Witnessing a meltdown

I walked into town for my annual eye test. I’m feeling much calmer today after a decent sleep – I had a sleeper and the bedroom at the house has blackout curtains: I need absolute dark, such as there will be at the end of time, in order to sleep.

I almost always wear headphones when I go into town. I started doing it a few years ago; it makes the whole experience much less stressful. I enjoy the people and the sounds, but there’s just so many of them and they’re all do bloody loud! Of course, I also wear sunglasses as the bloody light strains my eyes. They also have the effect of deterring unwelcome approaches from strangers asking for money or whether I have met Jesus yet. Very often I’m not listening to music, I just need the world to be a little quieter.

Walking back from town I was disturbed to see a young woman clutching her head and making the most horrendous noise. I knew what it was straight away. Her friends were distraught (there were only two of them). The girl fell to the floor still clutching her head and started banging her head against the floor.

Somebody brought ice; I need to find out why that was helpful.

I put my cardigan under her head and called an ambulance. The emergency girl at the other end was fabulous and immediately established what was going on through my jumbled words. The ambulance would be twenty minutes.

People were beginning to turn up to see what the commotion was. I suggested that we give her space, but I wasn’t able to communicate more. I seem to have completely lost my ability to cope in a crisis. I went and sat on a wall not far away with my headphones on.

Somebody from the office behind us came out and took charge of her care. He clearly knew what he was doing (I never saw his face, but he had a lovely shaped back),

I couldn’t leave in case the ambulance phoned back, but was soon as it arrived, I flagged it down, picked up my bags, and walked off. I blew the girl a kiss as I left – I felt so bad for her. She clearly struggles with life so very much: her wrists, legs, and belly were covered in scars. I could weep for her.

As I left, a chap on a scooter tried to get past. The pavement was almost fully occupied by patient, friends, and ambulance crew. Fucking idiot. All he wanted to do was gawp at the girl.

I’ve never had a meltdown like that. Sound and light can hurt when I’m emotionally overwhelmed, but never so bad that they incapacitated me. My responses to overwhelm have been predominantly shutdowns or meltdowns that bear a lot of resemblance to a child’s tantrum.

But I understood what the world was like for her.

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Physically better

I went to the hospital to see my husband. He seemed in better spirits than previously. We went down to grab a coffee. Then he started talking. He is physically well enough to go home, but the psych team haven’t been to see him yet and the hospital will forcibly detain him should be try to leave without being seen.

He’s wondering whether he should lie to them to secure a release, or tell them the truth: that he is feeling utterly hopeless. He kept dropping things into the conversation, such as that the problem if the house would solve itself because he won’t be around.

He’s also far from convinced about my autism self-diagnosis because “these things have never been a problem before”. He pointed to the crushing anxiety I feel so much of the time at the moment. He thinks that this is grief for my mum (she died five years ago this December). But then he also said that my crazy started before we moved to Southampton six years ago.

This time tears came, my leg was going like a jackhammer under the table. My throat constricted.

He said “why don’t you take some time off?”, to which I replied that I couldn’t until I knew that he was ok. I need to take time off when I know that it is completely safe to decompress and that I won’t just return to the pressure of whether he is ok or not. I said that I desperately needed to just lie down for a week and just be.

He talked about needing to re-home the dog. I said that I really wanted to find a way that she can stay with one of us: she’s out furbaby and we have a responsibility towards her. But I wish said that I couldn’t think any more about that just then. It seems that asking the house is going to be the next big thing that happens.

Funny thing is, that we parted on better terms tonight that the previous couple of nights. We hugged and told one another that we loved them,

Is he now my ex? I don’t know! And neither does he! My crazy is destroying us! And killing him.