Whatever gets you through the day (and as long as you make it to the next one).

Another empty day leads to another sleepless night. More messages left on read from someone I adore but is avoiding me like the plague. My text messages must reek of desperation, an honest account of grief and all the raw emotions that go with it. That’s how my week went, and he did ask. I’m on borrowed time with this one, only a matter of days before the next excuse and I know I’ll never hear back from him, broken phone or no broken phone, it’s hard to know what to believe, like so many of my past relationships. Fuck me, it’s history repeating. Unrequited love and the sad lonely swimmer… if it wasn’t such a fucking tragic joke, I’d stick my head in the oven and shut the door.

Again, another joke. Where does it end? When will it end? I had to recall in minute detail today, my complex mental health history over the phone to a counsellor. She was a lovely, lovely lady but I had to hold back. For the sake of my sanity, ironically. It’s hard to explain how you feel when you’re feeling suicidal. Not many people can really relate to how it feels. Rational and irrational thoughts become intwined and you feel yourself thinking ‘so if it gets too bad, at least I have a get out of jail free card. All the shit, all the pain and the heartbreak, if you can find a way to go, this will all be over’. That’s how I rationalise an irrational thought. It’s not healthy and it’s not rational but that what gets me through the day, knowing if I want to, all the shit will be over.

So why am I writing this? Is it because I’m juggling these very thoughts in my head right now? Maybe. But it’s also the fact that my colleague took her own life and I’m still trying to process that. I’ve been in the very dark depths that she was in. But it’s different. It’s always different for everyone. No one has the same fight. We all battle but the war is fought for different reasons. She had 2 kids. A bright future as an occupational therapist and so many friends that loved her dearly, that we’re all still trying to understand how no one saw it coming. Not even me.

But I know when you’re down, when your head is in that grey fog of severe depression, when you get so bogged down by suicidal thoughts, all you can think of is how to make the pain stop. How to bring peace to the chaos and carnage that is your mind. You begin to see your self worth as nothing. You think of yourself as a waste of a being. Pointless. The thought of death becomes comforting because you know that the pain will end. Despite how much love you have in your life, you can never quite believe it if you don’t love yourself. And that’s tough when your self worth is zero.

I told my mum I’d look after my dad. I have to keep my word. It’s hard but I have to keep going. As much as these thoughts haunt me, I can’t give in. Not again. I know I need to find another coping strategy other than a business man who’s too kind to tell me to fuck off and thoughts that I can just simply end all this pain. I know it’s not right. None of it is. It makes no sense. Life doesn’t make sense either right now. That’s grief and depression for you.

Mental illness is a lonely isolating thing and depression is just a mere but debilitating condition that many of us fight. I’m still reminded of my time in hospital and all the people I met along the way, us slaying our demons on a daily basis. Be kind to other people. You never know what they’re fighting in their mind.

@specksygurl

Stumbling

Ever have days where you just can’t be bothered to get out of bed? I’m having a month like that. I’ve been back at work for little over a week now. A job that I love and hate. I job that reminds me of my mum and how little I could actually do for her when it came to the time she needed me the most and I feel like absolute shit because of it.

Dying slowly from an illness is a horrible wicked cruel time. You will never know what actually happens until you experience it and when you do, you’ll never actually be around to tell anyone. Watching someone, helplessly die slowly is a form of torture. It creeps into your mind and gets into your heart and bones and makes you numb. It’s a form of torture I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Here I am now, trying to get images out of my head that haunt me. Trying to move on and failing in every way.

Failing as a person, as a friend, as a daughter, a sister, a person in a unrequited love with a man I adore but doesn’t have the heart to tell me he doesn’t feel the same because he knows any minute I’ll fall apart. And he’d be right.

I told myself I was just grieving. I was mourning the loss of my mother. I still am. But now it’s turning from grief into a depression, a familiar route that I’ve stumbled down before. I’m trying to pull myself up but it’s hard when you have nothing to reach out for. When your world is crumbling, what is worth surviving for when you won’t have a world left?