Turns Out I Wasn't Fixed...

This is one in a series of posts about a breakdown I had in 2010.

The story begins here.

This is what my life feels like... only without the light at the top.

When I return to work, I am still having suicidal thoughts on a daily basis.

One day, I have been plagued by yawns all day. You know that feeling, that if you just lay your head down and close your eyes for five seconds, you'll fall into a deep, delicious sleep? Except every time I try to go to sleep, I fail. That night, frustrated with feeling this offensively, mortally tired, I ransack my stash of pills, and take one of every type I can find. In the middle of my mad scramble for pills, it occurs to me that I could just keep going. I could just end it all now, just take every single pill I can lay my hands on and be done with it. Then that would be it. Then it wouldn't matter if I couldn't sleep. It wouldn't matter that everyone I love always leaves. It wouldn't matter that I'm alone. It wouldn't matter that none of my family gives a shit about me because they're too busy fighting amongst themselves. It wouldn't matter that I am utterly miserable in my own skin. The only reason I stop, and don't go through with it, is that I haven't written a note. I don't want to leave people without an explanation. I am too tired by this point to write anything coherent, so I just lay on my bed and fall asleep.

I am going to work every day, but I am still crying on the way home. I am still drinking vodka in the middle of the day, despite my promises to the GP that it would stop once I went back to work. I am still self harming. I am still turning up for work still dozy from the previous night's cocktail of sleeping pills and whatever else I can lay my hands on. I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, fixed.

As the days go on, I am taking more and more sleeping pills each night. Four, sometimes five. I don't always sleep any better, but I find that I am not so bothered by it; I spend large amounts of time in a weird state between asleep and awake. 

On one day in particular, tired of always being tired but not sleeping, I take five sleeping pills and go to bed. I still wake up at 3am, so I waste no time in taking another four pills and going back to sleep. When I wake at 9, only parts of me wake up. I don't trust myself to stand in the shower, so I tie my hair up and put on some clothes that seem clean. I catch the bus to work because I don't trust my wobbly legs. I buy a large coffee with an extra espresso shot, and wobble my way to work, where I pretty much collapse at my desk. I receive three emails telling me I look rough. My boss asks me why my speech is slurred. And I bump the door frame every single time I get up to go to the toilets.

The big boss comes over to speak to me. He tells me not to worry at all about work; nobody is cross with me and I am not taking the piss. I need to just take my time and things will get better. This is a gruff, middle-aged man from whom you are normally lucky to get a "morning" barked at you as he lopes past in the morning. I almost cry.

When my two hours are up, I walk home. It takes me nearly an hour to walk a journey that usually takes half that. When I finally get home, I lay on the sofa and fall asleep. When I wake up, I sit and stare at the wall.

I am vaguely aware that I appear to be going down hill. I am vaguely aware that the number of burns and cuts on my arms really can't be passed off as clumsy accidents any more. I am vaguely aware that I am taking the piss now. A friend emails me and basically tells me I need to pull my socks up now, and go back to work properly.

I know I am being irresponsible. I know I need to turn myself around and start behaving myself.

But on the other hand, what have I got? A doubled dose of medication, an inability to sleep without chemical intervention, a handful of people who say they are there for me, but are generally busy whenever I actually pluck up the courage to ask them to spend time with me. No chance of any sort of therapy or whatever else sort of help for at least a couple of months.

By this point, it's not that I want to die, so much as that I really can't be bothered to live like this any more. And I don't know how to change that. Everything seems so irreparably futile. 

This is going nowhere; there is no happy ending here.

The next part of the story is here

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