Breakdown Story: Signed Off

This is part of a series of posts about the nervous breakdown I had in 2010. 

The story begins here

Around this time I got my neck pierced for a third time.

I go to the doctor; she signs me off for one week. I walk home, deliberately slowly, thinking, what do I do now?

When I get home, I repeat the previous evening's actions, only with more crying, and more drink. Then, in an attempt to help myself, I call a friend and meet him at the pub, where I proceed to get even more drunk. He tries to help, to say the right thing, but he doesn't know what the right thing is, and neither do I. When the pub closes I walk home. In the dark, on my own, along a poorly-lit path across the meadows. Part of me hopes to be attacked, then I would have a reason to feel like this. It doesn't happen. I know I am being irresponsible, and I don't much care.

I feel like I'm heading down a road that only goes one way, and I don't know how to get back from it. On the one hand, that scares me. On the other though, I'm just sort of resigned to the fact this sort of thing will probably not end in a good way. I've had 29 years of feeling like I'm surplus to everyone's requirements; I don't think it really matters what happens next.

The next morning I wake up and have a strange feeling. There is no work today. No reason to get out of bed. I don't have to get dressed, if I don't want to. And I find that I don't want to. It doesn't feel liberating though, as one would expect. At the moment I feel completely trapped by my life. I wander aimlessly about the house. Daytime TV is seemingly made for people like me. Nothing too taxing. Nothing you would need to think too much about, or pay too much attention to. It plays in the background while I stare out the window.

Is 11am too early for a drink? Well, it's not like I have to be anywhere... I pour a drink. And then another. There's a knock at the door; it's a man from IPSOS Mori, wanting me to fill in a survey of my radio listening over the next week. I pretend to listen as he stands in my messy kitchen, politely showing me how to fill in the survey. He carefully moves a dirty plate out of the way so that there's space for the form on the work surface. He pretends not to notice the toast crumbs and general mess everywhere. I try to smile and look normal, but I'm aware that I'm in my pyjamas in the middle of the day, barefoot and stinking of booze. What must he think? I find that i don't care. I just need to say whatever he wants to hear to make him leave so that I can lock the door behind him and go back to hide under my duvet on the sofa. I take the forms and smile and will him to leave. 

The next few days are a blur. The only people I see or speak to are when I drag myself down to the shop for provisions. I often look up and realise an entire day has passed, and I've no idea what I've been doing. Each week on a Friday morning I get myself dressed and wander to the doctor's surgery. She gives me a new sick note, and I take it to work. I text my boss when I'm almost there, and he meets me outside. We make polite conversation. He has a look like a worried parent. I tell him I'm fine and then leave. I feel like a fraud being off work when I don't have a broken leg or appendicitis. I feel like I must look like I'm taking the piss, outside getting a tan in my shorts and vest while they are all stuck in an office. Later I am told that I actually looked more like I was recovering from some terrible illness.

I find a notebook and make a list of people who will need to be told when I am found. Then I make a list of things that will need to be sorted out: bank accounts, bills, a hire locker at the gym that's full of kit, a website where I half-heartedly maintain a blog, the back garden (sorry). On the next page I put the header, "Reasons to carry on." I sit and stare at it for a while. It remains mockingly blank; I cannot think of a single reason. I feel like a burden to everyone around me. My family don't care about me; they're too busy fighting amongst themselves. I have a couple of people you could probably call friends, but nobody I can call in the middle of the night when I can't sleep and I'm scared I've gone crazy. Nobody would really notice if I disappeared. It would probably be a week or more before my body was found - until my sick note ran out and work tried to get hold of me. 

I feel like there is a poison inside of me that just drives people away. It might take them a while to notice it, but eventually they do, and then they run. I've tried everything I can think of to make it stop. I try my hardest to be good and nice but they still leave. I must just be a bad person. Unlovable. There is no logical explanation. I am unloved and unlovable. It's only reasonable that, faced with all the damning evidence, I draw the conclusion that I need to end this. I need to die. There is no point in my continuing.

I begin to say these things to the people I talk to. People I work with at the local pub on a Saturday sit in stunned silence as I tell them that really, for me to die now would be the best option; I am not going to get any better, and it would be kinder to the people I love to have them mourn me for a while and get over it, than to put up with me like this for the next 60 or so years, with this horrible sense of obligation towards making sure I was ok. I tell them that if my illness was physical, like Cancer or Motor Neurone Disease, people would be fine with me going to Switzerland and dying, but because it's inside my head I have to soldier on, and it's just not fair. As if there is some sort of suicide-prejudice against mental health issues. 

At first they try to talk me out of it. Eventually, they just get used to me telling them I have it all planned, and that I might not be here next week. I'm not saying this for effect. I'm not saying it so that they'll try and stop me. I'm saying it because it's the only thought in my head, the only thing I am capable of saying, the only thing that makes any sense. Death really is the only option. I'm vaguely aware that the things I'm saying are shocking to the people around me, but I seem to have misplaced that part of my brain that censors this sort of thing. I blurt out inappropriate comments where most people would make polite conversation. Normal people. People who are not like me. I occasionally get half-way through a sentence and realise that my topic of conversation is inappropriate, kind of like when you're drunk and suddenly, through the haze, you realise you're talking too loudly. But I'm powerless to stop it.

Apparently decreased inhibition is a side effect of most antidepressants. Which would be fine, if they stopped you from being depressed - and then you could chat away uninhibitedly about how the sjy is blye and the grass is green and aww shucks ain't everything just grand. As it is, the side effect of decreased inhibition is teamed with the side effect of suicidal ideation, so you find yourself obsessed with killing yourself, and unable to keep from blurting it out to anyone you speak to.

So far the side effects from the Prozac seem to be harder to deal with than the depression they were prescribed to treat. An antidepressant that makes you entirely preoccupied with murder of the self. How very ironic. Someone call Alanis, quick. Apparently (according to the doctor) the knowledge that it's just a side effect of the drugs should make me less inclined to follow up on any of the thoughts that enter my head on an almost hourly basis. I wander around, completely overwhelmed by what goes on around me. It is utterly exhausting to have to make decisions, cross roads, appear normal, act lik I don't want to just throw myself under the first available truck.

How did I cope with my life until a few months ago when it fell apart? Have I just lost something I had before? I feel like something in my head has snapped irreparably, and no amount of drugs or ridiculous cognitive behavioural therapy will succeed in sticking it back together again. It's just broken, and this is just how it is now.

To be continued...

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