The thing about mental illness is that it grabs you and sometimes even the sufferer doesn’t even know why or what caused them to cry at that precise moment. I have been having times like this a lot over the last few weeks, but in the past couple of days in particular it has been really a big struggle.
For the first time in almost two years the suicidal thoughts have come back, but along with this is a reasoning thought, that if I were to try and commit suicide right now, I am likely to be saved and therefore my life would be worse to live in the aftermath because of whatever damage the attempt may have done to me, I would then have to live with along with everything I am trying to escape from. I am already under scrutinised watch, because of my past breakdown a few years back, so it is quite probable, that I will be saved – whether I like it or not.
I am in the situation that I know why I feel this way, but I really don’t have anyone to talk to who is not going to be conflictive with me about those matters to talk it through with. I am too deaf to use a telephone helpline and I don’t really have enough privacy to talk about matters online. I barely have the privacy to type this here now.
Well, Paul knows how I feel, but he is painfully irritating with his responses and usually end up making me feel worse, he isn’t the sort of person you can rely on for too much emotional bolstering or betterment. He knows I think this way about him, and yes, it does put a strain on our relationship – especially as I try and tell him that he shouldn’t feel emotionally responsible for me despite this. But he always proclaims that he does anyway and how could he not?
He is in denial of his own depression, I know this, because instead of trying to help me see the Brightside of life or help me take my mind off things, he is one of these people who will wallow with me and we both sit there in our pit of despair, talking ever deeper and concentrating ever more on the crap that’s in our lives – that’s not a place of healing. Alternatively on his more positive days, as he does have them occasionally, he will talk to me about stupid dreams of “if we win the lottery” or “if we built our dream house”, those conversations helps him in his dark times, those dreams, but it just makes me a whole lot worse! There are times and I am sure he knows it by the looks I give him, that when he talks of me of those big pie in the sky dreams, that I just want to take those dreams he talks about and shove them down his throat. Because, who wants to be reminded of things that are unreachable when you are in a time of struggle?
My problems are not primarily financial, that is something he can’t get his head around, I think.
My main focus is the lack of love, the lack of attention, friendship and family. I am also very sick and I am tired of that, I am tired of constant pain, constant illness and no one to sit there and snuggle with me for more than just five minutes a time, because no one has the time. No one has the time for me.
I talk about this to Paul, but he is so exhausted all of the time and struggling with his own injuries and pain as he is my main carer and Henry’s main carer and the household carer, that when I do talk to him, within twenty minutes he has literally fallen asleep during our conversation and wakes up with a jerk when I probe him about it.
I know I am a selfish cuss, because he struggles to balance everything for me, but he really could help himself a lot more by communicating with people who are willing to help him, but he doesn’t. He just plods along doing all of this and coping with all of this on his own and I do literally nothing.
He is 27yrs my senior, I am terrified of how I will live if he dies. That’s how selfish I am. I do love the fellow, I do, but I am shit scared of what will I do if he goes?
I can’t do a thing for myself these days, on an emotional and mental health level I could barely anyway, but now the body is falling apart, I can barely even cook for myself these days.
We have no one. We only have two adult nephews who visit once or twice a year and that is all. We have nobody, not even a reprieve of a friend who’ll come to tea anymore. Not since I have got too sick to reciprocate and Covid has made socialising with professional’s non-existent now.
I am ultimately desperate for two things, to move out of this house into a house that is not riddled with rising damp and holes in the roof and the ceiling literally falling apart in some rooms and I am desperate for more love and attention, especially long snuggles!
Oh I could add a third, to have a decent allergen free diet on a consistent basis, not having 2 weeks of feast and 2 weeks of famine in every month, which is how we live now. Well, I say we, Paul and Henry eat properly, I don’t, because I am the one with the intolerances. Gluten, lactose and occasionally egg, flax, pineapple and a few others; Gluten free foods are fine if they don’t contain flax, but most do. My body can’t cope with chocolate more than once a week either, or beef and my body can’t cope with a high fat diet, which makes things very difficult on a diet front these days.
When I went through a phase of anorexia as a teenager, I actually ate more then that I do on the famine weeks in the month and that scares Paul, but the doctors don’t batter an eyelid. I am still overweight you see and I am nearly a woman in her 40s. They don’t take the food problem seriously – if I had been 8 stone, maybe they would!
Yesterday all I had eaten up until 5:35pm (the time I am writing this post) is 1 slice of gluten toast (because we are struggling with finding decent gluten free locally in the past few weeks) and 3 slices of bacon. Later I will have a cereal bowl size of tuna pasta with new potatoes and herbs; the pasta is at least gluten free. Because of the toast today, it will mean tomorrow I will wake up coughing up phlegm for an hour and my asthma and blood pressure will be bad. But I needed quick food; I was feeling light-headed, shivery and headachy.
The food wasn’t ideal and I feel sick since, but I was hungry.
Anyway, this is just another bad day for me and I needed to get it off my chest.
Maybe tomorrow will be different?