The phone is ringing again.  You don't pick it up.  You can't pick it up. You don't even know why. It doesn't matter who it is calling, you can't even say why you can't speak to them.  You just can't.  It's like some frightened bird trapped in your chest thrashing its wings.  You can't breath.  You feel dizzy.  You just can't think.

You're making plans in your head about going somewhere, doing something yet the thought of leaving the house and actually doing it, alone, make you rigid with some sheer and utter panic.  You just can't do it.

Your partner goes out for the evening.  you can't sleep because you can't stop imaging them being run over or mugged.

You stand breathless watching your parents car pull away with your children in the back as they go round for tea and for several minutes all you can imagine is the car crashing.

When travelling in car or bus you constantly have scenarios of a crash in your head until you're convinced you're going to die.

You lie awake obsessed that there is something horrible going to happen to you that you can't control.

You're occasionally paralysed with abject terror.  You don't know what of.  You don't even know why.

There's some all encompassing sense of foreboding.

You spend ages trying to find a way to contact someone by e-mail because you seem absurdly unable to phone them.  If you do psyche yourself up enough to do it you have to do it instantly, before it passes and you become terrified of it.

You can't meet anyones eye.

You  dissect everything you say and do, convinced everyone thinks you're a total twat and they're only tolerating you out of politeness.

So you banish yourself to emotional and social solitary confinement.

You're too scared to say hello.

You can't wait to say goodbye.

One minute you're sat on the bus and the next you feel sick and disorientated, none of the windows are open and you can't breath.

You're walking round the shops when suddenly, everything is spinning.... the lights are too bright...the noise is too loud...you can't think.  Your brain is slamming around your head and your stomach hurts. You can't remember what you're supposed to be doing and for an instant you can't remember where you are.

You did the school run yesterday yet today, you have an indescribable inability to leave the house.

It's all silent.  It's all invisible.  It's all inside. You can't see it and I can't show you.

World Mental Health Awareness: Suicide.

This post may be triggering for some.  

The first time I wanted to die I was a child.  I ate nearly a whole tube of Bonjela because it said to not exceed stated dose.   I thought it would kill me.  I loved the taste and figured that would be a nice way to die.  I didn't even puke.  I was disappointed.

I once took a lot of painkillers.  I didn't die.  I didn't pass out.  I didn't vomit.  I didn't go to hospital.  I just slept, longer than usual.  I couldn't understand it.

I never wrote a note.  I never told anyone before of after.

Suicide. We've all heard of it, perhaps our lives have been forever changed because of it.  I'm not going to talk about the people who commit suicide nor the whys.  I'm going to talk about the not so often spoke about people, the forever suicidal.  To feel like you want to die yet to not act upon it.  Not because you're weaker then those who do or even braver.  They're entirely different.  One is fatally suicidal and the other is terminally suicidal.  To be terminally suicidal is to not want to die necessarily but a desire to not exist or to even stop existing.  Essentially you don't want to 'be' any more.  Death seems the only logical path to this.  Sometimes you're terrified of death, other times the fear disappears and you flirt with death.  You envisage ways of dying.  Ways of making sure you die. You fantasise about doing it.  You want it. Yet, you do nothing.

You close your eyes in the bath and imagine drowning,  you may even go under the water and hold your breath.  You look at the bathroom tiles and wonder what pattern your blood would make if you smashed your head into them hard enough.  You image falling down the stairs and the strange lifeless angle you create at the bottom.  You stare across the motorway bridge for just a few seconds longer than necessary as you wonder what it would feel like to jump off it.  You're waiting for the traffic to stop and for just a second or two you imagine yourself walking out into it.  You're taking your medication and you imagine taking them all.  You accidentally cut your finger when cooking and briefly consider running it quick, hard and deep up your wrist.

Yet you do nothing.

In some perverse way not doing anything becomes your punishment.  To disallow yourself the exit you desire.  You imagine the ones you'd love would be better off without you because you're bad, at everything.  You can't change.  You're broken to the core.  Things will never get better. They deserve better, so much better.  You don't want to leave them.  You realise that no matter how much better of they'd be, it would break them.  They're too young to hate you and you don't want to be the reason for their despair.  So you forbid yourself to go.  You don't deserve to make it stop.  You might be empty yet they love you, and you want to stay with them more then you want to leave them.  It's not them you want to leave.  It's you that you want to leave.  There lies the crux of it.

You don't want to die.  You just want to make it all stop. To make it stop.  To make it stop.

You can't be someone different or someone new so you'd rather be nothing at all.

So rather than living to die, you remain dying to live.  Holding on instead of holding in.

It's hard to describe how you can be suicidal yet categorically state you won't kill yourself.

My children saved my life.  The only reason I'm here is because whether they want me or not, I refuse to leave them.  They will do beautiful things that I can't and never will.  I want to watch them be beautiful.

World Mental Health Day: Self Harm

***This post may be triggering.

You've probably seen the deather children, swathed in shining black as they profess black roses and doom or the radically fringed emo's who's tears are star shaped and coated with gel.  Their scars are part of their uniform.  I remember in my youth, walking into pub toilets, all fishnets and pvc to touch up my armour of black kohl.  A young waif of a girl stood in a wisp of latex, her pale arms fully exposed, on show even, proudly advertising her ruby scars as accessories as a cruel smile twisted upon her lips.  Even a neon arrow couldn't have made them more obvious.  Her outfit appeared designed to showcase them.

I never showed mine. I didn't want people to see. Long sleeves and a wrist full of bangles.  Should they slip, a nervous laugh and a roll of the eyes as I cursed my frisky pet rabbits for having scratched me.  It was plausible.  People didn't suspect a thing.  They were hidden.  They were mine.  My secret.  My shame.  My release.

Self harm can take many forms be it blood letting, starvation, burns, alcohol abuse, drug abuse etc they're all a form of inflicting harm upon oneself.  I was a blood letter.  It started when I was barely a teenager.  I wasn't even aware it had a name nor that other people did it.  It started with nail scissors, jabbing them into my wrist and dragging them, again and again.  Sometimes it would be my thigh or my stomach. Often methodically and slowly.  Other times frenzied slashing.

It isn't about suicide.  You're not trying to slit your wrists.  You're not trying to die

It's about control.  An attempt to externalise everything that's within.  To make something visible out of an illness that is invisible.  To try and release the poison that's within you.  Sometimes it's a punishment, for being stupid or ugly or fat or disgusting.  Other times it's cathartic.

Physical pain is infinitely easier to deal with and to understand than mental pain.  So you try and make the pain in your head physical instead.  To extract the venom.  To cleanse.

I started at about age 11 and didn't stop until I was 23.  As I got older, scissors were often traded for razor blades.  It became a ritual, the removal of the bangles, the attack then the aftermath, that eerie silence as you watch the blood flow.  Then come the tears.  The sobs.  You're near convulsing with them.  You only stop because you run out.  Your head feels about to explode pain from the sheer strength of crying.  You clean up, hide your tool of choice.....back on go the bangles and down go the sleeves.  It's like it never happened apart from the reminding sting.  It feels good.  It feels real.  It's something to focus on.  You feel in control for a while. You feel alive for a while.

It didn't get better as I got older, it got worse.  More vicious.  The insatiable need to do it increased, it was like some throbbing in my veins begging to be released.  A white noise in my head that needed silencing.  Yet throughout it, there was control.  I never went too far.  Never needed medical attention.  Nobody had to know.  It was something I could finally do right.Even at work, I'd sneak to the toilets with scissors from my desk tucked under my sleeve, sat on the closed toilet lid, shaking.  Choking on silenced sobs. Everything was spinning and only this would make it stop, for a while.

Other times it was near daily ingestion of painkillers in some futile attempt to kill this inner pain.  To try and make it stop.

The thing that finally stopped me was having children.  I made a vow.  I couldn't let them see how vile I was.  How much I repulsed myself.  How faulty I am.  I haven't done it since.  That was ten years ago.  The urge is still there, it never went away.  It's worse, without an exit.  There's no way to let any of it out and it's filled me to the brim.  I'm drowning in it.  Poisoned.

I recently got a tattoo, to cover the scars.  The tattoo is representative of The Husband and The Spawn.  The very people who made it stop.  It's beautiful.  They're beautiful.  It's beauty ensures I can't go back.  It isn't my arm any more it's theirs, and I can't ruin that.

World Mental Health Day: Depression

It seems criminal to not write about mental health on world mental health day so here goes, the first of three short posts dedicated to various depression related things.

Depressed is one of those words that is overused and not truly understood by so many rather like the words love, hate, starving etc.  You love your child yet you really like ice cream.  You may hate homophobia, yet you only really dislike Brussel sprouts.  You're probably not starving and hopefully never have been you're just rather hungry.  See where I'm going with this?  How many times have you heard people dramatically declare 'Oh I'm so depressed today' the chances are if someone says this then they're one of the incredibly lucky people to have never actually experienced depression.  They may have had a shit day or two, they may jolly well be a little sad yet they're not actually depressed and it's highly likely that within hours or maybe a day or two they're not even a little sad anymore let alone despondent.  It's because of the throwaway nature of the word and it's misuse that there is so much stigma and misunderstanding surrounding depression.

Depressed isn't an adjective, it's a serious health condition.  It's not fashionable nor is it as transient as people believe.  Depression doesn't merely taint your day a little grey for an hour, it paints it black and within that blackness it attempts to destroy you.  You can't see out and nobody can see in.  You're screaming without a voice. You're drowning yet people just see you waving.

There doesn't have to be a reason for depression.  Often it's resultant of an incident or trauma in ones life and can with help be overcome through addressing the reasons behind it. A few lucky people genuinely can overcome it eventually and move on.

Then there's the other type.  It's just faulty chemistry.  It feels like your brain is faulty and wired up wrong.  Nothing happened.  There is no event to come to terms with. There is no reason nor cause.  It's just inside you, a parasite that feeds upon your very soul until you're unsure as to what is you and what is the depression.  It controls you as it devours you.  It's spiky black and angry.  It's fiery and vicious.  It's a thick grey smog that you can't see through.  It's the bleached out nothingness that expands within you.

It would be great to just be able to pull your socks up, to get over it, to stop wallowing, to move on.  You have no idea how much we would love for that to happen; for it to be that easy.  To be that simple.

It's like a carnivorous tumour that you can't cut out as it's entwined around your entire being.

Even if you have depression yourself, you can empathise with another yet you can't ever truly understand it nor them understand your depression.  Everyone's depression is a unique beast that manifests and torments in different ways.

Yet, it won't rain all the time.

So should you see someone who suffers from clinical depression smile or laugh.  Don't think them cured.  Don't use it to trivialise their depression.  Sometimes we laugh or smile because we have to, it doesn't mean we feel it just means we recognise it's the desired or appropriate reaction.  Sometimes it's the only way to stop ourselves crying.  Sometimes it's merely a short respite as the world lightens from black to shades of grey and we're making the most of it whilst we can, treading water until that proverbial hand snatches around our ankle and pulls us under again to drown.