I challenged myself to stand, starkers, in front of a full length mirror and pick one thing about my body that is 'okay'.  It was a harder task then it sounds. I saw my lank hair.  I saw my weary eyes.  I saw my straggly brows.  I saw a double chin.  I saw bingo wings. I saw a thick waist. I saw a forehead scored with creases and lines.   I saw a large overhanging belly ravaged with stretchmarks. I saw back fat. I saw tits I could dust my toes with.  I eventually decided on my knees. My knees are okay.  I could look at my knees without feeling sick.  They're not fab knees by any means.  They're just inoffensive. 

If I had to describe myself I'd say 5 ft 7 ish, blue/green eyes,  dark red hair, pale skin, pierced,  tattooed, dowdy,  aged,  fat and ugly.  

The next task was even harder; to look at my inner reflection.  The 'Me'. My inner reflection is crippled by mental illness.  I used to be lots of things.  I had infinite likes and dislikes.  I could inspire and be inspired. I was opinionated and present.  I could lead. I was alive. I had a look. I could be vibrant,  quirky,  bubbly,  intense and yes.... fucking annoying.  But I was someone (at times it felt like I was several someones) I was something.  

Now? I'm nobody.  I'm nothing. 

It's not an emo thing.  It's an empty thing. 

I rarely leave the house. I don't speak to anyone.  I have no hobbies or interests anymore.  The few friends I have, live in my computer.  I rarely wear makeup.  I often forget to brush my hair.  I  have only a handful of clothes; they're bland.   I have to concentrate to remember to talk or move or even just to be. I'm insular, anxious, sad, angry, lonely boring, numb and empty.  I enjoy very few things other than The Spawn.

I can't define myself because there's not enough me to define.

I worry that my kids deserve better.  That they deserve more.  That they'll resent me for hardly going out.  For not being interesting or funny or beautiful.  For failing at Pinterest. 

So I asked them to describe me.  And they did. 

Kids are brutal.  And honest.  I expected them to say that I'm fat, cross, sad, boring and never go anywhere or do anything with them.  

Never assume how others see you.  Don't let who and what you think you are define how you think others see you. They have their own eyes and minds.

Take a walk outside your mind.

You only have one life. It's wasted if you live it inside yourself.

We are our own prison.

I'm Mamaundone,  I have okay knees, awesome kids and my story isn't over yet .

There's a lot of blank pages to fill.



Look in a mirror today.  Tell me:

* One part of your body you like
* Something about your face you like
* Three positive things about your personality.

Panic Room.

The problem with anxiety is it's irrationality, at times.  You worry about things that have happened and about things that haven't.  You worry about things that are happening and things that aren't.  You worry about things that might happen, or will happen, or won't ever happen or even are happening. It's the past.  The present.  The future. It's little things.  It's insignificant things. It's petty things. It's big things.  It's about you.  About them.  About nobody.  And you can't make it stop.  Ever.  It doesn't matter that the things don't matter because the anxiety ties them into knots until they do. Matter. Until they matter too much.  Until it's all that matters.  You can't stop thinking (and thinking and thinking and thinking) you can't make it shut up or go away.  You can't sleep.  You can't concentrate.  Your brain is riddled with these writhing anxieties until it's crippled and stuttering.  They're snowballing. The worry turns into panic.  You're forgetting to breath. It's like an approaching Apocalypse and you can't run or hide.  It's a film of car crashes that you can't pause, happening before your eyes.  It's the frantic birds with razorblade wings trying to escape.  Trapped in your chest.  Trapped in your head. You can't close your eyes to it.  It's inside you.  You can't get off this ride.  You try to talk about it but it all sounds so silly and your words are ineffective.  They reassure you that it's pointless and you're worrying over nothing.  That it's silly.  That it'll never happen.  That so what if it had happened. They tell you just to stop thinking about it.  To stop worrying about it.  That's the problem though.  That's what they don't get.  You can't.  Stop. You can't make it stop.  Don't they think you would if you could?  That's just it though.  You can't control it.  It controls you.

Like record baby, right right, round round.

I hear the silence.  I try to fill it but the words went away.

So instead I'll post something from, my personal journal that pretty much sums it up.

I’ve not written for a while and yet it was not intentional.  What to write with when the words, they went away? These fingers twitched and this heart stuttered, yet you can’t talk in punctuation.  You need the words.

I feel irrevocably broken.  It’s no clean snap nor delicate fracture.  It’s pieces.  Mainly bits.

I can’t control this.

Yet it’s controlling me.

I’m swinging violently through moods that cycle rapidly.

There’s the incandescent rage, it’s burning my veins and giving my breaths teeth.  My eyes are looking through lens’ made with malice and my thoughts are dripping with vitriol; thick and bitter.  I find myself wanting to break things, to destroy everything with my hands and teeth.  I want to make life bleed.  I’m snapping at everyone, my poor babies have a monster for a mum.  My tolerance levels are reaching none existent.  I’m a lit fuse that can’t be extinguished. I’m on fire.  I’m burning.  I’ll burn you.

Until I’m falling.  Like a stone. Plummeting.

It’s dark, so fucking dark.  I can’t see you.  I can’t see me.

There is no me.

It starts with explosive distress.  The white noise is screaming.  The black dog; he’s howling.  I watch it shred my remains into ribbons and the ribbons, they fray.

Make it stop.  Make it stop.  Make it stop.

Everything is black and red.  Why won’t this noise stop?

& then it’s raining.

It’s raining and I’m drowning.

Violent sobs that choke me.  (Can’t breath. Can’t breath.  Can’t breath)

You can only fall for so long.  Eventually you land.  You hit the bottom.  With a thud, or a splat.  Inelegant and messy.

Into the grey.

Breaths are slow and thick; chunks of misery that stick in your throat.

This is the despair.

Utter despondency.

There is no hope.  No light.  Just the silence and the white noise in sloppy competition.

You can’t see through this.

You can barely move.

This is the harrowing.

Most things pass, eventually.  The wheel turns.  The world tilts.

& then you’re numb.

Life is the grey cat that’s claimed your lap.  It’s going nowhere.  It barely acknowledges you and yet it’s preventing you moving.

You’re inanimate.

The apathy is a new skin, this skin is heavy.

Yet there is a peace here.

Hear no evil.

See no evil.

Think no evil.

Speak no evil.

Do no evil.

You just are, and yet also so dreadfully not.  Anything.  Anyone.

There’s no anger here.  No fear. No distress. No despair.

& no joy.

Until the wheel moves again.

You're only pregnant, not disabled. Right?

It would seem there is very little gray area in how pregnant woman are treated, the pregnancy is either totally ignored with no extra regard to how the woman is treated or else they're treated as if utterly fragile and incapable of ordinary life, both of which can be equally frustrating for the woman in question.  Sometimes you do need special consideration, like being offered a seat on the bus or having someone offer to carry something that's especially heavy for you or even just understanding, for the exhaustion or mayhaps the extreme nausea.  Other times, you just need people to back the fuck off with their misplaced 'Are you sure you should be doing that?' or '[so and so] can't do that, she's pregnant'

Granted, the majority of woman can cope with pregnancy pretty damn efficiently as can their bodies.  Sure they may get the nausea and the bum grapes but other than that you see them still whizzing round, wearing heels at 37+ weeks, successfully doing every day life with activity filled days with barely a laboured breath right up until the first contraction.

We're not all that lucky though.

You should never judge a pregnant woman based on your own experience or perceptions of how you assume pregnancy should be.

Just because a woman appears to be coping fine, still show some consideration.  If another woman appears to be significantly suffering, don't dismiss it.  Every woman and every pregnancy is different.

Some woman have nausea so severe, they're hospitalised.  They risk dehydration and their bodies become exhausted and weak to the point where they find it difficult to function.

Others suffer with the invisible, battles against mental health issues that they may decide to stop medication  due to pregnancy.  Mental health issues plus pregnancy can be a toxic and dark journey that many can find utterly harrowing, it can steal the journey that is pregnancy, it bleeds dry the joy and the wonder.  Mental health impacts on every part of your life and on those around you.

Then there's SPD (Symphisis Pubic Dysfunction).  This is a little understood term that is bandied about readily.  Most woman get pregnancy niggles, you know a bit of back ache or leg ache maybe even a achey foof.  Want to know what SPD feels like?  Imagine someone taking a baseball bat and smashing your pelvis with it, several times.  Imagine being dropped from a great height, onto a stone horse saddle, repeatedly.  It hurts to stand up, it hurts to sit down.  You spend ages working up to turning over in bed because it's that painful.  Getting dressed becomes agony as the action of lifting one leg at a time renders you in extreme pain, ditto to walking up or down stairs. Whichever position to sit or lay in, becomes uncomfortable and then painful after short periods of time. You walk like John Wayne and it still hurts.  You're walking home from Nursery holding your childs hand and every time they jump, swing or do a superhero move you audibly yelp as the slight tug of their body weight seems to radiate through your hand, up your arm and jolts your pelvis. Your pelvis hurts, your foof hurts, your lower back hurts, your hips hurt, the inside of your thighs hurt, hell, even your bum hurts.  All the time. A simple ten minute walk feels like a hike, as your legs protest at being made to separate, you wince and feel like crying. Every step feels like columns of pain from the ground are shooting up your legs to your pelvis whilst at the same time someone is trying to rip both your legs out of their sockets in opposing directions oh and don't forget the band of pain that's crunching your lower spine.  It gets worse.  Every day the pain intensifies.  Bending down to pick stuff up, getting dressed, sitting/standing become filled with pain.  The little things you take for granted like walking to the shops, or going out for te day with your family become near impossible.  Every day simple tasks hurt more and more.  The lucky ones just have to exist through the agony, the unlucky ones are unable to and have to rely on crutches or even a wheelchair.  It's debilitating.  But hey, you're only pregnant.... you're not disabled.  Right?

Wrong.  Perhaps disabled is the wrong word, I know as someone who suffers from chronic SPD pain that the thought of referring to myself as 'disabled' sounds ludicrous yet if we take the word and strip it down to it's basic definition:

disabled

dɪsˈeɪbld/

adjective

1. (of a person) having a physical or mental condition that limits their movements, senses, or activities.

Then yes, sometimes to some people pregnancy in all it's hope wonder and magic can actually be disabling.  

Sometimes it's not just pregnancy niggles and aches.

Sometimes pregnancy isn't a straight line journey, you can't assume every pregnant woman is walking the same nine month path.  Like everyone in life you have no idea of their journey.

Pregnancy can be wonderous, beautiful, amazing whilst at the same time being excruciating and miserable.

Empty.

What happens when you have no idea who you really are?  We’re not talking basics such as name, address, history etc we’re talking the inside part, the part that makes you, you.  What do you do when you stare into the abyss that is self only to see, nothing?  Imagine you’re introducing yourself to someone yet you genuinely have nothing to say about yourself.  Nothing to offer anyone.  Empty.

It can be exhausting trying to be somebody, anybody, trying to fill this cold void inside.  You try on different you’s hanging in a ‘to rent’ closet yet they’re uncomfortable and none of them ever quite fit yet it’s imperceptible to anyone other than you.  After a while they become grossly uncomfortable, cumbersome and so hard to wear.  You try and shed the layers yet it’s so cold when there’s nothing underneath them.

So when the energy runs out, you retreat.  Somewhere where you don’t exist and nor do you have to. 

For me this is when my obsessions take over, insignificant obsessions that temporarily consume me, such as reading an entire series of books in a few days or watching several series of the same programme back to back over a few days.  A different world, where you cease to have to exist, where you can disappear.  Sleep becomes overrated as the next fix needs to be had then the feeling of being absolutely bereft when it ends and there’s simply….no more.  The emptiness is overwhelming.  

You need to fill up the soul vacancy again…with something.  You need to try and be someone again.

& the white noise inside my head is deafening.

Please Mr Postman

It feels like a lifetime has passed since I had the appointment.  It's almost as if it never really happened at all, all that bravery to finally face things head on, face to face seemingly wasted.  Everything is still stagnant.  Every day I wonder if the postman will drop that letter through my letterbox.  The letter that's a copy of what will be sent to others, about me. That she thinks I have many traits suggesting Borderline Personality as well as some traits of Bi-Polar II and III in conjunction with the depression and social anxiety. The letter that will say I'm too broken or maybe not broken enough.

I need this thing to be named, to know that it isn't me nor even a part of me.  To know that there still is a me, somewhere.

I don't even know who I am any more.  It sounds so dramatic and verging on the ridiculous yet it's true.  It's painfully obvious that I'm not just severely depressed.  That there's some disorder within my personality.  Every day I awaken thinking that today will be the day when I'll find myself again.  When I'll be myself again.  Yet what if there is no self?  what if the past is just different versions of the present.  Different suits that this emptiness tries on desperate to be someone, to feel something.  I have no sense of 'self'.  Who am I? what do I like? I just don't know.  I've tried to be so many different things and so many different people and nothing fits.  Beyond the obvious physical, I have no idea how to describe myself.  How to relate who I am.

I'm tired of shutting things off and shutting things out.

What if there is nothing in the centre?  take everything else away only to find there is nothing left?

It's not merely a  case of wanting to reinvent myself, the minor and rapid reinventions is just the confused fast paced searching for self, that never stabilises.

I'm running out of places to look.  Of people to be.  Nothing feels right.  Nothing feels like me.

The Birds.

It would appear that I no longer have a concept of normality or indeed abnormality.  Upon the topic of death fantasies The Shrink assured me that it's absolutely normal to lie in the bath and imagine drowning, to cross the road and imagine just stopping...mid road, to stare at the motorway bridge and imagining jumping.  Apparently everybody does it.  It's an act of challenging mortality and people find it exhilarating, almost daring as it makes them feel alive.  She asked me how I felt when these fantasies struck.  I told the truth.  Peaceful. Excruciatingly so.

The window is raining again, as in onto my window sil.  Again.  No it's not leaking, the paddling pool that is there each morning is apparently normal condensation, so normal that it only appears to happen in one room in the entire house despite every room having the same double glazing.  With it it brings it's friends to breed so that my current role in life is no longer merely chief scooper of cat shit, it's now extended to mould removal.  Who said glamour is dead?

The Husband had a chest infection so I had to do the school run in the morning, on my own. Pissflaps. It was marvellously uneventful, if you discount the fact a man ahead of me kept morphing into Death. Later in the week as we returned from town on the bus, I saw a man at a bus stop eating a sandwich .... that kept visually morphing into a huge block of cheese.

Having eventually succeeded in making him go to the doctors, The Husband that is, not the cheese man, whilst waiting in the chemist for his prescription I predictably begin to browse the hair dyes when I turn around only to see neither The Husband nor The Toddler.  Logic would suggest they'd just gone elsewhere yet when has logic ever courted me?  The panic devoured me whole.  They weren't there.  They were gone. Disappeared.  I was alone.  This wasn't planned and I'd had no warning.  Why had they gone?  The world stopped spinning whilst the inside of my head started to spin  instead as I stumbled towards the door.  I could hear my breathing inside my body, it was deafening.  The anxious birds that reside within the chest  started to flap with razor edged wings, as their feathers began to fill my throat. I could feel their frantic beaks piercing my lungs and heart.  I couldn't close my eyes, they were frozen.  You can't cry when your eyes are frozen.  The tears just fall on the inside and rise without bothering to ask if you can swim or not.

The tiny rational part of me listed the places they would probably be yet the rational voice is so small, so tiny that I couldn't concentrate on it.  All I knew is that they'd gone.

It's ridiculous.  I'm a grown woman and yet I was terrified.  I'd been abandoned.  It had been minutes.  It felt like years.

They were only in the charity shop a few doors away, I found out after calling him.  Yet why did I feel so empty?

Sometimes, I fear the worst is yet to come.  That the descent is a continual journey that masticates my brain.  That things will never get better.

I am folded.  I am folding.  I'm unfolding.

The prisoner

Sometimes I have so much to say and yet no words with which to say it with so the thoughts merely ricochet around the confines of my head increasing in speed until they become a violence of mere noise.  How very apt that an abundance of thoughts can paralyse your ability to actually think.  Other times, there's more words than blood within my veins that bulge and pulse to escape yet I have nothing to say.

The mental stars have once again realigned and deemed it time for of the wheel of moods to change once more.  There is no subtle change of direction, it's a spontaneous plummet.  There's no graceful wings to glide.  I am the stone and it's falling.  I'm isolated within my own head as I habitually go through the process of withdrawing from everything and anyone as my own mind drags me to forcefully retreat.  It gets easier as the years go on, the inability to connect with others eradicates the factor of having people to notice, it thus becomes easier to float in and out of social existence.  I am the ghost that watches yet can't be seen.  I write nothing, nowhere.  I hardly speak.  Something will present itself to temporarily compel me into obsession be it a series of books or a television series.  I immerse myself within in, lying awake for hours unable to sleep until I've completed the run.  Blanking out from everyday life barley even managing to go through the motions as I become locked within whatever it is the fixation is this time.  Yet through it's grip I do not grapple, for this temporary trade of isolation and compulsion in place of the thinking, that awful relentless brutal thinking is quiet.  Ironic that the mental silence to think is when the thoughts are in hiding and thus cannot be thought.  I am the nothing, I'm not really here.

I can feel the attempts of another change bubbling beneath the surface in the random spouts of hilarity that momentarily possess me and the spontaneous urges, like randomly chopping at my hair again...just because.  If I close my eyes I can hear myself in the background spinning, waiting in the back room to be let out again. until the motion creates a nausea from being tilted off balance.  Yet I can't unlock the door until I've completed the circuit.  Unable to be attentive to any aspect of life until I've rode out the obsession.  It's a series this time, I've watched 30 episodes in less than three days.

My head hurts from trying to think too soon.  Thoughts pound and flash in mental colours, yet they have no words despite them growing with impatience.

I am the  prisoner, awaiting mental bail.

I like to watch the puddles gather rain.

The Husband and I still weren't talking, both indignantly pissed at the other and it starts to storm. Sometimes, it's as if the weather itself is a reflection of a state of mind.  I'm caught in the excitement of a storm which induces an element of frenzy within me, a wild excitement as if the storm is a part of me.  Thing One is having his first ever sleep over at a friends and I'm trying and failing memorably to capture lightning in a photograph whilst hanging out of my bedroom window when Things Two and The Toddler join my pastime.  I feel invigorated by the storm, it's as if it sparks some kindle within me and if only for a few minutes I feel dangerously alive.

It doesn't last.  It never does.  The rain however lingers, wetting the now dark skies as I'm clock watching.  The doctors closes at 6.30pm, I don't have enough medication without that prescription. The Husband offers to go for me yet I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face, I'd love him to go for me yet whenever we're at war he seems to revel in highlighting how ridiculously useless at life I am.  The fury is dangerously smothering the fear.  It's hard enough to leave the house alone in daylight yet in the dark when it's near torrential rain?  The rational part of my brain knows it's easy.  It's only 0.8miles and it's downhill on the way there.  My stubborn streak is refusing to admit I need him and that i'm terrified.

The first half of the walk is fine, my internal narrator is behaving himself and I'm as ever bewildered just as to how you're supposed to walk in the rain and still see when you wear glasses, I can't see bugger all!  Yet I run out of internal small talk and it's dark, really dark.  I'm concentrating on breathing and how the rain is the perfect weather to cry in as it would go unnoticed, if you could cry that is. I'm exhausted, the previous day was busy and The Toddler was being an arse the previous evening.  I'm imagining footsteps behind me and envisaging cars ploughing into me every time I cross a road as I momentarily try to disengage the element of morbid fascination that has attached itself to the terror as the thought of not existing is as terrifying as it is momentarily exciting.  The paranoid thoughts weave a macabre seduction.  This is what happens when I go out alone.

I'm trying to concentrate, I temporarily Imagine going to a random pub, calling an old friend or simply walking and not stopping.  There's trains and buses and puddles in my thoughts. This is what happens when I go out alone.

To stay focused I start to count my steps, to keep my mind on the job so to speak.

Prescription collected, I'm stood in the chemist when an old woman joins the queue and randomly starts to tell me about her tinnitus and how it's literally driving her to the very brink of madness.  I'm momentarily struck dumb, I have an in ability to act normal when I'm nervous and I utterly dread people talking to me.  I nod and ah and step back, messing with my phone.  She takes a seat and starts the same conversation with another woman who's waiting for reflux meds for her baby yet when she goes the old woman turns to me and starts the same conversation again.  I rack my brain for something normal to say, as I try and sympathise trapped between the rock of despising ignorance so opting to be polite and the hard place of being utterly useless at social interaction.  I'd rather pull out my own eyelashes than be spoken to by a stranger. I listen as she tells me they can't do anything about it and that she can't sleep or watch tv.  It's relentless and she can't stand it.  I make stilted light conversation, as it's obvious her need for conversation trumps my awkwardness. I'm only half there really, trying to act appropriately is an effort at times.  Suddenly she's taking an unexpected turn in conversation and starts with 'I'm 82 you know' I nod and smile and then she starts to cry.  Yes, cry.  Oh buggerbuns.  She is telling my how she's 82 and has nobody, she's all alone and she hates it, she's so frightened because she is all alone.  She loaned family money and they never paid it back nor come to see her and people tell her she was stupid to do so and deserves what she gets.  There's nobody else around.  The need to comfort her yet the inability to do so is like glass in my throat.  She's 82, all alone, scared.  It's only just gone half past six yet it's pitch black outside and pissing it down outside and I can't compute how or why she'd be out in this.  My prescription is ready, I have things to do and I need to get home yet I felt rooted to the spot.  I had never seen the woman before and never would again.  She would have spoken to anyone who sat near her.  Yet, I felt somehow responsible for her, touched by the ferocious strength of her fragility.  I had nothing to give her.  Nothing that could help or change anything.  No magical words.  I needed to go yet couldn't just leave her.  I leaned forward, held her hand, hugged her and placed a kiss on her cheek.  It was all I had to give to her.  The only magical power I had was that of the heart.  To many it would be a natural step, yet I hate physical contact from strangers.  I can't even remember my dad ever hugging or kissing me and yet here I was, with a stranger.

I disappeared back into the dark wetness with a pain inside at how hopeless I felt.  Wishing I could have been more and done more.   I hope the pharmacy staff spared some time for her, she only wanted to chat to people.  I can't ever imagine being as brave as her.

Lie down on my couch and tell me about your mother.

Yesterday was the day, doom day.  A day I'd been actively avoiding for over half my life. The day when I'd finally have to verbally, face to face, tell a professional just how utterly crazy I really am.  My GP had referred me to psychiatry with suspicions of Bi-Polar disorder, bypassing the usual therapy channels.

There's anxiety and there's nervousness, both of which although related are not at all conjoined.  The former can be both specific and random with the latter being specific.  Yesterday I had both to the extent where I couldn't eat and felt physically nauseous.  It was like a heavy weight of serpents pressing down upon my head in a paper box whilst it rained.  I find appointments of any sort especially difficult, it's rare that I plan anything in advance as the anxiety activates my flee instinct.  I have to psyche myself up to do things and then have to do them spontaneously whilst I'm in that place that enables me to follow through.  Appointments simply provide some torturous wait, that sends my over analysation and tendencies to dissect into absolute hyper-drive.

It didn't help that the unit I was to attend was also where they treated substance and alcohol abuse and the only other person there was, shall we say, a character who quite possibly frightened the bejeesus out of me.

I had no idea what to expect.  I have an innate inability to expose myself fully, usually it's in measured and semi controlled spurts, after-all even a little bit of the crazy can scare people away.  It's easier to say nothing at all than risk the vulnerability of when you say too much.  To be completely open hand somebody else control and thus power over you.

I was in there over an hour, she was absolutely lovely.  I spoke way too much.  I couldn't stop because I knew if I paused, I'd not start again.  To pause would be to analyse and dissect and then to withdraw.  To pause would be to listen to the fear and allow it to take the reigns.  I guess it was a now or never situation.

It's like crying, you can't do it because you're afraid if you allow it to start it won't allow you to make it stop.

It was absurd in a way, trying to fit a lifetime into a little over an hour.  A lifetime of nothingness.  A lifetime of everything.

I have no idea what I expected, confirmation? validation?

She admitted that they dislike applying labels in a first meeting yet however, they do try and do it as that helps to know where to go from there on yet no label fit.  None.  I apparently have symptoms of Bi-Polar 2.  I have symptoms of Bi Polar 3, I have multiple strong Borderline Personality Disorder traits oh and I'm definitely heavily depressed.  No shit Sherlock.

She couldn't label nor help me.  Due to breastfeeding she can't medicate me other than the Sertraline I'm already on.

It's like professing your utter and undying love for someone only to have them reply 'Okay.  Thanks' anticlimactic.

She's referred me to be psychologically tested by a colleague in another department.

Not broken enough or too broken?  Perhaps I'm just the wrong kind of broken.

The initial relief of finally opening up, of letting someone see me inside out was exhilarating.

For about twenty minutes.

Then it all chipped away and I dissected everything I possibly said and remembered everything I forgot to say.  Convinced she couldn't wait to get me out of there, that I said too much or not enough, that I'm too broken, that she thought I was a complete and utter twat (just like everyone else does) That she was just wishing I'd give one word answers, waiting for me to shut up and leave.  I felt ridiculous.  & scared.  I shouldn't have gone.  This is who I am.  Nothing will get better. I said too much.

So it's another waiting game.  Could be months for the next referral.  In the meantime, I'm to remain on Sertraline and let it flatline me into submission.  An emotional zombie.

To remain living in the grey.

Woe is me navel gazing

Now the shit has finally got real, with an impending appointment with for want of a better term, the shrink team, I find myself questioning everything.  The depression first started to manifest when I was around ten years old.  I first hinted at problems to a doctor a whole fifteen years later.  In the past 8 years I have spent 1.5 of them pregnant and on and off a total of around four years on anti-depressants.

I'm thinking back to un-medicated times when I was most happiest, in my late teens and early twenties.  It was easy to dismiss the depression as typical teenage goth crap, yet it's not the depression, the self harm and the suicidal tendencies that I find myself questioning, it's the other parts.  The times when I was mischievous, hyper, bouncy, creative, flirty.  The times when I was incensed and incandescent with rage and vitriol.  These were the times I always thought were real, as they punctuated through the suffocating dark yet now, well now I'm beginning to wonder if there was ever anything remotely normal about them at all and if they were just as alarming as the depression.

There's things I did that aren't necessarily out there by any means yet when compared to the rest of my life back then, looking back they seem a little, to be frank, wtf-ish.

I'm beginning to wonder if I've ever truly known who I am and if the me I miss, was just the flip side to the me I am now.

Part of me fears a further diagnosis yet another part of me craves the relief to know that maybe none of this is truly me, the reason I'm so many mismatched parts is because not all the parts are me.  That maybe I can be fixed.  That it's not my fault I'm broken. Yet the other fear is, what if there isn't an explanation and this really is just who I am.  I can't bare the possibility that this is it.  Forever.

Sometimes I feel like a ball of nothingness that inhabits a body it doesn't even like trying on the skin and personalities of people that don't really exist hoping that one day I'll find one that fits and has my name inside.

I have two names yet I don't feel like either of them.  The medication flatlines my personality.  There's no spark.  Nobody is home.  I just exist.  Sometimes I crave to come off them again, just to feel yet I'm afraid of what I'll feel.  Afraid of what I'll do or say.  Petrified that the faux clarity will pull the pin of the hand grenade that's in my mouth and I'll do or say things that can never be reversed.  Things that will blow my life apart just to feel something.  Just to do something.  Just to try and be someone new, again.

World Mental Health Day: Anxiety

The phone is ringing again.  You don't pick it up.  You can't pick it up. You don't even know why. It doesn't matter who it is calling, you can't even say why you can't speak to them.  You just can't.  It's like some frightened bird trapped in your chest thrashing its wings.  You can't breath.  You feel dizzy.  You just can't think.

You're making plans in your head about going somewhere, doing something yet the thought of leaving the house and actually doing it, alone, make you rigid with some sheer and utter panic.  You just can't do it.

Your partner goes out for the evening.  you can't sleep because you can't stop imaging them being run over or mugged.

You stand breathless watching your parents car pull away with your children in the back as they go round for tea and for several minutes all you can imagine is the car crashing.

When travelling in car or bus you constantly have scenarios of a crash in your head until you're convinced you're going to die.

You lie awake obsessed that there is something horrible going to happen to you that you can't control.

You're occasionally paralysed with abject terror.  You don't know what of.  You don't even know why.

There's some all encompassing sense of foreboding.

You spend ages trying to find a way to contact someone by e-mail because you seem absurdly unable to phone them.  If you do psyche yourself up enough to do it you have to do it instantly, before it passes and you become terrified of it.

You can't meet anyones eye.

You  dissect everything you say and do, convinced everyone thinks you're a total twat and they're only tolerating you out of politeness.

So you banish yourself to emotional and social solitary confinement.

You're too scared to say hello.

You can't wait to say goodbye.

One minute you're sat on the bus and the next you feel sick and disorientated, none of the windows are open and you can't breath.

You're walking round the shops when suddenly, everything is spinning.... the lights are too bright...the noise is too loud...you can't think.  Your brain is slamming around your head and your stomach hurts. You can't remember what you're supposed to be doing and for an instant you can't remember where you are.

You did the school run yesterday yet today, you have an indescribable inability to leave the house.

It's all silent.  It's all invisible.  It's all inside. You can't see it and I can't show you.

World Mental Health Awareness: Suicide.

This post may be triggering for some.  

The first time I wanted to die I was a child.  I ate nearly a whole tube of Bonjela because it said to not exceed stated dose.   I thought it would kill me.  I loved the taste and figured that would be a nice way to die.  I didn't even puke.  I was disappointed.

I once took a lot of painkillers.  I didn't die.  I didn't pass out.  I didn't vomit.  I didn't go to hospital.  I just slept, longer than usual.  I couldn't understand it.

I never wrote a note.  I never told anyone before of after.

Suicide. We've all heard of it, perhaps our lives have been forever changed because of it.  I'm not going to talk about the people who commit suicide nor the whys.  I'm going to talk about the not so often spoke about people, the forever suicidal.  To feel like you want to die yet to not act upon it.  Not because you're weaker then those who do or even braver.  They're entirely different.  One is fatally suicidal and the other is terminally suicidal.  To be terminally suicidal is to not want to die necessarily but a desire to not exist or to even stop existing.  Essentially you don't want to 'be' any more.  Death seems the only logical path to this.  Sometimes you're terrified of death, other times the fear disappears and you flirt with death.  You envisage ways of dying.  Ways of making sure you die. You fantasise about doing it.  You want it. Yet, you do nothing.

You close your eyes in the bath and imagine drowning,  you may even go under the water and hold your breath.  You look at the bathroom tiles and wonder what pattern your blood would make if you smashed your head into them hard enough.  You image falling down the stairs and the strange lifeless angle you create at the bottom.  You stare across the motorway bridge for just a few seconds longer than necessary as you wonder what it would feel like to jump off it.  You're waiting for the traffic to stop and for just a second or two you imagine yourself walking out into it.  You're taking your medication and you imagine taking them all.  You accidentally cut your finger when cooking and briefly consider running it quick, hard and deep up your wrist.

Yet you do nothing.

In some perverse way not doing anything becomes your punishment.  To disallow yourself the exit you desire.  You imagine the ones you'd love would be better off without you because you're bad, at everything.  You can't change.  You're broken to the core.  Things will never get better. They deserve better, so much better.  You don't want to leave them.  You realise that no matter how much better of they'd be, it would break them.  They're too young to hate you and you don't want to be the reason for their despair.  So you forbid yourself to go.  You don't deserve to make it stop.  You might be empty yet they love you, and you want to stay with them more then you want to leave them.  It's not them you want to leave.  It's you that you want to leave.  There lies the crux of it.

You don't want to die.  You just want to make it all stop. To make it stop.  To make it stop.

You can't be someone different or someone new so you'd rather be nothing at all.

So rather than living to die, you remain dying to live.  Holding on instead of holding in.

It's hard to describe how you can be suicidal yet categorically state you won't kill yourself.

My children saved my life.  The only reason I'm here is because whether they want me or not, I refuse to leave them.  They will do beautiful things that I can't and never will.  I want to watch them be beautiful.

World Mental Health Day: Self Harm

***This post may be triggering.

You've probably seen the deather children, swathed in shining black as they profess black roses and doom or the radically fringed emo's who's tears are star shaped and coated with gel.  Their scars are part of their uniform.  I remember in my youth, walking into pub toilets, all fishnets and pvc to touch up my armour of black kohl.  A young waif of a girl stood in a wisp of latex, her pale arms fully exposed, on show even, proudly advertising her ruby scars as accessories as a cruel smile twisted upon her lips.  Even a neon arrow couldn't have made them more obvious.  Her outfit appeared designed to showcase them.

I never showed mine. I didn't want people to see. Long sleeves and a wrist full of bangles.  Should they slip, a nervous laugh and a roll of the eyes as I cursed my frisky pet rabbits for having scratched me.  It was plausible.  People didn't suspect a thing.  They were hidden.  They were mine.  My secret.  My shame.  My release.

Self harm can take many forms be it blood letting, starvation, burns, alcohol abuse, drug abuse etc they're all a form of inflicting harm upon oneself.  I was a blood letter.  It started when I was barely a teenager.  I wasn't even aware it had a name nor that other people did it.  It started with nail scissors, jabbing them into my wrist and dragging them, again and again.  Sometimes it would be my thigh or my stomach. Often methodically and slowly.  Other times frenzied slashing.

It isn't about suicide.  You're not trying to slit your wrists.  You're not trying to die

It's about control.  An attempt to externalise everything that's within.  To make something visible out of an illness that is invisible.  To try and release the poison that's within you.  Sometimes it's a punishment, for being stupid or ugly or fat or disgusting.  Other times it's cathartic.

Physical pain is infinitely easier to deal with and to understand than mental pain.  So you try and make the pain in your head physical instead.  To extract the venom.  To cleanse.

I started at about age 11 and didn't stop until I was 23.  As I got older, scissors were often traded for razor blades.  It became a ritual, the removal of the bangles, the attack then the aftermath, that eerie silence as you watch the blood flow.  Then come the tears.  The sobs.  You're near convulsing with them.  You only stop because you run out.  Your head feels about to explode pain from the sheer strength of crying.  You clean up, hide your tool of choice.....back on go the bangles and down go the sleeves.  It's like it never happened apart from the reminding sting.  It feels good.  It feels real.  It's something to focus on.  You feel in control for a while. You feel alive for a while.

It didn't get better as I got older, it got worse.  More vicious.  The insatiable need to do it increased, it was like some throbbing in my veins begging to be released.  A white noise in my head that needed silencing.  Yet throughout it, there was control.  I never went too far.  Never needed medical attention.  Nobody had to know.  It was something I could finally do right.Even at work, I'd sneak to the toilets with scissors from my desk tucked under my sleeve, sat on the closed toilet lid, shaking.  Choking on silenced sobs. Everything was spinning and only this would make it stop, for a while.

Other times it was near daily ingestion of painkillers in some futile attempt to kill this inner pain.  To try and make it stop.

The thing that finally stopped me was having children.  I made a vow.  I couldn't let them see how vile I was.  How much I repulsed myself.  How faulty I am.  I haven't done it since.  That was ten years ago.  The urge is still there, it never went away.  It's worse, without an exit.  There's no way to let any of it out and it's filled me to the brim.  I'm drowning in it.  Poisoned.

I recently got a tattoo, to cover the scars.  The tattoo is representative of The Husband and The Spawn.  The very people who made it stop.  It's beautiful.  They're beautiful.  It's beauty ensures I can't go back.  It isn't my arm any more it's theirs, and I can't ruin that.

World Mental Health Day: Depression

It seems criminal to not write about mental health on world mental health day so here goes, the first of three short posts dedicated to various depression related things.

Depressed is one of those words that is overused and not truly understood by so many rather like the words love, hate, starving etc.  You love your child yet you really like ice cream.  You may hate homophobia, yet you only really dislike Brussel sprouts.  You're probably not starving and hopefully never have been you're just rather hungry.  See where I'm going with this?  How many times have you heard people dramatically declare 'Oh I'm so depressed today' the chances are if someone says this then they're one of the incredibly lucky people to have never actually experienced depression.  They may have had a shit day or two, they may jolly well be a little sad yet they're not actually depressed and it's highly likely that within hours or maybe a day or two they're not even a little sad anymore let alone despondent.  It's because of the throwaway nature of the word and it's misuse that there is so much stigma and misunderstanding surrounding depression.

Depressed isn't an adjective, it's a serious health condition.  It's not fashionable nor is it as transient as people believe.  Depression doesn't merely taint your day a little grey for an hour, it paints it black and within that blackness it attempts to destroy you.  You can't see out and nobody can see in.  You're screaming without a voice. You're drowning yet people just see you waving.

There doesn't have to be a reason for depression.  Often it's resultant of an incident or trauma in ones life and can with help be overcome through addressing the reasons behind it. A few lucky people genuinely can overcome it eventually and move on.

Then there's the other type.  It's just faulty chemistry.  It feels like your brain is faulty and wired up wrong.  Nothing happened.  There is no event to come to terms with. There is no reason nor cause.  It's just inside you, a parasite that feeds upon your very soul until you're unsure as to what is you and what is the depression.  It controls you as it devours you.  It's spiky black and angry.  It's fiery and vicious.  It's a thick grey smog that you can't see through.  It's the bleached out nothingness that expands within you.

It would be great to just be able to pull your socks up, to get over it, to stop wallowing, to move on.  You have no idea how much we would love for that to happen; for it to be that easy.  To be that simple.

It's like a carnivorous tumour that you can't cut out as it's entwined around your entire being.

Even if you have depression yourself, you can empathise with another yet you can't ever truly understand it nor them understand your depression.  Everyone's depression is a unique beast that manifests and torments in different ways.

Yet, it won't rain all the time.

So should you see someone who suffers from clinical depression smile or laugh.  Don't think them cured.  Don't use it to trivialise their depression.  Sometimes we laugh or smile because we have to, it doesn't mean we feel it just means we recognise it's the desired or appropriate reaction.  Sometimes it's the only way to stop ourselves crying.  Sometimes it's merely a short respite as the world lightens from black to shades of grey and we're making the most of it whilst we can, treading water until that proverbial hand snatches around our ankle and pulls us under again to drown.

Well hello

Did you miss me?  Even a little, even at all?  Could you be terribly kind and lie a little and say you did?

So, in the proverbial post coital of Chrimbogasm, how was it for you?

I must admit it was a somewhat eerily calm event here, remarkably unsettling.  Obviously The Spawn had a ghastly good time yet I can't help shake the feeling that Christmas didn't really reach inside me this year.  Sure I cooked the food, and ahh'ed at the lights yet felt terribly empty as I sat lamenting the sorry sight of our battered tree yet unable to even gather the spirit to fix it.  Granted in part my parting of ways with a bittersweet dear john letter to Mr Zoloft mayhaps have had some hand in this as that lonely little flame reignited and tried to melt the barren wasteland that had smothered it.  I should probably stick to experimenting with my hair rather then my medication.

I must have blown the right elf this year for under my Christmas Tree was a kindle! (Thanks Mothership)

I was however struck with the temporary lurgy of doom, yes utter DOOM I tell you which had me wallowing in the confines of stumpy the bed for several days.  You know your husband loves you when he empties a potty of your vomit for you whilst you shiver and wibble in bed.

We're not really New Year kind of people what with us being agonisingly anti-social yet even we surpassed ourselves seeing as The Husband and I spent the entirety of it not speaking.

My children will never know how much  of their christmas chocolate I've stolen and consequently scoffed when they weren't looking I truly love them.

Not an Emo. Honest.

Please excuse my somewhat erratic posting, unfortunately I'm still somewhat at the mercy of an illness trough.  I'm one of the slaves of the invisible illness'.  I can walk, talk, cook and generally exist therefore I'm obviously fine. There's nothing to see here, there's no flowing of blood, no burst organs, no crutches nor bandages, neither cuts nor bruises and not a temperature or rash to be seen.  So obviously there's nothing wrong. 

It's all on the inside where you can't see and don't know where to look.  The M.E triggers the depression and the depression triggers the anxiety.  Circles and circles and circles again.  And I'm trapped.  Inside myself.  In this body and this head. They're hungry carnivorous villains that extinguish and devour the very core of who you are.  There's a reason you don't 'know' me, I don't know me anymore.  Maybe there is no 'me' to know.  Or maybe she's in there, somewhere, silent all these years.

& she's lonely.

The 'me' in M.E

I'm exhausted.  Bone tired.  Soul tired.  It's not just the lack of sleep (The Toddler is teething Molars, last night I had 90 minutes of broken sleep) nor the bouts of Insomnia in between.  I can always tell when a trough is approaching, my throat will get sore, I'll get an increase in headaches, my short fuse shortens further and my mental health tips towards the unstable side of the scales (more so then usual that is) then comes the fatigue or 'chronic fatigue' as it's called.  I could sleep for a week and still be tired.  I need sleep yet even if i get it there is no sense of refreshment or rejuvenation gained from it just an insatiable need for more.  The fatigue creates a thick fog in my mind, my thoughts slow down and slur, words escape me, my short term memory cripples itself, all motivation evades me.  The exhaustion is like a hoard of vibrating ants fizzing through my veins making my limbs feel ineffective and leaden and 'buzzy'.  They ache, it's no stabbing pain or sting it's a heavy dull ache.  It's an effort to raise my arms.  My thoughts feel numb.  Everything feels like an excruciating effort, even talking.  I lose all interest in anything and everything. I get enveloped by episodes of mania, buy things I may very well need but can't really spare the pennies for then eviscerate myself with guilt.  Then the land slides, the scales adjust again and the depression drags me spiralling into it's centre and I'm too exhausted to care so instead I just close my eyes and wait for the ride to be over.

Grey Day

I opened my bedroom window this morning just in time to watch the smothering waltz of the grey as it devoured the blue and closed my eyes feeling the brace of the wind slap into my face before the window slammed shut with a thud.

& then it started to rain, ineffectual droplets at first a mere smattering both `insubstantial and forgetful like the verse everyone fluffs with a hum before they belt out the chorus.

Another day at home it is then.  Last year I'd think nothing of staying holed away inside for days, weeks even months on end.  I only left the house if it was absolutely necessary or if pushed and even then it was under duress.  Call it what you will, it was some form of agoraphobia.  It wasn't that I simply didn't want to go out, it was more the thought of it caused paroxysms of dread and anxiety.  Even now when I'm able to leave the house I rarely do so alone and if I do it's always negligible to anyone else and 'normal' yet to me, it's an achievement, one that is riddled the whole way with anxiety and paranoia and of course the conversational diatribe within my head that never seems to stop. This isn't where my mental health problems begin nor where they end it's merely one of the roads on the busy and complex ragged map.

It seems somewhat ridiculous to be proud of something that is so ordinary and simple that people think nothing about doing it e very day but proud I was as the past 6 months or so I've been making myself leave the house and embracing walking everywhere, especially with The Toddler on my back.  It became an urge, a drive I made it a necessity to get out and to walk.  I should admit it probably helped that through walking I gained extra calories to eat.  It always seems easier to walk to eat rather then walk to lose weight if you catch my drift?  The Husband had long since recovered from the shock of me finally leaving the house and had replaced  it with protestations towards my now over zealous drive to walk all the time as he'd have to come with me.

So here I am with this obstacle in front of me.  The weather and my ankle.  My ankle is relatively back to normal during the day but it aches something chronic at night.  The worst is usually over within two weeks yet it takes an average of six weeks for ligament damage to recover.  Where we live there is literally one road with a few shops on it and that is a two mile round trip, up hill all the way home.  I fear that halfway there my ankle will give way and we'd have no money to catch the bus.  As each day passes I feel myself regress and it feels harder and harder to think of going outside into the real world amongst real people and the familiar comfort of staying at home is no longer suffocating it's slipped back into the realms of safe and comfortable.

I seem to be consumed by vapid lethargy, again.  

At first the day seemed off to a good start as Thing Two's lego arrived nice and early yet Thing Two was home from school today apparently 'poorly'.  Then of course there was the rain.  So what else was there to do, other then bake...again.  Sorry thighs. She is now at The Grandparents as it's her special day and it will be Thing One's turn tomorrow.  Thing one is fantastically excited as tomorrow he will be officially on school dinners for the first time, I suppose it will save us having to constantly buy lunch bags due to him losing them all the time. 

Hopefully tomorrow will have a break in this wet spell, if only a pocket of time so I can force myself out and breathe.  I think The Toddler and I have cabin fever.