Since the last time I posted, I have been really struggling. I am in an ED airlock, trying desperately to get back on my ship — a ship that carries everyone and everything I love. But my ship is hanging on the edge of a mixed episode causing black hole, and leaving the airlock feels impossible. Every time I try, I’m flooded with all the reasons I left the ship in the first place.

The airlock protects me from the black hole, but even with the door cracked open, I feel the pull. I’ve worked so hard to open that door, as I wrote about in my “Facing Equilibrium” post. I thought the equilibrium was about grief — grief for my best friend, my dad, my disabilities. I was wrong.

Where I am at with my Mental Health

What waited on the other side of that door wasn’t grief; it was trauma. Unprocessed, untouched, ignored trauma that immediately outwitted my defences I’ve been working on the moment I ever so slightly opened the airlock door. I wasn’t ready, because how can you be ready for something you’ve had to avoid just to survive? I’ve tried to process it alone, but cPTSD doesn’t work like that. Journalling, talking, writing — it’s like picking at a scab. The wound DOESN’T heal, but avoiding it doesn’t help either. It just grows deeper and here it was, the full depth of trauma, flooding my airlock.

Without going into too much detail, the trauma i’ve been facing is tied to years of abuse from my mother, who I cut off in 2020, the same year my best friend died. I went no contact after she turned her behaviour on my son. That was my breaking point – Mother lion instinct ENGAGED. For years, I thought I was to blame for everything she put me through, until I saw her treat my son, her own grandson, the same way and no one can convince me that he also deserves that.

As a mother now, I know deep in my core that her actions were not love. I could NEVER treat another human that way, let alone my own child and grandchild. Realising this has been liberating, but also incredibly painful. How can your own mother, and grandmother hate you so much to abuse you.

Abuse that I’ve been through, is NEVER love. Abuse is an action from someone incapable of love.

Facing this trauma alone caused me to downward spiral into a crisis with emotional flashbacks. For safety, I retreated from the door, locked it tightly, and reached out for professional help because I know now, I cannot get out of this ED airlock alone. The calls went unanswered but I had a psychiatrist appointment on Thursday 19th December, that had previously been cancelled twice – the last time they phoned me to tell me it was cancelled, my teen witnessed it as I always put my phone on speaker, but then accused me of non attendance to a cancelled appointment – but I still clung to it like a lifeline.

The Murphy’s Law Appointment

I spent all week preparing: saving spoons, changing my routine, waking up early. I was finally sitting in the waiting room after exhausting myself getting there, ready to ask for help.

Then, my phone rang, breaking the silence of the waiting room.

“Your appointment is cancelled. You’ll have to wait longer”

Absolutely RIDICULOUS.

You Know What Gets Me About This?

I don’t even know my psychiatrist’s name. I don’t know their gender, their face, or anything about them. They might as well be Batman for how secretive they seem about protecting their identity. I’ve had four psychiatrists in two years. Each time, I’ve had to start from scratch — go through everything AGAIN, repeat my story, dredge up the worst parts of my life — and for what? To get stuck in the same loop all over again.

I’m stuck. Stuck in this ED airlock with no way out. I’m asking for help — like they tell you to — and every time, they say no. I have been asking for help regarding my ED for a YEAR in January. They ask, “What help do you need?” like it’s a real question. Like they’re going to say yes. But they never do. “Call us again if it gets worse,” they say. WORSE? I’m already in crisis. I can’t even trust myself to eat properly, keep up with basic tasks and everything feels hopeless. What exactly does “worse” mean?

It’s not just about me, though sometimes it feels like I’m shouting into the void about my own care. I’m angry because I know there are others out there — mums like me, people trying their hardest to hold on — who also can’t get help. It’s not just my ship that’s broken; the whole universe is succumbing to entropy. And that thought keeps me awake more than anything else.

Let me be CRYSTAL clear: I understand I’m in a queue. I’m NOT asking to pull a Phil and Holly, jumping the line or demanding to be seen before anyone else. All I’m asking for is basic care — not just for me, but for everyone stuck in this endless wait. The fact that basic care feels like too much to ask for, or is seen as a sign of entitlement says everything about how broken this system is.

The Great Escape

After they cancelled the appointment, I didn’t make a fuss. I walked out quietly, determined to leave with the tiny amounts of dignity I had left. It felt like clinging to scraps of something that was never really there to begin with — because let’s be real, what dignity is there in begging for help over and over, only to be told no? I was so livid, let down, really upset, felt completely abandoned, isolated, stuck in my ED, and stuck in my head.

My head was screaming with DISASTROUS thoughts walking down the hill back to town from the mental health clinic, which happens to be by the train station. Outside the train station I stood there for a while stationary, well as stationary as you can be while shaking uncontrollably. My son had come with me for support, and I said, “Shall we go? Lets do something. I can’t go home. I can’t go home like this, but I am really exhausted”.

I knew at home I’d spin out, I knew I’d stew in the upset, I knew I’d be really upset at the fact I wasted spoons for NOTHING but I could perhaps change the latter. My son thought it was a good idea, and said, “We don’t have to do what we usually do, we can just pop to the Jellycat shops and then come back”.

Two tickets to Cardiff later, and we were sat on the train. I kept shaking my head, “I just CAN’T believe this, you couldn’t make this up”. The train soothed me a bit, it always does. I just wanted to escape, to leave, to run away, so I imagined I was, that the train was taking me to a galaxy FAR far away. We brought our plushies with us, so I had my bear staring out of the window with his peanut friend, mirroring my feelings of struggling to make sense of the world outside because it’s moving too fast to comprehend.

Cardiff usually excites me, but not this time. The trip helped — it got me far away from the psychiatrist’s office — but my usual all-consuming joy present as soon as I step off the train was missing. That alone told me how DEEPLY I’m struggling. There’s a fog over everything, a part of myself I can’t access. It always feels so dangerous to not feel like yourself.

The New Jellycat Bear Drinks My Coffee

Even in the fog, I still made the effort to see every Jellycat shop, and in one of them I bought myself a new bear. He’s adorable and cute. He’s a Jellycat Rumblikin Bear, a sign of my desperately needing comfort. In a different shop I saw a really happy penguin plushie, I bought him for WeeGee. Buying her gifts for Christmas even though she’s no longer here, keeps her with me. I thought the cheeriness of the HAPPIEST penguin in the world might rub off on me, if not today, then another day.

I also even bought Lush products to have a self care day over the weekend. I didn’t leave out my son either, I bought him a Polaroid lego set for always being AWESOME and being my rock through all of this. Even though I felt numb, buying these things wasn’t just about shopping — it was me trying to feel something, anything, and remind myself that I’m still here, still trying. After walking around for a while we both wanted to leave the sensory overload of the Christmas mayhem in Cardiff, so headed back on the train.

Our city was so quiet in comparison so we went to Starbucks for food, a place to decompress from the noise with my favourite Americano and a bacon roll. My son had his favourite Mocha and a panini, and by eating here, we freed ourselves up to just relax when we got home. We took cute photographs of our plushies eating our food and drinking our coffees while both repeating, “What a DAY, though” every so often – both recognising there are no other words to accurately convey what a day it was – before finally heading home.

Back At Home

At home I had a glimmer of pride for myself for trying to change my day and taking control of it, even though Cardiff didn’t work for me like it usually does. The scent of the Lush products I bought wafting around my living room a constant reminder of my trying so hard even when everything feels hopeless.

I had no energy left to be irate anymore, I was mostly just filled with disappointment. I watched my teen draw using my really big Bartholomew bear as an iPad table, and watched mindless YouTube videos. Trying to just take my mind off all of the sentences my brain kept repeating, “I dont know what to do”, “I’m stuck”, “How do I do this alone?”.

I am stuck in my ED airlock, at a pivotal crossroads with it. Open the airlock alone, and face the cPTSD flashbacks that await me, or wait here, but I can’t wait for another year. I am also in a crisis, I am not fit to open the door and face anything. I can’t face basic tasks right now, everything I do is a mountain, how am I fit to face the epic Everest sized climb of the entire 30 years of trauma when I can’t handle keeping on top of a smaller mountain of laundry?

I always keep on keeping on, for my son, for my plushies, for the memory of WeeGee to carry on through me, for my stubbornness of refusing to give up even when everything feels hopeless. The fact it’s Christmas makes this feel so much worse, the Christmas songs playing in Cardiff felt so out of place, like Christmas songs in July. More so, knowing I wont get help until after Christmas now. Writing this post might not fix anything, but it’s the one thing I can still do. And maybe, for now, that’s enough.

Disclaimer: I understand that the issues I’m describing are the result of systemic problems within the NHS, not the fault of individual staff members. I know most people working in the system are doing their best within impossible constraints, and I’m SO grateful for the ones who genuinely care and try to help. But the system itself is broken, and it’s important to talk about how these failures affect people like me who are trying to access care.

I leave you with an anthem for this post. If you knew what I knew, you would be angry too.