After 11 years of random cobblers I have used up all the memory on this site so will now use this one instead for even more random cobblers.
An Acceptable Level of Madness
I got back yesterday from the latest visit to my friend. Overall it was good despite more crap weather and my strange mood swings. I am due to visit the madness doctor again on friday but obviously that’s a complete waste of time as his only help is for me to take meds for schizophrenia which I dont have. I went past the care home today on the way to Tesco and saw a woman who used to work there and was usually quite friendly to me but she was pushing a man in a wheelchair and I convinced myself that she started to attend to the man in the chair as she had already seen me and did not want to speak to me so was simply pretending to be busy. Paranoia or the undeniable truth. I say this as I spoke to her once last March simply to be friendly and ask how some of the residents were but she seemed to want to go then almost like I was a nuisance. The simple things like this hurt. I wrote this over 10 years ago about another situation but saw it again today and it still opens up old wounds and i thought it somewhat similar.
“I tried to answer her but that oh so familiar awkwardness awakened and I almost sighed and walked off. It’s the reaction on others faces that hurts so much when they realise that you are not quite normal but they still try and be polite although at the same time try to move away.“
The never ending cure for social anxiety and depression it seems in anxiety books and self help sites is to tell people to make contact and try to talk to others as much as possible and yet there are simply so many instances of feeling like a weird loner and disliked when you do try. Like I have said many times before you have to be normal enough in the first place to even be accepted, BECAUSE EVEN MOST NORMAL PEOPLE ARE IN REALITY QUITE JUDGMENTAL BASTARDS!
Some Autumn Colours
I gave up in the deer rut for this year after 2 awful days weather wise and also deer wise. I truly hope the management of the country park have not culled 75% of the deer but its strange several people said they had never seen less deer there in many years. I know they need to control the population but people are such wankers sometimes. I also checked on a local weather website to see how much sun we have had as its been so cloudy almost every day. So far in october we have only had 15 hours sun whereas 2 years ago when I last went out we had 68 hours and the year before over 80 so it really is a bummer of a month for sunshine.
So instead I went to the botanic gardens yesterday as there was some sun for once. Many of the trees are already bare but there was still some autumn colours to view on the maple trees. I go to visit my friend again this week so it will be full on winter by the time I get back and autumn almost over. I was really looking forward to it this year after missing the whole of last autumn in hospital or the care home but it’s been a crap autumn so far.
Autumn Arrives
It felt good to be back at the park again. After the last year even this made me more anxious than normal and the bus was cancelled on the way there so I had to wait an extra 30 minutes. However this is my natural habitat and the place I have visited more than any other so it almost felt like being back home. The annual deer rut encourages far more people especially on sunny days but its still fairly easy to find lone stags on the hills and elsewhere and more come down when the sun fades.
Back Home
I got home yesterday after 11 nights away staying with friend. It was mostly good despite my anxiety still being bad at certain times. However, today is the 1st anniversary of my suicide attempt which brings back some unpleasant memories to say the least. I still know that if my infection had of been spotted I would not have been through all this crap and yet there were doctors who still demanded that it was all in my head and the urine test is infallible, despite evidence to the contrary online. Hence trying to make me take the shit drug olanzapine which I will only take again if my insomnia becomes unbearable.
So I spent 2 nights in one hospital for other tests, 16 nights in the infirmary after I slit my wrists and then about 60 nights in a care home for old people which I only got out of before Christmas as I was about to discharge myself anyway. I then saw the physio about 12 times, a wound clinic 6 times, the plastic surgeon 4 times and the mental health doctor 3 times but should have been 5 and is still ongoing. I wish I could say it was worth it but as I have mentioned many times here my mental health is in just as big a mess as before. I have had anxiety all my life but never this sense of almost panic and fear, its surprised me that it can be this bad at this age and that all my emotions more heighted than any other time of my life.
On the plus side we did bake an apple pie, see some nice horses on bike rides and find the annual day of dance folk festival on the last Saturday. The cathedral in Peterborough is also a good one. Such places always make me feel better. However, I am always staggered how 11 days can pass in the blink of an eye and yet bad times seem to go on forever.
Mental still but not schizophrenic
Olanzapine is generally not a first-choice medication for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), as it is an antipsychotic and has significant side effects, including weight gain and sedation. However, in some cases, it may be used as an off-label augmentation therapy for severe, treatment-resistant GAD that hasn’t responded to other treatments. ( But I have never had any other treatment for my anxiety)
I went back to the mental health doctor, a different one from last time. He gave me a new prescription for olanzapine but after just one tablet the next 2 days I felt like crap again so I have already stopped talking them. They are for schizophrenia anyway so of no use to me. They also make you eat like a pig and i ate 8 biscuits the next day even after normal meals. I have anxiety but am not quite delusional…yet. He was friendly enough and I told him about other problems but if all they can do is give you meds then there really is little help so again stop telling people that there is loads of help out there when there isn’t . The reviews of the health centre on google are absolutely woeful but it is in a quite a deprived area and falling apart like everything else. To top it all I have been having pain around my chest and heart but I am now reluctant to go back to my normal GP in case they think its all in my head. I am due to pay another visit to my friend on Thursday but I dont enjoy the visits like I used to as my current anxiety and state of mind make almost all small things much worse than they used to be and pleasure fleeting. If only I could go somewhere to find peace.
An Old Post
I wrote this about 4 years ago. When I go back and look at old posts, I often agree with them now more than ever.
“It still hurts a lot , years of loneliness and isolation and wondering what might have been, what I possibly could have done differently and hoping but realistically knowing that death is now the only release from all this guilt shame and regrets. However even if I was now 20 again I would still never do any of the total shit they advice in CBT so it does not work for lots of people as it was invented by someone who has no idea what its like and not realised that its a fear of humiliation, not people.“
Speaking to someone
I spoke to somebody yesterday. Yes its rare I know. It was the son of one of the old ladies from the care home I was in last autumn. I knew he used to visit his mother every afternoon but had not seen him since I left until the other day and then again yesterday saw him sitting on a bench around the corner. The home is only 5 minutes away. Thankfully his mother is still alive but sadly one of the three old ladies has passed away and the other, the one I had to stop from getting up every night and falling over, she had been moved to a different home by her son, hopefully a better one.
However the care home sounded like it had even gotten worse over the last 8 months with new management and several of the staff leaving. I was lucky in that as I was still mobile so was able to go home every day but if I was there 24/7 with nothing to do but watch daytime TV I would have gone insane(yes, even more than I am now.) I remember the toilets with urine all over the floor, once sitting on a chair covered in someone’s urine as they had wet themselves and one toilet with ivy actually growing in an open window even though it was December. The night staff who were simply glorified cleaners and had little interest in looking after the older residents. I dread getting ill again and having to go back to such a place. Yet they charged £700-1000 a week per person. Many elderly people forced to sell their houses to pay for such care. Yet the elderly population is growing rapidly and the money for social care getting less every year. Perhaps we are entering a new dark age and one day soon we will have people pushing carts walking the streets shouting “Bring out your dead!”
Today is a public holiday in the UK. the last one before Christmas. Its warm and sunny but such days only depress me as everywhere is crowded and remind me of my youth when all such holidays were also spent in my bedroom alone. A weird loner when young sometimes becomes a weird loner as adult. It simply must all be my own fault for not DOING THE HARD WORK REQUIRED TO CHANGE! I still think much of social anxiety treatment to be written by delusional morons. Of course I have some regrets now but the worst thing is you still have the mental capacity and emotions to imagine true love and what it would be like to be with someone but know its now too late to ever actually experience it. So what’s the point?
Anxiety as an alarm system
I saw a YouTube video today which claimed anxiety was in reality simply an alarm system. Now being alone was a trigger as when we evolved if we were not part of a tribe or group we were much more likely to die. Being with bad or abusive people is obviously an alarm along with real and major problems like lack of money food, accommodation plus many other related to modern living.
Most interestingly he also said that all meds do is take the batteries out of the alarm so you are not so aware of it and alcohol or drugs subdue the noise of the alarm to some extent but if the alarm is going off for a reason, like your house is burning down then you are still in trouble.
I think this is a major problem when people are looking for help for anxiety as they are looking for some magic quick fix solution but if you have real problems like a bad family or relationship, unemployment or a job you hate or bad house or neighbourhood then obviously unless you can fix those first then the anxiety is never truly going to go away. The thing is for many people these problems are often near impossible to solve so you realise there is no cure and there is no real help and then you start to think about ending it all again as the only way out.
More Random Crap
My emotional state has been somewhat different since coming out the care home at Christmas. I have not had olanzapine for 5 months either so it may just be general lunacy but when I am out and I see people, old or young I wonder what lives they have. Are they alone, did or will they find somebody to share things with, have children, live to an old age. everything. Its like looking down on humanity from above, as if I have already passed away like someone on Youtube with a near death experience video. Perhaps its just madness.
I think the worst part though is seeing younger people with friends but especially those in a relationship and happy and not only realizing that this was never me, well apart from the odd rare day and never with a girl, its also now far too late for any thing meaningful to happen. Career, relationship, family are now almost impossible. Then motivation collapses again and the almost yearning for this to end so all therapy is a waste of time.
The post I read on another anxiety forum the other day tried to use this as motivation to younger people to go out and not waste their lives and yet even if I was young again, I know staying in college and going to university would have been hell and I doubt I would have habituated fast enough to gain any real friends and certainly not female ones or a relationship. More likely I would have stayed a loner and struggled. Again this is not through cowardice as often claimed its just as much because as a weird loner at college or Uni you would be disliked and so ostracised just like school whereas all the normal and popular kids hung out together. Even with my current mind if I went back in time I would still not have the motivation to seize the day or do anything differently and almost certainly I would still have found it impossible to have a relationship even if you put me back in the body of a 21 year old Brad Pit. In fact if I knew then what I know now I may well have slit my wrist far earlier but with more success.
Death by Shyness 