Leave Me Alone

My case manager keeps calling me.  I’ve been avoiding her for the last few weeks because I just can’t fake it anymore, and I’m afraid if she sees how bad things are, I’ll get hospitalized.  That whole agency is really enthusiastic about hospitalizing people, and I feel like I can’t trust any of them.

I mean, they haven’t exactly done anything that would inspire trust.  This case manager’s not quite as bad as the last one, but she’s still pretty much useless.  The sum total of what she’s done for me in the months I’ve been seeing her is that she brought me one housing application and took me grocery shopping once.  Pretty fucking impressive case management, huh?  I still have no therapist.  I’m still constantly broke, behind on all my bills, with no hope of ever catching up.  I’m still effectively housebound.  But hey, she took me grocery shopping once, so clearly they’re rendering highly effective mental health services.

I want to pick up the phone the next time she calls and scream, “Stop fucking calling me!  You’re not going to help me, so just leave me the fuck alone!”  I want to lash out.  I want to make her hurt because I hurt worse, and instead of helping like she’s supposed to, she just leaves me to suffer alone.  I mean, she’s never once asked about my symptoms or how I’m coping.  Nothing beyond the rote, “Hey, how’s it going?” when I first see her.

Eventually I’m going to have to answer the phone or she’ll send the cops after me.  That would trigger the hell out of me, and I’d probably end up in the hospital.  Of course, if I try to terminate, she could use that as “proof” that I’m refusing necessary treatment (hah, what fucking treatment?) and get the cops to drag me off to the hospital.  It feels like I’m screwed no matter what I do.  I just can’t keep seeing her and acting like everything’s okay, knowing that if I said things weren’t okay, the only additional services I’d get would be hospitalization.  I can’t see her because I just want to scream at her.

I don’t know why I’m so angry at her.  I don’t like the person it turns me into: it makes me want to hurt her, to make her cry.  I don’t like the part of me that makes me want to take out my pain on other people.  There’s no reason for me to be this angry at her.  I mean, I don’t even want to hurt my father like this anymore, and the things he did to me were far worse.  I want to destroy this nice but useless woman, and I don’t even understand why I hate her this much.

So far past done with this

In the ongoing saga of My Case Manager Is Fucking Incompetent…

Today I was supposed to meet with her and my new case manager at 1:00.  At 12:15, while I was in the basement doing laundry, she called to see if we could move the meeting to 2:00.  I called back, but no one picks up.  No one ever picks up in that office, so I don’t know what the hell you’re supposed to do if you’re having a crisis or something.  So I left her a voicemail.

She didn’t show up at 2:00.  Or 2:15.  Or 2:30.  Or 3:00.  Finally I wrote it off and took a nap instead, because fuck that shit.

She doesn’t work on Fridays, so she won’t get my voicemail tomorrow and reschedule.  I’m not convinced the woman even knows how to check her voicemail, judging from past experience.  She’ll probably call me in another week and ask why I never called her back.  She won’t give me her cell phone number because OMG BOUNDARIES, and no one picks up at the office.  So how the fuck am I supposed to get in touch with her?

I’m so sick of this bullshit.  This is supposed to be helpful?  I was bullied/threatened into getting services from DMH–I didn’t want to deal with them after the way they’d treated me when I was trying to apply for services.  But it was get services from DMH or go to the hospital.  But this shit doesn’t even qualify as services.  I see ICM maybe twice a month.  She doesn’t check voicemails or return phone calls.  She goes on vacation without telling me.  When she does actually contact me, she constantly changes appointment times, and she almost always shows up late for appointments and then laughs it off.  She insists my diagnosis is something other than what it actually is, and she has virtually no education on my diagnosis.  I’m not convinced she has education on much of anything; she doesn’t even have an associate’s degree, and I know much more about the DSM than she does.  She has no understanding of what it’s like to live in poverty.  She has no idea what it’s like to live with a severe, disabling, chronic illness.  She isn’t interested in learning what my life is like. 

Pretty much all she does is show up sporadically to take me grocery shopping.  And while I go grocery shopping, she goes clothes shopping, and I have to sit outside with my melting groceries and wait for her to show back up.  I have no crisis support.  She’s not helping me manage any of my problems.  She’s not helping connect me with resources in the community.  She’s not doing fucking anything to help me.  She doesn’t even ask how I’m doing beyond the cursory, “Hey, how’s it going?” when I first see her.  She has no idea that my depression is getting worse because she doesn’t fucking ask, and I’m not gonna blurt it out in the middle of fucking Whole Foods.

I think what really bothers me is I feel like no one there gives a fuck about me.  If I killed myself, they wouldn’t even realize for a month.  (Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill myself.)  No one would, really.  I don’t have friends anymore.  My roommates might notice once I started to smell, but that’s it.  There’s no one left in real life who gives a fuck about me.  That’s a really painful thing to realize.

Happy Dance Time (or something)

Idiot Case Manager is leaving the program I’m in!  I won’t have to deal with her for a whole lot longer!

It was really hard not to act excited when she told me.  Really hard.  It was even harder because she seemed to think I’d be upset about it, and that made it hard not to start laughing.

Then she basically tried to push me out of the program, which is fucked up on a number of levels.  I know I seem high-functioning, but the last few weeks, my life has been falling apart more and more.  I really need support right now, not that I’ve been getting that from ICM.  She doesn’t even ask about my life, beyond, “Hi, how are you?”  She’s done nothing to gain my trust, so of course I just tell her I’m fine.

I really hope I get someone better when she leaves.  I need someone who actually knows what they’re doing and is actually going to try to help.  I really, really need someone right now.