Back to the maze that is my mental health, I know an interesting place to be from the outside. I can assure you everyday is a battle I seem to keep winning (not every day but 80%).
I suppose a lot of my mental health issues have been down to the way other people treat me, I am one of the most supportive, kind, loving creatures you will ever come across but a lot of the time my kindness was mistaken for weakness which ultimately became my downfall. I love hard, I always have but in the same way I also hate pretty hard too. It’s a very thin line between love and hate in my mind and it can easily be blurred by the wrong people.
I began my mental health journey many many years ago the first time someone hurt me, thinking about it now seems trivial but at the time it really broke me and I saw no way out. I’ve always had an overactive brain which again is a massive problem with mental health for me. Once someone lies or deceives me in some way, I take it as a direct reflection on myself when in most cases its just because they don’t care.
I remember my first suicide attempt like it was yesterday (I know a coward’s way out) hunting through my parents’ house for any medication I could get my hands-on ibuprofen, paracetamol and buscopan. Swallowing each pill individually so I could punish myself time and time again. Still to this day I struggle to take pills as I got so many lodged in my throat that day the feeling takes me back to the girl tormented that day.
At the time I couldn’t see a way out, I wanted the pain to end and my mind to stop. I never gave anybody else in my life a second thought (I know selfish but when suicide comes into play others don’t count). I never thought how my actions could affect the people I loved, it didn’t really hit me until I saw my mum, dad and sister crying afterwards willing me to have spoken to them about how I felt but with my mental state I didn’t feel like I could trust anyone to understand me.
The aftermath of my situation really hit me when I had to be assessed by the psychiatric team at the hospital, I’m not going to lie I didn’t want help, I did everything in my power at the time to be awkward and un-accepting of their help.
The weeks/months that followed were a blur of medications and counselling which made me feel like a belittled zombie (not a state I enjoyed but a state that ultimately saved my life). I didn’t want to talk because I didn’t feel like anyone truly understood how I felt about myself, the constant questions of “on a scale of 1-10 how do you feel today?” how do you think I bloody feel? Numb, hating the world, hating myself and not wanting to live…. Yeah that pretty much sums it up so on a scale of 1-10 I would say about a 2.
I guess that’s when I really noticed the voice (I believed that everyone had a voice and it wasn’t until very recently I found this was not the case) the only way I can explain the voice to anybody now is comparing it to the film Venom. It controls everything you do- what you eat, what you wear, how you converse with the people around you. As I explained in Part 1 the voice is dulled by medication but as I’ve found the original medication I used to have caused long term problems I still have today like memory loss which can be frustrating to say the least.
I’m sure my issues have caused not only myself lasting issues but also the people I love, the people who have been in and out of my life and the people I’m sure I will encounter in the future.
If you have been affected by anything I have said in my honest account I want you to know your are not alone and there are people all around you friends, family and strangers who can all offer you support when you are at your lowest.
One thing to take away from all this is there is always light at the end of the tunnel even when it can seem as though it is an oncoming train in the distance.
The Samaritans- Whatever you're going through, call us free any time, from any phone, on 116 123
https://www.samaritans.org/
