Dullness warning: I am going to assume you’re at risk of boredom here, not just because I have already posted twice in a week, but also because this is going to one of those posts that’s using writing as therapy in attempt to work through some stuff.
Trigger warning: I will be talking a lot about suicidal thinking.
One thing about having been a blogger for a long time is that I can look back at old posts and see what has changed over time. But I can also look back and see that in a way nothing has changed, that I just go through loops. I’ve blogged in the past more than once about a situation very similar to the one I find myself in, but I need to get it all out again, so no need to read on if you’ve heard all this before.
I am at war with myself. I have at least three separate thought processes going one. One is just me, normal me, but another is obsessed with suicide planning. I can run the primary script without it being noticeable to anyone that the obsessional one is going on in the background. I can talk about the future, whilst planning to make sure I don’t have one. I do at times feel pretty low, but in no way am I sitting around feeling that my life/pain is intolerable and therefore I need to take myself out of the equation. In fact, the planning part of me feels eerily calm. It tells me that making an attempt is just something I have to do, have to get over with, like I must do my tax return before the deadline.
The third script is slightly psychotic one. In the past week I have had a couple of really terrifying moments where I realised that “They” had started messing with me again (it’s too complicated to explain the whole “being persecuted by extra-dimensional beings” thing here, so if you are a newer reader or would like you memory refreshed, you can read an account here). I have had the frightening feeling that They have implanted the thoughts of suicide into my head because they want me to kill myself. I have become aware of things that always frighten me when I am clinically paranoid: banana skins, twins, weird tech glitches, being alone of the top deck of a bus. This has extended towards being scared to even see an empty top deck on a different bus, and to worrying when the post comes about what seem like messages on the outside of the envelopes. Always, my Them sense is tingly, although thankfully it is not as bad as it has been in the past. I have also experienced periods of mental confusion, which has happened in the past when I have had what my consultant calls “psychotic-type” experiences.
I had been doing so well! Not well enough to work, and unwell enough to have to be careful with myself at all times, but nothing like this since about September last year. I can only attribute my current situation to stress. Some time ago Tom and I decided to relocate so that we could enjoy his retirement away from the hubbub of London. Unexpectedly, the perfect house popped up in a perfect location in Wales, and we decided to go for it. In the space of two months we have seen viewed the house, had an offer accepted, got our pace ready for the market, and accepted an offer. It’s been so swift because we hadn’t expected to find somewhere to move to so soon, so our flat wasn’t even in a fit state to be sold. I couldn’t even begin to guess how many hours we have put in cleaning, painting, wallpapering, sorting possessions, packing them up, driving to the dump, putting things in storage. It’s been a very pressured time. Mid May is my deadline for an attempt because that when contracts are due to be exchanged and it feels quite sensible not to create more legal mess by doing it after that point.
The intensity of the suicidal thoughts ebbs and flows, but I have found myself doing more and more researching, and giving more and more consideration to which part of previous plans might be useful. So the normal part of me is beginning to consider myself at risk. I know that things are not as far gone as when I wrote this post back in November 2014 (November 2014? I have been going through this same shit for two and a half years?!) but it’s the same pattern. I’m trying to nip it in the bud but it’s so, so hard. It’s so, so hard to open with Tom about it, but I probably more successful than in the past. As you imagine, part of me doesn’t want to hurt him, and the sneaky part of me’s not keen keen to share because it might/will shut down my options.
Yesterday while Tom was sleeping I found myself crying and crying because I don’t feel that I will ever get to live in that beautiful house in Wales. The normal bit of me was pointing out hat I could avoid that disappointment simply by not killing myself, but more and more I feel that it’s out of my hands, that I have to go along with the plan.
I’m concerned enough that I have have my Trust’s triage number in my phone, because that’s how you access Home Treatment Team these days, self-referral. Part of me longs for the HTT, to be back under that close monitoring so I don’t have to do all the monitoring myself, and yet I remember how at times I railed against it, how fed up I got with going back to them time after time. My Care Coordinator is ringing on Tuesday, but it’s a Sunday as I write this and I don’t think I can wait that long, so I’ll be calling tomorrow.
Image shows three odd shoes and is course of in pastel via Flickr
purplepersuasion 