Reasons to Stay Alive

It took me nearly a week to say I attempted suicide, and I did it almost matter of factly.

Everything else had been “I was just so tired”, “I didn’t want to be a burden anymore” or simply “I took an overdose.” 

I had “nothing left to give”. Everything that had been bubbling for days, weeks, months, a year even, finally culminated in an overdose. 

In Antarctica, one night, I drank too much, wrote a suicide note on my phone and came to my senses crawling to the railings in a mess of tears. I dismissed this apparent suicide attempt in my mind, played it down, as alcohol induced silliness. I lost maybe 90 minutes of time between happily socialising with people and being found by crew. 

But the overwhelming feeling of isolation that spurred that event pushed me over the edge on the 17th. 

In the months before travelling I had spiralled, even to a point of being unable to leave the house because of my anxiety. The only place I was safe (from what?) was my house. More than that, the only place I was really safe was my bed, in my bedroom, unconscious in the lull of sleep. 

That week I had tried to leave the house, walked around the block shaking, and the flood of relief as I walked back into my house was palpable. 

I wanted to die back then, a year ago. 

No I didn’t, that’s not right. 

I didn’t want to live.

But I made myself a promise: I could kill myself after I went travelling. 

The idea that I would soon be away and everything would be alright got me through to February.

Then as the months and the countries wore on, the idea that I would soon be home and everything would be alright got me through. 

Then I got home. I started a new job. I settled back in.

Everything was not alright. 

Days became harder to get through. I have a To Do list app and I would set “get through the day” as a task. 

I would randomly burst into tears on the walk to the office, but where I could I shut off my emotions because they were too hard to handle.

I stopped sleeping properly.

I started off excusing it as “I was used to harder beds in Asia”. 

But I woke up exhausted day after day from waking up during the night and being kept awake thinking about work, volunteering, how I hadn’t exercised or been to the gym or what I’d eaten that was bad. What was going on with me and things that were going on in the world. 

The night before I took the overdose I woke up at 3am panicking about an email scheduled to go out at 8am. Could I log on and check it? Would it be okay? Would there be complaints and would I be fired? It took time to counsel my brain that the link I was stressing about worked, the email was fine, and I wouldn’t be fired. 

I slept badly that following Sunday night, and woke up feeling like I hadn’t slept at all. I worked from home but truth be told I was in such a daze. At one point, on the behest of my nan, I went outside. I sat on the bench and I rocked back and forth, as though this frenetic movement would enable the Vitamin D and the fresh air to seep into and around my body faster, healing me quicker. It’s incredible the connections your brain can make when it’s so far gone that logic isn’t logic to an outsider. But the inside perspective makes total sense of it all. It’s only revisiting that day a week later that I determined that bizarre logic. It’s only with hindsight that the moments of intervention, of prevention, are clear. 

At the time, they weren’t clear at all. 

I had nothing left to give. I had no energy left. I wailed in the car home from a meeting, as if I could purge myself with floods of tears. 

That didn’t work.

I went to my bedroom and self harmed. I removed scissors from my room a long time ago but I had discovered the night before that my bikini razor could do enough damage if I tried hard enough.

The sting of my flesh and the faint pinpricks of blood did nothing to provide relief or ease my pain.

So I gave in to the desperate desire to be unconscious and I popped pill after pill of my prescription medication and some paracetamol. I didn’t count. I didn’t care. 

Weeks earlier, under assessment from the NHS IAPT team I’d created a safety plan that involved removing most of my prescription medication from my home to my Nan's house. I can’t imagine the damage I have done to my organs, or the finality of my actions if I had more medication to hand. 

This is the thing I need people to know: I did everything I should have done except talk. I had the numbers of mental health helplines in my phone. I had a safety plan of things I needed to do if I felt bad. I have so many tools as my disposal, but I felt entirely incapable of exercising them because I felt so lost. The momentary, temporary fix of talking to someone, anyone, couldn’t erase this despair. 

But it would have given me a chance to step back from the edge. 

Instead I jumped, metaphorically speaking. 

There are moments of the night I remember with utter dismay: I kept insisting I didn’t need to be in hospital. I wanted to discharge myself. I couldn’t walk unaided to the toilet I was so unstable on my feet.

There are also moments of humour: the drugs trip I went on gave me a disco floor of flashing colours, and the senility tests given to older people in triage (“what hospital are you at?” “I don’t know, I didn’t get a good look at it.”) 

Then the fear: the mark on the floor that was wiggling like a worm towards me, feeling something crawling on my arm that wasn’t there. 

Then there was the painful aftermath. 

The next day, finally discharged, having to explain myself to my boss and family and friends. 

Having to leave the house again and take my nan for her blood tests to the very same hospital I’d been in days earlier. 

I wrote a note that I don’t remember writing. I wrote that I didn’t want to die, I just couldn’t live anymore. 

That feeling has been with me for most of my life, on and off in waves. I’ve never felt whole, never felt comfortable. Always as if I’m not quite right, it’s me that doesn’t fit. Because it couldn’t possibly be the world that’s wrong, when so many people seem to be okay. 

It’s always been me causing the problems. I had a good upbringing, a family that loved me. I’m privileged, lucky. I can only point to a handful of things that have caused my belief system that I am not good enough, that I am worthless, that I am a burden. 

But depression doesn’t care what happened or didn’t happen to you. It feeds off the negative thoughts and bolsters them. It’s a cycle that’s so difficult to break.

Someone once remarked that maybe I like being miserable. I don’t. I want to be better. 

Whatever happens next, I am recovering. Piece by piece I am trying to find myself again so that I am not so lost. Day after day, I am trying to find reasons to stay alive.