Last night my old ‘friends’ came to visit- depression, self-harm & suicidal tenancies. Great. Thought they’d gone for good.....

Seems all it takes is for my fibro pain to get above my pain tolerance level then they all come back with a vengeance.  Went through a really bad patch from ages 13 to 20 ish when i was always depressed and self harmed daily and often decided to end it all but never could as I couldn’t do that to my brother as I know he’d have been really upset.

In my second year ish of uni I just forgot to self harm and my mood greatly improved. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I was then in halls of residence and so able to nap between lectures so I wasn’t quite so exhausted all the time. my fibro pains get much, much worse when I’m exhausted so they reduced loads and I was able to live a more ‘normal’ life. Since uni I’ve had the odd setback of the depression and self harm but nothing like last night! It was so strong that I had to lay on my hands to stop me hurting myself, and the longer I resisted the stronger the need became to end it all. I just couldn’t bear to live if I was gonna hurt this much all the time, it was in absolute agony last night but I didn’t dare try and take some extra pain meds in case I took a few too many…. I think I must have cried for 3 or 4 hours before I finally fell asleep at around 5am. I soooo don’t want another night like that! I felt scared that I would try and do something stupid, but at the same time that was the only thing I wanted to do.

Really needed to talk to someone at around 3am but all my friends would have been sleeping, and the online message boards were dead- there was next to no new posts and so I assumed my friends in other countries were busy. Now that I’m awake and feeling much better, I know that I have many friends that may have been annoyed that I’d called them but would have comforted me and forgiven me for waking them up. But last night my brain was telling me that they would be furious and decide to cut ties with me (like certain other friends did when they discovered I had an incurable condition, just when I needed them). I need my friends, and can’t bear to think of a life without all of them so I didn’t call anyone and just cried instead.

What do you do if you really need a hug but it’s the middle of the night and most of your friends live in different parts of the country? Even the cat was asleep so I couldn’t cuddle her, and she’s supposed to be nocturnal. Settled for hugging myself, curled up into a ball, and thankfully I fell asleep.

Now it’s daytime and I’m awake I still feel low and a bit tearful but don’t have any need to hurt myself (or worse), I love being alive and I’m now terrified that I may have ended it all last night. I’m just glad the logical part of my brain was still functioning last night and it stopped me. This morning I had a call from my dietician who was really worried about my vit D deficiency as I’m severely deficient, deficient enough to be experiencing adverse affects which apparently include depression. It such a coincidence that she mentioned that the very morning after my awful night…. A normal level of vitamin D is above 50 nmol/L. Levels less than 25 nmol/L mean that you are deficient. My vit D level is only 7 nmol/L. it’s likely that I’m not absorbing it thorough my gut properly (due my various gastrointestinal problems) as I’m still very deficient even though I’m taking the medical dose of d3 forte tablets. My dietician wants me to take a much bigger dose and she’s contacting my GP about it.

Let’s hope my recent depression and lowness is due to my vid D deficiency and when that’s corrected it’ll be back to what I was like a few years ago- nice and cheerful without having to fake it when in public!  Have no suicidal tendencies today so fingers crossed that if I take extra pain meds in the evening I’ll keep the fibro-from-hell at bay and not have another night like last night, cos it was hellish. I really quite worried that it’ll happen again and quite scared of the prospect. But I’m a big girl and so I’m sure I’ll cope again.