Waiting

Waiting for a phone call that hopefully won’t come.

Waiting for the next appointment with my GP (Monday).

Waiting to see my psychiatrist (Monday).

Waiting, and quietly wishing, that my electrolytes will end up out of whack, I’ll have a heart attack, and that I’ll just drop dead. Over. Gone.

My GP was blunt. Kind, caring, and supportive, but blunt. The ED is entirely out of control. Obs, blind weighing, bloods, and ECG to be done every week until I can increase my food and fluid intake.

I’d be falling over and fainting if I weren’t already on meds to increase my blood pressure. The call that hopefully won’t come is from my GP. An after hours call telling me that my blood work is badly off and I need to go to the local hospital emergency department. It’s happened once before, and hopefully never again.

I’m to use Recovery Record and log every single item I consume. I dread it. I don’t want a list of everything I’ve eaten and drunk in front of me. My GP is insistent. I think she’ll be woefully disappointed.

I don’t even feel like trying. I just want to curl up, fall asleep, and not wake up again. That’d be lucky though. My body, thus far, has been incredibly resilient, and I’m still alive despite nearly two decades of abuse in the form of eating disorder behaviours, self-harm, and overdoses.

 

Promises

I promised my GP that I wouldn’t cancel my appointment this week. That I’d come even if I were feeling terrible.

The promise was made as a safety plan of sorts. A couple of weeks ago I overdosed the night before my appointment with her, then used the app to cancel my appointment. I told her. I was honest.

So now I’m to show up this week without fail. There’s also the silent, un-discussed expectation that I won’t self-harm in any way. No cutting, no overdosing or misusing medication.

I’m holding on. Barely.

The eating disorder is screaming at me. ‘Don’t eat, don’t drink, don’t think, don’t feel’. The same negative mantra it’s screamed for half my life. It is getting the better of me. The eating disorder plans feel safe and familiar. I’m falling into the trap of thinking that if I just follow the rules well enough that everything will be okay.

I know following any kind of ED rules is the quickest way to end up in the local emergency department. Dehydration in combination with my medical conditions is a recipe for disaster.

I don’t see a way out right now though. Going with the eating disorder seems safe and comforting. At least it doesn’t involve binge eating and piling on even more weight. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last nine months. Binge eating so often that I’ve depleted all of my savings. I’m broke from this damn eating disorder. At least restricting is cheap. Plus I’ll lose weight. Winning all round, right?

I know I’m making poor choices. It sounds utterly ridiculous, even writing it all out. This is where I’m at though. Completely emotionally exhausted, overwhelmed, struggling, losing any remaining hope.

Trying to Tread Water

I haven’t written a proper post for close to a year.

That’s how long depression has been kicking my butt. Not constantly. There have been light, happy, joyful moments and days sparsely sprinkled amongst the doom. The doom, however, heavily outweighs any lightness and joy.

Tweaking my antidepressant no longer helps. I suffer horrid side effects when I increase the dose. My psychiatrist is hesitant to change medications, but it’s something I’ll be pushing for soon.

Along with the unrelenting depression has come almost all the unhelpful behaviours you could think of. Aside from alcohol or illicit drug use. I rarely drink, and have never used drugs. I have enough going on physically and mentally without adding unknown substances to the mix!

Self-harm. Multiple overdoses. Binge eating. Not eating. Not drinking water.

The same behaviours over, and over in moments of ‘I can’t do this anymore’.

I had an inpatient psych admission a couple of months ago. It was helpful, and I was discharged in a much better space. However… within a month I’d overdosed and self-harmed.

I’m supposed to be journaling when I feel anxious or otherwise not okay. Journaling instead of leaping into unhelpful behaviours. I did. Once. That stirred up something inside. Flashbacks started, and small, scared chatter began inside.

I shut that shit down and dove headfirst, straight into an unhelpful behaviour.

Damn it. Not unhelpful. Self-harm, overdoses, eating disorder behaviours. They all help in some way, otherwise I wouldn’t be using them. They are helpful, but in a very short-term way, and they have unhelpful consequences. They don’t help me longterm.

I feel like I’m drowning. I’m trying to keep my head above water, but I’m struggling to do that. I keep going under, gulping water instead of air, only to rise again, cough up all the water, and start breathing…. before going under.

I don’t know how to fix this, and I don’t know what would help.

Will Therapy Ever End?

Our current therapist made a comment recently that made my heart sink. They said they thought we’re likely to need, at least, some supportive counselling for the rest of our lives.

The body is in it’s early thirties. If we make it to even eighty, that’s another fifty or so years of therapy. Maybe not weekly like now, but perhaps monthly.

Our current therapist will also be retiring in the near future. We’re trying not to worry too much about that, and trying to focus on getting as much DID focussed work done as possible in the time we have left.

That’s one of the hardest parts about having DID. Finding a therapist who has enough knowledge and experience to actually be helpful to us. In the last eight years we’ve just been lucky to come across therapists who are excellent at working with trauma and dissociation.

We’ve recently spent several weeks in hospital. None of us regret the admission. We got a lot of work done, and nearly all of us were able to talk to our therapist. No easy feat when there’s eighteen of us!

Our therapist is confident that we’ll have the majority of our trauma and DID based work done before they retire. I’m not sure how realistic that is. As much as ongoing therapy (for the rest of my life) makes my heart sink, I also can’t imagine our life without regular therapy or hospital admissions.

Does therapy ever end when you’ve experienced chronic childhood trauma?