It lives. (For certain definitions of "lives".)
Yes, well, being terrifyingly close to overdosing doesn't get better overnight. Or in 18 months, apparently.
The upside (laughs hollowly) to getting *so* bad is that I got referred to psychiatric services who immediately leapfrogged me to the top of their "Holy shit we need to do something" queue. I now have a consultant psychiatrist, a psych nurse / care coordinator, and a peer support worker (basically, someone who's been through the system & come out the other side, who now works for the NHS).
Huh. "NHS" isn't recognised by spellcheck. Telling.
I *seem* to have a relatively ok mix of brain drugs, in that I'm not crying messily *every* day & nor do I have anxiety so bad I can't leave the house or eat anything more exciting than spinach (that was a fun fortnight). I've joined a gym (on a student membership, hurrah for the OU!) so that I can honestly say I'm doing everything I should be doing to get better (adn a bit of me wants to be able to say "See, I *told* you it wouldn't work", which is quite disturbing in itself.
I'm still doing the maths, which is going terrifyingly well. I'm torn between thinking "100% should *not* be possible!" and "But that's really insulting to everyone who didn't get it!" and "That's really insulting to everyone who got it!"
Knitting, too, and spinning. They keep my hands busy so I don't damage myself.
Archery, though... Coaching stopped last summer when my coach signed up for another qualification & picked a different guinea pig. This meant my relatively small problems snowballed & have ended up with the whole thing being associated with misery & disappointment; combine that with ongoing anxiety over crowds and I haven't shot for months. It sucks; so does seeing posts about shooting on my FB feed.
One of the big problems I have is what they call resilience; basically, it takes me several days to recover from the smallest thing going wrong (or even going right, if it involves any confrontation at all). This is making me avoid doing all sorts of things *in case* they go wrong / someone says something that upsets me / I get disappointed, etc. The way I described it to Patricia (private therapist, who I still see regularly) is as if there's a load of bowls in front of me; one has boiling water in & the rest are hand-temperature, and doing the Thing means sticking my hand into one of them. The number of bowls varies with the perceived risk / degree of fucked-upness that might result. Clearly, some things are pretty unlikely to have a bad outcome, but if they *do* go wrong / if I pick the wrong bowl to stick my hand into it would be catastrophic.
So I'm doing things like avoid Ultron in case I get disappointed (I wasn't much, but Too Much Tony and Not Enough Cap, which is another dread I have about Civil War. It has all the Avengers => it should be an Avengers film. Cap 3 should be all about Cap & Bucky. I have Strong Feelings about that.)
(I also have Strong Feelings about Bucky, which should come as no surprise considering that angstmuffin assassins are my kryptonite.)
Anyway, I'm still off work (pretending to be normal for long enough to do anything is exhausting. Plus, too high a chance of the boiling water.) and getting income protection insurance, which will stop if / when work finds a way of terminating my contract. Hello, anxiety.
I'm horribly lonely much of the time, which isn't helped by anxiety over people being dicks during my worst few months and really mixes well with ongoing social phobia. Also, the house is such a state that I hate being in it, but am too overwhelmed to do anything, pretty much, so I don't feel able to invite people round (conversation! Argh! Boiling water!) As for Actual Relationships, after an attempt last yearish I'm now Utterly Convinced that I'm both undateable and do not have the sort of body that anyone would want as more than a body-temperature fleshlight.
TL;DR: I'm hanging on with my fingernails. I hate being like this.