I told myself I was a fraud, but maybe not

I’ve been back at work a couple of days this week. A little bit of normality.

Whilst going in causes me to have massive anxiety attacks on both days. And I feel I have to keep my arm covered as it’s a dirty little secret that might offend people.

But overall  it’s good to be back with the team, the banter.

And when it comes to the jokes it’s definitely like I’ve never been gone.

I’ve missed the team. I’ve missed company.

One of the conversations that came up, as always was, was that one of my workmates’ coat looks like it has a dead ferret attached to its hood. An ongoing joke. We laughed that would he dare go out in public in that? in front of his mates? In usual banter style, the response was at least I have mates. It’s typical comradery like we’d have every day. 

But in that moment it felt like a dagger through my heart.

Of course I laughed it off. What else was there to do.  But I spent the next 2 hrs battling with my head and painting on the smile.

But my drive home I sobbed. I cried so hard I couldn’t see.

Friendship is something I have always struggled with.

I only have 2 friends that I would call ride n die friends. 1 is 200 miles away and the other is up to her eyeballs in her own family life.

I have noone else to chew the fat with. The kind of friend to have late night chinwags about the way the world works where we gossip so long it’s the early hours before we know it. And figured out the answer to life really is 42. Noone close who I could call up at short notice and pop out for a drink with after a bad day.

So on that drive home my head turned to the poison it had been trying to fight all afternoon. And it told me I shouldn’t be here anymore.

I tried to think of if I had any outstanding prescriptions I could collect the way home. Take them all and pray they’d do the trick so I didn’t have to keep this battle up any longer.

I wondered if the tide was high enough that if I drove to the beach the current would be strong enough to drag me under.

I wondered if I had the strength to glide a blade across my skin one more time either wrist or throat deep I wasn’t sure, but enough to do it properly this time, not fuck it up.

 I even thought of new different ways I hadn’t considered before but realised I’m not strong enough for those.

As always I tried to fill my head with thoughts of my husband and my children. Convince myself that there is a reason I need to stick around, but even that was difficult today. My head says they’re better off without me. It fills my thoughts with lies when it’s this dark.

The second I got home I took my anxiety meds and went to bed in the hope that sleep would clear my head.

It has a little, but I still question if I should phone the crisis team. Tell them the thoughts I’d had in that moment.

Tell them I’m not the fraud I keep thinking I am half the time and realising that I really am as sick as I feel the other half of my life. A danger to myself.

I don’t see how I’ll ever get better when my head keeps playing tricks like this.

Maybe they should lock me up. I feel that’s what I deserve.