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So many things to get off my chest - here goes.
I know that this is a bit long and probably a bit dull as well, but being in such a horrible frame of mind at the moment I just feel like I need to properly put things out there.
I honestly don't think I've ever been so miserable with this pervasive sense of their being no real way out. It seems so ironic to think that a few months ago, before I started my PhD, I was excited and ambitious and I really, truly believed that this would be the right step for me. Things started to unravel fairly quickly. My new housemates seemed lovely, very understanding and open to my mental health and we talked and joked about it quite a lot. Then when my BPD flared up for real, a week down the line they complained to college that my illness was affecting their work adversely. College told them to segregate me from communal activity, not let me into their rooms (it was heartbreaking - I have a dependency disorder and to feel excluded is something which really pushes my buttons) and eventually told me to move out. They put me in temporary accomodation (I've since been given a new room), told me to stay in my room if I felt fragile and that my mental health had 'hurt everyone very much.' I was angry for a long time, and I still am. In my head I've tried to forgive everyone, but I still think there was a miscarriage of justice there. But by the time I'd got my new room I was too tired and ill and SAD to think about pursuing a complaint and so now, among other things, know that trusting college, who are supposed to be a supportive, nurturing entity, is impossible, and there is a constant fear that my mental health will 'tell against me.'
Three months down the line and I'm struggling to get up in the morning. I'm having regular therapy sessions but I honestly feel like there's nothing to live for now. I feel like, PhD-wise, I know nothing, can contribute nothing and have no deadlines, no essays, nothing to do from one hour to the next. It no longer feels like a blessing to have three years to pursue my interest, it feels like a curse, like there's so much empty time stretching ahead. With my housemates (I lived in a big house with 25 other people) there was always something to work my day around, always social events that helped me create my timetable - now I'm scared to go to any social events in case my old housemates are there (it frightens me to see how full of dislike they seem to be towards me). I try to get involved with things, lots of things, but I have this constant spool playing in my head telling me what a terrible person I am, how everything I say is utter rubbish, and how everyone is just waiting to hate me. I feel like I've lost the art of enjoying social situations, enjoying meeting people, and instead every time I go out, even to get a pint of milk, I feel a fluttering in my chest and an incipient sense of panic and I just want to shut the door on the world again. It used to be so easy to meet people, now I feel like I'm safer alone. Partly because I suppose I feel like maybe college were right, maybe people do need to be kept safe from ME.
But I'm so lonely, and even when I do manage to go to something social I spend my entire time thinking SHUT UP CARRIE SHUT UP NOBODY LIKES YOU SHUT UP and talking myself into this vicious circle of self-loathing with every little thing I say. I just don't want to feel like this any more, it feels like there's no way out, even when I go to Church and do volunteering and choirs and Christian Union and go for walks and for coffee, I just feel so churned up all the time. I feel suicidal so often, not to act on it but to the extent that not self-harming seems like such an empty acheivement now...
I've been miserable on and off for a year and a half and I'd just like to see a light at the end of the tunnel but I'm running out of reasons to keep fighting.
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