I’ve been wanting to put into words what has been happening over the past year but have struggled to really know how to word it. All I know right now is that I am heavily suicidal and don’t know what to do anymore.
The last year and 6 months has flown by, and I don’t mean in the sense that 2024 seems to have come and gone, but that I really am struggling to comprehend how it is November 2024 when I have next to no recollection of most of this year up to Summer 2023.
This is a long one and I understand that I might face backlash from this, but putting it into writing I think is the best thing I can do.
I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder 10 years ago and am now 30. However bar episodes it’s something I’ve managed with the right meds. In the same year I had a near death experience due to medical negligence. After it happened I suppressed everything and just put on this big positive face and blocked out what is probably one of the most traumatising things I’ve been through. I’ve always done the same thing with trauma, or make jokes or bat things off because I cannot face it.
Not long after, I developed OCD which got progressively worse over the years and though I haven’t been sectioned I’ve been under the crisis team 6 times due to it.
I got pregnant in 2019 and honestly pregnancy was amazing, my mental health was the best it had ever been, I was looked after by the perinatal mental health team and was told there was an increased risk of PND after birth.
After birth I did develop PND and postnatal OCD which was mainly intrusive thoughts which were so triggering it ruined my experience of motherhood.
Anyway to try to keep a long story short. By the end of 2022 my OCD was really bad and I went back under the crisis team and had my meds reviewed and was started on a med that is less resistant to OCD. And honestly I thought it had changed my life! The thoughts were lessened, I could get through the day without panic attacks. I was enjoying being a mum again though have lived with so much mum guilt for not being the mum I had wanted to be. I am lucky to have the most amazing partner and father to our child who has been my biggest support.
In Summer 2023 things started to spiral out of control but I didn’t know it at the time, if that makes any sense?
I started feeling physically unwell in myself and became convinced something was really wrong and that I was going to die and my son, who is autistic with GDD and is non verbal, would have no mum. I kept panicking about what he would do without me and just had this thing in my head telling me that I needed to find out what was wrong with me so that it could be ‘caught’.
I don’t want the story to go on and on so I’m trying to keep it as short as I can.
Basically, I ended up on the phone to the doctors all the time who eventually stopped giving me appointments (I became hysterical on the phone multiple times), they would ‘randomly’ ask about my mental health while on the phone and I would get upset saying they weren’t believing me. and then I started going to A&E, not just to one but to three in my area. It makes me feel embarrassed and angry at myself because I know this is the NHS, but I truly don’t think I was in my right mind.
It got worse and worse until I was hysterical at A&E, receptionists would say ‘you’re here all the time’, I begged for help multiple times to be told there was nothing wrong, and I just didn’t believe anyone and convinced myself it was medical negligence.
I don’t recall a lot of it and I don’t remember many specific visits or conversations with A&E doctors. I went so often and I was in hysterics most of the time because I truly thought I could die at any point.
The last time was in July of this year. And it only stopped after I got a letter that month from one of the hospitals warning me of my behaviour because I had been absolutely hysterical and not fair on other patients, as well as being told I had attended A&E 38 times in 2024 alone.
I was so confused and had little recollection of this specific event in the letter. It took me three days to remember what had happened - that I had hysterically started crying in the waiting room because I was desperate for help because I thought I was going to die. I hadn’t thought about this at all because from my perspective at that time - and in that headspace - I was just a patient begging for help. In reality I was a hysterical person convinced of something that wasn’t going to happen refusing to listen to anyone.
During this time, because this is already so long: I also became convinced I had been emotionally abused by my mum, and cut off my parents for months due to this. I convinced myself they hated me and no one else could see this.
I’ve got myself into a ridiculously bad financial position where I am in a serious amount of debt and it’s got so bad I’m getting letters and calls daily.
I have been trying to work throughout this (I did have a successful business) but I severely let myself down again and again to the point this started going badly downhill. I’m getting calls and letters and defaults left right and centre and I don’t know how to handle any of it because I’ve just let it get so out of hand.
But back to the year going fast thing - I have barely any recollection of the events that have taken place over the last 18 months and I remember things differently to how other people do. My memory is also getting progressively worse in the daily sense, and I am spending most of my nights crying when my partner goes to bed.
I feel like my life has got out of control and I don’t know where to go from here. I am so angry at myself and embarrassed and disappointed and just scared. I feel like I don’t know my own head anymore. There’s even been occasions where I’ve been paranoid about my partner or people wanting to hurt me even though it’s not true.
I have been at the point where I just want to end my life and have had serious thoughts and made serious plans. But I know I cannot do it to my beautiful little boy who even though deserves so much more than me loves me so much. I cannot imagine how he would be, all I can think of is him not being able to say that he misses his mummy or wonders why I’m not there anymore. Even writing that I’m sobbing.
But I am miserable and scared and just so, so burnt out. My head is everywhere, I don’t trust my head, and I truly don’t know what the fuck has happened.
I’ve not had my meds reviewed since the change in 2022. I kept missing appointments and they discharged me. After breaking down to the mental health nurse at my GP (she called me for an annual wellbeing check) they’ve referred me back to the CMHT and I see the psychiatrist on the 11th.
I don’t know why I’m writing this. Even now I haven’t got half of what is in my head out on here because I can’t process it everything is so jumbled.
I just don’t know what has happened to me over the last year and a half, I have barely any memory of 2024 as a whole, I’m ruined financially, and I just feel like I’ve totally lost it.