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.