Amazingly, I am currently going through a relatively stable period psychologically speaking.  My body, never one to be outdone has instead screwed with my blood-sugars and I have spent the past two weeks using every witch parts of my fingers to test my blood-sugars and ensure they are at a safe level.  Joy.

Despite the few weeks of calm, my current Therapist (yes, you read that right, I was told that I had to go to therapy) has declared that I need a Care Coordinator (I read this as yet another appointment to go to) as when I am not stable I am at a high level of risk..... Fair enough, no real argument there, but then, I am stable right now.  So a small part of me wonders if it is too little, too late.

I got the referral letter in the post during the week and as with all types of letters, I am currently struggling to get my head around what it says about me.  Least of all because its own lack of grammar implies I have more than one boyfriend (which I don't - I am a strong believer in monogamy).

... is experiencing problems associated with severe depression and anxiety with dissociative hallucination.  It is also possible, according to her psychiatrist, Dr X, that X is may experience co-morbid or underlying emotionally unstable personality disorder.

Sorry, but this is the first I have heard of a possible BPD diagnosis... surely they should tell me these things, before passing it on to me in a referral letter??

It is hard enough at times to grapple with severe depression, anxiety and hallucinations... It threw me through a loop when my Psych first suggested I may want to consider anti-psychotics should the hallucinations not improve (they have, btw... yay) but just as things seem to be settling down for me for once (they don't do that often) I get a letter saying I may have BPD....

Now to throw myself through the wringer in an attempt to figure out what that may mean for me going forward.

........

I will come back when my head is spinning a bit less and I can think in more straight lines.  

Dark Dreaming

I am dreaming a lot at the moment. Detailed dreams full of an intensity that is hard to shut away in the waking hours between. My thoughts are now almost constantly on forms of suicide or self harm. My respite and my historical escape of sleep has been taken over and riddled with the very thing it has nearly always previously prevented - The action of harm, carried out and watched in video graphic as a dream.

Last nights had a triangle type metal hanger with the top part threaded and secured through a break in a ceiling tile and the now visible metal joist above the ceiling tiles. The metal holding the hangers weight. A figure climbing up and putting their chin through the triangular hoop now hanging from the ceiling. Choked by the weight of their own being hanging loosely. Beneath them, a large wooden lump, a broken bed-post lays, sharp point upwards, ready for their inevitable fall. If one fails, the other won't. The rest of the room gathers dust and smoke as a fire begins to eat away at the now long discarded and irrelevant belongings. No failure here then.

Unsettling to have that as such a dream, and to have the unshakable image and a tune playing in my head in my waking hours that feels somehow linked. Maybe the person from the dream was listening to that tune play out?

Is it worth mentioning this to a therapist. To a psych. Does it make a difference that my thoughts occur in both waking and sleeping lives? That my actions turn to harm and sui on such a regular basis that I barely blink to take in how bad they may seem to others?

Maybe I have begun to let go of the idea that somehow there is a secret to be kept, that it should all be locked away as a thing of guilt and shame, that no-one else would ever listen to, or understand. Or maybe it is that this is now such a regular thing for me, and that it has been going on for so long that I have forgotten that to some people out there, it may not be considered normal.

The very idea of normal strikes me as strange, to be honest. So I guess it must be that.

I have therapy starting soon (on the 21st) I wonder what they will make of it, of me. Maybe to them, I am normal. Maybe to them, it is everyone else that is wrong. I can only wait and find out.

A week of disquiet

It is strange how often the way things begin is very often the way they continue - even if you try your hardest to make it otherwise. This week is very much a case in point. Monday was just a mess. Emotionally, physically, mentally... and the rest of the week has tumbled its way out a chaotic travesty I would not in any way be able to fully explain.

Work is busy, chaotic busy and I have flip flopped from one task to the next and back to the first in a whirlwind. Swept along in a gallivanting wave of emotions and frets and thoughts that I have barely the time to pin down and process.

I am aware that outwardly I am probably coping a lot better than I am inside. My mind has been thrown through a loop. Unsettled and up heaved and shunted in such a way that every glistening web of a lie I have told myself about coping is coming unstuck and falling to the ground in tears.

I am stopping the Mirtazapine, I haven't yet started stopping it, but it was agreed at my Psych appointment on Monday that as it has had no positive (or negative) effect on me, it is not worth taking the extra chemical. It was a low dose, so I can pick a time to stop it and stop.

I wish most things in life were that simple: it is not productive, so lets stop it. Boom. Stopped. Sadly, everything else, my mind, my body and my soul are far from simple and far from easily untangled.

My Psych now wants me to spend the time between Monday's appointment and the next (whenever that turns out to be, probably in December/January now) deciding two things:
1) If I want to try to reduce the dose of the Venlafaxine and in doing so, potentially risk unsettling my emotional/mental well-being (her words, not mine).
and
2) If I want to try an anti-psychotic.

I think the second of those two may well be the thing that threw me through a loop. Not at all discounting the fact that every Psych appointment I ever go on throws me through a loop anyway. Monday's session ended with my normal dissociation, finding myself randomly in town with no recollection of going there and wandering in a half daze for a while. There are bits and pieces and fragments but I really think I go into some kind of mind-hibernation whenever I have an MHU appointment. Bleh. Is probably the main reason I don't ever push for them to be more frequent.

Then, we get around to the Psychosis part. I mostly find this unsettling. I guess everyone finds psychosis unsettling, whether they have it, or hear or read about it (and if you hear about it as a part of the psychosis itself then you really have a double edged sword). For the most part, I can brush it under the rug where it belongs, pretend it is not happening and get myself to almost believe the facade of calm I attempt to put on on the outside. These are the times when it is mild and merely disconcerting:

The sound of sirens regardless of where I am (I have been on a train in the middle of a field before now.... )
The smell of burning and of rotting
The tactile sensation like ants crawling over my skin
The flicker of ghosts and monsters or the lingering doubt around people and crowds

Then there are the times when things begin to creep past my ability to ignore:
The monsters
The ghosts becoming more frequent
The disturbed thoughts and the increase in my belief in them

Then the distinction moments when I no longer know which stage is the better one to have and the utter panic and disillusion that comes with wondering if it is you who is wrong, or everyone else.

Put down on paper like this, I can see why the psych is suggesting I consider an anti-psychotic. The problem is, I am not sure I have ever considered myself ill enough to take them. It scares me to think that the level of ability to cope I have feigned myself into believing I have may well be paper thin and merely an illusion. It scares me to think that any of these things are the psychosis and that it is not just a stage.

I have been told in the past that my psychosis symptoms are linked to my depression being bad. That the worst my depression is, the more likely it is that they will be triggered and I have the wonder of how much the psychosis plays of my social anxiety and how much of my social anxiety has been born as a response to the psychosis.

Everything in its duplicity plays off everything else and I find it hard to sit and work out what causes what and when and why and if I consider it enough to potentially try yet another line of treatment.

I have four months to mull it over.... I think I just needed to put some of my initial thoughts here to pin down some of the disquiet of the last few days. Somewhere.

Storm breaks

Today I am having one of those almost inexplicable moments of down. That deep endless, sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. The knowledge that all you can be is disappointment and failure and the echo of all your emotions in the heavy rain, lightning and storm outside.

Yes - I am typing this with a thunder storm raging outside my window and slick salt tears stinging in my eyes. Chaos abounds in a wash of inertia and the knowledge that it makes more sense to wait it out than to try and fight it.

In some ways, this is an inevitable. As there will always be a storm after warm hot humidity, so there will be tears and a grip of doubt after any drifting hopes. All dreams unravel and sift apart in the end - Crumbling down to the sharp thump of reality. Nothing but ash and darkened hazy clouds. The roll of thunder and the pattering of rain of window, brushed by winds on the way down. No path is ever direct. No smiles cure this frown.

I am due to see my psych tomorrow. I am, as ever, unclear what I want to say. I am not going to pretend I am better because I am not. Yet, I am failing to see the point of the large dose of chemicals I take every day - They have made me put on a lot of weight, and that is all I can really say for them. Maybe if I stopped I would be a lot worse, but I do not feel better enough to see the balance. Is putting on all that weight worth the narrow margin in my moods? I am not sure.

Uncertainty rolls around in my thoughts like the clouds across the grey, marl sky. My head is noisy and it makes it hard to focus, hard to distract. Too distracted for distraction. Too hurt and stuck in the same problems to be able to choose objectively what may be best. I may rest, instead. Sleep through the fret and threat. The cool damp distinguished wreck.

Ooops

Well... that never happened...

Dust and Cobwebs

It has been so long since I have posted here. Stupidly long. Neglect amidst a mile of changes and many more miles of confusion and decision and chaos. As is life in all its ebbs and flows.

Time to dust the cob-webs from this thing and start again, and what better time than the first week of a new job. When my life feels like it is moving somwhere, and carrying me with it. Winds finally in the sails, even if the direction is not quite set yet.

Man the oars, I am coming back in.

So: new job, I am now an EA and the first letter of that alone rings excitement for me, as it is a step up (from PA) only a little one, but a step nonetheless and one I am proud of, as I have worked hard for it, and will work hard for it going forward - I picked a busy role. Busy is good for me, as it stops me ruminating and dragging myself down into the dark hollows of my soul and thoughts. That place still full of cobwebs and dust and dank from mould and misuses. The places in the soul we long to forget and have no real use or value for beyond the occasional trip below into the gallows to try to find something long forgotten, and barely missed.

I have some fantastic memories in there, somewhere. It just isn't wise for me to spend too long there. It is destructive for me. So, better to be too busy to have the time to wander the back-corridors and alleys of my own psyche. That is what I have now.

I am hoping that by being in a new place, with new friendly and enthusiastic people, doing the thing I like to do best (PA type duties, with lots of Governance and minuting.... Yes, I know, I am a weird one) I can refind those good memories, refind the smile on my face and the cheeky nature I know I have. That I can relight all the fires and shine back to those long forgotten hallows - those happy memories.

Time to dust those cobwebs, methinks.

Knowlingly alone

I have never felt more alone and confused. Today, I felt surrounded by monsters and amidst the fear and disgust I have come to find normal in their presence, I felt the shock and horror that no-one else had noticed. How could they not see? How could they not spot the discrepancies that scream at me so loudly I can barely look.

What makes this worse is that more recently I have begun to spot them amidst my colleagues and this is making work more and more difficult for me. I find it hard to look at them, to focus on what they are saying and to answer their questions without wanting to run, or scream and call them out to everyone as the impostor that they are.

Today, work was bad and then the journey between work and home tipped me from unsettled to just plain confused and alone. Silent in my own quaking fear as I found myself picking out more and more. It has got worse over the time I have been seeing them. At first it was just one or two, the initial taking over of the odd person here and there. The silent testers, to ensure they would not be noticed, I would assume. Of course it worked. No-one notices, so they they have begun to take over more and more.

I begin to fear for how long this will go on. How many do they need before they move on to whatever the next part of their plan is. I do not know the plan and I know of no way to stop it, or them. I can barely bring myself to write this. I am too scared.

Do they know yet that anyone can see past their glamour. Can spot them for their inconsistencies and wrongness? Can smell them? I am scared of what would happen if they knew. Would that make me a threat to their plans?

I feel tearful and alone. Sad and low and ultimately scared and disgusted that this can be happening around us. Increasingly. Slowly but definitely. One or two, I could ignore, I could shake off. I can't anymore. The colleague is that way now every-time I see them. There is no come or go, no 'what if it was just me in a moment'. There are too many moments and no-one else is noticing....