In the midst of my worst mental health crisis since 2017 – “YOU CAN’T POSSIBLY WRITE ABOUT A MENTAL HEALTH CRISIS IF YOU’RE GOING THROUGH ONE, CAN YOU? I DON’T BELIEVE YOU” – I know from grim experience that there’s only one person who can put me right: me. And yesterday, I made a pretty grim job of it. Here’s what I didn’t do:
- Attempt suicide
- Check into a psychiatric hospital
- Make an appointment with a therapist
Here’s what I did do all day:
- Cried until there were no more tears
- Went for a long drive, missing the entire Benfica v Liverpool game on BT Sport
- Didn’t eat anything from the afternoon onwards, except half a pot of fat free cottage cheese
- Went to bed at 9.00pm, hoping I’d never wake up again, except that it took over an hour to actually get to sleep
- Wrote to health secretary Sajid Javid asking him to help me.
Then I read about a Conservative MP called David Warburton was accused of multiple incidents of sexual misconduct and pictured next to a heap of cocaine and promptly checked himself into a psychiatric hospital due to the “severe shock and stress” he was suffering from. Why the actual fuck didn’t I think of that? I admit our circumstances are slightly different. For example, I don’t own a luxury airbnb property or access to loans from a dodgy Russian businessman, which probably puts Mr Warburton, WHO DENIES ANY WRONGDOING, in a slightly better position than me, but still.
And of course, my problems are partly of my own doing. I’ve just told the private company. paid for by the NHS expense to give me me six weeks of counselling for my depression, to piss off (not my actual words) because the trainee staff member failed to contact me on the day she was supposed to because she was ill, but failed to pass on the message she was ill. We’d discussed self-harm the previous week and I hadn’t ruled it out. How do you trust a company that behaves like that? Answer: I don’t. Patient heal thyself, except that SOMETHING I CAN’T TELL YOU ABOUT has turned my life upside down, inside out and round and round, changed all my perceptions of who and what I am, crushed my self-esteem and left me in a post British Red Cross style mental meltdown. Other than that, I’m fine.
Unlike Mr Warburton, WHO DENIES ALL WRONGDOING, I doubt that a local psychiatric hospital would allow me to check-in, certainly without sight of my bank statement, after which I’d be shown the door and told to visit my GP, to se if I could get an appointment this month. Then, I’d be referred to a private company where a trainee counsellor would make an appointment but then leaving me hanging around all afternoon having gone sick. No thanks. And what about an Aspergers/autism/ADHD/PTSD referral? No problem. Keep 2026 free if you’re still alive, always assuming the NHS hasn’t collapsed or been sold off by then. In which case, Mr Johansen, go back to bed, give your head a good wobble and don’t bother me again.
For all I know, my frivolous digs at a Tory MP could be very unfair. This could all be a terrible misunderstanding on everyone’s part and we all know that “severe shock and stress” are not words we use unless we are suffering from severe shock and stress, do we?
Christ, even if my imaginary closet opened yesterday and out crashed numerous skeletons, including one of me being viciously beaten by a previous partner, which flashed repeatedly across my mind. Honestly, I don’t trust myself to socialise with friends who support my old football club without saying something I really regret about domestic violence. It’s all in the papers. Trauma , baby, and for the first time in 32 years it all came back.
You know what they say: when one door closes, another slams shut in your face. And that’s how I feel today. I’m going into semi-hibernation for the foreseeable future.
There’s no need for you to say how sorry you are, how much you love me, how I’ll get through this because, with the possible exception of the last bit, they’re a given. And one day, I’ll tell you all about it and let you make your own mind up.
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