Dangerous Psychos

I’m hot, exhausted and melting.  I feel like everytime I stand up that there is a little part of me upright whilst the rest mushes like melted candle wax into the ground.  My brain is a melted lump in my skull and I can feel it trying to seep out.  I’m just a big blob of mush.

The reason for this?

Working on the 6th floor of a building full of people and the bloody windows don’t open.  No, not even a crack – completely sealed shut.

And they expect me to function! Fat chance.

It’s all going well really though, I have nearly finished my second week of placement and I am for the most part very much alive.  For the rest I am sure my heart is pumping but my head is in space somewhere.  Joys.

I have one confession to make: Although things are going well I am internally giving myself a good kicking.  I beat myself up for every little thing that goes wrong at the moment.  Whenever anything goes the slightest bit wrong I want to run around with my arms in the air screaming like a banshee.  It would probably scare the patients though so I won’t.  For the first time in a long while I really wanted to self-harm today.  Things were going ok and then suddenly WHOOSH heaps of self-harm thoughts came at me as if I were standing on the east coast mainline.  I’m almost 4 months clean, like hell am I letting some freight train worth of thoughts ruin my perfect (pah) skin and wonderful (snort) sense of self-esteem about my body and my life.  No, but really I can’t and don’t want to go there.  Even the thought makes me want to scream.

I was a bit defensive in the office today, probably overly so but I thought I had to argue my case for everyone else out there that is mental.  My colleague and I were whispering a conversation as my supervisor was on the phone.  Something came up and she said it was a dangerous cycle.  As overhearing tends to go my colleague thought she said “dangerous psychos” and her flippant remark was “you should go to (insert local mental hospital name here) hospital for that.”  I wanted to explain to her nicely that “we” are actually very normal people while we are well and that she was, in fact, sitting next to a patient from said hospital.  Unfortunately for me this would have blown my cover as a nice, sensible health care student.  Not that my cover was great to begin with.  Instead I just came out with a comment about how (insert city centre main street here) was filled with many more dangerous psychos than any psychiatric hospital could contain.  I made my point and was sensible about it and she agreed but it still stung that people can still judge people to be mad raving lunatics when in fact most people with mental health conditions strive to fade into the background of normality.

I use terms like “mad”, “mental” etc with my friends so I don’t know why it gets to me that someone I don’t know would come out and say that.  I guess it is what most people would think.  She may have a better understanding than I know of but to me the way she said portrayed a real sense of ignorance and stigma.  I shouldn’t be surprised, very few people I know with no experience of knowing anyone with mental health problems have much awareness.  I guess the aim is to try and re-educate/brainwash them into thinking about things sensibly but the aim is a long-way off.

Anyways, that was all a big long incoherent rant.  I think it will leave it for now before my brain melts away completely.

Kx