Content Warning: suicidality, death, loss, self-harm, trauma.
I’ve been trying to write about this for weeks. I start a paragraph or so and then feel so lost and despondent in the process and all around me, I can’t continue. I’m tired, I’m really fucking tired. I have come to accept that periodically wanting to die is something that I will always live with. It may not always be active but it’s there lurking in the shadows, waiting to step out into a chink of light and overtake me. I do know that some ‘episodes’ of this are worse than others, some may stay longer than others, some may be acted on, some won’t be, but I hold onto the periods of respite in between and remember that all of them have passed… eventually.
When the whole COVID-19 pandemic broke here in the UK, I was initially still working, still driving 180 mile around trips for work, still seeing clients face to face, still being afforded those few hours of separation from my personal and working life and all important processing space in my car; although it was terrifying not knowing if the next person or surface I came into contact with would make me sick, it was easier to manage than what I have now. I’ve lost that separation and the traumas I work through with people hang heavy in the air of my home, entangling with my own. I have to work 10 times harder to understand if I’m holding onto a strand of my pain or something that doesn’t belong to me but at this moment, lives within me because there’s no where else that’s safe to house it.
I envy those that get to shut their laptop at 5 and walk away from the tendrils of work that wrap and hook and have separation of their own narrative. In my job I don’t have that. The scabs of my trauma rub against someone else’s and the friction between the two makes my scabs sore and weep. Normally I’d have spaces to think about the impact of this or at minimum a colleague would be available to at least distract me. That space is now near non existent. And so I weave through the jelly fish like tendrils that hang from each ceiling of my home, hoping I don’t become entangled or stung because currently there’s no one to help alleviate the burn. Even supervision and therapy, as lucky as I am to have them and as great as they are, bring little – I’m still stuck with it all in my own personal space. My therapist now in my spare room with me.
What’s harder than ever is that on a daily basis I feel like I’m being smashed in the face with some of my rawest traumas via media/social media. There’s no safe place, nowhere to retreat to without something else bubbling to the surface. I continue to function, I continue to work but in my subconscious things take shape without my knowing, until sleep where all is laid bare.
These are the things causing me most difficulty:
I have found in recent weeks, my life following the same mind numbing routine as living on a ward with all of the difficulties of loss of liberty and always having people within arms reach. I feel like I’m constantly waiting for ward round to come to ask about my S.17 leave but it never happens. The consultant’s on leave and no one’s thought to get a locum in. I remember those days of utter detachment from community life and being frightened of returning to it; this is how I feel now. Having spent 2 years of my life barely leaving the house because the world was unsafe, at first I couldn’t understand why people were struggling with it so much and then I remembered how much living in such an isolated world had cost me and is now costing me.
I’m not someone that has lots of friends, I have a few key relationships I maintain and scores of acquaintances that I allow be part of my life at a very superficial level because that’s safest. I don’t really have any family – my brother, in-laws and uncle are the only people I regularly see. When your access to those relationships and connections suddenly have limits they didn’t previously – even when I was in hospital at least I had different people around me and would have visitors – it becomes acutely apparent how much you don’t have or have missed out on through fear. What also becomes apparent is how easily forgettable you are in these different circumstances.
As I wait for my figurative S.17 to be approved and for visiting hours to start, I’ve been on the spousal equivalent of 1:1 observations since March 22nd when I last left the house. I am someone that needs space and quiet while my husband wants to be with me all the time and relentless external stimulation. Although from time to time, I manage to get a little bit of space while I’m working, I’m still sharing that space with someone or something else; often there’s a dog demanding my attention. Even out in the garden there’s the dickhead who’s chosen to work on his VW camper van morning, noon and night every fucking day and quite frankly I’m going to shove that angle grinder up his arse if he does not desist. The suffocation, monotony and no control over external noise is very much the backbone of ward life. And like several of my admissions, I did not choose this, I had no say. You’d think being detained in your own home would be preferable, wouldn’t you… what I’ve found it becomes the perfect storm of all of the things you dislike about yourself and your life being magnified in the worst possible way.
As someone that has previously had to work really hard on fear of contamination after nearly dying from staphylococcus aureus and sepsis, I have found the relentless advice on hand washing/ disinfecting everything in sight a really unhelpful reminder of more problematic points in life. The hand washing and scrubbing until I bled, immersing my hands in the hottest water I could stand until they went numb, a CSA response throwback from not feeling clean. Things that had been addressed and neatly packaged away, now forming part of the tendril canopy I walk under. The evidence people told me I did not have to uphold these compulsions now in every single thing I read and hear. At first it was vindicating that finally the world was having to understand and experience the things that I and so many others have to day after day. Now it’s a fucking millstone around my neck that will drag me down and drown me the next time I need to practice distress tolerance and activate my dive reflex.
I dream of the metronome spaced beeps of ventilators more and more often. Something that has plagued my dreams for the past nearly 19 years since I watched my mother die. Every day is more exposure to that sound I so desperately want to forget. Journos pacing the floors of ICUs, the rhythmic, Darth Vada like gasps from those attached to apparatus. The apparatus that did not save my mother. The smell of alcohol gel makes my stomach turn as I remember stopping to use it at the doors of the ward before and after each visit. The throat drying stench of bleach and disinfectant now my home’s aroma; the smell of hospital. The smell of impending death.
I hear those who can’t be with their parents and feel bad for them but simultaneously almost revel in their separation. Finally you almost know what its like to be essentially parentless. I’ve not heard my mother’s voice or felt her arms around me since 5th September 2001 when she went in for her operation. I’ve not seen my dad for 18 months after seeing him for the 2nd time in 5 years after he decided to finally go ahead with the ultimate abandonment of his children and leave them to flounder as he walked away and set up home with a new family thousands of miles away. Sooner or later life will return to normal and those separated will be reunited; another wave of grief will hit when I am not one of them.
Thursdays had always been my favourite day of the week; I think it’s when I had my favourite lessons and was so tantalisingly close to the weekend, it helped me get to Friday. Now I hate Thursdays. Partly because days don’t mean much anymore but predominantly because I am now reminded of systems that have harmed me, my peers, my clients, my colleagues and my friends and family in so many ways and to seem like I’m a decent human being have to clap for them.
If I could just think of the faceless staff working tirelessly in terrible conditions without adequate support, facing losing their own lives as well as those they love and care for, paradoxically, I don’t think it’d sit so heavy.
What I do see are the faces of those who haven’t believed me, detained me, made assumptions about me, colleagues that have bullied and used me and played a large part in me relentlessly trying to kill myself, the GP that left me to die, the thoracic surgeon that let me bleed out all over the floor until I was nearly dead, the consultant that told my mum she just had bronchitis and there was nothing wrong with her lungs, the nurses that were neglectful and abusive to my dying grandmother as she writhed around in pain while cancer was eating away at her and her fucking GP who ignored our concerns for years. It’s those that I think of. Those utterly undeserving of thanks and applause but will graciously accept it none the less. I want them to be dead. I want them to lose their loved ones and feel the pain and hurt that so many of us have suffered at their hands. And then, my friends and colleagues working in front line roles in both physical and mental health and I just want them to be okay. The louder and bigger these weekly spectacles become, the greater the urge to hurt myself.
Living in a small old industrial town has its challenges, I’m finding the weekly clap making me despise the place and the people in it even more. As they’re out on their doorsteps waving their rainbows, banging their pots and pans and clapping for key workers, I remember that it’s with those very hands the majority of this town, X marks the spot on ballot paper, chose to vote Conservative and for Brexit. The cognitive dissonance astounds and infuriates me and I am left wanting to scream rather than cheer, to repeatedly smash my head off my front door rather than bang saucepans together and tie their trite rainbows around my neck.
The above is an incredibly depressing read, I am aware. I know despite all of this I am lucky. What I’d like to share now is what stupid people who have no idea of what many of us experience need to stop fucking saying.
1) “Get into a good routine/keep your usual routine”
If routine works for you then great, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Don’t let Sally, middle aged, middle class, white woman from Kent with 3 kids, an ‘orangary’ and bakes her own granola bars tell you how you should be living your life. Do what you need to fucking get through. If that means sleeping until 3pm because the world is such a shit show then that’s okay. Needing to sleep is a trauma response, this is fucking traumatic.
2) “If you haven’t got a new skill or learned something you lacked discipline”
Fuck the fuck off. If you’re able to take this time to do something different then fair fucks, props to you. If you haven’t and you can’t remember the last time you brushed your hair or put shoes on, what the fuck ever. Stay alive. If learning to crochet is going to be useful, crack on. Some people might not have the needed support, finances, headspace or physical ability to do so many of the things that people are suggesting. Don’t feel bad for getting through this period however you can.
3) “Stay connected”
This is all well and good if you actually have people to connect with or relationships that are healthy to maintain but what this is creating for many (including myself) is realising the huge space left by those that are not there. Wanting to go back to toxic attachments we’ve worked hard to let go of because it’s ‘someone’. If you want to connect with people and can do so safely then do but don’t let Brad, the life coach from Floria who’s bought his qualification online tell you what you should be doing. Don’t feel guilty for not reaching out to people to keep yourself safe either.
4) “Be creative”
If you’re naturally artsy, good on you. If you aren’t and want to give it a bash, great stuff. What I feel like is again, being on a ward and being told by an activity worker or OT what will help me manage my distress without considering if it will be useful for me, if I can afford it or if its even viable with my arthritic, carpal tunnel riddled hands. Being sweary on the internet is as creative as I get. Do what you want.
5) “Meditate and use mindfulness exercises daily”
I know people that this works really well for and would struggle without it. I however, like many really struggle with it for a long list of reasons. The main one being it doesn’t feel particularly relaxing to be focusing on my breath and my lung that doesn’t work properly feeling like wire wool being prized apart. If it’s helpful and you can do it, by all means utilise it. If you can’t you are no less of a person spiritually, psychologically or physically.
Do what is useful for you. Do what you need to get through. Stay alive.
Something that I’ve found helpful is the content from Mad Covid https://madcovid.com If you’re able, please donate to their fund – they’re providing packages for those living with distress and in hardship.
The world continues as do I but not in the same way. I don’t know if any of us or anything will ever return to what once was.
the main offender 