Deadly elephant in the room.

Trying to recover from a mental illness with heavy suicidal ideation feels a bit like having a man with a gun sat next to you, having to ignore him constantly. Sometimes he just sits quietly, gun in his pocket. He might as well not be there because you are used to this presence.

Tonight it feels like he has his hand on the trigger and the gun pushed against my head, but the only thing I can do to not die is carry on with my life, try and distract myself from the threat, try not to think about it. It is an impossible thing not to think about yet still I have to stay calm and pretend it doesn’t feel like I will be dead by morning.

It is nice when people ask how I’m doing, I mean really ask, as if they care rather than out of politeness, because when there is a man with a gun to your head it feels good to have a friend care. It is a bit like the elephant in the room to me, but it’s the man with a gun instead, and if everyone ignores him then it is hard for me to ignore him because he demands attention. If other people mention him then they give me an outlet and I can use up my mental capacity on a thought other than how close his finger is to the trigger.

I used to be scared all the time, and nowadays I am scared 40% of the time not 100%, which is great. But when I am scared it is no less terrifying, and in some ways the danger is no less present. I am doing better, I can see that, but in the moments where suicide is breathing down my neck, he is as close as he has ever been and the rope still feels like it’s by my fingertips.

I hope one day I can live a life where I get through entire days without the man putting his finger on the trigger and the gun to my head. I have come so far, but I still have a long way to go until I feel safe from the risk.

Improvement.

Recovery is strangely difficult to see sometimes. We are all aiming for perfect; physically, mentally, socially, and sometimes I think we forget that recovery doesn’t mean becoming perfect, it means becoming who we are meant to be without the disorder. It means becoming safe and a bit more capable. It means being less ill.

At the beginning of this year I was incredibly unwell, mentally. There was a period of time where I tried to take my own life multiple times per week. There was one 48 hour slot where I overdosed, was hospitalised, tried to throw myself off a cliff, self-harmed, tried to suffocate myself, physically beat myself up, and tried to knock myself out. Now it is strange to think back to that; it was a time where I actually wasn’t okay 100% of the time. Every minute of every day was unbearable and impossible, and I legitimately wasn’t myself for a long time. Between January and April I was barely recognisable to myself, when I look back at things I wrote back then in notes and emails to myself they don’t even make complete sense. I could structure a sentence but everything I was saying was based on twisted and disillusioned thoughts rather than my reality. I lost myself at the beginning of this year.

I am not saying I am better, I am aware that I am far from it. But today, looking back at the last 3 months, I am more myself than I was at the beginning of this year. I have tried to take my own life twice in 3 months, only one of them ended in hospital, the other ended with the police. I have self-harmed but only for one awful 48 hour period, and not before or since. In three months. That, actually, for me, is fairly incredible. I am proud to say that I have tried to take my own life twice in 3 months because that is far fewer times than it once was in 24 hours. It’s not perfect, but I am not aiming for perfect, I am aiming for a bit of stability. One day I will be able to write a post about how I haven’t tried to take my own life for three months, then years, perhaps one day 3 decades. And it is amazing that I believe that one day I will be able to write that, because 8 months ago I truly didn’t believe I was capable of any sort of future.

Well today I am here, I am safe, I am loved and cared for, and I am capable of having a future. In my own little way in my own little world, that is a massive step towards recovery. 

The Paris Shootings and the impact of mortality.

Death and the mortality of myself and those around me is a thought which for someone like me is all too present. I am obsessed by it, terrified of it, controlled by it and desperate to control it. The recent shootings in Paris have really made me think about how close death is to all of us, and how easily it can happen by accident. Any of us could be shot tomorrow, have a sudden heart attack, or be involved in a car accident. It may sound like a morbid thought but in some ways it isn’t; because it means that every day we get to the end of is something to be happy about.

The people who were killed in the Paris shootings were so alive. They were out on a Friday night, most likely thinking about having a good time, and what they had to do over the next week or so. They may have been thinking about their plans for the weekend, worrying about getting work done, and thinking about the people they care about. I find it very hard to comprehend that these people will never be able to see that weekend; they will never get a Saturday 14^th November 2015, or any of the days after that. They were robbed of their chance to grow old, but not only that, they were robbed of the chance to appreciate each day. They won’t see Christmas this year, there will be an empty chair at a table somewhere, an empty seat on a sofa, a present with no recipient, a pair of skates never to be laced up again.

We are all temporary beings and none of us will survive this life, yet when someone seems to be ripped off the earth rather than having the chance to pass away, it is a new level of cruel. The people who lived their lives alongside them have to readjust the way they function; they have to fill a blank spot which shouldn’t be there. The people who are no longer here along with so many others who pass away daily should not have been taken from us, or so it feels. Their hopes, dreams and future plans have to just disappear, everything they have worked for, everything they have trained for, planned for, has to remain unfulfilled forever. It isn’t a concept I can truly accept or understand and I am not sure I ever will – the magnitude of loss is huge.

I often think about how much of a struggle it is to survive with the problems I have, though I am always aware that everyone has difficulties and of course some have it harder; our pain is not comparable. One thing I do know is that there are people who passed away three days ago in those shootings who would give anything to be in my position. I may feel like I am on the edge of death for a lot of my life, but the important part to remember is that however close it may be, life is closer. There is a very high chance that I will wake up tomorrow morning, and that I will keep breathing for another day, another week, probably another year. I will get to fill that chair at the Christmas table; I won’t be an empty space because I exist to fill it.

I could easily be a memory by now – all too easily. This is another thing which is hard to comprehend – that if my life had gone the way I planned it, I would no longer be here. I would have become a memory of grief, a feeling of guilt, and a lot of love with nowhere to go. I would be an empty seat, a pole without me to perform on it, a derby game leaving my clipboard untouched. I would never again get to wake up, or fall asleep. I would never get to hug someone I care about, to rest my head on their shoulder and feel genuinely safe for those few seconds. I would never be able to reassure anyone, make anyone smile, teach anyone what I know, or hold out my hand to those who might need it. Grief isn’t something which goes away – it changes and eventually becomes a more bearable part of life, but the seat will always be empty of the person who it was meant to be there for.

I am incredibly lucky to be alive, and I desperately hope that this reminder of mortality can help people like me try and understand the magnitude of death. Understand that it is in some ways not massive, it is not like a firework or an explosion, it is a quiet and heart-breaking ongoing loss of someone who was not meant to be lost. Death by suicide doesn't leave its mark because it adds death to the world, it leaves its mark because it removes some hope, it removes a heartbeat, it removes your dreams and ability to love. I don’t believe I was born to be lost, I just need some help to believe that and be capable of it.

Sometimes I am blind.

I've been focusing on the wrong things in life, and I've been doing it for a long time. I don't mean too, and I'm not sure why I'm wired in such a narrow minded way, but I can be honest that I've made mistakes and I'm clear about my imperfections, and more importantly I'm going to try really hard to change them a bit.

See, I am desperate for reassurance from the people around me. It's something I hate about myself but it's also something I have very little control over. I've been looking for the wrong reassurance though, and I need to start learning that I'm not going to find it through asking for it. It is hard that questions never get the right answers, because trust isn't something that comes easily to me, mainly not trusting my own brain.

If I think: "They must like me, we're friends"

Brain says: "how do you know you're friends?"

I think: "well...we see each other sometimes, and chat a lot, and...I don't know, we're just friends"

Brain says: "you were friends, but you can't prove to me that you still are. I don't believe you."

In this situation I wish I could remind myself of all the events that mean I am cared for, but for some reason that's something I am not capable of a lot of the time. I tell myself things and my brain refuses to process them – leaving me empty.

What I need to try and slowly be able to remember, is that the words we are all obsessed with actually don’t mean very much at all. Things like friendship, care, trust and love are very personal and no two people feel them in exactly the same way, so why do I look for these words, when they don’t even translate between people? What I should be listening for are the things that do translate.

People telling me they love me does not make me loved, people telling me they care does not mean they care about me, and people saying we are friends doesn’t necessarily show friendship. One of you got up and drove to me when you should have been going to sleep because you were told it would help keep me safe. One of you didn’t question staying up until 4am to wait for the mental health team even though you had an assessment the next day that I didn’t know about. More than one of you drove to a random town in the hope that you’d find me there and be able to bring me home. More importantly; you didn’t run. I have people around me who should have run miles by now, I have pushed them away and I have clung to them too tight, I have drawn them into my tornado of a world, and they still stand strong and smile with me when things are good. They’re still there. I don’t care what 4-6 letter word you use or don’t use, I’m incredibly lucky to have these people in my life. Those things do translate.

I am sorry that I look for words when I should trust your actions. This is not something that comes naturally to me, but one day I will learn it, and the memories of the actions of so many people will keep me safe for life. 

3am lies to you.

Of the many, many small (and some very big) steps I’m taking towards recovering from both BPD and the traumatic memories my actions have left me with, I have to conquer myself at 3am.

It is commonly known that it is harder to find positivity in the middle of the night when its dark and you’re alone or next to someone asleep, and all you can think of is your failure. When you’re someone who’s suicide attempts have reached double figures by your early 20s, there are a lot of failures for 3am to pounce on. Something I have started to do to try and help stay sane through the night is to talk to myself; and yes I do know how that sounds! Honestly though, when there are voices in my head telling me that I have let down everyone I know, that I am hated, disgusting and that the world would be a better place without me, there needs to be another voice.
At those times I desperately need a person to be there with me, to look into my thoughts and to tell me that I am loved, I am cared for, I am worth surviving this. That will never be possible, even if I am not alone physically, I will always be alone inside my head, so the only voice I have to rely on is my own.

I am not strong enough to counteract the poisonous things which 3am tells me, but there is a small part of me which is capable of saying ‘It’s okay lovely, honestly, I know that this is horrible and I understand the tears, but you won’t feel this way forever. Tomorrow will bring a new day, and tomorrow will bring change and hope. I am here for you, I care about you, and I’m proud of you.’

It may sound ridiculous that I say these things to myself, but having spent my whole adult life being incredibly horrible to myself both mentally and physically, it is finally time that I try and care about the girl who screams into her pillow because she can’t handle the pain or the memories. When you’ve been abused it is too easy to feel like you deserve the abuse, it is too easy to fall into a trap of self-abuse because that feels like the thing you need to do. Self-love is a lot harder, but perhaps one sentence at a time, it can help me survive 3am. Some days it isn’t possible, but I’m proud of the few days where it is possible, because I would actually really like to survive this!

If 3am is lying to you; remember that you can comfort yourself, and remember that 3pm the next day may in fact be a lot nicer, and is worth waiting for and worth fighting for.

Borderline Animals (and Dr Chess Denman)

“They’re very very sensitive to rejection. I used to say to all the people I trained imagine when you’re talking to somebody with one of these problems that it is them listening to you but also behind their eyes there’s a little animal and that animal isn’t listening to what you’re saying, they’re listening to whether you like them or not or whether they think you like them or not and for that little animal ‘listen I’m going to be away on holiday’ it doesn’t mean ‘listen I’m going to be away on holiday’ it means  ‘I don’t like you enough to stay here next week.’ It’s an animal, it’s not thinking the same way as you or I might think in a calmer moment. They’re very, very sensitive to rejection.”

This is a quote by an NHS Medical Director and severe Personality Disorder specialist (Dr Chess Denman) in a talk about Borderline Personality Disorder. A few days ago I was thinking about the idea of mental illnesses as little monsters. I’ve always felt like the BPD ‘monster’ doesn’t quite fit the bill, and I’ve never been sure why. I have been coming to the realisation that it isn’t a monster; it’s a team of monsters. In her talk quoted above, Chess Denman described the animal of rejection which sits behind your eyes. This animal is definitely there for me, overwhelmingly, and I know that it is joined by the little animal whose role is just to project suicide into my brain, and the anxious animal beside it who quietly whispers all the time that I am doing everything wrong. There’s a paranoid animal which feeds poisonous thoughts into my brain about how much everyone hates me, which is great friends with the animal who is there to remind me constantly of how disgusted I am by my own existence. One of the hardest animals is the little guy who sits very quietly in the back of my brain, he spends most of his existence just watching. But then, occasionally, at seemingly random points, his hatred is so overwhelming that I end up furious. It isn’t because something understandably anger provoking has happened, its usually because I feel rejected and like the fight is over, and this little animal turns me off completely. I hurt myself, I hurt people I love, I say things which to be honest are fairly rude. Things I would never say if I was left as myself.

These animals can’t be summed up in one sentence and are one of the reasons that Borderline Personality Disorder is so hard to explain and to understand. It has so many faces that it it gets hard to recognise – even my happiness is often the disorder rather than myself, which is something a lot of people struggle to understand.

My entire life is trying to control these animals – so if you catch me in a good moment, it means I am controlling them well, not that they aren’t there, because I am nowhere near that stage yet. 

To My Humans

Dear friends,

Thank you for the days where even though you thought I was happy to start with, but by the end of our conversation, I genuinely didn’t want to die as much anymore. You’ll never know those times, but thank you anyway.
Thank you because I know that it sucks to have a friend who doesn’t always trust that you are friends. For having the patience to tell me that you don’t hate me and I’m not annoying you, even though those thoughts really are all in my head and you must be so bored of the words. They sound like new words to me every single time.
Thank you for looking at my reality and not shying away from me; because it would be far, far easier to have a friend who was less self-destructive, and yet you still see me as a human not a disorder.
Thank you for picking me. There’s a world of people out there and I am allowed a bit of your time. Thank you. I will never take that time for granted.
Thank you for the times where I failed to be there for you because I wasn’t entirely there in my own head and therefore simply didn’t have the capacity to see that I was needed – yet you still didn’t walk away.
Thank you for reminding me that its going to be okay; over, and over again.

Thank you for occasionally using the word love, however rarely. It’s one of the few words I believe no one would lie about.

Thank you for making me want to become a better person, and for standing by me whilst I make myself into the friend you deserve, rather than the one you accepted despite me being substandard.

Thank you for helping me realise that I can write this post without apologising.

I may be far more of a burden than other people, but I like to think that perhaps, in my own bizarre little way, I have a lot to give as well. It just might take a while to find it. Thank you for helping me look.

More than this pain.

Because I am more than a degree.
I am more than the university I attend.
I am more than my grades and more than my qualifications.
I am more than the academia which you think defines life.
I am more than a daughter, more than a friend.
I am more than what you think of me,
I am more than what has happened to me,
I am more than my dreams and my fears. 
I am more than my suicidal thoughts. 
I am more than my disorder.

I am more than you know.
I am a human, and I am the only human I will ever be.
I am going to do this for myself,
Because I deserve more than this pain. 

What makes it a disorder rather than just your personality?

A difficulty with Borderline Personality Disorder is that it is characterised by a set of symptoms which if all scaled down, most of the population probably experience. These being: antisocial behavior, compulsive behavior, hostility, impulsivity, irritability, risky behavior, self-destructive behavior, self-harm, social isolation, or lack of restraint, anger, anxiety, general discontent, guilt, inability to feel pleasure, loneliness, mood swings, or sadness, distorted self-image, fear, grandiosity, or narcissism, persistent thoughts of suicide.
Every person I know can tick a few off that list, yet they don’t have a disorder, it is genuinely just their personality. So what makes mine a disorder? The issue is that I have the entire list, and that the problematic side never goes away. At any time of the day I would say I have at least 5 of these happening, all the time, day and night. If I am at the ‘happier’ and of the mood spectrum I am also incredibly impulsive and obsessive, with almost no restraint, compulsive, self-destructive and feel guilty. When I am at the ‘sad’ end of the spectrum I get deeply depressed, feel no pleasure doing the things I usually love, have persistent suicidal thoughts, an very antisocial, highly likely to be self-destructive, incredibly lonely and with such a distorted view of myself that I often believe I don’t deserve basic needs, like drinking water. Along the way, between these moods, I have entire ranges of pain from anxiety and panic attacks or total dissociation to severe attacks of paranoia or hallucinations.

Those things are not my personality; I still have a personality aside from my disorder, but the unrelenting and persistently changing nature of these symptoms is what makes Borderline Personality Disorder such a problem. It isn’t how I was born, it was developed more like a disease or virus, inside my brain. One day I will have a life without these symptoms, but until then I will have to keep fighting to not be the 1 in 10 people with BPD who dies by suicide. 1 in 10 who die because of this disorder.

So if you read a summary of my symptoms and think ‘yeah I’ve had a few of them before, it isn’t a disorder, it’s just being angry sometimes’, then no. No, no, no. Please respect that the list above isn’t what sometimes happens, it has been unrelenting for the last 7 years of my life. I am desperate from a break but just like any long term illness, I am going to have to recover, slowly, patiently, and with a lot of hard work, until I get that break. BPD is not a life sentence, but for the years of my life that I suffer from it, it is every minute of every day. There is no such thing as a break from a personality disorder, and that is why it is a disorder. 

Don't tell me its good that I survive.

When people tell me that I don’t really want to die because I haven’t yet been successful, and that is a really positive thing, I want to strangle them. On the spot. I understand where you are coming from; I am still alive, I can see that, I know, I keep surviving, and I can’t seem to die.

I need you to also understand where I am coming from now. Because every time someone says that to me, it hurts in a few ways.
The first way is that it’s a reminder of my failure; I understand that it’s a positive thing that I am still alive but you have to remember that I am someone who wants to take my own life and who finds it very upsetting that I have not yet been a violent enough person to manage that. I know you see it as a good thing that I have not yet been successful, but I don’t. It being pointed out that I have repeatedly failed at taking my own life doesn’t make me feel proud, it makes me want to go and do the job properly.

The next way it hurts is because it’s focusing on the end point. When someone is physically ill, they are given medication to combat the illness itself. When you focus on the fact that I walked to the edge of a cliff and spent hours there then walked away, and see that as a positive thing, you are ignoring that in the weeks running up to that I have been desperately struggling to survive every day. Yes, that day I managed to walk away. Great news. But it’s not because I want to live, it’s because I am stuck in a horribly painful limbo between living and dying. I am not coping and haven’t been for a long time and you judge how well I am doing by whether I make it a month without taking steps towards ending my own life.
I will be recovering when I can get through longer than 12 hours without having a substantial feeling of how desperately I want to kill myself. Whether or not I die isn’t the most important part for me, because that is not the same as finding a way to survive and be better. I understand that you think I’m going to survive because I have a string of failed attempts, but that isn’t my reality. It tears me apart every time something like that happens and no, I don’t see it as positive that I walked away. I am desperate for this to be over, I am totally desperate. If that’s through death then that is something I am ready for, but the possibility of living like this for another 60 years is not something I am willing to do.

Don’t praise my lack of ability to kill myself. Praise every day where I manage to act like a functioning human, and respect the fact that suicide attempts are not the issue for me, it’s the hours in between that are the real problem and the worst pain.  

Mental Pride

Pride. It’s not a word I associate with Mental Health, personally, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. It is a difficult situation because I am not proud when I get to the end of each day, all I’ve done is survive, but some days that actually is an incredible achievement.

I sometimes have problems with reality distortions and hallucinations; I hear things that aren’t there (voices, animals, instruments), I believe paranoia that is wildly untrue and impossible (that I am not actually human), and I listen to daily distortions about how the people close to me feel about me (that they hate me, they all deeply hate me). These vary in intensity and how they show themselves, but with one thing in common that they are scary, deeply unnerving and make it near impossible to fulfill daily tasks.

There is no point in me being ashamed that I am living with a mental illness, instead I wish there is a way I could be proud. I would be proud of someone if there was literally a voice in their head telling them to jump off a building, alongside suicidal thoughts and mood problems, and they manage to stay alive. I would be proud of someone for being in public when they slip into the belief that they must not be real, and they still eventually get home unharmed. I would be proud of someone if they survived these problems every day and managed to hold down friendships, hobbies, and studies.

Yet I am not proud. I don’t know why I am not proud. Perhaps it is the constant knowledge that I am only just surviving these things and any day could be the day I fail, perhaps it is the knowledge that if I don’t survive it will be seen as a misjudged action, something that didn’t need to happen. Perhaps it is because I live in a culture where Mental Illness is accepted behind closed doors, but if I’m too open with it, I’m judged.

I want to survive this so that I can look back one day, and be proud. 

Why mental health is like building

It hurts so much because it lets me build a wall between me and the worst of my pain; it watches me lay it brick by brick, with no instructions, working out how to hold it together, how to keep it upright, how to make it strong and proper. It watches me cry as I drop bricks and they break, and it watches my pain when the rough surface scratches my skin away.

Then when my wall is getting high enough that it looks like the pain might stay behind it, it knocks it down. The bricks break, the cement crumbles away, until I am left with nothing but dust on the ground around me. Knowing that I not only have to sweep away the dust, I then have to start again. Find more bricks. Build from the ground up.

It’s no surprise I want to stop trying to build the wall and let it drown me.  Yet I haven’t stopped. I am not sure I will ever stop trying to build this wall. I am aware one day it might crush me, but until that day, I am still building. 

Because I mattered.

Reasons to make sure you have full consent before making any kind of sexual move:

Because saying no is hard
Because sometimes people freeze when they’re scared
Because people are humans not sex toys
Because we are just as important as you are
Because people who have been sexually abused will never forget it
Because life is hard enough already
Because there is a high correlation between abuse sufferers and those who develop mental illnesses
Because it is not your right to be pleasured, especially if it puts someone else in pain
Because someone being quiet doesn’t mean they should become your easy target
Because being drunk is no excuse for abusing someone’s body

Because humans are strong, but also breakable. You might not think it looks like rape, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t abusing someone.

Because to you I may have been an easy ejaculation, but I am also a daughter, a sister, a friend, a loved one, and a human.

Because  I deserved better. 

Let me be a coward.

Seconds. It always amazes me how it takes seconds for everything to drop. It doesn’t matter what has happened or how happy I have been for how long, it just goes. I lose it all and revert into a broken, barely human body which is so empty and so desperate that I can barely fake a smile and hold my head on my shoulders. I have to go on living a life that could be completely lost at any moment. I know that everyone has this, but I don’t believe it is in the forefront of most people’s heads at all times.

Suicide is seen as the cowards way out. Its seen as selfish.
“I know I’m not capable of that because I know it would hurt people I left behind”
“Just push through a few more days, you’ll see, it’ll get better”
“Don’t be an idiot”

I am not a coward, I am not selfish, and I am not an idiot. I have a problem which means that suicide is on my mind almost all day, all night. I sometimes wonder how long someone else would last with my brain. Honestly, I don’t think it would be long.

I am just a girl who doesn’t want to exist anymore. I want to delete myself. Remove the error. Rub out the mistake.

I am just a girl who thinks about dying all the time and doesn’t know how to live. It really isn’t selfish that I am incapable of living. I bet you’d be a ‘coward’ too if your brain didn’t work properly.

Grief is hell, I understand that. But when I lose this fight, I lose it all. At least grief means you still have a beating heart. 

This is my dream

Right now I feel like I am on top of the world. Not because I am the happiest person, not because I’m no longer ill, and not because I have achieved any incredible feats. No, right now I am happy because I truly believe with every bone in my body that I am going to be allowed to try and live until I am old and wrinkly! In this moment in time, I believe I am someone worth fighting for. I believe I matter, I believe I can help remind other people that they matter, and I believe that I actually have the power to put my experiences to good use and make a tiny bit of difference to someone’s world.

The thing about having a disorder like BPD is that is fogs your mental vision, constantly. It is always there, twisting things and taking away hope, trust and belief. Yet when things are a little bit better for me, like now, I am honestly so appreciative. A lot of people talk about living their dreams, but for me, honestly, my dream is to live. This is my dream. For me, this mood is an achievement, and looking past the pain, fear, mistrust and disillusion can be hard.

This mood won’t last, that is the nature of my disorder, and at any moment in the next 24 hours I could be reduced to a shattered human, curled up in the corner of my room unable to do anything apart from sob, or do myself damage. I am aware of that. Yet I can look past it, because I truly feel like I can get through that. I can shatter, I can go through pain, and I can put myself back together and wait for the pain to pass, because being a borderline hasn’t just made me weak; it has made me unbelievably determined as well.

Watch this space, because I have only lived ¼ of what could be my life, and I have a lot of things to do in the next 60 years and a lot of people I love to do them with. If you’re reading this as someone who is currently struggling, keep pushing through, because mental illness should never win. You are better than that and you deserve so, so much more than that. I will always believe in you. 

Dear Borderline Personality Disorder

Dear Borderline Personality Disorder,

These could have been the best years of my life if they weren’t littered with so much pain that I look back in shame, hut and anger. These are the years where I become an adult, and you have made me take those steps with a burden so much heavier than I am capable of carrying.
You have made me into a person I hate by slowly chipping away at every part of me that I could be proud of it and leaving me with nothing but shame and hatred. To say I don’t deserve love is an understatement, because you have shown me that I don’t deserve to exist because of what you’ve done to me.  You don’t deserve to exist. You don’t deserve the space you take up in my mind and body, and you don’t deserve the words you make me speak and actions you make me fulfill.
You make me believe that the world would be a better place if I die by my own hand. You make me believe that the best I can do for the people I love is remove myself from their life. You make me believe that when I’m gone, the space my life took up will give the people I love space to breathe rather than being stuck with the suffocation you bring.

You seem to love letting me believe I have the chance to survive this life, then turning out the lights to hear me fall down in the dark. To give me people to love then wait until I am alone to hit me with so much pain that I don’t know how to bear each minute. You give me the thought of relief, only for it to be the idea of death rather than the hope of life.

I hate you with every cell of my body and mind, and I feel like I will have succeeded in this word if I can eradicate a bit of your existence from the world. Yet even this thought is you not me, because we both know that the only way I can remove you, is to remove me as well.

There is one thing you can do to make me hate you more though; taking my life. Please don’t make me die, because if I am left as a memory of pain then I will have been a wasted life. Because if I have to look down and see the people I love wish I was there, yet knowing I can never see them again, never try to heal the pain I caused, then I really will be broken. I don’t believe in heaven, mainly because for me an afterlife would be nothing but painful regret; nothing but hell. Don’t let the people I love’s memory of me be a scar rather than a smile.

I am not nothing. I am not poison and I am do not deserve to die. I am so much more than you make me, and I am worth fighting for, because I matter. I don’t believe any of those things, but I so desperately want to remove the hands you hold over my eyes to let me see the world through the eyes of someone who doesn’t have a mental disorder, to see if, perhaps, I am worth fighting for.

You’ve taken years from me, taken memories, given me pain and left me scarred, bruised and burnt. Please leave me with my life.

Yours truly,
Someone who never quite gives up. 

Is that hope?

I’m in a really, really strange place at the moment. It isn’t somewhere I feel like I’ve been before, I may have been, but I don’t remember. And no, I don’t mean physical place; I mean the position of my mental wellbeing.
See, I have hope. It isn’t manic hope where I feel like I can take on the world, and it isn’t me being unrealistic about my situation. It’s a very small, very quiet hope. It isn’t saying ‘I can live forever and am going to be totally recovered very soon’, no. It’s more sensible than that. It is quietly whispering ‘This is hard, this is really hard, and you’re going to fall down again, and you’re going to be in pain a lot more. But if you keep looking forward and keep accepting help and working on yourself, then there is another side that you can come out of. One day, there is some kind of relief which you can access, which isn’t death. It’s a life where you can remember the worst pain, and respect that it happened, and you can grow and become a slightly different, slightly stronger person’.

It isn’t shouting this, because it isn’t sure if it’s possible. I am not sure if I can do those things, and I still wouldn’t put money on my ability to survive this. But I also wouldn’t put money on me passing away by my own hand. That might sound like a small thing but for me it really, really isn’t small at all. I am not saying something huge has changed, because it hasn’t, but something absolutely tiny has shifted slightly. I don’t know if it is going to last very long, and I don’t know if it’s the first step in a bigger shift, or if it’s just a temporary re-shuffle. It isn’t strong enough to get me past my feelings of self-doubt and self-destruction, but it is enough that it might make me stop for an extra second, and consider the possibility of allowing myself to live for an extra day.

I am very aware of how fragile the situation feels. I am still not used to the fear of how easily I can fall apart, and I still feel like I might lose it all tomorrow. But I am going to celebrate tiny victories even if they might not really be victories at all, and tonight, despite still feeling incredibly sad, I also feel hope. BPD is a horrible reality; but my god it makes you appreciate the tiny, tiny flecks of hope when they come.

Recovery is no mountain

Recovery from Mental Illness is something which is often compared to climbing a mountain, or scaling a high wall. A huge task, looming over us; a task which if we accomplish, we will be the person who managed to climb that mountain. Those things are true and fair, but from where I am standing, recovery doesn’t look like climbing a huge mountain. When you climb a mountain, you train, then you have a handful of incredibly intense days where you scale this huge height, then you get to come back down again. This is no mountain.

Recovery, to me, seems to be more like walking alone across the world. I wasn’t born this way; I was once a relatively normally functioning young girl who was ready to see what life had to throw at me just like any other teenager. Yet slowly, across time, I found myself very far away from home. For whatever reasons, I was no longer in the country where I was born and raised; I was alone in a foreign place where I didn’t recognise anyone or know my way around. I know I want to come home, I can sort of remember what my home country feels like, and the bits I can’t remember I can still imagine. But to get there I have to walk, step by step, through a lot of countries which feel alien to me. I have to find a way to trek jungles, swim through seas, and scale a few mountains along the way too. Walking across the world like this may take years: it is such a long way that I don’t know when I will make it back. There are days when I might find myself in a beautiful garden, walking in the sunshine through rose beds, but I never get to stay there I have to keep walking. Some days I am in a jungle so deep that I never get to see the sun rise, and I meet a lot of creatures in the dark. Sometimes these creatures rustle in nearly trees and scare me, and sometimes I need to fight them off just to be able to keep walking. Some days I find myself in the desert with no clue which direction to go, no sign of water, and no shade from the heat. Occasionally I will feel someone hold my hand as I walk, it never feels like they are walking with me, but I can still feel the comfort of their hand in mine, and I know that they for a little bit of time, I am slightly less alone.

Every day feels a bit different, but with a few things in common: I rarely recognise my surroundings, I almost never feel at home, and I never feel like my destination is in sight. One of the things which hurts the most about recovery being like this is that when I finally get to the place I want to be, I won’t have gone on the sort of journey which has an exciting destination, I will just be in the place where everyone else starts off. My goal is to reach the destination that other people see as base camp. Yes, I will have picked up experiences along the way which will give me a unique outlook, but it also carries the chance that I will never make it home. There are so many days that I want to lie on the ground and give up, because I feel so far from home, and to keep walking is exhausting and painful. I didn’t ask to be here, and there’s not option catch a flight home.

I suppose the important thing here is to remember that if you can be the person who holds our hands for a bit, it is appreciated. If you are the person doing the journey, then don’t give up, because home might be closer than you think. If you have played a part in my journey, then thank you and as always I apologise that it still might take a bit of time to get somewhere that I can call home, and it may also take me time to accept that for many people, recovery doesn't mean getting home. For many people with BPD recovery is learning to live out here alone. 

Patience, please.

My world changed on Sunday. It changed in a way which I didn’t think was possible, and which I am struggling to word, and coming to terms with it seems impossible. Perhaps if I can find a few words then it might somehow become a mountain which I can take steps towards considering climbing.

It would be wrong to say that on Sunday my world fell apart, because that started happening a long time ago, but last week it crumbled even further, and by Sunday I was still the same person, but stripped bare. I had no strength. I could talk and I could just about think, but it felt like someone had taken every ounce of me away from me, and left just pain inside a shell in the shape of me. I wanted me back, and I wanted my life back, but more strongly, I wanted the pain to go away.

On Sunday I poured kitchen bleach and kitchen cleaner, both corrosive, into a bottle. I left my house, holding the bottle incredibly tightly, and I walked. I walked away from humans, through fields, away from my home. I have tried to take my own life many, many times. That is, sadly, not new for me. Though I have never drunk a corrosive substance like bleach; that part is very new.

I am an intelligent (albeit very forgetful) young woman. I was not confused, and I was not psychotic at the time. I was not hallucinating, and I was completely aware of who I was. I knew that drinking bleach caused a massive amount of pain before dying, that you are in absolute agony until your organs fail. Yet I, with full mental capacity, put the bottle to my lips, ignored the overwhelming smell of chemicals, and drank a few mouthfuls. I gulped down bleach. I couldn’t physically drink more because of how immediately my body rejected it – and by the time I had recovered enough physically to try and drink more, there was someone there to stop me.

This isn’t me trying to tell the story of what happened, it was horrendous and I hope that neither I nor the other person who soon arrived there ever have an experience like that again. Of course I feel overwhelmingly guilty that there was someone else there to experience part of it; when you care about someone the last thing you want is to have them watch you when you think you might be dying. I would trade anything I have to be able to have removed her from the situation, but honestly, I don’t think I’d have survived it without her.

This is me talking about why this has changed me, and why I don’t think I can be the same again. I am not sure anyone could be the same again after that. Not because of the pain or the inability to breathe or speak properly at times, but because I have to spend forever with the knowledge that no matter how hard I tried, because I really did try and stop this attempt, I have the capacity to drink bleach, and I don’t have the capacity to stop myself. I can spend years ‘recovering’ from the personality disorder, but when I close my eyes, I will always be a girl who couldn’t stop herself from drinking bleach. I will always remember the moment where I was first asked what I’d done, knowing the expected answer was that I took too many painkillers, and I had to try incredibly hard just to have the ability to reply ‘I drank bleach’. I drank bleach.

 When taking an overdose, you take one pill at a time; one pill that wouldn’t kill you on its own. With bleach, it’s just one hit. There is a second where I thought ‘I can’t get through another second, it has to be now’. There’s a certain romance surrounding suicide. A Romeo and Juliet style ideal of dying, of being at peace. I wish I could show people the reality of being in so much physical pain that you want to die so that it ends, of feeling like all of your organs are on fire, feeling like your throat is melting. It is no longer about whether or not you want to die, because I didn’t think surviving was an option any more, I just needed my death to be quick. I clearly didn’t die, I went to hospital, and once my heart had stabilised and I had stopped throwing up cleaning foam, once my organs seemed to have got rid of most of the toxic liquid, I had to go home. I had to lie in my bed at night, still in pain, knowing that the next day I had to stand up and face another day, still with all the pain of the day before, yet now with the memory of what had happened.

This is not something I can see a way to be capable of dealing with. I know that time supposedly heals all wounds, and I trust my pain will fade one day, but that doesn’t give me a way to tell the people I love most that this has changed me, and it isn’t for the better. When I took a breath and drank from that bottle, a part of me was left behind. A part of me that still naively believed that I was allowed to hope, that I was allowed to believe it couldn’t get worse, was killed by the bleach. It got worse.

I don’t know how to tell people that every morning when I wake up I feel empty, not in a sad way, but with a sense of overwhelming exhaustion that I am stuck being a suicidal adult for the foreseeable future. Since Sunday, I haven’t actually felt happiness properly, in any way. I haven’t felt safe, and I am never actually sure how to get from morning to night. I feel like I am sharing my body and mind with a murderer. I am terrified of how soon I might be in that much pain again, and I am terrified of how I will end up if I keep doing this much harm to my body. There’s a person in me who wants to kill me. I don’t know how to live with that.

I think that this might be the time in my life where I have been least deserving of any care, any affection, or any sign of love. I have taken too much from other people, and I am aware of all the things I have failed at. If you know me, if you spend any time with me, please be aware, that I have not dealt with this. I am so sorry that it might take even more patience until I can cope, and if you want to turn away, then do. I understand. If you don’t turn away, then be prepared that I might cry randomly. I might stop talking and stay quiet for long periods of time, and my replies to you might not always make sense. Ultimately, the answer to whether I am okay, is no. I am not going to be okay for a long time, because a week ago I drank bleach, and I cannot cope with that. I cannot cope with the shell of a person who survived, and no, I don’t see any sort of light at the end of the tunnel. If you have a bit of extra hope you can lend me, it would be much appreciated, and if you can find a way to make me feel even slightly like I deserve to be loved, then you’ve managed something I failed to do. But feel free to still ask how I am, because I appreciate that, and it reminds me that one day I might reply that I am doing a bit better, and that is a sentence that would fill me with a lot of pride. Until that day might come, I am still here, and I am still trying so, so hard. 

World Suicide Prevention Day

Today is World Suicide Prevention day. Suicide is something which everyone ignores unless it is directly in their face - but if people can just spend one day considering how they'd like the world to act if it were them or someone they love who is affected by this awful act, then maybe that will be one step towards living in a world where people taking their own lives isn't a leading cause of death.

Suicide is surrounded by connotations of selfishness, shame and secrecy. It is seen as a choice for the weak, or only an option for those who have no hope in their lives. But that's not true; suicide could affect any of us, and any seemingly successful and happy person could be hiding a level of pain which means they genuinely find it hard to get from morning to night, every day.
Seeing as we don't know who that person is, take this time to remember that when you next casually refer to suicide as a joke, you don't know how much pain you might be putting someone in.

People often say of those who have passed away that if love could have saved them they would never have died. Well here we have a chance to make that come true; because if you show love to someone suicidal, it might stop them from dying. Doing be afraid to bring up the topic, don't be afraid to tell someone how much you love them, and please let us talk about suicide without being ashamed. Don't be scared to save someone's life.

World suicide prevention day shouldn't just be today, it should be every day.

Acceptance of Mental Health and never, ever giving up.

One of the toughest things about almost all mental illnesses is that they are a constant.  Every night the pain you fall asleep with is the one you wake up with – and this routine continues, sometimes for years, with no control. Its tiring, repetitive, exhausting, and can take massive control over your life.
I spent years being given false diagnoses, believing that my issues were just my personality. That it was just what I was like, rather than there being a separation between who I am and what my illness is. It is taking a long time but I am slowly coming to accept that there is the person I am, and there is the Borderline Personality Disorder that I have, and that I am going to beat. I accept my disorder, and I accept that it’s going to make me feel like giving up on a daily basis, but I also accept that I deserve better than that and one day I will be better. I don’t always believe this, in fact I rarely do, but if I write it down now then perhaps I will remember it when I can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel.

Another tough thing is never, ever giving up. I sometimes feel like I give up on a daily basis; I break down, I cry, I sit staring at walls unable to move or speak. Yet that isn’t giving up; that is my brain doing everything it can to not give up. Sometimes that means turning all my emotions off so that I am unable to do anything, anything but be safe. I may have tried therapy, group therapy, CBT, psychotherapy, counselling, and 7 different medications, but until I have tried it all, I won’t give up.
Currently I am trying lots and lots of vitamins (you never know), a STEPPS programme, solo therapy, mood plotting, and working out how my friends can support me in the way that I need it right now.

Never giving up isn’t necessarily about the therapy, or the medication. Sometimes never giving up is in every morning, giving yourself a chance to enjoy the small good things in your day, and reminding yourself that they exist. Because however small, it is those tiny jewels of hope and love which are going to give us the strength to fight our minds shattering around us. For me it’s often a single caring text, an outfit I feel confident in, or seeing something unexpectedly beautiful which allows me to hold onto hope for another tomorrow. That’s what life is; just a series of tomorrows. 

Scared of my own suicide

For the last 6 years I have been plagued by suicidal thoughts, and for about 3 years prior to that it was an array of other self-destructive thoughts. I dislike the term ‘suicidal thoughts’, because they have never just been thoughts. They are an overwhelming feeling, a sense of power, control and belonging, and feel like a look at the future rather than just an idea. When I think of suicide, it is not me considering it. The time for considering suicide was 6 years ago, and now it is a constant battle between the part of me which strongly knows that it wants to kill me, has to kill me, and the part of me which wants to beat this and live a full life.
I have good days and bad days. On a bad day, 90% of me is suicidal and 10% of me doesn’t know how to fight it, on very good days it’s the other way around, but those are rare. Very occasionally I get to come up for air and feel 100% able to survive, but this only tends to last for about 5 minutes and happens once every month or so. When that happens it feels like after years of being suffocated, the hands have been lifted from my throat. Yet I know that the hands will return, I know that I haven’t yet beaten this.

Suicide is a fear, an incredibly deep seated and slow yet terrifying fear. Some people describe their mental illness as an animal, holding onto them, walking near them. Suicide feels like an ink which has been injected into my bloodstream. People talk about recovery yet I have no idea how to remove this ink without bleeding out. People often tell me that I can’t commit suicide because it will hurt the people left behind. I’ve been told it will leave them angry, heartbroken, and an array of other negative emotions. Yet I struggle to make this a reason to not kill myself, because for me it is not as simple as ‘kill yourself or don’t kill yourself’, it is purely a question of how long I can hold on before I do inevitably die by suicide. That pain, anger and heartbreak will always happen; to me that part is not up for question. The only question is whether by the time I die, I can get the people I love to understand that when someone is killed whose heart is already black with ink; it isn’t actually a loss at all.

The fear comes from the knowledge that I don’t want to die. I don’t want to hurt the people I love, and I don’t want to be dead. I don’t want my life to end in my early 20s, and I don’t want a funeral before I get that chance to have a wedding. I want to go abroad on my own, I want to love someone and be loved back, I want to see which of my friends goes wrinkly first, and who is the one to try Botox? I want a life where I can gather more memories, not a life where all I leave is painful memories.

The control over whether I get to do these things doesn’t lie with me. It would be my hand taking my life, but honestly, its not within my power. I can try, and I can fight, but there is a mood which takes over where all I can do is watch from the side-lines as I hurt myself, swallow pills, prepare to hang myself and try to throw myself off a cliff. I get my own special seat ready for the viewing of me ruining my own life, and all I can do is watch.

So if I die by suicide: be angry, be upset, be whatever you want to be, but remember that the biggest loss alongside that you won’t see me again, is also that I won’t see the life I desperately wanted to live. So you might have to live it for me, and feel lucky for every day you go through where you don’t have to watch your own hands take something as important as your life away from you. 

The layers of BPD and why the internet is foul

Today I went on search of another blog by someone with BPD, because I felt incredibly alone, and I thought it might help. I found the following things:

1. An entire article on how people with BPD should never have children because those children would have a very high risk of developing a mental illness or PTSD just from being around you.

2. An article on how to stay away from people with Borderline, because, you know, we are clearly the devils work.

3. An article of how to cope better being a friend of someone with BPD. I was pretty hopeful about this one. Until it genuinely described how people with BPD will be emotionally crippled for their entire lives and that you'll have to accept that they'll never be a good friend.

I then thought I would look for blogs about suicide, because honestly, reading the first set of blogs made me heavily question why I bother fighting as hard as I do just to be judged. Every article I clicked on talked about suicide, then gave statistics for people with depression. They talked through depression, described it, and gave a range of helpful tips for dealing with it. Firstly Depression was portrayed in a positive light, but second and more importantly, no where was it mentioned that someone may die from suicide due to another mental disorder.

The thing I find most difficult about BPD is that its all the time; its a constant. At any time of day, I will probably be either overly depressed, anxious or bizarrely elated. Thats the first layer. On top of that layer, I will be scared of the people I need leaving me, irrationally. The next layer is thinking about suicide - I am in constant battle to fight it out of my head, and am reminded of it all the time throughout the day. Whether its trying desperately to remind myself I want to live, or working out how i'm going to die, its there all the time. The next layer is wanting to be alone, because I am exhausted from all the other layers, and can only process them properly in private. On top of that I am paranoid about random daily activities and the people around me, my feelings about people change in an instant, and I am scared that i'm going to die alone, in pain, and by my own hand.

And those layers all have to somehow co-exist, and when I walk near the edge of a high building, I have to have the strength to not jump off it. Because when you have those layers 24/7, the jump feels not so much just temping, but more like a necessity.

So to the people who write blogs about things which you know are going to be incredibly hurtful towards people with BPD, perhaps take the time first to think about whether its worth it. Because to me, being told I should never have children, is heartbreaking. To be told I can never be a good friend, is something I can't cope with. And to think that people need to stay away from me is a cherry on top of all these layers of pain that I am already struggling to deal with on a daily basis. Was your article still worth it?

My mind is hell.

Today I woke up and I knew that something was wrong. I opened my eyes and stared straight ahead, but couldn’t bring myself to turn my head, that felt like too much. My chest felt very heavy, as if someone was trying to pull my heart and lungs down into the bed. I rolled onto my side and curled up, continuing to stare straight ahead, wishing I didn’t have to face up to the reality of going through another day.
I try and sit up but I realise I am crying, and whenever I try and take a breath, it feels like I am taking on a promise to survive, each second. A promise I don’t feel I can keep, but every breath holds me to it. This makes me angry, my body is forcing me into thing I don’t want. I try and hold my breath , this should be my control, but as my tears catch up with my clenched lips I just end up sobbing, clinging onto my knees, hoping someone will come and take all of this away.

I haven’t been through a break up, no one has died, I haven’t been dealt any bad news. But I do have Borderline Personality Disorder. It’s a disorder which characterises itself through rapidly changeable and intense moods, a lack of ability to hold stability with inter-personal relationships, difficulty holding onto an identity and incredibly strong impulses towards self-destructive behaviour, such as self-harm or suicide, along with a plethora of other painful traits. It is difficult to medicate and hard to treat with therapy, but these are the best options. It is hell on a daily basis, but it is my life.

One of the things I find most painful is knowing that I can’t actually let anyone know how bad it is without overwhelming them. I allow myself time scales. Maybe once a week, once a fortnight, I can be honest when a friend asks if I’m alright, and I can tell them the truth. But every other day I act as if I can actually cope. When I am out, I take regular ‘toilet breaks’ which are actually me having a panic attack or sobbing silently in a bathroom. I pretend to be busy on days where I am too scared to leave my bedroom because paranoia has overwhelmed me, and every month or so I make sure I let people know that I am doing better, so that they don’t give up hope even if I have done. Nothing in my life feels natural, because I can’t let anyone in to know the true depths of the hell I am in. It is carefully planning my next move, because if I burden someone with too much, the guilt will take over and I would probably overdose. Yet if I stay silent as tell no one, I would feel so alone that I would probably overdose. But if I strike the balance right, I feel as if I am manipulating people around me, which makes me hate myself, and want to overdose. It is a never ending cycle of not feeling like I belong in the world but being terrified of death, despite being completely over-ruled by the idea of it.

There is no way I can let someone into my world and let them see what it is like. As a person I am not sure of many things, I doubt almost everything, but the one thing I don’t doubt is that my situation is far worse than even I am willing to accept. For many people, a suicide attempt is the lowest point in their life, and something which makes them see the light and make a change; something that they move on from. For me, suicide is a life sentence.

If you love someone who is struggling with mental illness, take the time to ask them what it is like, and try and understand what they are actually going through. Understanding is surely the first step towards being able to support them through it. And if you’re in it for the long haul; I am sure they’d appreciate a reminder that you don’t plan on giving up on them, because I know that’s a reminder I would appreciate.

The Silver Lining of Borderline Personality Disorder

With Mental Health being an increasingly mentioned issue in social media recently, awareness is slowly rising for conditions such as Depression, Anxiety, and Bipolar Disorder. The net hasn’t yet spread far enough for me to have seen mention of slightly less known disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder (also known as Emotional Intensity Disorder), but also few people have taken into account that longer term disorders such as BPD can also bring positive outcomes. There are few, and they pale in comparison to the negative symptoms which outline the disorder, but that doesn’t mean that the positive effects should be ignored.
One of the negative symptoms of BPD is having a persistently unstable personal image or sense of self. It is common for BPD sufferers to regularly change the way they look, doubt their sexuality, and question the way they act and who they are. The positive factor this brings is a very specific type of personality which can adapt to situations and is often good at a wide range of tasks. A malleable personality may make it weaker, but it also means that every day there is the ability to be changed for the better, to be inspired, motivated, and to build a wide range of experiences.
This ties in with another positive outcome; intense passion. We may be overcome with emotions which seem uncontrollable and unmanageable, but when we are passionate about something, we will not lose that. We will be so passionate that we try as hard as we can, we care with all that we have, and we have the ability to truly give it our all. If you are the loved one of someone with BPD, then trust that you will be loved so deeply. If we succeed in something we care about, it will make us so happy that we will remember the feeling deeply for a long time. It may hurt sometimes, but intense passion is an incredible emotion to have.
Other positive factors include stunning curiosity and genuine interest in other people, the ability to sit and listen for hours as long as you have things to say, we will care. The ability to be spontaneous, to live in the moment, and to really feel the highs which life has to offer. Due to having experiences so much pain, we are deeply empathetic, we will never judge someone for having feelings and will never push down the importance of them. Some borderlines struggle with compassion because their emotional ranges are so different, but many, like me, can access such a massive bank of emotion that we can feel compassion in almost all situations.

The last two positive attributes I will mention (as there may be many more!) are two of my favourites. The first is the ability to be deeply creative. We have the ability to open our mind, to use our bizarre range of experiences and deep level of emotions to create in a way which others may struggle too. This makes us naturally good at the Arts, and creative careers.

The other is the ability to pick ourselves back up again. To know that things will get better, and to fight so much more than I think it is possible for non BPD people to understand.  My mind is a tornado of pain; my symptoms literally include recurrent suicidal behaviour, chronic feelings of emptiness and nothingness, and transient paranoid thoughts. Every single day of my life. But I am still sat here writing this post.

I may have a personality disorder, and that may mean a lifetime of intense mental difficulty, but perhaps it’s worth reminding ourselves every now and again that with the hardest challenges come the greatest successes. And I am determined that my personality doesn't have to be a disorder, it can be a success as well.

The strange side effect of talks about Mental Health

Today I went to the TEDxUniversityofKent talks. The topic of the day was Milestones, and I was prepared that there might be part of the talks which I found triggering or which I was sensitive too due to my ongoing problems with Mental Health, specifically Borderline Personality Disorder.  What I didn't expect was a talk about Mental Health. The stage was graced by Becci; a girl in her 20s, well dressed, with a perky demeanor. Her talk was entitled 'Words have superpowers: A map of milestones to healing mental illness', and was about her experiences as a woman who suffers from Anxiety and Depression, who has found solace and healing in poetry, and who is working as a teacher aiming to help younger generations. 

It was a wonderful talk about some really important topics, and I was struck, but not surprised, by my reaction. From the first sentence through to the last, I was crying. Sat on a theatre, tears rolled down my cheeks silently for the entire duration of the talk. I found it hard to keep my breathing under control, and I couldn't stop myself from shaking. I spend a lot of my time wishing mental health was talked about more regularly. Wishing I heard other people talk about it more, and wishing I had more platforms to talk about it myself. Yet the minute it is talked about, I am reduced to a blubbering mess! I was lucky enough to have one of my closest friends next to me, and without her hand to hold, there's a solid chance Id have had a silent panic attack. This isn't because I didn't like the talk, it is closer to the truth to say I liked it too much. I had someone stood in front of me and a theatre of people, verbalising the thing which has caused without a doubt the hardest experiences of my life. It has shaped the last decade, and I know it will continue to shape my life and those of the people closest to me. Yet she stood on stage and held some of my biggest demons in her hands in front of her. Her talk wasn't about me, yet in some senses it was, because when someone talks about mental illness that openly, to someone who suffers, it is like hearing your diagnosis being read on on repeat. It's like the darkest most painful parts of your life being held by someone else. They weren't being hurt by someone else, just held; bringing my attention to all the pain and suffering that they have in the last brought, and continue to bring me.

This makes me think about talking about mental health issues. For me, I'm taking small steps and im writing this blog. It may not be the biggest or the bravest step, but it's a chance for me to say "look, i'm fighting something very hard and very painful every day of my life, let me try and help others learn from me, and let me reach out and remind you that you really aren't alone in this". And for me it's making a difference, because it takes away some of my shame, and it takes away the common problem of Mental Health as something to be hidden away. 

Today made it abundantly clear to me that people really don't vocalise their battles with Mental Health enough. I look for people who speak up, yet I was still affected that strongly because hearing those words was still a shock to my system. Today made me wish that people made me cry like that more often. Speak up, don't be ashamed, because you're brave, and I'm here ready to sob in the back of more theatres, or at more articles, or more videos online. And who knows, perhaps one day I'll have that affect on someone in return. 

Unicorn Socks to save the day (and other Gift Giving love)

I hadn’t had the best week this week. I am not going to go into details, but I feel its important to mention that it’d been a struggle, and it’s only a Thursday.
Today I got two parcels, sandwiching a Dr's appointment (and those are never fun!) which turned my day around. I am a member of an online community of people who like Black Milk Clothing. Its more than a community, and less strange than a cult, but is perhaps somewhere in between! We call ourselves Sharkies. As a part of this I am in a group where we Sharkies send each other random gifts, to try and brighten people’s days randomly. It has always been an incredible page to be a part of, and people’s generosity and thoughtfulness never fails to amaze me. This was exemplified today by a particular Sharkie, the sender of today’s parcels, inside which was the array of wonderful things pictured below.

Now, I am writing this post for two reasons. Firstly as a means of thanks, to this sender but also to anyone who has sent a gift on this page, to me or to anyone else! To take time out of your busy (or not busy, either way) life, and to spend both your money and your thoughts on another person, not because you feel you need too or to repay something, but just because you genuinely want too, is a wonderful thing to do. Thank you on behalf of all of us! I know I am one of many people who is incredibly grateful. One of the people for whom the random gift appeared at a time, so unexpectedly, when we needed a pick-me-up more than we even knew.

I am also writing this post as a reminder of how much your life can change in a short space of time. This week there were times that I really wasn’t sure if I’d get to the end of it; I was told something which made me have to re-evaluate my life, and for me that’s a pretty dangerous thing to do, and I wasn’t sure I could. I am still not sure about the re-evaluation, but I’m definitely working on it. What I am sure of is that I’ll make it far past this week. This gift has shown me that my little world is so much bigger than me and the decisions I am currently trying to make. My little world is actually part of a very big and very wonderful world! And this decision won’t be the end of me, because I am stronger than that, but also because I now have a pair of unicorn socks to help get me through.

Let’s be honest, unicorn socks and a large dose of hope is really what anyone needs to get through a rough patch!

Getting by with a little help from our friends

A key part of living with a mental health disorder is being supported. This can come from a variety of places; mental health professionals, counsellors, therapists, and importantly, friends and family. I am usually on the receiving end of the support from friends, but I have also been in the position of being the friend trying to give the support. This post is to the friends, for those who fight for us and only get repaid by keeping us as a friend. Its not your job, but you care enough to dedicate your time.

Firstly, thank you. Thank you for being selfless enough to help a friend who struggles with something you can’t physically see. Thank you for not giving up on them, thank you for believing in them and knowing that they are worth the help.
I understand that its hard; its tiring sometimes, when you have to give time that perhaps you don’t have. When you are trying everything to help them, and it just isn’t changing anything. When you have to watch the person you love go through a lot of pain and know that all you can do is tell them you’re there for them, and hope that they pull through. I even understand the pain of the times where you think you might be about to lose them, when you’re scared that this time they might not manage to pull through. You are amazing to stay there, taking that risk, and continuing to believe that somehow they will find a way, because you know they’re worth it.

If you’re at a loose end and don’t know how to help, it is important to remember that Mental Illness is often overwhelmingly lonely. This isn’t because friends aren’t doing enough, it’s just because the journey taken to recovery ultimately has to come from us, and when things go wrong, we are the first to know, and at that moment, we are likely to be alone. Asking for help can be lonely, and not being able to find the help is even more lonely. As the friend, you make this so much easier. It can be a random text just to remind them that you care or that you love them, it can be an impromptu meet up, or it can just be a conversation about something unrelated to the illness to help them feel like there is more to life. You have the power to be the ultimate distraction, and to provide a human safety net.

I also think it’s really important that in those times where perhaps you can’t help, or just don’t know how or what to do, that is okay as well. You’re allowed to do the wrong thing, and its okay if sometimes there’s nothing you can do. We know that you’re human and ultimately the responsibility relies in us and in the hands of mental health professionals.

I am lucky enough to have some absolutely incredible friends, and I have no idea how I am lucky enough to have them, but I also know that random texts and care that they give is sometimes the boost I need to keep fighting. Thank you from me, but also thank you to all the friends out there who make it possible for us to fight an illness which you can’t even see. 

Dealing with Fear

Fear is an emotion that different people feel on very different levels. You have phobias, anxiety induced fear, and of course those who think they are fearless. For some people, it would take a gun to their head to feel fear. For others it’s a fear of failure, perhaps at work or at home. For me, its everyday activities; I am very scared of opening doors, and no that isn’t a metaphor, I am genuinely very fearful of a door if I’ve never opened it before. Not knowing what’s on the other side scares me. I can feel it from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes, I shake, I can’t breathe properly. Fear.

Today I have been scared all day, because this Saturday I have a very scary and ominous event coming up. Something where a lot of eyes will be on me, scrutinising my every move, and I just have to do the best I can and hope it’s enough. Something I’ve learnt over the years, is that fear cannot be pushed down. Fear cannot be covered up, and fear will not let go. It demands to be felt, but if felt too much, it will just increase. As someone who has panic attacks very regularly, which terrifies me every time, I have learnt a few ways to handle my fear:

1.       Focus on something static. Find an object; notice all the little details on it. If its pillow; what is the fabric like? What colour/s is it? Does it look rough or smooth? Would you have designed it differently if you could? Do you even like this pillow? etc. The list could go on.

2.       Talk to someone you trust. I have some absolutely incredible friends; they help me keep my little world going round. If I tell one of them about a big fear I have, and they tell me that it’ll be okay, I trust them. I believe them. I give them the control of knowing, and I can feel the pressure dissipate slightly.

3.       Stand up to it. Don’t let fear bully you. You are strong, you are brave, you are here and you are fighting. Don’t let one emotion take that away from you. Take a deep breath, inhale your bravery, and exhale the fear. Because you are not going to be beaten by this, you deserve better.

This particular event is so scary that I need to do these things pretty much all day, and I know that once the event is over, I will be happy. I will also be proud because even though fear keeps coming back, I keep beating it, one day at a time. And I know that you will too. Fear is not something you should be ashamed of, because at the end of the day, it shows that you can still care.

LGBTQIA; sometimes talking about it hurts too much

Tonight I tried to write a post about how suicide and self-harm figures are far higher in LGBTQIA people. It meant me looking at lots of suicide statistics. I wanted to try and explain how it feels to be young and confused about your sexuality, about how it seeps into questioning all parts of your life. But I couldn’t write it; I got through the first line and I felt too sad. I knew that if I went through with writing it, it would put me in a bad place. I found this interesting, because I don’t usually connect my self-harm and suicide attempts to being a Lesbian, to me they were always separate. Looking back, I think perhaps I wasn’t totally right. One day I will write what I meant too, but for now, have a bit about my experience, without the suicide part.

I don’t remember the moment where I realised that I wasn’t straight. But I do remember that that was my thought. I didn’t wake up one day and think ‘Oh, I like girls, cool, I must be gay’. Instead, I tried to join in with conversations about fancying boys, but I had to lie. I presumed that one day I would fall for a boy just like they did, one day it would be my turn. But years went by and I didn’t. I thought perhaps I didn’t understand what it meant to love someone in that way, so I dated boys that I thought were good friends, whose company I enjoyed. But it was never more than that. I thought I was broken, because I didn’t have the right feelings, and I thought this meant I would just spend my life on my own. I was scared of that thought, and I was very alone in it.

When I first considered being bisexual, it wasn’t because I thought I was gay but didn’t accept it, it was because I thought that if the pool of people covered two genders, maybe I could meet someone and feel what my peers did. I continued to date boys because it’s what people did, but deep down I knew I was different. I didn’t know what that difference was, I even considered whether I might be asexual, because at this point I couldn’t recognise the difference between loving a friend, and falling in love with a friend. Now I can recognise this very easily, and lucky my type is so specific that it isn’t a problem, but when I was younger I didn’t understand that difference. It was just painful and felt a bit wrong. I felt like as a human, I was fundamentally broken.

I remember when I first told a friend that I might be bisexual. The minute I’d said it, I felt an extreme release of pressure. It was over MSN messenger, and seeing it in writing, I knew that it was real.  From there my journey was to be expected. I dated some more guys, I dated some girls, I had bad and good experiences, and eventually I found myself in a loving relationship with a female, finally able to fall in love like everyone else did. But sadly for me that journey was littered with self-harm, eating issues, and suicide attempts.

I do not believe my problems are rooted in my sexuality, but for any young person trying to make their way in the world, I can now recognise how lonely this can make us feel. How different I felt. How separate I felt. Mine is the story of a girl who had it easy with my sexuality – my friends and family accepted it – and its still a story of loneliness and a lot of misery. So I can see how the self-harm and suicide figures are higher. I just hope that in the future, it can be an open conversation, so that LGBTQIA young people in the future don’t have to feel like they are broken. We may always be different, but we should never feel like we were made wrong.

Allow yourself good days

The nature of my mental illness is that I get highs and lows. I don’t have control over when they happen. Sometimes they correspond to good and bad things happening in my life, and the reaction is severely magnified, but sometimes they just come out of nowhere. But occasionally, very occasionally, I have a good day, or a good few hours. This isn’t a day where I am manically happy for no reason, this is a day where for a few hours my moods don’t swing. On a good day I get to be myself, in the comfort that for these hours, I seem to have some kind of control.

Good days can scare me because when you end up being the way you want to be, but knowing it won’t last more than a day and could go at any moment, it’s hard. The fear of losing it often takes away some of the joy of finally feeling free, the joy of getting a break.

So today I’m thinking about how important it is to allow yourself those good days. Enjoy them as if it may go on forever, not focusing on the inevitable change in mood. One reason I am scared of these days is that I worry people will see me be that normal and decide I don’t need their help anymore. I am, sadly, very dependent on my friends. I am incredibly lucky to have some amazing friends, and I would be lost without them. Another reason I struggle to accept good days is that I am so desperate for it to stay that way that I manage to push myself into being depressed about how rarely I get to feel that freedom.

My advice, to myself and other people, is that we need to learn to allow ourselves these days. Whether there is a reason for it or not, you do deserve this break, and you deserve to believe that it may last forever. Mental illness is not easy to handle, but if you manage to have a good day, don’t be scared of it. Let it recharge your batteries so that when you next have a bad day, you know what it is that you’re fighting for.

Medication and Mental Health Shame

Today I had a sports massage for the first time. IT was my first one, so naturally I was a bit nervous. I had to fill in a questionnaire; one question was ‘Are you on any medication?’

The correct answer is ‘Yes, I am on Aripiprazole and Procyclidine’. But I still found myself ticking the ‘No’ box. When in the massage room, I was asked again, and of so, what its for. After a pause I said yes, I was on medication for head stuff, not physical stuff. She didn’t understand, and I had to explain that it was a mood stabiliser. I didn’t feel comfortable saying this, and I didn’t even mention the second pills which I have to take twice a day. I have to admit, I felt ashamed. It felt like I was showing a weakness of some kind.

This got me to thinking about something really important; that people like me, people who are on medication just to make life survivable, are the people who can change the stigma. If I have the strength to hold my head up high and say ‘Yes, I am on medication’ and if they ask why, I just say ‘to help with my Borderline Personality Disorder’. If I had severe asthma or kidney problems, I would be able to casually mention my medication. It wouldn’t be my fault. Yet the mention of casual Mental Illness just doesn’t seem possible, I feel embarrassed, I feel like people will judge me by either being scared of it, thinking I’m making it up, or thinking I’m seeking attention.

We can change this, by being brave enough to mention mental health casually. ‘Yes, I’m on medication for a personality disorder, it doesn’t have physical affect so shouldn’t be a problem’. I am not saying every human needs to know, but at the same time, I am determined that today won’t happen again. I will not be ashamed; I will just answer with the truth about my reality. Because it’s not a reality I need to feel guilty about.

Mental Health awareness with one word

Mental health awareness is so important to those who suffer from mental health issues, but is still barely on the radar of those who have no contact with it. This is a massive problem, because it means that those who are uneducated in mental health are unprepared to deal with it. Awareness is important so that when you do come across mental illness, whether it be you, a family member, a co-worker or a friend, you both have a better sense of what it is they're fighting. Understanding your enemies is the first step to conquering them.

I can talk forever about my experiences with mental health, and I hope part of that can help others come to terms with it, but if awareness is going to improve, understanding needs to cover a larger spectrum than one person’s experience.

Over this week I have asked dozens of people, all with a mental health problem of some description, to describe their mental health issue using one word. Despite my own experiences, I was still shocked at how emotive and all-consuming the responses were. These words come from a range of people who experience a huge range of disorders, from Depression to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Eating Disorders and Post Natal Depression, among many more. These are words which everyone should read and consider. Think about how your life may be different with a constant feeling of your mental health being:

restricting, limiting, consuming, misunderstood, crushing, disconnected, soul-sucking, emotional, debilitating, overwhelming, frustrating, asphyxiating, guilty, crushing, absorbing, isolating, exhausting, crushing, looming, sporadic, engulfing, mountainous.

 

They feel ‘worthlessness’.  ‘Resigned’. Like a ‘Burden’. ‘Cursed’ even. These are all words from people who are surviving like this every day, putting on a face to hide feeling like they are ‘limited’ or ‘disconnected’.

But two words stood out to me; the first is  ‘Determined’.

On a list of heart breaking words, determination still finds a place.

Because mental health sufferers may find it limiting, exhausting, turbulent and overwhelming, but the important part is that we live with these things every day, we face this alongside every normal day to day activity, and we survive. We push through, and the stigma attached means that we often fight it in silence, we go through the pain alone, scared that if we confide in someone they will judge us, or decide we aren't worth the friendship. In reality, we are people who have a huge capacity to understand your emotions without judging you. We know how it feels to have to to fight with ourselves, we know how to be brave and we know how important listening is.

The second word which stood out to me was lonely. It was the only word which was repeated by more than one person. It was the most popular word. Lonely isn’t a symptom, lonely is someone being let down by the people around them when they most need them. Lonely is being too scared to ask for help, lonely is why there is a barrier between those who suffer from mental health issues and those who don’t.

Mental health issues are often romanticised or joked about. Casual references to ‘I’m so OCD’ or ‘i'm so bored I’m going to kill myself’, or even ‘just lighten up, you’re not depressed your just lazy’ can be so hurtful, and are all things I’ve heard people say. So now I want you to remember some of those words above, just one will do, and re-think what you’re saying. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't hurt every day. It’s in your power to make sure the next person doesn’t make ‘lonely’ their word. And one day, the word can be recovered, or hope.

And if you're someone who does have a mental health issue, I hope you're proud, because fighting invisible illness is so scary, and I'm proud of you for doing it every day. I am proud of your ‘determination’, even if it comes alongside feeling‘emotional’ and ‘crushed’.