Get Me Out of My Head

Things at home have been slowly returning to status quo after the weekend from hell.

I saw my GP a couple of days after I last posted. She was of little help. I asked if she could give me an extra PRN oxazepam, or even something different, just for a week or two while I work all of the synthetic crap out of my system, but she said to make do with what I have. Basically, keep on cutting, and they'll keep patching me up.

The nurse was lovely though. She even walked me out to the car after she finished with my dressings, since mum doesn't even come into the waiting room anymore.

Whenever I stop smoking, it hits me like a tonne of bricks just how little I have in my life. It's easy to not think about it when you smoke so much, and it's very confronting when you do have to face it.

This is probably a good time to mention - I'm doing much better this week - as far as smoking goes, at least. I haven't smoked anything but tobacco since the weekend from hell. A little over a week mightn't sound like much, but this is pretty much the longest I've gone without in years (with the exception of hospital admissions).

As it tends to happen, though, one coping mechanism is quickly replaced by others. Not only is, ED-head in overdrive, but the urges to self-harm and OD have been unbelievably strong and impulsive. Twice, while making coffee, I've ended up pouring boiling water straight from the kettle onto my hand and arm.

There is a huge urge to OD, just to get out of my head and stop feeling for a little while. There is nothing to dull my senses anymore, and I'm feeling every ounce of pain amplified. It's time like these I suppose I should be grateful for my GP's insistence on daily dispensing. There are rarely leftovers because I'm so desperate by each medication time, skipping them to stockpile is simply not an option.

Since my first OD at the age of 12, medication has been heavily supervised and generally kept hidden from me, apart from a few things like antibiotics, prednisolone and basic ibuprofen. One night, I spotted my brother's hypertension meds sitting on the bench. My head started spinning, wondering if they'd drop my blood pressure to dangerous levels. In a moment of impulsive clarity, not wanting yet another ambulance call-out, I pretty much threw them into mum's room and said she should probably hide them.
  "Otherwise, cutting won't be the worst thing to happen to me tonight."

I regretted it almost immediately. But they're gone now.


Things at home have still been very stressful though. For one, mum will no longer pick up groceries for me, and I just can't get to the supermarket anymore. I ended up making a delivery order when payday rolled around, but in the days before, knowing I couldn't get groceries, I spent the last of my food money on a four-bottle buy of wine - because we could just go through the drive-through and I didn't have to get out, and it was an easy exit from my head for a couple of hours.


Saturday was a bit of a disaster, and in the end, narrowly avoided mum calling another ambulance. I think it's safe to say I've not been the most stable of late.

It was election day, and mum made sausages for lunch. For those who don't know, it's a bit of an Aussie tradition to have sausage sizzles at voting stations - 'democracy sausages', they call them. Since I vote via post due to agoraphobia, I've never had the pleasure of joining in, and I was a bit surprised when I emerged from the lounge room to find a pan of sausages sizzling away. My mum, brother and I sat and watched the election coverage on TV as I weighed up my sausage in bread, and I decided it was the perfect excuse to crack a bottle of wine at midday.

Things were going well for a while, despite the constant tension in the house. It was only when mum started freezing the chicken tenderloins she'd bought at the butcher that morning that the shit hit the fan. Usually, she'll wrap up a few seperately for me, and I pay her back. This week, though, she wouldn't.

In my head, that equalled her obviously not wanting me to eat. And I lost it.

I went back into the kitchen and, having had a few glasses of wine (which probably makes me far too bold and fancy-free for my own good), I stuck my tongue out, picked up a piece of chicken, and rubbed it all over my tongue right in front of her.
  "That's disgusting!" she screamed "Why would you do that?!"
  "Because I hope I get fucking sick."

Things only escalated from there. That night, I was really upset over dinner, and sat outside in my armchair crying as they ate. When mum came out, I couldn't stop the tears, and so bolted inside and locked myself in the bathroom.

I kept hitting my head against the wall, which, if you don't already know, is probably my current self-harm method of choice. Mum yelled through the door, to 'stop damaging her house'. Her care for a solid wall over my head only upset me more, and I kept banging, banging, banging. After a while, my negative self-talk mantras turned to a stutter. My head was bleeding.

Mum got worried at the stuttering, and got a knife to jimmy the lock open. When she got in, she saw the wall covered in blood splatters and smudges, and freaked out. She thought I'd cut myself, and kept demanding to see where. I was still crying hysterically, curled up in a defensive ball, and just pointed at the side of my head.

I kept telling her to leave me alone, that I'd stopped damaging her house.
  "I don't care about my house - I care about my daughter!"
But you can probably see why I didn't believe that.

After a while of back-and-forth, she helped me up and down to the couch. She gave me some of those hidden 500/30 paracetamol/codeine painkillers, and I sculled (skoled?) about a liter of Coke Zero straight from the bottle. Slept like a rock.

The next morning I awoke with a lump and a decent chunk of dried blood in my hair. Amazingly, no headache, though it's sore to the touch. I did consider trying to get an emergency appointment at my GP's clinic, but when I thought about it, it didn't seem there was much they could do besides send me for an MRI, and I've already got one coming up this month. The bleeding stopped by the time I got to the couch, so it's not like I needed stitches, either.


Now, I'm resting, and waiting to see if salmonella sets in from the raw chicken incident. In retrospect, it was a really stupid thing to do, but that self-harming part of my brain just wanted to make myself really damn sick.

I honestly don't know if I'm more stable on or off synthetics.


Also, I really wanted to say thank you to you all for your feedback on my last post.

I fully anticipated losing a couple of followers, but I think it's an important message to get out there, no matter how you may judge me. It's been too big of an issue with my mental health to just omit it or glaze over it like I did for so long. Like I said in my last post, I hope my experiences with synthetics can have a positive influence on even just one person.

#democracydoggage

My coffee splurge

 I finally bought myself a wine rack

The Bar

xxBella