Day 21

I am very different since my brain injury. On December 4th 2007, a funny thing happened to me on my way home from work, and I never got home as the person I had been again.

I particularly struggle with hormones. It took me 30 years to see that it was puberty that triggered the most immense difficulties for me, and my coping mechanisms, though unhealthy, were not unknown for a teenage girl: self-harm, body dysmorphia, an abandonment complex when it came to relationships with men, a need to be skeletally thin in order to feel desirable. Et cetera.

It is December 27th 2019; I am 46 years old. I have had a viral infection of some sort for a couple of weeks, which has mainly consisted of me losing my voice and coughing a fair bit but, apart from three hours in bed about ten days ago, it hasn’t got in the way of things. I have continued to go to the gym and have accomplished good results, and I’ve been fairly philosophical about my sleep patterns being a bit off-the-wall since the beginning of December, as I am not a fan of the run-up to Christmas and, to be honest, I have been delighted that, this year, I wasn’t suicidal.

Until today. I spent most of yesterday at my mum’s house in bed because I could, for once, have a rest; I am a single parent and there is no time for me to be ill, also for fear of causing my son, who has Autism, concern. With Mum on hand yesterday I was able to surrender to the bone-tiredness and sleep for much of the day, knowing that Daniel was being looked after. I spent a great deal of the night awake but, not being at home, I didn’t go downstairs because I can’t vape in Mum’s living room and I didn’t fancy the draughty conservatory. I wanted to go downstairs and have a cup of tea and a cuddle with the dogs, but I had this odd sense that my ‘time to be ill’ was diminishing, so I stayed where I was, trying to take it easy.

Daniel came in at 08:00am and I awoke, slightly trepidatious in case I still felt ill, but managed to navigate the kitchen and the morning routine in a clumsy way, pressing the button on the coffee machine absent-mindedly as I sought breakfast food for Daniel and Dentastix for the dogs; returning to the coffee machine to find that I hadn’t put a cup under the spout, so had filled the drip tray with coffee. On seeing that the water reservoir needed topping up I proceeded to drop the lid in to the vessel itself and find, by water displacement, why it wasn’t a good idea to reach in with my hand for the stray object.

I got a mug, started again, put bread in the toaster and took the dogs their Dentastix. Daniel growled at me about the whereabouts of his breakfast and I carried on, on a slightly less clumsy tack. After Mum had got up and said, “You sound better today” and I had interpreted this as a signal not to be ill any more, and she had told me that Susie is very ill up North, I said, “Well, I’m not having an illness competition; I am much hardier than Suze” and proceeded to gather up all of the Christmas gifts and things that Daniel and I would need to take home with us. Whilst doing this, with Daniel engrossed in his tablet game, I felt self-pity seeping in and alarm bells went off; I cannot afford self-pity.

Once Daniel and I were dressed and more or less organised, Daniel said, “You’re gorgeous.” I thanked him in an almost crumpled voice and he asked, “Why are you talking like that, Mummy?” I burst into tears, and said I felt poorly. Which I did. I was counting down the time until I could drop Daniel at his dad’s because I was feeling absolutely wretched, and I am not kidding: I wished I were dead. I couldn’t see a way out of feeling like this, in this tunnel of dark depression, and I felt all my energy ebbing away every time I thought about how I felt. So I tried to stay in the moment and avoid thought altogether; I reassured Daniel that this would pass and, when we got home, I had a bath in the hope this this would enable me to feel better. I sent Daniel’s dad a text message to ask if it were alright to bring him a little earlier, as I was feeling poorly, and the affirmative reply gave me some relief. However, I was struck with fear all the way to Twickenham, trying to ignore the thoughts in my head: I am only still here because of Daniel; God has sent me my son and I sent up a prayer to Her, “Please help me, please walk beside me” as I drove through the middle of Bushy Park.

I felt this sense of being trapped: I can’t die, because my Mum is too old to cope and Daniel’s dad is horrible and I just can’t abandon him; I can’t do that to my son. So then the thoughts of me putting him to bed and shooting him, and then myself, occurred and I thought, I can’t do this; I can’t get a shooter and then do such a thing; I just have to carry on and There Is No Way Out.

This hit me like a bleak Stop Sign and I thought, I am going to have to phone the Samaritans. I don’t want to worry Mum, and there is no-one I feel I can tell. I could tell them, I thought (a Samaritan) about the last year and its toll, and the comments of my son’s dad and his wife last November, and the desire to self-harm just to take my mind off my mind and let out some of the pain … And the Psychiatrist, and the meeting with the Doctor to find out why no-one acted on his suggestions in a letter he wrote to them two years ago. Two. Years. Ago. That was before my son got excluded from school and the Local Authority made, not just mistakes, but a massive fiasco, with the awful tutor, and ignoring my emails, and the complaints that I made and the rising tide of hormones and stress and cortisol and feeling so completely overwhelmed and guilty because I should have home-schooled him (I didn’t have the energy), I should have shouted louder; I should have done better because it’s my little boy the system let down, my little boy in isolation; my little boy without anyone to play with and my little boy whose future is slipping further and further into jeopardy because he has Autism, and the fear increased daily, and all that I could do was to get to the gym and to AA meetings because it was these which, somehow, gave me strength and energy – if I don’t go to the gym, I don’t make endorphins and therefore energy and calm and a sense of being somehow more capable and confident about my ability to deal with life in general.

And of course I didn’t visit my Psychiatrist because I didn’t want to be told, “Don’t be silly, you drama queen, you’re doing it wrong” or – worse – “You are in a dangerous situation and you need help” because I was clamouring for help and no-one would give me any. So if it turned out that I were in half the dire straits that I suspected I was in, then how was I supposed to deal with that? No-one else seemed in the slightest bit bothered, and it reminded me, in an awful way, of the time when the brain injury was ‘at large’ and no-one else seemed to regard it as any big thing, so I simply carried on as best I could, through breakdowns and people thinking I had Bipolar Affective Disorder, and going to be assessed for that and being told, “No, you’ve just had a brain injury and are more likely to be emotionally labile” Well, thanks. And then the combination of PTSD (which was never diagnosed) about childbirth and exhaustion at Daniel’s 5th birthday resulted in a breakdown and two months off work (my voluntary job at the time) led to me seeing my Psychiatrist and him prescribing me the medication I have been on ever since.

This year, however, when I did see him, he was shocked and advised an increased dosage immediately. He wondered why my GP hadn’t acted on his letter of two years ago and urged me to demand a referral to the Neuropsychiatric Unit at St. George’s Hospital straight away. I hadn’t known about a letter two years ago, and I remembered that, being in a breakdown when I had first gone to see him, of course I had omitted to ask to be copied in on all correspondence. Had I known that there was a letter, might I have pursued things? I don’t know. I did receive a copy of the letter from the Neurosurgeon who had commissioned my brain scan three years ago, but I don’t think I had quite the presence of mind to ask about it; instead, I went privately to see a gynaecologist, who confirmed in the end that Progesterone and I do not get on, as the doctors didn’t seem to think that there was anything the matter with me. Two years ago, in a heck of a state, I cycled to the sexual health clinic in Kingston, telephoned two women to let them know where I was and why, and urged the nurse to remove every last scrap of Progesterone-based contraceptive from my body. The nurse was so worried that she “safeguarded” me, making an appointment with my doctor for the following day, and telephoning me herself to find out how I was.

And still no action by my GP except to make a note on my records of my high sensitivity to Progesterone. No letters were mentioned, either from Neurosurgeon or Psychiatrist. No mention of the letters this year, either – when I asked for a referral for a mental health assessment, when the situation with my son and all the failures by the system had me thinking dark thoughts yet again. I think it was around this time that I brought Daniel to stay at my Mum’s, since I feared being alone with the thoughts (suicidal) that were constantly in my head.

Day 21 of my menstrual cycle is when Progesterone levels peak. I can feel it start to grow at around day 17, as I become increasingly crotchety and impatient. But this is my Nemesis: I have checked in my diary and it is indeed the exact day. Around day 14, when I’m ovulating, I can feel philosophical and almost jolly about being “fat and fertile” and craving cake and cock; I can be creative and humorous and pretty good company. But this is the Shadow-Realm; this is the time when I start trying to hitch a ride with Charon across the Styx, and I have to be on my mettle not to act out.

Having dropped Daniel at his dad’s this afternoon, I almost didn’t make it into the car before the tears were teeming down my cheeks. I drove slowly, squinting through a lachrymose blur, wiping my cheeks with one hand as I fumbled for the Sat Nav and the least trafficky route home. It seemed that I was driving in a dream, along grey-tunnel roads, under a heavy sky and, as I parked on my driveway I prayed that no-one would say hello. I made it inside, locked the door and thought yet again of the Stanley knife in the cupboard. It had been flashing across my mind every few moments for the last hour or so. I was thinking about the Samaritans, and calling them, but instead I hid: I went upstairs, put on my pyjamas and got into bed; I closed my eyes; I wished for everything to Go Away. At least having my eyes closed gave my brain a rest from having to process everything. It is a feature, since the brain injury, that lying in a darkened room gives me some sense of retreat, of solace.

I lay in bed, coughing from time to time, just resting, for a couple of hours.

Calling the Samaritans has still seemed like an option, but the thing I know I have to do is write ot down: the story of the difficulties and of my condition, if you will. I can’t sum it up over the ‘phone to a stranger. It needs to be told. Only then can I process it, own my story and move on. It’s my biggest chance. Those who have been to Hell always carry a bit of it inside; perhaps that’s why I am so ridiculously cheery in my general demeanour – throwing out life lines, but also using what I have learned in a bid to stop my own head from eating me alive.