Losing Myself

Hello

I have been in a very dark place these last few months, I have to admit that I have been close to giving up on many occasions but that promise I made to myself and again to Emily has kept me here...just. I must admit I have felt very much alone these last few months, alone with my thoughts, alone in my endeavours and left out in the cold. There have been some horrid realisations, for instance do you know how many of my friends have asked me how I am in the last few months?? Of the 600+ people I know on Facebook etc how many of whom have noticed that my posts might have been slightly off, or that I have been a bit quieter of late....? 0 yes zero. I even tried writing lyrics from an Alanis Morrisette song on my Facebook as a kind of cry for help because it was exactly how I felt,

'this is my first raise of my white flag, this is the sound of me hitting bottom'

another hint (as I don't usually post song lyrics either and anyone who knows me properly should have known that this was not a good sign) but the response I got? a lol and again no one asked me if I was okay. The fact that I have retreated from everything, from craft groups, from socialising even that small amount and no one picked up on it. This all just reaffirms to me that no one knows me, no one sees me, cementing that I am invisible feeling and that no one really gets me, not really.

Even the various health care professionals I have reached out to over the last couple of months, acknowledging that I am struggling badly with my mental health, not one of them has asked me that important question you should ask anyone who is struggling with their mental health...'Do you have suicidal thoughts?'

That is mental health check 101 and yet every single one of them failed to ask me that question, one even just dismissed my symptoms instantly as ' oh you are pre menopausal, here's 3 months supply of HRT patches' and that was it, no follow up to check whether it was indeed menopause and I swear she must be on commission for those things, surprise, surprise they did absolutely nothing. Further attempts to get in touch with my gp resulted in 45minute long phone calls on hold waiting only to be told there were no appointments and why don't I ring 111, which after you have spent 45minutes on the phone already even if you weren't already depressed you certainly would be after that and that even the act of being just about upright was an effort, you too wouldn't want to face anymore waiting, so I hung up and carried on, being the tearful wreck that I have been, the barely functioning zombie, trying desperately to find me again...alone.

Nearly a month later and again I tried to get in touch with my gp, again to be told there were no appointments not even telephone ones, at that point I broke down on the phone because I was done, I was barely holding it together as it was and it was yet another rejection, so I got my telephone appointment because she put it down as an emergency...finally. So I have more tablets to take on top of my others and off I go again. Again they never asked me that all important question.

I have felt abandoned by a profession I thought held my heart, ignored by old work colleagues who I thought were friends and lost all confidence in myself. I am a District Nurse with 8 years experience who cannot get a job because I don't say the right buzz words in interviews and cannot even do it on nurse bank even though my compliance is 100% and have done everything they have asked me to do, my old work colleagues have no trust in my skills, the healthboard I worked for, for 6 years does not trust the skills they gave me and laughingly told me they had no time to train me on a system I trained half their staff in and only needed a log on for (which I can't get because I am not a full time member of staff or whom no office seems capable of requesting for me) yet they will give wound care to band 3/4 colleagues who are already under enormous pressure but wont give them to me, wont employ me to do the same and more because they don't have time to have someone watch me insert a catheter once (if they are that worried about me getting the wrong hole then don't give them to me, although lets face it I have a 50/50 chance of getting it right lol)and they could still give me other things that dont require a face to face skills check. So I see these shifts I could be doing for them advertised and yet when I offer my services they miraculously get cancelled or the above excuses come out. This coupled together with not getting parts in various productions has left me second guessing and questioning everything I know and do. I have 2 degrees for crying out loud and yet I feel like an idiot, a failure, not knowing where my future lies and who I am anymore.

Now I question whether I even want to be a nurse anymore and if I am not a nurse what am I? Because of this mental health blip I find myself in I think I would struggle to do anything full time because it takes everything I have to be upright, to act normal and doing anything else on top of that just seems too much. So I have my businesses which I take off to various events on weekends because that I can cope with as its a few hours to do something I enjoy, but again with little to no support from my friends. I even got a bit emotional a few months back because in the time I have been doing this, 1 person I knew actually popped up to say hi at an event I was at and that meant the absolute world to me, but it also reaffirmed that again very few people out there support me, businesses thrive or die on publicity and yet very few people I know have shared or engaged with my businesses.

All these little things needle at me, they feed those dark thoughts of worthlessness, that everything feels pointless, that it is just too hard, it is too much and I should just end it all because the world would be better off without me, because there would be very few people who would even notice if I was not here.

Why am I telling you this? Because we need to do better, we need to be better for each other, we need to ask that important question because you might just be the reason why someone decides to stay alive.

I have felt and still do feel that everything is pointless at the moment but I know that is a symptom of my depression and I am doing my level best to counter it.

I am still here because I am too stubborn to give up, this realisation that the only person I can count on is myself hurt more than anything but I have made my peace with it now and to try and combat my confidence issues I challenged myself to do something completely out of my comfort zone to prove something to myself to try and hit reset and find something of myself by taking a solo trip abroad. In the process it nearly cost me the one person who is my reason for living but it was something I had to do at the time and it helped me regain something of me and thankfully I have been forgiven for taking that drastic step. I also made that all important promise to myself and to Emily that ending my life was something I would not do and yes it has been very hard of late to keep that promise, but it is a promise and I keep promises.

If I am nothing else in this world I am a promise keeper and so I carry on. I do not know what the future holds for me, I am going to look to what I love and hold it tight and hope that something brighter is just around the corner.

Because if there is one thing I am good at, it is starting again, so like the rubber ball I will bounce back and like Cinderella awakening from her slumbers by the fire, I will dust myself down, pick myself up and start again.

Until next time

x

MJ