What do you do when it feels like every day you are inching closing and closer to the edge of the cliff? The cliff that you have spent the last two weeks feeling like you are hanging on to by your fingertips in fact, so perhaps it is that you are now losing grip and starting to slide down the side? What do you do? When is it ok to say that you have been actively fighting this for over seven years, and that you just can't do it any more? To give up essentially. Particularly when you don't seem to be able to get much support, and so really you are having to do it on your own. There must be a point when it is considered acceptable to stop fighting. When you have tried hard enough for long enough. When people would understand that you can't keep living for others, and that you have kept going for as long as you can.
I honestly don't know what to do. I feel like I am at that point, but I know others would disagree. And I suppose part of me wonders if with more support, although right now it would need to be quite a lot more, I could keep going. But what is the point? What would it achieve? Another two months or so and I would be back in this position. To me, I have done enough and suicide is a perfectly reasonable option. For the sake of others I am trying to continue to fight, but I cannot do it on my own. So what am I supposed to do? Telling my parents won't help. They know I am not doing too well anyway, but talking about suicide just panics them, and won't change anything. My mum takes away whatever pills she can find, but actually that doesn't change anything. So I don't see talking to them as a helpful option. L knows I feel awful. I could tell her again, but I don't know what difference it would make. And there is nobody else I can turn to. That's it. She is the only person I trust, and she is the only person who could actually do anything. But she already knows. So here I am. Sliding down the cliff, and feeling like any day I am going to lose my grip completely and fall off. Which would be an enormous relief to me, but even in this state I know that it wouldn't to those around me. I do believe that they would be better off without me in the long term, but I know that they wouldn't be able to see that. So what do you do?
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You keep hanging on. You call L and make it painfully clear that you are suicidal, not that you just feel awful. You call the hospital (I know you don't like the hospital, but sometimes we have to do things that feel shitty in order to get better).
ReplyDeleteWhen you say that in another two months you'll be back in this space, well, that's your depressed mind talking to you. And honestly, I can't tell you that it's not true. But I CAN tell you that there's a possibility it won't be true. But there's no possibility for anything to get better if you're dead.
Hang on, Bippidee. I'm worried.
Wishing you well,
NOS
I could tell L again, but to be honest that is all I could do. In theory I could turn up at A&E, but they would do nothing - the summer before last I ended up at A&E about 4 times because I was suicidal, once with my mum asking them to admit me because she couldn't cope, and they still just sent me home with no follow up or anything, and I now have a care plan saying to avoid admission, so there is no way they would do anything. Speaking to L again is a possibility, but to be honest it feels so pointless - I don't know what I can say that I haven't already said, or that will make things any clearer. She knows I am feeling suicidal. I think she just thinks that because I have got through suicidal patches before then I will be able to again, and that because it is over two years since I last made an attempt, that the chances are quite low that I will do anything. I don't know. I just feel totally on my own on this one, apart from the support I get here. Thank you for caring. xxx
ReplyDeleteOh, honey, I wish you and all of us could get proper help and support...I am angry for you that your 'treatment' is so rubbish.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what you do, honestly. I wish I did. Do you think it would help if your parents talked to L? There are mental health advocacy organisations - maybe try talking to one of them? Sometimes we *can't* express how we really feel, and someone else talking to L might get her to take you seriously.
Right now, you talk to people on here. Call the Samaritans or any of the other helplines, cliche as it is. Hug your dog. Have a cup of tea. Anything that gives you even a little bit of comfort. You take it minute by minute.
You *will* feel better, even just a little bit better. It's the depression telling you there's no point going on, that it's reasonable to kill yourself - I know you won't believe this, but it's *not* rational.
This too shall pass.
x
Thank you for the reply. I don't think my parents talking to L would help, because I am a lot more honest with L, and she knows a lot more than my parents do, so there is nothing that they could say to her that she doesn't already know. She reads the majority of what I write on here (so far up to last Sunday, nothing since then, as I send everything I have written between appointments to her the day before I see her), so she does know that things are very bad, so I don't think it is really a case of not being able to express how I feel - I think it is her just hoping I will be able to get through in the way that I have in the past.
ReplyDeleteI understand what you are saying about it being the depression telling me that killing myself is reasonable, but I don't think it is just that. Even when I have been feeling less depressed in the last couple of months, I have still been feeling like suicide is the right option. I think that I have just had so many years of feeling like this, and I feel like my life can never now be what I intended it to be, even if I do recover, and there is always the fear of things getting as desperate as they are now again, and all of it combined has really made me feel like suicide is a rational and logical option, even when I am not depressed in the way I am now.
xxx
*HUGS*
ReplyDeleteWhy does your care plan say do not admit? It sound like you need to be in hospital.
If talking has not helped, SHOUT, SCREAM, jump up and down. Just get their attention. Many times i thought i was communicating just how bad i was feeling but i wasn't. I have been told "we didn't realise things were that bad you didn't communicate that to us". Please try again i know how hard it is when you feel the way you do. I hope you get the support you deserve and need.
ReplyDeleteHugs, Hugs and more Hugs. xxxxx
Looking at it rationally, one can't keep living only for others, that's for sure. Even a year of that is too long, and seven is ridiculous. I disagree that you are at that point — from what you write, it seems to me that you are way beyond it. I agree, however, about support. If it does no more than maintain the problem it has no point.
ReplyDeleteYes, suicide is always a reasonable option to consider. It's on the list of things that might resolve the situation.
From past experience you've quite reasonably crossed both A&E and involving your parents off the list.
You say of L, "she is the only person who could actually do anything." It sounds like something L could do is still on the list. What is it that she could she do?
And you say of those around you, "they would be better off without me in the long term". It sounds like detaching yourself from them is also on the list, even though they might never understand that it was for their own good.
The problem with being so depressed ~ suicidally depressed ~ is (in my opinion anyway) that sub-consciously we convince ourselves that good support ("the answer to not killing ourselves") just isn't there. We make up excuses for every solution. I am Queen of this!! That wont work because,....
ReplyDeleteAnd the real bottom oine,... When I'm that suicidally depressed,.. I don't WANT anything to work. I WANT to kill myself and find the relief from my depression. I think you just can't find the fight in you anymore so suicide is a relief and you don't have the energy or motivation to climb out of it. You don't want to be bothered with all the red tape and hard work it would take to struggle back upwards. I have been chronically depressed for over 2 years this time and I was FED UP. Tried numerous times to end it but nothing worked. Now suddenly I am feeling somewhat better. Thankfully I think I'm on the up.
So we understand completely that your tired and just don't have the energy to do what it takes to fight for your care. I think you need to show this blog entry to L. TODAY!
I don't understand your healthcare if you can't get admitted. Over here in Canada you just have to whisper I'm not doing well and bam your in the psych ward. I have to really watch what I say all the time as they throw me in there with just a hint of not coping and feeling like I might hurt myself.
I hate to say it hun, but I think you need to be in hospital and I don't say that lightly as I hate the hospital. But I know sometimes its the only answer.
Go to A&E screaming your suicidal if you have to.
All of us here have come to care for you a great deal and we just want you to feel better finally. Unfortuanately theres not a lot we can do for you being 'virtual' friends so I think you will have to seek the hospital route.
(( Big hugs ))
Wasn't L asking about medication for you? Did anything come of that?
ReplyDeleteIf you go to A&E with clear intent and a definite and available plan, don't they have to do something? Or maybe your GP? Sometimes if another professional is concerned others take more notice.
I can quite see why you feel you can't go on like this - you *can't* go on like this. It seems as though there is an assumption that because you have coped so far you will keep on coping. But no one is that strong, everyone has a limit to what they can bear.
I just hope something happens or changes to help you. You have therapy coming up, isn't that something to hang on for? It might make a real difference.
Please take care, as much as you're able x x
You're welcome, hon, I've been badly depressed too so I do know where you're coming from.
ReplyDeleteI can see that suicide may be rational if someone is in pain due to illness and has *no* options left for treatment, including mental illness. I just don't think you sound like you're there. I may be wrong, I may not change your mind, but am still hoping I can - or not that *I* alone can, but *all* these people commenting here who care about you.
OK so your parents talking to L won't help. As a couple of others have said, have you *really* talked to L? You may *think* you have but a lot of the time we unintentionally understate things. OK, me me me time: I went to A&E back in September feeling suicidal, was referred to the CMHT, when I finally got an appointment they happened to show me the referral letter and my jaw actually dropped, because the letter said I had no intention of actually acting on my feelings. I didn't think I'd said that. I thought I'd said I was serious (I had actually attempted by this time). So yeah, shout and scream to L that you mean it. If L doesn't listen she is, bluntly, incompetent, and you should complain to her boss.
I too find it weird that your care plan says you shouldn't be admitted, can you get that reviewed?
Think about what I said about advocacy, too, OK? Do a Google of MH advocacy and your area, or call Mind or Rethink. If that's too much right now, can you ask someone to do that for you? The whole point of a MH advocate is to shout for you when you can't for yourself.
As for your life not being 'what you intended it to be', honey, the phrase don't be so hard on yourself is a huge understatement. No-one's life is ever what they intended it to be! I'm being a hypocrite here because I've done that whole 'omg don't have the high-flying career yet' thing but it's not about what you achieve, honestly, you really don't have to pressure yourself like that. It's never too late anyway, I have friends who are starting new careers at 35. Plus, you have depression and BPD, you're really struggling right now, it's an achievement that you get out of bed every day, that you're still here at all - give yourself credit.
As I said before, take it minute by minute.
xxx