How Not To Talk To Sick People

1. "It's all in your head."

You wouldn't tell someone with a fractured skull that it was all in their head. Don't say it to someone with a mental illness. The location of the damage doesn't change its existence.

2. "You're lazy."

You wouldn't say it to someone bed-ridden with a spinal injury. Don't say it to someone with depression. Being unable to function is harder on the sufferer than the bystander. Support, don't accuse. And if they manage to do something they enjoy? Congratulate them on doing that, because even that took more energy and willpower than you appreciate.

3. "What have you got to be depressed about?"

You wouldn't ask what someone had to get cancer over, don't ask a depressed person to justify their illness. Not all lung cancer patients are smokers and not all depressed people have a trauma in their past.

4. "Stop worrying."

You wouldn't tell someone with scoliosis to stop their spine curving, so don't ask someone with anxiety to stop worrying. It's a symptom, not a choice.

5. "You're doing this to manipulate/control someone."

You wouldn't tell someone who lost a leg that they did it to control someone, don't say it to someone who self-harms or is suicidal. You can't control anyone if you're dead, and self-harm is usually about coping, not controlling. Don't judge.

6. "It's a case of mind over matter."

You wouldn't say this to a paraplegic, don't say it to someone with a mental illness. Their mind is the problem, after all, it isn't functioning properly. It can no more force itself to function normally that someone can overcome paralysis by willpower alone.

7. "I don't believe you."

You wouldn't say this to your son if he found a lump on his testes, don't say it to your daughter when she says she's self-harms/wants to stop existing/feels empty. Many illnesses take away loved ones, both physical and mental. Get the appropriate help and stand by her.

8. "I can't be around you when you're like this."

You wouldn't say it to someone struggling through chemo, don't say it to someone who is getting their medication adjusted/suffering withdrawals. They are suffering. They didn't ask for it. Empathise.

9. "You refuse do to x/y/z."

You wouldn't tell a one armed man that he refuses to clap. You'd accept that he can't clap, which is a different thing. Don't tell someone with anxiety they refuse to pick up the phone/reply to a letter. Chances are they just can't do it, even if it seems like the simplest thing in the world to you.

10. "Just don't think about it."

You wouldn't say this about a heart attack, don't say it about a mental illness. It is not that easy. The person with a mental illness is very probably trying not to think about it in a way those with other illness never do because negative thoughts play such a huge part in so many mental conditions. If the sufferer could turn off the noise, they would.

Pseudonymous Zombie
xxx

I Wish You Weren't Here

Here's the thing about three year olds, especially three year olds you've created... They aren't cruel, but they can cut deeper than anyone else. You see, they rebel. And when they rebel and push boundaries, they're blunt. The open their mouths and they haven't yet learned tact, or metaphor, or sarcasm. What comes out is a mix of the truth of their feelings at thatb moment and words they know have upset you previously.

Tonight my son didn't want to eat his tea and he was being obnoxious about it. I told him he could eat his tea or he could have a time out on the 'naughty step' and that I'd have to tell Santa he'd been naughty.  He turned to look up at me and said, "Mammy, I wish you weren't here."

And my heart broke.

Logically, I know exactly what I said in the first paragraph; they rebel and they say things that hurt. The problem is that my depression has a voice and it whispers to me. Sometimes it yells, actually, and what it yelled today was, "see, even he knows he'd be better off without you. No one even wants you." I had to get up and go into the next room...

"I wish you weren't here" is among the most hurtful things that can be said to someone who often wishes they weren't even alive. Those words cut deep, carving a path right into the wound which is already trying to become fatal.

"I wish you weren't here" is the worst thing you can say to someone with a fear of abandonment and has had other loved ones turn away.

I'm not going to hold those words against my son. He and his sister are the reasons I'm alive. Maybe that's why it hurts. I draw breath for my children. Without them I would have attempted suicide more than the once I have, and maybe that's why those words hurt so much. It makes me want to evaporate, to simply cease to be. I will almost certainly cut tonight. It'll be the only way to stop myself walking out of the house and just leaving. Vanishing. Either to kill myself or die on the street.

That's the thing about depression; the slightest thing, like an off the cuff comment from a child you know loves you to bits, can set in motion a tailspin that you just can't pull yourself out of. That makes every conversation a risk. It means being around people is a risk. It could take one wrong word, one misunderstanding, one moment to kill me. Literally. And even the most innocent voice could be the one that makes me crumble.

Pseudonymous Zombie
Xx

Two Hundred and Eighteen

218. That's the number of times I put a razor to my leg at 3am and pressed down, drawing it through my skin and then watching as blood welled and trickled over my calf. My left leg is scars from just above my ankle to just below my knee. Scar, after scar, after scar, one on top of another. In the past I've had words cut into my skin. 'Help' was the first phrase I wrote. 'Kill yourself' was the last. Not that the words are visible now. Not under the scars I've added since.

218. That's the number of cuts it took to calm myself out of putting my suicide plans into action last night.

Why cut?
Sounds contradictory doesn't it, that hurting myself can stop me from doing something worse. I know a lot of people who've never been where I am can't get their head around it when I say cutting gives me control. It's a pain I can choose to stop if I want. It's also a distraction. Very rarely it's a punishment, and when I start out punishing myself it quickly becomes soothing because I'm so used to being calmed by that familiar pain. I've acclimatised to it because I've been using cutting to cope since I was fourteen. It's how I self-soothe.

Cutting myself was the terrifying act which made me seek medical assistence in my early teens. My doctor referred me to a counsellor but the next time I saw him he told me that because I understood why I was cutting, and because I wasn't cutting severely, the counsellor had decided I didn't need to be seen...

To me, that's a bit like saying 'we've found a tumour, but don't worry, it's small and not serious yet so we aren't going to treat it'. The world seems to disagree.

That first experience of asking for help was sixteen years ago. It seems like a lifetime ago, yet it set me on a course that I'm not sure is reversible. It taught me that seeking help was futile unless I actually became suicidal rather than 'just' depressed. No one cared to address why I was cutting or try to prevent escalation. I wasn't ill enough to merit care.

Insidious illnesses take control...

I guess it was the age old problem, lack of funding meant only those with the greatest need could be treated. However, that ethos condemned me. I dread to think how much it's cost the NHS and student services to keep me alive since because I've struggled all my life. If someone had intervened then I might have recovered. At the very least I might have developed 'positive' coping methods rather than 'negative' ones.

There's the problem, you see; if you find the courage to ask for help with depression and then get told that someone doesn't want to see you, it damages your ability to request help in the future. You already know you won't get it because you aren't on the brink. You don't ask for help and you develope your own ways to keep yourself alive. The decision not to treat a teenager who's asking for help lets the wound fester. It encourages it. I still have scars on my arm which are a physical representation of what was going on in my head as a teen.

Back then it wasn't always bad. Yes, my self-esteem had been irrepairably damaged by long term bullying and other issues and that didn't help my state of mind, yet still there were some months I managed to live a normal life. Some I didn't, however, and that was when I'd drag sewing needles or the pins of badges over my skin. It was later that things went completely to hell.

When I started university at eighteen, my depression was already getting worse. Then my freshman year turned out to be horrific. Looking back, undiagnosed social anxiety had me on the back foot from the start. I moved into halls of residence but I couldn't gel with the girls in my flat. I didn't like to go out into crowded spaces. I couldn't join them in clubs and bars. I was an exceptionally private person and let very few people get close to me.

Feeling like an outsider in my flat, during my first experience of living away from home, was heartbreaking. Especially as my younger brother took possession of my bedroom at home so I never really felt I could go back without being in the way. The result was I spent most of that year staying overvat my boyfriend's parents' house, especially after he became my fiancé. He had one of those high level beds with a desk under it. I hated the bed so I used to sleep on the floor next to his computer, listening to its fans whirring all night because he never turned it off. To me, that was better than being in the flat with the raucous drunkards who couldn't wash a dish to save their lives.

Seriously, there were monsters growing in the fridge and every surface of the kitchen, even the dining table. I kept my plates in my own room because it was the only way I could avoid coming in to find some new green and blue growth  over my belongings. It was disgusting and the clutter made my depression worse, especially as the other girls realised I was an odd introvert and merely lived with me rather than engaging with me.

The change of environment, loneliness, and the feeling uprooted on top of pre-existing stresses led me to start cutting again, just so I could cope. I fantasised about jumping off the Tyne Bridge and drowning myself. If it wasn't for my fiancé, I would have done it. He's the reason I sought help again at all.

Unfortunately, help is rarely forthcoming...

I'd had to move to a new doctors when I moved out of home and into halls which was unfortunate. I joined a practice which university recommended. That proved to be a mistake. My new doctors kept their main surgery for general, local patients. They had a second door in the side street which led to a grubby upstairs surgery. That premisis was where they ran drop in clinics for students.

The students unlucky enough to register with that surgery were only allowed to go to the drop-ins run out of the grim upstairs rooms. Getting an appointment with the main surgery was almost impossible as the receptionists actively turned us away. That arrangement made me feel like a second class citizen when I was already feeling worthless which wasn't helpful, but that wasn't the only problem with the practice. In addition the drop-in was run by triage nurses who weren't qualified to deal with my problems and had to refer me to doctors, who had to be seen at the drop-in and were only occassionally available on a sit-and-wait basis. More than once, I'd spend an hour waiting to be seen only for a nurse or doctor to announce she was going home sick and we'd all have to come back another day. The effort that took was almost insurmountable as my depression became  progressively worse and smothered my motivation.

'Luckily' the university operated a counselling service for students. Unfortunately, that didn't do me much good as the counsellor went on either long term sick or maternity leave, I can't remember which, before I managed to trust her enough to open up. I gave up on student services after that.

By the age of twenty I'd determined that there was no real help out there. That seeking it was a pointless endeavour because I just wasn't suicidal enough. So I continued on, struggling, cutting, binge eating, hating myself more and more with each passing year but hiding behind a masquerade of being a functioning adult, going to university and work but avoiding socialising to quite a degree.

The masquerade is hard to keep up...

I didn't get better. I just learned to live with the numbness, fear, hopelessnes, and self-doubt. I had no professional help and lot happened over those years which made it difficult to fix myself. I changed course twice, we bought a house, we were in car accidents, I was diagnosed as 'sub-fertile' and when I finally got pregnant after years of trying I was sick for eight months solid. I was sick to the extent that I weighed less in my last week of pregnancy than I did in my first. The pregnancy was fraught with worries, suspected miscarriages and health concerns about the baby. It wasn't the experience I'd hoped for. Alongside that, my husband was made redundant and then, the week I gave birth to our daughter, I was made redundant too. We had no money. Our mortgage went into arrears. I had to work sixty hours a week setting up a business to keep a roof over our heads. In the weeks before my daughter's first Christmas, I broke down in poundland because I didn't even have the £3 I needed to buy her three books.

That was a bad year. My confidence plummetted still further and I was stressed constantly. Anxiety prevented me sleeping and I was exhausted all of the time. Eventually my doctor referred me to a Cognitive Behavioural Therapist. I was offered antidepressants as well but I didn't want to become reliant so I didn't take them.

Sadly, CBT didn't do much for me. Funding meant the counselling service could only provide between six and twelve sessions, but no more. Yup, no matter my condition, my treatment was limited because of the underfuning of mental health services in the United Kingdom. I didn't go to my last appointment. What was the point? I was still depressed, despite my therapist saying I was improving, and I was about to be cast asunder by him. Once again the notion that seeking help was pointless reasserted itself. I'm not sure I've ever really functioned properly since then, but what could I do?

We then had our second child, a son. Because of money issues I was back at work a week after giving birth. When I had an operation the next year, I sat emailing clients from my hospital bed. I never stopped. I never rested. Every day was an act of survival. All I did was work and worry, and feel completely worthless. My children deserved so much better than what I could provide and that was a constant nagging declaration in my mind. I didn't get better. I cried. Me and my husband fought horribly. Most months, I wasn't sure we could even be together any longer. It was year after year of hell. Eventually I managed to find new employment which paid more than my business. I though 2015 might finally get easier.

'Better' is a hard place to find...

Then my dad was diagnosed with cancer. Terminal cancer. He was given four years but there was just something about the situation, about his mad rush to get his affairs innorder including refurbishing the house he wanted to leave to us, that made me think four years was optimistic.

For the first time in quite a while my dad made the effort to spend time with me. The whole thing was confusing. I'll go into the problems stemming from my relationship with my dad another time, but it's safe to say being told he had cancer caused a great deal of conflicting emotions and even my grief was confusing. I often didn't know whether I was grieving for my dad or for the father-daughter relationship we'd never had. It was only in those months of treatment and uncertainty that I managed to vocalise something I'd struggled to say since my teens.

I managed to say 'I love you'. And I meant it.

For the first time in goodness knows how long we hugged and he said 'I love you too'.

I don't know if it's a good thing that we got closer then, or whether it led to more pain because we didn't have enough time to fix all the problems that had made me unable to tell him I loved him in the first place. That was hard, and it got harder and harder every time he was admitted to hospital and it became more and more obvious that four years was unlikely, that even two would be difficult.

The hum of anxiety and depression had never left me since my teens, but late last year, after dad's cancer diagnosis, I went into a tailspin. One worse than ever before. The diagnosis raised childhood problems. My head filled with things it would be unfair to raise but which would never be resolved by silence. I didn't tell my dad any of the hundreds of things I wished I could explain. I ignored the past and let dad know the one thing that mattered; I loved him. Because of how my brain works, how I've been trained by experience to turn off my feelings for people if I need to, I had to choose to let love back in because I'd shuttered myself off from dad so many years ago. But choose I did.

Syill, during the months that followed, my need to cut grew a hundred times worse. I even ended up carrying a knife in my bag so that I could cut wherever I needed to. Parked in a car park. Locked in the bathroom at work. Anywhere. Rather than doing a few cuts at a time like I used to,  I'd do ten. Then twenty. Then fifty. Then a hundred. Up and up and up. And I became more suicidal than I'd ever been before. While driving to and from work I'd imagine driving away; running, vanishing, dying. I day-dreamed about driving off the coastal cliffs near my home. It became so bad that in January, despite having avoided it for years, I went back to the doctors. This time I accepted the antidepressants. I was also referred to counselling again, and placed on a waiting list.

Then my dad had died in March, more than three years earlier than the estimate he'd been given, and the day after his death my family imploded. Grief caused a number of people to say things they shouldn't have. My depression led to anger and I lost my temper, I shouted because it was the only way to avoid breaking down and my family fell apart. Thats how bad I am. Anger is another coping mechanism. I shout when I can't bear to cry because I simply can't function like a normal person. I've never had the help I needed to be able to.

Now several people I love won't speak to me. At all.

Apparently I'm disposable...

One of those who fell out with me won't speak to mam either because she was more concerned for my mental state than his in that moment of falling out. The other has told me that I only self-harm to control mam. That, despite me having hid my self-harm from her for months until I just couldn't any more. Apparently I'm manipulative because I let my mam know I was falling apart and she wanted to help me rather than telling me to stop being childish, selfish, disgusting, the way others did.

I lost three loved ones in two days, and two of them blamed me for that. No amount of apologising or explaining could change that because, with me, they saw behaviour they couldn't understand rather than an illness.

Everyone had gathered around dad. Wanted to support him. Mourned his loss. He had cancer and we watched him fail. With my mental illness certain people saw me as inappropriate, as disgusting, as if I chose to feel what I felt. That's the difference between physical illness and mental illness; people see mental illness as a choice, but no one would choose this. No one would choose to live in a state that made them want to die.

In the aftermath, someone I cared for deeply told me he'd had enough of making exceptions for me. Making exceptions for me, because I'm ill but he won't accept that. He tells me he understands mental illness but that I'm a brat whose behaviour disgusts him. He claims the coping strategy which has cept me alive for sixteen years is actually just a way to control my mam. He says that not everything is about me, indicating he thinks I think it is, and ignoring the fact I hid my worsening depression while dad was sick. I hid it. I told no one but my husband and the doctor how much I wished to simply not exist because everyone had enough on their plates.

That doesn't matter though. Apparently, with mental illness, the very act of asking for help and empathy is attention seeking manipulation because everyone can have a rough time. Everyone can get down. It's not something that should make it hard for sufferers to interact normally...

 
Even after he told me I was manipulating my mam, this person went on to say this, "I have done nothing wrong to you. But you have made my life horrendous and stressful. Just because I don't blow up every day and make a fuss doesn't mean I'm not hurting or depressed."

Do you know what's wrong with that statement? What's wrong every time such things are said to a severely depressed person? It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of a condition. There is a huge difference between hurting and suffering a mix of severe depression and chronic anxiety. Claiming to have done nothing wrong after telling a depressed person they only self harm to control others is laughable. His exact words were holding my mam 'hostage'. Also, saying I blow up everyday was just melodramatic. I exploded once. The day after my dad died because I couldn't cope with what was happening. I apologised the next day. Any argument following was because I was being attacked or asked to apologise again. The person name calling and throwing around accusations was the other party, not me, and we didn't talk regularly enough for him to assess what I did day to day anyway. This person also kept requesting yet another apology. That's the thing with mental illness, sufferers are required to apologise for it.

Would you apologise for being unable to play football if you'd lost both feet?

No one tells a cancer sufferer to apologise for the effects of their illness. No one asks a person with a broken leg to apologise for not being able to walk. But an illness of the mind? A broken brain? That's different. That, sufferers are made to feel guilty for. As someone said to me, "If you think you've apologised enough then you really are an idiot". Or another example, "Maybe people talk to you like you don't have a clue because you go on like a brat. Thanks for confirming I am doing the right thing. Shouldn't have even bothered holding a (wedding) invite back in case of a miracle sincere apology. You proved me right. Don't contact me again to bitch about a problem of your own making."

The 'sincere' thing came up several times because he wouldn't accept any apology I offered. He walked away and decided I was a 'selfish arsehole' who he didn't think 'could get any lower'. And that's the better of those two people I fell out with...

The other one doesn't just ignore me. He turns his back on my kids when they say hello to him, even if I'm not there. He won't let his kids speak to them through a six foot fence. He's taken his anger at me out on my children. And that pisses me off even though I've successfully shut down what I myself feel for him.

So many of my problems come from abandoment. They come from being told I'm not good enough or that I'm some how deficient, from the bullying in my youth and from other relationships. I have an illness which has sprouted from feeling worthless and abandoned, but many people react to it by leaving. By making a sufferer of a mental illness feel worse than they already do.
I developed a survival tactic a long time ago. I can switch off my affection as if I'm flicking a switch. When someone leaves I'll hurt for a day, maybe two, and then I will decide to feel nothing for them. I don't think that's normal. I want to speak to mental health professionals about it, but the ability stems from the same place as my hopelessness, my anger, and my low self-esteem. It's a defense mechanism and right now people are probably judging me because of it. But do you judge someone with a broken arm from shielding it? That's all I'm doing. Shielding the broken part of me. Society treats physical ailments so differently to how they treat mental ones...

You don't tell a cancer sufferer they're only threatening to die to hold someone hostage.

You don't tell someone in a wheel chair that they should apologise for not being able to do things 'ordinary' people take for granted.

You don't tell a deaf person that they're clueless because they can't communicate the way you do.

So why tell a depressed person they're only self-harming or talking about suicide to hold someone hostage? Why tell a person which chronic depression and anxiety that they should apologise for not coping with distress the way 'ordinary' people do? Why tell a depressed person that they are clueless because they have difficulty communicating in a normal way? I have yet to understand it, but I've gone off on a tangent here so lets get back to how I got to sitting on the floor of my bathroom, cutting myself 218 times.

By April everything that had happened, everything I'd lost, was too much to bear and so I picked up a sheet of paper and wrote a letter. I apologised to my mam, husband, and children. I reiterated that I loved them but that they'd be better off without me. I'd struggled for sixteen years and I was finally ready to let my condition kill me.

After addressing that letter to my husband, I popped all of my Fluoxetine pills out of their blister packs and lined the green and yellow tablets up in front of me.

Then I started taking them.

I swallowed one antidepressant after another, fully intending to swallow every pill available. Unfortunately my husband came home earlier than I'd expected. He grabbed the pills from me and called an ambulance. I didn't die that day. When doctors asked if I was likely to try again I said no to avoid being hospitalised, even though I had other plans. I was sent home having failed to take my own life...

But I did achieve something. The hospital's self harm team contacted the counselling service immediatly. They got me an appointment the very next week. After months on the waiting list, I had a counsellor.

The hospital were also going to refer me to the community mental health team. Trying to kill myself seemed to be getting me the help I'd been asking for since my teens. It was just as I'd suspected back then. The only way to get help was to prove myself on the verge of suicide. For the first time I felt a spark of hope... The difficult pill to swallow was that even while suicidal, I was more optimistic than my situation merited. I hoped to get help, but help still hasn't arrived.

No further forward...

Weeks of counselling and a change of pills later and I'm no better. I haven't been assigned to a community mental health nurse yet. I can't see a psychiatrist even though my doctor wants me to because there isn't enough of them available. On top of that, my counsellor has decided he can't help me and has stopped our sessions and put me on the waiting list for more CBT. CBT, like the therapy which had failed me the last time I tried it.

To me, my counsellors decision felt like further abandonment. It felt like someone else giving up on me. September had come. Five months had passed since my suicide attempt and I was back where I started, only my leg was more scarred than i'd ever thought I'd make it. More scarred than my mam knows. I can't tell her because I don't want to be told I'm controlling her.

One of those who won'the accept my apologies knows I attempted suicide. Afterwards he reiterated that I was controlling mam, but I don't know how I'll control anyone from beyond the grave, which is where I'd intended to end up. But what the hell, it doesn't matter. I'm more bothered by losing my counsellor than losing him now, because I can't allow myself to care.

Not only am I still cutting, and worse than ever, but after my doctor chased up the community mental health team several times after my hospital trip. It turned out the self-harm team hadn't referred me as they'd told both me and my doctor they would. They'd sent a report to the CMHT but that was all. My doctor had to refer me instead and I was only placed upon their waiting list then, several tear and blod filled months after I should have been.

Since that referal I have seen a mental health nurse to be assessed. He agreed that I need treatment and support. He agreed I have severe depression and anxiety and I need help. So he's put me on yet another waiting list. He told me I'm 'amber'; in need of help because I have plans for suicide but lower down the waiting list than others because I'm not 'red'. In other words, I'm not in hospital or currently in the act of stepping off a cliff or swallowing an overdose.

If I find where my husband has my pills hidden and take them all, maybe then someone will throw me a rope. That's what it takes to get help when you have a mental illness. I knew it at fourteen. I knew it when a hospital worker arranged the very counselling I'd been waiting months for in a matter of minutes, all because I'd tried to overdose.

I'm not advocating making a suicide attempt in order to get help. If you're dead you can't be helped at all. I know that, and I want to emphasise it. Yet on my frequent bad days, I want to do it. Not as a cry for help but because I can't bear my existence. I don't care if a failed suicide attempt earns me treatment or if a successful attempt leaves me dead. Either is better than what I'm going through now.

I'd like help so I can see my kids grow up, but if I am beyond help or not worth the effort and funding, then I'd rather just die. Get it over with rather than waiting. Always waiting. Never living.

I don't feel alive anymore, you see. Emotionally I have about four settings now. Numb. Panicked. Enraged. Or more often than not, hopeless. Completely hopeless. So hopeless that there's no point in getting washed or dressed. No point in getting out of bed. I'm not going into that though as my hopelessness and lack of ability to live is covered in my last blog post entitled 'Raising the Dead: The Day to Day Life Of a Zombie'. Instead I'll summarise...

The truth about seeking help with mental health...

What have I learned over the past sixteen years? If you're diagnose with cancer, you'll get help. You'll get treatment to cure or slow the disease. It might fail, yes, but you will see doctors and nurses and they will try to help you. They'll provide painkillers. I would never wish my dad's death on anyone. It was horrific. But he spent his final days surrounded by his family. Surrounded by medical professionals. That's worlds apart from the situations those with mental health problems experience.

We're diagnosed but if our condition isn't going to kill us in the next week, the next day even, then we're told to wait. We're told that we're not a priority. We can have a chronic, life threatening condition for sixteen years or more without ever receiving the treatment we need. For any other condition wouldn't that be medical negligence?

And if we're lucky enough to receive some token attempt at treatment but it fails us? We don't die with people crowding around us talking about the good times. Our illnes isn't even marked down as our cause of death. We die alone with several bottles of pills and enough vodka to drown in. We die as we step on the cliff edge and plunge into the darkness. We die bleeding out from a self inflicted wound. Or we die with our necks bruising under the rough rope of a noose. We die from suicide, not depression, as if somehow the two are seperate. As if suicide attempts aren't symptoms of an illness.

If my next suicide attempt succeeds, I won't die as the documents are likely to say. I won't die of an overdose. I won't drown. I won't die from suicide. I'll die from depression. I'll die from an illness that was allowed to fester in my childhood and became an unstoppable force in adulthood. It's something I don't think I can escape because it is ingrained in me. Part of me. A dark part that has spread through me and left me scarred.

My death won't be today. It probably won't be tomorrow. It may not even be in a months time, but I have a plan, and sooner or later my coping methods will fail and my plans will become action again. I don't doubt it because I don't believe I'll ever get real help. But that should worry me. I've learned to time things carefully now. My husband won't walk in on me next time. He won't save me next time.

But I'm only 'amber', so help can wait.

Wait, even though my mind will continue to torment me, belittle me, tell me that I'm worthless, that my family would be better of without me. I'll hate myself and be more disgusted by myself than anyone else ever will be, even those people who turned away because I've hated myself since I was about eight. I'll continue cutting because it stops me doing worse, at least for now.

218. That's how many times I dragged a razor through my flesh at 3am. It's how many wounds I bled from just to keep myself alive last night. That might be the most I've ever done in one sitting. I don't know. I don't usually count. All I know is that my calf is scarred from ankle to knee, and it isn't the only part of my body I've permamemtly branded with my badges of self-loathing.

And my mam doesn't know, because I cut to control my own emotions, not to control people.

218.

But I dont blame the NHS, or the CMHT, or my doctors. They can only work with the funding that's available, based on how society values mental health services. Everyone understands A&E and why it's essential. Governments know they have to fund A&E. Not everyone understands mental health or its devestating affects, and because of the governments get away with underfunding mental health services. It's time for a rethink. Many of us urgently need the wider world to rethink.

Pseudonymous Zombie
xxx

Sinking into Davy Jones's Locker

I'm sorry I didn't post more about the experiences which made me who I am. My depression took hold and I couldn't face writing about it. Even doing this post has taken weeks of thinking about it ti find the willpower to do it. For the moment I'm going to leave the 'my history' posts although they will come. Instead I want to tell you what depression is to me - sinking into Davy Jones's Locker.

Imagine you're sailing on a stormy sea. You are the captain of a ship which you've spent years building, crafting, learning to command, but your journey isn't going to plan. You've been tossed around by the waves, lifted to dizzying peaks and thrown into trenches. Your crew have all been swept away and you have whiplash. You're exhausted. You just want it to stop and you consider giving in.  Surrendering, letting the storm win and allowing the current pull you under, seems ever more tempting, but you stand at the helm, gripping the wooden wheel as tightly as you can, struggling against the pull.

That's only part of your battle for survival.

Eventually the sea grows calm, completely still. No wind fills your sails and even though you haven't dropped anchor you can't move forward or back. You're stuck in place and it feels a lot like drifting, directionless, even though you aren't going anywhere. It's dark and sunless, and even the moon has turned black. You can't see, not even to find a candle or lamp to illuminate your charts and compass. Worse, you have no food or drink, and you're too weak from your previous battle with the storm to fish or get water. You're too weak to do anything but lie on the rough timbers of the deck, wishing you had a crew to help you.

Over time, hunger and thirst begin to gnaw at you, and your failure to captain your ship presses down on you but it only registers in fleeting moments because there's a greater weight on your shoulder. Everything you've done plays through your mind over and over. The guilt is relentless because your mind insists that your actions alone have cost you your friends, family, your ship. It tells you you're stupid; that every disaster is your own fault.

You should never have tried to captain a ship or chase your dreams. You're worthless. Trouble. Others would be better of without you. Such thoughts become a chant in your mind, a mantra that never ceases. It doesn't allow you to sleep or concentrate or even comprehend what's happening around you. The voice in your head is the only one you can hear.

Hatred sets in, surrounding you and swamping your awareness. You hate yourself far more than you hate your situation; so much so that you stop feeling your hunger and thirst at all because the only things you can feel are shame and self loathing. It doesn't matter that you didn't create the storm, or that the wind, rain, and monstrous waves were beyond your control. You're the captain, right? You should have been able to do something to salvage the journey...

It's not until you're already swamped that you realise you're sinking, that the sea is rising up around you, cold and inescapable.  Your ship, your life's work, slides into the sea and as it does it pulls you under. You can't breathe. Even holding your breath, you know you're floundering, failing. You're too weak to swim and even if you could, it's too dark to see and you don't know what's up and what's down. Your body's instinct is to fight, to keep breathing...but your mind, that just wants the struggle, the pain, and the shame to end. After causing so much anguish and being so worthless, it seems only right you go down with your ship. It's the captain's duty, after all. It's the one good thing you could do with your life.

The only 'right' thing you believe you can do is to die.

So you open your mouth and let your lungs suck in water.  You hope it's over quickly, that the pain won't be prolonged, but in truth it doesn't matter. You'll escape the world sooner rather than later and in so doing you'll save everyone else from having to deal with the suffering whuch getting close to you brings. No one will ever have to get close to you again. No one will take that risk and be injured by your certain failure.

Your pain will end, and the world will be a much better place without you.

That's what depression feels like. A long struggle. A slow starvation. Loneliness and self-recrimination. Sinking can become unavoidable without help, but the only way to get help is to drag yourself off your ship's deck and find a flare before your damaged boat slides the surface and beyond recovery. You need to find the strength to signal for help even though you're exhausted, lost, and alone on a vast sea with no land in sight. You have to persuade yourself that someone will see your flare, even though it seems hopeless. Harder still, you have to persuade yourself that even though you feel worthless and undeserving, calling for help is the right thing to do.

If you manage to send up a flare, well done. It's a step. A step towards salvation. At least that's what you think as another flare sparks to life in the distance. A response. A promise of help.

If your rescue boat arrives, you're lucky. In my experience that isn't how mental health services in England work. That flare will give you a day or two of hope. For a week you'll believe that someone will come for you with all the correct equipment to ensure your survival. However, as the weeks become months, your ship sustains further damage. Its sodden timbers begin to rot and you can't maintain it on your own, not in your fragile state. The water starts to rise faster and no matter how many flares you send up, the rescue boats never arrive. Sure, they send up responding flares. Some days the flares even seem to be closer, but then they move away again as if your rescuers have decided you aren't worth saving. Not yet, at least.

Truth is they have other priorities and although you know you're dying, your death isn't imminent and so your rescuers decide you can wait. Another week. Another month. It's the best they can do because there aren't enough rescue vessels for all the captains who have floundered in the wake of their own storms. The problem is, that the longer you wait the less you believe anyone will come. The neglect seems to confirm your own worthlessness. You have no value. Nothing to tempt a salvage team to head your way.

Months pass. Maybe even years. Eventually sending up flares seems pointless. You are dying and nobody seems to care and the thought that the world would be better off with out you joins with the need for your lonely suffering to end. Thoughts of a reprieve, free of pain, shame, guilt, and loneliness become a plan. Make your suffering end. Jump overboard. Take yourself out of the picture so that the rescue boats can focus on those who are more deserving than you.

You might fight off that urge most of the time, but it only takes one defeat to lose everything. To become just one more captain who was blown off course and was never heard from again. Your family will be left wondering what happened. Could the have stopped you setting sail? Could they have kept you safe at home? Maybe if they'd just talked to you beforebyou set out...

Those manning the rescue boats will wonder why you didn't hold on that bit longer. They will claim they would've gotten to you eventually, but your demise isn't their fault. They would've been faster if only they had more rescue teams... more boats... more support from the community, the government, anyone with the power to help. Responsibility lies with you, only you even though you didn't cause the storm.

It isn't your fault your crew couldn't hold on as your ship was battered by the tempest. It isn't your fault that you fought and fought but ultimately succumbed, yet there will be some back on land who will say you were responsible for your own death. You should've toughened up and weathered the storm. You should have just kept going even though each further breath end every small endeavour was a tortured disappointment. You should have been better. Stronger. You could have willed yourself to survive, after all you were physically healthy. It wasn't like you had lost a leg or were suffering some terminal disease. You should have saved yourself. You could have swum to shore if you'd told yourself it was possible rather than telling yourself it was too far.

Right now, I'm sinking. I sent up my first flare almost sixteen years ago. I've managed to get myself to shore numerous times since my teens, but this time I'm too far out. I can't see land. My compass has broken. My charts were washed away. I sent up a flare in January, after months of trying to save myself. Since then I've been on waiting list after waiting list. In April I attempted to jump overboard but someone pulled me back onto the ship. For a little while I had someone to talk to, but even they left me to continue my wait alone. Now I don't have the strength left to function. The words 'I can't help you' tell me I'm not worth more time. Assisting me is too much work.

In desperation, I've sent up further flares. The water is starting to creep over me again. I'm tired and I hate myself for my weakness. My failure. I'm ready to open my mouth and let the water in, but until I do, I think I'll be left on this sinking ship.

There aren't enough rescue boats, you see, and someone else needs those there are more urgently than me. I don't think I can bear to send up another flare. I don't have the strength to find the flare box. I certainly don't have enough hope left to persuade myself it's worth the effort. Maybe once I start to drown, someone will pick me up again. Maybe they'll help me back to shore then...

It's that or I'll slip into the depths and it'll be over. All of it. I'll never struggle again. I won't care either way; save me or let me die, either is better than lying on my ship, lost, ashamed, and in pain. When I drown some will ask if I was trying to cry for help or if I truly intended to die. They won't believe the truth, that opening my mouth was neither of those things while at the same time being both of them.

I want to live differently or I want to die. Either will do just as long as my current existence changes. That won't matter if I make an attempt to end it. They'll say I was unsure of myself, unsure if I was calling for help or seeking to die. They won't accept that I hadn't care which outcome I achieved; summoning help or ending it all, not as long as I achieved one or the other.

If I'm pulled from the sea again, surviving my second attempt to end it all, they'll say I have suicidal ideation. They'll say I'm crying for help. They'll say I'm not truly seeking to die or I would have tried more often, tried harder, needed to be hospitalised rather than needing 'cared for' in the community. That's what they'll say, or how their words will seem to me. But the truth is, when I open my mouth I  do hope to drown. I hope to end it all.

If someone hears my instinctive gasps for breath and comes to my aid, finally deciding to try and get me to shore, then I'll be grateful, sure. Yet at the same time I'll be disappointed and anxious, dreading the battle for recovery that I'll have to endure. But if I die? If I die, then there'll be nothing. And nothing can seem like the best out come for someone who is exhausted and in pain. Just like a someone might crave sleep after a long day, I crave an end to a long period of struggling. An end which I can't retract. A safe nothingness where I'll never face another storm or loss.

That's depression to me.

Pseudonymous Zombie
xxx