So, why Pseudonymous Zombie? The pseudonymous is self explanitary. I'm using a pseudonym. The zombie... well that's a metaphor for several of the states I regularly find myself in.
Not all zombies are 'walkers'. Some can't get out of bed at all...
Some mornings getting up and living is a lot like raising the dead. Impossible.
Today has been one of those days and I feel like a failure. I'm failing at life. I'm wasting life. I'm a burden on my family and most days I wish I wouldn't wake up at all. For me, a good day is waking up and not instantly regretting it. That doesn't mean I'm happy to be alive or enthusiastic about the day ahead. It doesn't mean I'm motivated. A good day means I'm emotionally numb, rather than actively hating myself and my life. I take my pills. I carry on existing. That's a good day.
On such a day I might not cut, because I'm emotionally numb rather than suffering from my relentless self-loathing and hopelessness, or the whirling anxiety that sends me into uncontrolled panic, a panic which I can only stop by sliding a razor blade through my skin over and over again. Twenty times. Fifty times. One hundred times. I've cut over one hundred and fifty times in one sitting before. My husband found me surrounded by pools of blood in our bathroom. That's normal to us now. We clean me up. We keep going. We wipe away the blood so it's gone when our kids get up in the morning. I hide the scars and try not to cry at the dinner table when I look across at the two beautiful faces of my children and know that those two perfect little people deserve someone so much better than me as their mother.
Those two are the reasons I'm still alive, but on a bad day my mind tells me over and over that they would be better off if I was dead. On those days I want to leave them with their daddy, walk out of the house and drive to the cliff tops three miles away. Then drive off them. My family would hurt, yes, but they would move on. They would no longer have to deal with me and they could have better lives. That thought process is why I no longer have access to my car key, because one day I started driving away intent on not coming back and it was only because of a lucky stop and a lucky phone call that turned me back.
Another day, before I went on long term sick, I drove home from work and spent an hour in the car outside my house debating leaving, running away and finding somewhere to die. My husband saw the car parked and he phoned to tell me that my son wanted to see me to say goodnight before he went to bed. That made me bawl my eyes out but I got out of the car and went inside to be a mother to my kids. Two months later I waited until my kids where safely at school and took a planned overdose of anti-depressants, knowing my children wouldn't have to see me. They'd be protected. I survived that suicide attempt because my husband came back sooner than I'd expected. Even when he walked in I threw back more pills until he grabbed them from me and called an ambulance. I'm not allowed to keep my own pills now either. My husband gives me what I need every morning.
Luck (or lack thereof), more than anything, has ensured I'm still breathing, but I don't feel like I'm alive. So what's the point in getting up in the morning? Especially when I can't go anywhere or see anyone?
Unsociable and better caged than being a menace...
Depression and anxiety have kept me housebound for seven months. I can count the number of times I've been out in public since March on my hands, and on none of those occasions have I been alone. I need my husband or my mam with me whenever I do venture out and even then its hard, especially while going somewhere busy. Twice I've tried to go with my two children to the soft play, with my husband and mam at my side, on both occasions being sat in that busy environment has caused distress. It starts with a gnawing anxiety and becomes panic. I feel unsafe and I start to fidget. I can't stop worrying and eventually it gets too much, my brain feels like it's being squashed under the weight of my anxiety and I need to leave, to get away. Even though my kids still want to play, we have to go home. I can't manage an hour in a place with more than two or three strangers. After both trips to the soft play I hid away in my bedroom, needing to be completely alone, away from even my family, while I reset. Resetting is a process that can take days. Days just to be able to face my husband and children.
I'm a better mother and wife if I don't leave the house at all. At least then I can face my husband and kids rather than hiding away on my own. If I go out, they're going to lose me for a day or two. If not permanently.
It's a nightmare. The panic that makes it impossible to go out in public also prevents me answering the phone most of the time. Every time the phone rings I feel a sense of dread, that whoever is calling will have bad news or wish me some harm. Sometimes I manage to answer, most times I pass the phone to my husband. I can't make phone calls either. The idea of having to talk to strangers, to call center employees, or the staff at the doctors surgery, even my friends is terrifying to me. My mind tells me they'll judge me. Or I'll say something stupid. I feel sure I'll do something that makes the person on the other end of the line think less of me. Because of that, my husband makes all my phone calls for me. Sometimes I have to get him through security question but that is all I will do. State my name, date of birth, and the first line of my address. I can't actually have a conversation about whatever I needed to phone about. Even getting through security leaves me feeling distressed, and then I feel like such a failure for not being able to manage such a basic thing. Something most people take for granted.
My inability to make a phone call is dangerous as well as being disheartening. I keep telling health care professionals that I'd phone the crisis team if I got to the point of putting my suicide plans into action, but the truth is that I'm incapable of making that call. I'd have to hope that my husband was with me and that he could make that call for me. There's no way I can call a stranger at my most broken and tell them what's going on. I can't even call people I know... People I love dearly.
I have a friend who I've known since the age of twelve. She's my best friend. Yet I haven't seen her in months. I haven't phoned her. I've stopped replying to her texts. Not because we've fallen out but because I'm scared. I'm not coping. I'm failing as a friend and I don't want to burden her with my shit. I don't want her to hate me for it like others do, and so I'm hiding myself away. Logically, I know that's the wrong thing to do. I know I'm pushing her away at a time when having a friend could help. But the illogical voices in my head, the depression and anxiety, they whisper the opposite every day, that I shouldn't burden her. That I'm worthless. That sooner or later she'd walk away from me anyway because I'm such a horrible person. Those feelings have control at the moment and I can't seem to fight past it.
So I don't leave the house. I don't interact with the world outside. I stay in the cage that my own mind has locked me in. What's the point of getting out of bed when that's my life. Even when I do get up, it's only to move to the sofa, where I'll spend the day in the same pyjamas I've spent the last week in because getting showered and dressed takes to much energy and feels pointless as know one but my family will see me anyway. Sure, with my husband's help I make sure my kids brush their teeth and get washed. They always go out in clean uniforms, well fed and well rested. But what I ensure for them, I can't do for myself.
I only wash and change at all with my husband's prompting. He needs to prompt me to perform any sort of self care. If he didn't cook, I wouldn't have meals. I might binge eat the can of condensed milk from the cupboard to try and make myself feel better, or munch my way through the christmas biscuits which are seven months out of date, but then I'd just stop eating. I'm regularly dehydrated because I don't drink unless someone prompts me to do so. Everything about functioning is just pointless to me, but it isn't the futility alone that affects me... It's also hard for me to even remember to do the most basic things.
Zombies are characterised as having diminished brain activity...
Poor memory and poor cognition is another symptom of depression and it's hit me hard. There are times I'll listen to what someones saying to me and not understand a word. I'll misinterpret situations. I'll misread letters. My brain seems to be functioning in a fog, and if you tell me something, don't expect me to remember. Unfortunately, my problems with cognition might not be down to depression alone, because depression and anxiety are no longer my only health problems...
I received a phone call from my doctor yesterday, one of the few I've managed to answer after my usual deliberation. She thinks I have fibromyalgia, which would explain the pain I feel all over my body and my poor cognition and memory issues. Basically, I can't catch a break, and if I did, it would probably be in a bone.
Shuffling, moaning, and not really alive...
In addition to fibromyalgia, an x-ray on my wrists shows minor changes which look like the onset of osteoarthritis. I'm only thirty. That diagnosis may seem completely separate from my depression. Although many fibromyalgia sufferers are depressed, my battle with depression started in my teens, not with the conditions of chronic pain which have plagued me over the last few years. However, that pain is feeding my depression and making it worse. Right now my lower back, neck, shoulders, wrists, fingers, calves, ankles, hips, and even my toes hurt. When I managed to drag myself out of bed, a task which took three hours thanks to the stiffness in my joints and the pain in my back and neck, I took every type of painkiller I could (in the correct doses while supervised). That helped a little, but I'm still in pain and I know from experience that when I sand up, unbending my body with be excruciating.
Even writing this is difficult. I'm not using a keyboard. That hurts my wrist, and when I was at work I had constant numbness down half of my left arm because of using a keyboard all day. Instead, I'm using my tablet which has a stylus which is light enough and precise enough to make typing on a touch screen a little easier on my wrists which are in constant pain. All the same, my left hand which is holding my tablet is suffering. The tablet's too heavy to hold without the connective tissues around my wrist joint burning. I'll have to put the tablet on my knee, but then I'm looking down and that is making my neck worse. I have to change position constantly to easy parts of my body, only to put another part under pressure as a result, even though the act of moving itself is painful, often painful enough to bring tears to my eyes.
I cried this morning with the pain of sitting on a dining chair. It took me three hours to get out of bed because of my pain and stiffness. I'm in pain now. And worse, what I have has no cure. All I can really do is take pain medication. The doctor has advised doing gentle exercise like swimming or yoga, but thanks to my anxiety there's no way I can leave the house. Especially not to don a swimming costume or show the world that I can barely move and often only manage to shuffle like a zombie, moaning as I go.
I'd like to go for a walk in the countryside like I used to, but my back pain means I can't even get from my house to the shop at the end of the street without crying in agony and losing my ability to move. 160 meters. That's my maximum as far as walking goes. And if I need to keep going, if I force myself on with tears in my eyes and my brain telling me I should just kill myself rather than go on like that, then I'll put myself out of action for days. I simply wont be able to move the next day, or the day after.
I used to love kayaking, and strangely that doesn't affect my back the way walking does. However, it does affect my wrists and shoulders. It was the one sport I really loved to do. It gave me freedom and fun while also providing the solitude I need. My husband and I used to go to the lakes and paddle out to deserted islands. It was quiet. Peaceful. A new perspective. But now, on most days, I wouldn't be able to do it. If, on a rare good day, I managed it, then I once again wouldn't be able to move for days afterwards. That's my conundrum. If I make the most of a rare good day, pain wise, then that is followed by several of my worst days. It's just not worth it, because the intensity of the pain on my worst days increases my suicidal thoughts. Anything to make the pain stop.
Even cooking meals is hard now, which doesn't help with my lack of interest in feeding myself. I used to bake but I can't now because mixing cake batter hurts. I love cooking, but I can't chop a meal's worth of vegetables without increasing the pain in my wrists, and I certainly can't stand at the hob making sauces or stirring pans. I know. I've tried one of the rare occasions I had the motivation to feed myself properly. I ended up in tears with my back pain and had to get my husband to finish for me. I couldn't move properly for days afterwards and my feelings of failing my family increased again. I'm unable to perform even the basic task of making a family meal. Often I can't even open jars or bottles because of the pain in my wrists and fingers. And this is me, potentially for the rest of my life.
It's a relatively small thing that really gets me upset about the diagnosis of incurable fibromyalgia though... It's agony to put on a bra. Trying to get a bra on is excrutiating while I'm moving it into place and fastening it. What sort of person can't put on her undergarments without gasping and grunting in pain aged just thirty?
This feels like a life sentence. My anxiety and depression have me in a cage and have done most of my life to varying degrees, but now my chronic pain tortures me as well. Most of the time, living this way just doesn't feel worth it. I have no value because of it. I'm useless. On long term sick. Unable to care for myself. Unable to be the mother my kids deserve. I want it to end, but the only way it will is to take myself out of the picture.
So no, I don't wan't to wake up tomorrow. If I do, I won't want to go through the agony of getting out of bed and facing another day. If I make it downstairs, the constant pain will gnaw away at my resilience until I'm seriously considering suicide as the ultimate painkiller, as well as the best thing for my family. It's on my mind now, and I the only way I have to calm myself, to block out that need, is to go for my razor blade and add the the scars already covering my leg.
That's the thing about each of my conditions, from the mental to the physical. There's never a reprieve, not really. It's constant. Depression. Anxiety. Chronic pain. It's a constant gnawing, like rats chewing a cable; sooner or later the cable will snap. These conditions are things I'm fighting to survive day in and day out. It's exhausting enough to make getting out of bed difficult and getting dressed impossible. I'm not living. I just shuffle along, moaning in pain, unkempt and finding no joy in being on earth.
Pseudonymous Zombie
xxx
xxx
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