Drugs

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I saw the GP today about my bleeding and she basically just told me to phone the consultant and badger them for my next appointment, which is… ok I suppose.

But she also asked me about the anti-depressants I was prescribed a couple of months ago (which I haven’t started taking). I gave her the full story of where things are for me, and she said that using them now as a means to get myself into another job would be entirely appropriate. She was enthusiastic about it actually; she was completely convinced they will significantly help my current situation. She’s also referred me for CBT, but that’ll be a few months on a waiting list.

I need to think more about this really, because at the moment I think I’ve lost my optimism that anything will improve. I’ve had things to hang on to up until now.

This will get better because….

Because the big issues will go away. They did, but the effects don’t just disappear overnight.
Because I will find a new job. I will, but when?
Because I will learn to handle things better. That’s not happening on its own.
Because time heals wounds. Even when they’re being poked and prodded every day?

I feel like I’ve run out of options, and the SSRIs give me another route forward.

One thing that concerns me is the “you’ll feel worse before you feel better” standard warning. That’s a can of worms right there, and, really, I should say something to my employer I think, just in case there are any Becky incidents.

But I am doing better. Am I being premature? Should I just wait a bit longer?

It’s all a feedback loop. If I felt better, I would handle things better and things would improve. Equally, if I feel bad, I am likely to handle things badly and make things harder for myself.

Anger

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I saw my counsellor today and went through the way I’d been feeling lately. Her opinion is that I don’t express anger; I keep it inside and it becomes intense anxiety because it gets too much and I don’t know how to cope with it. She is right in as much as I do feel anger and I generally don’t express it, so I need to think more about how I can express it healthily.

She also reminds me that I’ve been through a lot and I shouldn’t feel bad about having a slight set back.

In related news… Becky viewed my LinkedIn profile again today! We have a fairly bizarre history and an extremely unhealthy current relationship, so I’m unsettled she’s taking an interest in my social media. Nobody else I work with is repeatedly looking at my profile. It’s just… weird. She’s doing it in work hours too while sat at her desk, which is very odd. My counsellor suggested that maybe my boss, knowing I’m not happy, has asked her to do some digging (she’s his PA) and see if I’m at risk of leaving. I had thought of too but I’m not sure it’s likely.

If I could do it without visiting her profile, I would block her.

I’m going to give her the wrong impression tomorrow because I have a doctor’s appointment. It’s not an interview, really.

WORK

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I expected work today to be terrible because I had some kind of anxiety attack on Friday and I basically spent all weekend expecting to get another one today. That’s the problem here. When you wobble once, you start feeling on edge about it happening again. You’re essentially anxious about being anxious.

I found my thoughts were so negative.

I expected HR lady to be in (she was).
I expected her to go out for lunch with Becky (she didn’t).
I expected her to email me this afternoon and ask for a ‘chat’ at 4:00PM, because this is what she does when she needs to speak to me (she didn’t).

I got myself quite worked up about it, because I decided that I wasn’t going to stay late to speak to her (I leave just after 4), so I’d have to ask her to schedule it within work hours, which is a bit standoffish (why are you putting me in this position), and I’d also have to figure out how to navigate the conflicting feelings between the distrust I feel towards her for lunching with Becky and the desire to express all the weird things that have happened and ask if she really thinks they’re acceptable in a professional workplace (hint: they’re not if you want to keep employing me).

The reality was much more boring – nothing happened. Has she forgotten she’s supposed to be speaking to me?! I feel incapacitated by not knowing what to do, so I’m not going to advance the situation myself, but I definitely resent feeling that she’s lost interest.

Then on the train home I checked my LinkedIn. Two people have viewed my profile today. LinkedIn is quite fuzzy with how it tells you who viewed your profile. Some people it tells you straight up, others get hidden behind a description like “One person works at …”. So anyway. One person works at a local university, which is strange, because this is the second time this has popped up now and I didn’t go there or know anyone who is currently there and universities don’t tend to recruit software developers. But HR lady is doing a PhD there… has she put it as work instead of education?

And the other person is Becky. Of course it is. Because when I’m on the train what I really want to see is Becky’s face on my phone. She viewed my profile at around 1PM today. So she probably knows I’m looking to leave now. She is only the second colleague to look at my profile – I suspect because none of my other colleagues log into LinkedIn very often, because they’re not looking for other jobs…

Summary

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Health

Parkrun today wasn’t great. I’ve been pushing against my Personal Best (PB) for the last few weeks and now that the weather was a bit cooler, I should have been breaking it. Especially considering that I hadn’t run since Tuesday and should therefore be very well rested. But no. I was nowhere near my PB – over a minute off, which over 5k is an eternity. Unfortunately this is probably because of the blood loss earlier this week. Can’t run as fast with less blood. That’s science.

I feel a bit unsettled by the bleeding, which sounds dumb because it seems like it should be obvious, but the last time this happened it seemed unimportant compared to everything else. When you’re suicidal, the idea of your body dumping blood into your digestive tract is something you think of as helpful more than scary.

Life

I’ve had two phone interviews which may or may not go anywhere. If I get offered either of them I’m going to have no idea whether or not to accept. Although I have mixed feelings, one of them is offering up to £60k, and I’m currently earning only slightly more than half of that. But… money isn’t everything, especially after HMRC get involved.

Mike

Mike and I haven’t really spoken to each other since he upset me. He invited me out for a walk one day at lunch but I declined because I wanted to go further (well, it was both true and a convenient excuse). I go for a walk every day because exercise helps, but Mike is morbidly obese, so we have different ideas of what exercise is. I feel mildly disappointed with Mike. I feel annoyed he ruined a relationship that I used to value, but it’s important I don’t find myself trying to repair damage that he caused, because only he can do that. I feel disappointed that he hasn’t tried to do the grown up thing and address the problem. I think it shows he doesn’t really value the relationship.

Becky

The plants thing is weird. Here’s what’s happened: About three months ago Mike commented to me that plans were afoot (between Boss and Becky) to get some plastic plants in the office. I said that I couldn’t see the point of plastic plants, why not real plants? He said Becky didn’t want to look after them, so I said, in a completely unofficial and off-handed way that certainly was not a commitment, that I would probably end up looking after them (because I keep A LOT of plants at home). A week or so later Mike informed me that Becky had told Boss that I had said I wanted to look after real plants and used that to argue for real over plastic. I was surprised by this, but I didn’t react because nobody actually spoke to me about it. I didn’t mind so much that Mike had told her I’d said that, but she needs to actually discuss it with me before making promises on my behalf.

A few weeks after that, Becky spoke to me (which doesn’t happen often now) and we had a very awkward conversation which she didn’t seem to want to be having. She tried to get me to agree to look after plants. She didn’t mention that she’d already discussed this with Boss. I was unimpressed and I was also in the middle of an extremely stressful life event and had barely had any sleep, so I just resisted a little bit and then stopped talking. We looked at each other awkwardly for a while. She wasn’t taking the hint and said “you can think about it”. I said “ok, I’ll think about it”. This was probably two months ago.

Then last week, Boss called me into his office immediately after speaking to her, and said “Becky said that you told her you want to look after some plants”. I immediately just said “I did not say that”, but I still ended up agreeing to “partial responsibility” because I was put on the spot, which I’m not sure I’m happy with. The stupid thing is that I love plants and if someone had just asked me, I would have said yes. But going to my boss and telling him that I’ve promised something I haven’t is definitely not OK and it puts me off having any involvement. If I end up having a meeting with HR lady soon I will be discussing this with her.

HR Lady

HR lady hasn’t been in the office all week and hasn’t contacted me. I asked for a meeting about 5-6 weeks ago and she brushed me off until “late June”. She’s been back from her holiday for two weeks now, and it’s July. I’m underwhelmed. It doesn’t make me feel like a valued employee whose concerns are important. It makes me reluctant to speak to her at all, because part of me thinks I’m being obstructed purposefully. What does she gain though? If I end up leaving because she’s mismanaged the situation then my boss will not be impressed with her.

PTSD?

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I’m still struggling with mood swings. I got into work today and Becky was standing in the corridor talking to someone and generally being loud. Since I went back to work in January I have tried to drown her out with headphones, which was a short term necessity that seems to have become a long term thing.

Sometimes it’s fine. Sometimes I don’t need to.

Other times though…

I got into work feeling fine, but ten minutes overhearing her cackling (it really is a cackle) from my desk had me in panic mode. It’s a very intense fight or flight reflex, except, really, it’s fight and flight. I want to go and confront her about the fact she told my boss I’d said to her I wanted to look after his plants(????). I’m really angry about this. I want to shout at her and ask her what the fuck her problem is. I want to cry. I want to walk out and go home and be nowhere near her. I can’t deal with this, I wish I’d killed myself when I was up for it. Panic panic panic. It’s a primitive reaction for dealing with immediate physical threats and it’s just firing at the wrong time. It makes perfect sense when you think about it like that afterwards. It’s not so easy to be rational at the time, however.

So when my counsellor says I have PTSD…. I think she might be onto something. It’s not really a mood swing, it’s a trigger. I don’t know why I would have PTSD from this, because someone being mean to me was small potatoes compared to the rest of what I was going through, but it all happened at the same time and I didn’t really consciously think much about the big stuff, because I was so distracted by the small stuff. Maybe intentionally. It makes no sense really. I was enduring a situation which was very much a threat to my life and every week I’d go to my counsellor and not talk about it much at all, and instead spend the whole time whinging about Becky. Whenever Becky and I seemed to make some progress I would remark to my counsellor that I’d probably start feeling bad about everything else now I had nothing to distract me. I never had to find out, because Becky would always start being unpleasant again within a few days.

I need to talk to her more about this because I didn’t think I’d still be feeling these problems now. That’s how I need to look at it. Not “why am I not handling this better?” because that implies I think it’s a personal failure, which I do, though I shouldn’t because I think it makes me slightly reluctant to focus on it with her. I should be getting better now. I feel like I’m letting her down. I should be more open and tell her I don’t understand why I am still feeling this way.

One of my big fears is that it’s not specifically Becky, it’s just my reaction to stress. I know I can’t handle stress in general yet; my body just doesn’t react to it proportionately. I worry that I will get another job and find it’s more stressful and end up worse off.

I don’t know what to do. It’s difficult.

Not bleeding

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There was no sign of bleeding today, which is good. In the past it’s usually been visible for two days so the fact it’s back to normal after one this time is nice. I have felt a bit weird today with some nausea while I was walking and my stomach has been very unhappy, but I don’t know if it’s related. Other candidates include the heat and anxiety because…

…I had another phone interview this evening. This time for a job that seems more promising, at least by location. I felt it went well, much better than the previous one. I felt a lot happier afterwards so maybe it was just anxiety.

To be honest though, work is going OK. The project I’m on is coming to an end, but that’s OK, I think. It’s become very bitty and not engaging. I’ve been directed towards another project which will involve learning a new technology, which will be a bit more interesting.

Becky hasn’t annoyed me lately, though I did have a strange conversation with my boss the other day where he said “Becky told me you said to her you would be happy to look after some plants for the office if we got some in”. He looked very confused when I just said “I did not say that”. I don’t understand her, fundamentally. I mean, why would she say this? What was she thinking would happen? I still have radio silence from HR lady but when she surfaces I will mention this and ask her if she can offer an explanation. To me it looks like Becky wants attention, so every so often she does something weird, but I don’t know… she’s a 45 year old, not a 5 year old.

Bleeding…

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I’m feeling really down because I have internal bleeding again. It’s such a bizarre thing to experience. If you Google variants on “why is my poop black” (TMI, sorry not sorry), you’ll be told in no uncertain terms that you should go to a hospital urgently because it’s probably blood, and gastrointestinal bleeding can get really serious really quickly. It never has for me; it’s never become a continual bleed, but I’m sat here thinking “well, how do I know it’s actually stopped now?”.

I don’t know if it’s the emotional hit to my sense of safety or whether it’s just the physiological effect of suddenly having less blood, but it upset me a lot. I ended up crying in the toilets at work, which hasn’t happened for a long time. I didn’t even know what I was crying about. I felt angry and angsty and frustrated about work in general. Today wasn’t a good day.

I will be seeing my GP next week, but I’ve been anaemic before due to this and I’ve had a lot of cameras inside me, which didn’t show anything.

I don’t know if it’s just because I’m aware of the bleeding, but I also feel a bit… unwell. It’s probably my imagination. It always took a few incidents before I started to feel unwell before.

Interviewed

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The interview was disappointing, if I’m honest. I fumbled a couple of basic questions which I knew the answers to, I just wasn’t prepared for them and didn’t have them in the front of my mind. As I said yesterday, I didn’t think I really wanted the job anyway and it’s all interview practice.

It’s the first time I’ve interviewed in 7 years and the first time I’ve ever done a phone interview.

Interview!

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Hmmm, so, I have a phone interview tomorrow. I’m not really enthused about this though. I assumed it would just be a quick screening, but it’s actually going to be 45 minutes long. 45 minutes seems like exactly the wrong length for a phone interview. It’s too long to be a quick screening and too short to be something that they might offer you a job from without another stage.

But really, I just don’t think I want to work there. I’d have to buy a car and I’m not struck on the idea spending an hour and a half a day crawling through 15 miles of rush hour traffic.

Hours and commuting time are very important to me. If I can work 8:00-4:00, then the commute will probably be less than an hour a day and I’d strongly consider it, assuming the salary they offer covers the cost of a car. But if they want 9-5:30 then it’ll be longer hours than I currently work and a much worse commute.

We’ll see how it goes though. It’s experience.

Weekend

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Parkrun yesterday: Way too hot and I pushed too hard at the end, which I regretted immediately afterwards. Apparently my heart rate went up to 193 at the end, which seems pretty high. I should be more careful in the heat. Trying to set PBs in heatwaves is kind of dumb. I’ve noticed my average heart rate has been increasing over the past few weeks.

I think I’m pushing myself too hard and I should be more careful of this because it’ll affect my mental health if I’m over-training. Apparently I’m running more miles than 99% of Garmin users, and I’m not being strict enough about running some of them slowly.

But overall I feel pretty good. I spent the afternoons wandering around in the sunshine, which is definitely therapeutic.