hsphaven

“I think there is an afterlife. I think there is a hell. I think that hell is in your mind. And heaven? Who’s to tell.” Silvia Rosario, ‘The Last Life’

I went back to bed an hour ago hoping to get some rest so I could play badminton tonight, but I just felt even worse. I felt overwhelmed and wanted to cry. I still do. I struggle to find the words to explain why I feel this way. All the tears are stuck inside, drowning me from the inside out.

I am not ok. I think I’ve only slept one night the past few months, and continue to live with the damage the mental health system has done to me physically and emotionally.

I’ve been feeling like I need to get out of this city. The neighbours are too close. Often when I do finally fall asleep at sunrise I wake up to machinery noise and bangs next door. It is not a peaceful place to live. It is not a place that is forgiving when I haven’t slept at night and need to catch up on sleep during the day. I desperately need space. I feel assaulted by the world. I don’t know why my sleep is so bad and why I am so “cranked up” all the time. I’ve been coming up with all kinds of theories, many of which probably seem bizarre to most people. I’ve been thinking the new 5G phone towers are chipping away at me and implanting some really dark stuff into my mind. I believe that as we start to go asleep we are more open to the influence of spirits and energies. Often I am scared of falling asleep as it’s so disturbing. There was a point when I started to wonder whether something was trying to get into me. I started looking up demonic possession one night and then was logged out of Facebook.

“That’s what they can do,” I wrote to my poor physiotherapist who made the mistake of being nice to me and is now becoming a surrogate therapist since all my previous therapists gave up on me.

“They mess with electronics, they watch you when you sleep and then they attack you when you go into other states of consciousness. They move things in your house. For ages now things have been going missing, constantly.”

There is a bad smell which whoffs through my end of the house and my dad and I can’t find where it’s coming from. Last night I started wondering if someone was trying to poison me.

This past weekend I tried to go away to the country with a friend, but the trip was a disaster. The accommodation was not what I was expecting. I thought I would be staying in a nice little cottage in a garden. The reviews said the place was quiet and private. But it turned out to be basically one room attached to a larger house. There was a blow fly in the room and at night, every time I was about to fall asleep, it would buzz in my ear. I would then get up and try to find it but couldn’t find it anywhere. Then at 1am someone rocked up in their car. All the lights outside went on and I could hear this person stomping around the house. I didn’t know who the hell they were and thought they were going to come into my room and kill me! They were up all night; I could hear them on the other side of the wall. Behind my bed was a door which was covered by a curtain, hiding the fact the space was part of a house. When I finally fell asleep I dreamt about being raped by men, and trying to call emergency services but not being able to use my phone as I was too scared and couldn’t feel anything. I woke up when the person on the other side of the wall used the bathroom. I was hyperventilating.

I was in pain all night, and I didn’t get much rest the next day either as I could hear the neighbour hammering. When I got out of bed, I got my period, blood dripping everywhere. I had been expecting it for a while and was hoping it would hold off just one more day so I could go to the mineral springs. I tried to still have Devonshire tea with my friend, which we had booked. We showed up at the café and a weird old lady said she couldn’t find my friend’s name on the booking list. Finally she found her, and we sat down in the small, dark, bland room which didn’t seem to fit with the beautiful mineral pools that surrounded it. There was nothing vegan on the menu. I was expecting something far nicer. We ended up having to leave the café early because I was still in bad pain. We asked to get the rest of our order take away as I was not feeling well, but they took forever. We were left standing around waiting. Finally I lost it.

“I need my food or else I’m going to collapse onto the floor of your café!” I told the waiter. That hurried them up.

I left later that afternoon in a taxi. Even though the trip was a bit of a disaster it was still nice the short time I spent with my friend.

I spent the rest of the weekend sick. When I woke up on Sunday I felt breathless and ran to the toilet as I felt like I was going to vomit. I also had a migraine all day. My teeth ached (and still do), my jaw was clenched and my head pounded. My sense of hearing was extremely heightened. I pretended I didn’t hear my dad when he asked how I was as I had nothing left in me for a conversation. I just wanted to be left alone. On Sunday night I went to bed early and I took sleeping pills hoping to finally sleep. Interestingly I didn’t feel so nauseous and breathless anymore and my migraine went away, which makes me think they were symptoms of severe anxiety. But I still couldn’t sleep. My tinnitus, which I’ve had for twelve years now, was particularly bad. I tried everything to block it out, from playing meditation music to setting up a water fountain in my room, but nothing brought me relief.

I fell asleep at sunrise and then was woken by an electric blower and machinery. I feel like I live on a fucking construction site! I fell back to sleep briefly until I heard the door bell ring. It was my disability worker who had arrived for our afternoon shift. Apparently he had been there for fifteen minutes. He had contacted my mum as no one was home and he was wondering if I was in hospital again. I have honestly considered checking myself into one. I can’t stand being awake every fucking night then feeling like absolute shit the next day and having to cancel everything I have on. That, or go on another NDIS-funded respite back to the farm I stayed at a few years ago where I know the accommodation is quiet and private. Maybe then I could finally get some space and rest.

My friend is upset that my case management service discharged me when I am clearly not ok. I am feeling the same way. I miss my old case worker and am considering going back on the antipsychotic they gave me. I can’t sleep, my nerves are going haywire, the world feels like such a sinister place and I don’t know what’s real anymore. I actually came across an article about schizophrenia yesterday and it was scary how much I related to it, particularly the part about having a reversed body clock and social withdrawal. My case management service told me they thought I had bipolar, which is considered a lifelong issue. They had police searching for me trying to put me in hospital. Then a couple of months later they told me I was “well” and they would be discharging me from their service.

I’m regressing and turning to what might seem like some bizarre ways to get the care I crave. Today a women responded to a post I made on a site called FetLife a while ago saying I was looking for a “mummy”. Sometimes when we experience trauma we can become emotionally frozen at that age. The little child in me just wanted to be taken care of but we were all a bit overwhelmed by how sexualised the site was. I don’t want to be treated like some kind of kink toy, and while finally a woman has contacted me rather than just horny men, I worry this is yet another person who just wants sex and doesn’t actually want to build a loving relationship with me. I am about to message her to find out exactly what she’s looking for and see where things go.