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Wednesday, September 16, 2020

Admission

 


Today is the 16th, and as of today I have been admitted to a psychiatric unit as an informal inpatient. 

This is not something I necessarily wanted for myself or what my loved ones wanted for me, but my recent actions and my actions of last night where I attempted once again to take my own life mean I am at too much of a risk to myself to be supported in the community anymore.

I’m very scared, I feel very alone and I’m not sure what the future holds for me, but for my own sake and the ones I love, I hope this is the start of a better future and a better life for me. 

I’m past the point of being supported, I need real help and the only way I’m going to get that is by being taken care of elsewhere sadly. 

I am safe, and that is the most important thing. 

See you all on the other side,

Meg x


Thursday, September 10, 2020

World Suicide Prevention Day - a Word

 



So my last post was all about relapsing, so I guess world suicide prevention day came at an apt time. I want to talk today about suicide, and suicidal thoughts. I've written a post about feeling suicidal before which you can catch up on here, but today I want to come back to the topic

Feeling suicidal is so much more than the want to die, sometimes, yeah that's all I can feel, is this overwhelming sense of "I just don't want to be here", but others it's so much more.

It's feeling like you can't be helped anymore, no therapy, no talking, nothing can help this depression, this sense of worthlessness. It's feeling as though your loved ones would be better off, better off without the burden of taking care and worrying about you all the time. It's not being able to move because your limbs feel like lead, just laid in bed feeling helpless and although life is pointless now. It's feeling like nothing, not one thing is worth feeling in this much pain, not seeing your loved ones, nothing that makes you happy is worth the relentless agony that comes with mental ill health. 

When most of us say we're feeling suicidal, what that translates to for me, is that I've had enough of feeling this way, of feeling so overwhelmingly shit that I feel like I simply can't go on. It means I've hit rock bottom, and there's no way of bringing me round anymore, I'm lost in the wilderness of my mental illness, unable to find my way back to stability. It means that nothing that brings me even an ounce of happiness compares to the pain I feel just by waking up to another day of tears and sadness and emptiness. It means I want to kill the dark black hole inside of me that tears me apart, and keeps me up at night. 

I've felt suicidal on and off for around 4 years now, in the crux of my ill health, when I was first diagnosed with bpd, and I thought my life was over. But I haven't always felt this way. I've had problems with my mental health since I was 12 years old when I was diagnosed with anorexia nervosa, but even then I didn't want to die, I just didn't want to eat and gain weight. The last few years my suicidal thoughts have got me at my lowest, crept into my brain in the dead of night and eaten away at my thoughts, or sometimes they've opened my brain during a normal day, walked right in and made themselves at home. 

Suicide attempts are aplenty in my past, but they don't have to be or define my future. Nor does it have to define yours either. 

I refuse to be a statistic, I refuse to be a sad story, I refuse to be lost my mind and my illness.

I'm going to fight, and if you're out there struggling like me, I hope you will join me.

Meg x

Monday, September 7, 2020

Relapse

 

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I relapsed. A few weeks ago on a monday evening I tried to take my life three times, and not for the first time this year. I was subsequently detained under a section 136 of the mental health act twice in 24 hours, and in total spent around 45 hours sectioned and released back home twice, I'm exhausted still, but I am safe. I am home and trying to get some help - as impossible as that is these days - and trying to move on, but I want to talk about it, so I'm here. 

I don't ever share my personal stories for pity, or empathy or attention. I share them because I think we live in a world where the only things people share online are positive stories and good things they're doing, and thats just not real, life isnt that rosy and nice. Life is gritty and horrible sometimes and I think it's time we showed that part of it too. 

My life definitely hasn't always been rosy. It's been rocky for a good ten years, but you look at my instagram and my facebook and I look fine, I have a boyfriend, a loving supportive family, a job, a flat and a life. But that doesnt equate to happiness, that doesnt take my demons away, or hide the pain I feel. It masks the realness of real life, the sadness I feel deep down and don't share, and I refuse to live in hiding, in fear of shattering the glass of my online life. The shards are already shattered,  I may as well carry on and bring hope to people - that no one is ever alone in their struggles, or the only one to feel this way. No one is beyond help, or unable to find happiness. 

Relapse always seems like such a dirty word, you think of relapse and what do you think and feel? For me it's shame, weakness and failure. During my episode, I relapsed on self-harming twice. It had been over 18 months since I last hurt myself so the disappointment in myself was real, but something I need to remember myself is that, healing is not linear. It isn't one straight line graph of you starting at the bottom and going to the top, it's a humongous rollercoaster of ups and downs and blips. But that is okay, if you relapse, you are not a failure, you are not weak, you are struggling. 

To struggle is okay, it's normal, it's human. But it means it's time to get help, something I'm slowly realising as i get older. I've always been afraid to ask for help, scared to reach out and be rejected as I usually have by my mental health team. But this time it's different, as my boyfriend said to me the night I came home, it's gone too far now, I've hit rock bottom and I have to ask for help on getting myself back up, and I'm trying. 

But for now, it's time to do a whole lot of self-care, a bit of crying, and a lot of recovering. Remember, if you're out there and you're struggling, please reach out, get some help, even if that's in the means of telling a friend how you're feeling. And it's okay to have these feelings too, you're human and your feelings are valid.

Stay safe and stay lovely,

Meg x