Please note: If you are under 16, please speak to a parent or guardian before reading.
Am I your friend? Well it’s kind of difficult to say: I’m not sure I have the right words to convey what friendship is to myself, even those friendships I know well. Maybe it’s easier to express in pictures or music or smells or tastes or poems or memories. (I’m not very good at expressing using those means either, so I only imagine it’s possible). Anyway, here goes, with words: I’ve had, and still have, friends and I certainly count you as one of them. Each friendship has their singularly different origin: Those I remember from long ago when life seemed so much simpler, yet emotionally dramatic (for at least five minutes). Those from teenage years when life was so complicated and we were going through things ten times more dramatic than anything anyone else could possibly gone through, for weeks on end. Those who shared when we couldn’t share with those who knew us in more innocent ways, or when appearance and status mattered more than our authenticity or exploration of life. Those who survived the fallings out and who would remain there for a future together. Those who didn’t, but their memory lingers. But burgeoning self-consciousness turns a colossal, judgemental eye, on the question of what’s going on there. Who do I sincerely count as one? Do you genuinely counts me as one? And slightly ahead in time, who will become a friend in the future, and on what basis? Are the circles of friends reflective of our need for them, their need for us, or both? The tie that binds seems difficult to identify: For this friend, I’d do this; for this other friend, no way. (Both will be on the invites to a party though). For this friend: an invite to hours of chatting; for others: invites only as part of a group. Friendship changes: I’m not there, they’re far away; we feel guilt and loss; we meet new people who make us laugh more or who we share more things with; we feel left out; we fall out sometimes; we get on easily; we share trivial and important things; we get ill; we misunderstand; we regret; we lose one another. The slippery word “friend” beholds both of us, both our selves at this point in time. Ironically, in the easiest and most selective of relationships, there is considerable effort and investment and emotional enmeshment – however few or many friends we have. You remember pieces of me, and I remember pieces of you. Together we have reinforced and mirrored one another, our previous selves, in shared thought and spirit. And all of them are important because of sharing something small, unremembered, profound or deeply meaningful that resides in my memory somewhere; something for which I’m grateful. And I count you as a friend in this way too. A keeper of me. What, then, when paranoia takes hold? When self-doubt hits a new high and confidence a new low? When fear makes our world a terrifying place to live in? When we’re king of the world and the world can’t keep up and keeps holding us back? When people have damaged our relationships with others before we even had a chance to feel love? When what’s going on seems so much bigger than both of us; when we feel powerless to do anything about it; when we question our importance to one another, that surely others are better, have more meaningful relations? When we feel our limited encounters with trust and understanding are too small? When our illnesses change who we are, yet we continue to hammer out all our nuances within our continually negotiated relationships? When we feel powerless in these forces of change? When the first response to pain is to run away? We might lose one another through a period of distress. And then I remember that thing… Through all the malaise and chaos, loss and sadness, fear and worry, that life and experience constantly surprises us with, something has existed and continues to exist between us. That thing that inoculates against a loss of self, that helps makes sense, that maintains a hope for who we are and will be. That space in which we share something, often unspoken; because it’s about you, and because it’s about me, it’s “us”. A sense of belonging and acceptance. Not in principle, or definitive, but in love. Expressed between people who, at any other time, in any other location, in any other circumstance, would have been strangers. Little relation, no memory, an absence, an isolation, a void. For me, if I can only be there when times are good; then that is a mirror I find difficult to look in to. (But that might be a mirror someone else can only look in to). So I remain, remembering your importance to me. The ways you have changed my experience, my self, in ways I hadn’t realised until I thought about it. The obvious and the subtle. The way you accepted me for who I am, and how you helped me belong. So I to try and say the right thing, to do the right thing, listen, make the drinks, do no harm, listen, share, or just be. And yes, now, more than ever, when it gets tough, I am your friend. And you are mine too. Let us not let the mere strangeness, and tragedy, of human existence get in our way
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Please note: If you are under 16, please speak to a parent or guardian before reading. An Echo of Dread Put yourself in someone's shoes, Whose head is full of echoing blues, With days built of fear and dread, As monsters echo round your head. They scream, they roar, the fire burns true When demons live inside of you. As voices whirl round and round They knock you back into the ground. "Fail seven times, stand up eight" they said. Yet some days I can't get out of bed. "Get up, fight back, stand tall and bold, Fight your demons", I'm forever told. I'm trying hard to see it through. But when a monster lives inside of you Your world is dark and often bound, As a raging voice echoes round and round. The demon shouts, "You're worthless, weak." Each day, forever, seems so bleak. But each time I share a pesky thought Another monster's finally caught. That conversation, so overdue, Helps thaw away the deadly dew; Each morning now is near and bright I might just even win this fight. Stigma, shame, it all feels strong, Like the voice that's echoed for far too long. But now it's time to reclaim my head And put that monster under the bed. Speak up, speak out, don't live in fear, I shall not shed another tear. As strong and alive as that voice may be It's simply an echo that lives inside of me. Please don't tell me to "suck it up", Or say "come on, chin up chuck"; It's an illness, a battle, a struggle you see. But it certainly does not define me. No one can wave a magic wand And break the gremlin's gruelling bond. But live and laugh I shall again So please sit tight, until then. I know it's hard to understand But please I beg just hold my hand I know you can't see these demons in my mind. You can look, you can test, but you will not find The monsters that live inside my head. They're real, they're there, they're an echo of dread. If you are affected by any of the issues mentioned, please contact Mind or Samaritans.
Please note: If you are under 16, please speak to a parent or guardian before reading. If there’s one thing depression is good at, it’s isolation. It’s depression’s ability to make you feel like you’re behind a wall, empty on the outside and sobbing on the inside, and so alone because no one can see the truth or hear the truth. No one can look past the mask you wear to simply survive the days and understand that you’re not really okay. But depression isn’t actually rare and we often have more people than we think in our lives who are willing to support us if we can break out of our cage and tell the truth. “I’m not okay. I’m trying to fight my depression but it feels like it’s winning and I struggle to keep going. It makes me feel bad and weak and alone and I’m doing my best and I need to know that’s okay.” A while ago that summed up a Facebook status I did. I’m on medication and most of the time I’m more like the old me, but I have bad days and I have bad times. Often I just get on with life, despite my illness. It’s no different from learning to live with a limp or a dodgy stomach. I don’t talk about it a lot because it is what it is and the last thing I want, that anyone really wants, is to be a burden or a constant downer. But I had hit a hard time, and finally a last straw broke my back and I posted a status essentially apologising for the fact that I was no longer able to hide that I was hurting. I’m not sure what my purpose in writing it was except as a catharsis perhaps. I don’t know what I was expecting but I suppose I was hoping a friend or two might tell me that they cared about me. I guess I just wanted to not feel alone. I was taken by surprise though by the response I got. Within a short time I had comments popping up. ‘I’m sorry to hear that’. ‘Hugs’. ‘I love you’. ‘If you need to talk just message me’. ‘Here’s a link to a site that helped me before’. None of them judged me. None of them gave me some cliché about ‘just smile and it will get better’. There were some that said it would get better, but it always came with the comment that until it did get better they were there for me. The comments weren’t solutions to my illness or a magical cure that made me ‘happy’ again. I hadn’t been expecting them to be. They still meant the world to me. All of a sudden I wasn’t actually alone, even if I hadn’t really been alone anyway. Every message meant more than I could have expressed because every single one was a stone to weigh things more in my favour. They were all strings pulling me back from an edge I didn’t really want to be standing on. The thing is, no one can fight depression or another illness for someone. I don’t get to get tired and tap out, or tag a friend to jump in and take over for me. This depression is my battle. What these friends do, when they tell me they love me and they are seeing the fight and they won’t leave me to fight alone, is to stand on my side and cheer me on. They are my supporters, they bring my spirit refreshment when I’ve been knocked back. They wipe away the sweat and tears and push me back to my feet and somehow they give my legs the strength to hold me up; or maybe they hold me up when I can’t do it anymore. They don’t leave me in a wasteland to crumple in an incorrect belief that no one cares if I fall. That’s what depression wants me to believe. It wants me to think that I’m on my own, an island. It wants me to think that if I lose the battle, no one will care. It wants me to think that my life is negligible. That it affects no one but myself. If that’s the case, then it doesn’t matter if I give in, does it? It doesn’t matter if I hurt myself, or even kill myself, because no one will notice. It won’t hurt anyone but me and somehow depression tells me that is okay because at least the battle will be over. And sometimes I’m very, very tired and I do want it to be over. So when I get the courage to show people the struggle behind the mask, when they respond so tenderly and openly and lovingly, they are taking away depression’s greatest weapon against me. They are saying that I matter, that it matters that I am in pain. They are saying they would grieve if I lost the battle. They are offering to watch with me through the darkness until the morning light finally finds me. Friends can’t make the depression go away, but they should never underestimate how much power they have to weigh the odds in a sufferer’s favour. The difference between feeling alone and knowing that you have people in your corner can be the difference between whether someone makes the choice to be around tomorrow or whether they forfeit the fight. If you are affected by any of the issues mentioned, please contact Mind or Samaritans.
Please note: If you are under 16, please speak to a parent or guardian before reading. If there’s one thing depression is good at, it’s isolation. It’s depression’s ability to make you feel like you’re behind a wall, empty on the outside and sobbing on the inside, and so alone because no one can see the truth or hear the truth. No one can look past the mask you wear to simply survive the days and understand that you’re not really okay. But depression isn’t actually rare and we often have more people than we think in our lives who are willing to support us if we can break out of our cage and tell the truth.
“I’m not okay. I’m trying to fight my depression but it feels like it’s winning and I struggle to keep going. It makes me feel bad and weak and alone and I’m doing my best and I need to know that’s okay.” A while ago that summed up a Facebook status I did. I’m on medication and most of the time I’m more like the old me, but I have bad days and I have bad times. Often I just get on with life, despite my illness. It’s no different from learning to live with a limp or a dodgy stomach. I don’t talk about it a lot because it is what it is and the last thing I want, that anyone really wants, is to be a burden or a constant downer. But I had hit a hard time, and finally a last straw broke my back and I posted a status essentially apologising for the fact that I was no longer able to hide that I was hurting. I’m not sure what my purpose in writing it was except as a catharsis perhaps. I don’t know what I was expecting but I suppose I was hoping a friend or two might tell me that they cared about me. I guess I just wanted to not feel alone. I was taken by surprise though by the response I got. Within a short time I had comments popping up. ‘I’m sorry to hear that’. ‘Hugs’. ‘I love you’. ‘If you need to talk just message me’. ‘Here’s a link to a site that helped me before’. None of them judged me. None of them gave me some cliché about ‘just smile and it will get better’. There were some that said it would get better, but it always came with the comment that until it did get better they were there for me. The comments weren’t solutions to my illness or a magical cure that made me ‘happy’ again. I hadn’t been expecting them to be. They still meant the world to me. All of a sudden I wasn’t actually alone, even if I hadn’t really been alone anyway. Every message meant more than I could have expressed because every single one was a stone to weigh things more in my favour. They were all strings pulling me back from an edge I didn’t really want to be standing on. The thing is, no one can fight depression or another illness for someone. I don’t get to get tired and tap out, or tag a friend to jump in and take over for me. This depression is my battle. What these friends do, when they tell me they love me and they are seeing the fight and they won’t leave me to fight alone, is to stand on my side and cheer me on. They are my supporters, they bring my spirit refreshment when I’ve been knocked back. They wipe away the sweat and tears and push me back to my feet and somehow they give my legs the strength to hold me up; or maybe they hold me up when I can’t do it anymore. They don’t leave me in a wasteland to crumple in an incorrect belief that no one cares if I fall. That’s what depression wants me to believe. It wants me to think that I’m on my own, an island. It wants me to think that if I lose the battle, no one will care. It wants me to think that my life is negligible. That it affects no one but myself. If that’s the case, then it doesn’t matter if I give in, does it? It doesn’t matter if I hurt myself, or even kill myself, because no one will notice. It won’t hurt anyone but me and somehow depression tells me that is okay because at least the battle will be over. And sometimes I’m very, very tired and I do want it to be over. So when I get the courage to show people the struggle behind the mask, when they respond so tenderly and openly and lovingly, they are taking away depression’s greatest weapon against me. They are saying that I matter, that it matters that I am in pain. They are saying they would grieve if I lost the battle. They are offering to watch with me through the darkness until the morning light finally finds me. Friends can’t make the depression go away, but they should never underestimate how much power they have to weigh the odds in a sufferer’s favour. The difference between feeling alone and knowing that you have people in your corner can be the difference between whether someone makes the choice to be around tomorrow or whether they forfeit the fight. I'm sorry, that the depression is back. I know you don't like talking when you feel like this. I'm here if you need to talk, I'm here if you need me. What more can anyone offer? Depression is a bitch. It is invasive, destructive. It warps the world, turns everything that is good and beautiful to crap. I hate it. When I am in it, I allow it to gently hold me, to caress me and tell me I am worthless. I allow it to pull the blanket over my head and wish the world away. I am lucky. I know my depression, and I have an amicable enough relationship with it. I know if I am kind to myself and ignore the thoughts that depression gives me that it will go away. But this is just because I am lucky. Lucky that it is a gentler version that lives with me compared to the monster I have seen other people have to deal with. I wish I could carry your depression for you, wish I could take all the depression in this world, bury it in concrete, end it for ever. But I also love the days when my depression has passed. The blueness of the sky. The constant relief to have my own thoughts dominating my mind, to not have to keep gently ignoring those negative, paranoid, self-hating ones. The contrast reminds me what it is to live. Friends are always there and I find it a miracle that they just see me, whatever I am seeing. No matter how huge the depression is for me, they just see how it is weighing me down, covering me. They know I'm still there. Still the same. Even when i forget who I am. When I feel myself simply as a lack. An absence. Depression is not who I am. I write to myself, reassuring words. Words to bring myself back. Depression is not who I am, though it effects how I behave And how I think It is a circus mirror through which I see myself, bent and distorted And assume that this is the only reflection that others can see too And assume that this is influencing their thoughts about me But I do not know I am looking in a distorted mirror I think they are seeing the truth But depression is not me. It is not who I am. I am not a howling act of melodrama Nor a damp rag, limply hanging over the clothes line forgotten in a drizzling rain I am not a bringer of doom sent as a promise of misfortune Nor a blank gap in the air When will I let myself be? My friends let me be. They tell me to phone if I need to, they don't need to hear the things in my head to see the person I am. I am lucky. My depression is mild, it is fleeting. My friends are good, and loving and kind. Depression does not like it when I am grateful for these things. It is fed by guilt and envy, jealousy and pride. By the need for external validation, by adrenaline. It's best friend is anxiety. So I am forcefully, consistently, assertively grateful. And depression comes less and less often, with less and less force. I do not have the answers, and like all friends of people with depression I wish I did. I wish I could take all the depression away and bury it. But I am glad for the experience, of walking with the black dog because I know where you are now, my friend who is having such a horrible dark time and I know that you don't need to see the hope, because I can see it for you. Like my friends see it for me. Please note: If you are under 16, please talk to your parent or guardian before reading. It started, for me, with a text full of understatement about things being "a bit tricky", and then a heart-rending phone call in which my friend told me she was suicidal, the mental health crisis team were involved, and the realisation that while I’d been busy celebrating my 40th (she didn’t want to spoil it for me) the walls of her life had collapsed. It started, of course, way before that for her, and even as the shock hit deep in my stomach, I knew I’d felt this coming three months earlier when I last saw her and I’d failed to register the warning.
Worrying about someone you don’t live near is strange. We’ve been unwavering best friends for 27 years, but we first lived apart pre-internet in student houses with no phones, and our communication has always been, well, crap – saved only by the fact that neither one can outdo the other in crapness. Suddenly I needed her to know - intensely, verbally, but also gently and steadily - how important she was to me. I needed to hold on tight, without being close enough to even give her a hug. Texts became the best I could do. Her sister told me that what I said on the phone had helped, so I tried to reiterate how very much I needed her alive, how much I loved her and what a part of me she was. I asked her how she was, a lot, then realised that was getting boring (I needed to know, but that didn’t mean she needed to be telling me all the time). So I tried to entertain, and keep her connected to the details of the world with the daily minor disasters of my family life. I never knew if any of it was helping, but felt sure it was better to risk the wrong communication than none. Is it weird to say I had a good time when I finally went to visit? Yes, everything was different, nothing was okay – random weeping, walks so long I got blisters, carefully avoiding triggers, encouraging eating. But we still had loads to talk about, and a black tasteless sense of humour comes in particularly useful for mental illness. We’ve known each other since our hormones first started messing us around, but her rawness now opened us up like never before. When you don’t know how you’re supposed to be, or what you're supposed to say, the only option left is honesty and love. Our texts after this, even in the darkest times that followed, are different: covering the whole of life; funnier, stupider, deeper and more direct. At first, and again when it got very bad later, I woke up each morning with her name at the front of mind, a dull lurch in my stomach and a mass of questions I couldn’t ask anyone. Not her husband, who was busy just surviving and holding it all in some kind of order; not her – I’d said she didn’t have to tell me optimistic things just so I felt better, so didn’t really get many progress reports. I long to be closer so I could be present, helping and assessing, feeling the situation rather than looking for clues in short sentences. I also recognise that distance protects me from the exhaustion of a carer and gives me the reserves to keep on being a friend, whatever warped humoured, waffly texting form that might take. Long distance, but in it for the long haul. Please note: If you are under 16, please talk to your parent or guardian before reading. One night when I was 22, I spoke to a woman whose name I never found out. I was working a night shift, playing solitaire until I couldn't see the screen when she called. I couldn't understand her at first. It took a few repetitions, her voice was so thick and slurred, from crying, and alcohol, and as it turned out, all the pills she'd necked before she made the call. Eventually I established the basics - she had lost her husband and child. After some time and after a fashion, this fact and everything that came from it had overwhelmed any sense she had that her life was a thing worth having. She wasn't going to change her mind on this, she told me. She didn't want to debate it. There was nothing to debate. What she wanted was someone to talk to her while she waited. What she was asking me to do was to be there with her, for there to be a voice in her ear so she would not be alone as she died.
It was the nature of my job that I couldn't do this. It was illegal, in fact. Neither could I do what I was supposed to do, which was to give her another number and hang up. In the end, while people ran about trying to glean a location from the puzzle pieces of information she gave me, after almost two hours, she cut the line. I have no idea what happened after that. One night when I was 24, I sat in a side room in A&E, where I had been put after they had bandaged me up and told me I couldn’t leave because they believed I was planning my suicide and had access to the means, and that there was a pretty good chance I’d go back and kill myself, and so I’d been sectioned. How dare they. What did they think this was, Holby City? Does this look like a soundstage in Elstree, that just happens to have someone Exorcist vomiting in the room next door? Do I look like I went to RADA then did a summer’s experimental comedy mime at the Edinburgh Fringe before giving it all up as a bad gig and probably becoming a florist? (Don’t answer that. Shut up. SHUSH) The trouble was, though, they were absolutely right. I’d spent more time researching, planning and carefully executing this than I probably did on revising for my Media Studies A Level, and I mean I got a friggin’ B in that, so with the proper application - imagine! But they could do what they wanted, I wasn’t going to change my mind on this. I didn’t want to debate my worthlessness, and the complete lack of point in my continuing occupation of space and air. There was nothing to debate. What I had to do, clearly, was just get my shit together just this one time and do the decent thing and stop existing, stop taking, stop hurting, stop failing, just fucking STOP. Except - well, how did that happen? - tonight I am 31, and sitting in bed eating chocolate mis-shapes, and I have to get up for work tomorrow, and I have conspicuously failed to kill myself as yet. Now you may be seriously wondering if I am sitting here telling you this because I actually literally want a medal for stuff most people do without even thinking about it, and probably with much better skin than me. If you are, don’t worry. I’ve got a girl here sneering through her dismissive head shake, telling me this. She also says to tell you even if anyone wanted to hear this, it never would have happened if I hadn’t been such a monumental shitcanoe and hands up everyone who wants me to sit still and shut up and just try not to fuck anything else up or get any ideas that nobody has noticed, just by the by, that I am as cringeworthy and witless as I am thick and self satisfied. She’s got one of those clicker things that she presses constantly to count the ways I have fucked up and the ways I have failed, and my audacity in even thinking about daring to address this subject. That girl is, unfortunately, me. She lives behind the mirror and she’s like googling your name idly one dinnertime and finding out people write dissertations on why you’re a tit. She’s been doing that for as long as I can remember. I’ve never done anything more significant than buy a packet of Polos without being paralysed by my own internal monologue, by the way that I know in the same way I know what date I was born on that I am: wrong/bad/stupid/fat/ugly/boring/worthless/wrong/selfish/arrogant/deluded/evil/ lazy/too much/too little/an idiot/an embarrassment/a waste/a shame ...over and over again. She tells me I am stupid to do something, usually writing because the wench knows how I love it, and that I will inevitably fail and humiliate myself, and so I don’t do it, and then she berates me for being a lazy coward. Another of her favourites is to tell me I’d better do something about the state of my features before I expose the public to them, then laughs at me for wearing makeup and bothering to dress nicely because do I think everyone can’t see I’m hideous and find the effort hilarious? I mean, sometimes she has a point, like when she reminds me of how I tried to translate Manics lyrics into French to look clever in my oral exam and failed, or when I gleefully humiliated my poor mortified dad in the shops when my mum had sent him to buy Feminine Hygiene Products. I have to concede her point on the time when I was five and I wet myself Morris dancing (and the fact that no part of that sentence was exaggerated for comic effect) but a lot of the time it’s just hard, and it hurts, and in a very compact nutshell, that’s why I know how you feel, if you’ve ever felt like you wanted to die. Or if you do now. Or even if you never wanted to die, but still wished you could rip your stupid skin off and be someone far better. Apparently a lot of people get that. People you wouldn’t expect. Good people. Clever people. Cool people. Beautiful people. Brave people. Funny people. All this time I thought it was only for freaks like me. I read a very brave and clever book once, and it had a quote in it, something along the lines of: when you write about yourself, you write about other people. And that’s what I’m trying to do. Obviously, there’s a lot I’m not saying here about my life, and what happened, and what precipitated it. And I’m scared. I’m scared I’m not capable of saying what I mean, and that it won’t matter anyway, and that the people in my life who didn’t know this will be horrified and people reading it who don’t know me will think, what a gobshite. But that doesn’t matter. Because it’s not about me. I’m good. Got a brew here and everything. It’s about this thought I had about the girl who died when she was 25, and before that how she starved herself into hospital when she was 19 and scrubbed the skin off her hands when she was 16, who dragged a sharp blade up her arm when she was 11 and kept doing all those things, believing she’d never, ever feel forgiven enough to stop. The girl who soothed herself to sleep counting the days til her heart could stop and really, truly believing that her family and friends would grieve less for her death than for the space between that and her birth. The girl talking to you now, who didn’t die when she was 25, and is now past 30 (!!) and doesn’t want to die. Which is the whole point. I don’t really believe in fate, or miraculous transformations. I don’t believe in pulling yourself together and awareness ribbons on Facebook. I believe in books, lots of books, and songs, and books about songs, songs about books, and long conversations about either. I believe people are mostly basically decent and I believe in their stories, telling them and being told them and asking nosy questions and getting into all the dark corners and laughing about, but not at, the really not funny stuff. I believe that those things are what save me. And I believe they could save any one of us, and that they do, every day. And so that’s why I thought I’d tell you the bit about how that worked for me. I call it, because I have never had any discretion, Emma’s Handy Shiny Guide To Not Killing Yourself! Yaaay! First thing is: REMEMBER AT TIMES OF POISONOUS SELF DOUBT THAT YOUR BRAIN IS TRYING TO KILL YOU RIGHT NOW. The logic you are experiencing in moments like this does not bear any resemblance to genuine logic. It is an Evil Plot, and what do we do with Evil Plots? WE FOIL THE BASTARDS. See, even at my worst when I thought of the people around me, I never believed they didn’t love me. I just couldn’t understand why anybody would. I mean, it would hurt them, sure, but wasn’t it better to just hurt them this one last time, and then they could grieve and there’d be funerals and then they could all get on with their lives without worrying about me or bailing me out or listening to me whinge, and the space I left would knit together like I was never there. This, of course, is bullshit. The people who love me couldn’t see me like this, because it was a distortion. And yes, I also thought that might be true for everyone else but I was REALLY awful. And in the time since The A&E Incident, the very same people have got married and divorced and had babies and lost jobs and become adults and all this other stuff that if I hadn’t been there would still have happened, but without me, and they would know that I had been there and now I wasn’t and they carried on and I couldn’t, and that would hurt every day, and that wouldn’t be my fault, because suicide is not a selfish action or anything other than an absolutely horrific tragedy, but it wouldn’t have been the best thing for them. That was just some nasty shit the girl in my head told me, BECAUSE SHE’S A CRUEL BITCH. Get me? Now. Second thing: if you’re anything like me, there’s probably a lot of stuff you want to do that you’re too scared to do. Like, you’ve got to pay your rent or please your parents or whatever. And you won’t do it now anyway because you’re fucked. Here’s the thing about being fucked: if nothing matters, you can do whatever you want. I’m a social worker now. Can you believe they let me? When I was 22 and doing the job I did then, people told me it was something I’d be good at. That I should stop what I was doing and do that. That I’d be good at it. Because I love people, and stories, and minds, and how they work, and because I wanted to change things (and probably because I am essentially the most nosy person ever born). But I was scared. That sounded like a big adult thing someone like me shouldn’t be allowed to do, so because of my rent and my boyfriend and my student loans I didn’t do it. Two years later, dazed and reeling, just out of the hospital with no home and no boyfriend and no job, someone I hadn’t known very long (who would go on to become one of my very best friends as well as the most gorgeous person I ever kissed, and who would save me this time and over and over again) mildly suggested the same thing. And I thought: fuck it. I can live wherever, I can eke out a bursary as opposed to eking nothing, I do any worse than I have already. I decided in the course of all this that I should probably stop hurting myself, if I wasn’t going to be a total hypocrite. This proved difficult. For over a decade I’d been fluent in self harm, going at myself in various gruesome and coldly thought out ways that would constitute torture if you did it to someone else, and was torture for my poor ex boyfriend who once had to kick the bathroom door in because I was behind it bleeding rather more than I’d meant to. I didn’t see why he would be upset, why he couldn’t understand that this was all I was worth. I didn’t know any other way to quiet that voice in my head, to bargain with myself that I know, I know I’m terrible but if I can just... It was incredibly hard to give that up. I wasn’t sure I could live with myself without it, and I had never dared hope I might. It was just the price I had to pay for breathing air. But even despite all the times I was literally seconds away from caving in (and there were many) something weird happened: I started to think about the things I’d done before, and feel sad about them, and sorry for the girl who felt like she had to do them, and believe that nobody deserves that. Nobody. Not me, not you, not anybody. I started to feel something like respect for what I needed to exist physically. Initially it wasn’t for my own sake, and if I’m honest it’s ongoing, my having not cut myself for eight years but spent much of this weekend in tears about two triple chocolate cookies because it’s still not easy to give myself permission to deserve to eat, but it happened. It’s happening. I have a sense now that I need to treat myself, my physical self, my hated body, reasonably. Even more so, and stronger than the desire (which is still there) to go digging in my veins for what I hate, I have a sense that this is basic decency and nothing to do with how much I hate myself on any given day. Which is probably why I never have done it again. And I kind of think thats why I’m pretty sure I’ll never go as far down as I went at 24, ever again. And I promise, I promise you, if I can say that, it is not beyond anyone. And all this I learned, because I had nothing better to do than go and learn me some books. So now after three years in the job I was too scared to do, I’m getting not-scared enough to write like I always wanted to. Weird, isn’t it? I see people every day at work now, who are down that pit. It’s what I do. I assess people referred to a Community Mental Health Team. I get their stories, and how scared they are, and how they just need it to be over, one way or the other, it just has to stop. And I can say to them, with total conviction, it can. It does. It will. That they contain multitudes they can’t imagine yet. That the backing track in their head is lies, evil poisonous lies, and they will never have to be alone with it. And all of them, I swear, every one, gets this look in their eye that is how it looks to not dare to hope for something, and it chokes me, every time. I don’t tell them about myself, because that would be grossly over the line, and because I want their hour to be about them leaving all the filth in their heads with me, because I can deconstruct it in a way you can’t when you live with it. But more than one of them has told me anyone would think I had my own story to tell there. Ah, yes. That’s the other thing. Stories. This is probably the most important bit. Like I said, you will need stories. Books, songs, films, women who sit next to you on the bus, I don’t care where you get them from, and I’ll have a straightener with anyone who tells you the things that speak to you are cheap or stupid or whatever. You’re a geek, you say? Even better. Be a geek. All that means is you’re brave enough not to hide the joy of connecting with something. Connection is what keeps us here, all of us, not just the weird kids like you and me. I wouldn’t know where to start with all the stories that saved me, or how to do them justice, but I set up this (http://compilationblues.tumblr.com) a while ago to try, and keep meaning to go back and add to it. Come over, if you want. Join in. I’d love to hear it. I could talk about it all day. Few New Years ago, I went out on Canal Street in Manchester in a Batman dress, thinking I was all cool and ironic (also: people looking at my dress are thinking “that girl in the Batman dress” not “that ugly twat over there” right? That’s a big secret of mine) Anyway, about fifteen people came over and told me they loved my dress. It was a bit like being in the Sugababes or something, and there was this one girl whose face positively lit up every time I came into her eyeline. Of course, I assumed she was pissed. Later, the people I’d come with were having some kind of feud and my best mate had got so annoyed she’d gone to another bar thinking I was behind her, and I went off sulking to buy a drink, and found myself stood next to this girl, whose eyes lit up again. Then she got this look on her face like the bitch in her head was telling her something, and said she hoped I wasn’t getting pissed off with her or thinking I was being stalked or anything, it was just she really, really loved my dress. She said the thing was she had been young and gay in some horrible little town full of horrible little dickheads who revelled in making her life a misery, and she got really into comics as a sort of diversion, and spent ages on her own reading all these things that came to mean freedom to her and allowed her to make friends, and now she was an adult and she hadn’t died and here she was in a room full of gay people and a girl in a Batman dress and she never, ever thought that would happen. When we had separated from the ensuing tearful hug, I sat in the corner wiggling my toes (I had these awesome holographic shoes on, gorgeous but killer spike heels) thinking about the bands and books and songs that allowed me to look outside when I was young and scared and hiding in my head, and the stories I made up to comfort myself, and wrote and hid under my mattress, or when I was littler, told to my sister as I held her hand between our beds so she knew I was there if she had bad dreams. What I would do with the rest of my life, if I could do anything, is to write a story someone could use to save themselves. What I would write is a story that somebody could pick up, that would speak to them behind the wall between themselves and the world. That would know who they are though they have lost themselves. I haven’t done that. I don’t know if I’m capable. This is the story I have, and I’m telling it because I want you, you right there, to tell me the story that saved you. That’s all I did. It’s all I’ve ever done. I have taken the words and the energy of strangers and I have saved myself, again and again.In my working day I sit with strangers and I try to give them the desire to save themselves. I’m not anything special. I’m not especially good at digging my way out of the shit. I’m not even totally recovered. Nowhere near. She’s still there, that girl in my head. And I do still fight her. I haven’t won. And writing this, letting someone publish it, is a flailing attempt to kick her legs out from under her that might actually end up with a falcon punch to my throat. But you know, I’m fucking sick of her bullshit anyway. I kind of started this fight with her, and I thought maybe it’s something we all have to fight. So I thought I’d ask you. Because it might hurt, but I’ve never regretted it. And neither will you, I promise. If you are affected by any of the issues mentioned, please contact Mind or Samaritans. |
AuthorThe Kick Back Club is a collection of written works on friendship and mental health recovery Archives
February 2016
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