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Panic Attacks

I can't imagine anyone actually likes panic attacks, so saying 'I hate panic attacks' seems a bit pointless, so instead lets expand on it.

I particularly hate having panic attacks at work. They make me feel weak, pathetic. Because I need to sit alone, in a quiet room, breathing into an envelope, while everyone carries on with their work around me, below me; more often than not, I end up in the duty managers office upstairs, sitting in the same chair I've always sat in, even though the managers have changed I'm still there, sitting in the far corner.

I usually try and talk myself out of having to have a first aider with me. I don't need first aid, I just need to calm my ass down, maybe some water and painkillers, because the lack of oxygen and increase of carbon dioxide from breathing in and out of an envelope gives me a headache. I just want peace, room to quiet my mind because it races as quickly as my heart.

I feel like a child at work, a lot of the time, but I try to ignore this feeling of inadequacy, because when it comes down to it, I do my job fucking well and I just had my one to one with my boss and that went great. A panic attack emphasises these feelings though, I think because it's only me, and I need looking after. Because I can't breathe and I'm so scared and the world is getting that little bit darker...closing in.

I was fine the next day. Actually, I was fine, just a panic attack, I'm used to them. I no longer have that fear that, during a panic attack I'm going to stop breathing, pass out and wake up in hospital. I need to get the panic attack out of my system on Wednesday because I'd been feeling anxious since the Saturday, feeling like I had chains around my lungs. Thursday I felt great again.

I'm so up and down, no more stable than I ever was. Something is wearing off, but I'm not sure how much higher I can push my medication.

Infected

I like my cuts to get infected or I like infections in my cuts.

Those two sentence are slightly different but I'm not entirely sure which one I am. It carries between the two.

When I get infections, I take care of them, obsess over them. Draw out the infection, platers, dressing, cream, wash them, tcp, savolon, whatever.

I talked to my old therapist about this once. She thought maybe I was/am compensating for the fact that my dad never looked after me properly when I was a kid, when I was in his care. He didn't. Because I never ate breakfast at my dads. He was never there for lunch or after. He rarely made dinner. Nanna did. Nanna made sure we ate dinner at least. No made sure we washed, or that we had clean clothes on (clothes were washed, but we had to make sure they were put in the wash).

Okay, so a lot of kids go through this, look after themselves. Or don't look after themselves in mine and my sisters case. What frustrates me the most was that Dad was drinking when we were dirty or hungry at three in the afternoon.

He would give us all the money in the world, but money does not look after your children when they are sick. When I was, my dad would still go up the pub.

Which, leads to another theory Caroline had about me and my dad. I would have long periods where I didn't look after myself, and I still can't really look after myself very well at 26. I know what has to be done and what should be done, but I don't do it, can't get my head around do it. I don't look after myself, because it wouldn't matter to my dad if I did or not.

And I hate that he affected me this much. Just because he spent/spends all his time in the pub with a bottle of Newcastle Brown or ten.

So I forget to brush my teeth, my heair goes unwashed and my clothes are full of holes. My house is like a bomb site and my bills get forgotten. Instead I obsess over my cuts because those are my creation and not my fathers.

Panic: Therapy.

Panic.

I managed to talk myself into joining the day programme at Francis Dixon, in the middle of my appointment. We were just chatting about crap, and this guy, Dr. Lunt, is scary clever the way he knows how my head works, and I don't know, realised that I may have decided I want in on the therapeutic community.

Panic.

I'm being referred onto the prep group, and I attended that for a few weeks, and that will help me be able to see if I can commit to this. And if it's for me, and to get used to what goes on, and for the people there to get used to me too I suppose.

Panic. Scary. Argh.

I figured that something has to change in my life. Because, I can't just keep changing my meds every time they wear off, else I'm going to run out of medication to try. He also told me that the new NICE clinical guidance says that anti-depressants aren't very useful for people with personality disorders. Interesting.

Anyway.

Panic.

The prep group is on Wednesday afternoons, after I finish work, which is handy, cause I'm not sure how I'm going sort everything out. The job isn't important, the money is. What with bills and stuff, but I've always managed one way or the other. I will manage and I'm fed up of this life. Need to change.

Change, change, change.

I'm just rambling now.

Back, back again.

Cutting again.

Made me feel better, calmed the anxiety. I feel a lot of anxiety. The PMS hit hard, and that went a left remnants of depression. The numbness I usually feel is now replaced with more moments of bad, awful, horrible, terrible, fear, anxiety. All that stuff.

Anyway, cutting, five, three, five. Numbers are still important.

Pills, pills, pills.

I thought it was about time I posted something. These are my pills for the month. Months go by slower when you’ve a few pills to swallow everyday. Especially when you know that they work. Makes the months all the frustrating, they plod by, because this is the best the pills can do for you. Dampen your energy and change your personality.
Or maybe that’s just the depression talking.
Ask me tomorrow.
I'll probably feel the same though. I hate my medication.

Sacrifice

I hate the medication because it's taken my poetry away. More specifically the Carbamazepine. I take as a mood stabilizer, and it works, which makes it all the more frustrating. The anger is contained, a lot of the 'mild mania' is subdued. A lot of the poetry is contained and subdued too, what with these being too of the strongest things I feel, the strongest emotions and energies. The Paroxetine dulls the depression, that comes and goes, and is combated by the medication alone right now (but therapy will come), and there is nothing else after that.

A lot of the time I feel numb and hat doesn't make for good poetry. Or any poetry. Or anything at all.

So I'm forced into a choice, a sacrifice. My sanity or my poetry.

Without my medication, I'm a danger too myself. The scars are still fading from the last bout of depression, the last 'mini-breakdown'. As the years go by, these breakdowns get worse, the medication gets increased and the cycle starts all over again. But every time, I get closer to death. I could loose my life.

No one ever died from poetry starvation.

(That I know of).

Doesn't make it any easier, because I miss it. I've written one poem in the last three months. Plenty of other stuff, streams and reams of fanfic that has no consequence. Poetry has consequence, and I miss that, the importance that you can put into rhyme and form. Or not put in. That it can be both. God that sounds so pretentious. But I still miss it.

I'm not sure it's worth it sometimes. My sanity for my poetry. The medication is vital and while some people will say, it's only supposed to be a short term thing, for me, I think now. If it was a short term thing, I wouldn't have been taking the paroxetine for over two years. Non of this is a short term thing, which is funny, because I'm a short term person. I don't see too far ahead in my life. Not in a positive way.

Sometimes I like being alive, and there are reasons to be alive. But when writing is when of them and you can't write because of what's keeping you alive, if puts you in a quandary.

I'm not a person who can sit down to write. To go "I'm going to write some poetry now". I'll write anything, anywhere. I'm the person you see scribbling onto a newpapers, leaning on the bus stop because 'Ihavetowritenownotimetostoptogetanotebookout'. Does that make sense?

I don't feel that urgency about anything at all right now.