I’m a bad ambassador

Well, how do I feel now that I’ve recovered my mental faculties?

Like a “piggin’ idiot”, as Nick Frost would say.  

Physically, I feel pretty bad.  The whole, “Did someone kick seven bells out of me?” sensation hasn’t subsided.   I had a fit, or seizure or something like it which meant that I liberally smashed into various items of furniture.  My ribs and back are killing me and I keep finding cuts and scratches on my body.    My tummy still feels like crap, I threw up orange sick and feel somewhat swollen, too.  Basically I am not at my most elegant right now.

I feel embarrassed, horrified and very, very guilty.  Embarrassed because you really don’t want the staff of the London Ambulance Service to see you naked and covered in sick (”Lucky bastards” says Nik), nor do you particularly want your friends to see your norks (it’s okay, though, I have great knockers), vomit or to see you wired up to a drip thing, barely coherent .  I’m horrified because I keep getting flashbacks that frighten the hell out of me.  I’m also having real difficulty taking my medication.  I had to choke down Seroquel last night because the pill brought a rush of vomit to my throat.   Guilty because of the obvious; had the roles been reversed and I had come home to find Rob “dead” on the floor, it would have traumatised me for life.  I put, and continue to put, my friends and family through a lot of worry.  I’m really glad my little sister doesn’t live here as she’d already found my dad on one of his suicide attempts.

Tellingly, my mum hasn’t called, texted or sent smoke signals.  Oh well.  I have long since acknowledged that she’s not a very good mother. 

I have no idea how to face everyone and will probably be reclusive for a while. Although people have been very supportive and loving, I expect a bit of pissed-offness and I’m a bit mortified about it all. I’d love to pretend that nothing happened but that’s almost as bad. Not taking this seriously and dismissing it, as I always do with my feelings, as, “Whoops, took a little bit too much there!” will get me slapped. But talking about it like this makes me feel as though I’m being dramatic or something. I feel like I’m making a “big deal” of it, which is ridiculous!  

I’m quite a bad ambassador for manic depression, really.  I won’t be invited to the yearly secret manic depressive meet up.  They’ll take my chair away.  I won’t get the pretty embroidered name card.  They’ll send me a letter that’s just a photo of a middle finger. This blog is still about recovery from the mentals but, er, a few blips along the way, perhaps?  I don’t like the voyeuristic element of blogging; this is not, “Here is my pain, world!”  

Mentally I feel alright, but shaken and a bit absent and foggy.  I’m typing like a caveman, just smacking buttons.  I had a bit of a hairy moment last in my bedroom when I started seeing stuff but I think it was sleepy hallucinations.  I am trying to justify everything to myself and the people that know.  I am hoping that they understand that it was a mix of being badly medicated, extremely down and desperate that led me to it and that I wasn’t in my right mind.  I am more in my right mind now than I have been. I hope that they get that I’m still a sane mentalist, and reasonably well adjusted and emotionally stable, even if I’m not stable in terms of moods.  Up and down is part of who I am, in terms of my personality.  If I was flattering myself I’d use the phrase, “here comes a storm in the form of a girl”, but it’s vastly different than extreme mood swings.  That, my friends, is being mental and it sucks.   The hardest thing to explain to anyone about manic depression is how non-reactive it is, at least in my experience.  People always look for a cause, and it just isn’t there.  I called off the search a long time ago.  

I’ve stopped taking Effexor as I think it was the culprit in my rather severe and unexpected mood swings of late.  I’m having no withdrawal symptoms so far but then again, I usually get away quite lightly in terms of withdrawal, considering the massive amount of medications I’ve had to stop taking.  I simply can’t face taking Lamictal ever again.  Even the smell of it makes me gag.  I hope I get over that.  I still can’t stand the smell or taste of painkillers or vodka.

It’s not a unique situation I’m in; most of my readers are mentally interesting so I imagine a lot of you have tried to leave the gig early, too. I have taken an overdose before, but this one was different as I didn’t do it in my bedroom at home where I could be easily found. Didn’t write a hugely melodramatic suicide note saying goodbye cruel world.  Didn’t ring anyone until I couldn’t take the vomiting and pain anymore, pulled the phone out of the wall and did it long before Rob was back from work.  It wasn’t an adolescent cry for help.  I meant business.  So it is a little bit unique in context of my life.  (Although someone has pointed out that the medications I took are not inherently fatal. They were all I had.  My attitude to it was if I took enough, then it would work).

The thing is that I’m not wholly sympathetic to suicide or suicide attempts.  I am the person most likely to be angry at you for it (I’ve been through it too much with Brendan, Vicky and my dad) so I’m rather angry at myself.  I don’t think it’s weak or anything like that. I know there is a point where pain becomes unbearable (believe me on that) and you’ll do anything to stop it, and dying doesn’t matter. But I’ve been in the aftermath so many times. Funny how I didn’t even think of that myself. I didn’t think at all how people would feel.  

Last night I had very vivid dreams about some people from my ex-life.  My life in Belfast, my life before life.  For some reason the dream was soundtracked by Massive Attack.  I guess if you go through a, “I could easily have died” experience you think about the people who aren’t around anymore, in either the no longer knowing them sense or in the deaded sense.  

It occurred to me that some people who were important to me in the past (like my exes, and my close friends in school) would never find out if I had died.  I wondered; Would they even care?  Probably not.  Would I even want them to know?  I’m not sure.  

Mistakes, though, are not always regrets.  I have very little regret about anyone that I ever knew, even those who I only knew for too short a time before they died.  I’m grateful to have known them.   The mental goths, the people at school I sparred with.   Warm feelings, friendly feelings, wanting to pat their head because they were in my life. They probably remember me quite differently though… here comes a storm in the form of a girl…  To be egotistical, I’m rather enamoured by the fact that I am some peoples’ “I knew this girl, right…” tale.  But if something happened to one of them,  I’d want to know about it.  

I guess it’s a bit “life flashing before your eyes”, except it’s “vomit erupting from your mouth”.   But more than wallowing in the past, I am very grateful for who I have in the present.  

So.  Where from here?  This throws a spanner in the works concerning my treatment.  I seem to be a bit resistant, especially in terms of depression.  Effexor: clearly a bad idea and the psychiatrist used it as a “last resort”.  I can’t face taking Lamictal again and it wasn’t working anyway.  I’ve already taken carbamazepine, Depakote and Lithium, so what does that leave for mood stabilisers? I don’t think they prescribe Topamax for manic depression in the UK.  I suspect that they won’t try an antidepressant again, it has yielded disastrous results every time.  

When I mentioned this (the last of the antidepressants) to my CPN, she said there’s always ECT.  Which scares the shit out of me. 

In short, I feel a bit screwed.  This is going to be a looooong hard road.  My whole, “Ping! You’re cured!” fantasies have proved fruitless.  

What I am not going to do is try to top myself again.  I know people think that straight after an unsuccessful attempt  (how damning does that sound?  ”You can’t even kill yourself properly!”)  that I’d probably try it again.  I can assure you that I won’t.  The experience of the overdose shook me up so much that a) I feel glad I’m alive b) I feel like a complete shit for putting people through it and c) if dying is that unpleasant, I’d rather pop my clogs in my sleep.

Will I get very depressed again?  Probably.  It’s the nature of the beast.  Everyone gets depressed sometimes.  Even if I didn’t have manic depression I’d get depressed sometimes because I’m human.  I don’t like it, and I’m not being fatalistic.  It’s just true.  Nor am I sure how long this okay feeling will last, but I’m alright about it.

But I have the feeling that I’m going to be monitored somewhat closely by the community mental health team for a while and I should, above all, do what I never do; tell someone!  Ask for help.  I’m still crap at doing that.  As hard as I find doing it, it’s got to be better than expiring on a puke stained carpet.   

I’m going to take it easy for the next few days until I feel a bit better.  I owe a lot of people a pint.  And I have a few things to look forward to: Charlie Brooker’s Dead Set starts on 27th October, which me and Rob are in, and Eddie Izzard next month. So that’s good.  And thank you all for your comments.

Knowing my luck, though, I will get hit by a cement truck tomorrow, or be killed by ninjas.