hsphaven

I have not been ok since I wrote my last post. I agreed to be discharged from the hospital as I had this holiday booked, but yesterday I wished someone had of stepped in and said “you’re not well enough to go on holiday, you need to stay in hospital” and worked hard to get me in a better place.

My dad picked me up from the emergency department Saturday morning and we stopped at the supermarket on the way home. I hadn’t shopped for ages as I’d been too depressed, and I still barely had it in me. I was wearing my dirty PJs as I never have it in me to wash my clothes and my parents never taught me how to use the dryer. I also had no shoes. It was raining and I tip toed through the puddles and wet ground in bare feet.

When we arrived home, I went straight to bed. When I woke up I was in the worst emotional pain imaginable. The hospital didn’t give a shit, like usual, and my depression seems to have reached an all time low. My nerve issues which I’ve been dealing with for years have been slowly wearing away at me like water eroding rock. I believe people can get through anything if they can see an end in sight. That was my problem: all I saw ahead of me was endless torture. I believed I was damaged beyond repair. I also hadn’t been seeing my disability worker as we had a bit of a rift in our relationship, so I lost my routine and had nothing to do with my days. I felt awful for lashing out at him in text. One night at 3am, shortly before I ended up in hospital, I wrote him some more texts.

“My fucking neighbour’s waking me at 9:30am, the beach house is gone, my nervous system is fucked from all the drugs I’ve taken over the years, I have shit friends, I’m relapsing with anorexia, I’m probably gonna lose you next and suicide is on my fucking mind,” I texted him.

Then I proceeded to tell him I was a worthless piece of shit and it would be better for everyone if I was not around.

“Listen to “Hurt”- Nine Inch Nails. That’s me,” I told him.

When I woke up it was about 10:30pm. I felt like taking another overdose. I couldn’t stand another hour in this much pain. I had to put an end to it once and for all. I had suffered enough. I managed to call Lifeline before I took anything. The lady immediately asked for my address. I both wanted the police to come and didn’t. I didn’t know if I wanted to go back to hospital.

“Hospital won’t help me,” I told her. “They won’t rescue me. I have to put an end to this myself.”

I felt so hopeless that night, like there was no where to turn. Not all my friends are shit; I do have some good friends who have said I can always call them, even in the middle of the night. But I felt like I was locked in a cavern at the bottom of the sea… unreachable to my friends and the rest of the world. That is what depression and trauma does to you.

The lady from Lifeline spent at least an hour with me which was generous. I kept telling her it was a hopeless situation, nothing helps and I keep coming back to suicide. She kept telling me there was hope, that I didn’t have enough support around me and that I needed someone to sort out my medication.

“I don’t believe in medication anymore,” I told her.

“What about holistic approaches?” she asked me.

While I spoke with her I searched for my alcohol. I hid it somewhere too secret for even me to find. I told her I was upset that I couldn’t find the alcohol.

“That is what’s saving your life,” she told me.

She kept asking me if I intended to overdose to end my life. I didn’t know what to say to her. It wasn’t my preferred suicide method. I had been thinking killing myself in a tent using carbon monoxide was my best bet, but I had no energy to set it up, so an overdose was all I was left with. The sad thing about Lifeline is that despite how much distress you are in, they won’t send help unless you are making an attempt. Author Whitney Hanson wrote a poem about this which can be heard here.

“You sound calmer,” the lady from Lifeline said at one point.

“I’m not,” I said.

“What are you thinking?” she asked me when I went silent.

I wanted to tell her that I was no longer suicidal because she had spent a long time trying to help me. I felt like she must be getting sick of this call and finding it very unrewarding. But I was still suicidal.

“My mind is racing,” I told her as my speech sped up. “I’m thinking about how many pills I have, whether I have enough to kill me, how I can get some more alcohol…”

I crawled into bed and cried.

“Why is this happening, why is this happening?” I sobbed.

I wanted to fall asleep with her on the other end of the phone. I felt like she cared, and for once I felt heard. She asked me what I needed.

“I think I just need someone to be with me tonight,” I told her. “Is anyone going to come?” It had been an hour.

She told me we had a “safety plan” now so she couldn’t send anyone. The “safety plan” seemed to be just the fact I didn’t have any alcohol to use with the overdose.

In the end I said I was just going to take my usual medication and some sleeping pills. I said I’d only take the prescribed amount. I took one 2.5mg olanzapine tablet, which I am weaning myself off of because I felt it wasn’t helping me. Everyone seems to be concerned that I am getting off it against doctor’s advice, but I remember feeling just as shit when I was on it. I then took two tablets of temazepam for sleep.

“How long does the medication take to kick in?” she asked me. I wasn’t sure, and I was desperate for relief straight away. So three tablets turned into four. I tried to take some dissolvable olanzapine I found next to my bed which the doctor gave me for “agitation”. The dissolvable tablets were meant to act quicker, though I never found they helped either. I was just trying everything. The tablet must have been so old as it wouldn’t dissolve in my mouth. I coughed and almost vomited. I then found some diazepam and took two tablets of that.

“I’m confused by what you are taking,” the lady said.

I was out of control, grabbing at whatever I could find.

Shortly after that she ended the call. I can’t remember how it ended but it did. I then heard a loud knock on the door. They knocked again. I got up and answered the door. It was the police. I was honestly so relieved that someone had come. We went back to my bedroom and I lay on my bed. The pills had started to kick in and they dulled me down a bit. Earlier I imagined that if the police came I’d scream that I WILL make this end, and there was nothing they or the hospital would do about it. But I just lay there on the bed. I was a bit sedated, but still felt like crap, so I reached for another diazepam. The cop took the packet off me. Thankfully there was only one left, so it’s not like I lost an entire packet. The cops woke up my dad, who was not very happy about being woken by a stranger in his house, especially a cop who he’s not had the best dealings with. Apparently there were four of them. They called an ambulance, and I was taken back to hospital for the third time that week. The male paramedic was really nice and seemed to understand me well. I hesitated when we arrived at the hospital, but he said he was glad I was coming to the hospital.

I was given a bed in the emergency department. The psych person called Sarah saw me straight away. She was surprised to see me back already. I said I just needed to sleep, and she left me to sleep. But I couldn’t get much rest and just lay there listening to the problems of a nearby patient given only a curtain divided each bed. Eventually I told Sarah that I wasn’t getting any rest and wanted to go home. She let me go, telling the nurses I didn’t need to be there. The hospital called a taxi which arrived quickly. The birds had started their morning chorus, and I got home at around 5am.

I went to bed and had a dream that I was in a shopping centre looking at some beautiful pendants at a stall run by some spiritual folk. When you picked the right one for you, the pendant had special powers, light coming out and nearby objects levitating. It reminded me of the part in Harry Potter where wizards were matched with a wand. There was a beautiful oval pink crystal necklace, which the girl at the stall told me everyone could benefit from. Then there was one with a ring of black feathers which went round your neck. The currency system was completely different to the western world. You didn’t pay with money. These people didn’t even seem fussed if I took the necklace for free. I didn’t know how to pay them. The girl at the stall told me I had powerful abilities, but didn’t tell me exactly what they were. Then she left and I stood at the mirror deliberating over which necklace to get until my neighbour in the waking world woke me up with his hammering. It was early afternoon. I got back to sleep, but then my dad woke me asking if I was still going on my holiday that day.

It took me a while to wake up. I then quickly threw some things in a bag. It felt like running a marathon. It took everything out of me. My dad (who was going to help me find the place) and I then decided to just come back for the rest as the motel reception closed at 4pm. The motel was only 10 minutes up the mountain. I drove up the mountain every week, but this time my ear started playing up from the altitude climb. It became blocked, and wouldn’t unblock. This triggered another break down in me. I cried and screamed in front of my dad, worrying my ear was buggered for good. My body just doesn’t seem to recover any more. My dad thought that maybe I wasn’t over the cold/flu thing I had recently and there may be some fluid in my ear or I may have an ear infection.

We got to the motel after 4pm but they had left the key and the site map in an envelope at the reception door. We found my cabin. It was set in a beautiful garden, with people commonly holding weddings at the venue. The inside, however, didn’t quite match the quaint cottagecore vibe. It reminded me of a hospital room. I wasn’t too fussed though. As long as the place was quiet. Apparently no one else had booked a room here this week so I had the entire place to myself. There were no cooking facilities, but I was barely eating anyway and didn’t mind roughing it for a week.

We went back to the house to collect the rest of my belongings and also my car. I packed the bare basics. I didn’t even bother packing any clothes. I had nothing left in me. The holiday was meant to help me unwind, but it was becoming more stress than it was worth. We drove back to the motel and finally my dad left, which was a relief as I was dying to be alone. I couldn’t stand having company in the state I was in. I was in a foul mood and would snap at my dad to “shut up” in the car.

As soon as my dad left, I collapsed on the bed. I crawled into my sleeping bag and tried to calm down. I started to pick up, and with space to myself I could think more clearly. I thought about the people in my life I’m grateful for, and sent one of them a text message telling them that.

Not long after I started to calm down, the buzzing sensation on my head which has been bothering me for years now intensified. I was so distressed I fantasised about lying on the nearby road. I called the psych triage number out of desperation. A lady shortly picked up.

“I’m being tortured!” I told her. I didn’t know if it was all the distress I had been in, the sleepless nights spent in the emergency department, or the radiation from a nearby phone tower. She collected my details, and then brought up my file which said I had only just been discharged from hospital.

“I want to end it all!” I told her.

“Are you sure killing yourself is going to end it?” she asked me.

“Well yes, because I’ll be dead!” I said.

“That depends on what you believe,” she told me.

“Great, so I’m stuck in a cycle of eternal hell!” I said.

She reassured me that the buzzing would go away. She told me to make some tea, have a shower, take some diazepam and go to bed.

“That is what I would suggest for my children,” she said. “You can call us back tomorrow if you’re still not better.”

She only spent five minutes with me. The shower part was too much, but I managed the rest. I then got a text from my disability worker in response to the texts I sent him over the weekend at 3am. I had told him that I was realising that he is not a friend (despite the informal settings in which we meet) but another mental health professional, and I was worried he was going to hurt me like all his predecessors. He explained that he was sorry if it upsets me, but he was a mental health professional and had a duty of care which meant he had to talk to his supervisor when there were safety concerns. He said he could still listen to me, talk, have fun and help me practically, but he couldn’t keep everything I told him a secret. He said he was still willing to have me as a client. I told him I understood. I said I was staying in a motel, that there was something really fucking wrong with me right now and I was about to knock myself out with pills. I said I would text him tomorrow when I wake up about meeting up.

Despite taking some medication, I still didn’t get a good night’s sleep. I then woke up around 7am, which was extremely early for me. I heard someone walking around the side of the unit. I was also too hot in my thermal sleeping bag. I climbed under the covers of the bed. I stayed in bed and got patchy sleep until around 1pm when someone knocked on my door. They opened the door and then apologised and shut it again. At 2pm I got up. I told my disability worker that he could come see me. The motel had given me a form saying I had to pay for anything broken, pay $50 if I didn’t clean the dishes, and also pay them if I vomited in the unit. The form was the last straw. It felt like life was just sucking me dry. They wanted my credit card details, but in the end I thought fuck it and I just gave them a contact from NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme), telling them that NDIS would pay for any costs assured (they were paying for the holiday, afterall). My worker then dropped the form off to reception for me. He told me it was them who knocked on my door earlier and that they just wanted to drop off some towels.

We drove to a nearby café and I got a chai. My disability worker then drove me back to my house to pick up some things I forgot to pack. I felt better while with him. After he left I began this post. I then went for a walk in a nearby forest just on sunset. The walk helped to clear my head, and I started to feel glad that I had pushed through with my holiday. I even felt well enough to have dinner at a restaurant and then go badminton. I bought an expensive vegan pizza, but only ate one slice. I sat in the restaurant and read a great article a friend sent me about how fucked up the diagnosis Borderline Personality Disorder is (read it here). I then went onto badminton.

A group of about six of us play together each week, though I am not close enough to any of them that I would share the hellish life I live outside of badminton. Little did they know I was having a break down and had been in hospital three times that past week. I was physically weak from the whole ordeal and didn’t play my best. I kept thinking about leaving early, but I managed to last until the end. The vibration on my head then got worse again. I couldn’t believe it. It was like I had this oppressive force which pushed me back down whenever I got a leg up.

I managed to make it back to the motel after badminton. I was worried I would miss the turn as the road is dark and wet and I am not familiar with the route. I don’t have Google Maps on my phone either. But my buzzing head continues to torment me. The level of distress I’ve felt this past week has been amongst the worst distress I’ve felt in my entire life, which is really saying something as I have Complex PTSD and have experienced some incredibly disturbing things in my life so far. I called my dad to ask if he could drop off some clove oil which I thought might numb my head, but he didn’t answer and I presume he has gone to bed. I don’t have it in me to make another trip out tonight to collect the clove oil and then try to find my way back. I don’t know what I’m going to do tonight. I may just have to take lots of medication, hope it puts me to sleep and pray that the buzzing settles down. I feel like shaving my hair off hoping it will fix the buzzing (which sometimes feels like my hair is staticky and something is crawling in it), but a little voice knows it probably won’t fix anything. I’m starting to feel there is some kind of spiritual aspect to what I am going through and maybe I need to see a shaman or someone who can see things other people can’t. My energy feels very very intense, dark, heavy, scary and almost psychotic right now. I think there are people out there who can intuitively sense where a person’s at, like the witch who reached out to me on Facebook during my episode a few years ago which the mental health professionals called “manic psychosis”. Right now, I am just grateful for the moments when I don’t feel distressed. That is how low my bar is.