I thought I might be better without therapy, but it’s as though therapy has opened a wound in me which will not stop bleeding. I continue to struggle physically and mentally. I was awake all night for months. I think the lack of sleep started to make me paranoid. I also started getting some crazy mood swings, where I’d be up at night dancing and wanting to go to nightclubs, then the next day I felt dreadful, like I was hung over. In 24 hours I’d be manic, depressed, wanting to die, and then having moments where  I felt like I really was dying. My brain started doing some trippy things. One morning I fell into a very deep “sleep”. I found myself in a strange realm where everything was set in the future. The landscape looked different, though I still recognised it as my town. There was a tower like in the city. I visited my mum’s house and her room was empty. It’s like the world had moved on and I felt lonely and out of place. I had the sense that if I didn’t come back to my body on the other side I would die. I desperately tried to claw myself back to my present day life but every time I thought I was back I wasn’t. I could see my room but was still stuck behind a veil, still out of my body, and couldn’t interact with it. “Help me, help me” I called out but I knew no body could hear me or reach me. It was like Stranger Things come to life where I was Will stuck in the Upside Down world, an alternate dimension just behind the wall. He could only communicate through the electronics. Finally I managed to claw my way back to the world. It was, hands down, one of the scariest things I have experienced. It was like tripping on drugs. I felt like I was losing all contact with the world. I was for the most part glad to be back but it also sucked having a body again and having to feel my physical discomfort. I went to the emergency department and the staff seemed really concerned about me at first. I was put in a quiet, dark, private area and given Olanzapine. I had to wait all night as the psych people had knocked off for the day. When I was given a bed I had to listen to a noisy air vent above me on the roof, beeping machines and all the problems of the patients next to me as there was only a curtain diving each bed, only to be seen for 10 mins the next day and sent home with no support. The psych person who saw me went to consult his boss, who no doubt read over all the bullshit written about me over the years and decided I was just a difficult, dependent, attention-seeking Borderline Bitch so he’d send me home with nothing.

I’ve been in a really bad way, but no one listens. My dad asked how I was the other night and I told him. I then agreed to go on a walk with him and he talked non-stop about everything that was on his mind. Eventually I stopped responding, but still he kept talking. It was like white noise. I could no longer follow what he was saying, just his mouth opening and closing. It reminded me of this scene from Skins.  I felt like I was going to have a panic attack if I was stuck with him on the walk or in the car for any longer. That night I ate my dinner on a stack of books in the study as I didn’t want sit at the table with him or anyone. He then came into the study and started talking about buying a new heater. I was on the verge of killing myself so the last thing I was concerned about was the heater.

My tinnitus has become really bad. Usually I would love curling up in bed in a quiet room, but the noise in my head torments me. It has robbed me of the one thing I need most: silence. I’ve tried everything to help including medication and masking it with background noise such as a water fountain and meditation music, but nothing has brought me relief. I want to scream and I want to cry but I can’t, it’s all stuck inside. One night I was so distressed I drank alcohol and shovelled down pill after pill so quickly that I vomited. I mixed alcohol with benzos and painkillers. I just wanted to not feel and hear anything anymore. I then woke up in hospital again attached to a drip and monitors. Apparently an ambulance had brought me but I don’t remember the trip or anything. The last thing I remember that night was being on the bathroom floor speaking to Lifeline.

The doctors pinched me really hard to try and get me to wake up. Now I am sore. My arm is also bruised and swollen as they didn’t put the drip in properly so the water didn’t go into a vein. I vaguely remember the nurses saying my blood pressure was very low, I was cold and my heart rate was fast at one point. I was too drowsy to walk to the toilet so had to pee in a portable toilet they brought to my bed.

After my overdose I was finally given an admission, though it’s only in the short-stay, 48 hour ward. I don’t have an actual room, only a curtained area. I was given some olanzapine and finally slept last night, but woke up this morning to another patient talking about cigarettes and having to get an injection in her bum. Right now I am sitting in the meeting room so I can have some privacy and don’t have to listen to the TV which is always on.

I’ve been emailing my physio a lot since I no longer have a psychologist. Yesterday he said:

“As much as I’m here for you and happy to help explain things, we need to find a better way of expressing your exasperation with your situation than emailing me repetitively. I’m a caring therapist, and I want to help you, but I’m also a professional and people generally book appointments for this sort of advice, so that I can get paid appropriately for my help and expertise. It is starting to take up a bit of time responding to you, which I could be using in a way that provides income for my family.”

I told him I had been conscious of all our emailing and was wondering if he could bill for the time he spends emailing me. I didn’t get a response. I felt like shit after I read his email, so wrote another email this evening:

“Well obviously I’m just a burden on you and your family. Don’t worry you won’t hear from me anymore”

He replied saying that wasn’t at all what he was saying. He also said he’d like to keep the emails between 9am and 7pm as his work email is forwarded to his phone, so he gets alerts at all hours of the day. I thought that was pretty stupid and he should keep them separate. I often email him at 3am and don’t expect him to get it until the next day. Even given his replies, I have been too triggered by what he said earlier I don’t feel like seeing him again.