One second of relief and a hundred days of regret.

*trigger warning!*

That's how it feels anyway.
Cut myself for the first time since August the night before last. I was in a real state, really upset and down, felt pretty rock bottom so I got the urge to do it and thought "fuck it, I probably deserve it." So I did it. Only twice, and on the back of my wrists not the front (yey for safety). It didn't bleed much but the scars will be there for about 4 months before they fade well. Oops.

I realised the moment I do it for. I breathe in when I push the blade in and exhale as I pull it across my skin. The second in which I exhale I feel a small rush of relief and numbness at the same time. I can't explain it properly. Obviously after, once I'd pulled myself together, I regretted it immensely and now wish I could go back in time and go downstairs to my mum and tell her I feel a bit off so she could prevent me from doing it. Instead I have to wear long jumpers for the next however long it takes. Well done Anna, fucking brilliant.

Despite having depression my self-esteem isn't usually this low, but the meds are killing me.

Rule #1 of depression.

Lie about your feelings at all times.
When you want to cry you excuse yourself to the toilet.
When you're mad at someone you smile and keep it locked up for months.
When you hate yourself make a throw away comment that can be laughed off.
When you feel so awful you could jump off a cliff lock yourself away in your room and pretend everything is perfect.
When someone asks you if you're ok the only appropriate response is "yes, I'm fine, super in fact."

Because anything else would mean people might actually show they care, and we wouldn't want that now, would we?

Depression takes no days off.

What is not fun: crying on Christmas morning for reasons you're not quite sure of.

Actually, I had an alright day, saw family, ate well, watched the final Harry Potter and didn't feel too bad, but now the excitement of the day has worn off and I feel deflated again. I wish my medication would hurry up and work!

Guilt.

I'm too stressed to be made to feel guilty.
I'm too lacking in a sense of self-worth to sit at a table with someone who has no problem being horrible and insulting towards me.
I'm too lonely to tell people that their actions make me feel lonely because I'm scared of pushing people away further.

I'm not coping.

Can't look forward.

Had a nice if stressful weekend in London. Saw some great friends, had the odd heart-to-heart which felt really comforting and relieving but I'm still massively anxious. I want to scream and rip my hair out.

Had a talk with a friend who is convincing me to apply to Oxford. No way will I get the grades for it, I don't even know if I have the will to live that long, but even if I did get in on the off chance I think it'd actually kill me.

Group meal on Thursday. GREAT, no? NO. I thought it'd be just my small group of best friends but no, apparently, without consultation it's been decided to invite more people who I know and who I find interacting with without getting immensely stressed. You can't uninvite people, can you? And I mightn't see my friend who's moved to the US again before Summer. Difficult.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH.

also, forgot to take my meds today!

Just back from the Doctors. He needs to check with a senior member of staff to check that I'm good to go regarding Fluoxetine (Prozac) but he thinks it should be ok and I can go and pick up my prescription tomorrow.

He assessed my depression and concluded it was "moderate". In all honesty this surprised me, I thought it'd come out mild but he explained why and I sort of see his point - fucked up sleep patterns, a lack of motivation, immense difficulty concentrating, feelings of hopelessness, harmful/suicidal impulses. My head's been having a bad few weeks. Eurgh.

Can't wait for Summer already, and its not even Christmas yet. I need to breathe and not be stressed and I can't imagine not being so anxious whilst coping with school/work/friends. Though I did have a nice talk with people today, noone I'm close to and not about anything deep.

I'm probably paranoid but I feel like people I'm supposed to be close to keep putting me down. Not everyone, obviously, but sometimes jokes aren't funny, especially not when they're constant. I wish I could lighten up.

The problem with Christmas is...

...calories. Eating disorder wise I'm having the best Christmas I can remember, but even I'm still daunted by the knowledge that this is the month the calories stack up and the pounds pile on.

Every normal person knows this is, well, normal. A couple of pounds wont make you fat and can easily be shed with some activity and sensible eating in January.

Alternatively I could just purge out all the calories, abuse laxatives and spend Christmas night walking up and down the stairs 100, 200, 300 times.

But let's hope I adopt the former, yeah?

When your friend also has a mental illness...

...it is still really difficult to find the right words. Maybe because you know just how much saying the right thing matters, maybe because your empathy with them means you know there are no right words, maybe because you know that no matter how much empathy you have with them you can never truly know what they're feeling.

I hate seeing people having a bad day, especially when I'm having a good day. Sometimes it makes me frustrated   ('why are you ruining my good mood? I need to savour this!), but usually it just makes me feel determined to have more good days because I don't want people to see me be so inconsolably miserable.

The person in question is one of my best friends, I love him so much. Fortunately this means I know him, I can go some way to making his bad mood bearable, even if I can't make it good.

I just want to demonstrate there is a lot of variables that make a mental illness, and the strong emotion they bring - all sufferers are different, all sufferers' variables are set differently. 

Jovial is not something I feel often.

But yesterday was a good day. I felt cheery, actually went out in the evening (just to the Occupy camp, nowhere fancy) and saw a friend who I've been sort-of arguing with and I think I've ironed things out there - we had a nice evening anyway.

Today I feel a bit flat and am lacking motivation to do anything, but I've made plans for this evening with two friends and in the day I might head down to the social centre to do some work and engage in small talk. Does this sound daunting to a normal person? I'm feeling anxious about it.

Therapy.

Had a fairly good session, discussed a few things.
e,g,

• How I am lonely. Many of my friends have left for other schools/countries. I'm close to one or two people left now, and everyone is perfectly lovely, but I'm having trouble telling people how I feel, for fear that they wont care or wont know how to deal with it. I no longer feel I have people around me regularly I'm comfortable talking to about my problems whenever I need to.
• I am struggling dealing with my anxiety. Methods to contain it that have previously worked are becoming more and more ineffective.
• I am struggling to look forward to next year.
• I need to discuss problems I'm facing with people who can support me both emotionally and practically.

We talked about other things too, it was a helpful session and I felt lifted coming out of it.

But in other news...

After that morbidly depressing post...

I got a call from my doctor last week telling me my therapist was virtually uncontactable, meaning I have yet to get the medication I need. He's made multiple attempts to contact her and she hasn't gotten back to him. Eurgh. I really like her, but I'll be broaching the subject when I see her next. I also have an appointment with my doctor on Monday to move forward in getting what I need.

I am seeing my therapist either tomorrow or Friday. I can't remember which, but this week anyway. I have plenty to tell her and I've been feeling very anxious and depressed recently, more so than usual. I want to isolate myself more, I've been taking everything a lot more personally, I've made some decisions that were stupid, that I think I regret and that I don't really know how to deal with. Unfortunately they're decisions I'm finding difficult to discuss with people because I don't want to feel stupid and I think people don't care about my problems.

I was feeling really ill today so I stayed off school, so I haven't left the house or had interaction with anyone but my mum. If I'm honest, I don't mind that, she's probably the only person I feel at ease with right now.

I am not enough.

I do not feel like I am enough. I'm not good enough. I don't work hard enough. I'm not nice enough. I don't relax enough. I don't prioritise enough. I don't tell people how I feel enough. I'm not honest enough. I'm not tactful enough.

I don't do enough for my family, my friends or my future.

I want to be enough.

Mental illness and education don't mix.

Depression is not an illness that puts the get-up-and-go in you, and sometimes I wonder if ADD is my problem, not anxiety. I've been having increasing difficulty getting school work done. I feel so lazy but sometimes I'll sit for an hour writing little more than a few sentences when I need to get an essay done so I can move on. The whole education system has never really worked for me even though school is nice enough at the moment, if not a little lonely.

As you move up through the system support becomes more and more scarce, and although I expect nothing else it'd be nice if I knew where I was going in all this. I know how it's supposed to be. Get amazing A-Levels, go to University, work for a few years, maybe do a Masters... but I feel so lost on a path that is supposed to be straight-forward. 

Maybe it's not school, maybe it's just adolescence. One of my best friends is killing herself and it wracks me with guilt, another is falling fast into depression and I'm still angry at her for past mistakes, another is irritable and has me wanting to kill her one half the time and just go crazy the other, another finding herself a continent away, another just so...normal. I don't feel I have solid friends at school as everyone is emigrating to new countries, schools or friendship groups and so I'm giving everyone a final push, determined to be alone rather than with people I've convinced myself can only love me with half-a-heart. It's delusional. It's depression.

I want to leave, get on my own path NOW, not when the system tells me it's right (a system that seems determined to fuck me over) but everything is against me. Damn. Nothing is safe.

I'm finally seeing my therapist tomorrow. Our last appointment was cancelled as she had an emergency. What to do, what to do. What to say. I feel lonely. 

Difficult sessions.

For the most part I look forward to going to therapy. I have a really good relationship with my therapist and although there's only so much she can do for me it definitely helps to have a release and get advice on how to cope, particularly with my anxiety.

But last session was really hard, there were tears and I got a lot of heavy emotions out. She's calling a family review with my mother. I'm anxious. Although I love my mother I wasn't very nice about her at my last session and I'm worried it'll be a highly tense session with confrontation that wont get us anywhere. Although my mother and I have a good relationship she refuses to discuss some of the issues I have and is clearly furious at me each time I purge, and, to be honest, although the bulimia isn't her fault I wonder if I'd still be suffering if she'd offered her support. I don't know. Who knows about anything?!

I've been very anxious, depressed but purging less than usual.

I am not easy to live with.

If you have mental health problems or live with someone who has mental health problems I'm sure you will know we're not easy to live with. I live with just my mother and its difficult. We love each other very much but we infuriate each other.

Take this evening for example. I was exhausted and asleep so my mother went food shopping without me. When she got back I was awake and went through it all: here is my stream of thought: 'Tofu: good, salad: all fine, plenty of soya milk: yep, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS?! She knows I specifically told her no more vegan ice cream. She wants me to be fat, she hates me, why is she doing this to me?! And there are no almonds, she's so hypocritical, she's telling me to be healthy, where are my bloody almonds?!' For anyone who does not have an ED (and probably for some people that do) I sound like a massive, over-reactionary bitch. I just want to cry right now. Actually considering walking Lord knows how far to the nearest 24hour place to get everything I need but I need to throw out the ice cream without her getting mad too. I don't think its that cheap.

Right, off to traipse through deepest, darkest Toxteth in search of some bloody almonds. At 9:30 at night. I'm fucking mental. Maybe that's the problem.

What's it like to breathe normally?!

I swear I think I've forgotten. Currently I am anxious. I don't know what about, my head isn't racing much more than normally but the physical symptoms are almost unbearable. I cannae breathe properly, sitting still is difficult, I feel like I have hundreds of milligrams of caffeine or cocaine surging through my body yet I don't know why. Half of me wants to crawl back into bed because this is exhausting, the other half wants to strip my clothes off, dive into the River Mersey and sprint swim to Ireland. Obviously none of these is practical because I have a life to live, not to mention dignity to maintain. So instead I'm going for lunch with my grandparents, who will probably speculate I'm on some sort of drug and scold me for being jumpy and irritable. I hate this.

Yesterday I felt so low as well, I refused to talk and wondered who'd care if I was no longer here. Logic tells me lots of people would care: my mother, my aunt, my friends etc but there's no place for logic in depression. 

Ultra-anxious.

Went to see my psychologist yesterday and she gave me the approval for Fluoxetine. She's referring me to a psychiatrist. This, in my opinion, is good news and hopefully it'll lend some relief to my life. I really like my therapist but she is such an enabler, I feel I could tell her I was sleeping with 17 people a night and she'd put it down to normal teenage behaviour. Maybe I'm exaggerating a little and what she says could very well be right, I don't know.

I've been buzzing with anxiety over the last two days though, my personal life, workload and love life are hectic, to say the least. I feel like I've had a gazillion cups of coffee and that everything must be done very urgently no time to breathe or sleep must keep going shower shop work eat go out. I just want a break for one second!

Its not like I don't try.

I follow the advice, I do the exercise my mother, therapist and doctors urge me to do yet it has been failing to lift my spirits. Is it any wonder I feel so Goddamn hopeless?

This week I've been called a bad friend, felt like an awful daughter and been a slacking student. What am I doing?! I want to hide in bed all month.

"I just want to live a normal life."

Went to the Doctor's at 4. It was a really difficult appointment, there were tears and at first he seemed really reluctant to do anything but after I laid it out clearly and explained that I didn't think it was necessarily something wrong in my life but something wrong chemically in my mind he seemed more receptive. He's going to speak to my therapist about giving me Fluoxetine (Prozac). I've heard mixed reviews but I'm going to give it ago. I never thought I'd be taking Prozac though. Craziness.

In better news, my friend T saw a comment I left on a friend's blog in which I basically state I'm struggling with mental health problems. She reached out and said if I ever needed her she's there, which I was really grateful for. Will I take her up on her offer? Probably not, but its nice to know support's there if I need it.

Going to play Touch Rugby in about an hour even though I'm tired, I need to get out of the house and take an hour out of my head!

Acid reflux & anticipation.

After purging last night for the first time in a good few days (an excellent streak for me) I had atrocious, agonising acid reflux last night. So bad that, combined with being uber-anxious, I did not get to sleep until past 1 this morning. Not so good as I had a trip out this morning to collect data. It has not completely gone away. My throat is taking a battering these days, I've had a persistent cough since summer as well, which I suppose I should bring up with my doctor.

I am anxious with anticipation due to my doctor's appointment tomorrow. The main fear going through my head is "what if they don't believe me?!". Despite my extensive mental health files dating back 8 or so years I'm stressed they'll think I'm just after drugs for recreation or attention seeking or something along those lines. I keep going over what I'm going to say. I need to phrase it in a way that a) lays the problem out clearly, b) does not make me seem too at risk, c) shows them I'm at the end of my fucking reel with the thoughts I'm constantly having. How do I balance that? I could take a friend with me but I don't particularly want to drag them into my problems - everyone is so stressed and busy right now, myself included. 

Cuts and pills.

Not cuts to my skin but cuts to my services. My (much needed) therapy sessions have been cut back to what seems to be review sessions. I am not happy about this. I'm not happy full stop, I need the help these sessions give me. At the moment my best hope is a charity that has offered me counselling with a volunteer which I've decided to give a go but I'm cynical. The NHS has my history, my notes, my therapist knows how to deal with me and I worry that a counsellor wouldn't. It has not been an easy week.

Anyway, the cutting of my therapy has tipped me over the edge into making an appointment with my GP about getting on the meds. Such fun. My mum's asked me whether I'm going to ask for something for my anxiety or depression, as if I can't have both. This, ironically, has made me more anxious. What to do? I'm hoping I'll get someone who is sympathetic and will talk to me about options, generally those working at my surgery are nice people who try and give you options. We'll see. Appointment's on Tuesday.