Mental Health ~ Suicide and Me

 

Lets talk Mental Health and Suicide

Back in March 2018, I uploaded a post to Instagram to show support and solidarity with those who are struggling with Mental Ill Health. The post featured 84 statues which were standing atop of ITV's London buildings for project84. Project84 was put in place to help educate and teach people about mental health and how many people it affects, despite the 84 statues focusing on and representing the men who have reached their tipping point and have struggled and reached the end of their fight, looking over the edge before taking their final steps; however it's not just men who are affected. Mental health effects everyone no matter what age, gender, race or religion. The idea and concept behind #project84 is in aid of suicide prevention and to represent the 84 men who die from suicide in the UK every week. I thought and still think that and believe that this is an amazing way to make the invisible, visible. It's an incredible way to help get people talking about mental health and suicide prevention as well as advising people to seek out and accept the help they deserve and need. It's getting us all talking and helping us to have a chat about the things that we don't normally talk about with others.

So what does this have to do with me?

As you all may or may not be aware, I'm definitely no stranger to being open about my mental health struggles and I have no shame, worries or concerns about talking about my experiences and putting them out there to help others as well. Which has now led to this blog post.

I have been suffering from, struggling with, coping, surviving and just living with my mental ill health for as long as I can remember, the continuous battle of people not believing that I was struggling and not accepting that I was suffering from depression, anxiety, social anxiety, bulimia, anorexia, binge eating and more; just because I seemed 'okay' and it came across that I had everything figured out and everything was 'perfect' when in reality, I was falling, deeper and deeper into the abyss, the empty nothingness of myself, loosing all hope and excitement for life and just the thought of waking up and having to force myself through another day was actually killing me. 

I had reached the point where waking up didn't feel normal or natural, rather than being something that I just did subconsciously everyday, of course the waking up I had no control over, that was still subconscious, but the actually getting out of bed became more and more of a chore rather than the necessity required for me to start my day. I felt that change, it was very slow and gradual at first; but it quickly changed and turned to me changing very abruptly and feeling empty, like I had nothing to live for, no need or want to get up and go about my day; instead I felt the longing for it to end. The cycle of going through school and hearing the same things that people would say, the repetitiveness of having to endure everything from the moment I woke up to the moment I fell asleep. In the age of social media, home wasn't an escape for me either, it didn't provide that safe place where I couldn't be reached or taunted by the bullies, it instead became a place I dreaded being as what I would receive in return from my bullies would be so much worse than what I would get in school. Despite me never actually being physically hurt or attacked by my bullies, the effects still have a huge impact on my life today, the emotional and mental attacks and abuse completely changed my mindset and very quickly led to the anxiety developing alongside the various eating habits and eating disorders, however and what ever you want to call it and class it as.

In no way am I saying that what I did as a result is or was a good idea and I would never tell anyone that it was okay or normal to do; but I developed a way of masking what was really going on with me. This prevented family, teachers and anyone else from asking any questions or every suspecting that something was wrong.

My coping mechanism in regards to hiding what was happening was me putting on a mask. Which sounds silly, but by mask I am referring to me coming up with a façade and putting on this front, becoming something I wasn't and forcing smiles and forcing laughs. I didn't have the mental capacity or energy to show or feel any emotions during this time, every memory, photo or video of me laughing, smiling and seemingly enjoying life was all fake. It seemed that no matter what I did to myself to change I was still always going to be the 'fat kid', 'the loser', 'the kid who everyone called gay'. I went from choosing the bulimic route at first, where I would eat and then I would go to make myself sick, to binge eating and then not eating for a few days or weeks but that didn't work so I ended up just not eating and slowly surviving on less and less food and sustenance as it went on and on. This led to me becoming anxious whenever I was eating and developing more negative habits around food and eating, to the point where even now, if I don't feel comfortable or safe then I wont eat, I wont even consider or think about it. Due to my eating habits, my energy levels had significantly dropped and the constant feeling of fatigue and drowsiness began having an effect and affecting my everyday life, I didn't have the energy to complete school work, exams, course work, college placements and more. Everything begun to be and seem more and more difficult and even the basic simple tasks became more and more exerting to the point I struggled with basically everything.

So back to present day life, how does any of this relate to suicide and me. Well this was only the beginning. 

On Sunday 1st August 2021, I attempted to take my own life. Since I first started battling with my mental health, this was my 11th attempt and by far the worst attempted and the one and only time I can whole heartedly say that I was ready and fully prepared to die at the time of my attempt. 

Despite this image of me looking
 up at the rain,
 it wasn't posed for, I had recorded a
video on my phone
saying goodbye, saying sorry
and explaining
why I had decided to take my life

I left home with an abundance of anti-anxiety and anti-depressants and just went on walking and walking. As silly and as stupid as it may sound to have taken all of the medication with me, my reasoning behind it was to throw it all away, as the medication wasn't have any affect on my mental health, however that never happened. I reached a spot in the woods, far away from the track(path) where I knew that no one would find me. At this point it stared raining and I just remember sitting there with the tears pouring out of my eyes and just chilling in the rain. I absolutely loved it, I felt at ease with myself with the knowledge that no one could see me and the rain masked the tears. it was around 4:30/5pm when I took all of the tablets. I have no idea how many I had taken and I could not tell you exactly how many of each different tablet I had taken. All I know is that I had four different types of medication at all different strengths in which I had taken. I then sat there staring up at the rain waiting for it to take effect. It had been about half an hour when I started to feel disorientated and completely out of it, it was at this time I started to realise that although my life ending would have stopped my suffering and I would have finally been free from my depression, it would only have passed it on to everyone else, my family, my friends and those who actually care about me. 

I tried to phone someone who I cared massively about, who said that they would always be there to support me and make sure I was going to be okay, but I never got an answer to the phone calls because he had blocked my number, so I called a work colleague instead and just asked them to tell him that I was sorry and that I cared about him, loved him and didn't want to hurt him. She proceeded to try find out what was wrong and if I was okay and try to help me; after getting of the phone with said colleague, I proceeded to make some other phone calls to some family friends saying that i needed to go to hospital as son as possible to get help. This didn't happen, I ended up stumbling my way to their house and I was there for around two hours before my dad had come to get me and we went back home. While back home, my mum and dad were continuously monitoring me and my blood pressure, the first time my blood pressure was taken at home it was a little high but nothing to be concerned about, but by 11pm my blood pressure had sky rocketed and was way over being dangerously high. At this point I was rushed to hospital by my dad.

The following images are from my time during hospital in which we had been checked in at 11:25pm. From this point in time I was being monitored and checked to effectively see if I was still responsive and able to function. During this period I had been questioned about my mental state, what I had taken, why I had decided to take them as well as any triggers or anything that had happened leading up to the overdose. Myself and my father had been in the waiting area from 11:25pm until 4:20am where I had been moved to a room for a 24hr observation period. In which we had both been informed was to monitor my condition as I progressively kept getting worse but to also monitor and assess my mental state and my mentality to see if I was fit enough and able to return home after the 24 hour period, or whether I needed to be sectioned under the mental health act.

By 1:26am I had a variety of different tests and checks done, including multiple blood tests and ECG's. (An ECG or an electrocardiogram is a simple test that can be used to check your heart's rhythm and electrical activity through sensors attached to the skin which are used to detect  the electrical signals produced by your heart each time it beats.) The checks continued for the entirety of the original 24 hour period. I ended up being kept in hospital and monitored for around 72 hours before being discharged, in which I had to see Mental Health Nurses and have a variety of different conversations  regarding my mental state and how I was feeling etc. All while I was in hospital, the Mental Health Nurses had be in liaison with my GP and had informed them of what had happened and where I was mentally in regards to being allowed to return to everyday life. Thankfully I was discharged and deemed mentally sane enough to return home with the added advice of seeking help from helplines, doctors, hospitals or family members if I being to feel that low again. I want to add, that through out everything going on in the world with Covid, the Doctors and Nurses were incredible with ensuring everyone was kept safe along with following full Covid procedures throughout. 

Present day me

At current it is January 12th 2022. I have ben working on this post for a while now, debating on whether or not to upload it and share it, but I decided that I was going to, because I want to get more people talking about mental health and their struggles, regardless of what they might be. I am continuously bottling up my emotions, alongside my thoughts and not sharing or asking for help when I know that I need it. I have been working on opening up more to family and friends and explaining how I'm feeling, what my thought process is and if I'm struggling otherwise, how else are they going to understand and be able to help me if I start having an anxiety attack or panic attack when I with them.

I want to throw it in here at the end, but the bullying wasn't the only reason behind me struggling with mental health and developing my mental ill health; nor was it the sole cause for the overdose, there are and have been many other factors and issues that led to this, from the bullying right through to being assaulted, but that's just some of it and there's plenty more that I could into, but I'm not going to.