I saw my new CPN today.

I really like her. She is older, seems confident and got what I was saying really easily.

I dissociated over the weekend and ended up running round A&E in my (batgirl) pants. I banged my head and grazed my face. I have no idea what happened. Felt like shit for several days following.

She didn't have any notes on that so had I kept my big mouth shut at therapy he never would have known and might not have flipped his shit.

I only told him because I thought he'd find out anyway.

The meeting where how it all proceeds will be decided was planned ages ago so it isn't anything suddenly set up in response to my 'acting out'.
 
I have been self medicating with: The Governor

Crap

I think I am getting kicked out of therapy. Which sucks because it was my last chance at treatment and because it proves I'm intolerable.

Apparently I'm too high risk, the therapy 'isn't containing my acting out behaviours' whatever that means, 'we're on a knife edge' 'you don't know what you're going to do, I don't know what you're going to do' etc etc

I think the therapist lives in an imaginary world where should he discharge me back to the CMHT they will look after me.

What a joke. The CMHT is increasingly becoming a 'if we can't cure you there's no point having you on the books' outfit. They kind of have to keep me on at the moment because it is a requirement of the therapy service, but if the therapy service discharges me then there is no reason for the CMHT to keep me. Plus once every  weeks chat with a CPN really isn't enough.

It's a weird position to be in, from a Psychiatrist who takes a flip through my notes before meeting me and decides 'maybe nothing is wrong but because you self harm it's dramatic and scares people' to the therapist 'You are a terrible risk, severely ill, I've told them that' as if once I am discharged hey are going to listen to what he has said.

Each new psychiatrist thinks they are the one who most definitlyknows it all. One is so convinced of something the next says th complete opposite to. And all which such conviction.

The therapist says the CMHT have an obligation to care for people wth long term problems and I'm like 'Yeah but not people like me, unless you're stinking of piss and need a depot they don't want to know'.

So things are utterly sucking.

Apparently thee is some review meeting 'A regular CPA' the therapst says - as if I ever have them. Which will be the psychiatrist who had a quick flip through my notes, someone on behalf of the therapist and the new CPN - so no one who knows me.

I do feel like I've been conned, like I was told 'You can come here and talk and I will try to understand' and then suddenly it all gets too hot and he jumps ship.

I see the CPN later today so hopefully I can find out a bit more about what was said and then therapy again tomorrow soI can try and convince him not to kick me.


I have been self medicating with: Dr Pepper Zero

Did it again

I totally fucked up and took an OD. First in forever. Why why why? I have little recollection save waking up in hospital wrapped in a bajillion blankets like a mummy and covered in ECG stickers and crap from a drip. Then wandering in the pouring rain at stupid o'clock trying to wok out how the hell to get home with a phone out of battery and no freedom pass.

Apparently a psychiatrist spoke to me but I am sure it was 2 student doctors. I guess this is the 3rd more serious act of self harm recently.  I have been more depressed than usual.

Jakey is trampled and worried.

My CPN called me at the office the next day and I had to run outside because my mobile is so loud. What could I really explain sitting in the stairwell at Uni?

My therapist was not happy. Said I was cruel, sadistic, not capable of looking after myself, didn't recognise how serious my behaviour was or what a terrible danger I was.

I so I felt miserable and like I was in trouble with everyone.



I have been self medicating with: Garbage

New people

I met my new CPN this morning. She seems nice, small, fast speaking and friendly. But again someone who tries to normalise or find the normal in all experiences. She asked how I saw myself once I got done my doctorate and I said I hoped my life would be less chaotic.

She said 'Well to me as someone who first meets you, you don't appear chaotic at all'

How does one look chaotic I wonder? How might ones appearence reflect the mental disarray they experience on a daily basis?

My therapist once said 'You look like a person absolutely covered in scars' - so as long as I keep covered up I guess chaos stays silent.

I also talked about how it's difficult to hold things together when I have less structure - which she responded to with 'Isn't that normal though, for people with a nine to fiv job to let things go when they get a weeks holiday. Maybe you're being too hard on yourself?'

I think she was trying to be nice and reassuring but the whole thing about abnormal or not normal is it is extreme and significantly impairs functioning. It's not just that I spend a week in flat shoes and don't bother exfoliating, it's not sleeping, not eating or not stopping eating, messing up my meds and ignoring any kind of personal hygiene physical or mental. It's self harm and misery.

She is there part time so I will see her once every three weeks. Which is fine as I have therapy twice a week but it's also a downgrade in theamount of support I have which feels a bit frightening.

And it's the same impression that I got from my last worker which was that they try and avoid addressing or engaging with your crazy. Yes they can cope with practical shit, they are comfortable with pople who need benefit forms filled in, housing issues, help seeing the GP, people they need to ceck are on their meds or need a hospital bed during a psychotic episode but us inbetweeners it's lke the think WTF is our role here?

So they try and emphasise the normal in your experience and squash out the maddness. 


I have been self medicating with: At least I have been getting a bit of work done.

My last therapy session I cried genuine tears for the first time. I had gone thinking there was nothing to say or think anymore and then out of nowhere all this stuff came up. Some nights this week I have gone to bed and cried just from the... reverberations of the feelings I had. I don't think I can do this. It makes me feel so insecure. However I have some awesome new ink and that makes me happy. I love getting tattooed.

I have been self medicating with:
I am strong, love is evil
It's a version of perversion that is only for the lucky people
Take your time and do with me what you will
I won't mind, you know I'm ill, you know I'm ill
So hit me like a man and love me like a woman
Buried and sad, look me in the eyes, I want it
One will give you hell, one will give you heaven
Hit me like a man, love me like a woman
Love me like a woman
Love is strong, but I am evil
You are wrong, about me
Take your time, ah, play with me until
You can hear the children scream, like their stuck inside a dream

That you, ah, will
So hit me like a man, love me like a woman
Bury me alive, I can see it in your eyes, you want it
Some will give you pain, some will give you pleasure
Hit me like a man, love me like a woman
Love me like a woman
Don't you run away, run away from me, I will run away from you
Don't you run away, run away from me, I will run away from you
Hit me like a man, love me like a woman
From the devil deep inside, can't you see what I'm wanting?
Some will give you hell, some will give you heaven
So hit me like a man, love me like a woman
Love me like a woman
Love me like a woman
Love me like a woman


"Marilyn Monroe"

I can be selfish
Yeah, so impatient
Sometimes I feel like Marilyn Monroe
I’m insecure yeah I make mistakes
Sometimes I feel like I’m at the end of the road

I can get low I can get low
Don’t know which way is up
Yeah I can get high, I can get high
Like I could never come down

Call it a curse
Or just call me blessed
If you can’t handle my worst
You ain’t getting my best
Is this how Marilyn Monroe felt felt felt felt?
Must be how Marilyn Monroe felt felt felt felt

Its like all the good things
They fall apart like…
Like Marilyn Monroe

Truth is we mess up
Till we get it right
I don't want to end up losing my soul

I can get low, I can get low
Don’t know which way is up
Yea I can get high, I can get high
Like I could never come down

Call it a curse
Or just call me blessed
If you can’t handle my worst
You ain’t getting my best
Is this how Marilyn Monroe felt felt felt felt?
Must be how Marilyn Monroe felt felt felt felt

Take me or leave me
I’ll never be perfect
Believe me I’m worth it
So take me or leave me
(So take me or leave me)
So take me or leave me
(So take me or leave me)

Call it a curse or just call
Me blessed if you can't handle
My worst you ain't getting my best
Is this how Marilyn Monroe felt, felt
Felt, felt? Must be how Marilyn Monroe felt,
Felt, felt, felt

Is this how Marilyn Monroe
Felt, felt, felt, felt must be how
Marilyn Monroe felt, felt, felt, felt?

It has been so long since I last blogged. Partly because therapy as been so intense and I began to feel, actually I don't want to write about this publically. It feels so intimate and that somehow it can't leave the room.

It's odd, whatever happens during the session as soon as I leave and shut the door a second door is shut in my mind. Everthing that was said and happened gets locked in until the next time if we touch upon it again.

Sometimes I am left with a sort of sense memory, of feeling comforted or attacked or of a stale mate and frustration, sometimes nothing.

 My therapist is away now for several weeks and I found out yesterday my CPN is also leaving. I will see her once more before she goes and this will all happen before my therapist retuns. That's quite hard to take. I don't feel particularly attached to her. It was very much a relationship of practicality, she sorted out things and liased with the doctors but I never felt I could really open up to her as her modus operandi was to try and see the positives or put a positive spin on everything.

I won't exactly miss her though she was very nice but endings are always awkward - you kind of want to thank someone for being nice and giving you their time even though it was their job so it's a weird situation.

le doctorate is going well. I had a really good supervision last week and I am pleased with some of my work though behind on some of the boring bits.

And I have been doing lots of trying to be healthy things. Bought a nice big sketch book for my art work, organised a reading group for next term, socialised. It is hard to maintain a trying to be healthy stae of mind when I am struggling quite badly with my size and weight. I feel massive and desperate to lose weight but also am painflly aware of the price that kind of thinking and associated behaviours come at.  

I have been self medicating with: Cats

Starship Troopers

Yeah I earned my lumps. My glands are swollen behind my ears. They have been for some time. Since Christmas the lymph nodes in my groin have been massive. My GP at first thought is was because of my self injury. That burns on my legs were causing the lumps in my groin. My body fighting infection. He said they would go when the burns healed. But they remain. I have cut on my legs since so it is hard to test the hypothesis but... I have bruises on my legs from my bed and blood in my nose most of the time. It is worrisome. I need a blood test which I have the forms for but it makes me anxious. Someone looking into me, maybe they will see I am bad and dirty - all that craza shit. It's so hard. Therapist says it makes me feel out of control - it does. I have been self medicating with: Diet coke

I had a cat...

...her name was Minnow. When we first moved into our flat. Our first flat together, she was there, dancing in the garden. Balletic on her tippie toes. I was agoraphobic. At home all of the time. Jakey was allergic. She wasn't allowed in. She would miaow at the cat flap at night. We had moved into her house. And then she was allowed in, but just the kitchen, where there were no carpets. But when he was out at work sometimes I would 'accidently' let her into the front room. Gradually she moved right on in. Jakey's allergies got better. We took on this girl together - she healed us. Minnow did the 'flump' - she invented it. When you tickled her side she would drop with this amazing weight onto her side and rub all over the floor. She liked to sit on carrier bags. Boxes, jackets, anything slightly off the floor. She was a lap cat. She would sit on you and purr. She liked to get i bags and on top of the wardrobe, sit in my drawers of clothes. She brought us together, we cared for her together even when we were drunk and angry and apart. She loved us and we loved her back. I regret my anorexia because I spent those weeks away from her, and before hospital when I needed to work out it annoyed me having her climb all over me. I hate myself for that lost time. Once she got sick and we took her at night to the emergency hospital, in a box because we had no carrier. I was so scared, sitting trying to hold her in this box whilst Jakey went to call a cab for us to go home. She was okay that time but later she got sick, she stopped eating, got floppy, dejected. We took her to the vets to get her liver scanned and when we went in the evening to collect her they said there was nothing they could do. I regret so badly her last day was spent at the vets, scared, drugged, miserable. But there was nothing we could do and she was suffering. She was still wobbly from the sedatives when we put her to sleep, I hope it was a happy drugged wobbly high she went out on. Even though we gave her a life, took her in, fed her, cuddled her, loved her, somehow the last day still pains me. Maybe we should have taken her home, given her treats, let her go out happy. My parent's cat was old - and she got sick. At the end she could only lie on the floor, barely drag herself along, not eating. We were waiting for her to die but she was hurting I could tell. My Mum was working and my Dad... just wanted to shut her in the front room under the radiator and hope she did it herself. I couldn't... I felt it wasn't right. So I orchestrated for us to take her. Me my sister and my Dad. I explained the questions they would ask - would we want to take her home to bury, would we want to be there, that kind of thing. They couldn't get a vein to inject her so she had to have a huge injected in her ribcage. She growled, good for her, she was always a feisty little thing. We held her as she went. The vet was shaking - he'd known her a long time - she was a cool cat. Had attitude. You would open the door for her and she would make you wait, rubbing her scent on the door frame, before she slowley sauntered in. And she would give you a swipe if you annoyed her - though not as much as at first, she'd come from a shitty home and it took a while for her to settle. The responsibility for these precious lives sometimes is almost too much for me to bare I am writing this because... I can feel love. Purely, undestructively, just love. My therapist, who calls me sadistic, cruel, perverse (okay maybe I added that one to describe what he was saying but he didn't disagree) who likes to talk about the gleeful way I hurt myself and that there is something 'very cruel and cold' about me. I can love. I am the person who sleeps with no duvet, half way off the bed in the freezing cold so as not to move the cat. I spend more money on them then on myself, I take better care of them than myself. The therapist says I find it almost impossible and exhausting to take care of myself, and that may be true, but it doesn't mean I don't care or can't, I care for them, unconditionally, whatever they need. When I am scared to go out at night in the dark I will take them to the vets if they need it. When I am scared to walk far I will take them to the bigger further vets if they need it. When I am scared of talking to people, of dealing with feelings, of making decisions, I will do it all, hell or high water, for the little monsters. We are a cat house. There is more fancy cat stuff than human stuff. And whatever else, for all our problems, Jake is as crazy about the little furry buggers as me. It is clear as other things are murky - we love our cats, and I am so thankful to be with someone who doesn't even have to have the conversation, just knows, if he is at work and one of them is sick, my decision will be right with him too, because we are on the same page about them. I have been self medicating with: Kitty love.

Without skin

Therapy was really weird today. I feel like at the moment we are in a battle not and allegiance. He was telling me 'You're in control, you think you're bad so you make yourself bad, damaged, disgusting and you never give anyone else the chance to decide, you decide, you're in the driving seat' 'But if you know something is sour you just know, it would be pretty cruel to ask people to taste it' 'Because you know what you're like, you're sour' 'If you cut yourself you patch it up you don't wave it around to see if it gets infected - that would be a pretty risky experiment' 'Well psychotherapy can be like that, and sometimes we get it wrong, but yes in a way it is like being cut' More like flayed I think 'I feel like you're the picador stabbing and wounding the bull before it goes out to the fight, making it weak and.... enraged... and usually in a bullfight the bull dies' 'I am aware that you have to go away with all of this, and how hard that is' 'I didn't realise it would be this hard. I didn't realise it would be this hard this soon' for some reason I am crying. 'I'm sorry, and I'm sorry maybe I did push you too hard this session and I'm aware it's a long time untill you come back because I'm away so I'm sorry it feels like this' 'Because I have no means to comfort' 'I know' What was weird was that as soon as I left the room the tears stopped and the feelings stopped, I didn't feel sad and this thought 'Ha fuck you, I made you be just a little bit nice to me' popped into my head 'We're still dancing to the beat of my drum' It wasn't as if they way I was reacting in the session was me trying to provoke sympathy, I wasn't really thinking, but afterwards this sense of having won something back arrived. I don't know... weird. I have been self medicating with: Clean hair - it always helps