It's an anniversary few people would know about, and probably no one else remembers, but I had an urge to share somewhere...
Seven years since all pretence of coping finally collapsed, and DH (crying, in a panic himself) begged the doctors in A&E to not send me back home again. So too anxious to even speak anymore, I was wheeled off and locked up in a mental health ward. I stayed there for some weeks, while consultants (who never physically came to see me) slapped a few diagnoses on me and "care in community" was arranged. It somehow doesn't sound so bad, put like that.
I don't know why I'm thinking about it today, really. The bleakest, most horrible time of my life so far. When I was discharged, I thought I'd be back very soon, that I'd never cope, never feel any better. But it's been seven years, and here I still am, apparently. Things were very hard at first, then hard, and now only sometimes hard.
I've been beating myself up a bit lately for not doing more and being more. I turned down an invitation last week, because I was feeling a bit wobbly and thought it might be a bit much. I didn't apply for an interesting job, because I just wasn't brave enough and felt like I wouldn't be able to cope with the stress it would come with. Surely I should be "over it" by now! I haven't even been ill enough for mental health services or DLA for a good three years now.
I wonder do you ever really get over it, though? When you've once completely stopped functioning and lost all hope? To me it now feels like my whole mind was shattered to tiny pieces that autumn (the cracks were there much earlier, of course). And though with therapy and time it's all been more or less put together again, it's certainly not "good as new". There are bits missing, bits upside down, the glue's a bit wobbly here and there... Kind of serviceable for some basic common use, but not anything you'd want to put to test too much.
But seven years on, it's been a good day. I've done some shopping, chatted on the phone with family and a friend, took a walk in the rain, baked some cookies (they came out weird), and there's laundry and stuff waiting to be done.
Thanks, I just wanted to share... 