Angry At Life: How People Screw You Over

I am angry.

Actually that is an understatement.

I am fucking furious.

People who hold positions of responsibility and seniority have decided to make decisions about me without consulting me first.

They have gone right over the top of my head to discuss me with other people and the first I know of it is the other person happening to mention it in passing.

I can’t be arsed to go into details, and no one is probably interested, but it has seriously pissed me off.

I want to hit self-destruct and hit the button so hard that it explodes. Maybe I want to self-implode. I know I have just taken it all out on my Mum who commented that “if you’ve had the attitude you’ve had at home over the past few weeks I can completely understand why you’ve been kept out of any consultations”. I needed support and sympathy from her. A helping hand, not someone else to stab me in the back. I know my Dad will be equally, if not more, unsupportive when my Mum tells him.

I feel like no one in the world wants to actually help and support me anymore. They all just make executive decisions about me as if I was a pawn ina game of chess.

It’s at times like these I wish the serious suicide attempts of late last year had worked. I really wish I could go back 6 months and do it all again, but properly this time.

Ruth

Curtain Twitchers: The Disturbances in SW7 Strike Again

I am still alive.

I did think as I went to bed last night that the pile of tablets I own and the plastic bag looked very tempting but my Mum realised something was up and made me promise not to “do anything stupid” as she couldn’t cope, particularly at the moment.

She is suffering from really bad venlafaxine withdrawal as she changes over to sertraline and I can sympathise. Her GP is being good and weaning her off them slowly. I can remember in my first year of uni when my psych took me off them after a particularly bad overdose (I was in hospital for 10 days and facing renal failure) she just stopped them, there and then. One day I was on 300mg/day the next nothing. She figured I had put enough in my system to last me a lifetime.

My father is being a bastard as usual. The neighbours called the police last night because of the shouting between my parents. I hid upstairs in my bedroom with my iPod turned up to maximum. I wanted to get involved, to make sure my Mum was safe and to ensure that nothing bad was happening but I wasn’t in a good state of mind. In fact I was so irritable yesterday I would have probably ended up thumping my father one, and we all know that he would have just retaliated. Anyway, 3 police officers turned up on our doorstep and the curtains twitched, as per usual. Honestly, I would have thought the neighbours would be used to the police turning up so often at our house by now.

The two blokes went off to speak with my Dad and the female officer spoke with my Mum and then eventually with me. I told her that I couldn’t say much as I was upstairs avoiding being dragged into the mess and was listening to music loudly. She gave me a totally sympathetic look and told me that it must be hard. At this point I burst into tears. It’s always the case that when someone is nice to you that you break down, isn’t it? She was totally professional and told me of organisations that could help me. I told her that I was receiving support etc. and she went back to speak with my Mum. As no crime had been committed they left, after all they couldn’t arrest my Dad for drinking too much, being a complete tosser and shouting the odds; even if they could my Mum would deny everything.

Today is marginally better. I am finding things to do that are keeping me occupied and busy. So far I have washed my car, by hand rather than taking it to the car wash, as Allison said in our last session that using gross motor movements i.e. walking, gardening etc. would make some difference on the serotonin levels. I’m not sure I feel any better but it has left me with an hour and a quarter less of the day to face and a clean car. I still can’t face going for a walk as the feeling to run is too great. I don’t know where I’d run too. The obvious place is Newcastle as I have friends up there who would let me stay a while, but then it is so obvious that it is the first place my parents would look.

I know I am being stupid with the whole ideation of running away. I tried it 10 years ago and got picked up by the Met Police, held in the station for a while (in an interview room not a cell) until my Mum picked me up and gave me a bollocking. The fall out of the consequences is too great. It’s the same thing that is preventing me from not killing myself. If I failed, and given my track record I invariably would, then the consequences would be too great.

I see my therapist on Tuesday where I will talk through the manic phase I have been in, even if it has been provoked by a lack of medication, and the current depressed state. I see Allison on Thursday who will state that I need to use the crisis team more as support out of hours. I tried ringing them last night but I didn’t have the courage or energy to talk things through so I hung up as soon as the guy answered. I can’t get through to her that I don’t find the crisis team particularly helpful. I find them judgmental, patronising and of little use. They suggest the most obvious things when I need help and support and when I ring them because I need to talk with someone through things they ignore my request that I don’t need to be assessed by anyone and turn up at home.

On Friday I see Dr Mc for the first time since recommencing my meds. I will have to be honest with him about not taking them for a while and I know he is going to be angry. Last time he suggested starting a different mood stabiliser as the lamotrigine is clearly not working. I am dreading that he will suggest lithium. I don’t know why I am scared of it so much, maybe the long list of side effects or maybe because it is the drug that proves you have ‘gold standard bipolar’ and I am still trying to convince myself I am not bipolar.

I don’t know why I am trying to ditch the bipolar diagnosis when it is so clearly true. If I was successful then I would be left with complex post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorder NOS and borderline traits. I can guarantee the borderline traits would be re-escalated to full blown BPD and I don’t particularly want that.I want him to take me off the reboxetine and put me back onto venlafaxine. This is for two reasons, a) because venlafaxine is the only anti-depressant that hasn’t sent me sky-high every time the dose is increased and b) because one of the major side effects I suffer from with venlafaxine is loss of appetite and weight loss. When I restarted it last time I lost a stone and a half. I can’t tell Dr Mc the second reason though and he seems convinced that reboxetine is the way forwards.

Ruth

Stuck In The Middle Of A Quagmire

Yesterday was an exceptionally bad day. Today, so far looks marginally better but I think it will be a long time before things are good again.

As you may, or may not know, my parents are soon to be getting a divorce. However, at present they are still living in the same house. I don’t know why this is but it was working out OK with people living their own lives. Yesterday afternoon, just after lunch, things changed. I was upstairs so I don’t know the full story but suffice to say my parents had an argument which ended with my Dad hurling verbal and emotional abuse at my Mum, who tried to get me involved, but I am fed up of being dragged into petty arguments so I said I wasn’t going to take sides. She then promptly walked out of the house. This isn’t new, my Mum often needs space to think things through, so I wasn’t that concerned.

I continued doing what I was doing when there was a knock at the door. I ignored it for a few minutes and then wondered if it was my Mum who had forgotten her keys. I opened the door to find 3 police officers on the doorstep. I obviously invited them in before curtains could twitch more than they were doing already. Turns out my Mum was scared about what my Dad was going to do that she rang the police asking if there was somewhere safe she could spend the night and they sent 3 officers round to the address. 2 of them go off to talk to my Dad in the garden and the policewoman talks things through with me. I explain about the divorce, and my Dad’s past behaviour and I’m halfway through explaining things when she gets a call on her radio. Apparently my Mum has rung the police back and told them that she doesn’t need their help. The officers take down some final details and leave.

My Dad then leaves the house, at about 4pm, presumebly for the pub, and I decide to get the car out and go driving round to find my Mum. I find her wandering not too far away and manage to get her into the car and bring her home. The police then ring to make sure my Mum is OK, I tell them that she is, and to ask where my Dad is, to which I answer I don’t know.

The evening progresses quite quietly with my Mum having what can only be described as a somewhat hysterical turn and by 10pm we are both in bed. At midnight my Dad stumbles back into the house and goes to bed.

I wake up this morning to discover no one else is up. My Mum makes herself a cup of coffee and then goes back to bed. I go up to make sure she is OK and my Dad is moving around making a lot of noise. He goes downstairs with a suitcase and asks me to move my car (which is blocking his car in). I tell him that I’ll move the car but report him to the police if he drives off for drink driving as he clearly has too much alcohol in his system still. He tells me if I do that then “it’ll be the last thing I do”.

Since then, I didn’t report him to the police as I couldn’t be bothered getting my own back. My Mum appears to have cracked and I don’t know what to do to help her. Meanwhile I’m stuck in the middle trying to smooth over the cracks. All I really wanted to do yesterday was drive the car far away from here and run away, like my Dad has done. Trouble is, I have so little money at the moment that I can’t really afford to put any more petrol in the car and it is only half full.

My Mum says she’s going to make a doctor’s appointment tomorrow to talk things through. I don’t know where my Dad has gone and I don’t care. I just hope that he doesn’t reappear anytime soon. I’m fed up of being torn between two parents. I’m been played like a pawn for the last 23 years and I can’t let it continue.

Ruth

Bank Holiday Blues

Have started already, and it’s only 09:20.

This doesn’t mark a good start to the day, alongside the fact that it is absolutely chucking it down outside and cold inside because the parents have turned the heating off.

I think I may go back to bed.

Ruth

Edit: 6:15pm and I have just dragged myself out of bed for the second time since writing that post. The first one was for some happy, family lunch thing with all the family (who live in this country – I hate my sister at times for living in Gibraltar). So there we were, my parents, me, my brother, my sister-in-law (whom I adore) and my little niece and nephew and the conversation turns to me… as it always does. Debbie (my sister-in-law) asks me what my plans for September are. I tell her that I have an interview at the end of the week for a Secondary Science PGCE at the Institute of Education. Kit (my brother) kicks in and asks me if that’s wise and gives Debbie the look that was clearly meant to read “she’s just been diagnosed with cancer, she’s got to put her plans on hold, don’t encourage her”. I replied saying “I know that I may not be able to start the course in September but the IoE run a modular system of completing 3 terms so I could start in January or April 2009 if needs be”.

My Mum then tried to change the subject when Harry (my nephew) said “Daddy said you might die”. Now I laughed at this. Mainly because what father tells his little kid that their Aunt might die? Surely the whole, Ruth’s not very well and she’s going to have to have some nasty treatment and then an operation, would work better. My Dad then told me off for laughing and said that it was true. That he’d been looking on the Internet and bone cancer is very aggressive and can have a high mortality rate. I said I didn’t want to think about it and my Mum changed the subject again.

Then my Dad chipped in and said that I would have to think about it because it wasn’t the sort of thing I could stick my head in the sand and forget about. I told him in no uncertain terms that I was aware of that, that it was my leg which ached and that it would be my hair loss, my nausea, my vomiting, my fatigue and my knackered immune system that would cope with it and knowing him he would take no interest in me, as per usual, and it would be left to my Mum to pick up the pieces everytime I had chemo or felt rough.

I then left the table and Debbie followed me. She offered to bring me some food to eat in the kitchen but I said I wasn’t very hungry anyway. She apologised for asking a probing question, and I had to tell her that asking about my future plans wasn’t probing. Since then I came back upstairs and went back to bed. Faith (my niece) and Debbie came up to say goodbye and my Mum came up with a cup of fruit tea about an hour ago but I think people have realised that this lunchtime just crosses the line.

I didn’t mean to be all melodramatic and argumentative. It just happened. Like I didn’t mean to put my finger in the lighter flame for that nanosecond too long. It just happened. No lasting damage though, just a bit of an “ouch” moment at the time. I don’t mean to hurt and upset people and cause chaos in family situations. Maybe I should just avoid al social contact for a while until I settle down.

Tonight’s plans involved listening to the Kaiser Chiefs, live from Leeds, at 8pm on Radio 2 and then watching Walk The Line which I recorded last night, or if I still can’t face going downstairs I’ll download it onto 4 On Demand and watch it in bed. Both of these tasks will be conducted with the remainder of my bottle of wine from lunch and a few gin and somethings (probably cranberry juice or orange – undecided as yet).

What an exciting life I lead.

Ruth (x2)