Starting all over again

Sometimes things seem to be going well. I’ll be going out, socialising at work and enjoying life. I’ll be feeling confident and not even thinking about what I eat or whether what I’m holding can be turned into a tool.

And then things will start to build up. I’ll make a mistake at work and spend a week worrying about it. I’ll stay up until past 11pm trying to get my homework done, every night, and stop having any energy to get out of bed in the morning. I’ll drive past the pub, and my dad’s car will be outside it, again.

 Eventually, I’ll find myself standing in front of that shelf, trying to work out which would be the easiest to buy without looking guilty and which would be the easiest to dismantle.

Then everything starts again. And I don’t know if the cycle will ever stop.

Work

I have not told work about my history of depression, self harm and social anxieties. I answer the phones without panicking, I put out tannoys well, I laugh and talk with people in the office. If I’m on the shop floor for a couple of hours I smile at customers, I take them to whatever they’re looking for and try to chat with them on the way. I help out other partners with facing up or putting stock out if I have a spare moment. I arrive early, skip my break and never take my full lunch. 

So I can’t blame them for giving me funny looks when I leave the partner dining room half way through my lunch because there are too many people in there for me to cope with and going back to work. If I’ve not slept the night before or am feeling too low to work up much concentration and I make mistakes or don’t smile and talk to other partners much, it’s not surprising that they don’t understand. The man who yells ’smile’ at me every time I’m on the shop floor and he sees me looking unhappy doesn’t know that every time he does that I panic and have to go up to the office or a quiet aisle to calm down before I burst into tears. They don’t know that using the plastic blade thing (for opening boxes on the shop floor) safely is so so hard. 

I know I should tell them. That it would make things easier for everyone. But to most people I come across as shy but hardworking, there’s no need to spoil that. No-one has asked, apart from the form I had to tick to say I’d had any one of a number of conditions which no-one asked any further about, and if my manager is happy with how I come across, then I don’t want to change things when it could make everything even more difficult. They would be supportive, they would be understanding, but I can’t risk it.

Results day

AS results came out today. And I did ok, not amazing but I did ok.

Maths: B 237/300

Biology: A 281/300

Chemistry: B 239/300

English: A 190/200

I should be happy with this, I should be over the moon, but I’m not. I’m disappointed, I hate that I got a B in chemistry. I hate everyone at school for moaning that they ‘only’ got a low A in chemistry. I know that I am being stupid, I know these are good results… but they’re not good enough. Not for me.

It’s been a while

The great thing about having hayfever, is that when you spend all day at school in tears, people just assume your allergies are bad.

It’s been quiet on this blog for a while now. I got a bit caught up in exams, university stuff and life generally got in the way a bit. Now my exams are over school are pestering us to register with UCAS and fill ot as much as possible, go on open days and write our personal statement. I’m not good with university stuff, although I’ve now cleared up the problem of being a self harmer trying to get into medical school (it would seem they don’t like this) by deciding to go down the medical microbiology route it’s a bit better. No tricky questions on forms.
I’m terrified of the idea of uni though- I want to go because that is what is expected of me, because that’s what I have to do to get into Microbiology, but the idea of being on my own somewhere I don’t know without the motivation to get up and carry on as normal terrifies me. I can see myself skipping meals/ purging worse and slipping right back to where I was in year 9.

Things have been difficult today, something set me off in a lesson and I’ve struggled to stop crying since then. Getting my grade 6 violin results (which I passed with merit) nearly set me off because I hadn’t done as well as I should have (even though I wasn’t even sure I’d manage to get in the exam room), talking about grade 8 nearly set me off at the idea of the stress. My mum saying something simple set me off. I’m tired and I’m fed up and it all just feels too much at the moment.

Crashing

I have been up and down and unable to sit still and exhausted the past few days. My head is spinning, I’m not sure i even have the patience or concentration to write much more of this.

It took me near on an hour to leave the house this morning, I kept getting to the door and then having to run back to check I’d turned the oven off/ turned the computer off/ shut the dogs in the hall/ locked the doors. My brain won’t seem to slow down until suddenly I crash and fall asleep. I’m so tired, but I’m sleeping so much more, and I can’t settle. I just can’t stop and I’m so tired.

Getting there

Things are picking up, I’m starting to feel brighter and more human. Exam season is never a good time for me- study leave always sees my eating go off track and my mood drop, a combination which doesn’t combine well with stress and tends to leave me struggling to cope.

I’m still a bit iffy- not helped by the prospect of my first violin exam since  2006 (which saw me in tears before going in and forgetting everything) and a solo performance, but I’m getting there.

Tiredness

I am tired. That dizzy making tiredness where things switch between moving quickly and so slowly and everything loses it’s distinction. I have an AS exam on friday, English, so I should be revising but instead I’m sitting with a blank page of paper and my revision guide in front of me with no idea where to start.

Everyone else in my year has already done x hours of revision. I don’t need to know exactly how much x is to know I’ve done far less than anyone else.  I think I should probably care, and part of me does, but a larger part of me is too fogged over to really take it in. It will clear by friday, and then I’ll panic, but now it’s not real.

I started work this week, which has meant learning to use the telephones without panicing and dealing with customers- both on the telephone and on the shop floor. I went in as chatty, friendly halfarainbow- I smiled and asked questions and then I came home and burst into tears on my mum. I had a better second day, but that’s how it seems to be now- when dealing with others I act, I smile and laugh and none of it is really happening and then I leave that situation and everything becomes too real and present and difficult.

I remember

There are days, when I wake up and my brain fogs over. Days where I’m sure that I cannot face anyone, because I am too huge, too horrible. Days where someone being unexpectedly kind, or someone making a comment that hits too close will see me dissolve.

I’ve had a lot of days like that this week. Every year, I struggle with this particular week in May. It was this week in 2006 that changed things. It wasn’t the beginning of the self harm or anything else really, but it’s where I draw the line between ‘before’ and ‘after.’ It wasn’t the week the bullying started, that was long before and it wasn’t even the week where my friends stopped really being friends.

It was SATs week, the week when my mum reported the emails a friend had been sending me. We didn’t give names, but this girl, lets call her J,  found out. I went in on the tuesday to find no-one talking to me, or if they did talk to me it was to make some comment, or to tell me how awful I was. I remember standing outside the drama studio whilst J yelled at me, I remember no-one stopping her. I remember being slammed in the studio doors. Waiting for tutor period and someone coming up to me, asking me why I wore a jumper, laughing at me and telling me they knew about my self harm- I remember everyone joining in, and J laughing. I remember being kept behind by my drama teacher, him asking me if everything is ok. I remember a yellow sticky note on my back and the teacher noticing it, but not telling me it’s there. I learnt a lot that week, such as how it’s possible to feel cold inside all the time even though it’s hot outside. How you can wake up after a full nights sleep and still feel a bone deep exhaustion.

That week was neither the beginning or the end of anything, but it changed everything.

Small steps and positives

I passed my driving test on monday. It came as a complete and utter shock. I’d spent the whole day at school dreading it and not quite believing that I was actually going to take it and then suddenly I was sitting with my instructor in the test centre waiting for the examiners to come in.

I hate exams. The last practical-ly type exam I took other than drama (a violin performance for my GCSE music) saw me sitting at the side for two hours crying and panicking until I was calm enough to take the exam, the exam before that I spent the lead up to it in tears and did really rather badly so I was so busy worrying and being sure that I would run before I even reached the test centre that I didn’t imagine myself taking them exam- it just didn’t seem as if it would really happen. But it did, and I managed it (largely due to Bachs Rescue pastilles.)

It wasn’t my finest 40 minutes, and neither was it the best bit of driving I’ve ever done but in the end I passed with 8 minor faults. I had thought that this test would be a practice run, that I’d fail but at least I’d know what to expect next time round, but I can honestly say that had I failed- I wouldn’t have gone back.

I’m relieved and pleased and terrified that I passed. But I’m glad that I managed to sit the test more than anything, regardless of the outcome- I didn’t run, I didn’t cry during the exam and I didn’t freeze. Which is always good.

Things I have learnt…

I haven’t had the energy or the time to write much on here recently so I apologise for the lack of posts. Instead of writing a long blog post like usual, I’m going to do it in bullet point form, just to make it a bit easier.

Things I have learnt this month:

- I need to learn to say ‘no’ (I got scammed off a fiver by someone in the street because I was too scared to say no)

-Moving to a school 9 miles away from the other school doesn’t mean I can avoid the people who made the last few years so difficult, and when I see them I won’t be any less likely to feel dangerously sick.

-We have exams in 3 weeks

-I will never like driving

-Bach’s rescue remedy only works if you take it believing that it will work (and if your lungs don’t take an instant disliking to it).