Tuesday – 6pm onwards
Almost as soon as Avram and I finish up, my friend Bharvi arrives to pick up my spare keys. She and others have nagged me for actual years to give a set of keys to somebody. Today, it seems, I’m all out of excuses. Bharvi brings Darwin, The Best Dog In The World with her.
Sidebar:
Bharvi – although she’s only 3 years older than me and looks about 12 – had been like a second mum to me during Lockdown and she’s taking this very, very hard. We hug and we both cry and then the door buzzer goes again and Angharad and Kirstie have arrived for our slightly ghoulish road trip South to King’s College Hospital.
Once in the car, I realise that Angharad has taken a no-holds-barred approach to Road Trip Snacking as she heaves out a giant tote bag, veritably abrim with treats. She’s brought 18 Curly Wurlys. Let that sink in a second. 18. I do fucking love a Curly Wurly – and I’m so touched that she remembers this – but I find it hilarious that this is the number that she’s deemed will lure me back from the brink of death. “Angharad, if only you’d brought 23, she might have cheered up…”. Still, as we pull out, I’m eating the first of 4 that I’ll consume that night.
We get to the hospital relatively uneventfully, albeit that (inevitably) we’ve parked as far as possible from A&E. In we go and, incredibly, there’s only one group of people ahead of us (a family of 5) who have nearly finished being admitted. We’d been concerned about the 3 of us being allowed in together, but initial signs are good. It would transpire that being white, female and overtly middle-class unlocked doors both literal and metaphorical. Dripping with our privilege, we waited.
The admission nurse waved me up and Kirstie and Angharad followed closely behind, still unchallenged. I gave my name, address and date of birth. Hearteningly, the nurse double-took and said “1977? I thought you were at least a decade younger”. Thanks, good woman.
I went in to have an admissions interview and Angharad came in too, having been sternly told to finish her Curly Wurly before being allowed entry. I repeated the by now oft-told tale of ALL MY PAIN and the nurse took a lot of notes, frowning. She then said that we should wait in the waiting room that we had just left, rather than going to the next one, because this one was nicer; the thinking seemed to be that the gloom of the other one might finish me off entirely. A psychiatric nurse would come and fetch me as soon as one was available.
And so, we waited. And waited. And Angharad and Kirstie ate unfeasible amounts of crisps as I got through another 2 Curly Wurlys.
The Bottomless Tote Of Treats would have kept us going for several days, but it was only about an hour until Bola, the psychiatric nurse, came and rescued us. All 3 of us followed her down the corridor, past The Unspeakable Waiting Room Of Doom, but Bola demurred slightly when Angharad and Kirstie followed me into the assessment room.
B: Are you sure you want them here during the assessment? You need to feel you can speak freely
Me: Speaking freely has never been an issue, believe me. I’d like them here please.
Bola sighed and got another chair so Kirstie would have somewhere to sit. Angharad and I settled into an NHS issue sofa made of polyester and granite, whose only ‘give’ was a result of the impressions made by the thousand desolate asses that had previously occupied it.
And so, we begin. It’s all the same stuff, but this time with an air of formality and, I suppose, of prognosis that made this feel different from conversations with friends, family or SSSW.
Bola asks me where I want to start, and it all flows fairly easily – I’m nothing if not pathologically structured. We cover these broad highlights in roughly this order:
- Fairly intense workplace bullying by my boss (we’ll call her Harriet) over a period of 4 years had resulted in intense anxiety that had peaked Jan-Mar 2020 (No, Bola, I had never experienced anxiety before this)
- Coping mechanisms for anxiety during this period had included my usual [what mental health professionals call] self-care: reading, theatre, movies, tv etc. However, within a couple of months of increasing pressure from Harriet, I realised that that I couldn’t distract myself sufficiently from the mounting anxiety, and I needed to be around friends rather than alone with my thoughts. (Yes Bola, this did make Lockdown really hard. Lockdown generally was a bitch for single people.)
- I’d transferred to a new job in the same company in April, and it was a much better job, with a fantastic boss – but I was unable to cope with the pressure and emptiness of working from home on my own after the intense period of anxiety in the first 3 months of the year. I had requested an exception to be made to allow me to return to the office to address this, but had been advised by HR that this was not possible. It felt like the walls of my (lovely) flat were closing in on me. (Yes Bola, my new boss is not a sociopath, but I’m not sure I can do my job any longer)
- I had had relatively invasive surgery in July to cauterise my cervix. This had taken 3 weeks to diagnose, due to doctors not seeing patients face-to-face during Lockdown. During these 3 weeks I bled copiously out of my lady garden a) this was debilitating and b) aware that I was 3 years overdue a smear, I had persuaded myself that I had cervical cancer until my – incredible, legendary – surgeon assured me that I didn’t. So that was fun. (Yes, Bola, I feel much better now. Thanks for asking)
- And amidst all of this, in June I had met a guy. I had met The Guy. I HAD MET THE GUY. Like, THE FUCKING GUY THAT I HAD BEEN WAITING MY ENTIRE LIFE FOR. And, in the cruellest twist of fate of my entire life, he did not want to be with me. (Bola would later tell me several times that I was beautiful and that another man would love me far better and at least this hadn’t happened after THE GUY and I had been together many years – I loved Bola by this point, but none of this helped even one iota at the time. Or now.)
I’ll post individually about each of these and link to them. For now, I’m just concentrating on the chronology of The Crisis. Bear with me, I’m fragile (as I’m about to find out).
As I’ve recounted this, Bola has solemnly taken notes and asked questions every once in a while. I finish by saying that this set of events has left me in a world of pain that I can’t see my way out of and that I just can’t see any point in carrying on. I’ve lost hope and I don’t want to live this half-life any more. All I see ahead of me is a wretched future and basically, stop me, oh, oh, oh stop me, because you, dear Reader, have definitely, DEFINITELY heard this one before. Angharad and Kirstie have spoken a couple of times to reinforce that I am not fucking about here – if I express an intention to do something, then it’s absolutely, positively going to get done.
They will both tell me afterwards that it’s chilling hearing me talk about killing myself so rationally and logically. This is still how I see suicide: a totally rational solution to what is – if not an insurmountable problem – certainly a problem that I no longer have any interest in solving. I’ve had a really great life – better than many can hope for. I have virtually no regrets. But, now, it feels as though my luck has run out and I’m just not up for this any more.
I express much of the above to Bola and she is quietly and non-judgementally horrified. She explains the many things I have to live for. That there is so much life in me, that I should not and should never give up. She tells me the the workplace bullying has drained my emotional resilience and this is why I feel I can no longer cope. She says – as others have in the days before – that I am depressed and that this is the depression talking. For the record, I genuinely do not feel I am depressed, but I’m also not going to quibble with medical professionals.
Bola then runs through my options. Whilst shaking her head, she says “If you feel you cannot be safe at home, you can be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. I do not feel a psychiatric hospital is the best place for you.”
Whilst nodding her head, she says “If, however, you feel you can be kept safe at home, then we can refer you to the At Home Treatment Team”.
So, it seemed, for now, my destiny lay with the AHTT. We talked through some logistics and Bola said a doctor and a nurse would arrive at my door the following day to perform an assessment. Angharad has spent more time in the NHS system than any person should have to and asked a number of follow-up questions. These included requesting the contact details of the AHTT in case no-one turned up. Bola looked down at her notes, looked at me and then looked at Angharad with infinite kindness and sadness as she said: “For a case like this, they will be there tomorrow”.
This felt surreal. Of all the human misery in Southwark, apparently I was one of the most extreme cases. I didn’t even feel mentally ill. I still don’t. As much as a barrage of medical professionals have assured me that I must be horribly, profoundly depressed to be considering taking my own life, it feels like an absolutely justifiable and logical conclusion to me – albeit it makes things slightly socially awkward.
But, I digress. Bola had everything she needed and was quite convinced of my soul-crushing depression, even if I were not. It was time to go. I slightly wished I could hug her – it felt that we’d been through a lot together. The 4 of us once more glided through the hospital, unchallenged, became 3 and off into the night we 3 went.
Angharad and Kirstie were effusive in their praise of how well I’d done and how brave I was. I felt deeply uncomfortable – and I usually revel in praise, it’s my primary nutrient. This wasn’t brave, it was just pouring out a load of stuff that lived in my head all the time. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the NHS really had enough on its plate without me hoovering up its resources on my mid-life crisis “Oh no! I’m not happy any more! How simply AWFUL!”. Luckily, the hospital car park was about to cost me around £3,000 for our 4-hour stay, so I felt I could at least start to give something back immediately.
We got in the car, somehow overcame the extreme logistical obstacles that leaving the car park involved (it took 32 minutes. THIRTY-TWO MINUTES.), and Angharad drove us all back to my flat, picking up Liv – who was on overnight duty – along the way.
Once back at my flat, amidst many hugs and tears, Kirstie and Angharad left, leaving Liv and I together. And so, to bed. And that was Tuesday. Possibly the longest Tuesday of my life. But not the last.
*I genuinely apologise for this horrific pun. I couldn’t help myself. Trust me: I tried.
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