Yeah, do you go to support group meetings and things like that?

I do go. I do go, because I do feel it’s necessary, because I’ve understood that it is important I keep my mind and my wellbeing is also important. But I will not make it absolute, because absolute is her. But I do understand that if I want to be doing a good job, I must first see to myself. And I do see to myself. Once she’s asleep at night, I do go for a movie now and then, a Hindi movie, because I’m so homesick, and I do enjoy seeing scenes of India and all that, hearing my own Hindi language spoken. So all that, you do find, -you must look after yourself. I think that’s another message to the carers, look after yourselves, because your wellbeing is vital to your job. Without your wellbeing, where is you and where is the person you are caring for, so that is there.

And since I started taking antidepressant, I’m a bit more me, I feel me, -being reasonably confident, although I am not very confident to deal with mental health issues. I found one place I can actually enjoy doing things is the working with the support worker, with this service, the amount of help I got, I received, I’m trying to feed it back to this service, and to share with other carers. And especially I do some voluntary work for BME community, that makes me feel worth for myself, and I can see me, what I’m doing, that environment, so semi formal. But it links to my previous career working with, as a team, and lots of different people come to sit at the table, and making a discussion, and having brainstorms, and trying to improve the situation by team. I found I really do enjoy it. Although it’s not something you can say hobby, or fun thing to do, but I would rather do it instead of going to gym, or swimming pool, or having social time, because again another problem is about friendship, it’s a bit difficult if you are in the situation.

People often said to me You should have your own time, don’t neglect yourself, why don’t you have a bit, time away from him. But that is only possible to do if he is stable, but because I’m only one carer in the household, if he is not well I can’t leave him alone. This point is not very well taken into account, still some people say, just leave him, and if anything happens after you leave home, that’s it you have to, from that point you have to take the situation. But I can’t really do that, because simply, -OK I went out for a day out with other carers, I had a good enjoyment, but then coming back home, -if he ended up killing himself, that’s not something you can say. You had time off, and coming to see something, -the worse situation, I don’t think that’s the case at all. That’s why I’m saying about the family support is also very important. Those circumstances should be taken into account by professionals, if the carer is living with mentally ill people, and if the household is a very small number of people, then that should be taken into account. And you can’t just keep suggesting to carers, taking time off. Offering is one thing, but also understanding the circumstances is important I think.

And a colleague at the mental health services used to be tremendously helpful because again, although working within the services, it’s surprising how infrequent the opportunity there is to open your heart to whatever is going on. And, you know, I just try to work in normal hours and then, -although I, as I said, I’m very fortunate. I have flexibility in my job so I can work my own hours in the way, you know, as long as they’re reasonable. This colleague of mine used to.

She used to ask me, because we were quite close, she used to ask me all the time how my brother was. And I could cry to her, I could talk to her about incidences and it used to be very helpful. And so for a period of three or four years it was, that was extra support, you know, from this colleague. She left unfortunately, but just as well because sometimes I just want to be normal really. I just want to, not be wanting to talk about him all the time anyway, but I do. I think parents always talk about their children, and I always talk about my brother.

So if there are problems, when they occur, how do you get solutions to them?

In terms of solutions I have to help her understand.

For yourself? How do you do it for yourself?

For myself, it does feel, if I say anything with my heart that’s it. After that what ever happens. Its in my luck (naseeb).

Who do you talk to with your heart? Yourself or someone else?

Myself, I do not talk to anyone else. Myself. I talk to myself and listen to myself. If I say it to someone else. You know what it’s like in our community that word gets out wrong?

So you would not be able to talk about it?

No, not able to even if I wanted to because in every family, people think differently. Families don’t have the same thinking. Your thinking will be different to mine. Her sister, father or mother or anyone else within it, their thinking will be different. It’s not the same, you can talk to one and then another one. What is the benefit of it, nothing is there? Benefit of talking? Because I can handle it so why not? ‘In myself I have the strength to keep going.

Where has that strength come from?

It has to be taken. The strength comes from my mind- I am speaking according to my mind- I am saying- my thinking is- that in our life if we cannot do something good for someone- why do something bad? To make my life good why should I spoil someone else’s life by bringing unhappiness into it? As a human being we have no right to do that. If you have got married, then it’s a part of your family. Then you have to have the strength of character -any circumstances you have to bear (address the challenges) it. If you can do this- it is better. That’s it.

But I’ve been trying to move out of home and can’t really afford to, and just try and figure out what I want to do with my life and things like that. Sometimes I feel like I have to live for the three of them plus myself, you know, I feel like a big super hero and a lot of my stuff used to centre around, I need to earn enough money so that I can build a hospital or I can build purpose built accommodation for my brother, my sister and my dad so I know they’re OK because they all live in crappy council flats which I really don’t think help.

I just have to, yeah, accept that I am powerless over their stuff. I can ask my dad about his medication and he can tell me the truth if he wants to. And my sister, she can do her own thing, my brother can do his own thing but I know wherever I go that, that’s always going to be there and it would be nice to just be a sister or a daughter and not have to be their, sort of caretaker, it would be nice to not know so much about what’s going on in people’s lives, you know, but I live at home with my mum at the moment and I don’t really see that happening until I move out.

So this now, my dad being, this is the first time with my dad being in hospital that I’ve been trying to say no to things that I can’t do. Like with turning off the radio in his flat and I asked the housing officer if he could call the hospital because my dad was out still on day release. And he was, -his thing was no because the hospital staff can’t do that because they’re not paid to do that and you’d be doing us all a great big favour if you could go up and turn off his radio. I don’t really know where the next of kin thing comes into that but I don’t really feel that’s appropriate, it’s my dad’s flat and it’s his stuff. If they have to break the door down, they have to break the door down. He was, you know, just saying can you, can you and it was old behaviour for me so I went up and I turned it off and almost got into an argument with his neighbour who wanted to have a go about the noise and I met my dad up there and he had a go at me about the noise as well because I was asking him to turn it off for my sake and he’s like, no, they can contact my solicitor, he gets really arrogant when he’s not well as well. So I’m just tired of that and I’m really tired of being put into situations that don’t need to happen like the thing with my dad and his radio, that’s not my responsibility. He has a new social worker this time around and my dad’s health records go back 40 years and he only had the past year’s worth so he didn’t know, so I ended up telling him what was going on and I can be very matter of fact about that, it’s just what I’ve come to expect.