beautiful monsters

The longest blog entry in the world

Bear with me. Or not, I don’t mind. The following contains self-injury and suicidal ideation, viewer discretion is advised… I just need to write this down, get it straight in my head, put it out there. I’ve had a really awful week, but it’s looking hopeful now.

Breakdown

What have you done now? She’s angry with you. They’re all angry with you. They know everything. They know what a terrible person you are.

I want to be alive. I want to write poems that touch lives, and stories that open people’s eyes. I want to plant broad beans to enrich the soil and lemon balm for tea. I want to watch the jerusalem artichokes burst into flower, then dig up the knobbly roots to roast. I want to break open the earth, plant makomako, kawakawa, rata, and watch a web of green spread over the hills. I want to walk the Heaphy Track again, without crying. I want to travel to Mexico, set foot on the ice of Antarctica. I want to drink coffee in cafes and laugh with my friends.

I hate myself. I’ve messed up everything. The dishes haven’t been done, and America just started bombing Iraq. Our Fringe show was a disaster. And Saskia died. And our tomato plants have blown over in the wind. I’m a slut. I’ve lost count of how many guys have stuck their dicks into my mouth, my hands, my cunt… and I let them. I’m a mess. I’ve lost the jacket my mother bought me, and I had to pull out of the Tohu Maoritanga. I’m so needy and desperate, I scare people and push them away. I just want to escape. I can’t take it any more. Everyone hates me. I hate myself.

I've been fighting that part of myself, for so many years. Every day the self-destructive part of me has added new reasons for hating myself. Every day the part of me who wants to survive has clung on to any tiny strand of hope, but that part of me has been getting so tired, so very tired. Every day it has become harder to hold on.

Welcome to my roller-coaster life.

The poets are angry. It’s because you wanted too much. You can’t hide from them. They’re going to take away your voice.

I have it all worked out. There’s a parking building in town, there are some stairs you can climb up on the outside. It’s pretty high. It’s high enough.

*

On top of the constant struggle with the self-destructive, hateful part of myself, I've had bipolar, probably for years. I was only diagnosed a few weeks ago, and I finally started medication (lithium and anti-psychotics) yesterday. Because of this illness I’ve had intense mood swings, and at times some pretty weird thought distortions. (At one point I was convinced I had to have a baby. My daughter would be a prophet. I met a man on the bus and I knew he would be the father. I caught the same bus at the same time every day for a week but he didn’t show up again).

Over the past few months, things have gone down hill pretty rapidly. My mood swings have been more and more intense, I have been having psychotic episodes which have been getting worse and worse, and generally, well, my life has been falling apart.

All I wanted was an escape from the screaming inside my head. I wrote a note, saying goodbye to my parents and my friends. I explained where I wanted my ashes scattered, and made a list of who I wanted to have each of my treasures; my paintings, my jewellery, my violin. I felt regret, that I didn’t have enough treasures to give to all the beautiful people who have been part of my life. I wrote down instructions about how I wanted my ashes scattered. I cried a little, then I felt relief.

And then the part of me that wants to survive unfurled inside me. I had an appointment with my doctor that day. I decided to give life one last chance and go along.

Dr Bill thought that I should be in hospital for a few days, and this upset me. They’d just make me stay alive, and I’d get behind in my studies and my friends would get sick of me. When I said the right things to the doctors they’d let me out but nothing would have changed; I’d still hate myself. But part of me thought, hey, maybe I could rest for a while. I agreed to go to an appointment with the CATT (Crisis Assessment) team that afternoon.

There were three doctors, two of them were students so they just sat there and "observed." All of them were men. I don’t remember much about the appointment. I remember getting extremely frustrated with the doctor. "Yes, I understand how you feel," he said, but he didn’t. He seemed to think I should just get through it on my own somehow. I told him I’d tried everything I could think of, I’d been going through all the skills I’d learned; crisis management, distress tolerance, distraction, self-soothing… I’d been trying to eat healthy food, going to the gym, trying to get enough sleep, keep busy… And nothing was working. I hated myself. Completely, utterly, intensely. I didn’t have the energy to keep fighting. I just wanted to get away.

The doctor gave me some medication to help me sleep, and sent me home.

I walked out the door. I didn’t have any idea what to do next. Part of my mind was telling me "go to the parking building, go there, go on, get away." Another part was saying "you can’t go now, it’s too early. There’ll be people there. What if Stacey was working, what if she found you? You’ve got to wait till it’s dark." And then another voice, small and quiet, joined the chorus. “Please, help me.”

I walked to old St Paul’s church. I’d studied it during my failed stint at architecture school, and I knew that the architect had reluctantly chosen wood, even though Gothic Revival churches were traditionally built from stone. In Wellington, stone was just too hard to get. The native timbers gave the interior of the church a warm intensity and richness, very different from the cold, heavy effect of stone. I didn’t go into the church because I was afraid that someone would find me, but it was enough to touch the outside walls, and peek through the windows. It was comforting to know that inside it was quiet and dark. There were trees outside, and splashes of sunlight on the grass. I sat down on a dirt path, and felt the warmth of the sun on my arms.

I didn’t know what to do. I’d run out of strength, run out of ideas. Inside my pockets my fingers closed around something hard; my cellphone. I took it out and dialled my counsellors number. She kept me talking on the phone, but managed to get one of her colleagues to phone the police. As I was talking to her, I heard the car pull up. I was terrified. “They’re going to come and get me,” I sobbed to my counsellor. “I have to get away,” but my feet wouldn’t seem to move. I curled up in the vestry doorway and tried to push myself into the wood.

They must have a module at police training college on How To Be An Insensitive Dickhead, and the guys who picked me up were top of the class. As they wrestled me into the car, one of them said "Come on, it can’t be that bad." Wanna bet?

There was a bomb scare in town that day so town was gridlocked. It took us 40 minutes to get to the hospital and the whole way the cops were made comments about women they saw, scoring them out of ten. In between sexist jokes they told me on I was wasting their time, and if anything happened in J’ville while they were gone it would be my fault. I was wasting taxpayers money. They started calculating exactly how much money I was wasting. I guess they were trying to lighten the mood, but I was already convinced that the world would be a better place if I were dead. They had kiddie locks on the doors. I considered climbing out the window, but I figured they’d grab me before I could get out and the last thing I wanted was to be grabbed and pulled and bruised and told what a selfish manipulative kid I was. I kept still and kept quiet.

The police left me at the hospital. I had to wait there because the CATT team were stuck in traffic. The voices in my head were getting louder, telling me how everyone hated me. The only way I could get them to shut up was to bang my head against the wall.

When the CATT team arrived they gave me a prescription for some medication that was supposed to make me "feel better" and help me sleep. They arranged for me to spend the night in a respite house. I felt so trapped, and hopeless.

Respite was an extension of hell. I was convinced that everyone hated me. A certain poet was angry with me. In fact, most of the poets in Aotearoa were angry with me for writing. My poems weren’t good enough. I wrote about things I shouldn’t write about.
Two of them were sitting up at the institute. They had a beam that swung around and around. When it fell on me, they knew everything I was thinking. They knew everything I’d done wrong. They knew what an awful person I was. They knew where I was and if I stayed there they were going to come and take my voice away. Not my speech. My voice. My writer’s voice. They would take it away and I wouldn’t be able to write any more.

The night stretched on and on. I took the medication they gave me. It didn’t help. I tried to meditate, but the voices got louder. I tried to read but I couldn’t concentrate. I tried to have a shower but I started having intense flashbacks and started sobbing uncontrollably. They gave me some more medication. I wanted to hurt myself, to get away from my thoughts. Every time I walked passed the kitchen I wanted to open a can and use the lid to cut my arms. Every time I boiled the jug I wanted to pour the water over myself. I wanted to die. I wanted to get away from the poets, I wanted to escape from myself. God how I hated myself. I knew there was a back door at the respite house. I could just walk out. I could get into town before they noticed I was gone. I could get to the parking building. I could be free.

I went out and talked to the support worker. She told me she couldn’t do anything, sent me back to bed, with some more medication. I felt desperate, I felt like I couldn’t stop myself from walking out, from killing myself.

I always had a scalpel blade in my wallet, just in case I needed it. Somehow the police, CATT and the Respite staff had neglected to check my wallet. I pulled it out of the foil package. As soon as I pushed the blade to my skin, relief flooded into my body. Natural opiates pumped through my blood, my heart rate and blood pressure levelled, and the voices began to grow quiet. I drifted into sleep.

I woke to see the support worker glaring down at me. After yelling at me, she went and got the manager. The manager got me cleaned up and dressed.

Another day in hospital. Another day of fighting the urge to hurt myself, or to walk out. I saw the same doctor. He said I could either go home, or I could go back to the respite house if I promised not to cut myself again. I said I didn’t feel safe at the respite house, but he didn’t seem to think there were any other options.

I went back to see my counsellor, and she didn’t think I was safe to go home, I sure didn’t feel safe about going home. So we came up with a plan. I got copies of some of the crisis survival worksheets I’d been doing in therapy. My counsellor called the CATT team and the respite house, and told them that I was having a really hard time keeping myself safe. She explained to them that I had some information with me, and that it would be helpful if they went through some of the skills with me, because I was too tired to do it on my own.

The woman on the early shift was really nice, she talked to me heaps, and we watched Kim Hill together. I hadn’t brought anything with me, and I’d been wearing the same underpants for a couple of days, so she said before I went to bed I could give my clothes to the person on night duty, and she would wash them and dry them for me for the morning. Unfortunately the person on the night shift was the same woman who’d been on when I cut myself. I asked if she could wash my clothes, but wouldn’t agree to wash them. The person on the earlier shift, who hadn’t left, called out to her that I didn’t have any clean clothes, and the night worker grudgingly said that she might wash them, if she had time.

That night, I tried to stay in my room so that I wouldn’t make the night worker angry. I went through some of the breathing and relaxation exercises, but I felt scared and restless and I thought that everyone hated me. Finally I couldn’t stand being alone any more, and I went out and said that I couldn’t sleep. The support worker snapped at me that she didn’t have any patience with me after what had happened the night before, and I shouldn’t even be there, I was lucky they let me go back. I crept back to bed, but I felt even worse; her words had added to my belief that I was a hopeless nuisance and everyone hated me. I got more and more distressed. I went out to her one more time, I was really scared and I didn’t know what to do. She was asleep, and when she woke up she refused to even talk to me. Huddled in the corner of my room, I used my cellphone to call my mum, but there was little she could do from Rotorua.

I had to get away, before the poets found me. I went and found my unwashed clothes. I walked out the back door and ran down the street. I was scared that the staff would find out I was gone and call the police again, so I hid in the bushes for a while. The only thing keeping me calm was thinking about killing myself. I was too scared to go into town in case the police came after me, so I tried to climb up the carillon tower. I got stuck part way up. To get higher I had to climb across a tiny ledge, and I was scared that I’d fall, and it wouldn’t be high enough to kill me, but high enough to hurt a lot. I curled up in the corner of the roof. I gathered leaves out of the gutter and sat on them for insulation, because the metal of the roof was freezing. The cold wind tore through my clothes. I wanted to cry but I was too tired. Then I thought of my doctor, and how he seemed to listen and to understand… unlike the doctor I’d been seeing through the crisis team. I decided to get myself out to the Hutt, where he worked, because then I could see him, and I would be far away from the high buildings I wanted to jump from. I called my flatmate and asked if he could pick me up on his way to work. Then I let myself into my old flat, borrowed some clothes from a friend, and had a shower. God, it felt so good to have clean clothes! I sneaked some food from the pantry, and waited outside for my flatmate.

When I got out to the Hutt I phoned my doctor’s surgery, but they didn’t have any appointments. I had no idea what to do, I hadn’t thought beyond getting out to the Hutt. I walked around to his surgery, hoping that he would have five minutes free when he could see me. The surgery was also used by anthroposophic nurses. One of them found me crying and called my doctor at home to see if he could fit me in. He couldn’t, but he arranged for someone to take me in to see the CATT team again, and called to tell them he thought I needed to be in hospital. I sobbed all the way into town. On top of everything else I was convinced that my doctor was angry with me for coming out when I didn’t have an appointment, and that he wouldn’t want to be my doctor any more.

Back in town I was met by the same doctor and the same treatment. Back to respite. By this stage my mum had turned up in Wellington. It was a six hour drive, but a friend of ours just happened to be going down that day so she caught a ride. She brought me clean clothes, food, books and music. The woman on the early shift at the respite house was wonderful too, she talked to me, got me to help with dinner, took me for a walk, played scrabble. Most importantly she listened, while I bawled my eyes out, and babbled on about how scared I was.

The same night worker was on again. I took all my medication, and then hid in my room. I tried to sleep, and I dozed off a few times. Sleeping was almost worse, I had the most ghastly dreams. I dreamed that I stabbed myself in the head. I relived every moment of past abuses, over and over. When I woke I banged my head with my fist to try and get away from the poets.

In the morning I was dropped off at the hospital. I gave one of the occupational therapists a note for my mum, and then I left. I planned to get into town, get to the building and jump, but, for some reason, when I got to the street I turned left instead of right. I ended up somewhere on the slopes of Mount Victoria. I was paranoid that the poets were looking for me, so I kept hiding in the bushes. I got hot, so I stripped down to my bra, and as I clambered around in the bushes I got scratched across my back and shoulders. I found some bottles, and smashed them, and cut my arms to calm myself down. For some reason I had my walkman with me, I guess I’d been holding it when I left, and it was a Saturday, so I listened to Kim Hill. I thought that while Kim was talking the poets couldn’t hear my thoughts so they wouldn’t know where I was. As the time drew closer to 12 o’clock and the end of the programme I got more and more anxious. If I’d had my phone with me, I think I would have called Kim and begged her to keep talking.

I’d been running around in the bushes for a couple of hours, trying to get away from the poets, when then suddenly, tiredness overcame me. I collapsed on the ground and burst into tears. I was too scared and too exhausted to know what to do next. I just lay there sobbing, “help me, please, someone help me.”

Thankfully some people saw me, or heard me, and came to see if I was ok. They took me back to their car, talking to me reassuringly all the time. They wrapped me in a towel because I was still half-dressed. The guy said that he used to cut himself, but he didn’t any more. He said his mum was a social worker. He gave me his phone, to call my mum, and then he took me back to the hospital.

Finally, I got to see a different doctor, who was very kind and understanding. He checked whether hospital was an option, but there were no beds that night. So, he arranged for me to go back to the respite house, and for a nurse to stay with me from 10 till 8, to keep an eye on me. I was scared that the nurse would get angry with me, but I needn’t have worried. When I met Whaia Mere, she greeted with a huge hug, and kissed me on the cheek.

During the two nights I spent hanging out with her, I made some huge breakthroughs. For a start, I realised that if I sing in Maori, the voices go away. I’d start freaking out, and Mere would come in and say, "Sing your waiata, sing your waiata." The words would start to shudder out of me, “Tangi atu tku reo, tangi mai tku reo…” tentatively at first and then stronger. Sometimes Mere would join in, and gradually I would begin to calm down.

One the phone to my counsellor one of the nights, I told her that I hated myself. She asked me to write down all the reasons why I hated myself. It was like a dam bursting. I filled six pages before my wrist started to hurt from writing so fast. Once I saw them down on paper, they didn’t seem so scary. In fact, some of them started to seem ridiculous. It was such a relief, when I realised I’d been carrying around all this hate towards myself, I also realised that I could let it go.

After a couple of nights singing with Mere I swung into mania. Heather was allowed to take me out of the hospital, and that day I bought up half of Newtown. Jandles with big plastic flowers decorating them. A silly hat. Jewellery. I was in love with everything. I flitted around from one shop to another, my attention span rivalling that of a goldfish, my voice racing at about six hundred words per minute. I wanted desperately to go to my class, Writing for Children, so I phoned Kate and explained that I wasn't well, and might find it a bit difficult concentrating etc. I insisted on spray painting my hat silver before going to the workshop, and fretted over whether my sleeves would cover the cuts on my arms. Once in the workshop room I couldn't sit still. I walked out a few times, and paced up and down the stairs, listening to Bach on my walkman, then went back to the workshop and squirmed in my seat. I couldn’t calm down, but at least the depression had subsided.

*

On Monday I managed to get an emergency appointment with my psychiatrist, and she’s started me on lithium and a low dose of largactil. I feel very hopeful that the lithium will help. I’m also hopeful that I will learn to let go of some of the hate and guilt that has been festering inside me. I’m going to start going to art therapy again, and keep going to the DBT group, and talk through stuff with my counsellor. Life is starting to look a little brighter.

Gawd. I’m exhausted! I wonder if anyone has stuck with me to the end of this story? Well, if you have, thanks for listening.

Things are still going to be hard for a couple of weeks, till the lithium kicks in. My emotions are still swinging around like a disorientated out-of-control yo-yo. I’m really tired. I know now that I don’t have to hate myself, that the world doesn’t hate me… but those thoughts keep popping up and I have to keep pushing them back down.

If you’ve got a moment spare, drop me a line, your thoughts would be immensely appreciated. I’ve been feeling really alone. I have beautiful friends, but I’m afraid I’ll lean on them too much, so I try to back away… but I can’t really do it on my own. If you’re in Wellington, please, take me out, I’m driving my flatmates crazy, I’m driving myself crazy. Take me to a movie, or a picnic on the beach, or a hot beverage that doesn’t contain too much caffeine or sugar. I have a bottle of "sweet tastable" bubble mixture, and it really does taste sweet, like sweet air bursting… and I need someone to spin around in circles in the sunshine blowing bubbles. I need someone to walk to the park with me and play on the swings or lie in the grass making daisy chains. I’m having a regression to kindergarten age, I’ve been painting pictures with crayon and dyes, and making jelly (I know it’s not vegan shuddup leave me alone). I’ve been reading the red tree over and over. There’s a red leaf of hope on every page. Every situation. You just have to keep looking till you find it. I’m so tired, so damn tired. But I’m going to make it. I don’t have the energy to save the world, just yet. But I’m going to paint a picture for a friend, and plant some winter lettuces, and make a cup of chamomile tea, to drink on the doorstep in the last of the afternoon sun, while the cicadas sing around me.

Aroha tino nui

Fionnaigh.

Posted by Fionnaigh at March 18, 2003 12:04 AM