From darkness

It scurries back to the darkness from whence it came. 

Its attack is a sudden, total devastation. Having completed its mission, it evaporates. As if it never existed.

But it was there all along. Lying in wait. Just under the surface. Bubbling with increasing intensity. 

When it arrives, it brings with it an isolation unforeseen. How could it possibly feel like this? How could I possibly feel like this, so totally out of the blue? Unpredictable. Like a wrecking ball to my mind. It is simply a predator and I am the prey. 

So what can I do to protect myself from these attacks? How do I fight when I am encased in a bubble of doom? No air. No light. No hope. 

And how can I explain what is wrong if I don’t even know myself? How do I put words to something so implausible? 

Anxiety. I don’t want you. 

My touchID doesn't recognise me

Over the weekend, I did so much sanding that I have shredded my thumb to pieces. And as a result, my TouchID doesn’t recognise my thumb print. 

My phone doesn’t recognise me, just as I don’t recognise myself. 

Well, that’s not strictly true. I recognise myself but in the aftermath of the overdose and in the depths of depression I have to wonder: who am I? 

I have no Sense of who I am, and while my CBT work aims to delve into my sense of self and my core beliefs, I am left lacking. 

It’s a lack I’ve felt nearly all my life. A hole I’ve never succeeded in filling.

And I have tried to fill it. With work, with exercise, food, or with volunteering. With alcohol, travelling and self harm. 

But it prevails, and prevents me from really knowing myself. Who am I, without the depression? 

My thumb will heal. Will I heal? As I put my life back together - go back to work, start exercising again, start sleeping better - will these initial building blocks fit into place until I step back and think “yes, that’s me.” 

Will I be able to accept what I see? When I recognise myself again, how do I move forward and get to the next step: acceptance?

Tomorrow is World Mental Health Day and I implore you all to do one thing to take care of your mental health. Take a break at lunch away from your job. Walk in a park. Walk around the block. Watch a funny movie or tv show. Eat dinner with someone. Talk to people. 

Look in the mirror, even if you don’t recognise the person looking back at you and say out loud “I am enough.” 

When I finally get to know who I am, I will realise I am enough. But I don’t need to recognise myself to start telling myself that. 

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. 

Islands

No man is an island, entire of itself...

But this woman sits on her island, within an island, afraid to dip her toes in.

The safety zone expands, slowly. With help.
Forcing myself to walk slower, not to hurry away like a suspect at the scene of a crime.

The leaves fall everywhere; feels like the sky is falling in.
And everything is so loud and bright away from my island.

My ears ring from a simple trip to the outside world. 
I'm relieved to be back in the muted colours of my house.
In the quiet.
In here I can control the volume. 

The word "anxiety" feels like an understatement for the feelings of catastrophe that creep into my brain.

It's hard not to think that I myself am a catastrophe. 
One that can't be helped anymore.

Every stupid reason I've had for wanting to die or kill myself

I'm not good enough

At sport

At running

At the gym

At love

At relationships 

At friendships

At family 

At work 

At life 

I bought new clothes

I didn't have new clothes

I have too much stuff 

I ate too much food

I threw up food

I tried to starve myself 

I drank too much 

Someone I knew died

Someone I didn't know died

Someone I knew got sick

Someone I didn't know got sick 

A natural disaster happened

An unnatural human rights disaster happened

I don't have enough friends on Facebook

or followers on Twitter 

or followers on Instagram 

I don't have enough friends in life

I'm not a very good friend

I forgot to text back

I forgot to reply to that email

I was supposed to do that task and I didn't

I can't read all the books

Or listen to all the music

Or watch all the films

In the world

I can't grow my hair 

I can't grow my nails

When I grow my nails they break

I always have damaged cuticles

My boobs aren't even

My boobs aren't big enough

My hips are wide

My thighs are fat

I'm fat

My feet are wide but small and I can't find heels that fit

I don't suit [insert item of clothing]

I can't do winged eyeliner 

My makeup usually runs 

I'm short 

I can't see over crowds

People can't see me in a crowd 

People push in front of me in a queue 

I always have a headache 

I keep getting sick 

I take too much medication and I'm taking up NHS money and time 

I don't want marriage

I don't want kids 

There is and was context to everyone single one of these thoughts, ranging from "they don't deserve that to happen to them it should have happened to me" to "I will never be good enough so I should just end it". But the common theme is that my depression and anxiety plays havoc with my reasoning and will use anything it can get its hands on to fuck with me. 

It always comes down to being a burden. Being a waste of space. Believing with my whole head and a heavy heart that the world would be better off without me. 

It comes down to being selfish in a whole other way. I read this list back and I am struck by how self-centred it all sounds. But we can only view the world as ourselves, so our default settings are self-centric.

September was, and is annually, Suicide Prevention Month. Back in August, Sam (my now ex-boyfriend) knew something was up one night and he called me. He asked me what was wrong and I vaguely told him but I didn't want to go into it. I had already made up my mind that I was going to overdose when I got home. I didn't want to burden him with my unimportant problems. 

So he talked to me about Game of Thrones. He made me laugh. We debated certain references and theories.

And he brought me back to life.

I didn't overdose in August. And now, at the end of September, I have made it through another month. Sometimes with depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and other mental health issues, you have to take it one month, one week, one day or even one hour at a time.

That hour might be awful. It might be horrific. 

But the next hour might not be so bad.

If you need help to get through that hour, call someone. or text. or email. or write it all down if that helps. Listen to a music track you love. Maybe read a poem or a chapter of your favourite book. There are so many reasons to be alive. 

You might find that you don't want to die anymore. 

A word about common sense and how sometimes I don't have any

So, occasionally, I show remarkable lack of common sense. 

This week I got sunburnt in a record 40 minutes. Trying to tan my legs, I instead burnt my shoulder.

I shaved my armpits and then put on an extra strong deodorant. The instructions, which I hadn't read, said not to do this. 

Now my armpits are grossly red and infected. 

 I went to the supermarket and did all my shopping, only to realise at the till I didn't have my purse. 

And then there's the common sense I lack due to my mental health.

Like did I pick up my antidepressants?

I did? Ok, where are they? If I were a box of drugs, where would I hide? 

Turns out, they're in the drawer they're supposed to live in. 

The common sense I possess is twisted. 

"I can't self harm because Sam will see."

"I cant kill myself yet, I've got theatre tickets and a holiday booked." 

This common sense is accompanied with an utter sense of worthlessness that contradicts the ideas that my existence needs to continue until such & such a date. Because I don't want to disappoint people. 

Wouldn't killing myself do exactly that? 

No. When I get these suicidal thoughts, they are about protection. Protecting me, from the pain. But a lot about protecting the people I love from the hurt I could cause them. As if the hurt of killing myself could be any less than what I could inflict on them throughout life. 

I lack common sense. But I still have some compassion. And I'm directing to myself. And my poor armpits. 

And nothing will ever show my lack of common sense than putting potatoes on the radiator to dry...

Talking about last night

Last night I was the kind of "crazy" that people take pains to avoid on the street. 

The kind muttering to themselves. Twitching and moaning. In a world of their own, not in an adorable distracted way.

  

last night

It was burning, and I was crying and shaking, but I couldn't stop it. I was wringing my hands violently as if to shake the itchiness out through my fingers. At one point I can pulling on my right index finger because it was on fire with itching. 

It started with the crying. I felt despondent, I lay protracted on my bed wondering why my brain was so slow and making everything so hard. 

I tried to harm myself by pulling my hair out but it didn't hurt enough. 

I used a self harming alternative which succeeded in making my arm sting. 

Then I got a sudden burst of energy and I tidied up my room. 

And then that's when the itching started. 

First it was my arm where I'd drawn all over it in pen in a bid to not cut.

Then it spread up my arm. And across my chest to the other arm. 

And then I was scratching my arms as if I was possessed. 

It started spreading to my legs and my face and I decided there was nothing for it but to run a bath. 

A shallow puddle of cool water. I lowered myself in hurriedly and I would never normally have a bath that cold but I needed relief.

The act of getting my thoughts together to run a bath had helped me become more lucid. 

I scratched a bit more in the water but it helped me to calm down. 

I went downstairs afterward to take an antihistamine. And then I phoned my boyfriend. 

this morning

This is a more tangible side effect of withdrawal than the headaches, or the anxiety. You can see the damage it does immediately. The sunburn effect I experienced on my body last night faded to leave these bruises. I write this the day after and I itch. My hip itches, my hands itch, my head itches. 

And these bruises will fade, and my sanity with it? 

1 more day. 

2 years and goodbye

The weather is prosaic.
Dark clouds, with bright sunshine breaking through.
Blustery winds.
On again off again rain showers.
Dampness in the air.

2 years is a long time.
A long time to keep opening up and revealing yourself.
Time and again.
A long time to spend with someone and never really know them.

2 years is a long time to prepare for an ending that you can't really prepare for. It's a long time to have a safety net; how do you prepare for that safety net to disappear overnight?

I sought counselling because I was grieving, angry, and mentally unwell.
2 years later the only part that doesn't remain is the grieving part. Not in the ever present way it did back then.
It's taken 2 years to realise I can't be fixed and be made "whole" and "perfect" the way I so desperately desire.
Knowing that and not desiring it are  as different as fire and water.

Hours of ranting and raging, crying and laughing.
Hours of my life, gone.
Hours of who I was, who I am and who I could be.
Hours that have set me up for this next step; the step after the ending.

What is my life going to be without you?
I'm taking this next step and I know I'll want to tell you. 
And you won't be there for me to tell. 

2 years is a long time to be saying goodbye.

Passing

*This blog was written on 17th June 2016, when I found out I had passed my second module of my qualification. I've now passed my third, so I've completed the course. With that and my ongoing illness, I felt like now was the time to post this*

Moments after I emailed someone to say I was expecting the mark this month, it arrived. 12-24 hours earlier than I was anticipating.

I passed.

My eyes were drawn instantly to the percentage. I had high hopes; I'd scored 98% in my exam.

At that moment my brain challenged that established fact, making me wonder if that was a mistake.

I had high hopes despite the deep seated knowledge that it was by no means my best piece of work. I'd tried, I'd really tried. But the whole four months working on this assignment I went through disordered eating, depression, anxiety, self harm and suicidal thoughts.

I hated that assignment but not as much as I hated myself and my life. I persevered with both.

I could have deferred. Perhaps I should have.

But you can't defer life and this pass mark feels symbolic. Of course I'm going to be disappointed because that's my nature; I am never good enough. But actually this time the disappointment is buffered by relief, and the relief is winning out. Because I did the very best I could do. I know I did. I can see that the fact that I am still here and that I passed this module despite everything, that I am doing the best I can do and I am enough. Just enough.

So I'm going to continue trying my best in everything I do. That's all I can expect from others and myself.

The nineteenth day of the fourth month of the year nineteen eighty nine

Last year I spent my birthday in Essex. I was mentally ill without really knowing it, thinking I'd got over the obvious mental illness because I wasn't self harming outwardly. 

Instead I was obsessing over food and exercise in a way that would come and take a total grip on me later in the year. I still enjoyed my birthday weekend, with people who I was incredibly close to. Despite irrevocably losing one of those people since then, I look upon that weekend with fond memories. 

This year, I am physically ill. I have a cold. I'm coughing and spluttering and the nausea from the catarrh is nasty.

But you only get one birthday a year. 

I'm nearer to 30 than 20. When was my life supposed to start? Can I take on the mantle of a millennial who still lives with her father because rent is too high, who is still trying to "find herself" and has already discovered the person she's meant to be cannot be found in Australia, New Zealand, Europe or America? Nor was she is Brazil, and she's unlikely to be in Vietnam, Dubai, Thailand, Mexico or any other country on the bucket list. 

Who has a bucket list at 27?

I like having a spring birthday because as I travel home from work (I was sent home because people don't want my germs) the green of the trees lining the tracks are bright, and radiating hope. Hope for a plentiful year. 

I've now lived 9 years 3 times. 

And every other day of my life I feel like I haven't done enough. I'm not doing enough. 

I'm not being enough. 

But that's the great thing about birthdays that I don't think I appreciated until now, until today:

On your birthday it's enough just being you. 

Magic Jumper

I wear my magic jumper when it's cold out, and I'm numb inside.

My magic jumper is a barrier.

It doesn't protect me from the pain in my head, but it provides comfort from the pressure in their words. 

I wear my magic jumper not to make me strong,

But to stop me feeling so weak. 

My magic jumper doesn't always work. 

But I have it just in case I need it. 

Like hope, better to have it than not. 

The best thing about the magic jumper though,

Is taking it off. 

Knowing that I got through another day. 

Everyone's own Dresden

I like to step on broken paving slabs 
They remind me I'm not the only unstable one. 

For me, depression is like the city of Dresden. 

My mind, my life, who I am, has been destroyed. It is an innocent party, and depression has rained down on it, burning it to the ground. I feel frequently lost and confused and I don't know where to go next because all of a sudden I don't know what I want. How can you know what you want if you don't know who you are? 

My mind is my own Dresden because from the rubble and the ash I can rebuild myself. It will never be exactly like it was before and indeed, I wouldn't want it to be. But I've spent 26 years crafting myself, can I ever be really different? 

I realised very recently I've been having anxiety for 18 years.
The fear of moving home and my reaction to it.
All through my uni days when I would describe my mind racing and the neon blocks playing Tetris in my head, trying to organise my thoughts. I hadn't had that in years until last month. 

When you rebuild yourself after a  breakdown or just particularly bad depressive episode, you actually build a San Fran Dresden. You pick yourself up from the ashes and you work to make the pillars of your mind more secure in the face of depression. To protect and fight against the shakes of anxiety. 

In my San Fran Dresden I'm relearning to love the things that make me who I am, and I build it around all the things I want to do. There are unmapped territories I am yet to discover. There's a need to have something 'to look forward to'.

It takes a while to realise, but life with and after depression is just life. The only difference is that, against the odds, you are still here, still standing. 

You are San Fran. 
You are Dresden. 

Confessions

In last night's Doctor Who, the Doctor escaped from a prison. His escape, by punching against a wall (4x stronger than diamond) for literally millions of years, is an almost perfect metaphor for how to climb out of the pit of depression.

It take millions of punches, painful and sometimes traumatic punches, to get yourself out. There is no quick fix, not even pills. I am not fixed from being on more of a plateau. The plateau, the numbness, allows me to access a smidgen more of the person I should be, the person I normally am. But sometimes, that connection fails. 

Sometimes, you have to step outside and cry because your mask of happiness and competence is at risk of crumbling. You phone your mum because you're having vivid and violent imaginations of falling from rooftops. 

Your legs feel like lead. And then they feel like jelly.

And your heart turns to stone. Then it disintegrates like ash. 

All the while your mind just spins.

It makes everything possible and uncertain at the same time. 

It makes recovery possible and uncertain at the same time.

It makes life amazing and soul-destroying at the same time.

It makes you want to live, and makes you want to die, at the same time.

It makes no sense. It makes it impossible to go forward, and impossible to go back.

It works very hard to eradicate your future.

It works very hard to eradicate the very essence of who you are.

The only thing you can do, in the face of something that painfully makes no sense working very hard to destroy you, is to painfully work very hard to destroy it back. 

But this is not a war. You cannot destroy depression with hate.

You can only destroy it with love.