Making Plans

I’m making plans. But, for the first time in a long time they are kind of positive plans and they are plans I feel excited about.

It’s all to do with university and what they say. I have a feeling that they are going to make me defer for another year or even say it’s not the right time in my life for me to be undertaking such a demanding course. Well I’ve come up with plans if they say either of these.

If they say I have to defer I am going to take about 3 months to go travelling again. I plan to go to India and China. The way I look at it is I will be getting about £160 a week in benefits. This is more than enough to get by on in Asia. I’ll save money before I go but the income I will get will be more than enough to keep me going. I am not sure if it is against the benefit law though so I will have to look in to it more. But people I have spoken to here about it have said travelling is something I love so much that it is a therapeutic activity. It will give me a focus when I come out of hospital and keep me on track and not back tracking on the progress I make and will make sure I carry on engaging so that I don’t relapse. What does worry me is the mood side of it and if I go on a low while I am away. I don’t mind so much the highs, but, it seems as though the Sodium Valporate has evened out my moods a lot more so I shouldn’t have to worry too much. I can pin point at the moment what sends me in to a low and that is being in hospital. It makes things worse for me and so I get reactive low moods because of it. The SV seems to have stopped the change in moods for no reason so as long as I have that I shouldn’t have to worry too much.

I am worried about going on my own. I have been to India twice but both times they were with Gom and I felt safer with him. It’s the kind of place where you can get a lot of hassle. The first time I went it was to the north and you couldn’t walk around anywhere without people stopping you. Also, because I had blonde hair people would just throw their kids at me and get all snap happy. I am not sure if it’s the type of place I would feel safer going with a bloke. But, if I think like that I may never get to go. I’ve never been to China but it is somewhere I want to go and I have wanted to see the Great Wall for a long time. So I think I would have to just be brave and do it.

Another worry I have about going to these places are it’s not like SE Asia where you have a big backpacking scene. A big backpacking scene means there are lots of people also on their own and so you meet up with other people and it’s not lonely. I am worried I would struggle to do that in these places.

My other big plan is if uni say it’s not the right time for me to be doing the course at all. Then what I am going to do is get my TEFAL qualification which would mean I can teach English as a foreign language and I am going to bugger off for a couple of years to SE Asia. My Mum said it takes about 4-5 months to get the qualification and if I am not working it is free. It was actually my parents who suggested getting the qualification as I would have just gone and tried to get a job. Having the qualification would mean I can get a better job with better pay and in better conditions.

I can’t believe I never thought of these before. I love travel so much and now it feels that the bottom of my world won’t fall out should uni turn round and say no. Seriously, before I was on such a downer about it, worrying so much about what I would do and even had really dark thoughts about it because it was all I could think I wanted to do. But now, I feel really excited at the prospect of going travelling again. So much so, there is part of me which hopes uni will turn round and say “not this year”. Not sure when I would go, probably April to July time. I was thinking January time but I looked up the temperatures in Beijing and it’s seriously cold, like -6c average. Far too cold for me and with going from one climate to another it would make packing a logistical nightmare.

I am hoping that these new plans of mine will look favourably on me. Things aren’t going well for me here at the moment. The doctor said she wants to make the referral to a low secure unit which would mean me being in hospital a hell of a lot longer. It scares the hell out of me. She said there is still time for things to change. And, now that I have these new plans the self-harm and destructive urges won’t over take everything I do. Or, I will be able to do something about it before I get to that stage. The self-harm is something that is not going to be fixed. It will not go away. I am always going to be a person who self-harms. I may not do it for years but I will always be a person who self-harms. I am always going to be reminded of it also. Every time I look at my legs I will see the scars and I will know what they are from.

I don’t know what they will make of my new plans. They may not look on them favourably at all. But, saying that, the staff I have told so far are really supportive of it and said it’s good I am looking to the future and making alternative plans. I hope that the rest of the medical team sees it like that and not as though I am running away or am being unrealistic. I just hope no one does anything to stop me going ahead with these plans should uni fall through. They are positive and so far I have had a lot of support with them and people thinking it’s a really good idea.

Life at the Crazy Inn is still pretty much the same, except the other female patient on the ward smashed up the TV so now there is no TV in the female area and I feel really uncomfortable watching TV with the blokes. It was a really selfish act and I am so pissed off about it. I hope they will replace it soon but I am doubtful considering I had to buy my own TV remote as the ward would not replace the ward one when that went missing. I miss the tv :'(