Hanging on or letting go

TRIGGER WARNING – DISCUSSES SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AND URGES

Suicidal thoughts are never far away from the front of my mind. They stay near the surface taunting me, teasing me with how easy it would be to do and how much happier I would be. I have ways of ignoring them, but then they suddenly become loud and the rest of my head starts listening to them. On Friday night I listened to them, I ran a bath, had a sharp knife and I was going to slit my wrists and try to drown myself. I wanted to do it so badly but I couldn’t bring myself to even make a tiny mark on my arm let alone get my head under the water. It was just not going to happen. I sat and cried at how pathetic I was and all that I have become. I am disappointed in myself and feel like I am just a waste of space right now. I just drag people I care about down into the abyss and there is really no clear way to get out. I am selfish for that.

I couldn’t do anything for a particular reason which I am not willing to divulge at this moment in time. There was also a song playing on my phone. I like the song anyway, and I got most of the lyrics, but there were some which suddenly hit me, really hard. I listened to the song over and over again, trying to draw some strength from it.

 

The particular words which i listened to so many times like it was the first time I had ever heard them I have written out.

I’m gonna swing from the chandelier, from the chandelier
I’m gonna live like tomorrow doesn’t exist
Like it doesn’t exist
I’m gonna fly like a bird through the night, feel my tears as they dry
I’m gonna swing from the chandelier, from the chandelier

But I’m holding on for dear life, won’t look down, won’t open my eyes
Keep my glass full until morning light, ’cause I’m just holding on for tonight
Help me, I’m holding on for dear life, won’t look down, won’t open my eyes
Keep my glass full until morning light, ’cause I’m just holding on for tonight
On for tonight

I tried to keep this thought in my head, I am just holding on for the night, nothing more. Just that. When I went to take my meds shortly after I was so tempted to take everything I had. I took a cocktail of things which I washed down with the last of my vodka, but as I went to take more, I just couldn’t swallow them. I could remember the charcoal and how unwell I had been and it made me feel sick. So instead I kept thinking of the words to the song and tried to hold on.

I have made some great friends on Twitter, but there are a couple with whom I know I will have is the most amazing real life friends. They have kept me going and when I thought I would never be able to smile or laugh again there they have been.

I ran out of my venlafaxine on Saturday morning having also been told by a gp that they had been prescribing me the wrong version. There are the modified release tablets which you are meant to take once a day, or there is the immediate release which can be taken twice a day. I had been prescribed by the immediate release version only for whatever reason I was being dispensed the modified release. Either way, I had no money to collect the next lot so I went from Saturday afternoon without any.

They haven’t just suddenly appeared, they are there a lot, just sometimes I am able to ignore them better. I hear voices and can see images of people from the past. The images are far worse at night and are just big black shadows. The scare me and stop me from sleeping and have been there for far too long. The voices are hideous, constantly whispering in my ear. It’s the man who abused me when i was a child and my first husband that I mainly hear although I can also hear my mother and sister screaming at me at how useless I am and how I should never have come home from boarding school.

I wanted to shut them up on Monday morning, I didn’t want to have to listen to them any more. So i took out a fresh blister pack of cocodamol and took them all. I thought it was 8 that I took, but in fact it was 10. It took some time for them to kick in, but once they did I felt like I was floating, and I just wanted to close my eyes and sleep. I know I interacted with people on Twitter and I have apologised to them for scaring them, but I really don’t remember too much of this. I know I was being encouraged to seek help, but I can’t and won’t do that. I hate the phone, especially making calls. I get really nervous and anxious

I remember struggling to see my phone and keyboard and the beeps and vibrating it kept making were making me even more anxious and paranoid. So I put it on silent and closed my eyes…I went to sleep. How long for, I have no idea, but I when I woke I saw some messages…I called one of those people and we talked. I managed some how to get my prescription and take my meds. But I was not with it at all.

Then yesterday happened and today. I feel dead, I want to be dead. I am tired of fighting, I am so miserable inside. I feel like my life is just slowly being pulled apart bit by bit.

I called the help line for ESA because as much as I want to study, I know I am not well enough and would just fuck it up. I need some money and hopefully this will make a bit of difference to me and my husband.

I also wrote and email to the University I was meant to be attending to let them know that due to my mental health I was going to have to defer. This made me feel like a useless failure. I have nothing to offer anyone right now, I am literally a mad freak being a bum on benefits. Because it can’t be seen I feel more like this than ever. Although I  have been told by my husband that it’s quite noticeable that I am not well,

My husband informed me on Friday, following a few intense weeks, that he knew that our relationship was dwindling but right now to him this is not a priority. Our finances are and the kids.   I can understand this. And given how we are around one another, it was no big surprise. What was a surprise was him telling me how close he was to leaving me on several previous occasions and at the moment.

I know that I don’t need a husband. I didn’t get involved with him because i was needy, I was in love with him and wanted to be with him. I still do want to be with him, and I do want him, the biggest difference though is that a part of me wants some space. I want to figure things out. The only reason really why he is still here is because we live in London, renting is far too expensive and if he was to move out me and the kids would end up homeless and have emergency housing. So that’s why he stays.

He is overwhelmed himself and struggling with things. I have made him depressed and he has got to the point where he dreads coming home. It’s slightly better since the house is tidy, but with me and him, it’s never been this bad. I have no idea what the future will bring us, whether we will stay together or not. We do love each other but sometimes life is to complicated and my BPD is not easy for me to live with let alone someone watching. He has told me that I am rarely behave like an adult, something which I am horribly aware of. I don’t feel like an adult most of the time, I feel like I am in limbo somewhere and my brain is unable to bring me back. Dissociation is a word that I have heard other people use and they describe it as being like an event with big black outs or whatever…I seem to have done that to such an extent that I am living my life as a younger person. I am overwhelmed by the responsibilities I have as a mother and a wife. I am incapable of making decisions and I am so forgetful that sometimes its I wonder that I haven’t caused a serious incident or something.

I know inside somewhere there is a, now 35-year-old who wants to be here. But me, as I am right now, I am in my teens…stuck with no place to go, no future. Its bleak and miserable most of the time. I can’t always think what to say, I make mammoth mistakes and the consequences of these tear me even further apart.

I don’t feel able to talk about this to too many people, in fact I think this is the very first time I have even admitted it to myself that this is what has happened. I feel trapped between 13-18. More often than not I am 17, I feel that more and more as the weeks pass. I have no idea why, but this is where I am. And I cannot blame my husband for wanting to leave. I wouldn’t want to be married to me either.

I know that there is someone in here fighting me to get out and take charge, but I can’t let her too often because there are things that have to be dealt with…and pushing them under the carpet again and again is not going to do any good in the long-term. This is not to say that we are incapable of being 35, we are….Just not to the degree that is possible. Perhaps it’s self-preservation.

What is very clear, I am not well…I have a horrible mental health illness which is added to with additional mental health issues. Working on the BPD and managing it is a priority, but it is not easy and too many people do not understand what it is and how it causes problems. One thing though, very few are attention seekers. That’s not to say that there aren’t any, I have no doubt that some are. BUT, I want nothing more than to find stability and stay there without all the big ups and downs which currently plague my life.