Guilt

I was thinking today about all the things I feel guilty about. There are quite a lot, so I decided to make a list.

• being overweight & unable to lose it
• being a crap mum
• shouting at the kids
• not being a good wife
• having been a terrible daughter
• not earning a living
• not contributing to the family
• feeling so down all the time
• hating myself
• feeling depressed, when there are other people who don't have half of what I have, who are happy with their lot
• keeping secrets
• feeding my family healthy food, but not being able to sit and eat with them
• being grumpy
• being distant
• being anti social
• self harm
• not being sure of my faith, but making my children come to church with me anyway
• not being able to accept compliments
• wasting professionals time

So there are just few of the things I feel guilty about. Don't really know what I have achieved by making a list, but now I can see them there, I do see that I have a lot of guilt.

I'm going to see the specialist trauma team at the weekend. I feel guilty about that too.

Trouble is, I don't remember a time when I didn't feel guilty. Even as a little girl I felt guilty about even being alive. I was told from as far back as I can remember that I was unplanned & had come at a very inconvenient time & made things very hard for my parents.

If someone waved a wand and magicked away my guilt, I don't think there would be anything of me left.

Hard Day

It all started with me taking the children to school. The small one wanted to show everyone the bandage on my wrist - he kept pulling my sleeve up. I was mortified. It strikes me as odd the folks who say that self harm is attention seeking, as those who do it go to such extreme lengths to hide it. I have woven a story involving a broken plate and clumsy catching - it's so convincing I almost believe it myself. I then had to go back to A & E to get myself checked out.

I sat in the car for 20 minutes trying to psych myself up to go in. I eventually crept in and took my place in the queue. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, and a kind voice asking if I was ok. It was my Mental Health Social Worker. Often these people get a bad press, but I think this is often unfair. She has been off sick since October, so I have had to see random other people in the interim. I'm not keen on new people - I tend to withdraw and clam up, not ideal when you are supposed to be talking. She was so kind this morning, taking the time to talk to me and reassure me. But still I feel guilty about using up professionals time. After my wrist had been checked the nurse marched me off to the Mental Health Department, as she was not happy that I was still refusing to see the plastic surgery team. All of a sudden my MH SW appeared. She is still off sick, but again took the time to talk to me. She is back to work tomorrow and has already booked me in to see her. I feel terrible taking up her time when she is on a phased return.

I feel so very sad about the way I feel. Lost almost, joyless.

Failure

So I cut. Again and again. Then I panicked. One cut was really big & deep. I made it worse and worse. It wouldn't stop bleeding. I knew I had to seek help - but how the hell was I going to explain away what I'd done? It was plainly obvious - right on the edge of my wrist. I know - smashed plate. There are advantages to being incredibly clumsy - people will believe anything of me - even the far fetched tale of clumsiness that I concocted.

At A & E they were so kind. I didn't really want kind, I wanted them to shout "time waster" "idiot" "attention seeker" But the nurse was gentle and took the time to talk to me. He listened and said I didn't need to say sorry - but I did need to apologise, over and over again. Then he scared me witless by declaring that he thought I had cut through a tendon. OMG I nearly threw up when he said that. He said it needed stitching, but he was reluctant to do it, as I really needed to see the plastic surgeon. At that point I could have sunk through the floor - I really didn't mean to waste anyone's time - certainly not specialists, dealing with people with real and genuine injuries. The unit is over an hour away - I just couldn't do it. So I had to self discharge against medical advice. I feel so bad. He was so kind and thorough, and I rejected his kindness.

So here I sit. Bandaged. Damaged. Lost.

Urges

And so the urges go on. I'm sat here in the pitch black - terrified to put the light on. If I put the light on, then I'll be able to see. If I can see, then I can find my sharp things, then I can cut, and cut and cut. Really bleed - that is the only relief I get at the moment. Seeing the damage I can inflict on myself. It must sound really weird to someone who has never self harmed. But to me, it's the norm. It's the only way that I can feel real emotions. Unfortunately the emotions I feel are negative, and are directed purely at myself, but it's better than nothing I suppose.

Everyone is sleeping, all I can hear is the ticking clock. Each tick says "cut, cut, cut" but my head is saying "don't" the inner battle is so difficult and I really just want to sleep. Maybe forever, but maybe to wake up in a place where I feel happy and content, and my inner demons are banished for good. That would be nice. Please let me find it someday.

Faith, Plans & Shame

I have spent all day planning how to self harm tonight, in a way that can be explained away as accidental. I can't get the thoughts out of my head. They have been at the back of my mind whilst I cooked, cleaned, ironed. I thought about ironing my hand, but I'm not sure even I could explain that away as pure clumsiness. Self harm makes a terrible liar out of one. "Silly me" "I'm so clumsy" and so on. Unfortunately, anyone catching a glimpse of all the scars would probably be able to work out that this woman is more than clumsy.

I went to church today. I go most weeks, but this week I didn't take the children. I am really struggling with my faith at the moment. My darkest hours feel so lonely, I don't get any sense / feeling of God at all. It's an empty feeling. Lonely. Like my life. As we sang hymns and read prayers I was desperately trying to feel God - the Almighty, the one who will save us - but nothing. I am just a cold empty shell of a woman. I wonder if that is why self harm seems so important in my life - it's a way of feeling something - anything is better than nothing. Pain beats numbness, at least there is a feeling there.

One website I use makes a lot of noise about distraction - things you can to do distract you from self harming. Have a bath, do a crossword, make a drink, colour a picture, and so on - all very safe activities - but nothing that makes you feel something. Whether it's the initial pain or the shame and self hatred that inevitably follows - at least you can feel.

I am going to do it. I just haven't decided how, yet.

Friends

I was asked this week about my friends, what I did with the youngest child when we went to other people's homes? I was very embarrassed to admit that actually, I don't have any friends any more. Not the close, being able to talk to type friends. I have always been on the anti social side, but now, I appear to be a complete hermit. No friends to speak of, my world revolves around my husband, children & their needs. My only friends are virtual friends, people I have met online, in the forums where anonymity is a shield for my being. Imagine, a 43 year old mother of 3. A governor at the children's school, very active on the PTA, sitting for hours on end, talking to strangers online - yet she can't pick up the phone and tell someone who has known her for years, just how bad she is feeling.

I self harmed this week. It has been a couple of months since my last episode, but the urges have been there. I am now trying to explain away the terrible mess I have made of myself. The cuts are large and quite open, but I am too ashamed to seek medical help - taking up the time of health professionals whose time should be spent with people who deserve help. So I console myself with the faceless internet. People who say kind things - like, "you're a lovely person" But they don't really know that, it is gleaned from an online persona, designed to hide the flaws, the real person behind the words.

I have met people from the internet (I know, I know!) they were lovely - not 30 stone truckers or axe murderers! Real, genuine people, with their own set of problems, but who too find solace in talking online.

So for now, they are my friends. I bare my soul and talk about some of my darkest feelings. I don't even know if it helps, but I am very thankful for my online friends, and they'll probably never know just how thankful I am.

Ending it

I came closer this Sunday just gone, to ending my life, than I have done for a long time. Being a parent is hard. It's not just hard, it's tiring, exhausting, humiliating and many other emotions that feel amplified when you are in the Mum role.

Parenting a child with additional needs is challenging. It can be rewarding and exciting, but at the moment it is mostly devastating. To all those that say ADHD is a made up label to excuse bad behaviour - come and live in my house for a week. It is a very real, and extremely distressing condition - not just for the sufferer, but for the sufferer's family. Couple it with autism and you have a little chap who can't stop moving, but can't tell you why. You have a child so delightfully loving and yet so horrendously violent & vicious. You never know who you are going to wake up to.

His siblings are fiercely protective of him, but loathe him in equal measure. His behaviour towards them can be of a devoted disciple or a hitting, biting, pinching demon. They are not old enough to understand why he does these things, and are coming to hate the little boy they really want to love as their brother. It is so difficult as a parent - I am accused of "making excuses" for his behaviour, I am told that I am soft on him. But, being angry / upset / annoyed with him has no effect - he doesn't care. He really genuinely doesn't care - because at the moment he doesn't have that capacity. He is locked in this autistic state, where he is the centre of the universe, and it all revolves around him and his needs. Other peoples needs or emotions do not feature in his world.

I am feeling particularly inadequate at the moment. As a wife, mother, as a human really. It feels that things are slipping out of my control and I am clinging on to life with the tips of my fingers. I go through the daily motions, packed lunches, clean clothes, clean children, healthy diets for them, but deep down inside I am numb, dead almost. I have a headache that just won't shift and I wonder if today will be the day that I fall asleep and don't wake up. Released from the weight of life, allowed to be free.

I often wonder what it feels like to be happy. I can't really remember ever feeling really happy - really carefree. I think back to the frightened little girl hiding in the wardrobe in the dark, desperate to be invisible, and realise that those feelings are all still there, that actually I still want to be invisible, not noticed, unseen. If no one could see me then maybe I wouldn't exist, maybe this oppressive feeling of depression would lift.

I have to stay in this world for my children, I could not leave them wondering why their mummy left them, worrying it was something that they had done or not done. I brought them into the world, I have to be here for them.

But sometimes it would be nice to be free. To be happy. To be a real person.