Email Between Me And The Merseyside Police In Response To My Attempted I.O.P.C Complaint

Part One- Email From The Merseyside Police

(I have redacted email senders information.)

Hi,

I am writing to acknowledge your complaint received in this department on 12/08/2020 and allocated to me on the 27/08/2020. It is logged with reference number (I have redacted reference number.)

In order to resolve your complaint effectively, I would like to communicate further with you in order to fully understand your complaint and identify how you would like it to be resolved.

You can contact me on phone (I have redacted email senders phone number)or email , alternatively provide me a number along with a time that is convenient for you, between 08:00 and 15:00 between Monday and Friday.

(I have redacted personal and contact information of the email sender.)

Reading fiction

When reading a piece of fiction consider it in context.

What was the world like when it was written?

Things to remember in an exam when approaching 21st-century non-fiction

We are only part way through the 21st-century. We have no real way of telling how media and non-fiction will progress in remaining years.

Newspapers are increasingly moving to online formats and we see new forms of media arrive such as YouTube blogging.

Approaching 21st century non-fiction in an exam

During your exam you may be presented with a text that expresses a strong opinion.

You may be given an extract from an online newspaper.

Example

“Whenever I visit the supermarket or stroll around the street, I notice yet another young mother or father walking along with their eyes glued to a mobile phone. Oblivious to the cries of distressed babies and the appalling antics of attention seeking toddlers, they continue to indulge in the all absorbing joys of social media and texting.”

This is obviously rightfully critical of parents who show an interest in their mobile phones instead of their children.

You can tell this by examining the language which is very emotive.

You may be given the choice to agree or disagree with the extract.

Whatever you decide be sure to back up your ideas with evidence, using contacts and codes from the extract itself.

It really wasn’t the result I was looking for…

It really wasn’t the result I was looking for. I hadn’t even been at the house viewing for two minutes, and the landlady’s dog had already bitten me. Twice. It was an angry looking Shih Tzu that yapped constantly. Worse still, when it ran out of sight it was impossible to tell exactly where it was hiding, as it blended in with the white shag carpet, as though it was a soldier in camouflage hiding in the trees.

When I decided I was going to stay in London over the summer holiday, rather than return home like everybody else, everybody you told me, “You can’t do it.” It had spurred me on, not that I hadn’t already been determined to stay. I had been so determined to stay that I had already gotten a full-time job. At only twenty one it meant that I was receiving far less pay than my older colleagues, and so had no disposable income and was on a tight rent budget.

“There are houses with the cost of utilities included in with the rent,” the estate agent had told me

“I’m looking for a student or young professionals house,” I told him.

“I’ve got the perfect place for you,” he had answered.

What was he thinking?

Firstly, it wasn’t a student house.

Secondly, it wasn’t a young professionals house.

“I’m looking for a lodger,” the maybe fifty something landlady had told me. She was head to toe in lycra apart from her bare feet. “My daughter has just moved out.”

I looked at the estate agent as if to signal to him that there had been a mistake, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the landlady, nodding and smiling. At twenty one I was still too polite to say, “No thank you,” and walk away.

“Take your shoes off please.”

I did as I was told and stepped inside. That was the first time the dog bit me.

“There is a 10 o’clock curfew,” she informed me, as I sat down on the sofa. “No boys, no friends, and certainly no alcohol.”

This woman wasn’t looking for a lodger, she was looking for a replacement daughter.

That’s when the dog bit me again.

“I will be working past ten sometimes,” I responded. It was my way of trying to end the viewing.

“Not if you live in my house you won’t,” she snapped.

The rest of the viewings was a blur.

I nodded and smiled just like the estate agent was, but I wasn’t listening to a word she said.

I was relieved when I found myself back outside with the estate agent, the door closing behind me and my feet back safely in my shoes.

“So should we go back to the office and sign the contract?” He suggested cheerfully.

“No,” I said. “Not a chance.”

I’d like to say I learned a lesson about being assertive that day, but I didn’t.

Introduction to this weeks Wednesday blog post

Months ago, I promise you all that I would start posting some of my English assignments on a Wednesday, in particular the writing assignments. Then a few weeks ago I promise to post the story that I achieved my grade seven on, in my mock exam (apparently a grade 7 is an A to A*).

Well, here it is, I am finally making good on my promise.

This story is based on real events, but is not one hundred percent accurate…

…so I decided to write some autobiographical companion pieces. The first of which will be released in place of my Sunday autobiographical post.

I know I am once again straying from my planned posts, but these pieces are a very good look into how Borderline Personality Disorder can effect your day-to-day life, especially when you are undiagnosed.

An overview of 21st century non-fiction

Non-fiction content has become much more diverse in the 21st-century.

More information is accessible via the Internet.

Letter writing

Letter writing has become rarer and people use instant messaging systems and emails instead.

Growing use of texting and instant messaging has also seen a decline in the role of punctuation In most written conversations.

Text speak such as the letter u instead of the word you is widely used.

Journals

Social media encourages people to share small detail of their life with other people. It is possible that this alongside online blogs have replaced written diaries. However unlike diaries social media is meant to be witnessed by other people. This can mean the reliability can be affected, in fact the status of photos on social media maybe the posters best self rather than being an honest account of their daily lives.

Journalism

Journalism has changed a great deal in the 21st-century. This is because modern technology allows writers to send their information to companies at the touch of a button.

News reaches the Internet almost as soon as something happens.

News papers, particularly the tabloids, continue to present information by using emotive language and images.

Example

When the twin towers were attacked in 2001, most newspapers displayed images of one of the towers in flames. Words like “horror” and “an act of war” were emblazoned across the page.

An overview of 20th century non-fiction

The monarchy

In 1901 Queen Victoria died and her son Edward the seventh became king. He enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and travelled abroad to meet other important leaders. However his reign was relatively short and he died in 1910.

His son George the fifth became king at a turbulent time in history, over the following years tensions gradually rose in Europe.

The world wars

In fact the 20th century is categorised by two world wars one in 1914 and one in 1939. These walls had a huge impact on society and this can be seen in non-fiction at the time.

Gender equality improved in response to the wars as women were seen as assisting in the day-to-day running of the country.

Non-fiction literature had an important role in the recruitment of soldiers.

Posters encouraging men to fight for their countries were displayed.

Speeches were also written to boost the morale of soldiers and encourage more men to join the army.

Entertainment

Commercial radio featured in daily life from the 1920s onwards.

Most families owned a radio.

As the century progressed cinema and the television also became increasingly important.

• News

• Political views

• And literature

were easily accessible in

• Audio

• And visual forms

• As well as on paper

Newspapers

in 1912 the front pages of newspapers reported the sinking of the Titanic. The ship been called unsinkable, but the newspapers reported how it sank in only four hours, after hitting an iceberg.

Newspaper reports allowed terrible news like this to reach ordinary people all over the UK.

Newspapers can be used to trace changes in the mood of the country in the run-up to the Second World War. Many newspapers deliberated on the best way to approach Hitler. Some felt like the then Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was doing well. Others such as The Yorkshire Post stated in December 1938 that…

“By repeatedly surrendering to force, Chamberlain has courage aggression.”

by paying attention to multiple extracts from different newspapers, we can get a better idea of the ideas and thoughts being discussed at the time.

in the late stages of the 20th century news headlines became increasingly sensationalist. This means that they were deliberately emotional and horrifying to view. It became increasingly common for new stories to feature horrifying images, such as bleeding children and bombed out buildings. A focus shifted in many news papers from objective fact to emotion.

example

Following the death of Princess Diana in 1997 many tabloid journalist focused on the emotion and the tragedy of the situation. One newspaper referred to the anguish of her two young children. Media displayed continual crowds of ordinary people mourning Diana. These tributes grew daily, and some argued the emotive techniques used by journalists actively added to the overwhelming sense of grief.

Letters

The letters written from soldiers to love one’s back home are now invaluable to researchers, who use them to gain insight into the personal experiences of those at war.

Example

War poet Wilfred Owen wrote many letters to his mother. In them he wrote about the horrific encounters in war.

On the 21st of April 1907 he wrote…

“For twelve days lay in holes, where at any moment a shell might put us out.”

How do subjects and verbs agree with one another?

Subjects and verbs must agree with one another in number (singular or plural). So, if a subject is singular, its verb must also be singular; if a subject is plural, its verb must also be plural.

A sentence is made up of 2 parts:

Subjects that tells us what the sentence is about. It can be either a noun or a pronoun. It can be either singular or plural.

Verbs represent the action of a sentence.

The Time I Was A Missing Person

Today I have another short one part blog post for you all. It’s less of a story and more of an anecdote. What I mean by this is that there isn’t a strong narrative structure to the events I’m about to recount, it is more a collection of memories.

Today I’m going to tell you all about the time I was a missing person, even to myself. Today’s post touches slightly upon how the current laws and regulations in the UK allow certain organisations to use, and passively abuse vulnerable adults for profit. I mention it here just to make you aware, that I am aware, of these issues, but that it is a far deeper set of issues than I can address in a single blog post, that is about an entirely separate issue.

If remember correctly the meeting had already been rescheduled once, because just the thought of being in the same room as my housing officer was making me very mentally unwell due to the stress thinking about it caused me. My housing officer has been judging me, belittling me and discriminating against me, since the day he met me. Both me and my mother had made request to have another point of contact due to this, and had been told no. We had made a request that the meeting be with somebody other than my housing officer, and had been told no. We had then asked for another member of staff to also attend the meeting as well as my housing officer, and had been told no. However my housing officer had requested colleague assistance, to back him up against us essentially, and so his manager was also attending the meeting.

The reason for the meeting was because I had been crisis housing, meaning that I had to except whatever property I was offered, and the property that LMH offered me wasn’t suitable for even a mentally well person, and so was and still is, as I am still living in the flat, a danger to both my health and safety.

I have no memory of the morning before the meeting, or the meeting itself. I only know what I know about the meeting because my mum was with me. Apparently as soon as we all sat down, my housing officer and his manager, both admitted they were aware that the property they had housed me in was not a suitable or safe place for me to be living, but then immediately told us that they wouldn’t be allowing me to move to a more suitable or safe property. To this I apparently responded that I was going to use the rat poison in my flat to commit suicide and left the meeting.

What I remember of the day starts when I came back to myself, and found myself standing on the grass verge separating the opposite lanes of a duel carriageway, watching buses and lorries fly by. The best way I can describe what I mean by saying I came back to myself, is that it’s like waking up from a dreamless sleep to find that you have been going about your life while asleep. I’ve no idea what the correct name for this experience is, or if there even is one.

It had been less than a year since I attempted suicide by trying to throw myself in front of a car, so my first reaction was to ask myself if I had been planning on killing myself. I suspect that I had, and so I supposed I would get a response from Mork, but I didn’t.

Disorientated, and feeling strangely abandoned by my own “foreign” thoughts, I did the only thing that I could, I picked a direction (my left if it matters) and walked along the grass verge until I came to a crossing. On one side of the dual carriageway there was just houses, on the other side there was a small group of shops surrounded by houses. I crossed to the side of the street where the shops were, hoping I could find a clue as to where I was, but I found nothing, and all the shops were closed, so I continued walking in the same direction until I reached a bus shelter. Unfortunately none of the bus numbers or stops were familiar to me. Defeated I dropped down onto the bench in the bus shelter. My plan had been to call a taxi to take me back to the flat, but I couldn’t do that if I didn’t know where I was.

After only a couple of minutes of racking my brain for another plan on how I was going to get back to my flat, I lost the battle for my own concentration, a set of thought that were screaming at me, demanding answers to how I got myself to this unknown location won, and I was forced to admit the absolutely terrifying truth that I didn’t even know what day it was. When I took out my mobile phone to check the date, I was shocked to see that I had dozens of missed calls, and several voicemails. Afraid I immediately dialled my voicemail. It was a mixture of messages from both my mum, and complete strangers, who said they were the police. All of them were telling me that I needed to phone them back immediately.

Phoning me hadn’t been a smart move on the police part, and leaving me voicemails demanding I call them back was an even worse idea. My mind was not in a stable place, so being contacted by the police plunged me into paranoia.

Why were the police looking for me?

What had I said or done during my missing time?

“The police aren’t looking for you, you idiot,” Mork finally slithered into my consciousness. I knew that he had been close by. I knew that he was responsible for getting me lost. “The police know exactly where you are. There are CCTV cameras everywhere. You’re holding a trackable device. I bet a hundred police cars passed and saw you ,while you were trying to grow the balls to step in front of a lorry. They are trying to force you to do it, so that they have evidence to lock you back up in hospital.”

I had a flash of memory. The sensation of water thrown up by the tires of a passing Lorry splashing against my face as it whizzed by, and I felt nauseous.

I pulled my hood up so nobody could see my face.

People came, buses arrived, those same people went, not many, but enough to make me feel uneasy. I stayed on that bench for what felt like, and probably was hours frozen by fear.

I knew I couldn’t go back home, but I also knew that I had nowhere else to go.

Eventually my mum, who had tried phoning me dozens more times, left me another voicemail. In this one she sounded frantic. I felt so guilty over it that I called her back.

I don’t remember the entire conversation, just bits of it.

The first thing she obviously did when she picked up her phone was ask me where I was.

I was honest and told her I didn’t know, and that I had no memory of how I had gotten to where I was.

She told me that the police were looking for me.

when I said that I couldn’t come back because they would lock me back up in hospital, she promised me that they wouldn’t. I hung up and headed off once again in the same direction as I had before, trying to find a landmark. I walked for about fifteen minutes before I came to another small set of shops, one of which, a takeaway, had both its address and phone number on the sign underneath its name.

I called a taxi to that address, then I phoned my mum back and told her I was coming to her house. I was too scared to go home.

My mum told me that she was going to call the police to let them know that I was fine, and on my way to her house, so that they could stop looking for me. I knew that it wouldn’t be that simple, and so I expected there to be police at her house when I arrived, but there wasn’t.

I was so relieved.

I had been missing for hours before I came back to myself, and so not only was I desperate for a wee, I was also on my period, and needed to see to that. I’d literally only just sat down on the toilet when there was an explosion of noise, and then banging on my mums bathroom door.

“What are you doing in there?” A woman demanded.

“Trying to have a wee,” I said, startled.

“You don’t sound like you’re weeing,” she accused. “I’m coming in.”

“The door is locked because I’m trying to have a wee,” I told her, becoming distressed again.

At the time I was convinced mum had lied to me.

“I’ll break it down then,” she threatened.

Terrified that the police were about to break my mum’s door down, I dragged my underwear and jeans up and opened the door. I was still bursting for a wee and now I had no protection against my period and was clutching a bloody tampon.

There were about twelve police officers squashed into the small hallway in between my mum’s bathroom and kitchen, and spilling out into the kitchen itself. My mum Later told me a neighbour, who had seen the police enter her house, said she thought my mum’s house was being raided.

I felt like time stood still, them all staring at me as though daring me to move or say something, and me desperately clutching a bloody tampon as though it could somehow protect me from them.

Then a police officer walked in, asked them why they were all there, and told them to leave.

Dazed, I threw away the tampon, before being led into my mum’s living room, still bursting for a wee and now completely tampon-less, to wait for a social worker to come and assess me, to see if they were going to section me.

They didn’t because sectioning me wont cure my flat of being a horrible, unsafe and unsuitable place for me to live.

What I found bizarre though was that they banished my mum to the kitchen while they accessed me, like I was a child that might need to tell on here, and be taken off her.

That’s not the bizzarest part of the story though. Once they left, my mum told me that the police didn’t think they were going to find me without breaking into my flat, because they asked her for a photograph of me and she didn’t have any, because I hate having my photograph taken.

Firstly, like as if I have stacks of photographs of myself in my flat, and I just have them ready for people to come break my door down and take one.

Secondly, have you body snatched my real mother?

what dead Mandela world did you just arrive from mum?

I have a fucking public Instagram and Twitter account that I post millions of photographs to every week.

Thirdly, are you telling me the police think breaking into my flat, to search through all my stuff for photographs of myself I don’t have, was a better option than just going on my social media?

I purposely left my note until the end today so here they are.

1. I was really suicidal at the time, so I had actually said that I was going to kill myself a couple of times around my housing officer, and he never once before called the police on me. He didn’t do it out of concern for me, he did it because his manager made him.

2. LMH would rather force their mentally unwell tenants to live in awful properties, and have them sectioned when it makes them ill, rather than fix the problems with their awful properties.

3. I did say I was going to kill myself on this occasion, and I clearly meant it. I also said I was going to do it inside my flat, and yet the police knocked on my front door three separate times, and got absolutely no response, and yet none of those officers thought it was appropriate to saw my front door down to “save my life.”

Addition that I made to my IOPC complaint before they responded

Hi i made a complaint either monday or tuesday and i phone your advice line today and asked how i add to it and they told you i had to email in
i need to add two things
first after seeking information on what s17pace was i was told they would have been referring to s17epace which is to save life or limb i have been advised that this can not be used as standard practice to gain entry for a welfare check and exists to let the police enter the property if they have justifiable  reason to believe there is imminent threat to life which they did not have in this case as i had informed them i was fine had no plans to harm myself (and i have a right to refuse a welfare check if i am the subject of the welfare check) and was responding i have been told reasonable cause is something along the lines if they had reason to believe i had a weapon and was planning to use it if i needed immediate medical assistance such as if i stopped responding etc i have been told that if they had genuine concerns about my safety which did not require immediate medical assistance or disarmament they should have got an s135 warrant and that this warrant exists to not only get me appropriate help in an appropriate way if i need it but is also there to protect me from the type of situation that happened to me

i would like to add some effects that have occurred since i made my complaint i am now hallucinating police sirens and flashing lights on occasion in the carpark outside my flat which is very distressing
i have lost weight already due to not eating and although i started eating very small amounts of food late last night or early hours of this morning i can not keep anything down and bring it back up if my anxiety or stress peaks

since learning about the s135 warrant and what s17epace is and there differences i have decidedly changed my mind about what i want the outcome to be i would like all four members of the police that attended to be disciplined and prosecuted appropriately
i have made several attempts to raise my concerns with the merseyside police and been met with hostility if appropriate i would like the same action taken against any members of staff who are also helping to protect these officers as it is at worse police intimidation and abuse of power and at worst police misconduct and abuse of power as i have been told regardless of whether or not they genuinely believed they were acting on behalf of my well being they are not allowed to violate my rights and say they did it out of concern or for my well being they must act accordingly and secure the right warrants and behave appropriately

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An overview of 19th-century non-fiction

Non-fiction played a significant role in 19th century life.

non-fiction styles varied according to its purpose. However in letters, diaries and travel writing, we see the desire to capture moments, events and places through description. This is likely explained by the fact there was no other way to preserve memories.

Taxes

In the early 1800’s there were taxes on paper which limited the production of non-fiction.

After 1861 these were lifted. This resulted in the birth of various newspapers, such as the daily graphic, which contained both news and pictures.

This allows the growing awareness of local and national news.

True crime

The Victorians took a great interest in reading about crime.

Newspapers often had grisly titles. This both represented the fears of the time by reporting them, and made them worse by heightening national fears.

Travel

in the 1840s the railway became increasingly popular and common in Britain.

colonialism

Britain had a large empire and controlled India, Australia and Canada.

in 1869 a new Suez Canal opened so that ships could pass directly from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean without sailing around Africa.

The Empire brought wealth to Britain to slave trade and colonialism.

Letters

Letters were an important form of communication.

Travel writing

Travel writing where people such as Robert Louis Stevenson recorded their experiences.

this shows us the approach to other cultures.

The lower classes

many lived in overcrowded homes, and worked in factories or coal mines.

Ragged schools for the poor opened.

The upper classes

Diaries

It was common for the upper classes to keep diaries.

This tells us what life is like in Victorian Britain.

Reading non-fiction

Whenever you read a piece of non-fiction you should consider it in context.

The First Time Anybody Ever Called The Police On Me To Do A “Welfare Check”

If you are physically exhausted and emotionally worn out after reading my five part blog post about how my neighbours tried to murder me, I completely understand, because I am physically, mentally and emotionally destroyed after writing about it.

So this week I have a very short one part post for you.

It is about the first time anybody ever called the police to do a “welfare check” on me.

It is also about what it is like to have a mental illness that may effect your ability to be eligible for credit and having to report that to your current lenders, as well as what it is like to be a vulnerable adult due to that mental illness, and how your very reasonable safeguarding requests can be incorrectly interpreted by, and inappropriately reacted to by those companies you are a customer of.

As most of you reading this at the time of me publishing it will already know, I have had several diagnosis in relation to my mental health since 2016, when I had a public and explosive pseudo psychotic episode in the middle of work. I think the story that I’m about to tell you took place in 2018, due to the fact that I was podcasting at the time, and suffering severely with my suicidal thoughts that did not feel like they were my thoughts, and so I would’ve been close to my second admission to a psychiatric hospital. Because of how unwell I was the events that took place on this day are hazy and sparse, I will however do my best to recount what I remember as accurately as I possibly can.

During this time I would have had the diagnosis of comorbid Borderline Personality Disorder and Adjustment Disorder, with potential Bipolar Two or Cyclothymia (this diagnosis has since been changed, and at the time of publishing this is my current diagnosis is co morbid Borderline Personality Disorder, with narcissistic traits and Adjustment Disorder.) I was off work a lot because my employer was refusing to give me the necessary workplace adjustments and support, and I was in the process of selling the house I owned with my abusive ex-partner.

I should probably go into more detail on some of the points that I have just briefly mentioned.

1. I had been advised that both my definite diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder and my possible Bipolar Two or Cyclothymia diagnosis meant that I might actually not be eligible to be accepted for credit in the future, which could cause problems with things such as my next mortgage renewal, and therefore I should inform any lenders that I already had credit with that I had been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and potentially a type of Bipolar.

2. I had been advised that any companies that I was a customer with had a duty of care to put in place appropriate safeguarding measures necessary for a person suffering from my illnesses, and that because receiving post was a trigger for my “foreign suicidal thoughts” I should ask companies to only send me necessary post, so only post they were required by law to send me such as bills and statements.

I admit that I should’ve done both these things straight away, but did not. It wasn’t out of laziness, or disorganisation on my part, it was simply an issue of trigger avoidance, and waiting until I felt mentally able to deal with it, or I was forced into a situation where dealing with it was happening whether I was mentally capable of dealing with it or not.

3. My ex-partner had been financially abusive during our relationship, and was still being financially abusive at this point in time. When we moved into the property we had opened a joint bank account, agreeing that joint bills and household expenses would come out of that account, and that we would each pay an equal amount of money into the account to cover these bills and expenses. (He earned more money than me just to put the following events into perspective.) He set up all out household bills one day when I was at work, putting them in his name so that I had no control over them. Even though he set the direct debits for these bills up to go out of the joint account as we agreed, he never put any money into the account but would regularly withdraw money and I remember regularly having to beg him to put money back into the account so that our bills didn’t bounce. Like an idiot I was not only paying all the bills and household expenses, I had taken credit out on furniture for the house, and was the only one of us who bought furniture outright and, so because of my limited finances we had very little. I had also paid of his overdraft on his personal bank account.

However there was one bill that he set the direct debit for up to go out of his personal bank account, which was the mortgage. When I said that I was going to phone the bank to move the direct debit to the joint account, his response was that account was my account and he wouldn’t be putting any money into it, so if I moved the direct debit for the mortgage to the joint account I would need to make sure I moved another four hundred and fifty pounds a month into that account to cover it. He knew I couldn’t do that. All our other bills and expenses were taking up almost my entire wages. (I worked full time and was earning over a thousand pound just to put that into perspective.)

(He later tried to say he owned the house fully because I had never paid a penny towards the mortgage, even though we both owned an equal share of the property as what I believe is called tenants in common ownership.)

My ex had left me and the property in 2016, when he left me for a girl he met online who was ten years younger than me, so nineteen, and lived in Cyprus. He was twenty six. Then he had threatened to withdraw all the money from the joint account and move to Cyprus. I was still paying everything except the mortgage, on half pay and he was threatening to stop paying the mortgage.

On this particular Friday I had received a letter with the Halifax logo in the top left-hand corner. They were our mortgage provider. I had gotten an annual statement about two months earlier, so another one wasn’t due for about ten months. I felt sick. All I could think was that he hadn’t paid the mortgage. I stared at the envelope for hours unable to decide whether to open that letter, or my throat. Eventually I worked up the courage to open the letter, it was junk mail. It was a letter saying me and my ex partner, who they were already aware was separated from me and was no longer living at the property, had been accepted for a loan we had never applied for.

I decided that I had to phone them about my mental illness, it had already been a couple of months since I had been advised to do this.

When I explained to the woman at the call centre that I had been advised I should let them know I had Borderline Personality Disorder, and likely had a type of Bipolar Disorder, and that I also had Adjustment Disorder, she became rude and accused me of being fraudulent on my application. When I tried to clarify that I didn’t know I had these illnesses when I applied, and couldn’t even recall being asked if I had any mental illnesses during the application process, she asked me what I wanted her to do about it. This slightly alarmed me. I had worked in banking and financial services since I graduated from university, almost, so roughly nine years, I think, she should be telling me the next steps if there were any. I suspected she didn’t actually know what to do in this situation, so I suggest maybe she should speak to their underwriting team. she snapped at me not to tell her how to do her job. Our mortgage review was due soon, so I checked with her that all calls were recorded, and notes kept for the seven years that banks were allowed to keep them for, then I took down the date, time and mobile number I was calling from.

She was already trying to get me off the phone at this point, and I wasn’t finished. Regardless I did my best to remain calm, which wasn’t easy. I told her I had something else I needed to deal with. I asked could she please put a stop on any unnecessary post that they weren’t legally required to send, as post was a massive trigger for my illnesses. When she said that she couldn’t do that, I asked her who could, and she replied that nobody could, that it wasn’t possible. I was pretty sure it was actually a requirement that they allow me to opt out of non-essential post. When I said this to her she became argumentative.

I wasn’t going to get into a screaming match with this woman, and I suspect that she didn’t know how to do a job properly, so through gritted teeth, I asked to speak to her manager.

Her manager was even worse than she was. She accused me of making threats against my life to get my own way. I think I told her that she was ignorant and unprofessional. I know she hung up on me when I at least started to say this, so I don’t know how far through what I was saying I got before she hung up.

I was furious and upset. It took me awhile to start to calm down.

Friday was the day I helped a friend by cohosting his podcast. By the time he Skype me to do this I was sure I could get through it without a meltdown, and thought it would probably help to calm me down and cheer me up a bit considering the nature of the podcast material. It was a comedy, news podcast. We were recording when I heard hammering on my front door, it was so hard my immediate thought was that somebody was trying to smash the glass to break in. I got up and went to the living room window. Parked outside my house was one of those giant police vans. I told Josh the police were knocking on my front door and hung up. When I opened the hallway door there were two police officers at my front door. They asked for me by name. I panicked. They didn’t send a police van to your address for no reason.

“Am I being arrested?” I asked wearily.

The male officer replied that I wasn’t under arrest, but I need to let them into my house because I had threatened to commit suicide while speaking to a woman at the Halifax bank call centre, and that was serious.

Stunned I explain that I never threatened my life. I had asked the woman at the Halifax to stop junk mail being sent to me because it was a trigger for my illnesses. That a doctor had advised me to do this as a safeguarding measure. I asked if they had heard the recording of the call.

They hadn’t. He accuse me of lying. He said that people who work at banks were trustworthy people and intelligent. They wouldn’t misunderstand me or call the police for no reason.

I remember asking him if he was saying that he trusted them over me just because they work for a bank.

I don’t actually remember what he said but it must’ve been a yes because I remember telling him I worked for Santander bank. It was true.

He laughed at me as though a mentally unwell person wasn’t capable of working for a bank, or maybe it was because he thought mentally unwell people weren’t capable of working at all, anywhere.

He told me I had no choice but to let them into my house.

I looked at the van again, told them no, then said bye to them, went back into my living room and shut the hallway door on them. Terrified I sat on the edge of my coffee table and watched the police van.

The police office hammered on the window of my front door for another five minutes, before they got back into the van and remained outside my house for another fifteen minutes.

There’s several things a lot of people who don’t have a mental illness fail to understand, even when told.

1. There’s a difference between being such a suicidal and wanting to die, and being suicidal and wanting to live. When you’re suicidal and you want to live, life becomes a battle, an obstacle course, you have to try to avoid or remove the things that trigger your suicidal ideations. If I am asking you to remove a problem for me that you can remove, because it makes me suicidal, this is not me saying I am suicidal at that time, or that I want to die, it is the opposite, it is me saying I want to live.

People who called the police on you for this aren’t just ignorant they are also dangerous.

Believing that somebody should be locked away because they are mentally ill is a disgusting and dangerous belief.

Also being sectioned isn’t going to help me with feeling suicidal when I get post.

Being sectioned won’t cure me, and it is more harmful to a person suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder to be sectioned in the long run. Once discharged I would still be faced with the issue of receiving post, so nobody is going to section a person suffering with Borderline Personality Disorder because they struggling to open their post.

2. The police aren’t a calming or reassuring presence when they are doing a “welfare check”. Their attitude towards you is that you are less than them.

3. The police no matter how much training they have aren’t doctors. They are not trained to assess your mental health properly.

4. Sending the police to a mentally ill person who is not a risk to anybody else is discrimination, regardless of whether they or anybody else in position of power say it is not.

Imagine the police being the first responders to a physical health crisis like a heart attack or stroke. It would never be allowed, so why is it acceptable for them to be the first responders to a mental health crisis.

Let’s look at this entire situation through the lens of physical illness. Imagine if I had a heart condition and I phoned the Halifax and said can you stop sending me junk mail please, because I have a heart condition and the stress might give me a heart attack.

Now imagine they called the police on me and the police responded, and they responded and intimidating and discriminatory manner.

There would be uproar and rightly so.

So why isn’t there up roar over the fact that this is normal when it comes to dealing with people suffering from mental illnesses?

Attachment Two From The I.O.P.C Email Response -FAQ’S

The Time That My Next Door Neighbours Tried To Murder Me

Addition Two- Emails sent to the Merseyside Police

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Spelling, Punctuation And Grammar

Quotation marks

Example

” ” or ‘ ‘

The times you should use quotation marks are

1. When writing quotations

This is to show that you are quoting something that someone else has said.

2. Direct speech

When words are spoken of by character.

3. Titles of work such as songs books and TV programmes

Do you use one or two quotation marks?

Use one so that if you do a quote within a quote you can use doubles

Example

‘Did you watch “EastEnders“ last night?‘

Spelling punctuation and grammar

Apostrophes

Example

‘

Rules

1. Omission

To close a space when a letter has been missed out

2. Contractions

When two words have been put together

Examples

Do not

Don’t

We will

We’ll

3. Possession

Ownership

*Ask yourself how many owners does it have?

One owner = ‘s

Example

The girl’s phone.

More than one look at the plural being used.

If the plural ends in an S add an apostrophe to the end of the word.

Example

S’

The Olympic swimmers’ medals

If it doesn’t end in an S add an apostrophe and then an S

Example

‘s

The children’s teacher.

Exception

Its and it’s

If you can say it is add an apostrophe.

It’s without the apostrophe means of it.

Example

It’s (it is) a shame the dog lost its (of it) ball.

The Time That My Next Door Neighbours Tried To Murder Me

Addition- Photographs taken

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Photographs taken on the night I was attacked by my next door neighbour

The Time That My Next Door Neighbours Tried To Murder Me

Part Five

As you have probably already guessed, telling a woman who has; comorbid borderline personality disorder and adjustment disorder, and is not only not in recovery with these illnesses but is actually under avoidance as a coping mechanism for them she is so ill, who is currently suffering with extreme cleanliness and hygiene related OCD issues, hasn’t slept for days while taking anti-psychotic medication, has been under an immense amount of stress and pressure, is currently in the grip of a pseudo psychotic episode, depressive episode, and has just suffered an extremely traumatic event: that she has only two minutes to do a task that realistically should take about ten minutes, didn’t have a good effect on that woman. Me. I descended into a disorganised, erratic, screaming mess, as I began packing, and when I not only had to go into the bedroom, but go through my clean dry clothes while soaking wet and covered in mud, I began to sob hysterically.

When I got my small, appropriate sized, suitcase out of the cupboard, the female officer seemed to get angry with me once again, telling me that I could come back later that same morning and that all I needed was a bag. To me now looking back on this with hindsight and a clear head, I can spot a couple of very bright red flags.

Why did she care whether I took a large bag or a small suitcase?

They didn’t even give me an actual time I could return. When I enquired as to what time I could return to my flat, they just said any time later that morning.

Why was she forcing me to leave my flat if I could come back almost straight away?

It doesn’t make sense.

However for some reason, probably because she could also sense the policewoman’s anger, my mum also tried to get me to pack a large bag instead, even when I explained to her that not only did I not have a bag large enough, but that it would be easier for me to pack and carry the suitcase.

As the two police officers walked me to the police car, the woman who assaulted me appeared to be watching me from inside her flat. Looking back now it seems obvious to me that the police officers wanted to make it appear as though I was being arrested. This seems odd to me. If I shouldn’t have been arrested due to the mental state I was in, I shouldn’t have been forced to leave my flat in that state, and I certainly shouldn’t have been forced to leave considering the danger posed to me by the physical state that I was in. What was the purpose of this obvious show?

What did this show mean to, or give to, those police officers?

Later when my mum complained, both about the fact that I had been the one they had threatened to arrest, and that I was forced to leave my flat in such a vulnerable physical condition, she was told that it was very nice of the offices to give me a lift to my mum’s house, and that they didn’t have to do that. They did not have to parade me to the police car and lock me in the back, adding to my anxiety and trauma, they chose to.

When I stepped inside my mum’s house all I wanted to do was shower, but instead my victim survival instincts kicked in, and once again I went into a fight mode. If there was a chance that I was going to be wrongly charged with assault, then I needed as much evidence that I could gather to showed that I was the victim. I handed my mum, who had never used a mobile phone or tablet in her life, my phone and explained to her how to use the already open camera app to take photographs. All she had to do was line the shot up, and press the screen in the right place. It would be as easy as giving her an ordinary camera to use, I thought, I was wrong. It was a painfully slow process which took us several attempts to get every individual photograph. Only when I had a enough photographs of my injuries and the mud, which was all over the back of my clothes, did I allow myself to start to get clean. I stripped down to my underwear, throwing my muddy clothes into my mum’s washing machine to see if they could be saved. They could not. The mud had permanently stained them.

When I untied my hair so that I could brush out the tangles to wash it, not only did some tiny twigs and leaves come away in my hand, so did a massive ball of my own hair, which the woman who had assaulted me, had ripped out of my scalp during the attack. Due to the raw emotional state I was in, I crumbled into sobbing mess briefly, before managing to pull myself together just long enough to photograph the hair. I thought that the shower might help to calm me down a little bit, but it just agitated me more. Not only does my mums ancient, electric shower have extremely low water pressure, which leaves you not only feeling as dirty as when you got into it, it also leaves you feeling sticky. It wasn’t until I got into the shower that I realised I had forgotten to pack my face wash, which for me is a necessity considering both my allergies and my OCD. I have very sensitive skin so using shower gel or soap leaves my skin painfully dry to the point where it cracks, peels and splits. Not only does my mum just use shower gel to wash her face with, but even if she did use face wash I probably wouldn’t be able to use it due to my allergies. However it was impossible for me to not wash my face under the circumstances, and so I used my shower gel.

While I was washing I found a set of weird puncture marks on my shoulder, that had been covered with my jumper during the attack, which looked like teeth marks, but I couldn’t remember her biting me. As they hadn’t been there when I had gotten dressed to go round to their flat, meaning they had been received during the attack, I asked my mum to photograph them. Without me commenting on what I thought they looked like she asked me if I had been bitten. When my sister saw the photographs later that day she also asked me if I had been bitten.

The ordeal had taken such a toll on me, that when I got out of the shower and tried to dry my hair I couldn’t lift the hair dryer above my elbow, it felt so heavy and my arm felt so weak. In the end my mum offered to dry it for me as though I was a child. Not only did I let her dry it, I made her check for bald patches as she did.

Half way through her drying my hair, my phone began to ring. I have problems answering my phone at the best of times because of my severe anxiety and paranoia, so I was going to let the voice mail pick it up as I usually did, but my mum made me answer it saying it was probably the police.

It was. It was the female officer who had come to my flat to arrest me. I can’t actually remember what her reason for calling was as there didn’t seem to be one. I do remember several small bits of the conversation though. I told her how I had photographs of my injuries, and which also backed up my version of events. I was adamant that I wanted to make a complaint against the woman who had assaulted me, and she was just as adamant that it wasn’t going to happen. I was advised very sternly that as a member of the public I wasn’t allowed to ask other people to keep their noise down.

So what do you do then if you are a member of the public and other peoples constant, excessive noise is effecting your health, and your landlords, the council and the police all say it’s not their job to help you?

I found out that when the police arrived next door there were only three people there, as she put it “The mother and son who live there, and the boyfriend.” Then she confirmed that it was a one bedroom flat.

To me this proves that all three of them do in fact live there, because it appears they sent everybody who lived somewhere else home.

It also makes me think that they knew that the police would be coming, and did their best to hide whatever shady activity had been going on in their flat that night.

Finally the officer informed me that the mother was accusing me of harassing her family, to which the officer told me she had suggested that they might want to consider possibly keeping the noise down if I was inclined to harass them over it.

After it became clear that the officer did not have an official reason for calling me, therefore did not need to speak to me directly, I asked her to speak to my mum instead of me, as I likely wouldn’t be able to remember what had been said due to how ill I was.

She agreed.

I gave the phone to my mum. Her and my mum spoke for a while but my mum actually said very little. All I remember her saying during their conversation was, “If you had actually done what you were supposed to do and spoke to my daughter first and she had made a report about the woman who had attacked her, you would be doing everything you could to get her to withdraw her complaint and just smooth this over.” There was a pause and then she said. “Yes, you would.”

After the conversation between my mum and the female police officer ended even my mum seemed to have no idea what her reason for phoning me was. It seemed very strange, irresponsible, and unprofessional, to be phoning a vulnerable women, who had just been assaulted and who was in an awful physical, mental, and emotional condition, in the early hours of the morning, when she should be trying to sleep, just to reiterate that she might be charged with a crime, all because she had had the barefaced cheek to ask her neighbours to keep the noise down in the middle of the night. I felt like not only were the police taunting me, but that they were now joining in on the torture that I faced daily, and we are enjoying themselves. I sobbed as my mum finished drying my hair and checking for bald patches.

Although I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep at my mums house, I needed to sleep so badly that I was determined to try, so half dressed I began rummaging around in my suitcase for the rest of the clothes I needed. It was then that I discovered that I hadn’t packed any socks, none at all, none for the night, and none for the morning. This might not seem like a massive issue for other people, but I have circulation issues, and so I have extremely cold feet which bother me, not constantly, but if I don’t take care to keep them warm. Not only that but I hadn’t packed a bra for the morning. I just can not get dressed without putting on a bra. I melted down.

It took my mum at least half an hour to calm me down a little bit. She said she would put my clothes, which had just come out of the washing machine, into the dryer so that I had a bra and a pair of socks to wear in the morning, but I would have to go tonight with feet that felt like blocks of ice. I was just about to go to bed when the phone rang again.

“Answer it. It’s probably the police,” even my mum sounded like she was beginning to lose her temper because of the polices behaviour.

It was the same female officer. She spoke to me in a very condescending manner, again with a tone that said, I’m doing you a favour. She informed me that she was considering allowing me to make a report against my next door neighbour, but I had to send her my photographs by email immediately. (A brief note this wasn’t as easy as it should’ve been. My mum does not have Internet at her house so I had to use my mobile phone data. As most of you reading this will probably know, during this period in time my mobile phone contract was still with O2, so I only had a very small data allowance and my signal was terrible. It took me forever sending her a couple of the photographs that my mum had taken, all the time worrying that my data would run out before I finished. This left me freshly agitated.) Also, I knew what was really going on, I’m not an idiot. I had told her that I had photographic evidence that not only proved that I had been injured, but which backed up my version of events. I guessed that she had gone back to my neighbour and had asked them for evidence of their injuries, and which backed up their version of events, and when they either couldn’t provide it, or had provided evidence which matched my version of events, she has decided that she either better call my Bluff, or start trying to fix her error. I had zero confidence that my neighbour would be held accountable for what she done to me.

“You have an independent witness though,” my mum reminded me, as I stressed over my task.

“If you mean X then I don’t. I am sure he isn’t going to get involved in this because it’s the right thing to do. I’m sure he will want a favour in return, and his price isn’t one I am willing to pay.”

It took a moment for the penny to drop, but I saw the moment that it did.

Unsurprisingly when I finally managed to get to bed, I couldn’t sleep, and my lack of success paired with my desperate need for rest only frustrated me further. When I gave up trying and went back down stairs my entire body was trembling, and twitching violently. Not knowing what to do, my mum wrapped me in a blanket and sat me on the sofa while we waited for the dryer to finish, then she packed my things, gave me money for a taxi, and sent me home, afraid I would have a seizure or collapse before I arrived.

It was almost eight am when the taxi pulled into the car park outside my flat. The people who live next door were still up fighting. All I wanted to do when I closed the front door was sleep, but my OCD wouldn’t let me. I began frantically mopping my floors, and throwing clothes into the washing, before scrubbing myself raw in the shower.

I managed to get myself partially dressed before I literally collapsed.

When I woke up at around mid day my next door neighbours were still shouting at each other.

Later that same day, so the Sunday, at around five pm, a male police officer left me a voice mail. I called him straight back. He told me first of all that the officers who responded had done a really good job considering how hard it was to get a straight story out of my neighbours because of how drunk they had been. Then he told me that if both me and my next door neighbours didn’t drop our complaints against each other then the police would charge us both with some sort of public disorder offence. I don’t recall the name of the public order defence, but he did use it when he said this to me. He said that he had already spoken to the other people involved and that together, they had all agreed that it was in everybody’s best interest if we both dropped the complaints and all forgot it had happened.

Lets just pause here because I have a few concerns that I need to address.

1. My neighbours were drunk and shouting. I was calm, polite, exhausted, beaten up and had taken sedating medication before being attacked and they believed my neighbours over me.

2. The police had spoken to the other people involved (plural) not person (singular). Were they admitting that several of them were involved in the attack on me, or was it an innocent error? I don’t know as the officer wasn’t prepared to answer any questions, his words. He had phoned me only to give me the ultimatum.

3. He had spoken to the people who had assaulted me, injured me, threaten to murder me then attempted it, and together all of them and the police had agreed the best thing for them would be if the complains were dropped and everybody forgot about it. Of course that would be better for them. I tried to point this out but was told none of their stories (plural) (that he had just previously told me they couldn’t keep straight) matched my story. Astonished that as a police officer he wasn’t aware that people, especially people who commit crimes lie, I pointed this out to him. He said nothing in response.

When I insisted that as the victim it wasn’t in my best interests if the complaints were dropped and everybody forgot about it, he stopped me an told me I wasn’t the victim I was the perpetrator. He said I had taken the law into my own hands when I had asked them to be quiet and that the woman who had attacked me had every right to physically remove me from the property, you know the same property I live on, then asked me did I want him to log my complaint and the charges against me.

Obviously I was forced to drop my complaint, meaning that the predictions both me and my mum had made the previous night were correct.

I reported the incident to my landlords, first thing the next day, Monday. In the end my landlords also told me it was my word against theirs.

They did however tell me there was only one tenant on the lease for the property next door, and that they would never rent a one bedroom property to a mother and her adult son. This means that they are not only in breach of the tenancy agreement but that not everybody living there has had the relevant background checks and actually they might be committing benefit fraud.

Despite all my previous complaints to my landlords, the council and the police, and despite the evidence they had broken laws and tenancy agreements, they were neither arrested nor evicted and so I still have to live next door to them, with them now knowing their aren’t any consequences for their actions. I have to share a communal yard with them, I have to walk past their kitchen window when I go to the bin. If I am being picked up or dropped off in a taxi in the carpark they can see me out of their living room window.

My life is in danger from them everyday. As are other peoples.

Attachment One From I.O.P.C Email Response – How To Make A Complaint Guide Book

Spelling, Punctuation And Grammar

Semi colons

Example

;

Semi colons are used

1. To join two or more sentences which are linked. In this case they are used to replace conjunction.

Example

The school team had seemed very long; the students were exhausted.

2. To separate items in a list.

Example

I’ve travelled to a lot of places. I’ve been to Tokyo, Japan; Vancouver, Canada; Cairo, Egypt and Glasgow, Scotland.

Commas alone wouldn’t work in the sentence as you need a way to keep the city and the country they are in together.

3. As punctuation within phrases.

Spelling, Punctuation And Grammar

Colons

:

Colons are used

1. To introduce things in a list.

Example

The student bag contained: her lunch, a folder, some chewing gum and a hairbrush.

2. Can be used to qualify a sentence by producing meaning.

Example

He was utterly miserable that day: have fallen down three stairs and assist bus.

3. If writing a script colons are used to separate characters speaking from the dialogue.

Example

Hamlet: to be, or not to be…

The Time That My Next Door Neighbours Tried To Murder Me

Part Four

My mum, who was much quicker than I expected her to be, announced her arrival the same way she always did, by rattling her keys and clicking the locking mechanism as she struggled to open my front door. Sure that she wasn’t going to manage to get in without my assistance, I dragged my heavy, exhausted, jelly body off my television stand and across my living room. As I stood up X did too, springing to his feet and following close behind me.

As I reached the hallway door my mum finally managed to wrestle her way into my flat. When she appeared around the corner I stepped back into the living room, in order to give her space to enter the room herself, colliding with X as I did, that’s how close to me he was. He backed off slightly, but not much. Although I couldn’t, and still can’t, put my finger on what it was he was doing to have this effect, he somehow seemed to be creating an awkward tension. In an attempt to combat the awkward atmosphere I immediately introduced the two of them.

Understandably, the only thing that my mum wanted to know was, what had happened when I had gone next door to ask them to keep the music down. Every time I tried to tell her X interrupted with his version of events. Eventually I gave up trying to speak and let him talk, expecting that once he had given his side of the story he would be satisfied and allow me to tell my mum what had happened. Instead once he had finished telling my mum how had witnessed the woman from next door attacking me from his kitchen window, and had rushed down stairs and outside to “rescue” me, he began to tell her all about his life; how long he had lived in his own flat, his ex, his teenage son, and the events that had led to him moving into his flat. Although he didn’t say the actual words it sounded like he had also been crisis housing.

As soon as he finished sharing his own troubles with us he asked my mum in a serious voice, “Isn’t she beautiful?” before wrapping his arms around me.

It happened so fast, and was so unexpected and bizarre, that I didn’t make any attempts to resist. He pressed his body against mine, tucking his head into the tiny space in between my jaw and shoulder. His head was so close to my neck that his nose and lips were lightly touching my skin. Then he inhaled deeply.

He was fucking smelling me.

Insert rip off of Edvard Munch’s, The Scream Painting, emoji face here. My eyes met my mums, and I assume like my own must have been, they were full of horror.

I pulled away from him. To my relief he released his grip on me, but as I slid my body away from his he grabbed my hand and while staring at me intensely he told my mum, “I think I am in love with your daughter.”

Cautiously I slipped my hand out of his.

There was a moment where none of us spoke.

He seemed to be waiting expectantly for a response from me.

I was wondering how to politely ask him to leave. He had helped me, he had sort of looked after me, but he had suddenly gone from seeming to be an ordinary and safe person to be around, to seeming like he might be (and I say this as a person who has an illness that has the “politically correct” name Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, so I am in no way throwing shade when I use this word) unstable, and he knew where I lived. I didn’t want to upset him, but I also didn’t want him near me while he was behaving inappropriately.

It was my mum who finally spoke, “Thank you for helping her. I am really grateful for everything you have done for her. The police are already next door. They said they will be coming here as soon as they have finished there.”

He took the hint.

“I will come to check on you tomorrow,” he promised, as he disappeared around the corner.

“I’m fine,” I told him.

“It’s no bother. I want to,” he insisted. Then I heard my front door open and close.

It was genuinely only when he had grabbed me and smelled me, that I realised how stupid I had been going to his flat with him. At the time it had seemed like the safer option. I truly have never been in the presence of somebody as aggressive and dangerous, as the woman who had just attacked me. If I had gone back to my own flat what would have stopped her from smashing one of my windows and climbing into my flat so that she could have another go at trying to murder me?

Though me and my mum are both very grateful for his help, I think it is better if me and the man who “rescued” me don’t try to forge any sort of friendship.

Because of the fact that people are constantly ringing my intercom and banging on my front door and windows, it is impossible to say for certain whether it was him, but in the week that followed somebody persistently rang my intercom and banged on my front door several times a day, everyday. As usual, I didn’t answer it.

As soon as I heard the door close I peeped out into the hallway to check that he had really gone. The buzzer, that hums every time one of the external doors is opened, was humming. I waited for the sucking noise the external doors make as they shut.

“Did he just fucking smell me?” I whispered, shuddering. I was so tired that I honestly wondered if I had imagined it. I sincerely hoped that I had.

“Yes,” She confirmed. “He was smelling you. Has he been acting that way with you the entire time you’ve been with him?”

“No,” I shook my head, still shocked by his sudden change of behaviour. “He was nice. He was acting normal, until you got here.”

“When you told me that you were in some strange mans flat I was shocked. I thought you stupid girl, you know better than that,” She seemed disappointed in me.

“Would you rather I had come back here where she could have attacked me again?” I asked.

She sighed.

I staggered back to the television stand and dropped down onto it.

My mum went into the kitchen.

Next door the same man and woman continued to shout aggressively.

My mum returned with a cup of coffee for me, which she put on the coffee table opposite me. “It’ll calm you down.”

I stared at it.

I didn’t want it.

All I wanted was to either sleep or die.

We sat quietly and waited for the police to finish next door.

When they finally rang my intercom, it was my mum who went to let them in. Two police officers, one male and one female, followed her into the living room.

Next door all three of them were shouting aggressively at one another. It sounded as though they were in the room with us.

The female officer immediately took out a tiny note pad and pen, and started coldly firing questions at me.

what was my name?

My age?

My date of birth?

Did I live here?

Alone?

What was my address?

I answered each question calmly and politely.

She closed the note pad and pen, and tucked them into one or two of the many pockets on her uniform. “I am going to have to arrest you.”

I wasn’t surprised. What little faith I had still had in the merseyside police had been shattered when I had dared to reach out against my physically, sexually, mentally and emotionally abusive, ex partner. What little trust I had still had in the merseyside police had been beaten out of me, by the male police officer who was at least twice my size, who had almost broke and/or dislocated my arm as he smashed my body against a wall, disgustingly grinning with delight as he leered down at me, then swaggered away confidently when he was questioned about it. As surreal as it felt to be told as a victim of a crime, and a serious crime like attempted murder at that, that I was the person being arrested, it seemed like the typical way life usually went for me, so I just nodded in response.

Out of the two of us only my mum showed any emotion, appropriately the emotion she showed was disbelief, “Are you joking?”

“I’m afraid not,” she said in the same cold tone. She stuck both her thumbs into the arm holes of her vest and rocked cockily on the balls of her feet and heels. “That’s what happens when you assault someone.”

“It was me that was assaulted. She grabbed me from behind by my hair, threw me to the ground, then she jumped on top of me and tried to strangle me, while her friend watched and made sure that I couldn’t escape,” I corrected her, remaining calm and polite.

“According to her it was you who was trying to do the strangling. According to her you reached in through their living room window and tried to grab her by the throat.”

“You’re not arresting her,” my mum said.

“Oh, I am, and if you try to stop me I will have to arrest you too,” The officers enjoyment at getting to arrest a woman who is known to them as being mentally vulnerable, and at potentially getting to arrest a woman who is physically vulnerable, was confirmed by the way she smirked at mother as she asserted her authority over us.

“That’s not what happened. I went to ask them to keep the noise down,” I tried to explain but she cut me off.

“You need to stand up now so that I can arrest you.”

I did as I was told, “Can I get a solicitor please?” If there was one thing my ex, and true crime shows had taught me, it was to get a solicitor as soon as possible when you found yourself being falsely accused of a crime.

“We can talk about that once you’re at the station,” it might not have actually been a no, but it certainly sounded like a no the way she said it.

I picked up my keys and my mobile phone. as I did I caught my face reflected in its screen. It was a dull and dark reflection, and I wasn’t wearing my glasses, but even I could see how haggard and exhausted I looked. It was obvious that I hadn’t slept for days and that I had been under constant and immense stress. What was also obvious was that I had been hit hard in the face. My eye was already beginning to bruise. I sighed. ” Look at the state of me and I am the one being arrested.”

“She’s covered in mud too,” The female officer snapped at me. She was blatantly furious with me for some reason, what wasn’t as clear was what the reason for her fury.

“I mean my face. Look at the state of my eye,” I pointed at the greying skin.

“Are you suggesting that she did that to you?” It felt as though the female officer was challenging me, trying to intimidate me into playing the criminal.

All I had was the truth, “She did do it. She hit me in the face over and over again, hard.”

I turned to my mum. “Can you get me my glasses please? They are in the bedroom on top of the chest of draws. I didn’t put them back on when I got out of bed earlier,” Neither of the officers had made any attempt to actually arrest me like they said they were and I was eager to get things moving, drawing it out would only make me more ill. Knowing that I would struggle to see without them, and that I really wasn’t able to go into the bedroom covered in mud because of my OCD, she did as I asked. It was only when she left the room that I realised I had no shoes on. Since I had been told I was under arrest I didn’t think I was allowed to leave the officers’ sight, so I called to her, and asked her would she also bring me my boots, which where by the front door. She returned a few seconds later with carrying both my glasses and mud soaked boots.

I put my glasses on, then I took the boots from her. I dropped one boot onto the floor, then I bent over, lifting one foot as I did, the dizziness got the best of me and I fell into the wall.

“Can I please sit down just to put my shoes on?” Surely they couldn’t expect me to walk through a front yard which at that time was full of vomit, dead mice and broken glass bottles in just my socks, and there was no way that I was going to be able to put my shoes on while I was standing up. When she didn’t answer I sat down anyway and began struggling with the same boot. It took me so long to get it on because of how much I was shaking that my distress spilled out of me, “I can’t even get my own shoes on I feel so bad and I am being accused of attacking somebody. I haven’t slept for days, I have taken my antipsychotic medication, I’m dizzy, I’m visually hallucinating, I have a terrible headache and I feel like I’m about to have a seizure, why would I attack somebody while I’m such an awful state?”

“This is absolutely disgusting,” My mum took a deep breath in. ” I have been phoning you all night begging you to go to ask my sick daughters aggressive neighbours to keep their noise down. Then I phoned you to do a welfare check on my daughter because she was missing and I was afraid her next door neighbours had attacked her, and when you eventually agreed to check on her because she is a vulnerable adult and she has actually been attacked it’s her you decided to arrest. She wont survive this. She wont be able to survive the things that you are probably going to put her through once you get her to that police station. If my daughter dies because of you, if my daughter kills herself because of the things she is about to be put through-“

“Are you saying it was you and not the lady next door that called us out because I can check. It will be very easy for me to find out who called us,” now the female officer sounded like she was challenging my mum who was already crying.

“Are you saying that you don’t know who called you here or why? I called you to check on my daughter. Did you try do that before you went next door to check on her attacker?”

“I have to make a phone call,” the female officer told her colleague, then without further explanation she left my flat.

Knowing that sleep was now officially out of the question all I wanted to do was die.

“Dying is your best option now anyway,” Mork agreed, as he slithered out of whatever dark corner of my mind he had been hiding in lately. “All that hard work and stress that you have put yourself through every day just to stay alive, just to make it through the day, all those hopes you had about one day getting better and being able to rebuild your life, have all been for nothing. No body is going to hire you ever again now you’ve been arrested, especially not as a teacher. You know the reason why the hospital wouldn’t give you privacy to piss. Why the police threatened to break your mums bathroom door down while you were pissing…”

“Can I go to the toilet?” I asked the male officer, who hadn’t said a word since he entered my flat. I didn’t expect him to say yes, but he did. I expected him to say he would have to accompany me, but he didn’t.

Mark chuckled.” Isn’t it funny that the police treat people they are arresting better than they treat people they say they are helping?”

It wasn’t funny, but I understood the point he was making.

As I made my way to the bathroom I could hear the police woman who was just on the other side of my front door, “I have a woman whose claiming she tried to strangle her.”

I didn’t know if I was she or her, but it wouldn’t have changed my plans either way. I locked the bathroom door behind me immediately regretting it when I heard the loud pop it made. I waited to see if my mum had heard it, if she knew something was wrong. She knew that locking the bathroom door was not a luxury you had in my flat, as the lock sometimes stuck. I had warned her about it the week I moved in, after I had gotten stuck in there twice, but she didn’t listen to me and only stopped locking it a few weeks later after she also got stuck in there. I had asked my landlords’ to repair it, and had been told the same thing as I had been told when I had pointed out that the rusty towel rail wasn’t safe for me to have in my flat as it was a suicide hazard, ” Tough it isn’t your flat, it is our flat.”

From where I was standing I could see straight away that the one thing I wanted was the one thing that was missing from the row of toiletries along the back of the bath. Panicked I moved towards the bin that was next to the toilet, but I could already see that it was empty.

“You took the rubbish out earlier you stupid bitch,” Mork berated me.

“I didn’t know we were going to want to slash our throat tonight,” I sulked.

For a second I considered sneaking out into the hallway and getting a razor from the cupboard but I immediately pushed the idea away, it was just my luck they would catch me and charge me with possession of a weapon. Defeated and not knowing when I would get a chance to go again, I had a wee before I returned to the living room.

cheer up Mork encouraged, “You might have a seizure while you’re in police custody and die, wouldn’t that be funner than slashing your throat?”

“No,” I continued to sulk.

The police woman returned a minute or two after I did. “Good news I’m not going to arrest you,” she announced as though she was doing me a favour. “You will need to come in voluntarily though for question when we call you and tell you to sometime next week.”

Her ignorance made Mork laugh hysterically. “She thinks you’ll still be alive when they phone you…to come in…to be questioned…through the week.”

“Arrest me,” I needed to get this over with. Until I was questioned it would be all I thought about, I wouldn’t be able to sleep and I would be dangerously suicidal.

“What time did you take your antipsychotics?” The female officer asked me.

“Ten o’clock, like I am supposed to, then I went to bed and tried to sleep, like I am supposed to,” I told her.

“Then we aren’t allowed to question you until ten am,” she informed me like this made some sort of difference to me.

I shrugged. “Arrest me.”

“Rachel. Listen to me. You do not want them to arrest you. They will treat you like a criminal. They will search you, and the type of search they’ll do with how sick you are and everything you’ve been through, you wont be able to cope. You wont survive it,” my mum pleaded with me.

I wasn’t actually expecting to survive it I just also wasn’t expecting to survive the wait either. “Arrest me.”

The female officer turned to the male officer, the expression on her face said do something, but he didn’t see it because he already was doing all he would do that night, watching me without speaking.

“What’s wrong with her?” She asked my mum, it sounded like an accusation rather than a question, so I answered her.

“I have co morbid borderline personality disorder and adjustment disorder. Arrest me.”

“Listen to your mum,” She warned me.

“Arrest me please. I want you to arrest me. You cant tell me that you’re arresting me and then not arrest me-“

“Rachel! Stop it!” My mum snapped. Then crying she turned to the police officer and in a voice just above a whisper said. “Look at her. Look at how sick she is. Look at what they have done to her. Look at what you have done to her.”

The police woman ignored her. Without even checking it was a possibility she ordered, “You are going to have to stay at your mums tonight. I am not allowing you to stay here in case you retaliate against them.”

My mouth actually fell open when she said that. How was I physically capable of retaliating even if I wanted to, which I didn’t. “I wont be able to walk all that way,” I pointed out. “Aren’t you going to arrest her for attacking me?”

“We will be driving you there to make sure you actually leave here and go there, and no we wont be arresting her because its your word against hers and she has already made allegations against you,” I could tell by the way she was speaking to me like I was stupid that she was losing her patients with me and losing her interest in being here now she couldn’t arrest me.

“She was only able to make those allegations against my daughter because you went to the wrong flat,” my mum sobbed.

“So?” The female officer shrugged, it wasn’t even that she didn’t try to deny it, she actually made a noise in her throat like she was trying not to laugh. “She stays at yous tonight or well arrest her.”

“Arrest me,” I repeated.

“No. I wont,” she barked at me. “Get whatever you need to stay at your mums. You have two minutes. We’ve wasted enough time on you tonight.”

Response To My I.O.P.C Complaint From The I.O.P.C

Note. The complaint that I sent in was both sent via email first because I was struggling so badly with things, and then later through the form on their website.

I had also made several complaints already to the Merseyside police before putting in my complaint to the I.O.P.C, all of which were dealt with rudely, hostilely and dismissed by the merseyside police.

This is the response I received from the I.O.PC

(I have redacted information here, all information about the sender such as email address and name.)

Dear Enquirer Thank you for contacting the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). We acknowledge receipt of your email dated 14 August 2020. We are completely independent of the police service and are responsible for making sure that the police complaints system in England and Wales works effectively and fairly. However, each police force is responsible for considering complaints made against them in the first instance. I have checked our systems and it appears we have not received a complaint directly from you either via post or email, given the information provided. As such, it seems you may have submitted a complaint against the police via our website. Please be advised, we have no sight of such complaints; they are directed to the Professional Standards Department (PSD) of the force concerned to log. Therefore, to establish the current status of your complaint, or to submit further information, you must contact the PSD of Merseyside Police directly; their details are listed below.

(I have redacted information, all of which was contantact information here.)

You should, usually, hear from the PSD within 15 working days of submitting a complaint. However, given the current Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic it may take longer for them to contact you. I have attached further information on the police complaints process that the IOPC oversees for your attention. Kind regards

(I have redacted information here, mostly personal and contact information of the sender, but also a lot of the useless information about data protection and surveys etc.)

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Spelling, Punctuation And Grammar

Brackets

Example

( )

Are used to include information when it is not needed, but interesting, to make your writing clearly.

Spelling, punctuation and grammar

Commas

Example

,

Commas make your writing more fluid and more accurate.

They should be used to

1. Indicate to the reader that they should pause.

This can help the reader to understand what they are reading.

Example

As the player run onto the pitch, the crowd went wild.

2. When quotation marks are used mid sentence, to separate the quotation from the rest of the sentence.

Example

The player thought to himself, “I have to play well today.”

3. To separate out sections of a sentence.

4. Separate items on a list.

5. Are used as brackets.

These are called parenthetical commas.
This means that they separate out of the extra details. The sentence would still be a complete sentence without these details.

Example

My grandma, who is barking mad, (this tells us a bit about grandma. The sentence makes more sense without it, but it makes the sentence more interesting.) Is one of my favourite people.

6. Commas can also be used when writing out addresses.

You can write addresses out without them.
In the case of writing addresses, you should either always use commas all of the time, or never use them all of the time.

The Time That My Next Door Neighbours Tried To Murder Me

Part Three

I expected the usual response, which was an enquiry as to what it meant to be borderline, unexpectedly though the giant man beamed at me excitedly, “You have EUPD? I have EUPD!”

We both laughed.

I had never met a man who was diagnosed as having EUPD before. Less men are diagnosed as being borderline than women. The theory as to why this is, is, that gender stereotypes are to blame. This is because many of the traits that lead to women to be diagnosed as being borderline, are behaviours that are accepted as being typically normal male behaviours.

“Isn’t it horrible,” he observed out loud. “You can wake up on top of the world and half an hour later wish you were dead.”

I nodded sympathetically.

“I still drink though,” He giggled. He offered me the can again.

I shook my head. Maybe stop drinking if the depression is too much for you to cope with, that will help a bit, I thought, but I didn’t say it. It wasn’t my place to comment on his drinking habits, just like it wasn’t his place to encourage me to break mine.

“Have you ever been in Broad-oak?” He put the can down on the table.

Broad-oak was the psychiatric hospital that I had been admitted to the second time that I had been sectioned. Being that Broad-oak is (or was, when I was there, it might have changed) a low security psychiatric hospital, I had been able to walk around certain parts of the hospital that were not the ward that I was staying on, for certain things, if I was accompanied by a staff member. I had also been allowed to leave the hospital for set amounts of time, to do specific tasks alone. For these reasons I assumed that he recognised me. When I told him that I had been sectioned there for a month the year prior, he just explained that he had been sectioned there a few years earlier and had remained there as an out patient ever since.

We talked briefly about what had caused me to be admitted to Broad-oak, the thoughts that didn’t feel like they were my thoughts, being prescribed the wrong dose of anti depressants, and the two crisis workers that turned me away from their services on the day that I tried to kill myself. It wasn’t so much a conversation as it was him firing questions at me and me answering them, so I didn’t learn anything about him and don’t remember exactly what was said during this particular part of the conversation. Finally he enquired as to whether or not I had been prescribed any anti psychotics since I was sectioned. I explained that I had actually been on antipsychotics when I was sectioned, and still was.

“What antipsychotics and what dose are you on now?” he asked me.

“Two hundred, Quetiapine,” I told him.

“I’m on two hundred, Quetiapine,” He said excitedly, before adding. “I mean I take too hundred, but I’m prescribed four hundred, I just cut the tablet in half and take half.” I shuddered at the thought of how many antipsychotics he might possibly have stock piled at home because of this, that he could take during a suicidal mood. “Have you asked the doctor to just prescribe you the two hundred?”

He shrugged and turned his attention back to rolling his cigarettes.

I took this to mean that he didn’t appreciate me prying into his business.

“Can I borrow your phone now?” I reminded X.

“Can I get my phone back please?”

His friend finished rolling the cigarette that he was working on, then turned to X and pulled a face that made me think that he was about to confess that the phone was lost or broken. Instead he admitted, “It’s dead.”

Reaching into his coat pocket, which he had draped across the back of the chair before sitting down, he pulled out two mobile phones and a charger. He stood up and walked over to the plug socket nearest where I was sitting, plugged in one of the phones which he handed to me, then handed the other phone to X. “You can use mine.”

I was about to thank him when X, clearly bewildered, spoke, “Have you had that charger in your pocket all night?”

“Ye,” his friend answered, his tone showed that he hadn’t even noticed X’s bewilderment.

I waited about a minute for the phone to absorb enough power to switch on, anxiously holding the on button down for the entire minute. When the screen finally lit up I dialled my mums landline phone number from memory. I am a millennial, and her current landline phone number is the only phone number that she has ever had at the house where she currently lives, and she has lived in this house since I was two.

“Please, pick up,” I begged silently, unsure as to whether or not she would answer a mobile number that she didn’t recognise.

She did, almost immediately.

“It’s me,” I blurted out as soon as she answered.

She launched into a frantic rant before I could even finish what I was saying. “Are you ok? I’ve been worried sick. I’ve been calling you. I phoned the police and told them that I thought you had gone to ask your next door neighbours to keep the noise down. That I had been trying to call you for half an hour. That you weren’t answering. That I was worried they might have harmed you.”

It was my turn to rant now. “They tried to. That bitch attacked me.”

“The police are on their way. I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she hung up.

“I have to go. My mum is on her way,” I announced, relieved to finally have an excuse to go back to my own flat.

“I’ll walk you home,” X offered.

“Thanks but I’ll be fine honestly,” I objected. I stood up checking that my keys were still in my pocket.

He stood up too, insisting, “I’m not letting you walk back by yourself.”

Deciding that it would just be quicker to allow him to walk me back to my flat than it would be to argue with him, I followed him out of his flat and back down the stairs. we exited through the back door, which brought us out into his buildings communal yard. It was clean and tidy. All the rubbish was inside the bins which were lined up neatly. The only thing out of place was a washing machine that somebody had abandoned next to the door.

As we entered my communal yard X pointed to one of the giant piles of rubbish, this particular pile was next to the back door of my building and was made up of; both black bin bags that had been torn open by rats and mice, as well as supermarket carrier bags stuffed with rubbish, the contents of which has spilled out and begun to spread across the yard. “Is any of that rubbish yours.”

I was genuinely offended by his question. “Fuck no. I keep reporting it to my housing officer but he couldn’t give less off a fuck.”

As we dodged the spilled rubbish I took my keys out and let myself into the building.

X followed me inside. “I’ll wait with you until your mum gets here.”

Now I was back in a familiar environment, I felt like the adrenaline was draining out of my system, so I was too exhausted to even attempt to argue. I stepped inside and stumbled out of my muddy boots.

“Should I take my shoes off?” He asked thoughtfully.

“Please,” I dragged my heavy body into the living room. Every step I took required energy I didn’t think I had in me. I didn’t want to sit on my eggshell blue sofas, but I knew that I wasn’t going to be capable of standing up much longer, so I perched on the edge of my TV stand before my body was able to collapse on me.

X lay down on my sofa.

Next door the woman who attacked me and the older man were shouting aggressively.

I don’t remember what we spoke about while we waited, or if we actually spoke about anything at all.

This is where things got seriously weird, to the point where I felt like I was in a surreal nightmare.

My Complaint Letter To The I.O.P.C

Please be advise this letter is terribly written and I have tried to clean it up a bit and make it more readable and understandable. I was in an awful mental and physical state when I wrote it and was on a lot of sedatives.

This is a letter that I wrote earlier this year to the I.O.P.C after and about the incident that took place at 4Am on the 8th of August 2020.

This complaint is in regards to the merseyside police, who bullied their way into my property using threats and intimidation, which included threatening to saw my door down with a saw and charge the cost to me, and using physical force on me.

I would like to say here, and now, that this was meant to be a welfare check on me, due to my mother saying I had called her and said I was going to hang myself, which is not true. We did speak on the phone and we argued, no threats were made by me about my safety, or that I would harm myself. If I had been charged the price of a sawn down door, which first of all does not seem fair as I never made any threats to my safety, so either the police or my mother should have covered the cost, I would not have been able to afford it because im currently in both a terrible financial situation, and I have lost and fear I will lose more possessions in my flat due to mould, and have previously attempted suicide because of financial strain. I have also attempted to commit suicide once because I was the victim of an assault. So their behaviour in how they went about gaining access to the property could have caused me to commit suicide after they left the property or later on even though I wasn’t suicidal when they arrived at my property.

I wont go into the circumstances around the argument with my mother which led to her calling the police because it is irrelevant to my complaint, but I will say she would not have called them if she was concerned about me because she knows I am afraid of the police. I also understand that police do welfare checks and have had welfare checks before via phone or them at the door where speaking to me was enough evidence I was fine so I really dont understand why this time was different.

My reason for the complaint is that I dont believe the police were acting correctly as I am a vulnerable adult being that I have co morbid borderline personality and adjustment disorder. I live alone and am a small woman. I don’t think they were acting with my safety or well being in mind and think they were far more concerned with gaining access to the property purely so they could say “we did what we had to do.”

This event has left me severely afraid and traumatised. I had trouble feeling safe in my flat before and now I don’t feel safe at all. I feel like the police can come and saw down my door or assault me and say it was for my own good whenever they feel like it. I’m constantly crying, I have worse sleeping problems now than I had previously, and I’m not eating. I feel constantly as though i’m having a panic attack and if I hear a police siren I completely lose it. I have had to be put on diazepam because of this. As im already on quietiapine and getting very little sleep this means I falling more often. I also suffer with pseudo seizures which are stress related seizures and so both during and now because of this incident i’m at risk of having seizures. These have all hit me particularly hard because the crying, anxiety, panic attacks and seizures where all things that I was managing much better and now the crying, anxiety and panic attacks are paralysingly bad. I can not go about my normal activities which were already very restricted.

I have co morbid borderline personality disorder and adjustment disorder both illnesses which are triggered by stress and trauma so the polices visit has actually worsened my condition, symptoms and struggles. It has left me feeling very depressed, vulnerable, powerless and hopeless. It had also put me in a very vulnerable situation because now if I ever feel suicidal in the future I wont be able to reach out for help because i’m scared the police will turn up and get involved.

I do not believe the police had reasonable belief that I was a danger to myself to force entry or use physical force on me. I had even called 999 before they arrived to explain that there was no risk to my safety from myself. And although I begin to discus possible entry to my flat I never give them permission to enter and move out the way only to avoid being physically assaulted. This is evidenced when the female officer enters the flat and I say ‘I don’t want this to be happening’.

I have been assaulted by the police before, in august 2018, while at Aintree Hospital. This assault happened after I had tried to get myself sectioned and was left sitting alone. Nobody bothered to tell me that I had been sectioned. It was very late at night, my medication was over due and I had a seizure earlier in the day, so was sweaty and wanted a shower. When I tried to leave a security guard said to a police officer who was their with somebody else, ‘Stop her please.’ and gave no reason. The officer decided the reasonable approach was to grab me by the arm twist it in a way it shouldnt bend and run me very hard and fast into a wall.

The police who came to the flat, knew that I was afraid of them, its very clear I am distressed and that they are the cause of that distress. I told them I felt harassed and had been assaulted before and even told them I was scared yet, they chose to use intimidation and threats to get me to engage with them rather than try to calm me and the situation down. At one point one of the officers even taunts me.

Examples

-They say ‘You only have one option open the door or well put it through.’

-They sound really eager and excited when they say ‘Go get the ram go get the ram dave’ ‘Just going to get the ram put the door through’

They really sounded like they were enjoying it and that getting to ram my door down was exciting

There is a second time this happens when they say ‘Go get the saw dave we’ve given you fair warning’ I havent committed a crime this is meant to be a welfare check why are they warning me rather than trying to calm me down?

At this point I have told them that police have assaulted me in the past, so its very clear im afraid, but they dont care i’m afraid cos when I tell them i’ve been assault before they reply saying, they dont know why im being obstructive. Are they really that unsympathetic to the fear they are causing or are they not listening to me because, i’d imagine sympathy and listening are two tools they should be using during a welfare check rather than warnings.

-one of the officers says ‘Are you scared are you?’ His tone was menacing, taunting and like he was enjoying it. He knew I was scared because he asks this after i’ve already told them i’ve been assault by police before.

Theres no way he can say this is a valid question and not him enjoying himself because, he knows the answer and if he actually cared he surely he would have said something more caring like ‘Look if your scared…’ you can hear how intimidated I am by this because I ask ‘Why should I be scared of you?’ at which point its obvious he realises its inappropriate to taunt me because he says ‘That why you wont open the door’ so he knows im scared. Why arent they trying to deescalated the situation?

Why do they think threatening to saw my door down is going to calm my fears?

He then tells me ‘You’ve got no reason to be scared’ well I have and i’ve already told them I have and that i’ve been assaulted before by the police.

-When they do try and reassure me they make it sound like i’m being unreasonable when he says ‘I genuinely dont think anything is going to happen to you be realistic’

-Yet once the door is open they tell me ‘We can just push are way through’ when i say ‘your saying you can basically assault me to come into my property’ They respond ‘ye’ and essentially ye’ so they’ve gone from be realistic you wont be harmed to, we can and will assault you to gain entry to your property. Therefore my reasons for me not wanting to open the door is valid. Its disgusting that the police can assault me and say its for my own good.

I am on antipsychotic medication and struggle to sleep, which which i’d already told them several times I was trying to sleep and that i’m on anti psychotic medication, this means i’m dizzy and unstable on my feet,I fall over alot anyway

so if I was pushed even slightly I could have banged my head and died or been impaled on one of the metal bed frames that are in my hallway.

-They keep knocking on the door even though i’m speaking to them

-They keep revving the saw.

They deal with the situation in a really confrontational combative manner arguing with me and calling me a liar

-They say ‘We can record you too’

-They tell me I have no rights when I say i’ll sue them ‘you’ll never win weve got the power to put the poor through section 17 of pace we’ve got no case to answer’

⁃ They reference section 17 pace again later when they are threatening to assault me. Why do they keep referencing laws I don’t understand? Why aren’t they engaging on a none threatening level I can understand?

⁃ They say to me at one point I know the law,I don’t, i’m just a terrified, vulnerable woman who, can’t understand why on this welfare check they want to put my door through on hearsay, when on times i’ve been the one one whose undeniably said it theyv just phoned me

⁃ ‘You’re being obstructive’ i’m clearly distressed by their presence and afraid. This is meant to be a welfare check yet they keep making it about them, their obligations, and their rights. There’s no concern for my well being being shown by them. There meant to be checking on me looking after me. Its clear they have no interest in my welfare they just want to get into my flat and do their inadequate check they are required to do.

⁃ they call me rude. i’m clearly distressed and afraid

⁃ I’ve counted eight times I tell them I never threatened myself ‘I didn’t say it to her’ ‘she has, she’s called you for no reason’ ‘I didn’t say it’ ‘she’s full of shit’ ‘I haven’t said that to her. I didn’t say that to her’ ‘I haven’t said that’ ‘The remarks have come from her’ ‘I never said anything’ and i’ve counted eight times they dont listen to me or call me a liar ‘Because of comments youv made’ ‘Where’s the remark come from’ ‘You must have done’ ‘I don’t think she is’ ‘The remarks come from somewhere’ ‘ I don’t think she lied to us’ ‘It’s got to have come from somewhere’ ‘Your mums not called us for no reason’ and thats not including them talking over me and calling a liar when I try to explain the situation to them. I tell him im trying to sleep he says dont lie you called your mum. Ye for a quick five minute conversation. If he knew anything about mental health he’d know this is a sleep hygiene technique, instead he says she was trying to sleep. I try to explain that she wasn’t and he calls me a liar again, did he assume she was trying to sleep or did she say that, because people don’t all have the same routine especially people who dont work due to health issues. We sleep when we can or when it’s easier for us to do so, so if he assumed that’s wrong and something he shouldnt be doing he should be working on facts not assumptions. My mum has always said I can call her whenever, for whatever, however it’s very normal for us to talk late night and early hours of the morning, yet he assumes she probably isn’t sleeping because i’m ringing her, not because of her own health issue or routine. This incident has destroyed mine and my mothers very complicated relationship, she does nasty things for no reason sometimes, it’s why I have borderline personality disorder, because my childhood was traumatic, so again they obviously have no knowledge of mental illness, but if it hadn’t destroyed our relationship it certainly would have destroyed my ability to get support from her when I need it the most, because did she say I woke her up or did he assume that?

As I said it’s obvious the officers responding have no training or very poor training in mental illness and dealing with it, as because of my borderline personality disorder, the way they behaved IF I HAD been suicidal at the time, actually could have forced me to act on those suicidal thoughts even if I hadn’t been planning on before they arrived

⁃ my borderline personality disorder means i get suicidal ‘fuck you’ driven episodes, where i’ll do things to show people they have upset me, so while their playing with the saw, I could have opened the door and threw myself on it, or I could have waited for them to start sawing down the door and pressed my body against the saw

⁃ I get impulsive I don’t need to do this thing episodes, also those like the ‘fuck you’ episodes are driven by thoughts that dont feel like mine they, feel like a foreign entity in my brain and its very manic thoughts that feel euphorically freeing in the moment, in moments when I feel powerless such as this one, so like I went through a phase where whenever I got post these thoughts would be like, ‘You don’t have to open your post you can open your throat instead,’ so im telling you that their attitude of open the door or well break it down could have IF I HAD been suicidal caused me to cut my throat, and thats a very serious thing as far as im concerned. Officers should only be responding if they are trained in mental illness and they should ask for information on how your illness effects you and tailor their response to that

⁃ They tell me to stop shouting, i’m have a stress and fear triggered BPD episode so i’ve gone into uncontrolable fight or flight mode, my first response was flight they told me that wasnt an option, so now i’m acting in response to my situation which is that im afraid for my safety and i’m cornered

⁃ The search of my flat was for show and not a real search, therefore it was inadequate if i was suicidal, and so forcing their way into my flat and causing me severe trauma was pointless. They even let me know its going to be inadequate because they tell me she wont touch anything. They say one thing they are looking for is evidence i’ve taken pills, in a real suicide attempt, especially one where I was preinformed the police were coming, i’d have thrown out the empty packets or put them in a cupboard, no bins were opened when she left and she didnt search all my cupboards. I might be misremembering, but they said they have their body cams on so you can check, but im pretty sure she passed two closed cabinets in my hallway, but youd have to check on that one

⁃ They say an ambulance is coming, no ambulance turns up, surely it would be more beneficial to my welfare for them to talk me down with the door closed while they wait for the paramedics to assess me for this overdose i’m meant to be getting assessed for, and then get me to open the door and check my flat while the paramedic assess me. I was never assessed, their so concerned im going to kill myself that theyll saw down my door and assault me, but no ambulance turns up and i’m not examined for this overdose their concerned about.

⁃ Also when the female officer comes back he asks her calmly like they know her answer ‘are you happy’ they knew I wasn’t a risk to myself. This was never out of concern for me it was a box ticking exercise so they could say weve done what we had to do.

⁃ I feel this is obvious because I then say I want to report a crime of lying to to the police, which is what my mothers done, and they say first before i’ve even finished speaking, do it in the morning and second I can’t do it at all

⁃ Another reason it’s obviously not a genuine welfare concern and just a box ticking exercise is that i’m asked who’d be liable if i’d have killed myself, having not made any threats of that kind, but IF I HAD been suicidal why would I care about where liability lies, im not thinking about liability im thinking about my safety, my mother was according to her and them thinking about my safety and not liability, why are they thinking about liability and not my welfare if this is a welfare check

Another point of concern for me is why he pretended he couldnt hear me, it felt like he was playing a game with my safety and rights, like he was both enjoying it and wanted so much to saw the door down, but that they didnt actually have reasonable cause while I was speaking to them he says ‘whats that’ ‘I cant hear you’ ‘I cant hear you’ ‘i’m not satisfied your safe’ but hes heard me fine over the ten minutes previous which they also mention weve been speaking through the door fine for ten minutes later when I open it but also he heard me to tell me I had no rights when I said i’d sue them and I was much farer away

Other concerns I shouldn’t be liable for the door if it was sawn down, because I have no control over what lies people tell about me, if they sawed that door down and found absolutely nothing like they did the police or my mum should have to pay for the door, not me.

And because I can’t prosecute people for telling lies about me theres nothing stopping this from happening again

The way the officers involved behaved is dangerous and i’d hope seriously isn’t legal, because if it is the police are dangerous to some of the most vulnerable people in our society, and I am suffering greatly now because of their behaviour, I could have been seriously injured or killed and, i’m sure people have before and will be again if the police are allowed to behave this way. This was meant to be a welfare check and I was treated in away that has destroyed my already fragile mental health, it was meant to be for my safety and yet its put me at much greater risk of harm coming to me now because of my seizures and sedation, and in the future if I ever am suicidal because i’ll be too scared to ask for help

Attached are the links to the videos I took of the event

https://youtu.be/NSf3XuY24UQ

https://youtu.be/M_D0QPm0dC4

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Punctuation- Capital Letters

Punctuation marks help you write accurately

Capital letters

You use capital letters-

1. To start a sentence.

2. When using the personal pronoun I .

3. When Writing Initials…

4. And acronyms

Example

N.S.P.C.C.

NASA

5. At the start of speech.

6. When using proper nouns (names).

Update/ Journal entry

Right so I think this is my final update about whats been going on over the last few weeks

In medical news again

I got my flu jab so hopefully I wont die of flu this year.

I am not diabetic so the only thing I can think of is that I am hallucinating tastes again which would make sense because the taste and smell ones seem to come with my seizures and I have been extremely seizurish lately usually though its unpleasant smells and tastes.

My favourite old glasses came back to the opticians. I went in today to get some measurements done for my special lenses and they will be back next week.

I am trying to decide if I want my feet broken and reshapen and I really think I do.

In police news

My response to my complaint came through it basically said they are allowed to injure and intimidate people as long as they are mentally ill and that the polices job security is more important than the person they have been sent to do a welfare check ons welfare and safety.

I have referred it on to the police commissioners office. They have already told me that I wont get the outcome I want but I am going through all the channels I can with this I am not giving up and if I have to take meaningless steps in between the meaningful ones thats what I’ll do.

House news.

Things are shitter than ever the man who screams obscenities and bangs on everyones windows is back. He was out Monday night in the carpark screaming and banging and inside the block next door doing the same thing. Either Wednesday or Thursday night someone one in the next black was banging what sounded like a door all night. I al stupidly tired and emotional this flat will be the death of me. If the seizures don’t get me I am pretty sure that I am not far off having a stress related stroke.

Punctuation- Exclamation marks

Punctuation marks help you write accurately

Exclamation marks

Exclamation marks look like this !

Use them to show strong emotion. Use them sparingly or they will lose their effect, become annoying and make your writing seem childish.

Update/ Journal entry

I dont know what was worse sunday night or last night.

Sunday night it was nice and quiet, but cos my sleeping patterns fucked went to bed and couldn’t sleep. At two when I finally got tired I went to bed only to have my neighbour come home at that exact moment, which seems to happen every night now. I sweat he waits for taxi fares in the car park and when he sees my lights go off he comes in if he’s not got a job. He stomps in turns his TV on and starts moving furniture about. I got back up for a bit but when I went back fo bed I had a seizure then I had a second seizure. I had all this weird energy after it even tho I was tired and got back up. I started listening to a podcast got half way through and had another seizure.

I tried to go to sleep just after lunch time and as soon as I did his girl friend and a kid arrived and the turned the music on loud. I couldn’t sleep. After five I had a seizure that was so bad that i fell asleep but I kept waking up on the verge of seizures and having them all night long.

I woke up after lunch time today more tired than I was yesterday and feeling sick smelling of seizures.

I had to phone my psychiatrist today. I was meant to have a psychiatrist appointment on the first but because of the terrible signal at my flat I have to go to my mums for the appointment but I can’t because of lock down.

The appointments woman told me to just go outside. You know outside where everyone can hear my private mental health business and see the melt down I have whenever I have to speak to this clueless man. Also outside where they know I have been attacked by a neighbour and where random neighbours regularly freak out. Thats safe.

After she changed my appointment she told me remember if you are feeling bad in between your new appointment and now call us to speak to the crisis team. I said to her I am not being funny but if I was in a crisis situation again I would go somewhere else I came to your crisis team for help once because I was suicidal and they turned me away. I tried to kill myself afterwards.

She immediately got snotty with me and said well I have given you the option. The option to what come in saying I am scared I am going to set myself in fire and be asked if you really want to die haven’t you done it yet?

As a facility that deals with mentally vulnerable people I would say this attitude is a giant problem. You say you let me down and they get snotty. I complained after but I am sure James still works there and is still pushing suicidal people over the edge.

Oh also I went for a run today it wasn’t great I walked a large part of it and had to stop twice because my hallucinations were so bad.

Right back to the update in medical news

My knee started to swell back up and I had constant pain in it all the time again. I also had this sweet taste in my mouth that everyone was like its diabetes.

For some reason because of covid my doctors have stopped future appointments you have to phone up at eight am on the day which I obviously can’t do. I put in a complaint about this and heard nothing back.

I decided to phone and ask whether I could get a future dated appointment I was so stressed out with my pile of growing problems that I was crying so she actually gave me one. I asked for a double appointment because I had four things and explained what the four things were and the receptionist told me that the 20 minutes would be long enough.

When the doctor phoned me the next day he didn’t want to refer me to neurology for my seizures even though both my psychiatrist and a nurse had said I really need to be re referred. I was referred when I got out of hospital two years ago and the sent me an appointment. Then they sent me a letter saying they cancelled it and to phone them to make another. I did this and was told they would send me one out in the post, instead I got a letter saying I missed the appointment that they cancelled but that the reason for my seizures was medication I was put on after the seizures started. The doctors told me they wouldn’t re refer me because the neurology department should give me another appointment and the neurology department said the doctors needed to re refer me so I went back wards and forwards for two months.

He referred for a diabetes blood test but told me he didn’t want to.

Told me my knee xrays were fine like I am a liar but prescribed me a cream for it.

Then at fourteen minutes he refused to see me about the ADHD referral and told me off for four minutes about having other patients to see. He said I would have to make another appointment for it and hung up. It was only eighteen minutes into my appointment. I lost six minutes of my appointments. I was in tears because I had waited so long for to get an appointment.

My pharmacy didn’t have the cream until the next day which was Friday and when I come to use it it told me not to take it because I have asthma.

On the Monday I phoned back and explained this and was told again I needed to phone the next day at eight. I complained about having a double appointment I didn’t get so they made me an appointment wit a nurse the next day. She told me to use the cream like I was being awkward. She did however put my ADHD referral through. She said he should have done it. There was a letter on file from my psychiatrist asking for it to be done.

I am finally getting a new pair of glasses after four years. My new opticians were shocked that my old opticians didn’t pick up my cornea issue and were even more shocked they had refused to change my glasses for appropriate lenses for this and weren’t sure how I had been getting by for the last two years. It’s simple I had mo choice you fucking do what you have to to survive

Update/ Journal entry

I am up at four in the morning after having no sleep and two seizures, or at least I think I have had two seizures. So I have decided to write out todays blog post now and schedule it to post by itself at nine tonight.

Firstly In mental health news.

Im still waiting to be contacted about my Autism assessment.

I am now waiting for a neurology assessment because of my seizures, but they have contacted to tell me theres a long waiting list at the minute because of covid.

And I have finally been put on the four year waiting list to see if I have ADHD which has taken so long that its only happened a couple of weeks from my next three monthly psychiatrist appointment.

At which I am planning on being shouted at because

1. cant fit 3 buspirone doses into a single day. This is because I try to go to bed sometime in between 10 and 12 at night. The noise usually keeps me awake but if I do get asleep my neighbour upstairs comes home at 1 2 3 or 4 wakes me up and then has his tv or music on for sometimes hours. I am on anti psychotics so after getting to sleep at 5 6 or 7 I sleep through my alarm and usual drag myself out if bed at around 1 or 2 in the after noon so im only out of bed four what 8 to 10 hours a day.

2. I wrote him a seething letter a month or so ago and I know hes read it because hes sort of responded.

Either way the delay in the ADHD thing is due to my GP’s covid rules. They no longer let you make future dated doctors appointments, which is obviously an issue for me because I am on anti psychotic medication and dont get asleep till like 5 or 6 in the morning. As though I can then get up to phone them at eight to make an on the day appointment. I have wrote a complaint about it and had no responce. That was months ago.

I have been struggling lately I say this like I dont always struggle but the seizures have been getting more frequent again.

Last week I spent the majority of the last week or two crying because of every different emotion from happiness to grief.

I feel like I have been getting in to arguments with dangerous ignorant people a lot online too.

The thing that annoys me most is people giving out dangerous information. Usually people do it with out knowing it and are willing to admit their mistake but their are a small group of people who continue to do it even though they know its dangerous and this bothers me so much because one day they are going to give that information out to someone who will harm or kill themselves because of it.

Second most annoying are the people who suffer with normal human emotions and think they know what mental illness is and what its like to live with it because of this. There is nothing that ignites my borderline rage more than somebody trying to give me advice about what helped them when they were ill or telling me they suffer with a mental illness or mental health issues only for me to ask what illness they have with genuine interest and be told anxiety or stress. Fuck off and start being grateful your brain is a healthy brain, fucking hell.

Lastly are the ignorant people who have no experience an just like to give their completely useless opinions just to make all the battles I face as a currently unwell person with life long illness even harder.

I plan on writing more in detailed posts about issues like this hopefully in the not to distant future.

Update/ Journal Entry

Hi guys

It feels like forever, but my last update was only 20 day ago. Maybe that is too long. Maybe it is not long enough. Let me know the feed back so far has been great in the sense that it has been much appreciated and far more than I expected. I would love to hear more from you about what you want more of, and also for you to give me your best worst comments if that makes sense, we only learn from others compliments and criticisms, they are a pair you can’t learn from one without the other.

So much has happened that I decided that it was time to write again. I tried to do it all in one post and honestly because I am using my phone it just isn’t possible because of either my dodgy mobile phone data that only works sometimes and or the word press app is just slow and freezes. Also its a lot. So I have decided to do it in several posts across the next few days.

First things first- blog news.

Sorry guys the segmented autobiographical Sunday posts are going to stay as they are for a while. My goal is to get them back to being a full story in a single post eventually, but I am just not a fast enough righter and I write everything out on paper four or five times before using my phone to type it up so its not ideal. So for now I would rather post something well written every week for you that will get to where we are going in the end.

This current story running will run four parts. Part one went up last week. Part two goes has gone up tonight. Part three is written and will go up next week. And part four is still unwritten. I will try and get it done this week.

The next story is still unplanned to the point I am not sure myself what it will be. I will also try and get that planned this week.

I have decided that every week there isn’t a english writing assignment to post I will keep posting an additional note book post.

However I do have an assignment I plan on sharing as soon as I can copy it out in writing then type it up. I only have it saved in photographs right now, as it is on a returned test that I got back last week.

And yes it is the story that got me part of my Grade 7. I hoping it will be a nice change as my english teacher wrote ha ha ha all over it so hopefully I will leave you smiling for a change.

Sort of quick off topic I had my first mock english language test and got a Grade 7 the highest is a Grade 9 and a pass or a C is a Grade 4. This is a particularly sweet victory as I have met some discrimination from the college due to there lack of support for mentally Ill people. I am thinking about doing some posts on that however I might have to interrupt the current series of sunday posts to do it so let me know how you all feel about that.

Back on track. I have a new set of posts coming guys. It is temporary. I wont say what it is all I will say is see you Saturday at nine uk time.

Yes all posts, post at nine now and are scheduled in advance. So if you don’t see a social media post about it you can be sure it will be up regardless, so for the foreseeable future I will be posting Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

Finally with the blog news. I no longer have a proof reader so you are stuck with me now. All I can say is good luck with this one guys. The reason is that my proof reading was done by a friend who decided that for some reason he no longer wanted anything to do with me and as it was the second time he has done this I have made it a permanently ended friendship. Some how he has taken offence to this but I really couldn’t give less of a fuck.

Maybe more on that later but probably not anyway hopefully I will be true to my word and give you another update tomorrow.

The Time That My Next Door Neighbours Tried To Murder Me

Part Two

She was still groping at my chin, trying to get her hands around my throat. I knew I had to do more to protect myself from her. I understood what a dangerous and vulnerable position I was in, and that I had to take control of the situation somehow. I had to give myself time to think about how I was going to get myself out of this situation unharmed. I grabbed her by the hair, and dragged her head backwards away from me. I was trying to make it harder for her to see and think, but it didn’t work. Instead she began to literally snorting and roaring like an animal, as she tried to get both her hands around my throat. I reacted instinctively and automatically to this without thought. I grabbed her by the eyes and pushed her head away from me. I wasn’t pressing hard enough to injure her, but I was pressing hard enough to show her that I was serious. I’m sure that I was pressing hard enough to cause most people to panic and retreat. She didn’t retreat but she did panic. With one hand she continued to grope for my throat, and with the other she snatched at my eyes. Despite the fact that my actions were unplanned, it was the smartest thing I could’ve done, because I had prevented her from being able to see me or anything at all. Her hands just slammed into my chin and eye again and again and again.

“Get off her,” a man called. It sounded like he was across the car park, but I hadn’t heard a car.

Whether it was blind panic or one final attempt to kill me while she knew she definitely had the chance, she grabbed me by the hair with both hands and began violently smashing my head into the ground. Luckily for me the ground was soil.

As the man approached us he repeated his demand. He reached us both from a different direction and sooner than I expected.

“I’ll let her go, as soon as she lets me go,” I responded as he got in between us trying, to prise us apart.

Finally, probably realising now there was a witness to their murder attempt it had been thwarted, the man who had been watching began to pull her away from me. She was too stupid to understand that there was now a witness to any further assault attempts that she made, and refused to give up. She held onto my hair pulling my head up with her, until the man who had intervened forcibly removed her fingers from my head.

Still snorting and roaring she struggled against the man holding her, breaking free of his loose, reluctant grip, and launching herself at me.

I pulled my knee up and into my stomach, then as soon as she was looming over me I kicked out. My boot connected with her chest sending her backwards onto her bum. She flailed about either confused or unable to catch her balance for a second.

I used the opportunity to climb back up onto my unsteady feet. I was so unsteady though that she was back up onto her own feet at the same time as me. I heard her howling before I saw her running at me. The man who had intervened did too. He wrapped his body and one arm around me protectively, like a shield, and tried to push her away from us with the other.

“It’s over,” he repeated, as she now attacked him, howling snorting and literally spitting at him, as she did. Hesitantly the man who had been watching grabbed the back of her T-shirt, and dragged her slowly towards the door to the block of flats that they lived in, which they had wedged open with something I couldn’t see. She struggled against him, still determined to murder me, but only succeeded in losing her footing and falling back onto her bum. The man pulling hair was moving so slowly that this didn’t stop him, he simply lowered his arm and dragged her along the ground. She snorted and grunted as he did.

The man who had intervened ushered me away and into another block of flats. Outside I could still hear the woman grunting as she refused to give up.

“Come on, let’s get you somewhere safe,” he led me up the stairs to the top floor, where he took out a set of keys and unlocked the door to his own flat. All the lights, and the TV were on as though he had been home all along. I stepped inside. It seems smaller than my own flat somehow, but it was much nicer. He had obviously invested a lot of money into decorating his flat, something I couldn’t afford to do with my own, as I couldn’t, and wasn’t planning on living in my own flat any longer than I had to.

“I’m X,” He introduced himself.

(I have chosen not to use even his first initial for his privacy, and I won’t be including any personal details that he shared with me about himself, or his life, that’s not relevant to my own story.)

I considered it for a second before deciding to give him my first name.

He assessed me as though checking me for any injuries that required attention. When he was satisfied that I was okay, he disappeared into his bedroom. “You’re soaking. You must be freezing. I’ll get you some clean dry clothes to change into.”

“Thank you but I’m fine,” I wasn’t planning on staying. I had to let somebody know that I had just been attacked. I checked my pockets for my phone remembering that I had left it on the sofa. I felt myself becoming stressed not only at the thought that I couldn’t raise the alarm about what had happened, but that my mum had probably phoned me dozens of times by now. “If I could just borrow a phone to call my mum really quickly, I’d be really grateful,” I added.

“Of course you can,” he reappeared in the bedroom doorway. “But you’ll have to wait until my friends get back. They went out to get more beer, and one of them took my phone because his is dead.” He handed me the bundle of clothes he was carrying, a pair of pyjama bottoms and a T-shirt. “I can stick yours in the washing machine for you if you want.”

“No I’m fine thank you,” I shook my head.

He led me into the living room and lowered his TV until it was silent. “I won’t look. I’ll go back into the bedroom while you get changed.”

I shook my head again.

“You’re not fine. You’re shaking. sit down,” He pointed to his sofa.

l looked at his clean, fabric corner unit and shook my head for a third time. I was soaking and covered in mud. I was not going to ruin the sofa of the man who had just saved my life. “I’m just angry and upset and tired.”

“And you’ve just been jumped,” he pointed insistently to his sofa.

I sat down. He picked up a blanket, telling me that his neighbour knitted it for him, and wrapped me in it.

“I’m going to wreck your sofa and blanket,” I protested.

“You’re not,” He laughed. “Stop worrying about me, if you won’t put dry clothes on at least get warm.”

“Thank you,” I said, I meant for everything.

“Here have this, it will help calm you down a bit,” he handed me one of the two closed beer cans that were still in the packet on his coffee table.

“Thank you but I don’t drink,” I was still holding the bundle of clothes, I placed them on the sofa behind me.

“I can make you a cup of tea,” he offered.

“No, I’m fine, honestly,” I reassured him.

“You’re not fine,” he started, but he stopped, sat down next to me and began again. “You’re lucky my friends went out when they did. When they left I thought I’d wash the dishes,” he paused. “I have takeaway do you want something to eat,” he waited for me to answer, no, before he continued. “So I was filling my sink with water and just happened to see you at their window, and her creeping up behind you. I was about to bang on the window but it was too late. I saw her grab you by the head, and swing you around onto the floor like you weighed nothing. I panicked. I’ve heard that woman threatening to stomp on someone’s head before. I grabbed my keys and raced down the stairs. I was in such a hurry I nearly tripped over my own flip flops.”

I looked down and was quite surprised to see that he was in fact wearing flip-flops. “Do you know them?” I asked.

“Hell no,” he laughed again, but before he could finish what he was saying he was interrupted by his intercom ringing. He got up and buzzed in whoever was ringing his intercom without speaking to them, so I was relieved when he opened his front door and two men carrying plastic carrier bags strolled in. To say that they looked shocked, when they saw a strange woman smeared in mud sitting on their friends sofa, would be an obscene understatement.

He introduced us all to each other, but I don’t remember their names, before explaining that he had just had to break up a fight.

Both of the two men who had just arrived where tall, but one of them was a giant. His shocked expression immediately shifted to one that was both amused and sceptical.

“Who was fighting?” He asked X, but before X could speak he turned to me. “Were you fighting?”

The other man put the bag he was carrying down on the coffee table, and sat down on the other end of the corner unit as though he was trying to stay as far away from me as he possibly could, eyeing me warily as he did.

“Well it wasn’t really a fight, Rachel got jumped,” X sat down next to me.

The giant man’s expression didn’t change at all, yet his emotions somehow became more pronounced.

“Who jumped her? Who jumped you? What did you do to get jumped?”

“You know those people who live at that flat?” X informed him, as though his friend would know exactly who he was referring to.

“Noooo,” he gasped.

“I asked them to keep the noise down,” I replied.

“Nooooo,” he gasped again. “You’re brave!”

I was sure by saying I was brave, what he actually meant was that I was stupid.

“I’m tired,” I moaned. “I live next door to them.”

The giant man’s features softened compassionately, as his eyes filled with understanding. He seemed to remember that he was holding a bag. There was a small dining table in the corner of the room, he walked over to it, placed the bag on it, and unpacked some; tobacco, filters and cigarette papers. He pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “That’s shit. We can barely hear the TV over them from here. It must be an absolute nightmare living next door to them.”

“How many people live there?” I was more wondering out loud than I was asking a question but X answered me anyway.

“At least five people lived there when they first moved in, about two years ago, I think, if not there were the same five people there constantly, but I have no idea how many people live there now.”

“Isn’t it a one bedroom flat?” It wasn’t a surprise to me based on my experience living next door to them for a year that five of them would be living there, it was trying to imagine how five people could bare to live in such a small place.

“Ye,” X confirmed what I suspected.

“Do you want one?” The really tall man interrupted us to offer me a cigarette.

“No thanks I don’t smoke,” I told him.

“How about a beer?” he took a can out of the packet and held it out to me.

“No thanks, I don’t drink,” I told him.

“You don’t drink?” He sounded like he didn’t quite believe me.

I deliberated for a second, deciding to answer honestly, cringing as I did. “No, not since 2016, alcohol doesn’t agree with me, I’m borderline.”

Punctuation- Question marks

Punctuation marks help you write accurately

Question- Marks

Question marks look like this ?

The two occasions when you need to use a question mark are-

1. When you ask a direct question.

Example

What time is it?

2. When it is used to turn statement into a question. However if the question is being reported rather than asked you don’t need question mark.

Examples

” You can’t really mean that?” He asked.

He asked her if she really meant it.

Punctuation- Full Stops

Punctuation marks help you write accurately

Full stops

There are three occasions when you use full stops-

1. At the end of a sentence.

2. when you shorten a word. You put a full stop at the end of the abbreviation.

3. When your writing initials.

Examples

September

SEPT.

United Kingdom

U.K.

The Time That My Next Door Neighbours Tried To Murder Me

Part One

Today I am going to tell you all about the time my next door neighbour tried to kill me.

A bit of background information for anybody who is unaware of my current living situation. I moved into the flat from hell in November 2018. Since moving in I have been having several absolutely awful non-stop problems. Two of these ongoing problems are concerning antisocial neighbours. The man who lives directly above me is antisocial, and the people who live (If you can call what they are doing in the flat living) directly next door to me, but in a different block of flats, are also antisocial.

Today’s story is about the people who live next door to me.

In the two years that I have lived here, I have come to know from certain information that my landlords, workmen and the Merseyside police have given me that, like my flat, the flat next door is a very small one bedroom flat. When I say these flats are small, I mean that they aren’t even big enough to fit a necessary amount of furniture and appliances into them, they are tiny. Despite this there are at least three adults, two male and one female, living in the property next door, however most days the flat is full of people, including both adults and young children, and there are people constantly coming and going at all hours of the day and night. Many of these visitors knock on their windows, and mine, and out of those that do less than half of them will actually go inside the block of flats. Bizarrely, despite the fact that they have an intercom and you need a key to get into the block of flats, when I moved in they had a doorbell on their front door. Even stranger, it was used an awful lot, which is how I know they had it.

When the young children, and by young I mean toddlers and primary school age children, are there it is usually a sign that there is going to be a party that night. After which all the adults seem to leave, and the children seem to stay overnight. Sometimes the children are at the property for several days in a row without leaving.

I’m sure this is a fire hazard. I’m sure this contributes to fly tipping and rubbish dumping issues in the yard, and so also the mice and rats that the flats are infested with. I am also sure that my landlord couldn’t care less about the strange, and likely illegal, activity that is taking place inside the property.

Although covid has helped to reduce the activity at the flat a lot, it hasn’t stopped it even during lockdown.

Even when there is just the three of them home, there is constant and excessively loud noise coming from inside the flat. There are normal household sounds, such as the TV and the radio playing too loud. One of the men shouts, sings, and makes rather disgusting exclamation is of noise constantly. At least two of them, the same man and the woman, have violent sounding argument several times a day. Usually though it is all three of them, and whoever else is there, arguing. The arguments regularly include banging, however it is impossible to tell whether the banging is related to the arguments or entirely unrelated activity, as they often bang for what sounds like it is just for banging sake for absurdly long length of time. Occasionally though these fights have spilled out into the communal yard, and there have been men aggressively fighting right outside my kitchen window.

Disturbingly, when the children are there they can be heard hysterically screaming and crying, usually this happens during their parties.

Their parties, or rather their usual nightly activities, include all of the above at a much greater volume, but also involves them playing instruments and singing at the top of their voices. (These parties would take place most nights, starting at around 5 pm and ending at around 3 am, before Covid.)

You can hear the noise from their flat, as though they are in the same room as you, even when you are in my bedroom, which is at the opposite side of my flat to them.

Being concerned for the safety of the clearly distressed children, I have called the police several times, either very late at night or very early in the morning, when I have heard them screaming and crying. The police responded a couple of times, then made it clear I should stop reporting the sound of hysterical children at 11 pm, midnight, 1 am, and 2 am, as though it was a normal thing to be hearing, and of that time, and that they wouldn’t be responding again.

The problem of these neighbours alone would make even a well person sick. I am not well. I have co-morbid borderline personality disorder and adjustment disorder. That is not to say everybody who has either borderline personality disorder or adjustment disorder is unwell, like any other lifelong mental illness you can be in recovery with both of these. I am not in recovery, and even if I had been when I moved in, I wouldn’t be anymore. The constant noise, especially at night is a trigger for my illnesses. It stops me from sleeping which is an issue both because I am on antipsychotic medication and also because I need a strict routine, including a set of bedtime and waking time, and it causes me to have pseudo seizures and pseudo psychotic episodes.

Me and my mum, who helps me when I am particularly unwell or struggling, reported the antisocial activity going on at the flat to my landlord and the council. My landlord sent me to the council, who sent me back to my landlords. My housing officer told me several times, as though he really couldn’t be bothered, that I should be going around to my neighbours flat to ask them to keep the noise down.

On one particularly bad night, that followed several other particularly bad nights without pause, that is what my mum did.

Hearing how severely my physical and mental health had declined over a few short days, she walked the forty minute journey from her house to my flat, to ask them to keep the noise down, just like my housing officer had advised us to do.

As they live in a different block of flats to me, I don’t have a key to get into the building they live in, so my mum knocked on their kitchen window.

It was a woman who opened the curtains, that they had at that time. On seeing my mum she called out in a foreign language and two men appeared taking her place at the window, behind them a toddler in just a nappy watched, the two men swore at my mum, called her names and threatened her. The next day we tried to report it to both to the police and my landlords, but neither were interested in what had taken place, including the threats.

The week beginning Monday the 16th of November 2019, was a bad mental health week for me, yet other than the parties next door starting earlier than usual and getting less sleep than I normally would have, which wasn’t much anyway, I don’t remember why.

On either the Wednesday or Thursday the parties began at around lunchtime and the days that followed, including the Saturday, were the same. I didn’t get any sleep at all on those nights, and so by the Saturday I was also very physically unwell. Among other things I recall that I was; visually hallucinating, shaking, dizzy, beyond exhausted, suicidal, and having seizure symptoms.

I remember being sure that I was going to die either as a result of a seizure, suicide, stroke, or heart attack. Hearing how distressed and unwell I was and knowing how abusive and violent my neighbours are, my mum called the Merseyside police around six times that night. She explained that she knew that the police don’t as standard deal with noise complaints, but asked would they under the circumstances, telling them how aggressive my neighbours were and how sick I was. They refused.

Up until sometime around 11 o’clock, the noise had been a rotation of; loud music, knocking on windows, fighting, banging, and screaming children. It was at this point that they began playing instruments and singing at the top of their voices, a sign that there was at least going to be another three hours of partying ahead. I phoned my mum in tears and told her that I was going around to the flat to ask them to keep the noise down. She reminded me of what had happened when she had asked them to keep the noise down. Finally she asked why I thought they would listen to me.

I told her that I didn’t think they would listen to me and reminded her that Phil, my housing officer, had told me that was what I should be doing. I needed it to stop, and so I had no choice.

“Don’t go around there,” she ordered. “I’m going to call the police again.”

“What’s the point?” I started to say, but she hung up on me.

I threw my phone on the sofa and went into the bedroom to change out of my pyjamas. I pulled on a pair of jeans, a jumper, and a pair of boots, grabbed my keys and left the flat.

It was cold and raining outside.

Because I couldn’t get into their block of flats, a factor that in hind sight most likely save my life, I knocked on their living room window.

When the blinds opened what I briefly saw inside confirmed what I had been reporting to the police, council, an my landlords, which was that the flat was primarily being used as a party venue. Inside there was no real living room furniture, there was just a large dining room table, its chairs, and a giant Wall mounted television. The room was packed with people, both adults and children.

The expression on the heavyset woman, who looked to be in her late forties, that had opened the blinds, changed to shock when she saw me, as though she was expecting somebody she knew.

“Be quiet, it’s nearly midnight,” I croaked, I was on the verge of crying again.

Her expression turned to anger. When she began shouting at me in a foreign language, I recognised the voice of the woman who lived there. The only words I recognised was the word bitch every time she seem to be addressing me.

“Keep the noise down,” I raised my voice above hers repeating myself over and over again, until I snapped. “Keep your fucking noise down. “

That got her attention. She stopped shouting. She looked as though nobody had ever dared to speak to her that way before. I saw the rage enter her eyes as she spat, “I kill you bitch! “

The music stopped and the voices of the two men that also lived there replaced it. At first I thought that they were shouting at her, because she seemed to be responding, but then they dragged her out of the window, taking her place, still shouting. One of the men appeared to be in his thirties, the other appear to be in his fifties.

Feeling as though I was getting nowhere, I turned to go back to my flat. They banged on the glass at me and began talking in a mixture of languages, one of which was English. I stayed where I was for a couple of seconds.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” I said.

They both abruptly stopped talking. The older man smirked, slyly, show me a couple of black teeth and no more. It dawned on me that they had been purposely trying to distract me. I knew somebody had snuck up behind me, but it was too late.

The person behind me grab me by the hair, yanking my head back so hard that hot pain shot through my neck, tossing me to the ground like a rag doll. As soon as I landed the woman from the window jumped on top of me, knocking all the air out of my lungs, launching straight for my throat, in an attempt to strangle me. I hadn’t been to the MMA gym in over a year at this point, but what little self defence training they had managed to teach me kicked in, and I tucked my chin as close to my chest as I could. The hand that she was attempting to strangle me with hit me in the mouth instead. The same training told me to shrimp and roll her off me, but the younger man from the window was already outside and seem to be waiting to catch me if I got free.

Assessing the situation I calmly decided that I was safer underneath her, holding her off me.

“Holding her off until what?” I thought. “What are you waiting for? She is actually going to fucking kill you.”

Paragraphs

Paragraphs

There are four rules-

1. Each paragraph should be about a separate topic.

2. Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence. This should tell us what the paragraph is about.

3. The build on the topic.

4. Each paragraph, after the first paragraph, should have a hook. A paragraph hook is a link to the previous Paragraph.

Example

(Of a hook)

It was also (The hook) (Tells us it is in addition to what we have previously read.) very dark in there.

Sentences -Complex Sentences

Complex sentences

Complex sentences are a main clause. This means it stands on its own and make sense without anything else. Plus a subordinate clause. This means it can’t stand on its own as it is an incomplete sentence.

Example

(Subordinate clause) Although the team played, (main clause) they lost the game.

The Second Time That I Was Sectioned

Part Three

Photograph of injuries either caused by either the nurse or police officer that assaulted me or a combination of both

“Are you having me on? You were fine literally two seconds ago.”

I knew that I was in the hospital by the background noise, which was just as distant as his words, however I couldn’t open my eyes to confirm this. The light was sharp and burnt my eyes, which already felt as though somebody was sticking pins in them. I could feel them pulling to the back of my head. My brain felt as though it was in a vice, and the violent jerks of my head as it popped and clicked made the pain a million times worse. My toes were curling closed so tightly, and my ankles twisting so far inwards, that the muscles in my feet and legs felt like stone.

“I don’t feel well,” I heard myself slur, but my words sounded just as distant as his.

I was sitting in a large rectangular, private room. The chairs, which I think were blue, occupied every bit of wall space. There was a door to my left in front of me, and the door to my right behind me. The police officer from the street was sat opposite me, with an open laptop on his knee, which he was leaning over, a phone charger in his outstretched hand.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the charger from him, and plugging my phone into the nearest plug socket, which allowed me to put my phone on the chair next to me.

I was dazed, as I had a sense of returning to myself, which is something I get roughly half of the time that I experienced missing time. It never gets less scary. Knowing things have happened that you will never remember, never gets easier to deal with. Returning to yourself is like confirmation that you didn’t just forget it, you didn’t observe it, something in your brain switched off and you were gone. Automatically I went into investigation mode. The last solid memory that I had was of dialling the hospital, everything else that happened was jumbled up fragments. I checked my Jean pockets and found only my house keys. I was wearing jeans, a jumper, and a pair of flimsy pumps, I wasn’t wearing socks, a coat, or my glasses.

“Where are my glasses?” I asked the police officer.

“Do you wear glasses?” He responded, in a tone that suggested he thought I was playing a very unfunny joke on him.

“I wasn’t wearing them when you got there?” I pressed.

“No,” it felt as though he was trying to withdraw from the topic.

“Did the people in the street have them?” I was panicking. I couldn’t get by without my glasses.

“I don’t think so. They seemed like nice people, who were concerned about you. I don’t think they would’ve robbed your glasses.”

I wasn’t accusing them, of stealing them. I didn’t understand how I had used my phone or left the house without them, so I assumed they must’ve fallen or been knocked off in the struggle I had with the two men. Surely they wouldn’t have just left them on the floor, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking. “Was there a pair of pink glasses on the ground?”

He sighed. “I didn’t know you wore glasses until you just asked me where they were. I don’t know where your glasses are.”

I gave up.

“Do you know if there is a toilet that I can use? I’m desperate.”

He pointed to the open door behind me.

I stood up and went inside. The door was really wide, and the room was really long, with a toilet and a sink at the far end. Above the toilet was a red alarm cord, to pull if you needed help. This was clearly a wheelchair accessible toilet, yet the room it was in was definitely not wheelchair accessible. When I tried to shut the door, I realised that it was locked open.

“Can you go outside while I have a wee?” I said, knowing I wouldn’t be able to go if he didn’t.

“No,” He refused.

Seeing as my stomach ached, I was so desperate, I gave it a go with no luck.

“What are you doing in there?” He called after a minute or two.

“Trying to wee. Will you please go outside for one minute?” I was close to tears.

“No. One more minute and I’ll be coming in there,” He warned me.

I felt my eyes begin to fill with tears and blink them back, before pulling up my underwear and jeans, feeling worse than ever.

I didn’t sit back down, I couldn’t, the ache in my stomach was too intense, and I knew if I sat down anywhere other than the toilet, I would wee myself. It was then that I became aware of just how badly I smelt of seizure’s. Noting that both my racing and alien thoughts seemed to be exacerbated by the constant radio chatter and feeling that I wasn’t done with my seizure’s yet, I tried to tactfully approach the subject with the police officer.

“Doesn’t that agitate you?” I asked him.

“No,” He said bluntly.

“It’s agitating me,” I told him. “Can you turn it off or down?”

“No,” He said again.

When two nurses came in to check my blood pressure, I pleaded with them desperately to let me use the toilet privately. One of them, the older of the two, acted like it was an atrocity that I hadn’t been allowed some privacy to use the toilet, but instead of just asking everybody to leave the room for a minute so that I could use the toilet, she told me that she would take me to the public toilet, which was the room opposite mine.

I followed her out into the hallway. As I entered the toilet and tried to close the door behind me, she stuck her foot in between the door and the frame, grabbing the side of the door.

“You can’t shut the door! “She barked at me. “I have to be able to see and hear you at all times.”

“Are you serious?” I asked her horrified. Not only was her behaviour more intrusive than the police officers, it seemed purposefully so. Her behaviour was completely unnecessary, inappropriate, and degrading. Plus, there were people walking passed the toilet.

“You could be trying to trick me so that you can harm yourself,” She accused.

“With what? I have nothing on me. Search me,” I suggested.

“I can’t do that,” She sounded as though she was pretending to be aghast. “That would be highly inappropriate.”

“But watching me piss isn’t?” I asked.

“I’m a woman,” She said defensively as though that changed anything.

“So” I asked.

“Either go, or get back in the room,” She stepped out of my way, and I went back inside the room.

It was the same nurse who popped her head into the room, to tell me that my mum was in the reception, asking to see me.

“You called my mum?” I complained.

“No, She just turned up.”

I was sure she must be lying.

“Did you call her?” I turned to the officer.

“No,” He shook his head.

“Tell her to go home,” I demanded. I could feel my stress level increase, and with it my anger and seizure signs.

“Let her see you, just for a minute,” She encouraged.

” No,” I told her firmly.

She refused to go away though, instead coming inside the room. This is where I start to lose time again. All I know is that she mithered me about it until the police officer intervened, and pointed out that she was obviously causing me distress, and asked her to respect my wishes. She did but she returned several more times and acted in the exact same way, until it wore the policeman down.

“Just let her come in and see you’re okay and then she’ll go away,” He advised me.

I snorted a laugh and shook my head, standing my ground. “Tell her I don’t want to see her.”

The nurse disappeared returning a minute later with my mum.

I could feel my blood heating up. It got worse when I saw that my mum was crying.

“It’s always about her,” My brain alien chirped.

I felt like I was exhaling steam.

“How could you do this to me?” She wailed.

I erupted.

I have no memory of what I said, or she said from this point on, just the knowledge of us both absolutely screaming at each other.

“You need to leave,” The police officers voice snap me out of it.

“Why do I have to leave?” My mum asked offended.

“Because one of you two have to leave, and you’re the only one of you two right now that’s allowed to,” He informed her.

It was then that I think the reality of the situation hit her. Her expression changed. She nodded and left the room, but she didn’t leave the hospital. I could hear her, in the corridor for what felt like hours. It was so stressful.

She was still there when the second male police officer arrived. It was immediately evident that he should’ve been present the entire time. He barged in loudly declaring, “Sorry about that. Thanks. Did anybody notice I was gone?”

The officer from the street glanced at me. I was standing by the toilet door, sulking. He nodded towards the other door, stood up, and led the man that had just arrived into the corridor.

I seized my chance and slid into the toilet.

“He’s going to notice you’re gone,” My brain alien chirped.

“Shut up,” I moaned but it was too late, my bladder had frozen.

“Go,” I urged it

“How cheeky is he?” My brain alien carried on chattering away. “He won’t leave to give you privacy while you wee, but he will to give his friend privacy so that they can talk about him skiving.”

“Shut up,” I moaned again, trying to force my aching bladder to empty itself.

“Rachel?” The officer from the street called. “I’m coming in there.”

“Fucking hell, ” I shouted. “I’m trying to have a piss.”

Stumbling to my feet I managed to pull my underwear all the way up, and my jeans up just enough to cover them, before the door opened and the officer from the streets stepped inside. Crying I pull my jeans up the rest of the way, buttoning them closed. He left the toilet and I followed.

I think my mum was gone when the next two officers arrived, one male and one female, however I can’t be sure, as I was struggling against the seizure that was fighting me for control over my body. Slumped in the corner, twitching, shaking and sweating, I sobbed quietly. All four officers started talking as though it was a social gathering.

“We were here in this exact same room all night, last night. It was great,” The female officer giggled.

“For our entire shift,” The new male officer added. “Our first job was to escort some nut job the paramedics were too afraid to deal with by themselves here.”

They all laughed.

“Let’s hope this one is the same,” He continued.

“You only just started?” The officer who only turned up once I was at the hospital asked.

“Ye,” the female officer answered.

What I remember of my assessment isn’t much. There were three men who assessed me, two were doctors, and one was a social worker. I remember being told to stop messing around.

“I don’t feel well,” I slurred in response. My brain felt as though a giant hand was squeezing it. When I tried to pull my body back up into a sitting position, I just slipped further off the chair. The men watched me.

“Help,” I pleaded, but I don’t know if I said it out loud or in my head.

“There’s a bed for you in the hospital, if you want it,” I recognise the voice of one of the men who assessed me.

When I forced my eyes open, I couldn’t make him out. My vision was blurry. The light was sharp and burnt. He was just a dark shadow in the doorway.

“I don’t need a hospital bed,” I complained. “I need help. I need somebody to make this thing in my head go away.”

He didn’t answer. He turned, and left the room. I wanted to follow him, but when I tried to stand up, my body, which felt like jelly, refused to respond.

I was still desperately trying to regain control over my body when the two nurses returned.

“We need you to come with us. There is a patient that needs this room more than you do,” The younger one ordered.

“I need the doctor to come back and speak to me,” I said. “I need help, and nobody will help me.”

“You need to leave,” The older nurse demanded sternly.

“Everybody matters more than you,” My brain alien chirped.

“I’ll leave when I’ve spoken to the doctor,” I promise.

The younger nurse started to speak, but the older one cut her off. “That’s not going to happen,” She smirked at me.

Then they left the room.

It was at least half an hour before my jelly limbs started to respond to my directions. Checking my phone I found that it had already gone midnight. My antipsychotics were due over two hours ago, and the smell of seizures had gotten much worse. It was clear that the doctor wasn’t coming back to speak to me. They wanted me to leave, and I desperately needed a shower and my medication, so I decided that it was time to give up and go home. Stepping out of the room, I followed an exit sign to the end of the corridor, where two security guards were standing. They moved to block my way as I approached.

“You can’t come through here,” One of them told me.

“Why?” I asked. Somewhere behind them, to the right and out of sight, a woman shouted hysterically. Thinking it had something to do with her I said. “Is there another way out?”

They exchange glances, but neither of them answered me.

“How do I get out?” I tried again.

They didn’t respond.

Frustrated by their odd behaviour, I tried to get around or through them, but they blocked me no matter which way I went.

“Stop fucking around and tell me what’s going on,” I demanded.

They still didn’t answer me, so I physically tried to push my way in between them, unsuccessfully.

Finally done with it, I ducked down, and slipped between them that way.

Once I was on the other side of them, I was able to see the woman who was shouting. She appeared to be minding her own business, and she didn’t seem to be a threat to anybody.

“What the fuck?” I said.

They still didn’t respond, but their expressions changed to expressions of panic.

Done, I turned and walked away.

“Stop her please,” Somebody, behind me, called.

There was a flash of black, then excruciating pain in both my shoulder and elbow as my arm twisted in a way it shouldn’t bend. Before I could scream out in agony, I was run extremely hard and fast into the wall behind me. There was an explosion of light, as my skull smashed into the wall, with a disgusting crack.

The police officer who was pinning me to the wall was huge. He was at least a foot taller than me, and twice as wide.

“Get off me,” I shrieked. “You’re breaking my arm.”

His grin turned into a snarl, as he opened his mouth to speak.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” One of the security guards shouted.

“Get off her,” The other one yelled.

The police officers expression of enjoyment turned to confusion.

I don’t remember the huge officer releasing me, or how I got back on the other side of the security guards, who were shouting at the police officer as he swaggered away, but that’s where I was when one of the doors along the corridor opened. The older nurse hurried out of the open door, grabbing my arm as she passed me, and began violently dragging me along the corridor. There was a second where my confusion and fear intensified to the point where I was sure I was about to start crying, and then I was roaring at the nurse to get her fucking hands off me, as I pulled my arm back towards my body dragging her with it.

The next thing I remember, is banging on the door to the room she had come from, demanding a doctor come out and talk to me, while the security guard watched calmly. I hammered on the door until my knuckles were raw, and then I hammered some more.

“I’m not going away,” I informed the people inside. “It’s not as though I can go anywhere else.”

Finally, one of the doctors who assessed me came to the door.

“Have I been sectioned?” I asked him.

“Yes,” He answered, sounding unsure, as he looked at the security guards for assistance.

I followed his gaze.

One of the security guard looked away, and the other just shrugged.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” My voice quivered, as my eyes filled with tears. “I’ve just been attacked by a policeman and that bitch in there.”

He apologised and said they should’ve informed me, but that they just hadn’t gotten round to it yet, as though that healed my injuries and my trauma.

The next day, my mum complained to the Merseyside police, about the police officer assaulting me. They said they had no way of knowing who the police officer was. She then complained to Aintree University Hospital, about the nurse assaulting me. She asked for the CCTV footage, but never got it. Both complaints went nowhere.

Sentences- Compound sentences

Compound sentences

Compound sentences are two clauses joined by a conjunction. A conjunction is a linking word.

Example

(Of a conjunction)

• and

• but

• yet

• then

(Of a compound sentence)

(clause) + (conjunction) + (clause)

(clause) John didn’t do much revision for the exams (conjunction) and (clause) he got an E grade for English.

Sentences- Clause

Clauses

Each part of a sentence is called a clause. Every clause must contain a finite verb.

Update?/ Journal entry?

I thought I would sit down, and take some time to give you all a quick update on life I suppose, as I’ve been a bit erratic with my social media use lately.

So first things first- my blog

I will still be posting an autobiographical story every Sunday, but I might have to break some of them into two or three parts for the time being as I am struggling writing them for several reason, my mental health being the biggest reason.

When I have a writing task I have completed for college I will be sharing it of a Wednesday. This will probably remain erratic for now sorry. However once I am into the swing if things I am thinking of setting myself my own writing tasks based on how the exam questions work for practice so I will start sharing that too.

I have struggled a lot, or at least I feel I have, with writing because I never understood it had rules, which isn’t all my fault as I have told teachers and tutors this in the past and got no response that this isn’t true, so now I have discovered there are rules I am going to maybe share a rule I like or have found particularly helpful on a Thursday. These aren’t tips from me they are tips I have been given which I am trying to learn to use.

I have been thinking about maybe doing more journaling as a way to try and improve my writing, and keep you all up to date a little bit better but I am not sure how much you would all be interested, and I’ve been thinking of maybe trying to do a my day in pictures like I used to on twitter once things start getting a bit better because it would literally just be me sitting in my pyjamas, or running clothes when I haven’t been running and looking like shit because I never sleep and have been suffering with seizure symptoms a lot more recently.

Either way if you’re interested in either of those things let me know an I might try and work it in as weekly or monthly thing for now.

In mental health news

Most of which is a couple of months old now, my current psychiatrist refused to assess me for NPD so I’m still not officially a narcissist, however he did decide to refer me to be tested for autism and agreed I probably need to be seen for ADHD and put on the four year waiting list to see a specialist but due to the terrible issues at my flat I’m struggling to get a doctors appointment, even though they apparently want to look into my seizures and my knee needs seeing to. I’m scared I wont be able to get an appointment for the flu jab this year and that in a year where everyones been taken out by covid it’ll be the flu that gets me.

In police news

Again pretty old by now I got my subject access request through. What seems like half the body cam footage there should be and showing the polices sarcastic uncaring attitudes and that they were in fact going to put that saw through my door. Oh and transcripts of the 999 operator, heavily redacted of course saying-

mother said: she said well i might as well hang myself

and

That she wont open the door to you.

Which though I don’t have the transcripts of my mothers call would seem my mother was telling the truth when she told me she just wanted them to call me because I wasn’t answering my phone and she was worried, but more on that in a later post because remember they also said the bodycam footage didn’t exist at all at one point so I’m currently pulling all my emails and stuff together because….drum roll… the merseyside police have a decision to my complaint, yet I haven’t seen it yet despite being told this weeks ago because apparently the people who deal with the complaints just have so much work on. I wonder why when your officers are so unprofessional.

In house news

Sadly no I don’t have a new place to live yet. I do have my subject access request from them though and so I will also be working on my response to their response to my last complaint so thats going to take me a while too.

Thats pretty much it apart from maybe expect less from we in all areas of life last week and this week. Halloween was a major distraction for me even though I have no kids, don’t watch TV and never leave my flat. This week you can probably expect to find my currently over weight self drowning my sorrows of turning 34 in cake of some sort and doing not a lot else.

But ye I think that’s it apart from I’m not proof reading this sorry lol

The Second Time That I Was Sectioned

Part Two

“Stop her!” A woman screamed hysterically.

I felt somebody grab me and drag me back on to the pavement, and out of the path of the car. I tried to wrestle free but a second pair of hands grabbed me. It was then that I stopped struggling, together the two men were too strong for me to get away from. Now with all the fight gone from me I dissolved into a shaking, sobbing mess. My muscles felt weak and my entire body went limp on me. The man who had dragged me back onto the pavement wrapped his arms around my body as though he was hugging me. Really he was preventing me from escaping. Unintentionally he was also holding my body up. He reeked of alcohol.

“I’m going to call the police,” I heard the other man say.

“Ssh, it’s okay, I’ve got you,” The man that was holding me cooed.

“I want to die,” I said, but my resolve was fading, and the parasite was silent.

“You don’t,” he told me.

“They won’t help me,” I continued, as though he knew what I was going on about.

I felt so unwell that I couldn’t have even tried to kill myself again if he had let me go. I doubted I could even stand up by myself. My head felt as though my face had been smashed with a brick repeatedly and now my brain was being squeezed. I felt like I was being stabbed in the eyes over and over again. I was sure I was going to vomit all over this poor man who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Two people led me to the wall that separated the supermarket and the post office, one on each side of me, they were practically holding me up. When I sat down on the little wall one of them had to sit down beside me for the first couple of minutes to make sure I could support myself and wasn’t going to topple over. My body felt like jelly. I was sweating and shuddering. When my phone began to ring the person beside me asked me if I was going to answer it, it was only then that I recognised the voice of the woman who had screamed, “Stop her!” before I was grabbed.

“No,” I choked, my tongue felt swollen and heavy and my mouth was dry.

She took my phone out of my loose, sweaty grip, and answered it.

“No, she’s not. She just tried to throw herself under a car. I don’t know if she’ll be able to she doesn’t seem well,” She didn’t sound well. She handed me the phone. “It’s a nurse? She said you got cut off? She wants to speak to you?”

I took the phone, but because my fingers were numb and refusing to function, by the time I managed to position it and press my phone in between my hand and my ear, the woman that I had been speaking to earlier was mid rant.

“I’ve no idea what you’re going on about,” I interrupted. I had no patience for this woman.

“Don’t you remember me?” The panic in her voice grew, but she sounded more concerned about herself than me. “We got cut off.”

“We didn’t get cut off,” I told her. “I hung up on you because you’re an uncaring bitch. “I hung up on her again.

This time she didn’t call me back.

The lone police officer that responded informed me that he was detaining me and under what section of the mental health act.

“They won’t section me. They don’t believe I’m sick enough. Will you lock me up so I can’t hurt myself?” I begged him.

“I’m not in the habit of locking up young women that are obviously sick, sorry.” He answered.

I don’t know how many men it took approaching me for the police officer to lose his temper, I didn’t even try to keep count, but I remember when he did. I don’t remember what this particular man said to me, but I heard the policeman mutter under his breath “Fucking hell, again,” before he authoritatively told him. “Get away from her, she is being detained by police officer.”

The man seemed reluctant to go, “Are you alright?” He asked.

I wanted to ask him what he was going to do about it if I wasn’t. Instead I responded. “Obviously not and you’re making it a million times worse.”

“Snotty little bitch. I hope they throw the key away,” he grumbled.

“Fuck off,” I shouted after him.

“That’s enough,” The police officer told me.

I noticed the woman when she passed me for at least the second time. I had my elbow against my knee and was slumped over with my face against my closed hand. It was her garish purple coat that caught my attention. When I glanced up she was turning away, but I saw enough of her to make me feel uneasy. She looked wired, as though she may be on drugs. Her make up looked like she had allowed a toddler to smear pink clown lipstick, and green eyeshadow on her face, and she was eyeing me like I was prey.

She walked backwards and forwards along the street as though she was a shark circling me. The policeman didn’t seem to notice her. He also hadn’t learned yet, that whenever he stepped far enough away from me, so that he could speak into his radio about me, without me hearing him, somebody always approached me. I’m pretty sure she was the person that taught him this lesson.

“Fell out with your boyfriend?” She hissed. The purple velour and fake fur appeared in front of me. “Need a place to stay?”

I kept my head down hoping she would take the hint and leave me alone.

“Want to come and stay at mine?”

I looked up at her and fixed my pseudo psychotic, BPD, washed teddy bear eyes, on her manic, wired ones, and she visibly recoiled from me.

“No,” I growled.

She was already backing away from me but it was too late, the police officer had heard me.

“For Gods sake. Get away from her. She’s with me,” He marched towards us.

She looked relieved.

“I thought her boyfriend had beaten her up,” She explained to him like that was a good reason for her behaviour.

“It’s none of your business,” He told her.

She skittered away.

During the many hours that I spent sitting in the street unaware that I was waiting for an ambulance that would never come, the police radio was constantly alive with chatter. One incident that they were already discussing when the officer arrived was a neighbour dispute. One neighbour had threatened another with physical violence, then to set their dog on them, then to murder them, then to murder their children, then to burn down their house. This incident played out, and escalated across several hours. Eventually somebody came on the radio to inform everybody that the husband of the party being threatened had phoned back again to tell them that the neighbours dog had mauled his wife, and that they were now waiting for an ambulance to arrive. He was worried because he didn’t feel safe leaving either their teenage children, or house unattended, due to the neighbours now carrying out their threats.

“Does that make it an emergency now does it?” Somebody else asked sarcastically laughing.

“They think it does,” The woman who put out the incident announcement came back on laughing

“They always do,” Somebody else giggled.

“The things that people think are emergencies?” Another person laughed.

I thought it sounded like an emergency.

I certainly didn’t think it was funny.

Eventually and inevitably, I was too weak to fight it any longer, and the seizure won the battle for control of my body. My toes which had been curling in and out locked closed painfully. My eyes which, I had been in a tug of war with broke free, pulling into the back of my head. My twitch which had gone from the violent flick of my head, to the aggressive shaking, was now a full on spasm, the pops and clicks that accompanied it began to sound like explosions above the sound of the street.

The police officer gripped my wrist holding it above my head as though that would stop me from toppling off the wall “Are you epileptic?” He sounded panicked.

“No,” I answered. I could feel tears dripping down my cheeks, and sweat pouring from my boiling skin.

“Do you need seizure medication?” He asked.

“Is that a thing?” I responded, but I wasn’t sure if I said it out loud or inside my head.

“Epilepsy?”

“Medication?”

The words sounded far away I felt my muscles begin to seize up turning to stone and tried to fight it.

“… A seizure… I’m not waiting for the ambulance any more, it’s been hours… “

The words drifted around me, punctuated by a voice on the radio that was somehow both louder and indecipherable.

I was in the back of a police car, but we weren’t moving.

Sentences- Multiple sentences

Multiple sentences

Multiple sentences must contain more than one finite verb.

Contain two finite verbs.

Example

The scene in a busy shopping centre on a busy Saturday afternoon is (A verb) one that brings (A verb) excitement, trepidation and to some despair.

Sentences- Simple sentences

Simple sentences

The term simple sentence doesn’t necessarily mean that the sentence is short or simple in meaning. Simple sentences must contain one (complete or) finite verb.

To be finite a verb must meet two rules-

1. It must agree with the subject.

How do subjects and verbs agree with one another?

2. It must show the tense: past, present or future.

Examples

Ed (The subject) plays (The verb) (Past tense) guitar.

In amongst all the beer cans on the floor, Ed (The subject) the famous musician plays (The verb) (Past tense) an ancient, beaten guitar, in his own special way.

The Second Time That I Was Sectioned

Part One

Today I am going to tell you all about the second time I was sectioned.

This story is not about my three week stay in hospital during August and September of 2018, it is about the day that led to my hospital admission.

Very serious warning. I was sectioned for attempted suicide, so I will be talking about my own suicidal thoughts and attempted suicide. Suicide contagion is real, so if you are struggling with your own suicidal thoughts I would recommend that you don’t read this story. Also I would ask that you please speak to somebody you trust, a family member, a friend, a doctor, a crisis team, or even an organisation like the Samaritans. If they turn you away please keep trying people until you find somebody who will help you. Please don’t do what I did. I was very unwell. I have complex and severe comorbid Borderline Personality Disorder and Adjustment Disorder and may have other undiagnosed mental health issues. I was having a (pseudo?) psychotic episode, which had been building for months, if not for over a year, was fuelled by poorly prescribed antidepressants, and exacerbated by the people, and events happening, in my life at that time.

As some of you know I was wrongly diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder in 2016 which resulted in me being put on a lot of different antidepressants. One of the side effects of the antidepressants for me was that they actually made me feel more depressed. After a couple of months of taking them I started having thoughts that felt as though they were coming from a parasitic worm living inside my brain. The thoughts did not feel like my own thoughts. They had a sharpness to them, they were manic, and hysterically upbeat. They would encourage me to violently commit suicide, for example they would tell me to set myself on fire or cut my throat. This was also frequently accompanied by a “… That would show them, “or a, “Don’t worry about (insert stressor) because if that happens you can just (insert suicidal act),” or a, “You don’t have to do (insert stressor), you can just (insert suicidal act) instead.” These alien thoughts were accompanied by a strong emotional reaction, and my own thoughts would respond to them. While I was experiencing them I would feel euphorically happy or excited, and was convinced they were the best and logical solutions to the problem, but once they stopped I was horrified and terrified by them. When they first began to happen they lasted only a couple of seconds and were fleeting, but as time went on it was my own thoughts that became fleeting.

I told my GP’s, and psychiatric nurses, as soon as I began getting these alien thoughts and begged for help. I continued to tell GP’s, and psychiatrists, about them and beg for help as they progressed. Every medical professional I told dismissed them as normal foreign thoughts, which even if that was the case, meant that I was in danger, as Borderlines act impulsively. I read that Borderline Personality Disorder has the highest number of successful suicides out of all mental illnesses. One GP even struck me off as a patient at the practice I was attending at the time because I had a Borderline episode in the surgery.

I think it’s necessary for me to add a quick note here. I’m not saying that the antidepressants alone gave me the symptom of alien thoughts. I am on a much lower dose of antidepressants at the moment and I do still get them, but they are much rarer and milder. What I think is that this symptom was exacerbated by the antidepressants. Put simply I believe this symptom is a product of my illness, intensified by the medication.

At my last psychiatrist appointment before my suicide attempt, I again, begged for help with these alien thoughts.

Another side effect of my antidepressants was tremors, meaning that I shook, really badly, to the point where doing anything was a challenge. Throughout my life I had tried every antidepressant and had reported the shaking as a side effect of them all, so I had been told by my GP’s that there was nothing they could do to stop them, and that I would just have to deal with the tremors.

Another quick note here. I don’t have the tremors anymore, so it was clearly a result of wrong medication. I believe I was on too high a dose of antidepressants, with either no, or too small a dose of antipsychotics. Reviewing my medication and changing it has stopped the tremors, even though that is not why they were review, which means there was obviously something that could be done about the tremors. I should not of had to struggle, so badly, for so long.

As you have probably noticed we have jumped ahead a lot. I have missed out the fact that in 2017 or 2018, I found out that in either 2016 for 2017, I had been diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and nobody had told me. When I found this out I wrongly believed that my medication was being reviewed and adjusted accordingly. This was because at the time I found out I had Borderline Personality Disorder I was on the highest dose of Sertraline and Mirtazapine which are both antidepressants, and was taken off the Mirtazapine and put on Quetiapine which is an antipsychotic. I’ve since learned that the only reason that I was taken off the Mirtazapine, is because the only antidepressant that you are allowed to take with Quetiapine, is Sertraline.

After this final psychiatrist appointment before I attempted suicide I noticed two things. Firstly my tremors were at their calmest in the morning up to four hours before I took my Sertraline, secondly so were my alien thoughts. This confirmed to me that what I suspected at the time, which was that my antidepressants were to blame for the alien thoughts, was correct.

In the couple of days leading up to my attempted suicide I had been struggling more than usual with my suicidal thoughts, and had been experiencing a lot of missing time. I hadn’t slept for days again, and so when 8 o’clock came I phoned my GP to ask about having my antidepressants reviewed. They suggested that my psychiatrist do it because it wasn’t them who put me on the sertraline to begin with, (it was the GP surgery that had struck me off as a patient.)

I waited an hour for my psychiatrists practice to open and phoned them. I was told that I would have to wait for my next appointment to speak to my psychiatrist, which was months away, and was advised very sternly that I was not to stop taking my medication before this.

So I did as I was told and took my Sertraline at ten o’clock.

Then I went for a shower, as normally I would’ve done this and gotten dressed, before taking my antidepressants.

In the time it took me to shower and dress that horrible worm in my brain was hyperactively chatting away again.

An issue which I was struggling with at the time, and which I am also struggling with presently, is anxiety when it comes to opening my post. During this period in time though it was a major trigger for my suicidal alien thoughts. When I would consider dealing with my post, or trying to open a letter, that little worm would tell me “You don’t have to open your post, you can open your throat instead. “

Usually I would laugh and answer “You’re right that is the better option. “

Sometimes it would take me hours to open just one letter, then take me all day to read it, and the best part of the week to deal with it. That is how difficult and emotionally challenging receiving post was for me. I had gotten used to assessing what was the most important piece of post to deal with based on the envelope. I would check the return address and for any stamped or printed logos, then if those things didn’t help I would look at the type of envelope it was and whether the address was printed or handwritten.

When I came back downstairs I saw that the postman had been, so I went to collect my post, and began my ritual of checking the envelopes. There was one envelope that worried me so much I tore it open there and then, trying to read the letter inside, in a panic. The contents and task was so distressing that I threw the letter and envelope onto the staircase where I had been sitting, and took the rest of the post to the pile that was accumulating on my coffee table. As I threw it down the pile moved and the top few letters slid off the table onto the floor, revealing a kitchen knife. The shock, of the realisation, that I was now actually following these alien thoughts during my missing time was so horrifying, that I put my shoes on, grabbed my keys, and hurried to my psychiatrist practice, which was at the most a five minute walk from my house.

By the time I got there my unstable condition had ramped up, and I was shouting and crying, first in the reception, and then in the waiting room, that I wanted to, and was going to set myself on fire. When a member of staff other than the receptionist, decided that they probably should speak to me, they asked me like I was stupid “Why did you take your medication if you think that’s to blame?”

When I answered that receptionist had advised me that I had to take it, I was told. “The receptionist isn’t a doctor. “

To which I responded, that if the receptionist didn’t know anything about medication, then she shouldn’t be giving out advice about taking it.

Seeing that she was not going to be able to convince me to leave, the woman grabbed a member of the crisis team that was passing by, and asked him to speak with me. Reluctantly, after protesting that he was busy, he ushered me into a private room.

I was taken aback when in a bored manner he enquired “If you really want to die why haven’t you tried to kill yourself yet? “

His manner and attitude aside, I was shocked by his questions for two reasons.

Reason one. I was already a suicide surviver at this point. I had tried to kill myself almost exactly ten years earlier.

Reason two. My experience as a person who suffers with suicidal thoughts is that you fight a constant battle with them. You debate with yourself about how much you want to die compared with how much you want to live and why. You don’t just wake up one day and decide that you’re going to kill yourself. It is a slow and complicated process that leads you to take that final step.

Maybe this is only my experience though and not a normal or common experience.

I genuinely and seriously considered this question. I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t afraid of dying. I was afraid of botching my suicide attempt and living, but with disabilities because of what I had done.

“I suppose I am a coward, “I answered honestly.

He told me that there were no available appointments until exactly a week later, and asked me if I wanted him to book me in.

I explained that I wasn’t going to make it a week. I wasn’t going to make it to the end of the day.

He shrugged like I was bothering him, and told me that I wasn’t going to get seen today.

I asked him should I try to admit myself to hospital, and he responded, to the woman who just minutes earlier had been shouting about how she wanted to herself on fire, “Do what you want. “

We sat in silence for a moment, as I tried to decide whether I could make it home without throwing myself in front of a car. When I decided I probably could if I left now, while the worm was quiet, I stood up and left without saying a word.

He didn’t try to stop me.

I rushed home, terrified that at any second, the parasites living inside my brain might take control of my body and mind. As I did I managed to string together a loose plan. I had to act fast. I had to let as many people as possible know that I was a danger to myself, in case this thing inside my head tried to prevent me from getting help. As soon as I got inside my house I phoned my mum to let her know that I was afraid I might kill myself, and that I was going to try to have myself sectioned. Then I phoned the nearest hospital to ask them two questions.

Question one. Should I go to that hospitals A&E department? I wasn’t sure if I needed to go directly to a psychiatric hospital or not.

Question two. What should I bring with me so that I would have everything I needed if I was admitted. I knew that there wasn’t a single person that I could rely on to bring me what I needed once I was sectioned.

The first person I spoke to was a man. He told me he was transferring me through to a nurse who worked at their A&E departments crisis team, and that she would be able to answer my questions.

When the nurse answered I explained what was wrong with me and asked her my questions. She told me that she was looking at my medical notes, so she could see that I had spoken to a member of the crisis team at my psychiatrists office that day, and that he had established that I wasn’t a danger to myself. When I tried to tell her what had happened when I spoke to him, I misremembered his name calling him steve. She jumped on this using it as an excuse to cut me off. She told me that his name was James not steve. She said that if I presented at A&E I would be turned away without being seen, because I was fine, and I needed to stop wasting their time. I responded that if I presented at A&E and I was told I was fine and to stop wasting their time I would walk out of the hospital and straight in front of a car. At this point it was me and not my brain worm driving me. Alien thoughts aside, I do have suicidal thoughts that feel like and are definitely mine, and what she had just said had caused me to go into a complete suicidal melt down. I couldn’t stand the thought of going another hour with this parasite, which was chattering away again, never mind the rest of my life. It was clear now that nobody was going to help me get rid of it, because nobody wanted to help me, nobody could even be bothered to listen to me describe this thing fully, they always cut me off and told me that I was fine, just like this woman was doing now.

I was far from fine

As long as this parasite was allowed to be the dominant entity inside my head I would never be fine.

“Fuck you, “I told it. “I don’t have to live with you. If I die, you die.,

Fuck this absolutely vile human being on the other end of the phone.

“Teach her what happens when you’re a nasty uncaring bitch, “the parasite laughed.

I wasn’t laughing anymore.

It wasn’t funny.

There are four problems that I am met with at this point in the story, which are all actually the same problem. I experienced missing and jumbled up time, it is obviously a symptom of my illness, sometimes it just happens, it also happens when I have a Borderline episode, a migraine, or a seizure, and all these things were about to happen. I will try my best to put what happened in the correct order, but I can’t guarantee that it actually happened in this order, and I can’t account for what happened during the time that is missing.

“I’ll do it right now, I told her.

“Behave,” She chastised me in a voice you would use to speak to a five year old.

I screamed at the cars one at a time as they swerved around me, blasting their horns.

“Do not speak to me like that. I am not here to take your abuse,” She accused.

“I’m not talking to you. I’m talking to the cars. I’m in the road you stupid cow,” I snapped. I found it impossible to believe that she couldn’t tell that I was in the road screaming at cars.

“She’s pretending she thinks you’re saying it to her so she can hang up on you so that nobody finds out she fucked up,” The worm suggested gleefully.

“Fuck off,” I told it.

“You know the cars are’t purposefully going to hit you. They know you want it too much. You need to start again.”

I wasn’t happy about it ignoring me but it was correct. I followed its advice and got back onto the pavement. I was fuming at this woman. It was her job to help people in my situation, and instead she had pushed me over the edge. How dare she take the high ground with me. I hung up on her. Then I stepped off the pavement again, in front of a car that was moving far too fast to stop in time.

Sentences- Statement Sentences

Sentences

There are four types of sentence.

1. To make a statement.

A statement is a sentence that must contain a subject and a verb.

The subject tells us who or what the sentence is about. It can be one word or a group of words. If the subject is a group of words it is called a phrase.The subject usually comes before the verb, however this is not always the case, be aware that sentences were the verb comes before the subject can be confusing. The subject does not have to start or end a sentence.

Examples

Ed (The subject) has been playing (The verb) his guitar a lot recently.

Over in The corner stood (The verb) Ed (The subject).

This week Ed (The subject) has been playing (The verb) his guitar a lot.

A statement sentence must also contain a verb, which describes an action or state, gives information about an action and can also give us information about a state or condition.

Example

Ed (The subject) loves (The verb) playing the guitar.

The verb can exist to link the subject and the rest of the sentence. This works like an equals sign in an equation. These are called linking verbs.

Example

Ed (The subject) seems (The verb) to be happy.

2. To ask a question.

3. To give a command.

4. To exclaim something.

Describing a room in my house – The kitchen

The kitchen is the most deceptive room in my flat. View it quickly and in isolation and you might be fooled into thinking this flat is safe. Spend a little longer looking and you will begin to at least feel if not see that there is a lot that is wrong with this flat.

The grey tiled floors, matching work tops and wooden cupboards give the room a new fitted kitchen feeling. They are very similar to the kitchen that me and my ex partner excitedly chose when we bought our new build house that didn’t yet exist. That was another life, another property, another kitchen. Take a closer look and you will see the differences and not just in the colour of the floor tiles which aren’t white, but in the white mismatched unfitted electric cooker I bought when I moved into this flat almost two years ago. Theres no fitted hob and oven here because it’s not a kitchen lovingly chosen for a new build house, it is a bare basic rented social housing kitchen.

Look behind that mismatched cooker and the silver fridge or washing machine and you will see the tiny white and red cardboard boxes filled with green mouse poison. This poison is for the mice I discovered in march last year and have been reporting to my landlords ever since. The required work to stop them coming into my flat has still not been completed. I leave the boxes there, despite being told by pest control that they are useless, because I don’t know what else to do. “Mice eat where their nest is and their nest isn’t in your flat,” Pest control told me.

Here in the kitchen the only signs of the damp and mould that is currently destroying everything i own, everything that i worked so hard for in all my previous lives, are abstract. The strong smell of the bleached work tops and floor. The lingering smell of vinegar from trying to treat my clothes and bedding. The constant sound of the washing machine. Even the empty space where my clothes dryer used to be before it caught fire from over use wouldn’t immediately be connected to the damp and mould.

There are no giant brown cardboard boxes packed in anticipation of moving to

somewhere safe, which never materialises, in this room either.

The kitchen is the most deceptive room in my flat. It keeps all this properties secrets but then it also keeps some of mine.

The first time I was hit by a car

Today I am going to tell you all about the first time I was hit by a car.

It’s not the most uncomfortable ride that I could give you, but I would fasten your seat belts because it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

Serious warning. I wont be going into massive amounts of detail, but there will be references to suicidal thoughts and pre sexual assault trial death threats. There will on the other hand be a lot of detail about a very violent hit and maybe run. If you’re not in the emotional headspace to deal with any of these topics maybe don’t read this story, or read it when you are feeling more emotionally up to it.

For anybody who doesn’t know this, I am from Liverpool, which is a city in North West England. I went to Middlesex University, which is/was a University in London. London is a city in South East England. There is roughly about two hundred miles between Liverpool and London. I lived in London for three years. I moved there alone when I was nineteen and left when I was twenty two. This story takes place during my second year of university, so I would have been twenty or twenty one depending on the month, which I don’t remember. My course was based at the Cat Hill campus, which was an Arts campus. This campus did not have student accommodation, so when I lived in student accommodation, during my first and second year, I lived at the Trent Park campus.

I would walk from the Trent Park campus to the Cat Hill campus, almost, all the time. During my first year, I had walked down Snakes Lane and through Oakwood to get there. Everybody who knew me, knew this. I had continued doing this at the beginning of my second year, but had recently changed my route due to threats I had received, and the looming sexual assault trial. I don’t know what the name of the pathway that I was taking through Trent Park at this time was, but it brought me out in Cockfosters near the tube station.

I was on the same side as the tube station waiting to cross at the traffic lights. I was listening to music on my MP3 player. The music that I was listening to would have probably been something Metal or Emoish, so I wouldn’t have been able to hear the sounds of the street around me. I have since learned that this probably saved my life, and that it is also probably the reason I received just as serious injuries in this accident as I did the second time I was hit by a car, which was a less brutal accident. During the second accident I was aware that the car was going to hit me, during the first accident I wasn’t. If you know you’re about to be hit by a car, your muscles tense up, and you have a greater chance of being injured if your muscles are tense.

The traffic lights turned red. I looked to my right. There were no cars approaching. I looked to my left. There were a couple of vehicles already stopped at the traffic lights. The two women on the other side of the road, who had also been waiting to cross, had already stepped off the pavement. I looked to my right again. There was still nothing approaching. I stepped off the pavement.

There was an intense explosion of pain in my head which rippled down through my neck. Almost simultaneously there was a second explosion of pain in my right shoulder. A couple of seconds later there was third explosion of pain this time in my left knee.

During this, and for what felt like an eternity after, all that existed was this pain. Me and the world didn’t exist.

When I started to become aware of my body and the world again, I couldn’t remember who I was, where I was, or what had happened to me. I knew I was somebody, but I could have been anybody. I knew I was somewhere, but I could have been anywhere. I knew something awful had happened, and that I had hit the ground outside from a decent height and at a high speed. I knew this because when I opened my eyes I could see the ground, and I could hear the sound of the street around me.

I ran my tongue across my teeth, first the top, then the bottom. I was shocked and relieved to find that they were all where they were supposed to be.

As I was doing this, the blankness about who I was sort of started to fade away and, I began to remember who I was. Due to being sexually assaulted earlier that year (and now I know, also my complex mental illnesses,) I had been very unwell with my mental health. Though I had suffered with depression, anxiety, and insomnia my entire life, these issues were worse than they had ever been. At this time I might have also been on a very high dose of Lorazepam, which actually made my issues worse instead of better. So, when I remembered who I was, my first thought was genuinely, “Fuck, I’ve done it. I’ve jumped off something and it wasn’t high enough.”

It never occurred to me that I was injured, so it definitely didn’t occur to me that moving might exacerbate those injuries. I rolled over, as I did saw the tube station, and the memory of stepping out into the road came back to me. I almost burst into tears of relief when I realised I had been hit by a car and hadn’t actually tried to kill myself. As I sat up heard the four words no girl wants to hear when she has just been hit by a car, “Shit she’s getting up.” Hearing those words made me feel physically sick.

I looked around. My bag, MP3 player, and mobile phone, were scattered about in the road. The only vehicles what were anywhere near me, were still in the same place I remembered them being, which really confused me. Two workmen were climbing out of a small flatbed truck, which had been waiting in the queue at the traffic lights when I stepped into the road. In the other lane, quite a way down the road a car was reversing at a very fast speed in my direction. One of the other two women who had been crossing the road was back on the pavement, talking frantically on her phone. I realised that she was the one who had been talking about me. I looked around for the other woman, who was an older lady, and was shocked to find her standing next to me. I looked up at her. She was staring down at me. In a flat, emotionless tone she told me,” You’ve just been hit by a car.”

I didn’t have time to respond. The car that was reversing was closing the distance really quickly. It didn’t occur to me at the time that the driver shouldn’t have been driving that way, or in that direction. It didn’t occur to me that he was driving dangerously, I just thought that he couldn’t see me sitting on the ground. I jumped up, gathered my things, and stumbled out of the path of the reversing car, which came to a stop a little bit closer than the truck.

The two men who had gotten out of that truck were also closing the distance between us.

When the reversing car stopped, a man, who was ranting and raving in a foreign language, got out of the drivers side and marched towards me. I noticed straight away that he was clenching and unclenching his hands, which were at his sides, in a really agitated way. As he got close to me he raised one balled fist as he shouted in english, “You stupid girl! You got in my way!” Then he swung his fist at my head.

There was a loud cracking noise.

It was only when he recoiled that I realised I had slapped him hard across his face before he managed to strike me.

Unfortunately, I shocked myself more than I shocked him. I froze with my hand still raised and my mouth open, like an idiot.

He roared and swung at me again.

My slap might not have stopped him, but it had slowed down his attack just long enough for the two workmen to reach us.

The older man jumped in between us taking the blow that was meant for me, yet somehow managing to grab and over power him.

The younger man wrapped himself around me, shielding me, as he moved me away.

I was screaming hysterically at the driver about how he had hit me with his car.

He broke free and charged at me but the older man blocked him. He was chastising him for driving like a lunatic as he did. The younger man was also shouting at the driver to calm down. From the pavement the woman who had been on her phone called that the police were on their way.

Continuing to shout the driver stomped back to his car, he spat a jumble of english and foreign words at us, before climbing inside and starting the engine.

“Go,” the older man told him. “We already got your reg'”

The car sped off.

While this entire commotion had been taking place, the older woman hadn’t moved. When I noticed this I turned my head in her direction. She was still staring at me. In the exact same, flat, emotionless, tone she told me, “You’ve just been hit by a car.”

“Come on darling, come with me,” Somebody behind us said.

The younger man let me go and I turned around to see the lady who had been on her phone standing right behind me. “See to her,” She suggested, nodding at the older lady, then she took my hand and led me out of the road and down the street to a bus stop. “Sit down and wait for the ambulance,” She told me.

I sat down.

She sat down next to me.

“Do you want me to call your mum?” She asked me.

My attention was torn between the car that had hit me, which was back where it was when I first saw it, the older man, who was now moving their truck out of the road, as it was blocking traffic, and the younger man, who was coaxing the older lady back onto the the pavement.

Not understanding her question I looked down at my mobile phone.

“Or you’re dad?”

Thinking my brain had caught up to what she was asking I answered “My mum doesn’t live here.”

“You’re mum lives in Liverpool,” I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement.

“Ye. I go to the university,” I told her, as though it mattered.

She nodded anyway. ” Is there anybody me to call for you? A friend? Your boyfriend?”

I told her there wasn’t. I couldn’t remember where everybody was supposed to be right now, and she still didn’t have my full attention as there was too much going on around us. The man who had hit me was reversing back in our direction again, and the younger man had finally managed to get the older lady safely back onto the pavement.

“What’s wrong with her?” I asked.

“I think she’s in shock. You two were about to pass each other when the car clipped you. It threw you into the air flipping you over and as it did you almost hit her.”

Although I didnt think she was accusing me of anything, her answer made me feel guilty. Defensively, I told her, that I honestly didnt see the car.

“None of us did,” She reassured me. ” It came out of nowhere doin sixty, maybe seventy,” She paused.

It was the loudest pause I had ever heard.

Then she continued grimly, “I thought you were dead. I told him, you better get an ambulance here quick. I think she’s dead. You landed on your face. You weren’t moving. Then you fucking got back up like nothing happened.”

None of us spoke after that. We sat together in silence, her with one arm around me, until one of those small paramedic cars arrived a couple of minutes later.

When the paramedic got out, he asked who had been hit by the car, and then asked me to tell him what had happened. I told him all I remembered was that I had landed on my face. He asked me a couple of follow up questions that I don’t remember, but which I recall made me feel like he didn’t trust my recollection of the incident. Then he asked me if I was in any pain. To my surprise I realised I wasn’t.

He said he wanted to talk to the person who called the ambulance.

The lady with me answered that it was her.

He asked her to tell him what had happened. She told him what she told me, but not word for word.

Then he examined me.

While I was being examined both the proper ambulance and the police turned up. For some reason, despite the fact that I was the person being checked over by the paramedic already on the scene, the paramedics that had just arrived and the police went straight over to the two men who were now both with the older lady.

The driver who had hit me drove away, again, when the police pulled up.

The older man seemed to be telling them what had happened. He was pointing at me and at the car that hit me, which, again, was reversing back towards us.

The paramedics led the older lady to the ambulance, helped her inside and closed the doors.

One of the policeman approached us, and spoke directly to the lady who was with me, not acknowledging me at all. He said the older lady was being treated for shock, so she couldn’t speak to them, but that the two men, who had gotten out of their truck to give me first aid, had agreed to wait to speak to them, once they had spoken to the driver. They wanted to know if she was also willing to wait.

She agreed.

Then both the policeman headed towards the car that had hit me, which, surprise, surprise, began to drive away again. This this time it only drove a couple of feet before stopping. The police made the driver get out of the car. They appeared to be physically restraining him as they took him to the police car and put him in the back.

When the paramedic finished examining me, and informed me that he was going to call another ambulance for me, I reached my bullshit breaking point. Honestly if the ambulance that had already come for me, had been kept for me, I probably would’ve gone to the hospital like I should’ve done. Maybe it’s one of my narcissistic traits showing itself, but I felt like, and sort of still feel like, that ambulance was for me. If the older lady also needed an ambulance, then it should have been her waiting for another one to come. Also if she was a higher ambulance priority than me, a person who had just been hit by a car doing sixty, or maybe seventy miles per hour, then I really must not have needed medical attention.

I told the paramedic not to bother. If I didn’t leave now I was going to be late for a meeting with my tutor. Both him and the woman tried to convince me to wait for another ambulance, and to go to hospital, but I was done, so I declined.

The paramedic tore a sheet of coloured paper out of the book he had been making notes in. It was some sort of medical document which included diagrams of the front and back of the human body. He gave it to me, telling me when, not if, I went to the hospital because of this, to hand the form into the reception.

I took it and put it inside my sketchbook, which was inside my bag. Then I got up and left.

As I walked I phoned my best friend, I’ll call him S for anonymity, not expecting him to answer, but he did. When I told him that I had been hit by a car, he burst out laughing. I was shocked and horrified and insisted that I could’ve died. He told me that he doubted I could’ve died, and that I would be fine. Then he told me about the time he saw somebody he knew get hit by a car and get straight back up. I won’t repeat the story here, because it’s not my story to tell.

We hung up as I reached the Cathill campus because his lecture was about to start, which meant, that so was my meeting. I hurried through the main University building, past the indoor fine arts studios and outside, around the back of the building to where the cowshed was. At the time I attended Middlesex University, the Cathill campus wasn’t a big enough building to provide the amount of studio space, classrooms, and workshops needed, for all its courses and students. As a solution to this, it had set up several metal buildings that sort of looked like storage units, at the back of the building, by the car park. The cowshed was one of these buildings. It was a giant, green, metal, building with one entrance/exit and several fire doors, which were supposed to be kept shut. It had been set up like a studio space, so had false walls installed, giving it a claustrophobic, maze like feeling. In my second year, the cowshed was where my studio space was located.

When I got to my studio space I was less than five minutes late, yet my tutor, I’ll call her K, had already been and gone, leaving me a note as evidence. I hadn’t passed her on my way in, so I was sure she would still be in the cowshed. She probably would have still been in the cowshed when I entered. She probably would have still been in the cowshed, talking to other students, when I did a full circle of the maze, if it hadn’t been unusually empty that day.

I left my stuff at my desk, and went back into the main building to the indoor fine art studios, which was where the staff room was located, but K wasn’t there either. I did find another tutor, who I didn’t know, and asked him to please let K know I would be in my studio space for the remainder of my meeting time, but that after that I was going home. I was in a terrible mood and knew that I was incapable of doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

I was only waiting for K for about ten minutes, but it was an awful lot of time for me to replay what I remembered of the incident, and my conversation with S, over and over in my mind, while reading and reading the paramedics notes dozens of times. When she arrived K found me a crying and rambling, incoherent mess. In the end she took the medical form off me, read it and ask me, “Why are you here? Go home.”

I did.

When I got back to halls I didn’t want to be alone, and S was going to be at Cat hill for the rest of the day, so I went looking for C.

C and me also knew each other from the year before and had a complicated relationship. He was as I expected not at university where he should’ve been, but instead with his obnoxious herd of first year friends. When I turned up at his room sobbing and babbling about being hit by a car, I did not get any comfort from him. I got called “a liar” and “a bullshit artist” by his friends I decided as much as I didn’t want to be alone, alone was better than being verbally attacked, so I went back to my room. In the emotional mess I was in, being accused of being a liar was more traumatising than the event itself.

This is something I have found to be the case for many traumatic events I have faced throughout my life.

These people were not my friends. Their individual opinions didn’t matter to me then, and still don’t matter to me now. What bothered me, and still bothers me, is societies collective attitude that if it’s something they don’t want to be true, or it doesn’t fit what they consider to be normal, then it isn’t true. What is more infuriating, is that this denial of the validity of “abnormal” events, then shapes our perspective of what is a “normal” event. Sadly I think being hit by a car is not an extraordinary event. I think it happens more than people like to believe it does.

The next day I woke up wishing I had gone to the hospital the day before. It was hard to move anything. Every muscle in my body was aching and stiff. It was impossible to move my head, neck, or left shoulder, because of how intense the pain was, and I couldn’t put any pressure at all on my left knee. So now I had to get dressed and get to the hospital in this condition, and somehow I did, and I did it by bus.

On my way out of halls, I saw C and his friends at reception. This isn’t as unfortunately, unlucky as it seems. None of them ever went to their classes or lecture, etc.

C asked me, “Where are you going pix? You don’t look well. What’s wrong?”

I told him, “You know what’s wrong with me. I got hit by a car yesterday. I’m going to the hospital.”

One of his friends responded, “Really? That bullshit again?”

I waved my medical form at him as I left the building. Telling him sarcastically, “Yep. I got my imaginary paramedics report an everything. “

C called after me, “I’m in trouble aren’t I?”

I didn’t stop to respond. He didn’t matter enough to me to be in trouble with me.

After being x-rayed, and reassured by the doctor that I had no broken bones, I questioned whether this was strange considering the speed of the car.

He told me that it wasn’t. He told me that he had seen a lot of people that had been hit by cars travelling at much faster speeds, who had received less injuries than me. What was strange though, he added, was that I had somehow landed on my head without breaking my neck.

I was taken aback by this.

We sat there silently for a couple of seconds before we both burst out laughing like he had told me the funniest joke.

Despite the doctor at the hospital reassurances, I decided that I better get my teeth checked. After all, if I should’ve broken my neck, how did I know that my teeth were not going to just fall out of my head?

When my dentist asked, what he could do for me, and I had to explain what had happened, I felt stupid.

He took some X-rays of my teeth, and checked them, before examining my teeth. Then he reassured me that there was no damage to any of my teeth, and that they were not in fact going to just fall out of my head as I feared.

As I was getting up to leave, he stopped me and told me, “When I was your age and I was a dental student, I was walking along Oxford Street when a car mounted the pavement and hit me. The street was packed and I was standing right next to my friend. I was the only person the car hit. I rolled up onto the windscreen. The car with me still on it, smashed through the window of an electronic shop and took out the wall of TVs behind it. I could hear people screaming as we smashed through shelves and stock only stopping when the car hit the back wall. I didn’t have a scratch on me.”

I would like to tell you this story has an ending, even if it wasn’t a satisfying ending, but it doesn’t.

I don’t know what happened to the driver of the car that hit me. The man who jumped a red light doing sixty or seventy miles per hour. I don’t know whether this is because nothing happened to him, or if it’s because the police didn’t bother to take my details, or even speak to me, before the paramedics gave someone else my ambulance and allowed me to walk off in shock.

Describing a day in the life of- me

It’s Saturday afternoon and I am trying to tackle a weird and stressful problem. It’s a problem that I have admittedly brought on myself. It’s a problem that other people probably believe they have but don’t. I have to write about my day, not even my whole day, just the most emotive part of my day.

For me this is a genuinely impossible task.

Why?

Because I’m Borderline and not in recovery, in fact I am so far from recovery I am in avoidance.

The first problem this causes me is that living life in days is just a concept to me right now. It’s a concept I would love to be a reality for me but its not. I live my life in and in between episodes.

The next problem is that being Borderline means that I spend my day in a constant emotional state that would be overwhelmingly notable to a none Borderline person. When this emotion gets too much for me, which is often, I have an episode. For me an episode can last anywhere from a couple of seconds to a couple of months. Some episodes i remember fully while others I have no memory of at all. Mostly though what i have is partial and out of sequence memories. The best way I can describe this is if you imagine an episode is the alphabet and what I have is letters b,g,l,r,v and some times the way remember it is as b,l,r,g,v. This can make explaining what happened during an episode difficult at best. The episodes i hate the most though include pseudo psychosis and pseudo seizures.

Lastly recovery and avoidance.

As a person with co-morbid Borderline Personality Disorder and Adjustment Disorder the reality is that i will never be cured. These are live long illnesses and so successful management is the best i can hope for but that day is a long way off.

Trigger avoidance is a management technique which I believe is only used with Borderlines and is put in place when you are severely unwell and unable to cope. There are many reasons why a Borderline person may be put into avoidance and what avoidance means is different for everyone. Like many Borderlines avoidance for me means I can’t work, can’t be in a relationship and I don’t drink alcohol through choice though this is advised as a life long thing to avoid even when in recovery. For me though and what makes this even more difficult is that avoidance reaches into every area of my life, even those areas others see as a relaxing a escape. I can’t read a book and sometimes have to reread short pieces of writing over and over again to take it in. I rarely watch anything as this is a massive trigger for me and when i do it has to either be short and limitlessly rewindable or something I have watched a hundred times. I mostly listen to things and when I do it again has to be limitlessly rewindable and usually in small broken up pieces.

To put it simply I purposely aim to keep my days as uneventful and emotionless as possible and when that can’t be done I usually struggle to explain what happened and how I felt during it and this is why a task as simple as telling you about something that happened during my day that was emotive is a weirdly impossible and stressful task for me.

Three more tales of road rage

I thought I would share another three of the most memorable encounters that I have had with cars as a pedestrian.

Number one

I was waiting to cross a really busy road in a commercial area which has no actual crossing point for pedestrians.

Both lanes had cars moving along them.

Despite having cars behind her a woman stopped her car and waved me across the road. She did this even though the other lane of traffic was still moving. Absolutely aghast at her behaviour I shook my head at her more in disapproval than in response. She continued to wave me across but I just completely ignored her.

At no point did the cars in the other lane stop moving.

She remained stopped and waving me into the traffic until cars behind her started beeping, at which point she started driving again, but only so that she could stop next to me, roll down her window, and aggressively demand to know why I didn’t cross the road.

Appalled I pointed at the cars still moving and began, “Because-“

At which point she didn’t wait for me to finish, instead she drove off.

Number Two

I was standing side on to the road, waiting in a queue to use a cash machine in the same commercial area, when a commotion broke out across the street. (By commotion I mean banging and shouting.) I turned instinctively, as did several other people both in the queue and walking down the street, to check that I wasn’t in any danger. I couldn’t see where exactly the noise was coming from, or what was going on. As I wasn’t going anywhere anyway, I remained twisted half in the direction of the queue, half in the direction of the road, trying to work out what was going on.

This road has a couple of very large speed bumps in it, and I just happened to be standing right next to one of them.

A taxi driver approaching the speed bump stopped, even though there were cars behind him, and waved me across the road.

I called to him that I wasn’t waiting to cross. He shouted something back at me which I couldn’t hear. As I couldn’t hear him, I assumed that he also couldn’t hear me, so I gestured to the cash machine. He didn’t move.

I don’t know if the cars behind him just wanted him to move, or if they had understood what I was telling him, but a few of them started beeping at the same time.

This must have caught the attention of the commotion makers, because the banging and shouting stopped.

He rolled down the window of his taxi and began belligerently accusing me of holding everybody up. I started to call back to him that he was the one holding everybody up and that I wasn’t waiting to cross. He cut me off, I don’t remember at which point though, and continued to shout at me. I don’t remember what he was saying, but I do remember it was heavily punctuated with swearing. I waited for him to stop shouting at me, then I calmly told him I was in the queue for the cash machine. He told me I was rude and drove away.

Number three

I am convinced that this woman was actually just looking for a fight or accident, though why anybody would go looking for either of these things is a mystery to me.

As I turned the corner onto this street, I noticed straight away that at the far end of the street, there was a car stationary in a driveway with its engine running. The gates of the driveway that this car was in, had been opened outwards onto the street. This was particularly dangerous, as both the pavements and roads here were narrow, and so the gates were actually opened out into the road.

I had assumed that the car was pulling out onto the road, an that by the time I reached this house, the gates would have been closed making it possible for me to pass by unrestricted. However by the time I was only a couple of houses away the car hadn’t moved. I assumed that the driver was waiting for somebody. I was about to cross to the other pavement so I could continue passed when the car lurched backwards, stopping in between the open gates.

The movement shocked me and I stopped.

If the car was pulling out then it was going to need to mount the opposite pavement to clear the gates.

The driver who I would say was in her fifties waved me passed.

Her actions of only moving the car when I had intended to pass had left me feeling unsafe around her, so I politely called to her that I would wait fore her to finish pulling out.

She responded, “My gates.”

I didn’t know what to say to this, so I said nothing.

With a sort of angry desperation she said, “Hurry up and go.”

I just responded that I would rather wait.

To which she said. “I need to close my gates.”

Done with this bizarre and unsettling encounter, I had already decided to walk back to the other end of the road, and take the long way to where I was going.

I told her bluntly that actually I didn’t feel safe passing her car, then I turned and began walking away.

She shouted after me, “Are you ok?” and, “Is there something wrong with you?”

Then she reversed her car out of the drive way, drove it backwards across the opposite pavement, pulled out diagonally into the road and parked it just in front of me.

This was after the incident by my mums house, so I fully expected her to get out of the car and attack me, if not physically, verbally.

She stomped towards me and then passed me, heading back to her gates, which she was quite a bit away from.

I crossed the road and passed her, keeping my eye on her until I was out of the street.

A couple of minutes later a car that looked like hers passed me going far to fast and weaving in between the road lanes.

Exhaling

When I decided that I was going to start a blog, I put out an announcement telling you all about how I had a plan for a short series of autobiographical stories, road traffic accidents and incidents was not that plan.

I promise that I am not abandoning that original plan. I am however going to take a detour, and that detour is road traffic accidents and incidents.

I have no plan for this detour, so I really don’t know where it will take us, it just sort of happened , like my stories just happened. I suppose planning for my blog to go in one direction, only for it to go in another, is a fitting reflection of my life.

Im thinking of this detour as a mini series, within a mini series.

For the next few weeks I will be sharing my car accident and incident related trauma with you all, (and no, I didn’t realise I had so much car incident and accident related trauma either, until I just let myself write and it all came spilling out of me).

I have a person who is doing me a massive favour by reading my stuff before I post it, (for anonymities sake I will call them PR for proof reader.) I need somebody to read my stuff before I post it because I can’t spell or punctuate or be trusted to use paragraphs correctly, but also just to check it’s understandable. My planning is none existent. Trying to write when you have racing thoughts, about times when you had racing thoughts, that you don’t fully remember and that the memories you do have are sometimes out of order, feels like an impossible task. A story that I have wrote, that takes you five minutes to read, takes me twenty hours plus to write. This is because I write the story as I remember it, as that jumble of partial memories filled with a mixture of dozens of emotions and thoughts. Then I have to make sense of it, put it in order, cut out that excess of thoughts and emotions that I experienced both while the event was happening and while I was writing about it. Then there is the additional task of deciding what might not be appropriate to use in terms of other peoples stories, or descriptions of and information about people that might make them identifiable.

There are so many reasons that I am putting myself through this experience which is beyond challenging, but one of those reasons I have only discovered since hitting that publish button.

When I asked PR to read this upcoming Sunday’s blog post, Three more tales of road rage, their response was, “Maybe write something that isn’t about you being hit by a car. You don’t want to burn people out with it do you? You don’t want to be known as car girl do you?”

These comments were exactly the type of thing I was looking for. I hadn’t realised just how much I had written about cars. I don’t want to bore people.

I thought about it a lot.

I had never planned to share the three short stories in Three more tales of road rage. Sharing them had never crossed my mind because they had never seemed important, yet for some reason I had written about them, and as part of a series of events in my life that I had never associated them with before.

Also, I had already started working on a story that I had thought about sharing, but not as part of this series, and in the very distant future. I couldn’t explain why I had done this either. Yet, it felt important to me to continue writing it, just as important as it felt to publish the Three more tales of road rage waiting in my drafts box.

I realised that our memories are like spider webs. You can follow them strand by strand expecting to get somewhere, but end up somewhere entirely different, because the are connected in ways even we don’t understand. Some are forgotten because they just aren’t that important, while others that might seem just as unimportant somehow attach themselves to the memories we class as important, giving them the exact same power over us as the memories we class as important.

After thinking about all this I decided to run it passed PR.

Was being car girl so bad?

Is advocating for better road safety a bad thing?

Am I even advocating for better road safety? If I am, what do I want to change? What is my message?

I think I probably do want some specific form of change. I probably do have a very specific message I want to communicate. If I didn’t why would telling these stories be so important to me?

Though this need to share my stories has managed to fight it’s way out of my subconscious, my message has not.

Yet, when I spoke to PR, what actually came out was that reason I was doing this that I didn’t know existed. That by posting these stories, my stories, moments from my life that have not only made up my life but shaped it, I felt like I was exhaling a very poisonous breath of air that I had been forced to hold.

Up until this point I had never realised that the older I have gotten the more I actively avoid telling my stories, if not at all at least in full. I tone them down in an effort to make them more ordinary but I still get told, “That’s mad,” “That’s crazy,” “You should write a book,”

Now I have realised that I do this, I have also realised why I do this. Through out my life, as these things have happened, and I have been standing there with the evidence in front of me, I have been told by those around me, “You’re a liar,” “You’re a bullshit artist,” “You’re over dramatic,” “You exaggerate,” and that is somehow just as traumatic as the events that I have lived through.

As I was realising all this, I was wondering how many other people have experienced stories other people either refer to as “Crazy,” or, “Bullshit,”?

How many other people are also feeling like they must edit their lives to “normalise,” them therefore confirming this bullshit idea of what a normal life is?

Why should we be forced to hold in these festering experiences because doing so benefits other people?

Why should we care if speaking our truth makes other people uncomfortable, whether that is because it challenges their idea of what a normal life is, or scares them because it makes them fear that they too could experience trauma?

As I write this I feel like I am preaching to the choir, because if you’re reading this we’ve probably bonded over our “crazy,” life stories and thats why you are reading it.

I want you to know I’m not trying to make you feel like you should be sharing your stories, they are yours and what you decided to do with them should be your choice.

However I am done letting my stories fester inside me. I want to let them out in the world with the hope that my trauma prevents somebody else trauma. At the very least, I want to create a world where its safe to share your stories if you choose to. If I fail at those things, well at least I exhaled.

Road rage

Today I am going to tell you a story that some of you might remember me tweeting about, in bits and pieces after the incident occurred, and as the story unfolded. It is the story about the time that I, as a pedestrian, was the victim of a road rage incident.

I think that this happened in the April of 2018.

I was having a very hyper manic episode where I had managed to scrub every inch of my three bedroom house that day. When I finished it was only mid afternoon, so I decided to clean the ground floor level doors and windows on the outside of the house. I grabbed some cleaning cloths, cleaner and my keys and successfully completed the back of the house, moving swiftly onto the front. Once I was finished I searched the pocket of my jeans for my keys, but they were empty. A feeling of horror gripped me as I realised what I had done. I peered into my hallway through the large window in my front door, which automatically locked behind you when you closed it, and saw that my keys where in the lock on the inside. My mum, who only lived a ten minute walk away at the most, had a spare set of keys to my house. I automatically checked my jean pockets again, even though I had only just check them so knew they were empty, because I was panicking. A fresh wave of horror washed over me and I dashed to the living window and pressed my face up against the glass. Right on the other side of the window, next to my TV on the TV stand was my mobile phone.

I was locked out of my house with no phone, wearing just a thin pair of jeans, jumper and pumps. I didn’t want to leave my house with the keys visible in the lock but I had no choice.

As the lock on our garden gate to the back yard was so stiff that I couldn’t get it to open or closed, and I had been the only person living in the property for the last year, the gate was never actually locked. I put my cloths and cleaner in the back yard next to the wheelie bins and hurried off towards my mums.

If you look at a map of the estate where my mum lives you will see that all the roads (by roads I mean the part of the street that cars drive on) are built in concentric circles with frequent and random lines intersecting them. The roads of the street that I was on, as I could see them, were shaped like the letter J, if you flipped it over, then rotated it ninety degree so that the curve was pointing upwards. The line across the top was to my left and the curve to my right. The pavement that I was crossing from had no cars parked along it at all, however the pavement that I was crossing to did, and always does, have a wall of cars parked along the edge of it. This means the only place you can cross this particular road is on the very corner were the line across the top of the J connects to the body, and if you are crossing from the side the cars are always parked on, your view of the road is completely restricted. This street is the street that my mum lives on and her house is the second house after you cross this road.

As I approached the road I noticed two things. The first was that there was a car coming around the curve of the J. The second was that there were two teenage girls on bikes, who appeared to me to be about thirteen or fourteen, who were not only waiting to cross from behind the wall of cars, but also appeared to be watching me to see if it was safe for them to cross.

As the car came around the curve in the road it switched on its left indicator and then immediately slammed on its breaks. The car, which was too far away for me to see inside, was stopped in the middle of the narrow road with its left indicator blinking for so long, that one of the girls on the bikes started trying to see though windows of the parked cars. When she couldn’t see through them she began creeping forward into the road to try to see around the parked cars. It was at this point that the car flashed its lights and switched its indicator off. Although I assumed that the driver was telling me to cross the road I didn’t respond straight away. This was because there was no way I was crossing in front of a car after my previous experience of being hit by a car when the driver had waved me across the road, but I didn’t want to signal the car to pass if the girls were going to ride out into the road. Even if I had not had this previous experience of being knocked over, I wouldn’t have crossed in this situation, as it was obvious to me that the girls couldn’t see the car, and the driver of the car wouldn’t have been able to see the girls from where they had stopped the car. I was afraid that if I stepped out, and the girls followed my lead, the car might hit them.

This wasn’t a completely paranoid concern. I have lost count of the amount of times I have seen drivers stop, wave pedestrians across the road then start driving before the pedestrian has gotten out of the direct path of the car. I have seen this happen at random points in the road, zebra crossings and crossings were the man is still red and the lights are still green. The random point in the road situation baffles me the most, because if you are in such a rush that you start driving before the person crossing has cleared your cars path, why would you stop when you don’t have to in the first place.

The girl awkwardly bumped her bike backwards onto the pavement, her friend said something to her and she shrugged, neither of them made a move to cross, so I shook my head at the car. The driver flashed the lights again and again I shook my head. This happened several more times.

When the car started moving again it was very slowly. Rather than pass me and turn left as it had been indicating it was going to do, it pulled up along side me. The driver, who was a woman who looked to be in her forties, leaned across a child, who appeared to be about ten but was sitting in the passenger seat without a booster seat or seatbelt adjuster. Belligerently she demanded to know why I hadn’t crossed, spitting that she had been doing me a favour. I told her she hadn’t done me a favour at all as I could have crossed the road dozens of times in the time she had been flashing her lights at me. She became aggressive calling me names,most of which were names that implied I was sexually easy, a sex worker and a drug addict.

The girls, who looked anxious about what was happening, were almost across the road, so I moved out of their way and walked around the back of the car to cross the road myself. As I did her verbal abuse got worse and as I passed the car I gave her the finger.

The girls, who were now watching, were standing slightly behind the spot were I had just been standing.

The driver of the car started screaming “Did you just swear at me?” and “Did you just swear at me in front of my son?”

Done with her abuse I told her firmly to “Fuck off and leave me alone.”

She exploded.

I have no other words to describe her violent, verbal reaction.

She swung the car in a circle so erratically that the back of the car mounted the pavements almost clipping the front wheels of one of the girls bikes. They stumbled off their bikes, which they dragged beneath them, almost tripping over them, in their panic to get out of the cars path.

“I’m going to run you over!” She absolutely howled as she drove the car straight towards me.

I just watched her completely and unreasonably, unaffected by her threats. I know that my reaction was strange and incorrect, but I have borderline personality disorder, so my reactions when I am not having an episode can seem strange and incorrect to none borderline people, and I would have been having a very severe episode at this point all things considered. It certainly wasn’t that I didnt believe she was going to hit me. I did. I just wasn’t scared of being mowed down by her.

At the last second she spun the car away from me. I turned calmly and walked away, expecting her to also turn and drive away. She didn’t. She drove up along side me and told me that she was going to follow me to where I was going. I immediately froze where I was. I was not going to lead this woman to my mums house, which was now just feet away.

She pulled her car up outside my mums house and got out of it screaming “You better run!”

I didn’t.

Again it wasn’t because I didn’t believe that she was going to attack me. I did.

I just wasn’t scared of her. Also you never turn your back on someone who is threatening you and you certainly don’t try to run away. If they catch you from behind or you fall you aren’t going to be able to defend yourself properly. She came right up to me, she was so close to me that there wasn’t any space between our bodies, even though they weren’t touching, and put her face right up to mine as she continued to scream at me.

It was at this point I knew that I had to remember the registration number of her car. I moved only my eyes and only slightly. I was still watching her but now I was also repeating her car registration number silently to myself.

I remember very little of what she said to me, and I remember even less of what I said to her, though I doubt I said much as I was busy repeating the registration number over and over again in my head.

what I do remember is that when she first got right in my face she kept shouting that she was going to knock me out. This made me laugh hysterically. It was the type of manic laughter were I feel like my eyes are literally rolling about in my head. She responded to this by telling me that there must be something wrong with me. This made my laughter even more manic. There are a lot of things wrong with me, but I reckon there is more wrong with her than there is wrong with me.

At one point she said. “See those two little girls there,” this made me turn my head because I was confused, stupid I know, but luckily she didn’t assault me while I was looking away. She was pointing at the two teenage girls who looked more like women than I do. They were in my opinion young but, anything but little. She then tried to chastise me for swearing in front on them, even though she had said and done far worse in front of them and almost to them.

At some point I responded to something she said to me, however I don’t remember what it was, by looking her dead on in the face and telling her the registration number of her car, in a serious and emotionally flat tone. When she responded by commenting something along the lines of how I better make sure I remembered that number, I just repeated the number again in the exact same tone. I think this is when she got back into her car, although I might be wrong about that.

Again I expected her to drive away. Again she did not. She reversed up to me, took out her phone and began taking photographs of me.

A quick note here. It is a crime to threaten somebody in manner that would give them reasonable belief that you are going to carry out that threat. At least it is in the uk. It is most definitely a crime to grab and/or drag somebody, in the uk. I also can’t think of a single reason why you would take photographs of someone if it wasn’t to later try to encourages others to commit crimes against that person too. This is a fear I also had in the moment about why she was photographing me.

I walked calmly towards the car, telling her to delete the photographs as I did. She told me that she wouldn’t and put her phone away. I pointed to where she had put the phone and told her to delete the photographs of me again. This time she responded by grabbing my wrist. I broke her grip quickly and easily by rotating my hand. As I did I moved away from the car. Fumbling, determinedly, she managed to grab the sleeve of my thin jumper and began dragging it so that it stretched. I didn’t know if she was trying to pull me into her car, pull my jumper off me, or rip the sleeve off my jumper, I just instinctively knew that I had to stop her and acted without even thinking about it. I leaned into her car and flicked her glasses with my left hand. Panicking, she let go of my sleeve and grabbed her glasses, giving me a chance to move away from the car.

Even while she was physically assaulting me, her son who was still sat calmly beside her in the passenger seat, wasn’t paying any attention to what was happening. He wasn’t even looking in our direction. It was then that I realised that he was used to this behaviour from her, and that she must behave this way all the time.

Another exchange that I don’t fully remember followed. What I do remember of it though makes this incident even more shocking and troubling. One thing I will remember for the rest of my life is the sickening realisation of just how dangerous this woman was when she said to me, “Look at yourself, you’re about fifteen and you’re a druggy, you’re a disgrace.”

She thought that not only was I a child but that I was the same age as those teenager girls she had referred to as being ‘little girls.’

When she told me that she was going to call the police on me, I told her to do it. I meant it. She then told me “Stay here. I’m going to drive to the police station and bring the police back here to get you.”

I was pretty sure she would be coming back with people but that those people wouldn’t be the police.

I insisted that she call the police like she said she was going to.

She responded to this by finally driving away shouting, “Bye druggy,” as she went.

When she finally drove off, it was in the direction that she had been facing and, not in the direction that she had been planning to go in before the incident happened, so I waited a couple of minutes to see if she either came back on herself or drove around the block in a circle. When she did neither I walked around the curve she had disappeared behind to check that she had actually gone. She had. I did this to make sure that if she drove passed again she wouldn’t see me going to either my mums house or my mums next door neighbours. While the incident was taking place I had been hoping that my mum didn’t come out trying to help me and put herself in danger, but rather would call the police, though I expected that she would come out. Seeing as it seemed that she had done neither of those things and I couldn’t see any of her windows open, I assumed that she was not home. I knocked next door and asked to borrow a pen, which I used to write the registration number on my hand. I explained that I was locked out of my house and that my mum had a spare key, and asked could I use the spare key that they kept for my mums house. The key he gave me didn’t work but while I was trying unsuccessfully to unlock the door, my mum opened it. She had heard my attempts to get in and had come to see who was trying to get into her house.

As soon as she opened the door I burst into tears, shouting, I demanded to know why she hadn’t called the police while I was being attacked right outside her house, then without stopping to let her reply, or for breath, I asked for my spare key. When she came back with the key asking what had happened, I was in such a state that I snatched the key off her and dashed off with out a reply, running all the way home.

When I reached my house and saw that it hadn’t been broken into I calmed down slightly. Because my keys were on the inside of the lock on the front door and I was in such an emotional state , it took me a while to realise I could get into the house through the back door. The first thing I did when I eventually got inside was retrieve my keys. The second was phoning the police to report the incident. I gave the operator the cars registration number. They told me it probably wouldn’t be right but they would look and see if it was in fact a real registration number. I described the car, the woman and the child, thinking this would help them identify if it was the right person. They told me that it wouldn’t. I was still in such a mess while I was speaking to the operator that it wasn’t until I got off the phone that I began to wonder if my mums CCTV had been recording while the incident was happening.

I owed my mum both an explanation and an apology and seeing as I had to take my spare keys back to hers I headed straight back there.

After explaining what had happened to my mum she told me she must have just been ahead of me in the street as she had been the shops and hadn’t even finished putting her shopping away when she heard me trying to get into the house. However because of this the CCTV was still recording during the incident and even better it had caught parts of the incident. It had caught so much of the woman that my mum thought she not only recognised her but actually knew who she was by name.

I wont go into detail about it here, but there is a lot of gang related activity and gang related crime where my mum lives and so she became very worried that I had been target on purpose. I reassured her that I didn’t think that was the case and that I believed this was the woman’s normal behaviour.

We agreed that I should call the police again to update them. I asked them did they want the CCTV recording. They told me that they didn’t. I asked them did they want to come and watch it. They told me that they didn’t.

Because of how unwell I was feeling I stayed at my mum’s house for a few hours that night, so when I finally decided it was past time I left, it was already dark outside. The street lights by my mums house are notoriously bad, so it is almost pitch black in the streets on her estate at night. She told me that she would walk back with me in case somebody was waiting to assault me because of what had happened earlier. We got to the gate and she stopped for a second like she was considering something, then she insisted we go the long way. We had only walked past few houses when she asked me if I remembered the registration number of the car. I told her I did. She pointed to a car and asked me “Is that the car?”

I was amazed when I saw that it was. It was the woman my mum had thought it was.

It took us much longer to get to my house than it usually would. As we walked my mum told me that I should check that the photographs of me weren’t on the internet. I explained to her that this wasn’t as easy as it sounded and why and pointed out she could send people the photographs privately or even just show them to people.

Yet once I was inside and waiting for my mum to call me and let me know that she had gotten home safe, I found myself searching for this woman on social media to check that she hadn’t posted the photographs on any accounts that she had signed up for using her real information. She seemed to only have a facebook account. The photographs were not on there. What I found though did confirm that she acted this way all the time and that she was a very dangerous person. She seemed to only post two types of things. The first were posts about who, sometimes even naming the person, when and how she had verbally and/or physically assaulted them and/or threatened them. The second were reposts of news stories about wanted criminals. In these posts she encourage anybody who knew these criminals to take actions into the own hands and not always by calling the police. I was so horrified by what I saw I never looked at her facebook account again, not even to check for the photographs of me.

It took the Merseyside police over a week to get back to me. The officer told me that he had searched for the registration number that I had given them and was surprised to see it was a real plate number, but that he truly had believed there was no way it was the vehicle involved in the incident. In his opinion it was impossible for anybody to remember a plate number.

He said regardless he had followed up the report. That he phoned her several times and every time left voicemails she didn’t respond to. He said he was planning to close the report due to this, when he had to go to a house around the corner from the address listed for the car, so he decided that he “Might as well just knock while he was in the area,” but that he hadn’t expected anybody to answer. He said he was surprised when she answered and even more surprised when she admitted that it was her and commented on what an honest lady she was. He said she had promised him that she had never done anything like this before and would never do anything like it again. He told me that she could have just denied it and that would have been that as “I had no evidence that it was her.” When I asked what was going to happen now he told me nothing, that the report had been closed. When I expressed my concern over the fact that she had assaulted me and nothing was being done about it, he told me that he had made her aware that if she did do anything like this again she, “Might get into trouble.” He then told me if you don’t want somebody you’re arguing with to grab you don’t get close enough to them so that they can grab you. He told me to forget about it now, it was just a case of road rage and road rage happens.

There you go guys, that is this weeks story, the moral of which, if we take the police officer from this story’s advice, appears to be if you are the victim of a crime just forget about it.

The second time I was hit by a car

Today I am going to tell you the story about the second time I was hit by a car.

It was around lunch time and as I was working the late shift I was on my way to work. It was my first work day of that week so, I think, it was either a Monday or a Tuesday. I was waiting at the bus stop nearest my house, the position of which is poorly planned as it’s located just behind a curved corner in the road. This meant that if you were waiting for one of the two buses that stopped there, you had no choice but to stand on the very edge of the pavement next to the bus stop, because if nobody was getting of the bus, and you didn’t see it to signal it in time, it would fly passed the bus stop. On this particular day I was unable to stand next to the bus stop either to the left or right, and so was forced to stand to the left of the bus stop further from the curve and in the middle of the pavement. This was because several cars were parked up on the pavement to the right of the bus stop, closer to the curve in the road, and to the left of the bus stop was a large hole that filled with water when it rained, which it had been earlier that morning. This hole had been there since I started using this bus stop a couple of years earlier, and because of how busy the narrow road got cars parked up on the pavement regularly. My point being that neither of these things were unusual, but did mean that I couldn’t see around the curve in the road.

It’s been so many years now that I can’t remember the make, model, or even colour of the car. All I remember is that the car was identical to the car that a woman I used to work with owned. How do I know this, and why would she do what happened next, is an entire story of it’s own, and it’s a story that I am probably going to tell you another day. Still, whenever I tell or think about this story, I wonder whether it was her, which, I shouldn’t have to. I should know if it was her, because it should have been dealt with. I shouldn’t have had to worry for months after this happened whether I was going to be targeted again. If it was her and something else had happened I am certain she would also have gotten away with that too. Even more so to this day I shouldn’t have to worry that if I am hit by a dangerous driver there will be no consequences for them,and that they will be able to continue driving dangerously. I certainly shouldn’t have to worry that I could be charged financially and/or criminally for the damage done to that car as it hit me.

The car was travelling at a normal speed for this road as it came around the corner, but in between the corner and the bus stop, which was a very short distance, it accelerated rapidly. The cars speed was so fast that as it mounted the pavement and headed straight at me, that even with my severe racing thoughts, all I had time to think, was that the driver had lost control of the vehicle and that it was going to hit me. At the last second though the car spun wildly away from me, entered the hole in the pavement and sent the dirty rain water inside it up over me and down onto me. As it bumped off the pavement back onto the road, it didn’t slow down, but instead continued at a dangerous speed until it disappeared around another bend in the road.

Shocked and shaking, I waited for the paralysing panic attack, that I was sure was about to cause me to melt into a quivering puddle, but it never came. Instead I suddenly became aware of how soaking wet and freezing cold I was. Also my skin felt sort of gritty, like when you have wet sand on you.

I was seething.

I was thinking logically and clearly enough to realise that I wasn’t in a fit state both physically and mentally to continue on my way to work like nothing happened. However I was not thinking logically and clearly enough that I understood that just changing my clothes wasn’t going to fix that. I crossed the road and heaed home, phoning my then boyfriend as I walked. When he answered I shocked myself. I had expected to launch into a rant about how I was soaking wet and going to be late for work. Instead I started sobbing hysterically and babbling about how a car had just come centimetres from hitting me, and how I had been sure I was going to die. I was so overwhelmed emotionally that I began to hyperventilate and my limbs felt like jelly. I stopped walking and waited to see if the looming panic attack got the best of me.

As it was around lunch time in a mixed residential and commercial area there were a lot of pedestrians on the street but not a lot of cars. I had one narrow main road broken into two parts to cross at a sort of unofficial, official crossing. What I mean by this is that there is a triangle shaped island before the round about to allow people to cross, which is a busy crossing point, but which has no zebra crossing or traffic lights etc set up, and the cars have right of way. There were no cars on the round about so I crossed to the island and waited as there was a car approaching the round about. Again I cant remember the make, model, or the colour of the car, however I do remember that it was in no way similar to the car that splashed me. What I remember of the driver is that she appeared to be in her late fifties or early sixties and had dark brown hair that was going grey. I think that she was wearing glasses. I was not wearing glasses as, at this point, I only wore my glasses while at work. The car slowed and stopped as it reached the island. After a long pause of about a minute the driver waved me across.

In hindsight I truly do think that this was a weird and unnecessary thing to do. It would have been much quicker for both me and her if she had just continued past me like she should have done. I won’t blame my upset for the fact that I crossed though as lots of people, at least here, stop and wave people across all the time. Since this happened I have lost count of how many drivers have behaved similarly by stopping and waving me in front of their one tonne plus machine on wheels, only to become belligerent when I have refused to cross in front of them. I will definitely be telling you about the most extreme time this happened to me in a later post.

My last memory before I was hit is of me actually saying to my then boyfriend, “…She’s waving me across,” as I stepped off the island and onto the tarmac.

Then I was laying across the windscreen and front of the car completely dazed. It’s weird what things you do actually remember after a traumatic event, especially years later. I remember that my left arm was up against the windscreen with my face on top of it. I remember my legs dangling off the bonnet. I remember the overpowering smell of my own perfume, and my handbag crushed beneath the bonnet and my body which was twisted unnaturally.

Later every time I saw my bruised arm, which was all the time, I would think about how easily that could have been my face. I would think back to what happened and know without memory that I had heard the car spring to life and had automatically turned towards the sound. That on seeing the car speeding towards me I’d only had enough time to use the hand that was already raised to shield my face. That I had either rolled or bounced hitting the car several times before I eventually landed in that unnatural position. I would find the bottle of perfume cracked as well as several make up containers. I can tell you all these years later that these years later that the perfume was Diesels Fuel For Life, but not what handbag it was or if i still own it.

We stared at each other through the window for what felt like an eternity, but could only have been a few seconds, before she spoke. I couldn’t hear her, so she must have been mumbling, but it looked like she was telling me to ‘Get off.” I don’t know how many times she said it, as she was saying it quickly over and over again, before she awkwardly leaned forward and banged on the window by my head. This wasn’t the first time that I had been hit by a car, and something about her behaviour, which reminded me of the man who had hit me years before, told me she was going to run. I had visions of her taking off with me still on the bonnet, and me rolling off and falling beneath the wheels. This jolted me into action.

I don’t know how I managed to get off the car but I remember standing in front of the car feeling like it had been a real struggle.

We were still staring at each other. I don’t remember what she did or said but I remember the difiance that it sparked in me. I tried to shake my head in response which is when I became aware of the awful pain in my head and neck. I tried to raise my left hand, instinctively recalling that’s where my phone was but I couldn’t move it. I couldn’t feel it. I know that my right hand was empty, because I used it to take my phone out of my left hand, and lift it up so that I could see it without moving my head. I don’t remember if my phone was broken, or if I needed to buy a new one because of this, but I don’t think I did. I think having to replace my phone due to damage would be a detail I remembered. Also I was shocked that the phone was still working, and that the call I had been on wasn’t still connected, which slight disorientated me. I slowly and awkwardly managed to dial 999 with the same hand that I was holding my phone in.

Cars were already queuing behind the car that had hit me.

When the 999 operator answered I began shouting hysterically about how “she had hit me with her car on purpose.”

I can’t remember whether I was transferred to another operator or not, but the operator who responded to my slightly calmed down explanation of how the driver had waved me across the road then hit me with her car, did so with disbelief. Regardless, they got my location, informed me that both the police and paramedics were on their way, then ended the call.

By the time I got off the phone with the 999 operator, which had to be within about three minutes of me being hit if my boyfriend was telling the truth, cars in the queue were already beeping their horns. One car even pulled into the other lane and drove down the wrong side of the road so that it could enter the round about through the exit lane.

Pedestrians began to get involved. They shouted at me from the pavement to get out of the road. One pedestrian even came up to me to try to drag me out of the road, which could have worsened the damage done to me when I was hit, but I began screaming at them not to touch me. They, I think it was a man, backed off, but not much. I was screaming that I wasn’t moving, that she had hit me with her car on purpose, and that if I moved she would run.

At this point she got out of her car and approached me, telling me that she hadn’t hit me on purpose, that it had been an accident.

I didn’t move. I had no intention of moving. I growled at her that, she was just a stupid cow then.

She got back into her car but didn’t shut the door.

That’s the scene my boyfriend came upon. Me in the road crying. A stranger still trying to grab me. The driver that hit me watching from her car with the door open. He ran to me and asked me what happened.

Later he told me that he had heard the car speed towards me and hit me. He said he tried unsuccessfully to get a response from me. Believing that it was the same car involved in both incidents and fearing that I might be dead he immediately raced to the scene.

The stranger who had been trying to drag me out of the road swiftly disappeared.

My boyfriend approached the car and she shut the door.

He told me later that he asked her what happened. She told him that I hadn’t been paying attention to the road because I was on my phone and that I had stepped out in front of her moving car. He tried to explain to her that he knew she wasn’t telling the truth because it was him who I had been talking on the phone to. He told her that I had told him that she had stopped her car in a weird place suddenly and that I wondered if she was ok, and that there was a good minute before I mentioned that she was waving me across the road. She stuck to her story. My boyfriend, who at the time worked for a solicitor processing road traffic accident claims, explained that this meant she was at fault as the motorist, because she saw me and apparently assessed me as a potential hazard yet failed to act appropriately. She then changed her story to something resembling the truth but said that she just nudged me with her bumper. She would as any liar does, change her version of events several more times, probably to try to get out of whatever blame or trouble she felt she was facing at that particular time.

When the merseyside police eventually arrived at the scene, they asked me to go across to the residential side of the street, which i did. They then asked the driver who hit me with her car to pull her car over to the residential street quite a bit further down, in order to let the traffic clear. Or rather, so the queue of witnesses, who hadn’t given statements, could disappear. They did a similar thing with the groups of pedestrians, again witnesses, who hadn’t given statements.

The only two officers who had responded, one male and one female, then began questioning me about what happened. They had at his point left the driver whose details they hadn’t taken alone, and out of sight because of where she had to park, meaning that if she wanted to she could have just drove away. When I got to the point where “I stepped off the pavement and she hit me with her car,” I was stopped by the male officer. He told me sternly that I shouldn’t say “she” hit me, rather, ‘the car” hit me, because by using the word she I was making an accusation. He continued on that she might not be responsible for the accident, as she might have a medical condition or be on medication, which caused the accident.

I have two problems with this. The first being that she did hit me with her car. The car was not driving itself, she was in control of the vehicle, therefore it’s not an accusation, just a statement. Also, as though I am going to be capable of carefully analysing the possible interpretations of me using the word she while in the state I was in. The second being the automatic and unquestionable dismissal of the drivers responsibility due to a medical condition or medication. I would like to make it clear that if the driver didn’t know that she had a medical condition, and was not experiencing symptoms that would have given her reason to question that she might be a danger behind the wheel, then I completely agree that she wouldn’t have been responsible for the accident. Nor do I believe that having a certain medical condition or being on certain medication should automatically mean that you should not be allowed to drive. I appreciate that certain medical conditions and medication effect everybody differently.

My mum knows a lady whose husband died of a heart attack while driving. Once he was dead the car not only continued driving but picked up speed and mounted the pavement. Luckily the car hit a tree head on which stopped it before it could hit any pedestrians. He had no prior history, or symptoms of heart problems. If he had just passed out or lost control of the car because of this heart attack, but lived, and because of this he had hit a pedestrian, I personally believe that he wouldn’t be to blame.

However if the driver knows that they have a medical condition or symptoms that would make them a potential danger behind the wheel, then their choice to get behind the wheel is a dangerous one and one that they made knowingly.

I worked with a man who suffered with diabetes. (I have actually worked with a lot of men who suffered with diabetes and if you are one of them and you are reading this, then I can tell you that its probably not you.) This man suffered with what he called hypos. (Sorry if this is not the correct term for them, I am trusting him as the sufferer to know what they are called.) He regularly missed his medication and continued to drive. He would laugh about how he suffered several hypos while driving which had caused him to drive dangerously. If he had hit somebody because of this then he definately would have been to blame.

Also he used to make these carefree admission in front of another college who was a special constable.

The male officer then went to question the driver. The female officer stayed with me and my boyfriend to wait for the ambulance. while we were waiting, she pointed out that I was soaking wet and asked me at what point, and where I had been laying in the road. I explained to her what had happened with the previous car. She responded that the actions of that driver were illegal, and if they got caught doing that they would “Get in trouble.” I pointed out that the incident happened outside a row of shops, a doctors surgery and a nursery, so there probably would be CCTV of the incident. I asked to log a report about it. She told me no. Assuming that this was because she was only here to deal with this particular incident I asked should I phone up later to report it and again she told me no. This time however she gave a reason. She said that the police really wouldnt investigate such a petty crime. When I pointed out that the car had mounted the pavement, almost hit me, and was going over the speed limit, she said that this didn’t make it a more serious crime.

Eventually the ambulance arrived. The paramedics asked me how I was feeling. Among other things that I now don’t remember, I told them that I had pain in my head, neck and left shoulder. I told them how right after I had been hit I couldn’t feel my left arm, hand and fingers, but how now I had terrible pins and needles in my fingers that were starting to spread into my hand. I was told that these particular issues could be a sign of brain and/or spine damage.

Horrified I fired off desperate questions.

What sort of damage?

How bad?

Would it be permanent?

They couldn’t tell me.

They insisted that they needed to put my head in this awful support and made me lay down on a stretcher, so that if I did have spine damage I didn’t make it worse. Then I was rushed to A&E with the siren on.

While I was waiting to be assessed for spine and/or brain damage at the hospital a male police officer arrived to speak to me. I don’t remember what the male police officer from the scene looked like, and I only remember that the police officer who came to the hospital had red hair, so i only know that they were not the same person because of the conversation that followed. He told me that the driver of the car had accused me of trying to smash her window with an umbrella, by banging it against the windscreen, while I was on top of the car. Not only that. He told me that she had accused me of repeatedly screamed at her that she was a stupid cow and that during this outburst she had genuine reasons to fear that I was going to drag her out of the car.

I don’t know if I had an umbrella with me that day, but it certainly wasn’t in my hand when I was hit. I was holding the phone in my left hand and my right hand was empty. Also smashing something your laying on top if seems like an impalement risk.

I won’t claim that I didn’t bang on the window while I was on top of the car, because my memory of the event is obviously patchy and foggy at best. However if I did, I certainly wouldn’t have been trying to smash her window. The only reason I can think of that I would have banged on her window would be in response to her banging on the window against my head.

I did call her a stupid cow, but only once.

Her ‘genuine’ reasons for fearing that I was going to drag her out of the car are all purposeful lies. I know this without even knowing what those reason are (the police refused to tell me these reasons, probably because they didn’t ask for them) and this is why; it was obvious that I couldn’t move one arm, that the other hand was full and that I was in terrible pain. I was struggling to move and when the man was trying to grab me I couldn’t raise my left hand to try to stop him, I was literally wiggling away. I had called the police and knew they were on the way. Attacking somebody when you know the police are on their way is a level of stupid that I really don’t think any person is. The same can be said for the fact that there were dozens of people, witnesses, watching what was happening. She wasn’t even in the car when I called her a stupid cow, she had gotten out of the car and was approaching me. If she thought there were genuine reasons I was going to drag her out of the car at any point I’m sure the grab happy stranger would have eagerly seized the excuse to restrain me.

The police officer told me that I was very lucky that there was no damage to her car, because if there was damage to her car, I would be being charged both financially and criminally. I asked them had they been to the church and shops that this happened outside of, to see if there was CCTV that proved that what she was claiming was true. He told me they hadn’t. I asked him would they please go to the church and shops that this happened in front of, to see if there was CCTV to prove that she was lying. He told me they wouldn’t.

The police had turned up at the hospital to tell a very distressed and injured woman, who was currently waiting to see if she had brain or spine damaged and was worried she might be paralysed for life, that she was lucky that she wasn’t being charged financially and criminally for damage to the car that hit her, but only because there was no damage, without evidence or witnesses, to support the claims of the driver that hit her.

When I pointed out that any hypothetical damage done to the car likely would have been caused when she hit me with the car, he told me that she, the driver, who hit me, would have told them what damage was done when she hit me and what was malicious damaged caused by me after she hit me.

Put simply what this police officer said, is that you can be hit by a car so hard that it does damage to both your body and the car, but as long as they have the drivers word that it was malicious damage done by you, after they hit you, thats enough for them to charge you financially and criminally for the damage done to that car as it hit you.

When I asked if anything was going to be done about her dangerous driving, after all she shouldn’t have stopped how or where she did, and she certainly shouldn’t have waved me across the road. He told me that wasn’t dangerous driving and that she had done me a favour by letting me cross the road because I was upset. He told me that she was a nice lady doing a good deed. when I asked how what she had done wasn’t dangerous, after all she had hit me with her car, the police officer who up until this point seemed to have all the details they had been bothered to take, but not verify, told me that he didn’t know and couldn’t tell me even if he did, because he didn’t deal with road traffic accidents. When I questioned why he was dealing with this if he didn’t deal with road traffic accidents, he told me that he dealt with antisocial behaviour and that he was here to speak to me about how terribly I had treated this poor woman who had just suffered a nasty shock, because of a traumatic incident.

Later when I called the police to follow up on what was going to happen in relation to her hitting me, I was told nothing, that it was just an unfortunate accident. When I asked them how the accident had come to happen, how she had come to hit me with her car, they told me that she couldn’t remember and that they believed her, because she gave several different versions of what happened while trying to remember. So by her own admission she lied. She openly lied about how it was that she came to hit me, and yet they acted without evidence and without witnesses and sent a police officer to give me an unofficial telling off, while I was in hospital waiting to find out if I would ever be able to move my left arm again.

Luckily I wasn’t permanently injured and didn’t have either spine or brain damage. However I did suffer emotionally. I was put on diazepam for a bit, which didn’t help me (because at the time I was still undiagnosed with my borderline personality disorder and my adjustment disorder), so I just had to and still have to deal with the effects that this has had on both my mental health and life.

I also had to deal with a couple of days of blackmail from my then boyfriend because of this. He had taken photographs of me on the stretcher, soaking wet, wearing that awful neck. support and was threatening to put them in facebook. Eventually I couldn’t take the blackmail any more as it was awful and refused to comply with his demands, so he posted them on facebook. I felt humiliated. However I no longer care about these photos and have no idea if they are still on facebook or if he still has them saved somewhere.

Though I don’t think she hit me on purpose, I do believe she is a dangerous driver and should have at least had to take some sort of re education program in driving, and be made to go to the doctor to get assessed for any medical conditions that could have caused it and to have any medication reviewed, before being allowed to drive again. I don’t believe she was a good samaritan doing a good deed, i think she was a nosy woman having a gawk at the soaking wet girl crying and having a mild panic attack. I think she is disgusting and pathetic for lying about somebody she had injured, but don’t know really what she had wanted to happen to me. Her car wasn’t damaged and she hadn’t been assaulted.

I on the other hand had been physically assaulted, twice in one day, and the people responsible didn’t even get a telling off, but I did. I will never understand why the police jumped through hoops to defend and sympathise with a woman who had just hit somebody with her car and why why they again jumped through hoops to find reasons to tell me the person who had just been hit off. To this day I still think about these question. I am still deeply depressed by and traumatised by it and its made even worse by the fact that I know no none of my questions about this event will ever be answered.

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Some photos of my injuries after the second time I was hit by a car

A statement about this week

Don’t worry guys this isn’t this weeks blog post. I was going to do a normal tweet but when I hit a thousand words I decided to just put it up on here and if you want to read it you can

I havent been much fun this week or over the last couple of months.

Its been another heavy week on top of the heavy few months I have had.

It started with the police playing stupid games with me over my subject access request. It had been over a month since I put the request in, so I emailed them asking what was going on with it, to which they responded they had sent me the information I asked them for. They hadn’t. They responded by giving me only three heavily redacted transcripts of the dozens of calls to and from the police over the July/August. No body cam footage. They said they had no body cam footage. I had an email from someone else at the police telling me he had body cam footage. They tried to say they just couldn’t find it. Im now in possession of what seems to be just a portion of body cam footage. I would love to know what they are hiding behind their redactions and edits, as what I can see only proves that they were not on the night in question or since, concerned for my welfare or doing anything for my own good. What I have shows an entitled heavy handed uncaring and power drunk approach towards a mentally unwell woman who is classed as vulnerable by doctors etc.

Its been week two of my housing officer ignoring my emails after he to tried to play games with me over my subject access to them too. Sending me copies of a couple of letters I sent to them and their response.

College offered me very dangerous support and denied my appropriate support request which their now trying to go back on and say it was all a miss understanding after I said I wanted to complain.

My complaints to twitter over what I believe is a very dangerous person who will do someone emotional harm they wont come survive has just been ignored. I missed a lesson because of insomnia.

This is all on top of my normal housing and mental health issues. Noisy neighbours, banging on windows, people insistently ringing my intercom, vermin in the yard even during the day just feasting on rubbish and now scratching at the rat grids over my vents as they try to get back into my flat, my on going battle with mould and the absolute chaos in the car park etc etc etc; feeling heavily depressed, hallucinating the most distressing of which have been the flashing blue and red lights in the car park altho i dont think police cars have red lights on but in my mind they do but at least its an indication that I might be hallucinating, etc etc etc again.

Then theres the letters the housing want to PROVE I am in fact someone who has tried committing suicide before which arrived friday and which drag up my previous assault and abuse issues. Its like I will never be able to move on PROVE your not a lair to the court, PROVE your not a liar to people who don’t matter who are noisy busy bodies PROVE your not a liar even though you’ve already provided PROOF at least a dozen times just to get the decent treatment by official agencies that EVERYBODY should get.

I have an equally heavy but bizarre real life story for tonight blog post for you all. Its ready to go and will be up at nine.

I just wanted to say two things to all my twitter followers really-

Firstly thank you for your continued love and support. You are wonderful and I continue to appreciate you all and know I am very lucky to be blessed with knowing such a wonderful group of people, and the fact that that group of people just keeps on growing fills me with faith that the world might actually be more good than bad. I like you too prefer it when we are all experiencing good times together and sharing laughs and art work etc. I can’t wait for the day where I am filling your feed with my usual doodles etc but even more a time when I might be sharing some real work because I have the time, money and space to make it.

Secondly, again thank you for sticking with me through my dark times. I will keep fighting for me and for you. I know that injustice is something we have all faced in some form or another and I am passionate about changing that. This week I have felt like I have been fighting everything and everyone and that the world has been against me… Today this thought terrified me… because for all my faults and vulnerabilities I know that I am an exceptionally strong person if only because of my specific combination of mental health problems and I am also a fighter… But I am also thankful that I can fight and I will. Maybe I am delusion. Maybe I can’t change the world but I am certainly not going to give up because of one tiring week.

XOXO LOL

With love

Pixie

Welcome To The Psychotic Girls Guide To Surviving The Human Apocalypse

Announcement

Hi all,

I have promised to do hundreds of things for you since I joined twitter almost five years ago. Lots of these things have been forgotten, lost in my fast moving stream of tweets. Some of these things I did start to do, but had to stop due to the severe decline in my mental health and my awful living conditions. These are things like selling prints of my art work and making origami tutorials. Although I do hope to restart these things once my living conditions change and my mental health improves slightly, I unfortunately don’t see this happening any time soon.

Others though, some of which predate twitter, such as my novel and novella, bob on the water never disappearing but also never moving closer. Today I realised that all these things are writing related, such as my none fiction book, my auto biography and a mental health blog.

Probably not surprisingly to you I have seriously wanted to write for a career at points in my life. I mean I’m borderline I have wanted to do a lot of creative jobs. Probably surprisingly to you though, when I was a very young child I wanted to write fiction so much I would write stories, send them to publishers and then weirdly look forward to receiving their rejection letters.

I’m not a gifted writer, I’m probably not even an ok writer and I don’t think I am a great or even ok writer either. I know I could never have used my writing skills alone to get a bachelors degree in writing, the way I used my art skills alone to get a bachelors degree in art, even though i didn’t have enough G.C.S.E’s to even take an A level.

I have been trying to write though lately. After all my psychiatrist tells me I need hobbies and I need to invest time in my future while I wait to move and then wait again for my mental health to improve to the point where I am ready for therapies. I have even been focusing my efforts on one thing and one thing only, my novel. However several things have happened in such a short space of time that I can’t help connecting the dots and seeing a giant arrow pointing me in the direction of starting a blog. Yes, I know nobody blogs anymore, but you know that I don’t care what other people are doing. First things at my flat ramped up to the point I took it all public and then the police almost literally smashed their way into the public part of my life too. Finally I got accepted on to an English Language G.C.S.E. I have decided to give blogging a go, after all I need to practice my writing skills and currently I wan’t to do something that will shed light on how terribly the mentally ill are treated in the UK if not also the rest of the world and begin to try to start to change things. I have very short term plans that I hope to make into long term plans. I have nothing written yet and so I will be posting my first piece next week. I hope to start by writing a small series of autobiographical pieces with a common thread that will all come together to paint a picture that will hopefully explain a lot. I plan on posting every Sunday evening at nine o’clock UK time and hope to see you all there.