(Drumroll…)

I feel like starting this with ‘okely-dokely, neighbours’, but I’m resisting the urge.

I got three A*’s, in English Language, Drama, and English Literature. In fact, I got full marks in English Lit, a fact I’m more than a little excited about, and just dropped three marks in Language; I got 8 A’s, in everything else. So I’m happy. I honestly wasn’t expecting to get A’s in Physics or Chemistry or Maths or PE, and while I maybe dreamt of A* in Drama I never thought I’d get it (contrary to popular belief the written exam is ridiculously difficult).

Rhiannon got nine A*s and two A’s and, thank God, she didn’t insincerely sympathise with me. Not even once. She did say that ‘I suppose your marks in English show us where your strengths really lie’ in the most insincere voice imaginable, but that’s how she usually talks, so I didn’t attack her.

I am disappointed, though, because my ‘safe’ marks were the ones I didn’t get. On school tours, my Latin teacher tells prospective parents how ‘we always get A*s in this school. Never less. Oh – but last year a girl failed; she only got an A. Ahaha.’ There is a very high standard of teaching in the Latin department at my school. I’ve been her pet student since Year Seven, and she was telling me my mark was assuredly A* for years. When my form tutor realised I was sad crying over my A, not happy crying, she came over and usefully told me to think of all the girls who got Ds, Suzanne! I should be proud of that mark! Like I was aiming for a D, as well. But I am proud, I guess. I just know that she’s never had an A-level student who didn’t get that star in their GCSE before, and she’s going to be rubbing it in my face for the next two years, once she’s yelled at me about it enough. She’ll be mad.

Plus my German teacher marked my coursework as A*, said that she’d marked harshly so if anything the examiner would mark it up, sent it in, and it’s come back as a B (overall A). I told a teacher, because a two grade discrepancy is pretty hefty, but I think they just thought I was telling them my grade wasn’t good enough and I wanted the star, and I was brushed off.

But essentially, I’ve done lot of worrying for nothing. And I’ve got final, incontrovertible proof that it’s entirely possible for me to do exams in a state of psychosis and for it to still be all right on the night. I’m not entirely sure how I should feel about that…

Edit: well, I’ve got my little bit of (fake) champagne now, and we’re having a takeaway Chinese to celebrate, because I love Chinese. My parents are concerned at how easy I am to please…

You don’t call me borderline, I won’t intensely devalue you

I started out with the best of intentions, intending to do one of the old ‘look, you, quit trying to diagnose me, OK?’ things with the DSM-IV-TR diagnostic criteria for borderline personality disorder. I did a bit of cut-and-paste and started getting ready to prepare some smart arguments and cutting comebacks to stop all those doommongers in their tracks.

 

But no, this is Suze we’re talking about, it was never gonna be that simple.

 

Classy quotes and death by teddy bear

The mood round here really has come down, hasn’t it? I know it’s my fault for being unable to feel anything to a normal kind of extent, and I still remember what I was like yesterday afternoon (cue disturbing flashback to walking down a road that’s every suburb there every was, trying not to cry, and going past a policeman outside the school and pretending to look at some house’s net curtains so he won’t notice my face – then there was a scream and I thought someone’s dead there’s a murderer run don’t run just die you’re hearing things it’s your imagination hallucina- and then the little boy shrieked again, because he was having so much fun being sprayed by the hose while his grandma washed the car – yep, paranoid overreactions to the fore – and then I decided that while I was in a place where no one knew me I might as well get it out of my system, so I started crying into a wall), but (deep breath) I’m over that now. Mostly.

I had my second Latin exam this afternoon, Verse Literature (Virgil, Book IV of the Aeneid, if you’re remotely interested) and it went way better than I was dreading it would. That’s lifted my mood, so I thought maybe I could lift the general Dumped By A Hallucination mood with a classic anecdote from a classic psychosis appointment. I’ll just go find where I wrote it down.

OK, set the scene. I’m trying to explain the famous Birthday Incident to the social worker (I explained it in some other post) and I finish talking and he looks at me, doing serious nodding and making sympathetic ‘hm, yeah’ noises.

“Hm. Right, yeah, I see. So you don’t have any friends?”

“No! It was a lie! That’s the point!”

“Oh, right. Yeah, I get you.”

“I have friends, really, I have lots of friends, loads of friends – no, wait, that sounds like I’m boasting – I mean, I don’t have no friends, I just got a usual amount – not no friends but not loads – I’m normal!” I scream desperately. There’s an echoing silence. “Friend-wise,” I add.

Well, it makes me smile. Of course, at the time, I cringed in embarrassment and probably went through several shades of red from pink to purple. It’s not up there with the whole ‘sharks are lanterns hanging off yellow trees shining golden light’ talk I gave the first time I saw a psychiatrist, but it’s pretty fun.

Thing is, I just don’t seem to be able to talk to anyone from CAMHS without humiliating myself. They leave big empty silences, headnodding sympathetically, and wait for me to dig myself into a hole so depe I’ve got no chance of getting out – then they draw a false conclusion, watch me get embarrassed over how false it is, and nod a bit more. And then I get tongue-tied, and can’t defend myself. Then, when I finally thought I’d managed to say what I wanted to, and thought I’d got my meaning over clearly, I get an assessment back with mistakes all over it and an appointment wih a psychiatrist who didn’t even realise she had one booked in that afternoon. It’s not good. Nope, it’s not good.

She told me that if I’m going to have CBT, which I am, I have to decide what I’m going to ‘work on’. I get a choice, too: she recommends ‘working on’ fluctuating self-esteem, or anger control, or ‘stress’. Yeah, my ‘stress’ pervades everything. Everpresent omnipotent stress causes everything although I’ve never really been aware it exists for me. Anyway, she also asked me if I ever feel I don’t deserve to live. I said I sometimes feel that no one else deserves me to live – they’ve never done anything that wrong. That got us onto suicide, and suicidal ideation (lots of it), and planning my own, and trying to carry it out, and that wasn’t mentioned as something for CBT. I don’t know, I just really felt like I was being dismissed as another little emo kid with too much time on her hands, trying to blend in by pretending that she thinks suicide is cool. I don’t, and I’m not emo (I’m a regular surfer chick, harhar). I just have days, weeks, where all I can think about is how much better it would be for everybody if I wasn’t around. For a while I was convinced I would be dead by the summer holidays – or not so much dead, as winked out of existence. I would just fade away. I thought it would probably happen on a higher plane, so I wouldn’t be aware of it at the time; I thought that my physical body would probably be hit by a truck or something, and go into a coma and so wither away to nothing physically and spiritually simultaneously. I’d be on a higher plane. I don’t know what kind, but that’s where I was going.

I just started looking up delusions on Wikipedia, seeing if there’s a name for believing you can predict your death, and I found a very troubling page.

I have believed this: “Syndrome of delusional companions is the belief that objects (such as soft toys) are sentient beings.” I was terrified for months that my soft toys hated me; they were plotting to get rid of me; when I went to sleep they would occasionally try to suffocate me; if I went to sleep with my back to them they would definitely try to kill me that very night. Jeez.

I have a PE exam tomorrow which I have neglected revising for, due to terror over the Latin Literature. I should probably go do that now.

Me and a boring life

Spent my morning so far at my desk, staring out the window at the rain and listening to Paramore. I did a bit of writing but I can’t find the self-control in me to look at my Physics textbook and buckle on down to some revision (my GCSEs start next week), and then I nicked one of my sister’s birthday chocolates and my mother came home and we ate lunch. It’s stopped raining now. This is my exciting life. I’m coasting down it in neutral.

One of the psychiatrists from CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services) called while my mother was home. They feel like finding out whether I still reckon I can control the weather, I suppose. The first time they suggested for an appointment clashed with one quarter of my Latin GCSE, so no can do. It’s set for next week now, I think. I’ll naturally write about it here; this is my fancy new toy that I can’t quite work yet, sure I’ll update!

Anyway, that’s me done so far. I finished reading Christine this morning (I’m a real Stephen King nut), and started reading My Sister Jodie by Jacqueline Wilson, which is my sister’s. Now I’ll probably go look for something to eat while I finish reading it, and then my sister’ll come home and I’ll learn my Latin. Hm.

Chin up, chucky egg. TTFN.