Saturday, 11 November 2017

IVF Update

This is going to be a short post - I just want to update on our IVF journey. We paid for a multicycle plan which covered 2 fresh cycles and all frozen cycles. We just pay for the medication seperately. Our first fresh cycle we got 2 embryos and both failed. Our second fresh cycle we got 7 embryos. So far we have put 4 back and all have failed. We have 3 left but have decided to wait until after our wedding which is in October 2018. This means we can save any extra money towards the wedding and just really focus on that and be able to enjoy it a lot more.

Sunday, 18 June 2017

Depression.

I don't have a diagnosis of depression so take this post lightly.
I have been getting very low moods since a young age. I stopped myself from crying between the ages 7 and 15 because I thought it would help control my mood. I stopped crying the year my Grandad died and I broke down on my 15th birthday in the back of a minivan. I can tell you that stopping yourself crying doesn't help at all.
What I mean by low moods is something I struggle to explain. I call it depression because I believe it's depression but without the diagnosis I feel a bit of a fraud.
I got very bad with my mental health between 19 and 23 and used to dissociate a lot and found it very hard to hide my problems which was the worst part for me. Some of that time was whilst I was living at University. I would have flashbacks and dissociate. It was like I was still inside my body but I couldn't physically control my body. And sometimes I would just fully blank on a few hours and go from being in a lecture to being outside my flat with no memory of the in between. It wasn't nice. It made me feel really uneasy and embarrassed. It massively affected my 2nd year of Uni. I quit before my 3rd year because I just wasn't coping and knew I wouldn't be able to hold down a career where I was my own boss.
But now when I think back to that I would prefer it to the depression. I have periods of depression and periods of sadness. When I am feeling sad I never remember how bad it was to be so low. I am in the low right now and it feels so bad.
I watched a documentary a few years ago about a boy who had depression. He described it as waking up to find the world is black and white and there aren't any colours. That's the best description I have heard so far. Everything is dull. Music is muffled. Films are slowed down with no plot. Colours are greyscale. And there is a flatline on emotions which is hovering right at suicidal and nothing can rise above that line, only below.
I have tried to describe how it feels when I am depressed but it isn't a great explanation. I can't quite get across how isolating and on edge it feels.
It feels like I am in a soundproofed box. I am on the inside and the sounds and colours and people are on the outside. They are right there but I can't get to them. I am locked in here alone and the walls are covered in razor blades. There is a noose above my head and it is dark. Everything bad that I have been told or felt in the past is right here every morning and every night replaying in my box. I don't feel like talking or sleeping because there isn't a point. I seriously consider saving money and running away for a few weeks before killing myself so I can't realistically be at risk of being saved. I get dressed and wash and eat not because I want to, just because I don't want anyone to know how bad I feel incase they try to keep hold of me when I need to slip away. Everything I do when I am feeling this bad is calculated so that if I do get to the point where I can't cope anymore I am able to kill myself without any warning.
Everything inside me is fighting against this post because it goes against everything. No one is supposed to know how suicidal I am. But no one checks this blog so I am safe for now. Safe. Not really.
I referred myself for help months ago but my mood dropped so low since. I can't go for that help until I am better because it isn't help for depression.
Sometimes it takes about 6 months to pass. I wake up and the colours are back and my heart is beating and it doesn't hurt to breathe. But I am still so sad that I can't enjoy myself. I am still so low. Just not depressed. But it is gone for a few weeks at most before it is back.
I have been struggling with coping since my nephew died and I had to drop out of therapy and speak to a social worker I hardly knew and my dad spoke to girls my age and I had to have IVF and we had 2 miscarriages. You can see why it keeps getting lower each time it returns and staying away for less time.
It hurts so much to exist. I don't have a diagnosis so I can't say much. But I know my mood is always suicidal or sad. There isn't a normal or a happy. I wish I remembered what happy felt like. Not just what it feels like to enjoy something. To have a good day. To smile. But to actually be happy. I haven't felt happy in so long.
I don't know how much longer I can force myself to live. It is so much easier not to.

Thursday, 9 February 2017

Social Anxiety

Social Anxiety is something I don't talk about much, because when I do I get very emotional.

Motel (2015), Clem Crosby

When I was very young, probably around the age of 3, I was scared of strangers. Nothing triggered it. It was just one of those things. I wouldn't talk to any children or teachers in nursery, my mum came in to play with me to try to encourage me to talk but I would only talk when no one was close to us. In Primary School it didn't change. I was physically unable to speak. If I needed the toilet, I couldn't ask. If I was going to throw up, I couldn't tell anyone. I wet myself a lot of times and would have to wear clothes from the lost and found. I threw up in my lunchbox, in the queue, in the playground. I remember when I was about 6 I had a nosebleed and I couldn't tell anyone so I just used my maths book to catch the blood. It wasn't a fun experience. It was incredibly lonely.

When I was 6 or 7 a teacher thought it might be selective mutism (Selective Mutism is a complex childhood anxiety disorder characterized by a child's inability to speak and communicate effectively in select social settings, such as school. These children are able to speak and communicate in settings where they are comfortable, secure, and relaxed.)

That teacher became my playtime therapist. Every playtime she would sit with me in the classroom, just me and her, and she would ask me to read to her. The school probably had no idea if I could read. She chose a really basic book which I hated reading anyway. She would start off with letting me mouth the words, then I would whisper them. She was sat right next to me for the first few times. After that she would move her chair a little bit further away so I would have to be a little bit louder until eventually I was reading at a normal volume. That year I was in the school nativity. I was a narrator, and I have it on home video. I also left my own lessons to read books to the reception class on Fridays. I wasn't scared to read out loud. I was still a bit anxious to raise my hand in class or to speak in assemblies between the age of 6 and 11 but only at a normal level.

After that I went to Secondary School and was bullied the entire time. No one really knows. I never told my family. I didn't really have friends to tell. I didn't tell teachers. In my first year of Secondary School I made myself a target. I wore pants because I didn't want to wear a skirt. I was only one of 2 girls that wasn't wearing a skirt and we were both bullied. I have blanked a lot of the bullying out but I know that that was the year I found out what 'suicidal' meant.

 In year 8 I bowed to peer pressure and I wore a skirt even though I hated it. This started a whole new set of bullies. I can't tell you how many times I was called fat and kicked in the legs. I wasn't fat, I was average. It was just obvious that I wasn't confident so yet again I was an easy target. My selective mutism didn't come back but I think this is when I started to get social anxiety. I wouldn't talk in class, I wouldn't speak to friends, I would go as far away from anyone as I could. Around this time there was stuff going on at home that I won't go into detail about but it made me a lot worse. I started to properly self harm. I can vividly remember the day it started. I was wearing a watch and I accidentally trapped my skin in the clasp when I fastened it. I would do that in lessons throughout the day as punishment. It progressed very quickly when I found a blade at home and took it to school in my pocket. I would cut myself at breaktime, only very lightly and there was hardly any blood, but it wasn't enough. I started to punish myself by not letting myself eat any dinner. I wouldn't let myself have a drink all day. If I had a drink I would make myself throw up. I started counting calories at home and had a chart online where I would track what I was eating. I didn't know what I weighed. I was only 12.

When I was 13 bad stuff was still happening at home. I still isolated myself at breaktime and lunchtime. I still didn't let myself drink. I would throw up after I ate. I started some of my GCSEs which was a welcome distraction. I was in touch with a friend from Primary School and I felt like I could be myself around her. Outside of school and away from home I started to find my own personality and I felt happy. I think that's what got me through.

14-15 was pretty much the same story but with all of my GCSEs. I would starve myself on certain days of the week. I would skip Fridays because Art was my least favourite subject. It's the one subject where there is no right answer and that was a massive trigger for me. I had to keep everything at school perfect because everything at home wasn't. I skipped school so many times that my dad had to come in to school to speak to the truancy officer. PE GCSE included weighing ourselves. I was amongst the top 4 heaviest, and I was the shortest. I was predicted all As. I panicked and I couldn't cope. I couldn't blank out what was happening at home anymore. I asked a cousin advice on what to do and she told my parents and everything seemed to crash all at once. I didn't get all As. My friend from primary school moved away.

I finished school just after I turned 16 with very few friends and a lot of bad memories. I couldn't go back there.

I applied for a local college. I wanted to do A Level English Literature. I also wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to do an Art subject. I wanted to prove to myself that I don't have to know the right answer. I ended up doing BTEC Graphic Design and I did enjoy it but I don't think it's something I will ever do well at because I don't do well without specific guidelines or instructions. I made a few friends on a very small course. I still couldn't really speak up. I still bowed to peer pressure. I smoked, I drank, I went to house parties that I didn't feel comfortable at. Every time I was going somewhere that wasn't within the college times I was feeling this internal panic. I could just about cope with it, with the occasional panic crying. I did ok. I got a triple merit. (I could have got a DMM. I was asked to resubmit my Fine Arts Project with annotations for a distinction but I couldn't physically speak to the teacher to tell him I had done it.)

I got rejected from 6 or 7 universities because of my average grades and lack of originality in my portfolio. I got accepted into my last choice. I won't go into detail about university because I hated it. It was absolutely the wrong choice for me. I hated living away from home and not knowing anyone. I tried to make friends and I think I did a good job at 'keeping up appearances', but I started to starve myself again. Stopped letting myself drink. My mental health got a lot worse and I couldn't really hide it anymore. In my first year at university I was hearing voices, self harming every few weeks and not really sleeping much. I was throwing up a lot more than I used to and I went to the emergency clinic a lot of times when I was having panic attacks.

My second year was a lot worse. I didn't get on with the people I lived with. In fact I was terrified of them. My mental health got very bad and I was paranoid about everyone. They would get drunk and bang on my bedroom door and window because I was the weird girl that didn't come out of her room. I lost a lot of weight because I couldn't go to the kitchen to eat. I started self harming more regularly. I would throw up to the point of throwing up blood. I would overdose and sleep through a day or two. I would drink to pass out. That year was the scariest year because I was making myself so ill that I wouldn't know what was happening. I would black out in lectures and not know how much time had passed. I remember leaving my flat to walk to a business studies class with a girl who lived in the same campus and then I remember her asking if I was ok back outside my flat. I couldn't remember any of the in between. I overdosed quite drastically once and I woke up in hospital. I didn't tell them my name and no one looked for me. I stopped leaving my flat as much and I only really turned up to university for deadlines.

I knew I needed to take a year out, but your year out is supposed to be a work year and the idea of being in a work environment with complete strangers terrified me. It still does. I get suicidal thinking about it.

During that 'year out' I realised I didn't want to go back because I was terrified of failing. I was terrified of going back and not being with the same people on my course because they didn't take a year out. I was terrified of the unknown and I would lie awake at night sick with anxiety. The voices would reiterate the fact that I was failing and that I will never amount to anything. The suicidal thoughts were stronger. The self harm was more frequent, eventually I was cutting at least 10 times a day. I have a lot of scars, most of which were during panic attacks when I felt trapped and like I couldn't breathe. Cutting helps me breathe even today. If I am feeling anxious about going to an unfamiliar place I will usually cut to calm me down. I'm not proud of it.

I think I probably didn't know how bad my social anxiety was a lot of the time because with school, college and university you have a routine. My issues always appeared when there wasn't a routine. I can force myself to perform to an expectation. I can force myself to turn up to a lesson, to work out the right answer, to meet a deadline. I can't force myself to meet up with friends, to work out how to start a conversation, to go to a social event. (I probably can force myself but not without feeling very panicked and wanting to self harm or worse.)

And this is where I find myself. That 'year out' was 5+ years ago. During that year out I met my girlfriend online. She is now my fiancee and the only friend I have. I wasn't able to go back to university. I haven't been able to get a job. Every day is a struggle not to self harm because I feel worthless. I am not doing anything with my life. I struggle to even leave the house for days at a time. I have tried medication and therapy and have learnt coping mechanisms for the voices and the impulsive thoughts. But I still feel so trapped.

It's unbelievably hard trying to explain what a world with Social Anxiety is like. I started this post saying that it's something I don't like to talk about. I avoided talking about it for most of it. And even now I can't put it into words because I don't know what words to use. Trapped is the only one that seems to fit. I feel trapped in my own mind. It prevents me from telling the truth because I'm scared of the consequences (being that the other person begins to pay too much attention to me which is a trigger). I tried to ask my GP to be referred for more therapy a few years ago and nothing came of it. That's because she phoned me and left me a voicemail asking me to phone her back about the therapy, and obviously I couldn't do that. She has left the practice now so I'm trapped again and can't make an appointment because it will be a different doctor and I don't know how attentive they will be. I applied online for eTherapy and after sending off the referral form found out they need to speak to you on the phone or face to face before you can use the online courses. I lay awake for 8 hours panicking about it. I tried every trick I could think of to calm my palpitations and eventually fell asleep at about 10am.

It's now 5am and I am still panicking about that self referral even after watching documentaries in the bath. I'm going to try to read a book in bed and hope that my referral gets an instant rejection because I didn't include my address or phone number (although I did include my GPs address and I feel so sick about the possibility of receiving a phone call from them).

I wanted to write this because it helps to just spill my feelings sometimes. And the anonymity of posting it on a blog no one reads is exactly the kind of non-attention I can cope with.

Saturday, 28 January 2017

Alphabet Dating - Z Date!

A really good idea for Z date is of course Zoo. January isn't really the season for Zoos and a lot are closed at this time of year, plus it isn't easy to get to one when neither of us can drive. So Kirsty chose for us to go to Zizzi for dinner. We spent the day in Town. We looked around Forbidden Planet and Waterstones, bought a Valentine's bath bomb from Lush, found the Hogwarts cushions we have been looking for in Primark and went to Zizzi where we had a Spaghetti Bolognese each and a pizza to share. After that we went to the cinema to watch Lion which was so good. It was a really nice date to end our year of Alphabet Dating on.

Alphabet Dating - Y Date!

The most common thing that comes up when searching for ideas for Y date is YouTube. If you don't already know, we film YouTube videos a lot anyway. So it wasn't really an exciting date idea. However I do love it when we film fun videos so it was a good excuse to do one. We filmed us playing the Who Am I game that we got for Christmas. We also bought yellow sweets to eat whilst we played Lego Batman (we also bought Lego minifigures that day). And to finish it off we had chips, cheese and beans whilst we watched Celebrity Big Brother.