wanting to die so much but scared of death.

[domesticgodless]

Hi all I'm sorry to darken your mornings with this no doubt with the rain it's dark enough already :)

I just want so much to die and cant' because I have the children. I can't really explain how I feel. It gets assessed as 'severe depression' but I also have this gnawing agitation inside.

I'm afraid of pain but keep fantasising about becoming ill and dying so it would not be my fault I were dead... or shooting myself in the head just to be free of this pain.

I have tried contacting crisis teams etc before but no real help they just send me to a psychiatrist who gives me more drugs that rot my brain and don't work.

I am a human writeoff some of us aren't meant to live. I know this. I also know it's depression, others worse than me feel justified in being alive, but my depression is chronic and rarely lifts. I brought a lot of it on myself too by shocking and abusive behaviour in the past.

The only thing keeping me alive is that my eldest son would miss me so much however shit I am. I only have him 3 days per week and live for that time. My youngest son recently refused to look at me when I went to drop something off at his dad's. We were out with his dad (school stuff) at weekend and he clung to his father repeatedly saying 'daddy daddy I want to come back with you I like you' etc.

I always felt a bad mum tbh. A terrible one. Also came out of an abusive relationship which I still miss. I even wanted to be friends with the sod but he refuses to be friends saying I must see that everything was all my fault and then we can start again :D heheh.

Everything has closed down for me, I'm terrified. I am getting phobic becoming scared of inanimate objects because they are empty and dead inside just like me.

I don't know what the hell to do

A very high powered job then. No you didn't offend me about "certified loony" and I more than half knew that you were being ironic. It's just I have the need to challenge it even from people who are mentally ill!! My friends sometimes call me "Mrs Rochester" which makes me laugh!

I'm on the edge of giving it up a lot of the time esp cos of the 90 min commute (2 plus hours by train) which is pretty undoable if you're already cracking up. I am quite good at holding it together while teaching. It's everything else that's going to hell.

I sometimes quite like the 'madwoman' tag- used with a bit of irony. But not as a term of abuse as I've had it used against me to discredit all my decisions etc :(

Oh and to exempt xP from any responsibility whatever for what went wrong in our relationship :(

After his vile email yesterday he started sending me pics of his day (?!) and complaints about his workload and an eye infection. WTF??

I'm an academic too. :)

As it happens, I cracked up completely just after exams began. I think I let myself do it then. That said, I think your uni is being illegal unreasonable. Get your GP to write you a vehement sick note. They HAVE TO SORT OUT COVER. It is NOT YOUR PROBLEM. It's THEIRS. My Gp wrote that nobody was allowed to bug me to find my own cover. That put the fear of God into them.

This job we do is INCREDIBLY stressful because management is so poor, and all of them just take advantage all the time. I was working 7am till after 10pm every day including Sunday. Bastards. Take the space you need to get better. You matter.

oh god so did I sieglinde!!

The marking sent me over the edge :) happens to us all I think but I really lost it. Sent a few emails I shouldn't have (not angry just freaking out) and one went to entire staff list :D you have to laugh. Now 60% of the staff completely ignore me as I'm clearly a 'loony' so work has become a very lonely place. My life in London is also lonely, divorce means I can't afford to live where my kids go to school plus it's a private school (at stipulation of ex) so the parents are v unfriendly and right wing anyway and I don't fit.

While at work, as I can't often manage the 90 min commute there and back in a day due to illness and loony working hours, I stay in a b and b. More loneliness. I am sure all this has been eroding my sanity. Last year I just went slowly mad and I haven't got out of it.

I decided to come out about being ill- why should I be ashamed? And lost 80% of my 'friends'. Not like I ever demand free counselling etc or ask them for things. I guess they think depression is a personal failing and may contaminate them in some way.

Yes some of my friends also academics have been saying 'this is not a job conducive to sanity'. I am bumping along the bottom as unable to publish much. So get channelled into the shit jobs eg 'academic advisor' writing references and reading essays for students I don't teach.

Yeah the thing is I've now told work I want to go back FT?! So can't blame them for doing it. Luckily this year it will only be until December, as I have research leave after that.

I'm actually dreading the research leave as just can't seem to do research and feel so fucking useless.

At least it's a nice day today and my crazed despair has retreated to a ball of fear in my chest which I carry all the time. It's my first feeling on waking.

oh god, DG, I so sympathise. Study leave often sends people over nowadays. It doesn't do bad things to me because I find it easy to think of things to do, but I'm not pulling in enough grant money, I'm told.

In my case what finally tipped me into madness was my fascist evil demon boss. But it could just as well have been something else.

I have lived in EXACTLY the circs you describe - snooty private school parents, check. B and B accommodation during the week, check. Colleagues deciding you are untouchable, check. However however, here's my 0.05 p.

If you are under 40, and you really don't like research either, get out now and retrain as anything else. Accountant, lawyer, anything. keep the job going while you do. Don't worry any more about performance indicators and the blah blah shit they pull.

If you are over 40, emulate your male colleagues, and do what you have to to avoid actual disciplinary action. Show up to class and smile a lot and give them lots of presentation work to do. Show up to meetings and smile and nod. Show up to events and smile and nod. They may not like you, but you don't have to like them. Work is the place they pay you to go. Wear the mask; don't let it wear you. And get your meds sorted. :)

I am a mere 4 months under 40 :D and used to BE an accountant heheheh. I really didn't like the right wing ethos there and holy god the work was so dull. Like an entire day of departmental meetings and admin every day.

but then at least one didn't have to answer 5/6 stupid emails every day (you know who from :D) and be told one is utter sh*t for not working 80 hours per week for crap pay and ego gratification.

I dont' mind the teaching and am apparently good at it. My research such as it is is OK. But not enough research, and NO grant money at all. Disabled under equality act = not exactly a good hire for most places. So I am bumping along the bottom and have to commute the 90 mins, since not much chance of another job in academia closer to home (London) either.

I had the fascist evil demon boss last year, pulled me in for disciplinary action regarding forms not brought to meetings, mistakes made by my previous institution re teaching certification, blah blah. I got union involved. She had been bullying a couple of other 'misfits' too and finally left in despair at us all. I think she had a breakdown actually. She lacked empathy to the extent that although she had been off work for depression a couple of times she bullied those in her department who suffered from it.

I totally lost it. However boss this year is way nicer and I'm still losing it but I think this is down to the abusive wanker I can't get my mind free of.

apologies to those reading this who think 5/6 emails a day isn't bad. I actually get more like 50 a day but 10% will be of such mindboggling entitlement, laziness and usually rudeness that I want to walk out of my job straight away. :(

I get 70+ emails a day in termtime, not counting spam, and the little shits dearly beloveds complain if I my reply isn't in their intrays in 60 minutes.

Yep, the point is not the no. of mails, but how long the answers have to be. Graduate students feel shortchanged by fewer than three paragraphs. Including paragraphs putting in writing what you just told them orally. But it's not ok just to email them, as this is 'phoning it in'. :( Everything has to be done three times.

Dunno, DG. Could you do accountancy for small businesses or charities instead of for Morgan Whosit?

I too think the fascist evil demon is mainly in my head - he's been forced to back off, but he is still there.

LOL @ fascist evil demon in the head! Oh yes! We internalise it. Freud got it right about the superego eh.

Yes we had a sort of 'supercomplaint' from our students about non-response to ALL their emails (most are of course answered)... 80% of which could be answered by a cursory glance at the syllabus. When one of my colleagues responded 'but many student requests are completely unreasonable' there was a stunned silence from the powers that be. Hard to contradict that one.

I don't have graduate students yet but some of my more gifted undergraduates are like that. They expect 24 hour personal supervision and are terrified they have missed something vital in what you said. I also find they latch on to weird things and get obsessive. For instance I made the mistake of saying to my best undergraduate, 'great dissertation, I think it's publishable'. He then demanded to know a. why in that case it didn't get 80% b. exactly what was wrong with it not to get 80% c. exactly what he needed to do to get published. I'm still getting tetchy emails from him and he's left now!!!

It's just a job where no good deed goes unpunished. Research 'stars' ignore the students and foist them onto the 'people people' like me (who ends up feeling sorry for the poor sods starved of a future as they are and ill prepared by school). Then when you give them a bit they want more more more. I

I did get a nice 'best teacher' mug last year though :D

charity work would be my next port of call. But I'd earn half what I do now starting out- even on my crappy lecturer's salary. It would be in London tho I guess....

accountancy is out, I know there are some things worse than academia :D

Well, good to know there are worse things. I once worked in a meat-packing factory

yy the grabby students. yyy the more you give the more they want from you. yyyy the weird admin people. I had to point out to fascist boss's second-in-command that not all student comments on comments forms are valid complaints. . And the demand that everyone get a 1st and that nobody ever be criticised unless they are failing, put together.

Because I'm at Oxford almost everyone is a research star, but only people with a one year plus money grant get much out of being one. Why we chase the money I don't know. it doesn't go to us, and it doesn't go to the students either. The dept that came top in my subject in the last REF got a 20%+ budget CUT. Yet all the little admin people run around acting as if research can save them from something or other.

god these are Oxford students?! I guess they would be more demanding- but I also assume you don't get the type of emails going 'hi yeah u didn't tell us what to do for next wk and I've got a job interview the day of the exam can u change it for me pls' (only not spelt as well as that)? And unsigned.

They just drive me effing mad.

I really don't think university administrators know what the hell is going on in their institutions. Management so rarely does and how much more when they are trying to 'manage' activities that are mentally beyond them. I just read David Smail on that, so true. They try to dumb everything down and 'rationalise' it all which only lowers standards. They are suspicious of actual staff as suspect them of knowing things they don't; this cannot be admitted so staff must be denigrated and patronised at every opportunity.

Managerialism is the 1980s curse that won't go away.

Btw I am actually going to announce first thing in my seminars next week that I will not be answering emails when the answer is in the module or seminar outline.

One of my friends did that and a student complaint was upheld against her. She was told she should have replied to each email advising them what the course literature said. (By evil fascist head of school now departed). But sod it I don't care. I'm not teaching the little dears anything by spoonfeeding and infantilising them.

bless you, DG. This has been so nice, in a weird way. I feel comforted.

My students are perfectly capable of asking me things that are in the Handbook, and complaining if I say 'it's on p.77' instead of going over it with them.

hehehehe. Me too sieglinde.

Btw how were your august institution about actually giving you sick leave/covering your teaching etc?

What future do students think awaits them in the Real World (TM)?

I think they don't, tbh. I feel bad for many of them. They're walking out into a huge steaming pile of economic shit with no compass and no proper preparation. The measurement-obsessed school system fails them, and then we are instructed to fail them further by treating them as little consumers who must not be inconvenienced by having to work too hard.

This is why I often find myself delivering a sort of motivational speech in my seminars peppered with nuggets of digestible homespun wisdom a la Alan Sugar. 'If you don't want to work you shouldn't be here... I don't need to do the work I've got my degree already...' blah blah blah.

It's all a pile of shit no wonder we're depressed :D xx

My august institution is fine now the GP has shouted at them seventeen times and sent them furious faxes.

My AI (shorter form) has the same students as everywhere else. Only they bloody know they are in clover, because even the average ones can walk in to great jobs. Ten years after graduation they earn five times what I earn. This includes the ones who plagiarise every essay and say when called on it that it's their right to have a good time while they are young... of course one can't write references that tell the truth, either :)

I too feel bad for many of them, but they are so ferociously demanding that I think it's a hobby I can no longer afford. I shall simply lie through my smiling teeth, tell them how faaabulous they are.

Some of them actually are, too. Fabulous, I mean. Incredibly hardworking, astoundingly bright. They keep me going. But the system now works to dumb them down too. Yes, even here.

It's a giant fucking pile of merde, isn't it?

God really? When I was at Oxford we were pushed extremely hard- indeed too hard in my opinion (eg learn ancient Greek in 2 years and catch up with the public school boys who've learned it in 12; read entirety of extant Greek literature once 'learned'; etc) but it did leave me with ingrained habits of independent thought. This is what I'm really not seeing in my students (most of them).

I just refuse to write references for students I haven't taught or who have plagiarised, been rude, failed to attend, etc. They can sue me.

I walked into a so-called 'great' job in my 20s which would now earn me 5x what I earn, probably. It was boring as all hell, and the TOTAL immersion in managerial BS and petty office politics just blew my mind. You are perhaps not missing as much as you think :)

I'd recommend you read David Smail's The Nature of Unhappiness if you haven't. Says it all and by god I felt better. I realised that for sure I'm not crazy. It's just the world :D

It would be great to meet up for a moan chat if you're ever in London or Kent. xx

When did they increase the dose?

IME I feel horendous for the first 5/6 weeks, then feel better. Are you still in thse first few weeks?

yes oranges I am actually. I have felt a bit better the last few days. Cut out wheat which may be helping. (I was bloated all the time and I read that wheat can affect mood)

However being bipolar my mood can 'switch' without warning.

DG, the meds will work, but you have to let them. It does take ages for some of us, depending on how low we got :(

I have just ordered the Smail. Thanks for that!

Yes, Oxford used to be just as you describe, and structurally it still can be in some subjects and in some colleges, but the new generation of arseholes management are keen to avoid lawsuits and complaints above all, and inevitably this is leading to dumbing-down.

What kept the old system in place - and lord knows it had its downside - was the complete autonomy of the tutor. In a world of complaint, that no longer applies. We're now expected to procure a 1st for everyone who might hope for one. If they don't get the first, it's our fault. even more if they don't get a 2.1.

The old idea that we offer them stuff and they choose how to respond is very much over. I have colleagues who are themselves all but writing graduates' work for them. I've refused to do this, repeatedly... and then the complaints begin.

Sorry I've not read all, but glad to see you've made a connection with sieglinde here.

As spiritual thinking seems to appeal but you are clearly liberal in your beliefs I wanted to suggest going to a Quaker meeting one Sunday morning - but I see wolf got there first with that idea. As she said there's plenty of lefty feminists amongst those you'd meet.

Glad things are looking up a little for you in last few days. Hope things will continue to brighten for you x

hi all, feel a bit back on the downward slide today. Missing my vile abusive ex and feel extremely lonely and as if I'll be alone forever blah blah (yes I know get the violins out.) Everything seems grey and pointless.

The psychiatrist asked me how I was and I said 'intermittently suicidal and having panic attacks'. The conversation then turned immediately to medication, where it then stayed until I was dismissed. There's really something very wrong with our paradigm of 'care', isn't there....

Yes I will try to find the local Quakers. I am not good at getting out of the house except to wander around disconsolately or go places with kids.

Sieglinde that's sad to hear re. Oxford. I 'missed' a first myself (tutors were up in arms), and would never have dreamed of complaining, it was entirely down to me (depression too, but that wasn't diagnosed then).

Interesting, the fear of complaints has also reached us but I wonder if it is a middle class thing that increases with achievement/expectation? We get a few per year but it has not yet (for most staff) begun to affect policy too excessively, particularly since that ridiculous case where the guy from Nottingham sued the IT dept for not 'giving' him a 2:1 and the judge quite sensibly said that the courtroom wasn't the place to assess academic standards.

However as we all know the 2:1/1st obsession is so that universities can top the league tables. (No department in my institution really expects to do that, although we are being pushed to up the rates by management of course) so perhaps there's less pressure thus far.) A clear indictment of the measurement-over-quality culture!!

Glad you might think about trying the Quakers.

If you "go places with kids" you probably spend your time doing what most of us do ?!

I get frustrated as a pre-school practitioner with "measurement over quality"

• it seems unless you get it down on a post-it note it didn't really happen !

Seems like it affects education of all ages then ?

Hope you can enjoy some of the afternoon sunshine, and over the weekend