Help!…Help… Elp… elp… lp… p…

I’ve moved around a lot the last year. I’ve lived in 3 different countries, 8 different houses and finally I’m settled in my house that I inherited and is all my own. That means for the first time in 3-4 years I have a proper home. The thing I’d been missing a lot about moving around was having a doctors that really, properly knows me. The doctor I had when I lived with my parents was very good, and they’d known me since I was about five or so.

But what’s really frustrating me this time is that I’ve actually made a promise to myself (and my best friend, who’s also pledged to get herself some help as a new years resolution) to go and be honest with a doctor. I promised when I moved back from France that I was feeling so incredible bad that I would go, and I would be honest about everything – the rapes, the suicide attempts, the bad feelings and self harm and everything. I wanted to get better so bad that I finally promised myself it was over. I would go and be brave and finally something would be done about it.

But do you know what? It hasn’t made a blind bit of difference.

I came back to the UK on the 21^st of December 2012 and it’s now the 27^th of February 2013. I’ve been feeling as though I’m standing on a knife edge, ready to trip and fall off at any moment, having some episodes so bad that I don’t know how I lived through them. And the worst part about it is that the doctors all know that. I told them that I think about committing suicide every day. I told them I hurt myself and that I have a large stack of pills at home. I told them about my nightmares and everything else and its still been over two months before I’ve even been given anything at all to help.

At first, the doctor referred me to a psychiatrist. The man was lovely but I only saw him once. I did as I promised and poured my entire history out to him. I found out at my next session that he’d left the practise and I had to see another woman. This woman wasn’t as nice, I didn’t like her but I forced the details out, every last one of them. All the while no-one would prescribe me anything because I was presenting with vaguely Bi-polar symptoms so they didn’t want to give me anti-depressants, but they wouldn’t give me mood-stabilisers without a diagnosis. I saw the psychiatrist twice in total over the month and a half. With nothing in between. I feel left helpless and abandoned. Eventually I went back to my GP yesterday to prod them, remind them that I’m sitting here struggling to live. She was angry with the psychiatrist for not getting back to me and gave me some diazepam (valium) for those times when I’m so angry or upset or hyper that I think I can’t cope. Just the thought of having something to calm me down when those times come around is fantastic, but I need something that’ll stop this pit of emptiness too.

Eventually the psychiatrist phoned me today, having been prodded by my GP. She’s got an airy-fairy voice that makes me want to stab her with a spoon, but I was polite. I said, ‘Don’t worry’, when she apologised for taking a fortnight to get back to me. She said she wanted to prescribe an anti-depressant – Trazedone – and some psychology.

Great, I thought, I finally have a proper plan of action. That was until I asked her about how long they’ll take to help. The anti-depressants won’t work for at least three weeks, she said, thought I was expecting that. And since they’re just anti-depressants and I’ve tried a lot of those with no success (or with them making me worse), I can’t help but wonder if they’ll help at all, or if after the month they’ll have to change and start me on something else. And, oh, the psychology department will get back to me within a few months.

Months.

Months!

I almost can’t comprehend what’s going on. I’m here living each day as though I might die, struggling to cope with anything at all. Crying, hurting myself, existing through work hoping I won’t snap and do something wrong. Waiting, all the time just waiting for something, anything that can help. These professionals are sitting listening, telling me how awful it must be, saying they understand I’ve had a hard time and telling me they’re there to listen when I’m in crisis but still nothing happens. By the time the drugs or therapy start to work it will have been at least 4-5 months since I sat and told them I want to die and that I’m not coping.

The doctors keep offering me sick notes for work. I keep having to refuse because on the outside everything looks fine and my mum would not stop yelling or ignoring me if I took any time off. She’ll make me panic by saying that I’ll lose my job because of it, and how will I survive? How will I look after my dog and my boyfriend and my house if I take some time off and lose my job?

Sometimes though, I just wish I could relax. I’ve admitted to myself and my doctors and my friends that I’m severely not coping, but only because of her I have to be here, struggling away just like everything is normal. I wonder, if I died, would my mum and the psychiatrist and all the others who’ve hurt me and put me in this position know that they were at fault? Would they feel guilt?

Probably not.

D x

Tags: anxiety, depression, diazepam, doctors, doctors suck, psychiatry, psychology, trazedone, valium