(CONTENT WARNING: suicidality mentioned, eating disorders, mental health, unreliable therapists, sleepless rambling)

One day I want to write a post about the housing saga and have it be a POSITIVE one. I really do. Today is not that day.
It’s been 6 weeks since the hospital’s crisis team discharged me back to my regular department. During that handover meeting, my key worker (who I was meeting for the first time) promised me she’d set up a meeting for me and the team’s social worker with the aims of helping me navigate the council’s housing system without such a catastrophic effect on my mental health. The kind that saw a return of bulimic behaviours I haven’t had in 10 years. The kind that had me shaking and sleepless and suicidal in my GP’s office on a Saturday morning three days beforehand, with no idea where else to go to try and get help, desperate to stop myself from doing anything reckless. (Actively trying to prevent the loudest 20% of your mind from taking over the anxious insecure majority is a strange feeling.)
I went home feeling like the cork was just about jammed back into the bottle, aware that it would be very dangerous to let the pressure build back up again.

So, since then I’ve waited. For six weeks. In the meantime having no luck with my other housing options (see previous post). Mental health up and down, nothing as bad as it was when the crisis team had to get involved, because of the aforementioned cork keeping my distress gently bubbling away on the inside. Literally holding out for the help I was promised.

Today I left a voicemail with my key worker, chasing this up. Two hours later the social worker called. “K has just told me about your situation….”
I had to ask her if she meant “…for the very first time”. Yep –  Just. Told. Her. 
If I hadn’t called, how long could I have been waiting for this meeting? I have a horrid feeling the answer would have been indefinitely.
If I wasn’t so tired I’d be absolutely furious. I AM absolutely furious, but the tiredness means it’s coming out as defeatist sighs and the frantic need to write this all down before I fall asleep at the laptop.
I’m pretty sad too, though. I don’t find it easy to trust people, psych professionals even less than most, and I’ve already lost a huge amount of trust in my new key worker. I know that mental health services are getting cuts all over the place, everyone’s so busy and overworked, and she probably genuinely forgot. The problem is there’s a human impact on the other side of the safety glass. My life can’t be put on hold right now – I’ve wasted 6 weeks waiting, and my provisional deadline to move is now a month away.

The social worker said she would text me some potential meeting dates. I’m not letting myself hold out much hope of that without another prompting phone call. I’m also very glad that anxiety over being forgotten about is overriding anxiety about making phone calls right now.