On Wednesday, I (and my wonderful outreach worker who came with me as emotional support/witness) had a meeting with two of my bosses to discuss me going back to work which currently isn't an option despite their wishes to the contrary. The meeting went as well as it could've gone under the circumstances, the dialogue summed up being as follows:
Boss: What can we do?
Me: I don't know.
Boss: We don't know either. We'll meet again in December.
I feel nothing was really accomplished by that twenty-minute chat about how messed up my brain is at the moment beyond just making me feel bad about it. Sure, the whole "but you can start at two hours a week & build it up from there, it's not a problem!" angle was brought into conversation (as expected) but it didn't seem to really register that I currently very rarely leave the flat. When I do it's usually during hours when there's very few people about, into places people don't frequent.
Right now, people are a huge problem for me. I find it hard to attend appointments with people I trust, let alone subject myself to strangers who may or may not comment on me. When I was on my way to pick up groceries on Tuesday, I was referred to as 'fatty' (I wasn't the slimmest to begin with but medication weight gain is officially -a thing-) by a guy driving a van past me & normally I wouldn't give a toss but right now my mind is in a weird (not dark, just weird) place and I feel anxious if I'm noticed which for a chick with turquoise hair can sometimes be hard to avoid despite unnatural stuff no longer being taboo or uncommon.
Quite frankly, I don't know if I'll even be okay to work in December. I can't put a timeline for my recovery, mental health doesn't work that way and nervous breakdowns don't play ball with pre-existing conditions. My splitting, hallucinations and dissociation were getting horrifying and intolerable before the medication kicked in and I'm still not 100% (not even 50%) that what's on my mind or what I see/hear/smell is completely real. I find myself working robotically whenever I'm not 100% consumed by something interesting and even then, as soon as I let my concentration slip... there's the whispering of my name, there's... blood puddles forming on my bed in the corner of my eye (my desk is right next to my bed -- to say my flat is tiny is the understatement of the century :P), the paranoia creeps in, everyone hates me, I'm not a worthy human being, blah de blah, et cetera et cetera... so by no means am I not only okay to work, I'm just flat out not okay.
Trying to explain that to mental health professionals is tricky enough because they have their own set ideas of how disorder A and B work & I sometimes have huge trouble being heard:
- For example, my psychiatric doctor wants to lump my hallucinations together with dissociation, while my GP believes they're caused by the constant state of stress my brain is in, but then my alcohol abuse support worker -- a psychiatric nurse in her own right -- recognises clear signs of psychotic behaviour & is very clear in that dissociation =/= hallucinations). Thankfully, borderline (again, the diagnosis keeps flipping between bipolar, borderline, bipolar AND borderline) is treated with anti-psychotics so whether or not I'm listened to is really secondary because I got the right crazy candy anyway.
But trying to explain that to someone with no mental health background -- despite the assumed want to understand -- is ten times harder because I keep trying to word things in a way that doesn't make me sound like a completely insane person but then... I am an insane person? :D
I'm trying really hard not to stress about it and I'm 100% sure my bosses didn't arrange this meeting with the purpose of making me feel like utter 💩, but intended or not, the anxiety is there & despite needing to leave the house this morning -- my electric is running super low & groceries wouldn't hurt plus I need to hunt for colder season clothes and thermals -- I've worked myself up into a state where I absolutely don't want to.
Thankfully, getting it off my chest has helped a bit (see, this is why I keep coming back to blogging) and I journalled about it a bit which also helped... but it is what it is.
I can't help how my brain responds because I've yet to start the 'rewiring' therapy of split thinking. I feel worthless because I'm not perfect. I'm useless because I'm not useful. I'm not being a good machine. I'm not like everyone else. So I must be a waste of space, right? It's all black and white with no grey in between. Maybe one day I'll learn to stop these trains of thought but right now I'm wallowing in them because it's what I know how to do. It sucks.
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