Frustration, frustration, frustration.

Today I am mostly feeling angry. Punch the wall angry. Swearing at inanimate objects that have slighted you by being inanimate angry. It's coarsing through every fibre of my being as we speak. I can feel the adrenaline from it prickling every nerve. I'm twitching and overflowing with the electricity and impulsivity of it.  And I want to scream an ineloquent string of offensive words at the world out the nearest window. I want to punch and kick every single item in this flat. I want to vent all my frustrations at everyone I see and argue with everyone that dares to give me eye contact. I want to rip off the clothes that I'm wearing and pull out all my hair. I want to scratch, gouge, bite and hit every inch of me. I want to call people I know and be awful to them, just scream profanities at them and tell them all the ways in which they've let me down or have burdened me. Because I feel suffocated by this life, by who I am and since I can't control me, perhaps they can control who they are around me. I'm sick and tired of trying to mould myself into a band-aid for everyone's ailments. I'm sick of being patient, sick of listening. I don't want to do it anymore. It doesn't matter who it is, eventually everyone in my life dumps all their woes and frustrations on me. I'm the one that has to calm them down, hug it out and make them feel better. Because that's the role I've built for myself and that's what I do with everyone. I weed my way in, beseeching them to use me as their own personal agony aunt. Even with my support worker. Constantly talks about her kids and her life and if I didn't feel shitty enough about myself tells me that I have to remember there's always someone worse off out there and at least I'm not like the parents in the paper who's son was just murdered. That's a real problem. And then to confuse matters further when I told her it wasn't exactly news to me that I wasn't the hardest done by on the planet she replied with but maybe you are the worst off perhaps there is no one that has it harder than you. Talk about mixed messages. I don't exactly lack clarity on my particular situation. But knowing something and doing them are completely two different things and I've always found the execution the hardest part.
At the end of the day the part I'm struggling with the most is the idea of "change" and whether or not its possible. everything when it comes to the anxiety and depression is so much about denial and distraction. Very little is to do with dealing with anything, resolving anything, understanding anything. Is change even possible? Not from the people I know in my ife it seems, not from me for sure. At the moment it's all keep busy, go to the gym, take classes at night, hang out with friends. All in an effort to fill up the space in your head, to keep you so focused on everything else there's no time to wander into that old familiar room in your mind. I hate being busy though. I really despise it. What does it achieve? It leaves me drained and dreading the start of the next week. So at the weekends I get sucked back down the drain because I don't have the energy left to keep the smoke and mirrors going. I have to live it. And its still there, still as strong. So it uses me as a punching bag, keeping me awake, taunting me, extracting every ounce of self respect and worth I have. Every last drop of energy is evaporated. I'm trying to care about me, the flat, something...anything really but I can't. I don't have anything to anchor on to at this point. I'm going through the motions. I only manage to keep the flat tidy if someone is coming to visit or stay. I'm still not putting any energy into looking after myself, everytime I do I become so self-concious it leads to a day long series of panic attacks. My mind just goes into over drive on me. Every glance, every laugh is all at my expense and that little voice upstairs wallows gleefully in the cess pit that it has created. After all who am I to think that I can pull of normality. It's ridiculous to think that I could look anything less than profoundly hideous and a laughably shambolic impersonation of a real person. And it is so crystal clear to every other member of the public that they can't help but glare with derision and pity. I just want to reach inside of me and rip all the cowardice, the malice and uncertainty out. I want to gut myself like a fish. Make everything nice and clean. But I can't and I don't do any of it. All I do is push things down a little deeper and top it off with food. And I follow along ever so passively and accomodatingly to the people at the CMHT doing what I'm told even if i don't want to. for instance the fitness classes. I am too much of a chicken to outright say no I don't want to that, that this week I'll be going to two which are the closest to the flat.  I never stand up for myself or the people that I care about. I can never make my voice heard. and its not that there isn't a voice. Its not like I don't have opinions and probably snooty ones at that. I do. I can be perfectly obnoxious in my own right. That part of me though remains hidden away from 99% of people, ironically only the people I know best get to see the worst parts of my character. Even with them though I'd twist myself out of shape to do what I think I have to for them. Especially my brother and my best friend. They didn't ask me to do this. My brother constantly tells me he doesn't want me or need me to do this but I can't for the life of me turn off that need to make myself useful, to fit in and to stay quiet because only the people that are important get to speak. Only the people that matter get to need. Only the people  that are relevant get to decide. My job is to serve. My job is to do whatever is required, whether I'm able or willing to. My job is to stop being selfish and always put other people first. Such a crazy idea to build a prison for yourself and yet resent other people for forcing you to it. But I do. There's a part of me that really resents other people and it burns as bright as the part that loathes myself. And I know I'm never going to be free of it.
Change is an abstract idea and thats all at then end of the day. All we have are different grades of the same. Which is what really sparked off this latest explosion. My parents 36th wedding anniversay. 36 years of misery, resentment, verbal abuse, mistrust and not one ounce of change. And look at me I'll be 31 this year and I still react to them in the same way I always have, deference. Which is how I react to everyone. I lower myself. I can't be in a room with anyone no matter how much younger or older and not feel those panicked twinges of inferiority. Nearly thirteen years since I left high school and I still wake up in that same stomach churning, indigestion inducing state of anxiety. The world is just one large day at school. And everyone else are the nameless, faceless bullies that are just waiting to drag me down. Over a decade and I can't shake the way I look at the world. It's not as if I'm oblivious to the fact that there are good people in the world. I have my best friend, my brother, other friends and people I've become very close to on sites like Twitter. So why can't I shake it. Why can't I give myself and other people a chance? And why do I keep on blaming everyone else for something that only I am causing. I need to learn to be friends with people without injecting myself so deeply into their lives. Its not that I don't like helping it's just that I can't, not now at least. It's too much. I need a bit of peace and quiet to focus on myself, to try and figure out what I'm supposed to be doing and I can't do that if I'm constantly running after everyone else. I need to learn distance, boundaries. I need to learn that people won't automatically abandon me if I'm not at their beck and call 24/7. I wonder if I'll ever learn to cut myself any slack. I wonder if I'll ever make any meaningful progress, instead of just making the same old mistakes over and over. I'd really like a little change. I really hope I'm wrong and that its a possibility.

Sunday Brain Strain

The last few days my head has been swirling with all sorts of nonsense so I'm going to try and exorcise them from my grey matter. The usual negative diatribe of course was front and centre. And one or two issues from earlier in the week keep gnawing at me. Like the frustration I felt finally getting to the bank after 3 cancelled appointments to find out none of what my homemaker promised we could do could be done. And I ended up no further along and £50 lighter. The thing that I have been ruminating over the most however is my last meeting with my SW. It was a little strange. We didn't do anything apart from drive about. That's not the strange part however. It was that she was chatting away to me about her home life and actually acknowledged their had been a role reversal.

Usually she talks a lot about her kids etc. And I figured she must do this with everyone of her clients, must be her way of connecting with them and giving them examples that they're not alone. Apparently not though. Apparently I have the great honour of being her sounding board. And I have to be honest I'm not great at it. I think its because after almost 2 years seeing her I'm still pretty much all but mute and I guess there is just a lot of dead air to fill. I've mentioned before the way she treats me bothers me somewhat. She treats me more like a daughter a lot of the time than a client. And I find that hard to deal with. I don't even have the energy or ability to be there for the people I already care about a lot and its just added another one to the pile. Yay for more guilt. It means that I absolutely dont want to let her down and wouldn't dream of telling my Psychologist when things get uncomfortable for me.

And it also means I feel unable to tell her to her face if things are getting uncomfortable and I wish I could. She keeps telling me that it won't hurt her feelings but I don't believe her. And I especially couldn't have done it that days as she was particularly worried about one of her kids. Whom apparently was verging into my territory. She was obvioulsy worried but she had the strangest attitude toward it considering her line of work. She was adamant that despite the incident that occurred she wansnt going to go down the path of talking to the GP or other MH professionals about it. She didn't want her kid to go down the same route as me and she asked when my problems has started. And it was obvious that her kid being like me was her worst nightmare. And I still don't know how I feel about that. I guess I'm mad. I'd like to think I have some positive qualities despite my problems. Not that I'd be able to admit any but I do hope that there's something of worth in me. And I'm mad too that if there is a problem she'd rather pretend everything was okay instead of maybe getting her kid help. It makes me wonder what stock any of these people at the CMHT actually put in their work. If they don't believe in it, how can I?

Three is a Magic Number

In more ways than one.

I won't be seeing my psychologist or support worker for the next three weeks.
My support worker is actually off on a four week holiday to visit her husband in Australia and my psychologist felt it best to give me some time to adjust to the flat and start sleeping before we met again.
I can't say that I'm all that bothered about not seeing my SW for a month. As some people on a closed Facebook group know she said something to me a few weeks ago that left me reeling.
She basically insinuated I was committing fraud by spending a weekend at my parents. Forget that I'd managed a week at the flat before heading home and that I haven't been back since. Apparently that wasn't good enough so they thought they'd put the frighteners on me. She also told me I was being selfish if I didn't move in (even though I had) because my brother can't live here if I'm not here and my parents wouldn't get any help.

Talk about putting the weight of the world on your shoulders.
I could tell she was trying to turn the screws on me and I also knew her saying this was coming from my psychologist was nonsense. My psychologist would never ever be as tactlessly blunt as what my SW can be. She has been pushing me toward moving out for a long time and I could tell she was both frustrated and baffled that not only was I not going at the speed she wanted but I also wasn't loving it.
She can't grasp my reaction to this move in the slightest. It's all black and white. Pro and con for her.

It was always the CMHT's belief not mine that my parents home environment was the driving force behind my anxiety and depression.
And I agree not having access to the basics like warm water, working shower and toilet might have had a negative influence on my mood but it was never the core of the problem.
I had to fight the urge pretty hard to pull away entirely from the CMHT and just return to my dark little box room.
I wanted so badly to show them that they couldn't manipulate me or tell me who or what I am and what I have the right to do.
But that was just the anger talking and if I did do that I knew that would be selfish. Its ok if I'm suffering at my own hands but not anybody else. I want better for them.

So all in all I'm looking forward to not having to deal with the appointments for the next few weeks and working at my own pace without interruption or coercion.
And to celebrate my brother and I are having a friend down to stay at the end of the week. Hopefully it'll help me relax and shut my brain off for even a few minutes. We're going to head to the cinema and will be probably watching a few scary flicks and foreign goodies in between playing games and good talks. I'm also looking forward to Thursday because we'll finally be able to move my hamster Smudge into the flat. I miss having my little fuzzball around. It's reassuring hearing him running in his wheel in the wee small hours. Will probably help me focus on something other than the usual argy bargy going on outside at the weekend here.