How I got on

The appointment was surprisingly short, I spent most of the time there sitting around in a tiny waiting room trying to avoid catching peoples eye. The first doctor I saw was a junior psychiatrist, she asked me the usual questions that I’ve been asked many times before about my anxiety symptoms etc. I asked about diazepam but nothing came of it unfortunately. After talking about my suicidal feelings, she decided to discuss with the consultant and then asked me to come and talk to him. He was very intimidating, I felt like I was being interrogated. This just made me anxiety worse, I stumbled over words and my mind went blank several times but I think I managed to get my point across. There was a particularly painful moment when he asked if I had any close friends or girlfriend, to which I answered truthfully; no, and then he asked “Why not?”. My mind was overcome with all the hatred I have for myself and if I wasn’t so tongue tied with anxiety, I could probably have spent half an hour listing the many reasons why not. Eventually though I had to settle with “probably because I am so weird” which led to further questioning about why I think that, and of course why I think that I look weird which I couldn’t answer because I felt tears coming to my eyes. Thankfully he stopped the interrogation at that point and asked me to wait outside while he talked to the original doctor.

I went back to see her and apparently they are concerned about me, maybe it was the way I answered their questions because I was not feeling actively suicidal like I was the last time I saw my MHP who just sent me on my merry way. The outcome of it all is that I have got to have someone from the crisis team visit me at home today, which I didn’t really want but I couldn’t bring myself to argue with them about that. They also changed my medication to venlafaxine, an SNRI so hopefully that might make a slight difference though I am not expecting miracles.

I had hoped that I could relax slightly after the appointment was done but now I have to worry about this person coming round. Of course I had to tell my mum, but I didn’t say why they were coming exactly because I don’t want her to know how close I was to killing myself. She’s now gone on a mad cleaning spree that usually happens whenever we are expecting visitors. I just hope that she will give me some privacy because I don’t want her listening to me talk about such personal and potential hurtful things.

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Psychiatrist Appointment Tomorrow

It’s here at last, I seem to have been waiting an eternity to see an actual psychiatrist. My appointment is tomorrow morning and the nerves had already set in a few days ago. I didn’t get more than 3 hours sleep last night, I was lying awake worrying until 4:30am, hopefully tonight will be a little better. That is actually something I want to talk to them about, my incredibly haphazard sleeping. One night I might only get a few hours, like yesterday, and sometimes I sleep in until 1 in the afternoon and can hardly stay awake during the day.

One thing I’m really hoping to get out of tomorrow is the opportunity to try some different meds. I’m coming up to one of the most stressful and difficult times in my life for a long time, leaving home and going to university. This seems like a valid situation where prescribing me some benzos would be useful. I don’t want to fall to pieces the first day I get there, I won’t have anyone to hold my hand and therapy is still a distant dream so it’d be nice to have some help. When I had the diazepam after my visit to A&E, it helped a lot to calm my shaking and racing heart/thoughts. I could really do with even a tiny supply of them to help get me through the most stressful few days.

I was always scared to ask about them before since I’d heard that they are almost impossible to get prescribed for social anxiety, but after seeing the psychiatrist at the hospital who recommended I could use them in the above scenario, I think I might grasp this chance and ask. One of my great fears is that they will think I am a drug seeker, when nothing could be further from the truth. I don’t smoke, take any illegal drugs or even drink for goodness sake, but it’s still a thought lingering in the back of my mind.

Goodness knows what will come of the appointment, I’m preparing myself for disappointment but also bearing in mind that it has taken months and months to get this arranged and I don’t want to miss my chance at possibly getting some help. I’m prepared to be honest with them and try my hardest to force the words out of my throat even though I know my body will make that as hard as possible.

I’ll report back after it’s all over.

Psychiatrist

Last week I finally got a letter from the psychiatrists telling my when my appointment would be; the 26th of September. That meant I would have to get the train back here for 9:30am on the Friday of my first week at university. Luckily I managed to get my mum to phone up and they could fit me in earlier on the 6th so I will be able to go before I leave for uni and before I have my last appointment with the mental health practitioner. I’m not entirely sure what will come of it, but I am hoping that possibly changing my medication might give me some relief from the crushing lows I’ve had recently and hopefully they’ll agree with the psych I saw at the hospital and give me some diazepam to use as needed. I could really do with some for when I start uni.

We had some bad news this evening, my mum’s boyfriend, K, phoned and told her that his daughters boyfriend, whom she met in Africa, has committed suicide by shooting himself. I felt terribly uneasy when she was talking about it, I’m not entirely sure that she realised how very close I was to ending my own life last Saturday, if she hadn’t returned home then there was a very high chance that I would have done it. For some reason she seemed much more upset about this person who she has never met than she did about me. I’m a horrible person for thinking this, but I can’t help feel a bit concerned about that. I have no idea about the circumstances surrounding his death, I’ve never meet him or K’s daughter, but I felt a bit hurt after my mum was going on about how tragic it was when she seemed to be ok after a quick 10 minute chat with me.

Deterioration

I’ve been feeling awful for the past week, I mean really bad – I’ve been planning my suicide seriously. As my university start date gets closer I can’t help thinking about what a disaster it will be if I decide to go. I’m going to struggle for money because I’m having to pay all of the tuition fee myself since they wouldn’t give me a loan for it. I did plan on getting a job as soon as I get there but given how hard it’s been for me to even be considered for an interview over the past 18 months, I wouldn’t hold out too much hope. Then there’s all the other social stuff, I don’t know if I can handle rejection and being a laughing stock to everyone again, I’ve had enough of that at school and work. The course itself is going to be hard, but that’s really the least of my worries.

My life will not be worth living if I can’t get a degree, I’ve already decided that I’m not carrying on living if I can’t go to university now. I cannot stand another year of this, it would be too much. I told someone this, and they said why am I not doing everything I can to get help and go to uni then? The truth is, like I said in my previous post, I truly hate myself and I don’t think that my life is going to turn out any different from the horrible drudgery that it has been for the past 20 years.

Always being alone and unwanted by anyone is a difficult existence. It infuriates me when I hear people say things like “I’ve been single for months now” as if they should be pitied. I have never been loved or found attractive by anyone, I find it hard to pity others when I am fundamentally disgusting and unloveable myself. I’ve never known the happiness of having someone care for me and having someone to care about, I haven’t even ever held a girls hand, let alone kissed anyone. Pretty pathetic for a 23 year old and I doubt things are going to get better, I simply become more of a freak with each passing day.

I don’t want to be saved, and I don’t understand why people insist that I should try to prolong this miserable existence for as long as I can. There is nothing to look forward to except more disappointment. Disappointing my parents with my failures, constant isolation, watching everyone else get on with life and having fun while I just sit here wishing to be dead.

I am a horribly bitter and jealous person now. I feel awful whenever I see people out with friends, and especially couples. It seems as though everyone has at least a little pleasure to look forward too no matter how hard their life is, at least they get to experience friendship and love. I know that I have things a thousand times better than most, I have a roof over my head and food to eat, but it is hard to feel happy when that is it. No living person outside my family cares whether I live or die, I have no experience of intimacy or sharing my thoughts with others. Most people would find it hard to imagine not having a single friend in their teenage or adult life so they probably can’t understand how crushing the loneliness is for me. I recently made a poll on an SA forum that I visit, and even compared to other SA sufferers, I am in the extreme minority because I have gone out to places with people (besides family) less than 5 times since I was 13. Someone there even made fun of me because of it, even to other socially anxious people I am a target for mockery because of my social inadequacy.

Tonight might be the night it all ends, I haven’t decided for sure yet. I’ll have to wait until my mum goes out anyway. Time to finish those notes.

Self hatred

A few thoughts that I posted on a forum recently:

As the title says (I genuinely hate myself), I honestly don’t like myself at all. I don’t feel like I deserve help and when my therapist suggests trying to fight back against my “internal critic” and simply cannot do that, because I don’t believe any other way of thinking is correct. Telling myself that I’m “OK” or that I am not weird would be like trying to tell myself that I am not a man, or that I don’t speak English.

I don’t want to help myself, I feel as though I deserve to be depressed because I am such a loser and so pathetic. Whenever people try to say positive things to me, my first reaction is hostility and then disagreement, as if they were complimenting my worst enemy. 

I’m not sure exactly what is wrong with me now, morbid thoughts are almost constantly on my mind and I don’t even try to stop them, in a strange indescribable way, I am glad that they are there.

…

If a person hated someone so much and thought they were a waste of resources and a drain on society, if they thought that the person was so pathetic and such a loser that the world would be much better without them that they wished they were dead. Would you think that the person is bad? Evil? 

What if the object of their hatred was them self?

Going out

My mental health practitioner is always on at me to go out more, even if it’s just for a walk but a lot of the time I find it difficult to motivate myself to get out of bed. I often do feel better if I can drag myself outside for a while, though it’s not much fun to go everywhere by yourself, which I usually end up doing since I have no friends. 

I got a rare opportunity to spend the day with my sister today, she’s usually very busy with work or at her boyfriend’s house, I miss her a lot – we used to spend a lot of time together and unlike a lot of siblings, we get on really well. We went to the seaside on the train, I haven’t been to a beach since 2004 so was happy to be by the sea again. It was a lovely day but I couldn’t help feeling very guilty about what my thoughts and plans must have done to her. I get the feeling she’s worried about me, I wish she’d never found out that I was suicidal, I didn’t think it was fair to let her know but I didn’t have a choice in the matter. Anyway, I was feeling extra guilty and rather sad that it might be the last time we get to spend a day together doing something fun 😦 I still don’t know what I’m going to do in the next few weeks, I’d say it’s not likely that I’ll be here by the time my uni course starts.

I don’t really know what else to write, I’m feeling kind of empty inside at the moment.