Content note: mental health, stress, isolation etc.
This has been a god awful few weeks. Really, pretty damn terrible. The sort of stretch where, I don’t know if everything’s shit because of my mental health, or if everything being shit is what’s causing the hugely bollocks mental health. There’s still no word on whether my family member has a terminal disease, but since she called me weirdly early in the morning the other day and sounded like she had been crying, and the fact she hasn’t mentioned any of the tests she had, I’m not feeling altogether positive. Not only that, but I’m really struggling with uni work but they said they can only be helpful if I get a GP letter (but those are expensive, and my money is…very very low, which is another reason everything is terrible). One of the reasons my money is low is because my laptop broke, and according to the guy who looked at it, the hardrive is absolutely dead. Completely dead. He checked his special machine – there is nothing on it that can be salvaged. So, already behind on my work, I’m even further behind, and I have lost so many precious memories and helpful documents that kept life ticking on by. I’ve already missed one assignment, and I can’t even find out what that assignment is because that module is run by someone who gets irritated by questions and has sent me all round the houses trying to find the person who he thinks should be doing his job for him. None of this is helped by the fact that I still don’t have a single friend here. Not one. And due to my brain being a useless sack of crap, I can’t seem to stop crying. I even cried in front of one of my instructors yesterday, because she started asking a million questions and she even asked if being trans was part of my feeling shit, and it was just like, the world is crumbling around me, and even here, where it’s meant to be 2016 and I tried to go neutrally so that I wouldn’t just be “The Trans One Who Transes All The Time”, that’s still all I’m seen as, and probably all I’ll ever be seen as. I feel hugely hopeless at the moment. I’m trying to see a way out, but when I’ve felt this close to the edge so often before, it’s getting harder and harder to convince myself that “it gets better”. When? When does it get better, and how long am I meant to wait? The trouble is, what little mental health support that exists is all about preventing suicide in the immediate moment. I mean, that is hugely important, and I sure all hell back that because it’s vital as hell. But…couldn’t there also be more long-term focused stuff? There’s only so many times you can put all your pills in the bin and lock up any sharp objects and lengths of rope. If there isn’t something beyond the immediate, in-the-moment suicide avoidance, nothing’s going to change, it’s just going to be postponed. Last time I felt like this, the NHS advice line told me to go to A&E, and I did. After an hour of waiting, one conversation with a nurse who inevitably asked about my genitals, and a psychiatrist who gave me a leaflet about wanting to die than told me to phone a number in a week (which I did, and they offered me an appointment in a small town that wasn’t accessible by public transport or one that was happening on a day I couldn’t make, then told me it was one or the other or I’d be removed from the system), I gave up. I mean, yes, I suppose the admin and travel involved kept me from slitting my wrists that particular day, but in the long-term, it just…killed my faith in the NHS, making me infinitely less likely to contact them in crisis times, and therefore, really only making me more likely in future to go through with plans without bothering to reach out first. Which, ironically, would cost them more to treat if a failed attempt was made than if the government stopped scrimping on mental health services in general and also invested in training medical staff that not every psychiatric problem is genital-based.
I realize these problems are hugely insignificant compared to what many people are going through right now, and especially what many trans people elsewhere put up with. But the logical aspect of my brain seems to have rather short-circuited, and so currently I feel like I’m on a tiny wooden raft being battered to shittery by life, the universe and everything. I very much hope your times and brains are healthier than mine right now.
ftmfml 