Long weekends, bank holidays – or just any change to your usual routine can be difficult to deal with when you’re at the grips of a mental illness. I worry about seeming ‘dramatic’, but the thought of having four days to myself, where my mind will most certainly take over, and remind me of how I’m a ‘waste of a human’ – the thought of four days of that, with no work or routine to distract is pretty exhausting, and a little scary.

For me this weekend has been particularly scary when it comes to the thought of ‘making it through’. My mood has been horribly low for the most part of this week; and I’ve been struggling to find ways, or tools to get myself feeling okay again. I’ve had two trips to my community mental health team this week, and both times I’ve felt unable to speak up and voice what I’m going through. My coping strategies haven’t been particularly healthy, and my mental health has really been impacting upon my ability to work – which frustrates me even more. The feeling of extreme despair at the thought of having to make it through another day, yet alone the thought of actually continuing with life has been severely overwhelming.

Thankfully it’s all just been thoughts and feelings, and the severity and intensity of it all has left me feeling more overwhelmed, and less able to actually do things. It has meant that I’ve spent a lot of time at work this week feeling crippled by my mind, and desperate to crawl into bed and never move – which I have done a few times this week.

Yesterday I crawled into bed at 4pm, after eating a pretty large Easter egg, and fighting my way through tears when driving home from work, a bottomless pit of anxiety, sadness, fear and a crushing sense of deluge in my stomach, chest and mind. I woke this morning at around 9am, weirdly not ashamed at the fact that I’d spent nearly seventeen hours asleep… my dreams were weird. Plain weird – I’m having to record them at the moment for my psychologist, so paying attention to what I’m dreaming about is even weirder.

I needed time to switch my mind off, I’d really been struggling with some pretty intense thoughts and the feeling of not being able to carry on with things was too much.The safety of my bed, even when I was overcome by far too much pain and emotion, with far too many thoughts in my mind, helped me get through a pretty rough time. And weirdly now I am more than happy to have the bank holiday weekend off.

I feel as though I’ve tried (a lot of times) this week to speak, and open up about how I’m feeling. I don’t feel like I’ve been coping, or rather, I feel like I’m on the verge of really not being able to cope with things, and naturally I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about things in my mind. However, I’ve also felt like I haven’t had the space to talk things through with people – I know that this feeling may be partly due to me feeling incredibly anxious as of late, but I just wish that someone would sit me down and give me the space to talk through and make sense of what I’m currently experiencing (and what I’ve experienced in the past).

I have a crisis team, but I’ve still managed not to contact them – it would be ace if they could just somehow figure out when I’m struggling and phone me and ask me questions. Sometimes having to ‘deal’ with things myself makes everything a lot more difficult and hard for me to cope with. When I’m struggling I don’t want to have to keep asking for help, I want someone to acknowledge this and kind of softly encourage me to talk about what I’m experiencing.

Having a long weekend – which should be full of joy and so forth, is pretty intimidating. However, I’m planning on trying to keep myself busy, and (sigh) I will try and actually acknowledge, think through and make sense of the emotions that I’m feeling. I’m hoping that will allow me to self-soothe; I think running around and trying to avoid things hasn’t been working for me. I’d tried to reach out, but I think that’s a little too overwhelming at present, so my only option (rather than unhealthy coping tools) is to actually feel, and sit with my thoughts and feelings. It’s gunna suck, but if I look after myself at the same time then hopefully I’ll make it through this Easter without hating myself too much.

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