in front of a class every week – fuck you. You messed my life up forever. I hope karma hits you hard. For that class, and teacher, for allowing it to happen without defending me. Fuck you. You started a pattern in my life and made me feel I was completely worthless and invisible to everyone.

 

To the teacher who called me a stupid girl for burning my fingers in cookery class. Fuck you. You showed me up in front of a class in my first year of secondary school – no wonder one of my biggest triggers now is public humiliation!! To the teacher who told me off for going to my parents & head of year about her behaviour instead of her directly – fuck you! You should never have been a teacher, vile little troll. To the guitar teacher who was appalling at it, taught inappropriate songs, inappropriately flirted with one of the older students, and when reported, LIED, vindictively smeared me and my family – FUCK YOU!! I haven’t forgotten. You will pay for it one day when the truth is revealed.

 

To those at college who gave me ‘the look’…. that look that says ‘Oh God not her…. stay away from me’…. ‘weirdo…. I want nothing to do with you’ – fuck you all. You may not have liked me but that was the beginning of my mental health problems. I had just started self-harming. Would you have been less judgemental if you’d known what I was going through?

 

To the person who ran the art club I volunteered at, who often made me feel like shit… like I wasn’t doing good enough…. who used me… didn’t appreciate me… and made me feel like an utter freak for making a fucking mistake with the drinks – fuck you forever. That has never left me. You taught me I can’t make mistakes without needing to punish myself for it. I did. I cut myself in the corner of the hall, where kids could have seen me doing it. That’s on you bitch.

 

Fuck you to the bus driver who pretended to kidnap me, when I was the only one getting on that bus, at night time, alone. Lucky I dented my wall, and not your bus or your face.

 

To those in the office who made jokes about self-harm, ultimately making me feel uncomfortable to work with you anymore. Fuck you.

 

To Robbie, for leading me on, whilst secretly shagging Rachel, who kept giving me the evil eyes, yet is now married to a woman, and you then saying you weren’t ‘fannying me around’ during a difficult conversation, leading to me leaving FB and my life crashing into nothingness. Fuck you. And fuck her. You were supposed to be people who helped people like me. You set in motion things that would destroy me. I could’ve gone on to do great things if I hadn’t felt forced out by you two.

 

To Adam, for admitting you liked me, kissing me and then fucking off up north without so much as a goodbye. Ghosting me and giving up on our friendship. Treating me like I meant absolutely nothing to you. Fuck you!! Yeah, you were my first damn fucking kiss. You were my first experience with men, and that set me on a path of bad experiences with men, so that I now will never trust one ever again. I deserved better treatment than that, especially from someone I considered at the time to be one of my best friends.

 

To Evan for shagging that Hana girl in the two weeks before breaking up with me. For telling me not to make you feel guilty about that – fuck you. For breaking up with me instead of letting me be there for you. For stringing me along, hurting me, using me, telling me you couldn’t give me what I wanted and two days later being in a relationship with your now wife – fuck you. For getting back in touch with me three years ago, then suddenly unfriending me and never talking to me again, leaving me wondering what I’d done wrong – fuck you! But at least you once apologised to me for the hurt you caused me. It’s more than anyone else ever did.

 

To Joe, for completely obliterating my self-esteem, my faith in men and my ability to love. For using me. For playing with my feelings like it was a game, when I genuinely had feelings for you for some reason. For wasting my time and stopping me from seeing the one damn person right in front of me who could’ve been mine, had I not been caught in your web. FUCK YOU TO HELL! You broke me. I never want a relationship now because of you. I don’t trust men. I don’t believe a man could ever see anything in me now, other than an ego stroke and a sex object. But then I feel too fat and ugly now to even be seen as that thanks to you – you lost interest in me as I gained weight, and tried to palm me off onto one of your friends, obviously telling him how to try and get something out of me – ruining our friendship, as I most certainly don’t want anyone who ever reminds me of you and what you did to me. Fuck you. You stood me up so many times. You ran away. You ghosted me. You accused me of ‘overreacting’ to you cancelling – when you did it all the time and I have BPD you arsehole! So repeatedly rejecting / abandoning me would cause a reaction which is extremely normal. An overreaction would be keying your car or kicking you in the balls. I sent emotional messages. Get over yourself darling. You got off light. You made me feel cheap and worthless. You treated me like a whore, when I should be treated like a damn queen! Thank God you never had me and never will.

 

But fuck all you ‘men’ for making me feel there is nothing to value in me other than someone to stroke your egos, or something else. Why the fuck do men see women as objects rather than people with emotions and something to offer. Maybe it’s just me they do that with. I was a kind, loving, giving, down-to-earth, loyal woman. I had so much to offer. I was good ‘girlfriend’ if not ‘wife’ material once upon a time. And you all completely trashed that, so that I now don’t believe I’m good enough for a good man. Why did you not see and value the love I could give…. the kindness in me…. and treat me with respect?? Why did you treat me as though I was some cheap slut who you could play mind-games with?! WHY!? You treated me so badly that it brought out elements in me that you went on to demonise. You did that to me. You changed me in to something you didn’t like and then used it as a reason to ditch me, and ultimately I didn’t like what I became either. I’ve never learnt to like myself again since. So fuck you all.

 

Fuck you Lucy for being a pathological liar. You lied about everything, from having cancer, being raped, jobs in Italy, how Nick felt about me, and even your mum dying. I know she didn’t. I researched and found her online, alive and well. You’re a liar. You also never paid me back for a Westlife ticket. You’re a user and a thief. You took my intellectual property and uploaded it as your own. You didn’t take it down when asked. I should’ve taken action against you for that.

 

Fuck you Nick for being a dick. You took it out on me, when it was Hannah and Lucy stirring things … I was being told different things by different people. I just wanted you to talk to me yourself. I only heard through those two, and Hannah was being unpleasant at the time, so I thought Lucy had my back. She was a liar. I didn’t know that. She was a new friend! So to take it out on me like you did was shit. I made a mistake and you destroyed me for it. You ended that message by saying ‘How you think messaging me all the time is going to make me like you, I really don’t know’. To someone with BPD that is murder. I will never forgive you for that.

 

Fuck you Cheryl, for warning me off your ‘husband’ even though you two had separated and you were actually with another man yourself by then. How dare you do that to me? You scared the shit out of me, because I am not ‘the other woman’ and never would be! You made me feel like I was a bad person but I was simply having conversations with Joe  – you two were finished. You were doing it to try and ruin Joe’s life – I don’t blame you after what he did to you, but fuck you for taking that out on me, someone totally innocent, who would never hurt anyone.

 

Fuck you Jessica, for always picking fights with me about politics, just because you couldn’t accept a different opinion to yours. You made it personal too by saying it’s good I don’t have any children – FUCK YOU TO HELL! You have no idea how that felt. My granddad had just died, and I was so upset that I was the only one of his grandchildren to have not got married…. I wished so much he could’ve met my future babies… it hurts me that it will never happen, and he won’t even be at my wedding let alone meet them. Within two months of losing him you were saying that. I also may struggle to conceive. I also likely won’t ever find anyone to have those children with. It was a very raw nerve. It was low of you to strike it like that. You were a child. I hope you’ve grown up since, though I highly doubt it. That was the shittiest thing a ‘friend’ did to me publicly online.

 

Fuck the ‘trauma therapist’ who traumatised me by publicly shaming me on Twitter because I was triggered due to past trauma. Fuck ‘Mouse’ and all those other pricks on Twitter last year, who attacked me for defending Boris… calling me a racist and stupid, and a troll even though I was posting on my own feed.. a troll posts on others’ posts to pick a fight. If anything they were the trolls. Intolerant lefty remoaner bastards. Fuck remoaners to hell and beyond. Fuck lefties. Fuck people. Fuck ‘democrats’ in America – they have Trump Derangement Syndrome, just as we have people suffering Brexit Derangement Syndrome here. That stupid woman (??) patronising and shaming me, calling me an arrogant know-it-all etc. for standing up against mental health stigma. Fuck her forever. Showed the vile nature of their side of the debate. Made me hate Americans after that. At least they’re not all deranged like her. But she fucking almost killed me. Screw the intolerant bastards who talk about tolerance, peace, inclusivity etc. and claim to be the decent people, when they treat others like that for having a different view to theirs – one day all lefties will realise they are on the wrong side of history and have behaved appallingly. Fuck them all.

 

Fuck you Gill. You never told me you liked Sam. I confided in you alone that I liked him. You waited until I was most definitely out of the country, you broke up with your partner, moved home and within a couple of days you were having your first date with Sam. You didn’t tell me for two weeks – after I’d seen you both together twice. The second time I was a third wheel and didn’t even know it! You knew it would hurt me. You knew what you would do, but gave me no opportunity to do anything about it. If you were any kind of friend you would’ve been encouraging me to tell him how I felt about him, not plotting to steal him when I was powerless and out of the country. I fucking hate you for this. You do not deserve my forgiveness. You’ve been married about three years (??) now…. I still don’t wish you well. You destroyed everything I had in my life. You took away my group of friends and kept them for yourself. You made me have to start again, only I haven’t been able to. I’ve never been able to rebuild my life or trust friends ever again because of you! You took away my trust, my hope, any future I might’ve had. You totally destroyed my beautiful friendship I was forming with Sam. You didn’t have to be with him. You didn’t have to latch on to the nearest single guy. You could’ve been alone for five minutes. I was happy for you that you broke up with your guy. You could’ve let someone else experience not being alone for a fucking minute, but no…. selfish. AND you clearly discussed my interest in Sam with Hannah, as she kept hinting to me that she didn’t like any guys she knew at the time, and it always coincided with times I talked to you about him. So when you claimed to her that you didn’t know I liked him, you lied. You knew, as you talked to her about it. You broke my trust in every way possible. Yes I miss you, but you didn’t fucking deserve my friendship.

 

Fuck you Sam… for just taking Gill up on her offer instead of waiting for me. Obviously you two are happy now, so you clearly had no interest in someone like me… despite being interested in my best friend who I thought was similar to me. I kept hearing that you did like me I just refused to see it. I see it now in the things you used to say to me. But I couldn’t see it at the time. I was new to men. I was low in confidence. I needed and deserved a guy to man up and ask me out. So fuck you for staying quiet. Fuck you also for the way you responded when I poured my heart out to you. You raved about your now wife and told me there was no betrayal, when you wouldn’t fucking know, because you benefitted from that betrayal. You don’t understand shit like that. She broke the code. She DID betray me. You had no right to invalidate me and say it wasn’t a betrayal. I had just lost EVERYTHING because of Gill. I was heartbroken. I had lost you. I found the courage to admit the truth to you, even knowing there was no hope as you were taken. I told you what your friendship meant to me… how much I’d miss you. I wished you well Sam. You said absolutely NOTHING of the sort to me. You ranted at me about how you thought you’d always be the awkward loser, a back-up nice guy, a boring stable man, blah blah blah… you didn’t have to be Sam! I was right there, another awkward fucking loser! Now I’ll be alone forever. If nice guys don’t even want me then there must be something seriously fucked up about me. I give up. You didn’t say you’d miss me, or that you wished me well, or anything to indicate you ever valued me as a friend. You talked about Gill being a ‘good strong friend’ – 1. Was I not?? And 2. Yes she was… until she stabbed me in the back. You only knew her for two months, I’d been friends with her over three years. So I think I knew her a bit better than you did, and your description of her didn’t match her. It matched me. And then when I first saw you at Lou and Scott’s wedding, before the wedding I said hello, and you blanked me. You hardly spoke to me. It was plain fucking rude and hurtful, and I had to text my mum about it as I was so upset! I thought you were a good guy, but the way you spoke to me when I was falling apart, having just lost everything, having expressed sadness at losing you, and the fact you even chose someone like Gill tells me you never deserved me. You were not as nice as you seemed. Your fucking loss, but nobody else’s gain. All men have seen to that.

 

And bloody hell fuck you Hannah. The Queen Bitch. The one who destroyed everything I had left in my life. You started it in fact. You always threw hissy fits when I tried to help with travel arrangements for the group. You always brought our disagreements to the attention of the rest of the group. You wrote statuses about ‘people being immature for writing statuses rather than talking directly to someone’, and then whenever I tried to talk directly to you about things, you said ‘I’m not discussing this anymore’, ‘It’s only an issue for you’, ‘You’re making an issue out of nothing’. How fucking dare you? Do you know that invalidating someone with BPD is about the worst fucking thing you can do to them?! I know you didn’t know I had it. But you should’ve done. And you would’ve done had I  felt able to trust you in regards to my mental health. But I remember a time you said the help I was getting wasn’t enough… that I needed more help. That you were worried my posts were a cry for help and I’d try and kill myself. You were blunt. You were something that rhymes with that too. I reserve that word only for the worst of people I’ve met. You upset me, then invalidated and shut me down. You removed yourself from the group message and started another one, excluding me, where you then talked about me… I know, Lou showed me your messages. I somehow ended up getting the blame, with Gill saying we needed to sort it out so they wouldn’t have to see you one time, then me, then you… when YOU were the one telling them that we couldn’t sort things out – which happened to be because you refused to listen to me and be nice. You didn’t tell them that did you?? You said to me that I needed to move on, stop making an issue out of things and making things awkward for our friends. I LET YOU HAVE MY FUCKING FRIENDS!! I knew I couldn’t compete with you, so I backed away, missed out on a lot and let you have my friends. That’s right Hannah – MY friends. Lou was my friend. Gill was my friend. You only fucking met them because of me! And what a fucking mistake that was. Look at the trouble it caused me introducing you to my two best friends. I had a right to talk to my best friends about what was upsetting me. They were my only friends, so I couldn’t go to uninvolved friends like you could. You had no right to restrict who I spoke to about your abuse of me. As it turned out nobody stood up for me or told you to fucking apologise to me, did they? No… I got the blame. I always get the blame. Oh until YOU blamed Gill for stirring between us and being a bad influence on you. Then you apologised to me, ditched Gill and became my friend… for a few weeks, before having a pop at me for nothing, blocking me… and when I showed sadness that it seemed like only one of us wanted our friendship (me), you launched into an attack about all the things I had apparently done… accusing you of going after Nick, then Sam, you said I make life difficult for myself by letting things get to me, you said I always seem to have a lot going on (on a day I was going for my first MRI of my brain), and the truth is everyone does, it’s just how you deal with it – that I’m very different to you…. then you accused ME of bitching about you to Gill, when it 100% never happened. There was no evidence it had. Besides I didn’t bitch, not in those days. You brought out the bitch after all that drama. Gill was the one to say things about you, so I figured you must’ve been right about her stirring…. so a year later I reached out to you to make amends and clear the story up. You refused to listen or speak to me. You messaged Lou, involving her just before her wedding, telling me through her that you didn’t want to hear from me again, and all the blocking you again and again, the negativity, not having any trust and criticising you as a friend, it’s not the sort of friend you ‘wont’ in your life. That wasn’t on that you bitched to my only friend about me. So I messaged you directly… I had to – Lou refused to defend and help me. She just replied ‘okay’… Should’ve been a red flag that she liked you and didn’t have my back. I asked you not to involve Lou, but you ignored that and carried on, telling her the reason you were so distant with her, was that I still wouldn’t ‘leave you alone’ and you were trying to make it so I couldn’t contact you. You were a drama queen Hannah… I sent you three messages in total. You were unreasonable, immature, disrespectful in the manner you dealt with it, and I had a right to defend myself given what you did. I was never going to get in touch again. I made that perfectly clear. You should’ve drawn a line under my last message to you. But you just had to have the last say didn’t you….. and well done…. it all ended up making Lou mad with ME! I had started ‘stressing her out’ before the wedding, even though I was the fucking one defending HER and asking you to leave her out of it…. nice that.

 

You two became friends again in 2016… given the shit you put me through and the trauma I experienced back then, it rightly upset and unnerved me. It drove a wedge between Lou and I. That’s not your fault. That’s Lou’s fault for how she handled it. I’ll come to that. But you blocked her when she oh so selflessly picked me and totally didn’t make me feel guilty about it!! And as soon as I was no longer Lou’s friend, there you were, or rather there SHE was on YOUR friend list. I’d wish her luck with you but sadly I no longer care… she clearly thinks the sun shines out your arse, just like everyone else believed while you were bullying me. Butter wouldn’t melt kind of smile. They never saw the bitch I was subjected to on many occasions. She’s chosen you over me. She’s welcome to you, as you are to her.

 

Wow, that was a long one. Well you did kind of ruin the last friendship I had, by putting doubts in it. Which leads me on to Lou. God I wish I was never having to write shit about you. I never thought you’d be this person you’ve become. The way you handled the Hannah thing in 2016 absolutely sucked. It was the start of my mental health deteriorating. My mum had been ill in the run-up to it all, and our falling out was in the lead-up to my granddad getting sick. It was not a good time. Anyway, Hannah reappeared. I was in distress. I wanted to end my suffering – I was feeling suicidal as a result, anxious, sick, crying all the time. I felt betrayed by you. I didn’t give you a fucking ‘ultimatum’. In fact I very clearly said I’m not going to tell you what to do. I just wanted you to show some ounce of caring, emotion and sympathy for how I was feeling. But it was like you couldn’t compute why I felt how I did. It was as though you thought I was making it up in order to try and ‘control’ you.  You said yourself that you didn’t think things were that bad between me and Hannah. That says it all. You didn’t BELIEVE me! How do you think that felt?? You were also invalidating my experience, like Hannah did… can you understand how that felt, given we were talking about Hannah! The problem with you was that it felt like you were putting your desire to not be told what to do, ahead of my wellbeing and our friendship of over a decade…. I couldn’t understand why MY friend from school who you hardly knew, was that important to you that you would jeopardise our friendship. It took you way too long to do the ‘right thing’, and even when you did that you made me feel guilty that you ‘did that for me’. You said you never wanted to talk about Hannah again as you couldn’t cope with it. Fuck you! How do you think I felt?! Why did it upset you so much?? Was it because I had made you do something you didn’t want to do, because of my reaction to emotional trauma? Or was it because you felt bad? Was it because you really loved Hannah as a friend? Even though she had blocked you for no reason, for two whole years…. I still cannot understand your devotion to Hannah. Friends are loyal. And they don’t make you feel guilty when they do something for you. The way you handled all of that really put question marks on our friendship. I think you held it against me ever since. It’s evident because you added her as a friend as soon as you dumped me.

 

I felt I couldn’t confront issues with you. Just like I couldn’t with Hannah. You might not have done what Hannah did – saying it was only my issue, move on, etc. but you gave me silence, and you stored up resentment and got ‘wound up’ when I expressed hurt. You turned it round to make it seem like I had hurt you by expressing that I was hurt! I couldn’t talk to you. Friends should be able to discuss issues without fearing losing the other.

 

So many of our problems came from my feelings of inferiority – feeling I wasn’t good enough to call you my friend. Being scared of losing your friendship or being replaced. I was ill last year… having a breakdown. I was grieving. You abandoned me at the lowest point in my life until this year. You misinterpreted a blog I wrote and attacked me for it, making me cut myself worse than ever, and having me calling the Samaritans at 1am. You pinned all blame on me, absolved yourself of any wrongdoing and said things would never be the same again…. what, because of your misunderstanding and my mental health symptoms?? You didn’t like me anymore after seeing what mental illness can do to a person? Yeah? Well then I fucking did deserve better than you. You were so concerned with what others would think of you after that blog, that you didn’t even stop to question if any of it was true, or how I felt. You didn’t give a shit about me. Just appearances.

 

I understand you had your own shit going on, but that was no excuse for the way you treated me… neglecting me all year, making me feel like a burden, rejecting me, blaming me and taking it all out on me just because you couldn’t cope with anything else…. that wasn’t my fault that you were having issues I knew nothing about, because you cut me out of your life! Just like if you and I were having issues you shouldn’t take it out on your husband, family, or other friends, if you were having problems with other people you shouldn’t have taken it out on me. Not at a time I was suicidal and isolated. That was unfair of you. I got the blame for issues you had with certain other people, but it was your fault for not dealing with things better – don’t blame me for causing arguments just because you can’t communicate maturely with people in your life. I did not cause you and this person to argue more. I have been blamed for that twice now. I will not accept that blame. It’s not my fault. The fault lies with you and your inability to deal with things properly and communicate between you.

 

I reached out to you, despite how shit you made me feel. I wrote at Christmas and sent the kids and you presents. You didn’t open them. You didn’t give your kids the presents I had taken the time and effort to make and choose for them. Who the fuck does that?  Involving the kids in an argument?! You don’t take it out on the fucking kids. You were saying you’d feel guilty keeping it all if we were to end things here – this tells me two things…. firstly you may have felt guilty for not giving me anything, and you have an issue with the feeling of guilt – that’s why you blame me and others, so you don’t have to feel guilty… hm… but that’s your issue… you need to learn to tolerate guilt and stop making others feel it instead… and secondly that you had it in your mind at that point that we were done. You had already given up on me. It was rude that you never acknowledged receiving them. You never thanked me for them, other than in your final message to me, saying that you received the parcels thanks, but… I take it you never did open them and just threw them away…. that or you thought they were shit, as I never once got a thank you for any of it, from anyone. That was awful of you. You totally snubbed me over Christmas – no card, no text, nothing. Fuck you for making me feel invisible. I’ve not been able to make myself be seen again ever since. I don’t exist anymore thanks to you. I felt invisible all last year – that was the problem. You were an absent friend…. as was everyone else…. I needed my friends, instead you neglected and abandoned me. So how dare you go out of your way to make me feel the most invisible I ever have?! I won’t forgive you now.

 

Because after Christmas I did the fucking running and chased you up, as I wanted to be able to move on. You started talking to me, but kept saying things like you weren’t sure what was best; you didn’t know if we could survive this etc. You seemed to think we’d sort it out better in the future (at least I think that’s what I translated from your message), as we’re both too stressed now. I wasn’t stressed. I was falling apart because of you. Because you were abandoning me. I was losing you and my Godchildren… the only good things left in my life. That wasn’t stress. It should translate as ‘I’m too stressed to deal with you – and always will be’. Yes I was ill and I was grieving. And you thought it’s best to leave me until a time I’m not under the pressures of those things?? Leave me alone to deal with it?? You abandoned me when I was grieving, and having a breakdown… who does that?? You’re wrong that we can sort it out in the future. You can’t just end things on that note with me, run away because you’re too stressed to deal with it, and then approach me (or more likely with you, wait for me to approach YOU – won’t happen) in a few months / years and pick up where we left off…. no… you left me feeling hated. You ABANDONED me, because of my mental illness. I can’t just forget that. I can’t forget the things you’ve done out of spite. And you’ve destroyed my bond with the kids. I can’t forgive that. I’ve missed eighteen months already…. and what, you want to leave this another year or two or whatever, and then sort it out?? I will never forgive you for taking them out of my life, giving me something else to grieve on top of my granddad, losing Liv and losing you. Nothing can buy back the time I’ve lost with them.  C used to look forward to seeing me. Now she won’t even know who I am! Do you not understand how utterly crushing that is?? I saw me being in their lives forever. I saw you being there forever. I was a forever sort of friend. And you pissed it all away as though I meant nothing to you.

 

You showed so much hesitation about sorting things out with me. But the problem was whilst you were doing that, you were posting about your wonderful times with everyone else but me. You increased the amount you did this, after I blogged about my paranoia and insecurity about just that sort of thing. So I think you did that vindictively. I couldn’t afford to see any more of that. So I suggested unfriending you, so you could be free to post about them and I wouldn’t get hurt. So that I could focus on my mental health and paranoia. But you could get in touch when ready. I wanted you to agree with my idea. You blocked me without a word. Fuck you. You knew that would hurt me. What the hell were you playing at?!

 

You then removed yourself from my Facebook group, after hearing from Scott that it would hurt me. That was done with malice and immaturity. There is no other good explanation for doing that.

 

And you’re friends with Hannah again now – is that why you blocked me, so I wouldn’t see?? Had you stayed friends throughout and been lying to me? Or did she unblock you, see we weren’t friends and ask about it and you two became bosom buddies again? You’re welcome to each other. You’re the same person now. You’re no longer like me. You’re like her. Just more covert. Either Hannah really was that important to you, or you wanted to send a ‘fuck you’ message to me now you were free to do what you wanted. It hurt. It was lousy. You should’ve been focusing on how to resolve things with me, not doing everything in the book to make things worse between us.

 

Then when Liv took her own life I reached out to you, as if that had happened to you I would still want you to know I cared and would be there. Well, I would have. I talked to Scott. You unblocked me. But the next day I had doubts as I couldn’t face being hurt by you anymore. And knowing you and Hannah were friends again complicated things and would’ve been a stumbling block. I couldn’t afford to deal with that as well as the grief. As soon as you found out about my uncertainty you re-blocked me… hurting me – just what I couldn’t afford to feel. Who blocks someone like that a day after they’ve lost someone to suicide? You apparently. Or the you you’ve become. We did talk by text a couple of times, where you asked if there was anything you could do – hard to answer when you were no longer willing to be my friend. It felt empty and distant. So that was that. You never checked up on me after that. We’re finished.

 

Oh and you moved house without telling me a thing about it. Bye by the way. Kind of like what Adam did to me – except you might not have moved up north… I have no clue where you are or what you’re doing anymore.  I can’t write to you now. I can’t message you online. Old phone’s dead. I guess you really are free of me finally. That’s what you always wanted. You just wanted me to be the one to make the call so you didn’t look bad. Fuck you.

 

Anytime I’ve tried to set the story straight and make amends with people they have refused to listen, and stuck to their misconceptions. I tried to make things better with Hannah, she went to Lou and said she didn’t want to hear from me again. I tried to make things better with Lou, she got ‘wound up’ and didn’t think our friendship would work anymore. Nobody has allowed me closure. Nobody has had the decency to give me a conversation before walking out of my life. They’ve all either ghosted me or slapped me with a ton of harsh words and false accusations, before slamming the door in my face.

 

You have all killed me. I’ve had to bear all of this, whilst working through health problems – physical and mental. I’ve had family illnesses, where my parents both ended up in hospital within 10 months of each other. My granddad also got ill in between that and eventually passed away 8 months later. The family fell apart after that, because of someone who still hasn’t apologised over two years later…. we never spoke again and never will at this rate. I had a breakdown at my group therapy two years ago almost, and have gone downhill since then – I experienced ‘transference’ with one of the therapists, so it destroyed me when the course ended and I lost him. I haven’t recovered. I just stuff it down, and it comes out in my dreams instead. Now my only friend I had left took her own life almost three months ago, which I cannot cope with. But have to cope with alone, as everyone’s pretending I don’t exist. I’m doing a charity walk this month, which I just finished on Saturday – having done over 26.2 miles, ‘raising money’ for the Samaritans… haven’t raised a penny. Nobody gives a fuck about me, my feelings, my grief, how alone I feel, about Liv… I just don’t exist. And nobody valued her enough to sponsor me. It wasn’t about me. It was about her. But it’s made me feel so isolated and invisible now, so what was the point?? I will be donating the whole amount of my target by myself now. That or writing to them to apologise that nobody cares enough to acknowledge me or help me. The only people who might’ve done it were Liv and Lou…. Lou abandoned me. Liv is dead. Both happened this year. So I have nothing left. I knew them both at least 13 years… my two longest friendships…. gone…. that’s two extremely traumatic losses. I don’t think anyone gets that. Nobody seems to have acknowledged or validated what I’m having to deal with right now. And I’m trying my hardest… I’ve even tried offering words of support to others, and been completely blanked by them, as if I’m invisible. I wish people could understand how hard it is to just breathe right now…. to go on living. I wish they’d show some appreciation that I’m trying, or acknowledge my existence. I feel I’m dead myself now. Anyway I had to travel on my own to a place I’d never been, to go and say goodbye to Liv…. not knowing if it was even okay for me to go…. but I had to be there. I was meant to see her five weeks later. I never got to see her again. I had to see her and say goodbye. But that was hard. I am so alone.

 

It’s unfair that she died when she did. She seemed happy at last. I was going to see her a month later, at last, for something we were both excited for. She couldn’t hold on that long. I never got to see her again. I never got to hug her. I wasn’t given the opportunity to save her. She abandoned me. Just like everyone else has.  It’s unfair that my ‘best friend’ abandoned me and didn’t even care enough to make things right after that happened. All these people wouldn’t even blink if I followed in Liv’s footsteps. That’s how little I matter in the world. This isn’t just my illness telling me nobody cares…. not anymore….. this is reality. Nobody cares. Or they’ll care too late.

 

Fuck anyone who used to like me before I became this ill, and who is now wary of me… fuck you. All I needed was your love and support….. to be made to feel I wasn’t an awful person…. that you understood me and weren’t going to leave me….. to feel I mattered and was visible. I understand mental illness isn’t attractive…. my outbursts, my words, everything… it’s not pretty and can be scary… but I didn’t choose this. This is illness mixed with a shit load of awful people who did awful things to me in the last ten years and in my childhood. Being left alone because of all that, it’s gut-wrenching. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. If you used to like me, but now don’t then fuck you. You could’ve helped me. But you all sat back and watched me self-destruct. You did this to me. You can’t blame me for what I’ve become as a result of you not giving a fuck about my existence.

 

Fuck anyone who has an issue with me writing this post. You are a part of the problem. Cause and effect…. you are the cause, this is the effect. You have no idea how much I’ve held in, for your sakes… how much I’m still holding back. If you didn’t want me to write this then perhaps you should have treated me better and thought more about our relationship than your own damn ego. All of you combined have created this monster of truth that you’ll all hate for speaking out. But honestly, how much did you really think I could take of people shitting on me, ditching me, silencing me, before I’d explode..? You can’t expect me to deal with all this totally alone. The alternative to this was quietly going off to die. I know some of you would prefer I did that, as you care more about how you look to others, than the devastating damage you have caused me.

 

Fuck anyone who ever made me beg for anything! I had to beg throughout school to hang around with people…. I had to beg to go in a limo at the prom, and was rejected on the grounds of being ‘boring’. I had to beg guys to talk to me when they were ghosting me. I’ve had to beg people to tell me they care about me, miss me, to show me friendship. I’ve had one person mentioned in here want me to be someone who begs for things. They want that sort of control over someone. NEVER. That was the point I realised I will never do that or be that person. I will never let anyone, particularly a man ‘tell me what to do’. I will never be in an unequal relationship – we’ll be partners, give and take, and I will never have to beg a guy for anything – he’ll shower me with love, care, affection, respect and support. If I cannot have this then I’ll settle for having nothing, as I have the last few years. I will not be controlled by anyone. I will not be made to feel less deserving and as worthless as that person made me feel. I will not have to ask for these very basic needs to be fulfilled. Either there is someone out there only too willing to give these things to me freely, without ulterior motives, or all men are sex-addicted pricks and will never deserve me. And I will die alone, having never experienced the love of a man.

 

I’m now starting to realise I have no friends. I’m done begging. I’m going to go silent now. I’ll write on here, but nobody acknowledges me anymore… at a time I really need a friend, due to everything that’s happened this year. Nobody’s stepped up. So I’m done begging for friends. I’ll probably cry about the fact I’m alone, and I’ll whinge about how nobody cares etc. But I’m no longer asking them to be friends to me when all I get back is radio silence. It’s so painful to be on the end of that, when others get support when they cry out for help….. it’s so painful it makes me want to rip my own heart out and put my hand through a brick wall.

 

When you grow up lonely, have to beg for friendship, you’re bullied, you make friends who all go on to hurt and betray and abandon you, guys reject and abandon you, everyone ‘ghosts’ you, everyone starts dying around you, you’re stuck in a bubble of isolation and mental illness, tackling the battlefield of grief alone, you lose someone to suicide whilst trying not to kill yourself already because of everything else, and then you reach out for support, from anyone, and all there is, is silence….. that bubble of isolation violently bursts and you fall to the ground, every bone in your body breaking at once. You can’t get up or move. You’re powerless. You can’t breathe. You will your heart to stop beating. This is how it feels to be me now. I don’t want to live.

 

Nobody sponsored me. Nobody talks to me on Facebook, Twitter, here. I don’t have offline friends now. My world is closing in. I’m right back to where I was when I first got mentally ill after school. I’m alone. But it’s so much worse than that… because of everything I’ve been through since then. I thought it was the end back then. But nothing had really happened in my life. I hadn’t had my heart trampled on over and over again. I hadn’t had guys toy with my emotions and destroy my self-worth. I didn’t have friends who I trusted who betrayed and abandoned me. I hadn’t lost anyone. I was young and thin and had a whole life ahead of me. Now…. who knows. I feel like my life is over.

 

I’ve just had a two week ‘break’… but didn’t really have time to stop and sit and process stuff. The one day I did, I spent all day writing about my feelings, forgot to take my medication and ended up harming myself. So I have come to realise that it’s better to not stop. Not stopping may lead to overloading my mind and having a full nervous breakdown, like I was on the verge of two weeks ago…. but the other option is I have to sit and feel everything that’s happened… and I have nobody to help me with that now. I’m alone. I can’t afford to let it in, as it’s too monstrous… it would consume me. Either way I’m doomed.

 

And I’m not allowed to talk about it. I’m not allowed to write on my blog as it hurts others’ feelings…. fuck that and fuck them. What the fuck about MY feelings for a change?? Ever thought about those?? No. Exactly. So fuck you. If I talk about stuff then people get mad about it and use it as a reason to not know me anymore. If I don’t talk about it, it gets bottled up and explodes later in a worse way, plus I never have real relationships with people, as they’ve made it so I can’t approach them directly! So everything is fake…. all friendships have issues…. you use them to make you stronger, not make you drift apart. But if you can’t be honest with each other then it’s not a real friendship.

 

I’m just done with life. I’m done being me. I’m done with reality. All last year I was floating in a bubble of dissociation. Nothing felt real. I felt disconnected from everything and everyone. I felt invisible and isolated. Unless you’ve experienced dissociation you cannot know what that’s like, and for the reaction to reaching out of the bubble, to be that of anger, blame and shaming me for blogging… fuck, that hurts. Now if I’m in a bubble (which I know I said burst – but it’s like two realities at once – one I’m broken on the floor, the other I’m still floating around), I’m in a bubble within a bubble within a bubble. I cannot be reached. I definitely cannot be seen….. HELLO BITCHES!! … see, nobody would see I’ve written that. If anyone sees I’ve posted a blog, they won’t read it. If they do they’d have given up by now…. just like they all give up on me.

 

On the off-chance anyone is still reading, thank you so much for seeing me, and for tolerating such atrocious language and anger. I’m sorry. This has been a long time coming. I’ve held back a lot for a long time. And the pain I’m feeling right now is out of this world. It’s strange…. it’s like feeling overwhelming pain yet feeling numb at the same time. Again, like two things exist at once. I think the reality is that it all hurts too much that I shield myself from it, and feel numb as a consequence. But I’m numb because I feel too much…. not because I feel nothing. I wish I felt nothing. I wish I remembered nothing. I already don’t remember my childhood. I don’t have any happy memories of being a kid. Not because I didn’t have any. From what I can see in photos I had a wonderful upbringing. I don’t know why I can’t remember any of it. I can’t connect to the photos I see of me. It’s like they’re someone else. I guess maybe that would explain not really knowing who I am. How can you, when you rely on stories told by others about you. I have snapshots of things – but they’re always the bad things that happened…. like being picked on at school… but I don’t know my reaction to it… all I have to go on is what my mum tells me. I don’t remember much at all. I think there’s something wrong with my mind. All I remember are traumatic moments. The rest just vanishes. Even the Westlife concert I went to a few weeks ago… I barely remember it now. It’s fading away. It’s why I take as many photos of things as I can. To remember. But even then I can’t remember being there or how I felt. But these damn bad memories just play over and over again, relentlessly. And the pain I feel as a result, that’s not something I’ll forget anytime soon. Why can’t I forget the bad and remember the good? I have no good stories to tell people. I can’t remember them. All I feel is hurt and pain. Loss. Mental illness. Trauma. I wish I could forget all these awful people and the things they did to me. I wish I could be me, and know who that is. I’ve completely lost it somewhere along the line – changing to make others like me, after years of not being accepted at school. And then all those experiences mentioned above, have further changed me. I don’t know who I am anymore. It’s scary right now. Nothing feels real. I don’t feel real. I don’t want to be real. I don’t know who I am. I cannot trust anyone. I have nobody to talk to. No support. I don’t feel grounded. I have no reason to live anymore. I’m grieving the loss of someone who didn’t want to live anymore. Nobody knows how I really feel. Nobody would even care. Everyone leaves. I’m not meant for this world. What has been the point of all this pain…?

 

 

 

 

No Recovery.

*All the usual warnings*

 

 

 

Today was a tough one…. saw my doctor. Talked about how everything is at the moment… how detached I’m feeling from everything I do. That I’m putting on a front to hide how I’m really feeling. I have nobody to talk to about anything now. I talked about how pointless everything feels. That I’m just going through the motions and doing things that people expect of me, but with no attachment to it.

 

After talking about the losses I’ve had this year she asked who I’d say is my closest friend now. Can you imagine how painful that question is? How depressing it is to shrug, shake your head and say ‘the people I work with’…  I don’t have friends now. I told her how all last year that was the problem, I FELT as though I didn’t have friends – that clearly pushed away any I DID have. Now I genuinely do not have friends. I mean close friends. I have acquaintance-type friends. I told her how after what my best friend was like with me, I’ll never be close to anyone again. I’ll never trust anyone again. I said that no matter if I formed a ‘friendship’ with someone new, it will never compare to the ones I’ve lost this year. I said I’m focusing too much on what I’ve lost. I do understand that. It’s hard not to, when you feel you’re losing everything around you.

 

I almost cried a couple of times. I talked about the pressure I feel… how it feels so much heavier than usual. That I feel people’s expectations of me are too high, even if they’re not. I feel too much pressure to do things, and to be a certain way. I feel so misunderstood and alone.

 

She thinks I feel detached as a form of protection. I don’t know. All I know is it’s scary and upsetting, as it feels like the prelude to doing something permanent. It feels like not caring. It feels like distancing myself from attachment, in preparation for letting go of everyone and everything. I feel everything is pointless because I’m ultimately going to follow the path of my friend who ended her life.

 

My head feels chaotic. I popped in to see my colleagues afterwards. I told them how overwhelmed I am by everything. That my mind can’t catch up with itself and that’s why I forget things, make mistakes, I’m clumsy and can’t cope with the tiniest of things. I admitted I’m worried about being the only one in next month, as a couple of them are off. It means working with someone I don’t particularly get on with. Someone who doesn’t know about my struggles. I feel pressure to be in, as nobody else will be. What if I can’t cope and have a meltdown? There’s too much pressure and expectation on me. I’m hoping after a couple of weeks off myself I might feel better about this, but I doubt it.

 

Life is seriously like… my body forcing me to do things…. physically being there and going through the motions, and my heart and my mind are inside, screaming, pulling at me and begging me to stop. That’s how it feels. My heart doesn’t want to go on. My mind wants everything to stop. But my damn body, the outside… the mask I show everyone, doesn’t want to disappoint / worry / burden anyone, and thinks nobody will understand if I don’t soldier on. So it forces me through hoops to appear normal. To appear strong. But inside, my soul is crying and desperate for a break… for peace… for the end. That’s why I can’t connect to everything around me. My heart’s not in it. My mind’s not in it. I’m physically there, but mentally and emotionally I’m in a ball in the corner, wishing not to exist. Wishing none of this was real.

 

This is all so difficult. And having nobody to talk to about it all makes it so much worse. I’m trying to do positive things. I contacted the Wellbeing Centre, I’ve started my charity walk, I’ve even taken up knitting again…. but none of these things are going to make me better. Nothing can. I can never get better, because I have lost the two longest friendships I had this year, in two very different yet very traumatic ways. Nothing can fix or change that. Nothing can fix me. Nothing can take away the anger I feel at my former best friend for ditching me and treating me so poorly. Nothing can bring my other friend back to life. Nothing will give me answers as to why these two things happened. Nothing can change the pattern of my life – that people abandon me and I never understand why. Nothing can erase the past. Nothing can reconnect me to this world again. I don’t believe I can ever recover. There really is no hope. People will tell me there is, but I don’t feel it. I don’t see it. I don’t believe it. This world is just too much for someone like me. I can’t face it alone, but that seems to be my destiny.

 

I’m just so tired of being here. I’m sick of feeling. I’ve had enough of everything. I want to forget everything. I can’t go on without forgetting everything that’s been and gone. Once upon a time there was help for people like me. Now I have nowhere to turn. What do you do… who do you turn to when you no longer feel a part of this world, can’t go on in it, and can’t see recovery? There’s nobody. All these services out there are ‘recovery-based’. You have to want to get better. I am beyond that now. I can’t see a future. I can’t see recovery. If I can’t see it how can I believe in it, and work towards it? I need better help than that. I just want someone to listen and understand how broken I am. I don’t want them to tell me it gets better. I don’t want them saying it’s normal and we all feel that way. I don’t want them saying I have to put the work in if I want to recover. I know that. For so many years I put so much work in, but it’s the world around me that pissed all over my efforts. It’s this world and this life that undid everything I worked for. It’s the people in it who broke me to my core. Tell me how I’m expected to put in any more work to help myself, when this fucking world is trying to destroy me…?! What is the point??

 

Mental health professionals are supposed to help you. They used to. Now they expect you to help yourself. That’s the core message they send out. So I’m a lost cause then? If I’m at a point I can’t help myself because I am in total darkness… what then?  I just want someone to …. I don’t even know the end of that sentence. Because the truth is I could say I want someone to make me want to live again. But with the trauma of everything I can’t live. I cannot see any scenario where I would feel happy again. Where I’d feel loved. Where I’d feel safe again. Anything I had and believed in has been violently ripped away from me. No therapy and no pill could help me now. That’s how bad I feel. I wish there was some treatment that would save me, but there isn’t. Because no matter what, I have to live with this mind, these memories, this pain and this loneliness forever. The scars I have inside are so much deeper, so much worse than the ones on my arm. Nothing can heal those. I’d say ‘prove me wrong’, but I think without my belief, nothing will work… and the trouble is I believe in nothing anymore. So it’s hopeless.

 

Feels dark today. Just trying to get through each moment. Having to tolerate a lot of unbearable thoughts and feelings lately. I wish they’d all stop. I just want to be me again.

 

 

 

Unbearable Pain & Depression.

*Suicide references & as it became a rant towards the end, a lot of very bad language, I’m sorry*
*Will likely offend those who know me, in one way or another*

 

 

Yesterday I was grouchy. Today it’s mainly sadness and depression.

 

I’m not coping with life anymore. I really feel like I’m living in a bubble….or even the cliché ‘dark cloud / fog’, which is often used to describe depression. There is nothing positive about life anymore, not for me. There is nothing safe about it. I feel so scared, so alone, so fragile and broken, and so hopeless.

 

It’s been this way since my granddad died. That changed everything for me. Ever since then things have continued to get worse and worse…. I’ve faced so much more loss since then, and there’s no light left. There’s no point to anything anymore. Life is loss, illness, pain and death. There is no joy. There’s no love. There’s no hope or reason. It’s just all black.

 

There are so many things I’m meant to be doing at the moment…. I haven’t even reached out for the beginnings of help I need, as I feel so paralysed by grief and depression right now. I can’t start any of the things I’m meant to be doing. I don’t want to go out again. I don’t want to work. I didn’t today. I couldn’t. I had to take diazepam last night because of how awful I felt. I can’t face pretending to feel better than I do. I can’t face being around people, triggers … And the monotony of life – the fact it goes on and on, particularly after significant losses, it’s too much to cope with. I want life to stop for a while… let me catch up mentally with all the chaos and the trauma. I want a break from it all. I don’t want to just carry on. I can’t. I’m falling apart. And nobody’s even noticing.

 

Life changed forever in 2017 after my first major loss. After that, nothing felt certain anymore. Everything was flat, harsh, heavy, dark and pointless. I battled on. I had no other choice. I had group therapy. It made me worse. I faced another loss as a result. Last year the full effects of grief kicked in, after medication wore off. Nobody was there for the first anniversary, bar one. I isolated myself as a result. I was neglected by people, even my best friend. I had been crying out for help and support, and friendship. I used the only voice I had left – this blog. I couldn’t reach out to anyone anymore. This was my only outlet. Rather than being praised for using the only tool I had to reach out for help, I was attacked for blogging about my feelings, when they concerned my best friend. She was committed to misunderstanding me. She doesn’t understand mental illness and doesn’t even try. She couldn’t understand why I did the things I did.

 

I had paranoia. I still have it. But not as intensely as last year. Either that or I’m delusional and paranoid, and don’t even know that things aren’t real anymore. Doesn’t feel that way though. I have no evidence to the contrary. Anyway, my mental illness pushed my friend away. She gave up on me. She abandoned me, right at a time I needed care and support. She gave me more loss to deal with – hers and the kids…. the one reason I had to live besides my own family. I’ve not seen them for almost eighteen months. I’ve not seen her for over a year. It’s over.

 

It hurts, because I was ill. … I couldn’t help that. My mind wasn’t my own. It still isn’t a lot of the time now. I had been calling out for her friendship, yet she chose to interpret it as me not wanting her friendship, so pulled away more. When I talked about my paranoia, how it manifested through apparent jealousy and possessiveness, but wasn’t really that – it was insecurity, low self-esteem, thinking she didn’t care about me – she clearly didn’t get this, and started to do things that triggered that paranoia more than ever before. She cut me out of her life. I am aware that she is moving or has moved house…. don’t know when or where to. I’ve been left out of the loop for about a year now at least. For all I know she could be going to the other end of the country, without a goodbye or closure. Could be down the road… who knows? That’s the point!

 

She got offended at my blog and had a go at me for it, while I was in the midst of a breakdown. That blog had been my only means of communication. It was intended to help the situation and stop us never talking again. It clearly backfired. But the intention was good, so to be attacked for it was upsetting. More than upsetting – I had to call the Samaritans that night as I didn’t want to live anymore. Over the next month I calmed down. My position shifted from never wanting to hear from her again, to having compassion and understanding for her…. I wrote to her and sent Christmas presents etc. – she completely snubbed me. No card. No text. No thank you. Not even acknowledgement of receiving the presents. Found out a month later (after I had to chase her up again), that she never opened anything. She didn’t give the kids the presents I’d bought / made for them. I’ll never forgive that. Taking it out on the kids. That’s wrong. I’m never bothering with any of them anymore. I’m done.

 

After chasing her up, she wasn’t sure if she wanted us to be friends again or not. She wasn’t ready, and wasn’t sure it could be like it was before. She had said to me last year that ‘nothing will ever be the same now’… so in effect nothing was ever going to be the same after that comment. What, all because of my mental illness?? This was telling me that she couldn’t see me the same anymore… the biggest fear of letting people in on how bad my mental health had become. If she was saying things couldn’t be the same, because of the things I did last year – things that came as a result of my ill state of mind…. then she was basically saying she couldn’t forgive me my mistakes made due to mental illness. It was saying to me that she obviously would never forgive me for anything – even in a good state of mind…. if she cannot even forgive it in an ill state of mind, when my mind wasn’t my own – then what hope is there? We all have to be perfect all the time…. one strike and you’re out. Is that it?

 

If it’s that things would never be the same, because of her behaviour, that’s different. If she felt ashamed of how she spoke to me and felt bad for abandoning me when I needed her…. I could understand that, and how she might find it hard to look me in the eye again. I’d get that. But she needed to convey that to me, that she felt to blame if that was the case. She needed to say she couldn’t be my friend and that I deserved someone who could be my friend. She needed to say something, anything that didn’t make it seem she was blaming me. The fact she didn’t do that tells me she does blame me. And if that’s the case then I can’t understand it. I honestly cannot understand what the hell I ever did to deserve being treated the way I was. I was unwell. I am still unwell, but I have fought bloody hard in the last six months, to scrape my way back to who I am. Nobody will ever know how hard it has been to keep on living this year, totally alone.

 

Her behaviour this year has been worse than last year if that’s possible. She was indecisive about whether to sort things out with me. I pushed through my mental illness, my paranoia and my isolation in order to not lose her – in order to fight for our friendship of thirteen or so years. I thought she was worth it. She was like a sister to me. Clearly she didn’t feel the same about me. This makes me sad. I respected she needed more time for whatever reason, but I had to put my mental health first and suggested I would unfriend her for the time being. That way she was free to be herself and post what she wanted, but I didn’t have to tolerate being hurt by it… I didn’t have to see her rave about her better friends, whilst neglecting me. It felt like a sensible idea. She obviously didn’t like that idea, and instantly blocked me as a result. She blocked me on another account too. She then took herself out of my Facebook group, after hearing it would upset me. And then she added a past mutual friend who drove a wedge between us three years ago now. I recently found the letter my friend wrote, where she said that she ‘didn’t know adding __________ would cause us to not talk for so long’. So either she didn’t learn, or she was doing it deliberately to spit in my face, now she was free of me.

 

My heart lurches at the things she’s done, and the vindictiveness that I know is behind it. The passive-aggression. It’s been denied. I’ve been told she hasn’t done anything with the intention of causing me pain. She’s just trying to be herself. I know that isn’t true. But the person who said it can go on believing what they wish. It doesn’t change the truth. There’s no other good reason for doing these things. Had she had any intention of resolving things with me, she would never have added that former friend again…. not after knowing what it did last time. I feel sad that instead of putting energy into making things right with me, she was doing everything wrong she could possibly think of – and I even gave her further ideas to hurt me, which she did too. I feel sick and sad that she’s not the person I thought I knew all those years.

 

It’s making me question reality. If this is who she truly was all that time, then the last thirteen years of my life were fake…. they were based on a lie. I’m finding that hard to cope with. I can’t trust anything or anyone now. I’ll never be close to anyone again. And I’ll never believe anyone who says they’re my friend and they’re not going to leave me. Because she did.

 

Did she even understand that adding that friend in 2016 actually HURT me? That it caused me anxiety, depression, made me cry every day and feel suicidal? That I felt BETRAYED?! Or did she just know that it ’caused us not to talk for a long time’. Did she not understand the emotions? Is that why she accused me of giving her an ultimatum and telling her what to do? Because she sees things as cold, black and white facts….?

 

I have – I’ve tried ‘diagnosing’ her, simply so I can understand why the hell she’s treated me how she has…. I’ve felt so lost and confused. I’m still confused. And frustrated that I could never get her to understand….. but now I’m thinking is that even my fault or my problem? If she can’t comprehend what I’ve said to her, then the fault doesn’t lie with me…. at least I tried to explain things to her…. I tried to tell her the emotional consequences of things like that. If she was unable to take that onboard and understand me as a result, that’s not my fault. It’s hers. Sorry, I’m having to try and be my own friend here and stick up for myself, because I’ve been made to feel it’s all my fault for months now, and I’m just realising now that it wasn’t…. and the situation was hopeless. I did the best I could. You can only explain your illness and your emotions to the same person so many times, before you have to give up and realise they’ll never get it. They don’t want to get it. And until they get it, you will always get the blame. I’m not taking the blame.

 

It absolutely sucks what has happened. I HATE that she became this different person and left me, at the worst point in my life… I HATE that this happened. I wish it hadn’t. But I am understanding the quote that says you don’t lose friends, you just learn who the real ones are. I may not have many real friends as such now, but it’s better to be alone than to be with people who are not really your friend…. who could at any moment just turn their back on you and walk away. If she had really been my friend she would’ve done anything to not lose me. She wouldn’t have given up on me.

 

Knowing this though doesn’t help with the pain I feel right now. I’m desperately upset about it. I feel so alone.

 

The one person I had whilst being neglected by everyone else, was a friend I knew for about the same amount of time – thirteen years….. mainly online. But she was a wonderful person and the only stable person in my life besides my family. She never hurt me, judged me or let me down. She encouraged me. She cared about me and believed in me. She praised me. She was everything my best friend wasn’t.

 

Two months ago she ended her own life… five weeks before I was meant to finally see her again. Grief associated with suicide is different and complex. You go from sadness, to anger, to guilt and all around again. I still remember finding out…. I went into shock. I couldn’t eat or drink, or stop crying. I hadn’t seen it coming. I should have. I didn’t know things were quite that bad for her. She was happier than I’d seen her in ages. We were looking forward to seeing each other again and seeing our favourite band reunited again. We never got to do that. I had to go without her. Thankfully I had a good friend come with me, to help me enjoy it. Now that’s over though, the thoughts are creeping back in…. the ‘Why…?’… and also anger that she didn’t say goodbye. She didn’t say sorry for leaving me…. she didn’t give me the opportunity to help her. She just went. And by leaving she left me with nobody and nothing.

 

Now I have nobody to confide in or ask advice from. I have people I can chat to, but they’re all more recent friends / acquaintances.

 

I’ve lost the two longest friendships I’ve ever had, and both happened in the space of two months…. one due to suicide, the other because they simply gave up on me. This is unbearable to live with. I have nothing left. My life was looking bleak already, and then the one friend I had left decided life was bleak for her too, and ended it. Now I’m often left thinking why should I have to keep living and suffering? Why can’t I just join her?  Nobody would miss me. Not like she is missed. I have nothing left now. I’ve done nothing great with my life. I’ve made no impact at all. All it seems I’ve done is burden everyone and been used and discarded by them all. Everyone abandons me. Even my friend abandoned me by taking her own life. She left me on my own.

 

I have nobody to cheer me on…. to make me feel I matter or that I’m even visible….. I have nobody saying they love my photos from the concert I had to go to without her. I have nobody showing any interest in my existence now. I can reach out online and be honest about how I’m feeling and be met with silence. It makes me feel nobody cares and I might as well end it. They wouldn’t notice. I feel so invisible. It was an increasing problem in the last year or two…… my deceased friend was the only one who really made me feel I was real and had any value. Now she’s gone.

 

When it happened I reached out to my former best friend, as I was desperately in pain, and wanted to not have that loss on top of the grief. I regretted it the next day, as I realised it was opening myself up to more potential pain at her hands. I was still upset and angry about her adding the other person. I’d actually only written a letter to her that day, which I was intending to send before moving on with my life… and then I found out and that got shelved. So it was confusing. I didn’t want her to think I’d just be okay about it. So thought it best not to get involved. She had unblocked me to try and get a message to me, which never came. When I showed doubt she instantly blocked me on both accounts again… showing not only was she immature, reactive and passive-aggressive, but that she had no compassion in her heart whatsoever…. to block me at a time like that, when I had just found out my only friend had killed herself. It was the exact pain I had decided I needed to avoid at a time like that. It’s the very reason I had second thoughts about reconnecting.

 

We eventually spoke through a couple of texts, but that didn’t come to anything. She asked if there was anything she could do, and my thought was ‘No, not really….. not given the distance between us now…. I mean, you’re not exactly going to offer to meet me for a coffee are you?!’…. it felt empty… hollow…. pointless. For a while it felt better to not feel at war with her. But a couple of weeks with no follow-up texts to check if I was okay, I realised that really was it. She didn’t unblock me. She’s still friends with that other girl…. she’s moving on with her life, whilst she’s left mine in absolute tatters.

 

That’s what annoys me most…. she doesn’t even realise the mess she’s left me in. What she has done to me. She said she didn’t blame herself for how our friendship went. She should have. I had a mental illness that I was fighting really hard, with no support. I was grieving, alone. I made effort for her when she misunderstood and hurt me. She snubbed me. She did a series of things to hurt me this year… even blocking me while I was still in shock at losing my friend.

 

No matter how she may feel in her life, she has other friends. She has a family. I’ve lost my Godchildren. I’ve lost my best friend. I’ve lost my only other friend to suicide. I don’t understand any of it. I don’t even want to exist anymore. I don’t know why she gave up on me. It was either because of my grief, my illness or the symptoms of my illness which offended her, and made her see a side to me she can’t forgive as me being ill. Or she just got bored of me and used it as an excuse to ditch me, and chose to blame me so she didn’t look bad. It has to be one of those – it can’t be that she thinks I’m better off without HER. She’s done everything possible to punish me. That says she hates me and blames me. This is no longer paranoia, it is a fact. If she didn’t blame me then she would’ve communicated that to me. Her behaviour has communicated it so much clearer than her words ever could. She meant me harm and doesn’t want to know me anymore. I just wish I understood why she was so intent on ‘punishing’ me. I’ll never forgive her for all these things she did to me, at a time I was just grieving and seriously mentally unwell. And in the lead-up to the worst and most traumatic experience I’ve ever had…. the suicide. Now I’m left on my own, with nobody to help me through it. Nobody to live for. No hope. No light. No point. She did all this to me.

 

If I die, then it’s her fault. She left me. I would never have got as low as I did if she had shown me her friendship early on. And then attacking me for being ill and reaching out the only way I knew how at that point…. hurting me so badly…. ignoring me at Christmas…. blocking me….. stabbing me in the heart as revenge for some perceived crime….. I even thought naïvely that she might step up after hearing about my friend’s death. I was wrong. That’s how I know she 100% doesn’t and likely never DID care about me.

 

It all hurts too much at the moment. All the loss. I feel paralysed by it. I don’t want to participate in life now. There is no life. Not my life anyway. Others have their lives. I’m back in that invisibubble of gloom, murkiness and despair. I watch…. detached from reality…. praying to not wake up one day….. I don’t feel any good feelings right now. All I feel is a rage, a despair and a desire to piss all over who I used to be, and become a bitch…. I don’t accept this reality. I want a different one. I don’t want to be me anymore. I want to be someone who tells people to go fuck themselves. I want to tell my friend what a bitch she was. I want to not give a shit about the kids anymore. I want to be as vindictive as others have been to me. I want to dish out a bit of karma myself. I want to have a breakdown, cause a scene and genuinely not give a shit about it. I want to not care about ending my own life. I want to not have feelings. I want to not miss people or care about them. I want to feel no remorse like others seem capable of doing towards me. I want revenge. I want to hurt other people (emotionally, not physically).

 

But at the same time there’s that fucking annoying part of me called my fucking conscience, going ‘Excuse me, sorry to trouble you, but that’s not who you are…. you need to keep the spirit of those you’ve lost alive, and be the best you that you can be…. live for them and not let these experiences harden you…’ – that conscience is an irritating little bastard. It’s the only thing that keeps me normal and ‘me’. It drives me insane at the same time as I’m in constant conflict with myself, and can never find peace. But it keeps me in line with my morals. I just wish I could turn that off and dish out a little of what the world has dealt me. It’s not fair that so much has happened and so many people have hurt me, and none of them give a shit or face any consequences for it. They’re all happily getting on with their lives while I face the life sentence because of my fucking mental illness, and my inability to just ‘let things go’. I fucking hate it. They’ve all messed me up and made me unable to live life. My former best friend is the worst of them all. I hope one day she’ll realise she fucked up and feel bad about it. It’ll be too late by then, I’ll either be dead or I’ll have moved on to better things. What’s happened isn’t fair. It isn’t right. And I have to pick up the pieces alone, and tell myself I didn’t deserve it. I have to tell myself I’m not an awful person, I just have an illness she didn’t and never will understand….. that’s not my fault. I have to tell myself that, because the one person who could’ve told me that, took her own life.

 

This is the state of my life now. Going in circles about how fucked up everything is. And how one traumatic loss impacted another and another…. No medication, no therapy, no amount of happiness with other people right now can fix what’s happened. Nothing can take away the seriously fucked up things that have happened in the last year. Nothing. I have to live with the scars of that for the rest of my life… however long that turns out to be. I feel crippled by the trauma of it all. And nobody can help me with that. The mental health team won’t see me until I’ve started at the bottom. They’ll never diagnose me, even if it was something to do with trauma, and would help me understand and get the right help, they won’t diagnose me. So I have to battle on, with nobody understanding why I just can’t live life anymore. I have to stay alive so it doesn’t upset my family. That is the only fucking reason I’m not dead right now. Do you know how fucking wrong it is that life has fucked me up that much that the only reason I don’t kill myself is to not hurt my family…. that that is the only reason to live….!? And it’s no life at all. All those fucking bastards who hurt me in the past and this year have seen to that! They carry on with the lives they have, leaving me stuck in hell because of them, not wanting to live but having to because of my fucking conscience! I hate everyone. I hate my former friend. I don’t wish her well. She didn’t give a shit what happened to me when she discarded me like I was nothing to her….. so why the fuck should I care what happens to her from now on?? Sorry, I’m really upset.

 

I hate living. I hate feeling. I want to take a pill that makes me forget everything that’s come before. I want a clean slate. I want to want to live. because right now I don’t want to. It feels so surreal what’s happened – like a nightmare. How can this be real? I don’t want this life…. or rather what’s left of it. I wish I could sleep forever. It’s the only time I don’t feel the pain of living. I’m just not sure someone like me is meant to live in a world like this. If I am then I have zero clue how…

 

 

 

Bad Mental Health Day… (Rant)

*Strong language, self-harm and suicide references. Read with care*

 

 

There is no such thing as a ‘good mental health day’ for me, not for a long time now. But I can tell the particularly bad ones apart from the rest. Today is one of those. In fact all week has been. There is no imminent reason. Nothing’s changing. Nothing is happening that hasn’t been happening all year…. just sometimes you can’t cope with things as well.

 

If you looked at me you wouldn’t think I was any worse than usual. My usual has become more depressed – so not going out, getting dressed, brushing my hair has become the new normal. So although you’d know things aren’t ‘good’, you wouldn’t know that I spent this morning trying to research where to cut myself to do more damage. Or that I went onto a site to find out the least painful way to kill yourself – of course it was one of those sites that reels you in and tells you not to do it and to reach out to Jesus instead! But looking up these things is something new. I’ve been self-harming for half my life now. I’m not new to it. So I have no reason to research, other than I want to cause more damage. That’s how bad I have become with my mental health.

 

I know I have probably already damaged my hand from punching a wall weeks ago… I still have pain and it seems deformed. But that doesn’t stop me wanting to make it worse. A professional could say to me ‘You might break your hand’… but the state I’m in now, that’s not an incentive to stop hitting the wall… it’s more like ‘…. good’. If you’ve never been in that state of mind you would think I’m a psycho. I don’t have the energy to tell you why you’re wrong anymore. Not today. It’s like when I lost my friend a few weeks ago, I harmed myself so badly I bruised the tendon in my arm again. And I want to do that again. I want pain. I want blood. I want bruising. I want damage. I have nothing left.

 

My mental health has become so bad it cost me friendships I thought I’d never lose. Mental health services won’t help me. I’m too unwell to do my voluntary work. I don’t leave the house. Unless it’s to do something with family. That’s all I have now. Nothing else. And I hate the world outside my family. I hate them with a passion.

 

My existence is just tolerance now. Tolerating uncomfortable emotions, which seem to always be there. I have no professional support. No social support from friends. Yes there are one or two people I talk to online. But no close friends in real life. ‘Make some new friends – take up a new activity’….. fuck off. Do you actually know what it’s like to feel how I do today? Do you know what it’s like to have lost everything and to feel so suicidal and to just want to keep cutting yourself over and over again? And how hard it is to have self-worth buried six feet under the floorboards. To have paranoia and anxiety about going outside the front door, let alone to meet new people and have to trust them to not abandon you, like even your most trusted friends have?? Do you know what it’s like to not want to live anymore, therefore how hard it is to do things that would improve your life? And to have to cope with this all on my fucking own?

 

Mental health services I think, are too fixated by this ‘You have to want to get better…. you have to put in the work, I can’t do it for you’ crap. Yes, of course I have to put in effort – it’s what I did at therapy, at DBT… I’ve always been the one to help myself, with support. But what about times like now? What about when someone can’t help themselves anymore, because they’ve been allowed to spiral to the point of apathy and despair? What about when I can’t even picture feeling better…. when I can’t even see a future…. when I feel so paralysed and isolated and unsafe in this world….. what then? If I’m unable to help myself straight off the bat does that mean I’m undeserving of help? Do you have to be able to help yourself otherwise you’re just seen as a lost cause? Because the trouble is I’ve felt like a lost cause all year. Nobody has proven otherwise. My friends left me. CMHT won’t help me. They think as I’ve done DBT there’s nothing more they can offer me. As if ‘Well if that didn’t help you, nothing will….. just look at your folder and use your skills’. Thanks. I’m beyond being directed to a folder I made over ten years ago. I need actual human help to dig me out of this grave I’m existing in. I’m being buried by pain and nobody wants to help me with that pain. Nobody wants to understand it, validate it, or tell me what the hell is wrong with me and how to treat it. I need help. I need compassion. I need effort. I need to know I’m worth something in this world. Because I’ve lost that and I see no other reason to live than to not hurt my family.

 

Why won’t anybody HELP me? 

 

Nobody gets how difficult it is to keep living right now. I am constantly wanting to hurt myself because at least that’s the sort of pain I can ‘tolerate’. Tolerating paranoia, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, chaotic thoughts, disturbing images, crippling depression, isolation, self-hatred, guilt from wanting to die, fear of abandonment, feeling helpless, hopeless and a failure, and the biggest desire to just not feel anything anymore…. that sort of tolerance is something I can’t do. Not without help. The help I can’t get. So I live in hell, experiencing all those things because I can’t get help, and I can’t kill myself because I love my family. So I suffer. And people leave me because I’m suffering. But they have no clue that I’m going through all this hell. So I self-harm to externalise my suffering. To take the focus off the inner turmoil. And I live with the physical pain too. The emotional pain would kill me otherwise. On the scale it is right now it’s not something I could deal with.

 

I feel pain because of abandonment. I feel pain because of grief – that’s been particularly hard this week for some reason. I don’t tend to self-harm because of the sadness of my loss. I don’t think I ever have. I usually just let myself cry. It’s only this week that the pain of grief felt too strong that I thought about self-harming to stop it. But I didn’t. But I do self-harm as a result of other things that I can’t cope with so well now, as the grief has made me vulnerable. I view life through a different lens now. Life is just a waiting room… waiting for your appointment with death. My outlook on life has become morbid. I know I have to do some work on grief, but grief is not the biggest problem in my life right now. Other people are. And I can’t cope with them. I can’t cope with being around people, or talking to them. It’s too much.

 

I  also feel pain from things that happened over the years. I feel pain at realising my closest friends didn’t really care about me. I feel pain at the loss I experienced at therapy last year. That keeps trying to rear its ugly head. I have to try and block it out at times like this. I have enough trying to kill me without that joining in. It’s just when times are like they are at the moment, I want to run back to those days and the therapists who ran the course. I have nothing now. I feel pain about all the online abuse I’ve had this year too. I feel pain at not receiving help. I feel pain from everything and everyone. There’s that saying –

 

“People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.” ….. 

 

Usually I feel the agony at the slightest touch …  as in ‘how people treat me’… but now I feel it from every movement I make …  as in ‘nobody has to even do anything bad to me, just living hurts’. People talking to me and people NOT talking to me both hurt me…. so it’s better just to deliberately stay away from people. But it still hurts, because they don’t come looking for me, fighting for me. So whatever I do… or don’t do… hurts. Living just hurts. 

 

It’s taken all day to write this. I ramble so much and yet never feel I’ve said enough. I can’t ever release the chaos I feel inside, and I worry I don’t express it well enough for anyone to understand the hell I’m in.

 

Today is a very bad mental health day. It’s 5pm and I haven’t had my morning meds… (don’t worry, I’m about to). Those are the days I know are bad. Now some might say they’re bad BECAUSE I’ve not had my meds…. could be… but this has been ongoing for the last few days. Medication won’t actually make me feel any better than I do right now, because even if I do have a need for medication, the problem is life…. lack of support, so much loss and pain, and just being weary of life. No pill will change my circumstances and all the shit that’s happened to me. And there’s been a lot of shit. I don’t know how I’m still here. I need something that will make me forget all the bad things, or remember all the good things….. I need more good things to happen…. I need more people to be the sorts of people I need in my life…. I need them to be kinder, gentler, warmer…. consistent. I need to be understood. I don’t want people being super positive to me or saying we all feel that way sometimes – fuck off. I know you don’t know what to say to me but you’re making me feel worse and more misunderstood and alone. No more of the ‘What you need to do is blah blah blah’…. no….. what YOU need to do is shut the fuck up and listen to what I’m saying and acknowledge how I’m feeling – comfort and support me, without advising me or comparing my suffering to yours or anyone else’s.

 

I’m always being told I need professional support – sustained support from secondary mental health services. Other people with lesser demons than mine seem to have that support. Why can’t I? Being denied that help communicates to me that they wouldn’t give a fuck if I did end it. They’re supposed to be there to help people. What a shit job to take, whereby you just sit back and let someone end their life… turning your back on them as a lost cause…. how the fuck do they sleep at night?

 

Guess I’ll have to pay over £300 to see a psychiatrist for an assessment then, to get a diagnosis in order to get the help I need, and then I’ll have to go private to be treated for it – whilst other people with the same illness get given the help for free…… I have to pay other people to keep me alive…… what fucking incentive is that? We should be given the money to stay alive. All these people who’ll have to do that – they’ll recover from the depths of their illness and have no fucking money left, which will cause life problems and worsening of their illness. It’s ridiculous. WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO PAY TO STAY ALIVE?!! I’m already giving enough effort and paying the price just staying alive for the sake of others…. why do I also have to pay someone else money just so I don’t die?! This country is fucked up. And I’m always the one left crawling on the floor, BEGGING for help. It’s not fucking right. It makes me more suicidal.

 

I’ve had enough. There’s no point to this post. I’m just sick of the chaos. Today was a very bad day. At least I see the doctor this weekend. That’s something. I guess.

 

 

 

My Experience Of IAPT.

 

 

*Self-harm & suicide*
*Pictures of dressings shown but no scars etc. visible*

 

 

One year ago tonight I had a breakdown at my group therapy session, and self-harmed in the break. That was the point my life spiralled down to the mess it is now. I still vividly remember that night.

 

I had arrived early, to ask to speak to one of the therapists afterwards about an issue. That issue was what I called ‘transference’. I wanted help to know how to cope with it, so that it wouldn’t become a barrier for me in the group. I was terrified about talking about it. I felt sick with anxiety in the time leading up to it. I felt I had to do something, and this was definitely something new for me, so very hard to do.

 

 

 

I got to the building and pressed the buzzer to be let in….. no answer…. I tried again, and again…. no answer. I phoned the therapist we were told to phone to be let in…. no answer. So I stood there for fifteen / twenty minutes by myself, until someone else turned up. It was almost time for the session to start by this point. We were the first ones there. We went in when someone else came out, and went up in the lift and stood outside the doors to where we had to be. A couple of others turned up, having done the same, so four or five of us were just lurking by the lifts, wondering what was going on. I was really angry that on this one day where I needed to talk to them before the session, they ignored me. And that now there wasn’t time to say anything! In the end another member of the group phoned the therapist… and this time he answered! Which given that I was transferring on him, made me feel personally rejected, like the other person was special to him but I was irrelevant and to be avoided. I was nothing. So it all set me off in a very bad way… It turned out the buzzer wasn’t working. I don’t know why the therapist didn’t answer my call, but answered the other person’s. I’ll never know that.

 

There was no time to ask to talk to them later. But I knew I had to say something. I spent the first half of the session zoned out. I couldn’t focus. I was so anxious about confronting the problem, that I wasn’t paying attention to what we were doing. I hobbled to the break and asked to speak to Matt. I told him I wasn’t able to take anything in… that I had a problem and could I speak about it afterwards… he said the line I heard far too often on that course – that there’s limited time as they have to be out of the building by 7:30pm. I was starting to cry by this point for holding it all in. So he said we could have a chat there and then. We went into the next room and sat on one of the couches. I don’t remember all the words – not to quote them anyway. But I remember I was following a plan of how to tackle the issue. I had problem-solved and decided how to approach it, to save any misunderstandings or embarrassment. I was building up to saying what I needed to. But before I could ever get to that point, Matt steered the conversation away. He skirted round the issue, and kept talking about me having an appointment made with my individual therapist. He wasn’t hearing me. He wasn’t giving me the opportunity to say what I needed to. Okay, I should have just blurted it straight out, but I was scared, so I was working up to it. I’d done all this problem-solving homework that week, to figure out what to say and do about it….

 

 

 

It didn’t go at all to plan. I didn’t get beyond three or four points, before he led the conversation. With all the skirting around it, we ran out of time and had to go back in for the second half. I was still heavily burdened, and in fact felt even worse. I felt unheard, misunderstood and rejected in a sense, in that he was stopping me speaking to him and forcing me to do things a different way. In one pocket I had my grounding object. In the other I had something to harm myself with, wrapped in a small bandage. I had never intended to use it. I had hoped things would go better than they did. It was ‘insurance’. It was just in case things went so badly I couldn’t cope anymore. I shouldn’t have had it on me. I know that. But I was in a very bad state of mind, and it was so I felt I had options.

 

I followed Matt out of the room, and was so close to making the right decision. I was just behind him as he went in the door to the main room. I had my hand in my pocket on my grounding object, but the prospect of going back in that room, with nothing feeling better, nothing released, for more of the same – hearing nothing and being lost in upsetting thoughts, I felt ‘what’s the point?’… I couldn’t do it. I felt trapped. So I told Matt I’d just be a minute, he said okay, and I walked in the opposite direction, to the toilets.

 

I was beginning to cry and was muttering to myself as I went. I had difficulty getting in the toilet door, as another door was open just inside, and it was preventing the door opening. This added to the feeling of frustration. When I finally got in, I went to the farthest cubicle, shut myself in, pulled out the tool, and with one quick and impulsive movement I had gone too deep. When I saw what I’d done I began to panic. I was hyperventilating. There was no pain at that point, and in fact it took a while to even bleed, but once it did, it really did. I grabbed some tissue and as I did, the blood went all over the floor. I’d never harmed myself that badly before, and I still graphically remember seeing it, and hearing the blood hit the floor. I’m not trying to glamorise it. And I am actually leaving details out. I am traumatised by the experience and still have unwanted flashbacks. It’s not something I can forget.

 

I don’t know how long I was in there, but it was the loneliest feeling I’ve ever felt. I was speaking out loud saying ‘I don’t know what to do… what do I do? What am I going to do… I don’t know what to do’. I was panicking. I was kicking the side of the cubicle whilst crying ‘NO! NO! NO!’…  I felt sick seeing the wound. I had already had a bandage on my arm from previous self-harm. I used what I had taken off to put over the wound and bandaged myself up, just so that I could come out of the cubicle, to the taps with some tissue and clean the floor up. I was worried someone would come in and I’d be caught. I thought I could hide what I’d done to myself, but if they saw it on the floor that’d be it for me. So I cleaned the floor up. And then I tried my best to clean my face up. I had cried so much I had panda eyes. I had all the signs I’d been crying, and I didn’t want people to notice if I went back in. I knew I had to go back in, because I didn’t have anything to treat myself with. But in my bag I had steri-strips and a dressing. This would seem odd to people. But just as I had ‘insurance’ by having the tool with me, I had ‘insurance’ just in case it happened. Again, I never thought I’d need it – that’s why I didn’t have that on me in the toilets! When I self-harmed I wasn’t in my right mind, so I didn’t think of the consequences in that moment.

 

I didn’t know what the time was at this point. Had I missed ten minutes? Half an hour? Was the session almost over? I walked back to the session, went in whilst trying to hide my face. I sat back down in my seat nearest the door. I wasn’t present. I think the therapists were trying to include me, but I was just focused on how to treat my arm. It was throbbing by this point, and I felt really sick. I decided I had to do something, so I just grabbed the bag that had the treatment stuff in, and dashed back out again.

 

This was what alerted Vicky, the other therapist, that something was wrong. I don’t know what happened in the room after I went out. All I know is that initially I went to the room next door, sat on the couch and started to search for my steri-strips. I then realised what I was doing and how foolish it was to sit in a room that anyone could walk into at any minute. I then went back to the toilets, to the end cubicle, having wasted valuable time, and unbandaged my arm. I was searching in my bag for what I needed, and I heard someone outside the toilets talking. It sounded like they were calling me. I didn’t answer. I started panicking more. I had to rush to treat it before anyone saw. Then I heard Vicky come in. As lovely as she was, she had quite a brusque tone, and it made me feel scared that I’d be in trouble. I didn’t want her to know what I’d done.

 

But I realised I didn’t have a choice. I think she was asking me to come out. I reluctantly told her I had a problem. That I’d hurt myself and it was the worst I’d ever done it. I was crying the whole time. She had to persuade me to come out and let her see if I needed treatment. I felt so ashamed – nobody ever sees my wounds and I didn’t want her to see it. She had to tell me she wasn’t mad with me, she just needed me to come out so she could help me. Eventually I reluctantly came out. It didn’t feel real. She said it would need stitches. I got a bit distressed, as I didn’t want anyone to have to know. I hadn’t needed to seek treatment for self-harm for about ten years… after that one experience I said never again. I hated worrying my family like that. I talked things through with Vicky – about not wanting to give my family more to worry about… we’d had a bad enough year. I don’t remember everything we said, but I remember her saying ‘old habits die hard’. I remember her reaction when I said I had something to treat it with. When I got the bits out, and she was like ‘What is this? Is this your kit?’… It felt attacking and judgemental at the time… and looking back actually. I felt so ashamed. I can still feel that kick of shame right now. As it turned out it was just as well I had something, as they’re not kitted out for things like that. She got me to hold the wound closed while she put the strips on. She advised me to get it looked at for stitches still.

 

I was so apologetic. I didn’t want anyone to know. One of my first questions was who would have to know about it? She said ‘Well I’m going to have to tell Matt’. That was one person who I didn’t want to know about it. I didn’t want him to feel it was his fault, having just spoken to me. She said my individual therapist would have to know. And then as the session was coming to an end I had the choice to stay in there, or to sit in the room next door to the group. I asked Vicky to put my stuff in the room next door, so I could avoid seeing anyone at the end. I had been getting a lift home each week, but that particular week, because I was intending to have a chat at the end, and didn’t want anyone to know about it, I said I’d get the train. So I was suddenly stranded at the end of the session. So after another chat with Vicky I phoned my dad for a lift. And initially waited in that room. Vicky tried to lift me up by saying to look at the positives – that I came out and got help from her…. that I knew it was the wrong choice and regretted it… She said one of them would phone me the next day to check in on how I was. Matt tentatively popped his head in the door whilst we were talking, and I felt so guilty seeing him, as obviously he knew at that point something had happened. Apart from how to tell anyone I needed to go to the hospital, how Matt felt about it was my biggest concern. Daft I know.

 

I had to wait for my lift, so walked over to the train station to be met there. I got in the car – obviously my dad knew something was wrong as I’d said I wasn’t good and needed picking up. But I couldn’t admit it. I said I wasn’t sure whether to tell him or what…. but I waited until we got home, and told my mum instead. We went straight back out, to the minor-injuries unit. It was all a bit of a blur. It didn’t feel real. I didn’t want what was happening, but just had to go with it. I think on some level I zoned out… detaching myself from the reality of it all. I remember sitting in the waiting room, feeling so completely drained and flat, and noticing how sparkly the floor was…. mesmerizingly beautiful. I found an odd sense of peace in it. I was seen really quickly, probably because it said I had ‘a cut on my arm’ on the form I had to fill in… I guess they prioritise things like that in case it might prove fatal. They commented on what a good job Vicky had done closing it. They decided to leave it as it was, and not to stitch it, but to put special dressings on it, and I had to go back in every couple of days to have it checked and changed.

 

They were really good about looking after it. I never felt judged.  Until the last check-up I had, where the nurse made me feel like shit, took the strips off too soon and fiddled with the wound until it hurt. She interrogated me, and made it sound like I shouldn’t have been there, and should have gone to my doctor’s surgery to have it checked – despite having been told to come back there. Lucky I had someone in there with me – we just got up and walked out on her in the end. I complained about her.

 

 

But going back to that first night with the wound – it was difficult. I found it hard to sleep. It hurt so much and I couldn’t risk sleeping on it. I was also haunted by the visions of what had happened. I started writing a letter to them about it, because I was so angry that I’d been left in that situation. I was angry that I hadn’t been listened to, and that I’d been made to do what I did (yes, I know it was my choice), and for everything I’d gone through that night as a result. I was so angry I was crying about it. So I wrote it out. A part of me felt I wouldn’t go back to the group. Part of me felt they wouldn’t let me. I was worried I’d be in trouble and I’d be abandoned in that state. I decided not to make any decisions that night. The next afternoon Vicky phoned. I couldn’t tell her why I did what I did, but said I’d written something to explain it and would let them read it the next week. I was excused from doing the homework that week.

 

This is a sample of what I went through in those first few days after it happened:

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a difficult week – full of pain, flashbacks and wound checks. The flashbacks I was having were so vivid… graphic… disturbing. I had to keep my senses fixed on the present, so took to colouring and other visual activities like jigsaw puzzles, to try and keep my mind off it.

 

 

I had tendon pain, from the wound up towards my thumb. I had this for several weeks and had to be careful what I did. They checked I had sensation in my hand, so were sure it was okay, and just bruising or something. I felt I had no right to complain about that pain though, as I had done it to myself. But family kept reminding me it wasn’t my fault, and I still didn’t deserve to be in that pain, just because I self-harmed. It did wear off eventually, but I’ll never forget that pain. I even drew on my arm to show the area where I felt pain…

 

 

 

 

That week was just about surviving and getting through it, and catching up on sleep I couldn’t easily have. When I went in the next week I texted and asked to come up earlier, as having to catch public transport I had to wait around in town for a long time, and I was really anxious about going back there. They said that was fine. Vicky spoke to me before the session to check in. I gave her what I’d written. I apologised again, saying I never wanted that to happen again. I asked them what the group knew about what had happened, and they said that I just left and wasn’t coming back into the session. I don’t know what the truth is. I don’t know at what point Vicky told Matt – was it quietly at the end, where someone else could have heard? I was worried this might be the case. But that session I really threw myself back into it positively. I joined in more. At the time it felt like a turning point…

 

 

I later wrote about what I learned from the experience myself…

 

 

At the end of that more positive session I apologised to Matt, saying I hadn’t wanted him to feel bad about it. He said that he actually learnt from the experience, that he should get straight to the heart of the issue early on. He realised I was close to releasing something and he didn’t give me the opportunity to do it. We spoke briefly about my self-harm, and how it had come from a sense of feeling ‘trapped’. I said I’d written to explain it. Then they offered me some of the left-over biscuits from the break and I left… knowing that the next time I saw them they’d know what had happened and why.

 

This was part of the previous ‘problem-solving’ homework – where I assessed how it went.  This was written in a bad moment where it was hard to find positivity!

 

 

The rest of the course was difficult. There were better weeks, and others where I didn’t cope well at all. One week I was really anxious (I took a diazepam before the session, despite not having it prescribed for that) … I had difficulty speaking out and asked Vicky for help with it by giving her a note… she nodded to say she would help, but when it came to it she didn’t. This was so I would push myself to do it without help. But I wasn’t happy with this. It happened the same week that someone was a bit abrupt and stand-offish with me, and also the next day Matt had seemingly ‘ignored’ a text from me, saying I wanted to leave the group and why. I was angry about all these things… and hurt. I brought it up at the next session, but it felt unresolved, and I self-harmed in the break again. They didn’t know this time. Vicky came in to check on me, but I managed to bluff my way through it, talking to her through the door whilst bandaging my arm, so that she never knew. I told her I was just upset and needed a minute. When we came out of the toilets Matt was at the end of the corridor waiting to speak to me, to say he was sorry he didn’t get my text. We realised because his work phone is an old phone, and my text went over a certain length it came through as a multimedia message, and he thought it was spam. So he didn’t open it. He said he would never have knowingly ignored me in distress, he just didn’t get the message. So that felt a bit better, but it felt like a rejection, and that doesn’t heal immediately. This is what my text had said:

 

 

 

And these are to illustrate the struggles I continued to have throughout the course…

 

 

Another week I asked to speak to Matt before the session. I wanted to know how to detach from someone, and if I would get any help with transference issues after the course. This time I asked if I could just say my bit before he answered or asked anything. So he just made notes. I didn’t get wonderful answers. The bits I remember were to remember my values … that from reading literature on it, transference tends to sort itself out, and if it doesn’t you’d normally just not work with the therapist anymore… and that I had the option of quitting the group and having some alternative help. I don’t know what that would have been. He talked about people wanting therapy to ‘fix’ them. And about transference being about wanting solace from our struggles. I felt a lack of validation and understanding. And I also heard ‘If you yourself can’t get over your fear of losing me, you’ll have to lose me’. I felt zoned out by that point. I felt despondent. He asked if I could do the session today. I said I didn’t feel safe. He asked if I had the means on me to harm myself. I said no. I was telling the truth. He asked if I could keep safe that night. I said it would be difficult. I knew in that moment I would be going home and harming myself. I wished I had something on me. I had decided to avoid that option that week though. I went into the session, didn’t join in at all. Didn’t say a word. Nobody even looked at me through that whole session – particularly Matt. I felt invisible and rejected. They did a role-play about how to say no to things, a made up excuse they joked about was that ‘my granddad died… no the other granddad’ – and given my granddad had died six months earlier it kicked me to the core. It felt like a personal attack. Insensitive. I wrote these notes during the session, desperate to get out of there…

 

 

 

Dashed out of there at the end, ran down the stairs, got in the car and said ‘don’t ask’. I went home, harmed myself and had to go for treatment again. My family were desperate for me to stop going to therapy at that point. They didn’t know what my problem there was. I couldn’t tell anyone. They just saw me getting worse. It was only once the therapy finished I finally admitted it to them. But even I was questioning why I was continuing to go to the group when I was always left in this state…

 

 

 

By the halfway point of the course I was painfully attached to Matt. I couldn’t understand it. It was overwhelming and distressing, and nobody else knew how much I was suffering or why. I saw the end in sight and I was so desperately upset about the impending loss. I couldn’t admit to the group the reality of it, so made it sound like I’d miss the group. Consequently I felt misunderstood. It was a heartbreaking experience.

 

 

I wrote a note to Matt about that chat I’d had with him, the one that led me to go home and self-harm…  and how misunderstood I felt. I also spoke to Vicky a couple of times, breaking down in tears at the loss I faced. They were both really good about it. After giving Matt the note he seemed more understanding and caring, saying he knew it’s not easy, and he understood. He said he’d have a word with my therapist so that I could get more urgent support. I had my appointment two days after the course ended. I thought this was because she was aware of everything that happened. She wasn’t. She made me tell her everything and then trivialised my feelings for Matt. It was all handled wrong. I was then told that was my last session with her, and effectively abandoned, two days after that loss of Matt and the group.

 

But I’ll come to that…. going back to before the final session… Throughout the course I found that I would spend Thursdays crying because of my feelings for Matt, and the loss I was going to face. The thought of never seeing him again was unbearable. It’s a thought I still haven’t come to terms with a year later. To have to spend ‘forever’ without him. Forever is a long time. I don’t cope well with ‘forever’ or ‘never’. It tends to make me suicidal from the pain.

 

The days leading up to the session were tough. I had support from group members who added me on Facebook, but I still couldn’t tell them what I was going through.

 

 

 

That night of the last session was hard. I was very emotional. It was made harder because Vicky wasn’t there – she had supported me through the course and my feelings, and wasn’t there at the end. At that point the only people who knew how I felt were me and Matt. I had told another member of the group a couple of days before, who wasn’t there for the last session either… I only told her because I knew I wouldn’t have to sit in that session with her knowing. So the only people in the room who knew the pain I was in were me and Matt. The burden was too much. I got upset in the break and admitted it to one of the others. The very last mindfulness session we did I still remember. I remember thinking ‘this is the last time I’m going to hear his voice’. It was to be my last memory of him. And I started crying during it for the first time on that course. I’d often hear others during mindfulness exercises, but it was never me. I couldn’t hold it back at that point. And then it was time for goodbye. It felt empty. Unsafe. People gave me hugs at the end… still not aware of why I was upset. While I was hugging one of them I saw Matt notice and look away… to this day I wonder how he felt – was he relieved I’d be gone? Did he feel bad for me? Was he even worried how I’d cope? I doubt it. He probably didn’t think a thing about it. I was so upset at the end that I never really said goodbye or thank you to him. I regretted that for a long time. Anyway a few of us went next door to the pub, and I told them about it and broke down in tears. They were wonderful… they validated me, they understood, they picked me up and made me smile again.

 

 

 

And then I went home, and watched The Apprentice… hiding my face the whole time, as I kept crying. As soon as it was over I went to bed. Only I sat up for hours crying, and self-harming instead of sleeping. The emotional pain was so vivid and loud.

 

Sometimes when in distress I take photos. It may seem odd to some, but sometimes it feels like it captures the emotion and feeling. Just like a self-harm scar says ‘Look, I was upset and this happened’, the photo proves there was real emotion and pain. Often though I’m not even that aware of what I’m doing. I have taken photos of my self-harm before too. I know it seems an odd behaviour – it’s one I might dedicate a post to soon, to explain. This photo captures the raw, ugly despair I felt that night…

 

 

 

I got to the point I didn’t feel I could live in that amount of pain. No amount of self-harm could stop the emotional pain. Nothing would stop reality – that I’d lost him forever. And I thought if self-harm can’t fix this, then the only thing that might is suicide. It took me a very long time but eventually I phoned the Samaritans. I had sat with the number in my phone for ages, and hovered over the call button…. I couldn’t bring myself to do it…. I’d never called them before. I didn’t know what to expect or what to say. There was a lovely lady on the other end who got me through that night.  And somehow I got through a lot more after that. I got through Christmas, the New Year and many reminders. I even saw Matt in a shop during this Summer. We looked at each other, but he appeared to not see me or recognise me, so I didn’t say hello. It upset me and dredged everything up, but I’m still alive at least.

 

These were some of my thoughts from that night of the last session:

 

 

 

 

The whole experience was very traumatic. From start to finish it wasn’t handled right. From not being given the space to say what I needed to, and breaking a vicious circle, to having to deal with it on my own throughout the whole course… to being led to believe I’d have more support at the end…. to being told that was it, they were done with me. I know they feel bad about it, but this is one time that therapy did me more harm than good. And I think there were lessons they could do with learning from it. Talk to each other – my therapist didn’t seem to know anything about my experience on the course! Listen to what your ‘clients’ say and what they need. Don’t run a course right up to the time you have to vacate the building, because then you’ll have time to help people who need it at the end, so they won’t go away and self-harm! Don’t abandon someone just after an ‘abandonment’ or loss – my therapist went to do that two days after I was suicidal from a loss. After I broke down in floods of tears in that appointment, could hardly breathe, and almost had to beg to not be abandoned she offered me one more appointment… four days later.… as if that was any better!! Ridiculous. All so they could tick boxes and ship me out of the factory. Yes I’m still angry about it. I saw another therapist for four sessions to work through issues from the course. But the damage was already done.

 

I had had such hope that I would get help in that appointment after the course. It was disappointing how it went… it left me suicidal – I decided it best to catch a bus the short way home, as it didn’t feel safe walking over a motorway bridge to get home. I finally admitted everything to my family that day, as I was not okay, and didn’t feel at all safe…

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not okay. I’m not recovered. I’m not over Matt. But I survived. Surviving it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt… it doesn’t mean I’m okay now… it doesn’t mean it wasn’t the hardest thing I’ve been through. I’m still vividly haunted by it. And in all honesty I need someone I can talk to about it, frankly and without judgement or being told to just move on. The whole experience was traumatic – I can’t forget my incident at therapy. I can’t forget everything I went through, that nobody would know about unless they read this blog. It’s scarred me so much in many ways. My self-harm is out of control as a result of doing that therapy and being abandoned. I’m in immense pain emotionally even to this day, because of the way it was handled, because I was denied the opportunity to heal and because I miss Matt so much. That wound has never healed. It’s still gaping wide open, and the infection of this horrible life has seeped in and destroyed who I once was.

 

I guess in some ways the pain has faded a little bit…. like the scar…. I have an arm full of scars now since doing that course, but I still know exactly which one happened that night. I know which one happened the night I dashed out of there, went home and hurt myself… the first time I had to have one glued. As a self-harmer I don’t remember every single one and what caused it. I’ve done it much too often to remember every one. But something as traumatic as that I would remember.

 

The pain may not be as extreme and impossible to survive as it felt at the time, but it is very deep pain, that nobody gets. They all think I’m over this now, or at least should be. How do they expect me to be over it if I never talk about it? Even writing about this experience here, which I needed to do, I’ve felt like I’m back in those times. I’ve felt the emotions… even felt pain in my arm. I’ve felt urges to say and do things like I did back then. I’ve felt under threat. I’ve felt suicidal again. I had to stop several times writing this post, to remind myself that it’s not happening now. That although it hurts and I’m not over it… it is over. It’s in the past. This self-reassurance isn’t actually of any comfort to me. I have no professional support now. I’m not over my feelings for Matt, and cannot talk to anyone about it. Nothing can help the pain I feel. And it’s not like my life is in a good enough place to say ‘I’m not in that time now’. Because I don’t like the time I AM in. So it’s no comfort to say it’s not happening now, when I’m still wounded from its happening in the first place.

 

I know it took a lot of strength and determination to get through the course to the end. I had times I wanted to quit. I had times people were wishing I would quit. But it couldn’t be for nothing. I had to keep going. I had to find every ounce of strength I had left in me to push me through that course. And I did it. I don’t know if it was the right decision or not. A part of me wishes I never mentioned the transference and just carried on with the course, sitting there thinking ‘Matt is so lovely’, and avoided all the embarrassment, and didn’t start self-harming like I did. Because it’s only spiralled down since then. Part of me wishes that instead of going off and self-harming, I’d gone in, grabbed my stuff, left and never looked back. It would have avoided the attachment growing. It would have avoided the loss. It would have saved gaining a new physical scar for every week of the course, and so many emotional ones too.

 

I have to try and find and hold onto the positives. The strength and determination it took to go there every week. How hard I worked, doing my homework, creating my folder and creating my own homework. Meeting new people who feel the same ways as me, maybe not in exactly the same way, but to know I’m not alone in the things I think and ways I behave. There are many lessons I could take from it. I haven’t given them much thought lately though, as it’s been a mixture of flashbacks, grief, love-sickness and also trying to put it all out of my mind. But it’s something I should consider…

 

 

 

 

This was me six days after my incident at therapy… putting on a brave face, through the pain and the flashbacks. Oddly it’s one of my favourite photos of me that someone else has taken. If nothing else it shows me that I can come through anything, still be strong and smile. I carried on living. I continue now to carry on living. Whilst everything inside me screeches at me to end it. I’m in a worse place now than I was back then, and I don’t really have the strength to smile anymore. Nobody would want to feel how I do at the moment. I wish they could so they’d understand the mess I’m in. It’s not just about this situation – that only plays a part in my current struggles. But it was the start of the accelerated decline in my mental health. Somehow I now just have to hold on long enough, to get to a place where I can start to believe in recovery again. It’s a long way off, and there’s no support in sight for me. But now it’s come to the point of just hanging on, it literally is ‘do or die’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why I Died.

This is a difficult month for me, because of reminders of the past. I know people would just say not to think about it. But it’s not as simple as that. Life traumatises me. Things that happened six years ago still haunt me. I’ve never been given the opportunity to work through these issues with therapy or the like. The last therapy course I did made a point that they don’t look at the past, they look at the now… CBT and mindfulness don’t cater for those who have unresolved pain and trauma. I don’t know what help there is out there, and if any of it could help me at this point. I feel like a lost cause now anyway.

 

It would just be nice to have my pain recognised, understood, validated and to be told how I can let it out. I don’t want to be told to just ‘move on’, ‘let it go’ and ‘forget it’. To be told those things is to misunderstand me and misunderstand my mental illness.

 

Six years ago I lost everything. My life has never been the same since. I was betrayed by one of my closest friends, hurt by another, hurt by a man I had feelings for, a friend passed away, I had a bit of a breakdown whilst I was abroad, lost another close friend – all of this happened in the space of a couple of months. I lost my group of friends. My social life became zero. My confidence and self-esteem plummeted. I could no longer trust anyone. I had no hope. I was destroyed.

 

Then the next year life changed. My goddaughter was born. Wonderful. It allowed me to be a loving, fun version of me. But life changed so dramatically from how it was only a year before. It was a good change, but whilst everyone was busy moving on with their lives – my friends were all getting married, having children, growing up…. I hadn’t attained the sort of life they did. I stayed stuck in the year 2012, and everyone else’s lives happened around me. I was suddenly the only single one left. And I was not left in a good place. I don’t think they realise that yes, their lives have also changed… but they have their lives. They have their partners, they have their families. All I had was them. Their friendship with me. I was stripped of everything else in 2012. They were all I had left. My godchildren became my focus. But at the end of the day they’re not my life. They’re my friend’s life. Her life has changed, but she has a life.

 

When left alone I have no life. Nobody understands this. My life changed so drastically overnight. From a sense of belonging with friends, and support, care-free fun and socialising…. to losing it all….. to seeing everyone else settling down…. to being my fun self with the kids….. to seeing less and less of them, and of my friend … to having nothing left.

 

I’ve accepted it’s over. I’ve accepted I’ve been abandoned. I don’t even blame anyone anymore. I saw it coming years ago. I knew eventually I’d be left on my own. I’d lose relevance. I’d drop down the priority list. What do I have to offer anymore? I’m single, childless and severely depressed and broken. Who would want anything to do with me? It’s okay. I’ve made my peace with being totally alone. I’ve been feeling increasingly alone for the last couple of years. Yeah I’m upset, but best not to let it in too much. Dwelling on it would kill me. And as that’s starting to appear on the horizon now I shouldn’t really hasten it.

 

All this change in my life… and loss… losing my friend who passed away – we weren’t the closest of friends, but she was a positive influence in my life… I still miss her. Losing the guy I had feelings for – he was a jerk as it turned out and had been playing me, but it still hurt. Losing two of my best girl friends because they hurt and betrayed me. Losing another guy – a friend of mine who I thought I’d settle down with & the way he left things between us. Losing the young care-free social life and replacing it with babies (which was good – but was ‘growing up’ … only problem is I wasn’t ready & lost a social life that could help me find my own happiness). Losing my mental health and physical health. Losing my granddad… my first loss… so also losing that sense of security and safety, and that belief I’d never lose anyone. Losing my extended family because they attacked my family the day before the funeral. Losing my confidence to speak out about things, as I kept getting attacked for my views, or nobody really cared what I had to say. Losing most of my friends – not knowing why. Losing my best friend. Losing the support group from therapy, and the therapist I had feelings for. Losing the ability to talk to people anymore. Losing everything. Losing the will to live.

 

Life is loss.

 

I have lost so much over the last six years, and nobody gets that. Nobody understands how that feels, to lose things, lose people and be abandoned by everyone. To have your life changed so much. From finally having friends and building your confidence up…. to utter despair and isolation…. but having your family in tact. Having your godchildren and one friend at least. To a broken family, real grief, deteriorating mental health and nobody there for you at all through it, and losing the godchildren and friend… watching it fade away. I now have nothing left besides the closest members of my family. The world is also different from a few years ago. It’s all going to hell.

 

A part of me is quite chilled out about it though. The world is going loopy just at the right time, when I’ve lost everything. Not much left to stick around for.

 

I book to go and see things by myself again now, like I used to do before I had friends. I’m going to a show next year alone, and the cinema this week. No I don’t like going on my own particularly, but I don’t have a choice. I have two events I’m going to in the next six months where I booked two tickets – I now have nobody to ask to tag along. So will be either going with family, on my own or selling the tickets and not going.

 

Nobody understands this level of isolation I feel. I don’t have anyone to talk to about anything. That’s why I make videos and write blogs. This month is hard for many reasons – some are as far away as six years ago… some are more recent, a year ago and therapy. I can’t talk to anyone about it anymore. They all want me to just move on already and I’m sick of it. Don’t you think if I could move on I would’ve done by now. I’m not choosing this!! I tried opening up to the only person I have left who I could talk to, about how I’m struggling at the moment, and they had the same response – ‘Are you still thinking about that? How can you move on?’ … I clammed straight up and resolved never to open up about my feelings to anyone again. And I haven’t since.

 

So I truly do suffer in silence now. Yes I write. But writing doesn’t let out the internal scream in me. I can’t vocalise my feelings. That’s why I made so many video journals lately, to talk my feelings through. But I can’t have human interaction and compassion from anyone, because nobody gets it. Nobody gives me the time and care I need. Nobody asks how I am, actually wanting to know the answer and help me.

 

So yes, I am really struggling at the moment with flashbacks, distressing emotions, so much pain and turmoil, and deep loneliness and sadness. But I will never breathe a word of it to anyone in my life. I’ve closed up now. I feel everyone is sick of me still being caught up in my past and not being happy. It pushes me closer to the edge. I wonder why I bother going on if I’m such a failure that I get on everyone’s nerves. If they’ve all given up on me and think I need to ‘just let things go’ what hope is there? It’s one of the most distressing things to hear when you’re in pain because of the past…. to just let things go and to live in the here and now. Believe me I want to do that. Unfortunately for me though the here and now fucking sucks. Unless you’ve been through what I have keep your mouth shut.

 

Some people I know really don’t know how lucky they are. I wish I could hand them my pain, my memories and my mental illness, just so they could understand how impossible it feels to live my life how it is right now… alone. Abandoned. They wouldn’t last a week. Probably not even a day. And it’s what I have to endure every day of my life. And I know some of them would compare their problems with mine. They’d tell me their life isn’t that great, blah blah blah… stop trying to relate to me. You don’t understand isolation and having NOTHING. You have a partner. You have children. You have a social life. You have a job. You have a home. You have purpose. You have mental health! You cannot understand how I feel. You can’t understand how it felt to be starting to live your life finally, and to just as quickly lose everything. To have it change you as a person. And to lose even more because of that change, and because of your mental health. To lose everything you had left. Nobody could understand that. Nobody DOES understand it, clearly, as they’d be here for me if they did.

 

I’m just so sick of existing in a world where people don’t want to know me, because of my mental illness. I’m trapped. I can’t end my life because of my family. So I have to exist. But my depression and negativity offends other people and pushes them all away. So I have to exist in constant emotional pain and isolation. It’s enough to make you want to end your life. But like I said, I can’t, because of my family. I AM TRAPPED. And this is hell. And I don’t know what to do anymore.

 

I’m not who I once was. And there’s no way I can ever get that back. With every loss, a part of me dies. The best part of me died six years ago this month. But so much more … anything I had left died in the last year.

 

I need help.

 

I need someone to help me. PLEASE. I don’t know what to do anymore. Life is so dark right now. Even with support I wouldn’t know how to get through this. But I am alone. I don’t think I can do it.

 

 

Raw Reality Of Transference.

I sometimes film video journals, when the pain of something is too great to keep inside, and writing doesn’t do enough to release it. This is the first of a series I’m likely to do on mental health issues.

 

I felt the knot of emotion in me, and didn’t know what to do with it. So I picked up the camera and hit record, and started talking until it all came out. No script. Just raw emotion. Sorry, it’s not pretty.

 

I just feel there’s a lack of understanding of transference, especially in this country, even among professionals. From my experience I sensed it was not something they were that used to… which when you’re in immense emotional turmoil with it, makes you feel isolated and desperate. They did what they could for me eventually… but it wasn’t enough. At my three month review after being discharged from the IAPT service, I wasn’t even asked about my feelings for Matt. Either they didn’t want to stir it up, they’d forgotten it was an issue, or they honestly thought I’d be over it by then. But they don’t know me. And they don’t understand BPD and attachment. The intensity of it. I’d love to educate these sorts of people on the reality of it all. I think all mental health staff could do with learning by hearing directly, from those affected by certain mental illnesses.

 

I’m actually in the process of making a couple of other videos – they’re in the editing phase… where I speak to the camera as if I’m speaking to them. Matt is one of those I did this with. I felt it was a way to say the things I never got to say to people. It was to try and find my own sense of closure and peace, as I was never given any. Sometimes it feels good just to let it out. Both videos I’m making are based on things I no longer talk about to anyone. That’s a lot of pressure to leave on yourself. I don’t like being on camera – hence my style of just the eyes…. hate my voice too. But sometimes you have to let go of these insecurities and express your feelings vocally. Since I have nobody to do that with, I make these videos.

 

This video below was a spur of the moment decision, as despite having made the other video, speaking to him, it wasn’t enough…. the memories of the course are weighing heavily on me almost a year on now, and I knew it was something I had to open up about. Though the pain is still there, it helped a little to let it out….

 

Here’s the link to my video on YouTube –

Raw Reality Of Transference

 

 

 

 

Keyboard Warriors.

*Self-harm*

Today has been an intensely traumatic day for me, which I will be writing about in the coming days. I just felt I needed to say something somewhere, as I’m in the process of closing my Twitter account, and my Facebook account is closed atm too, so as this is my ‘journal’ of sorts, I thought I owed it to myself to state the fact that I’m not coping at all well right now. I’ve been abused online all day, resulting in many wounds, both psychological and physical. I’ve had to take some diazepam to calm me down and stop me doing further harm to myself.

 

The spite and nastiness of people online is shocking, and I won’t be pulling any punches in telling those responsible just what I think of their behaviour. But that will come in the next few days. Right now I’m trying to stay calm and focus on self-care. Actually I’m struggling to stay awake! Hoping things will feel better in the morning… psychologically at least.

 

People just have to stop being so rude, divisive and hateful, especially when they preach tolerance, love and inclusion. They pushed me to self-harm a lot today… the next victim might not be so ‘lucky’…. the next one might kill themselves…. how would they feel to learn they were responsible for someone’s death?

 

These sociopathic keyboard warriors have taught me how vital kindness is. They are bullies through and through, and they need to take a long hard look at themselves in the mirror, and ask if they really like the person looking back at them… because I bet what they think they are, and what they truly are, are not the same thing… They’re the most revolting specimen of the human race, and they’re lucky they have their anonymity, else I’d be naming and shaming them like they did with me. I will be making their comments public though and thoroughly dissecting their behaviour to try and understand what drives these narcissists to bully.

 

Right now, painkillers and sleep… try and forget the horrors of today. And hope I can find the light again… right now my faith in humanity is next to zero, and I feel closer to disappearing than I have in quite some time. I’m all alone in dealing with this. Anyway, goodnight to anyone awake, and remember the importance of kindness, and respect. It could save a life xxxx

 

 

Perpetual Past.

 

 

I’m at a bad point in my life in terms of my mental health. This is made worse by reminders of my past. I want to explain this here.

 

When I was at school I was bullied. I was socially excluded. I lived through breaktimes and lunchtimes on my own, stood at the side of the playground, watching others have their fun. Do you have any idea how lonely and humiliating that would be for a child? To not be accepted by your peers just because you’re quiet and shy, and actually willing to learn. I used to have to beg people in my class, if I could tag along with them, just so I didn’t feel so lonely and look like a sad loner. This was again humiliating, and risked rejection. I don’t know if I was rejected – perhaps I was sometimes, but I’ve blocked most of my childhood out so cannot recall. I was always seen as ‘different’ and paid the price for it by not being included.

 

The reason this is in my mind lately is because I feel socially excluded again. Nobody talks to me. I have to practically beg people to communicate with me… to care about me… I feel I’m standing at the side of the playground that is ‘life’, and watching everyone else get on enjoying living it, and I’m all alone, forgotten, rejected, abandoned and merely a spectator of everyone else’s joy. I have to ask for support from people. I ‘cry for help’ on social media, and everyone chooses the best thing to do with me is ignore me. They don’t take it seriously. They don’t realise how painful and frustrating it is to be ignored when you’re reaching out for help, and how humiliating it is at the same time, that I’ve put myself out there, publicly asking for care and support, and everyone can see that nobody is there for me. It’s public rejection. I don’t feel accepted by anyone. Because of my beliefs and also because of my mental illness.

 

I’ve had bad experiences with men, that’s why those experiences are very limited. There was a guy called Joe who was okay to begin with, but then he did the thing jerks do, which is to blow hot and cold. He’d feed me crumbs and I started to see them as slices instead. I would chase after his attention. I would degrade myself, trying to get him to return the feelings I had for him. It was never going to happen. I was just a game to him. I was an ego stroke and entertainment. I would spend so many nights crying my heart out over him… problem-solving with my friends about what was going on in his head, and what to do to ‘fix’ the situation. He’d seem interested and appear to change, only to vanish off the radar again a couple of weeks later… not talking to me for weeks… months at a time even. I kept getting rejected over and over again. I kept forgiving him and letting him back, exposing myself to more rejection further down the line. In the time he wasn’t talking to me I would obsess over the possibilities, for why that might be – maybe he was having troubles, maybe he got scared, maybe I offended him, maybe he was just busy. And ‘busy’ was another thing he’d use so often. The trouble is eventually ‘busy’ started to sound like an excuse. I’d already been through experiences where people said they were too busy… yet they seemed to have time for anyone else but me… he was one of those people too.

 

The reason this is weighing on my mind right now, is that the inconsistency and unreliability he showed me, is being reflected in my friendships. But the trouble is I have come to expect it from those friends. So it’s the consistency of the inconsistency if you see what I mean. It’s replicating the same feelings I experienced with Joe. For instance, I had some issues with a friendship, drifted apart from them, we sorted things and met a couple of times… things seemed like they might change… like they understood how I felt and what I needed, and then it reverted back to how it was before….. it felt like the ‘hot and cold’ ‘breadcrumb’ thing. My hopes became too high, that things would improve but it always ends the same. It really is making me relive those experiences and those same feelings as before. Which then makes me resent the friend for making me feel the same way he did. I’m not shown the level of care I need, so I degrade myself by uncontrollably having meltdowns quite publicly about my feelings, which mimics the levels I went to in order to get the care I wanted from Joe. The trouble is, where I used to problem-solve with friends about it, I can’t do this in this situation, because the very friend I would do this with, is the one I’m experiencing the problem with. So I’m alone in having to deal with it. It’s become routine to go anywhere between two weeks, to two months not talking to them. And the trouble I’m facing at the moment is I’m telling myself I’m done. No more forgiving. No more repeating this, as my soul can’t take it anymore. I’m telling myself to cut them off, so that I don’t have to keep reliving the same shit over and over again. In my head I’m treating them as though they are Joe, and just as he ran out of chances I feel they too are doing the same. And I hate that. I hate that I’ve become like this, but it honestly is like reliving those days, where I kept making excuses for his disappearing acts and lack of care. I’m telling myself there’s a good reason for it – but that doesn’t change the way I feel about it. It still hurts. I still feel let down. I tell myself it’s my fault and I’ve upset them, so feel the same guilt I did before… but then I also feel the same – that communication is needed. And this friend is busy. I know that. I know they have a life I could never understand, as I have no life. I’m not for one minute saying they’re making it up. I know it’s busy. But all I’m saying is when I already am reminded of Joe by this person, and I hear ‘busy’, I hear ‘excuses’, even though it’s not. It’s just a part of the flashback.

 

I had a group of friends. This gave me the support and social life / confidence I needed to get out there and live my life. Disregarding for a moment, the fact one of them betrayed me badly and ruined everything I had, as that’s not relevant to this post (it was the catalyst for the destruction of my life, but that’s another story)… one of them showed me up in front of the others, attacked me and badmouthed me, and I became alienated from the group. I was cast as the villain and people took her side by continuing to meet up with her, without challenging her behaviour and standing up for me. Their loyalty failed. This was very upsetting in itself because when I was at school, about age 12 or 13, I was bullied in front of the class by a girl named Lisa and her minions, and nobody stopped her. Not the people I regarded as ‘friends’… not even the teacher, who asked her to stop once, and didn’t bother once she went back to it. That was bloody humiliating and very upsetting. It showed me up in front of everyone and nobody defended me. So this encounter with my group of friends mimicked that. Nobody had my back against this bully of a friend.

This feeling has been repeated time and time again since… in the last couple of years a ‘friend’ kept attacking me because of my political views. She would pick fights with me and argue very publicly. She personally insulted me off the back of a political conversation, and rather than people saying it wasn’t right, most people defended her! They didn’t have my back. The one who did defend me had to put up with someone disagreeing with her, seemingly defending the ‘friend’. I get hurt, yet I feel since the encounter I’m alienated. I feel my time with that group came and went, because of the same sort of problems.

And then the latest group, where I don’t feel able to join in conversations anymore. Because of another case of political disagreement. I know I’m the outsider in that group when it comes to that. But also my interpretation of a situation (or the situation itself) was that as a result of something I said, they said something in the group and got all the support of everyone, making me feel excluded and like ‘the bad guy’ again. I admit I may have been wrong, but it seemed too coincidental, the timing. Even if things have moved on since then, I am unable to. I feel excluded and like they all hate me.

 

These things just keep repeating. And to be going through all those past experiences totally alone… reaching out for help and being ignored, it’s too much. I feel as though I’m dead. And I’m wishing that I was. I wish I could portray the feeling created by these experiences… I can actually see a depiction of the silent scream, but could never convey it properly for others to see. Sometimes I want to rip myself apart and then rip the very fabric of existence…. tear a hole in the universe and scream into it.

 

I’m not just battling depression, anxiety, BPD, paranoia, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, grief, loss upon loss upon loss… I’m battling my past. And it’s not a simple case of ‘let it go’. If I could I would, but people keep recreating my past for me. Nothing changes. I can’t forget it because people won’t allow me to by treating me better! The result is I think why bother living life if it’s always going to go the same? I can’t keep feeling the same feelings over and over again. I won’t.

 

My work experiences also keep repeating themselves. I keep facing things that caused me to leave past places. I have to fight to keep going and not let it force me out.

 

Even the transference issue I had at therapy last year was a replication of past issues… I wasn’t allowed to talk to Matt about my feelings and about the issue in order to resolve it and draw a line under it. As soon as they found out about it, three different female therapists would be the ones to deal with me. The one co-running the group with Matt would take over discussions with me. My individual therapist afterwards who was less than helpful, and then another one to deal with the issues I had in the group. Even though I felt I knew what was needed, it was passed off as some misguided hope of something – like I was clinging on and that it wouldn’t help. I’m sorry but I knew full well what I was thinking. And I still to this day feel angry that these women didn’t listen to me. I have been denied a sense of closure by every man I’ve met. This has destroyed my faith in men, has made me close off to them and given me attachment issues. I saw this as an opportunity to change all that. I felt if I could have had one last conversation with him, as a therapist, he could have fixed all those broken parts of me – all those heart-breaking beliefs I’ve been given by experience. He could have taught me that it’s okay to like someone who doesn’t like you back, and that it doesn’t mean you have to feel ashamed, or keep away from the person out of embarrassment. That things can be ‘cool’. He could have shown me that I can be rejected but still respected and wished well personally. He could’ve let me say what I needed to that I never got to say in the past to people… I could have said goodbye and felt there was a line drawn under it all. But because I obviously had to be kept away from him, this therapeutic opportunity was wasted and I feel all the worse for it. I feel I was denied a chance to grow and the chance for things to be different. I feel it was forced upon me, I was ripped away from him with no closure for my peace of mind, and I never got a conversation that I’ve been denied my whole life…

This isn’t me just holding on – look, I’m holding on now anyway, BECAUSE I didn’t get that sense of closure. I’m not healing and I never will, because I walked away with embarrassment, shame, feeling unheard, misunderstood and rejected – just not rejected by him, but the wall of female therapists who protected him, or protected me from him, or whatever….

I know from my own experiences how long it takes me to heal…. I’m still not healed from anyone else I’ve loved and lost. I know how long this will scar me for. How long it will affect me for. I just wanted a chance for it to be different this time. I didn’t want something from him. I didn’t want anything other than being set free… but by the person directly … by direct communication. I’ve only ever heard through other people or through silence. I deserve more than that. I’m really so upset by this at the moment. It’s the first time I’ve cried whilst writing this post. I just feel so annoyed that therapy should be about helping you, and about change. And they weren’t willing to help me see a change. They expect me to face the same circumstances and deal with that differently. No. I need circumstances to change otherwise I can’t live in this world. Because circumstances have taught me I’m worthless…. I don’t deserve honesty and direct communication… having feelings for someone is the start of goodbye….. I’m a fat, ugly, horrible person who makes people feel uncomfortable because of the intensity of my emotions…. and that men can’t be trusted and will never treat me well.

They missed an opportunity to heal me. If I was in America and paid to go private they’d have allowed it. They’d have cared about doing what was necessary to bring about a change. But since they missed the chance, my life will continue on a loop… nothing will change… I will face the same problems again and again… and there will be no better opportunity to challenge those demons and make things right – it was the most open I’d been and it took a heck of a lot of courage to admit to my feelings to them all… it was all for nothing in the end. They missed it. They got it wrong. They didn’t help me early enough and when they did, they didn’t hear what I was saying. They thought they knew better as they’re the professionals. Nobody will ever give me what I need to heal – a conversation in person… that was the chance. It’s gone now. So I have to keep going through life being rejected and avoided, treated like shit… I’ll probably never put myself out there ever again, because it always ends the same. It’s ironic that the whole course was about dealing with vicious circles, and when I tried to break mine and do things differently, they didn’t allow me to do so. I blame them for not only keeping me stuck where I was, but for digging me in deeper, making it harder for me to ever break out and be free. I’m angry with them.

 

I’m just so sick of people cutting open old scars and not understanding why I’m bleeding and why it hurts so damn much! They just run away and leave me to bleed to death.

 

As it happens I am now reliving my youth… I’m in the same place I was in my late teens…. having only my family…. struggling with my volunteering…. too down and anxious to leave the house…. the worst I’ve been in many years.

 

All I’ve ever wanted was a chance to move forward, but those around me just won’t let that happen. When the chips are down they’re nowhere to be seen. And my life spirals round and round, down into my past and washes away any progress I made. I’m in a much worse place now than I was two years ago. Life has gone to hell. I’m weary of it all. Sometimes I wish I could sleep forever…