So, yesterday was different from my usual Tuesday – no Weight Watchers weigh-in, not out of choice, but after a good two months of waiting, I had my psychiatric assessment for the mental health team based in my new coastal location.
I was very anxious about it. With all the moving around TuT and I have done in the last twelve months we have had experience of four different NHS mental health services and it really is a post code lottery of what is on offer depending on which part of the country you are in.
Living in the north had different ideas of what was a good level of support, and the same is true of the south. The problem with these psychiatric assessments is that you have to go through everything; I have been involved over the years, with various mental health teams since I was 15. At 28 years old now that is over 10 years to go through to give an accurate background of my mental health.
So when the CPN (community psychiatric nurse) took TuT and I through to the little office to do the assessment I was very anxious, but reassured that she had my official looking file and had got some notes from Milton Keynes, where I lived for five months before moving here.
The seats were uncomfortable and I ended up sat on this rotating-retro square desk chair – I felt like the director! And so began the tale.
Beginning with the abuse that I can remember occurring from the ages of 10; to being taken to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinic when I was 15 because the school told my mum I was acting strangely and that was why I was getting bullied; apparently I was bringing it on myself with my the way I was behaving.
Then through sixth form when I discovered self harming as a way of coping and perhaps enjoyed getting drunk and messy a little more than my friends.
Then from sixth form to university with the beginnings of my disordered eating, through the famous “breakfast/tea diet”.
Into university where I nearly ended up being admitted as an in-patient to the psychiatric ward in the north, but managed to persuade them not to as I wanted to finish my degree in Liverpool. The agreement to skirt my admission was that I would see a Psychologist.
So then into my third year at university I had to come home to the north every other weekend to see the Psychologist.
Then graduating, starting work in administrative roles, with the psychologist tagging along in the background whilst I ended up on anti-depressants and was struggling to get any sleep.
Then into 2003 when I made my first suicide attempt and ended up in hospital. The hot summer of 2003 when I spent most of my nights sat in my bedroom self harming and taking overdoses. Whilst getting angrier and angrier at my parents for allowing the abuse to happen when each night I was reliving terrifying flash backs and just felt completely unable to cope.
Days were spent in the psychiatric day hospital and nights were spent losing the plot and drinking with friends I’d made from the day hospital.
Things between my parents deteriorated to the extent that my new psycho-therapist placed me in supported housing for people with mental health problems.
I lived there for about a year before moving home and going back to work part-time as a legal secretary. Which went well for about two months then the solicitor I worked for took on defending a man accused of abusing his step-daughter. When having to photocopy daily his step-daughters statements, which I couldn’t help but read, but mirrored my own experiences of abuse, I knew the step-daughter couldn’t be lying, but we had to defend the step father.
By the autumn I was back in hospital as in-patient following another overdose. From there followed a cycle of returning to work, getting ill and stressed, getting admitted as an in-patient, going back to work etc.etc. and so on. Until my employers got sick of having to find cover for my secretarial role, and on discharge from my admission in August 2004 I came home to a letter sacking me and telling me not to return to work again.
At around this time I started seeing and soon moved in with, my ex-partner, who turned out to be a violent and abusive, manipulative alcoholic. Life was based around alcohol and was total chaos. I returned to my parents on a couple of occasions but he would always talk me round with promises to change and that life would be better.
I was totally unable to contemplate going back to work with how badly my mental health had deteriorated and couldn’t see any way out, any way to improve my life. So in January 2006 I started the year with a massive over-dose, my most serious and nearest I’d got to actually finishing the job and ending my life, and on recovery, another in-patient stay on the psychiatric ward.
My new psychiatrist had taken me off all my medication and I was just flying along through life, trying to keep things as normal as possible whilst living with a violent alcoholic. I started attending Weight Watchers and losing weight, which made me feel a bit better about things and improved my self-esteem. The improvement in my self esteem meant increases in the violence from my ex-partner.
Eventually in June 2006, wandering the streets at 4am after the ex had locked me out I decided to take control of my life and declared myself homeless. The ex went on holiday and trusted me with the flat keys to feed the fish and collect his post, I used the opportunity to clear the flat of all my belongings, re-housed my fish with my brother; and spent another hot summer, this time three years later, attending the day hospital and living in a bed and breakfast whilst I waited to be re-housed.
During this time I met TuT and after six weeks of being with him moved to South Yorkshire to live with him; I knew I loved him and wanted to be with him forever and I wanted a fresh start away from everything that had happened in North Yorkshire.
There’s been plenty more that has happened whilst I have been moving around the country for TuT’s work and we have been at the mercy of whichever mental health team we were living under.
I was pretty exhausted after covering all this history with the CPN conducting the assessment. There is a place fairly near to us that will be able to help me come to terms and deal with the abuse when I am ready. In the mean time she would like me to attend the local day hospital here. So I am now waiting to hear from them and am just hoping that I won’t have to go through another assessment at the day hospital and go through the whole story again!
I spent the rest of the day exhausted and feeling like I’d sat a couple of A-Level examinations.
Today the sun is shining and the weather is wonderful. I am going to a different Weight Watchers meeting at 10:30am to find out how the last week of tracking my points has gone – I am at the mercy of the scale-gods! Wish me luck and I will post my weigh-in result when I get home.
