Be The Change You Want To See In The World

It’s my year anniversary today. I’m not likely to get any flowers for it, Hallmark definitely don’t do cards for the occasion and I could well be the only person who remembers it. The past year has been a weird one; I moved home from Leeds, broke up with my first real love and left a job I cherished.  The things that got me through were caring texts from friends, spontaneous trips to the seaside and copious cups of tea. This day last year was the day I was admitted to Ward One of the Becklin Centre in Leeds because I was in the midst of a psychotic episode.

I wish I could say it was the first and only time it has happened to me, but those of you who know me from school will remember a similar thing occurring in the run up to the GCSE season.  I’d always been a happy, cheery girl with a pretty positive view of the world. I believed in the kindness of strangers and liked my happy go lucky lifestyle. School was fun; I was in the selective class (Pine sluts, wheeey) and predicted A*- B’s in the forthcoming exams. I had a part time job selling shoes, hung out with my friends on Saturdays and was seeing a boy I’d been crushing on for months.  I was a pretty average girl, until suddenly I wasn’t.

Stress is one of the key triggers of a psychosis; traumatic experiences can also contribute or as it can occur as a result of drug or alcohol misuse. In fact, when my episode begun at the tender age of sixteen everyone around me was convinced the bizarre behaviour I was exhibiting was due to drugs, until my cousin stepped in and reminded everyone that I was utterly opposed to them!  It just didn’t make sense, one week I had been doing a Sociology project on the objectification of female figures in the media (I was a feminist before I even knew what the word meant) and the next I was in a secure hospital taking medication to keep me from becoming ‘elated.’ My life was in tatters, the foundation of my world crumbled and reality had, quite literally, escaped me.  Psychosis is a mental health problem that causes people to perceive or interpret things differently from those around them. I personally felt like I was in the Truman Show; everyone was analysing my every move and staring at me behind my back. It was the most horrible, uncomfortable feeling – I have a great deal of empathy for celebrities now!  I seemed erratic and weird, babbling about things that made no sense, peculiar and very ridiculous. It wasn’t until I saw my dad (a mental health nurse) that my family realised what was happening. I was hastily driven to A&E where I was assessed and sectioned. I cried and cried and cried, told my dad I hated him and begged him to take me home.

In total I stayed in various mental health hospitals for about three months, encountering people with far worse conditions than I. I witnessed my friend crying as she cut into the tops of her legs, saw a boy wander down corridors all day as he patted his head mumbling and a girl with schizophrenia afraid to leave her room because of the monsters she saw. I felt lucky in comparison, yet still felt that my life had effectively ended because of my illness. I hadn’t finished school; I had no GCSE’s and had no clue how I was going to integrate back in society.  My positivity had been crushed, I felt like I’d been punished for being too hopeful. The reality was I hadn’t coped well with the pressures of school and the disintegration of my parents’ marriage; a few small factors had combined and overwhelmed me. Doctors said my illness was almost inevitable; I was the type of person who was bound to experience this type of illness at some point in my life. I should at this point add how incredibly supportive my friends and family were. Whilst also coping with the shock of what had happened to me, they put their best brave faces on and reassured me that everything would eventually be okay.  There was a small party held for me on the last day of my stay in hospital (June 2017), I was given cute cards from the other patients, there was a cake and best of all my mum was there to finally take me home. I remember Roland (another patient) and his lovely mum being there; she leaned in and hugged me and whispered in my ear ‘this is the first day of the rest of your life.’

What she said was truer than I could ever know at that point. For the first few weeks of me being home I pretty much slept constantly, leaving the house seemed ambitious and I watched waaaay too many episodes of Friends. I became a kind of recluse. By this point I was grossly overweight (a combination of medication and being in hospital for so long) and my confidence was non-existent. However I so badly wanted my life to be better I enrolled at a college to study for my A-Levels come September…  It was awful! My brain was still reeling from everything that had happened so concentrating in class felt impossible, my medication made me fall asleep every afternoon and I just desperately wanted to crawl back into bed every single day. By Christmas I had dropped out. Instead of retreating back to my duvet and admitting defeat I set myself the small, simple task of leaving my house once a day, every day. I started off simple with popping to the shops and eventually built that up to taking long walks. Walking was a form of therapy for me; the book ‘The Philosophy of Walking’ states that ‘by walking, you escape from the very idea of identity, the temptation to be someone, to have a name and a history… The freedom in walking lies in not being anyone.’ The further I walked the more I forgot about what had happened to me. After a few months I decided to get a job until the next academic year begun. I got a job (which felt like a big victory at the time!) and was paid something like £3.92 an hour. I eventually left that poorly paid position and joined a workforce of girls, got 50% off clothes and finally begun being happy again, a feeling I once thought had forever escaped me.

Fast forward a few years and I had gained my distinctly average A-Levels, hurrah! I secured  a place at Leeds Metropolitan University (now known as Leeds Beckett) to study English Literature and it felt like my hospital days were way behind me, my life was finally back on track. University was amazing, the best thing I’ve ever done. I met my lovely boyfriend, went to India twice and travelled to America for summer camp (where said lovely boyfriend met me after in New York).  There were times through my degree when I worried I might be getting poorly again – a combination of late nights, essays and scarcely eating – but I got through my degree unscathed. I wrote my dissertation on how the figure of the mother in nuclear families had changed from the 1950’s to the present day. I gained a 2.1, which I’m more than happy with.

The worry had always been that university would be the catalyst for me getting unwell again, so when I completed it with my sanity intact there was a surge of relief. If I could survive university, I could surely survive any other kind of stress, yes? It was this dangerous kind of thinking that got me into the 13^th of May 2014 predicament. Once I stopped looking for the signs of becoming unwell they became rife, oblivious to me.  I was blissfully happy living in Leeds post-uni, I had the most amazing housemates you can imagine, a cute vintage bike to get me into town, lovely boyfriend had asked me to move in with him, I volunteered at the local cinema every Friday fortnight and I literally thought things couldn’t get any better. Then cracks started to appear.  Money worries were abundant, I rarely paid my rent on time, I ate infrequently and I received a hefty bill for council tax that reduced me to tears. One of my amazing housemate’s mother passed away, an awful thing to happen to someone so young and my heart broke at seeing her go through such a loss. It made me miss my own mother terribly and I yearned for home. That’s when the final thing happened. As much I loved the ever so lovely lovely-boyfriend I couldn’t move in with him. I just couldn’t. I hated myself because I loved him so much, and by this point I was in a job I adored (and was good at!) but something felt off. Little did I realise I was days away from suffering my second psychotic episode.

How often a psychotic episode occurs and how long it lasts can depend on the underlying cause. I believe the cause for this episode (besides money worries and career pressure) was the complete and utter fear that I had failed lovely boyfriend because I didn’t want to live with him anymore. After telling him my decision, and after lots of talks and tears, I went full blown batshit crazy. The damage of making such a consequential life-changing decision propelled me into mania and I once again lost my grip on reality. One of the main symptoms of psychosis is suffering from delusions, believing things that are obviously untrue. There were horrible, completely terrifying moments when I thought both my parents were dead. It wasn’t until I was sitting in the back of a police-car, handcuffed, barefoot and crying I realised I was suffering another episode, but by this point it was far too late. I couldn’t do anything to stop the episode, all I could do was recite my parent’s phone numbers and hope that the episode would be over soon. The next few hours of my episode are hazy; I just vividly remember being pushed by the policeman, so I pushed him back. He grabbed me by the back of my head, smashed it against the door we were standing next to and pinned me to the floor. All I remember is screaming in pain. After a few hours of frantic calls I was transferred to the Becklin Centre (you can read some reviews of the ward I stayed in here) and my parents had been contacted; they rushed up to Leeds immediately.

This stay in hospital was brief; I recovered quickly and was out of hospital within a fortnight after being on day release for a week. Strangely I wasn’t worried about this episode – I’d been through it before so felt like I knew what it took to recover. I spent these days quietly playing scrabble with my friends, cooking dinner with lovely boyfriend and celebrating one of amazing housemate’s birthday. All seemed well and everyone was impressed with how quickly I’d recovered. My family decided it best that I moved down to London temporarily to be looked after and cared for under their watchful gaze. However, when I arrived home my support networks (boyfriend and housemates) weren’t there, I was left alone for long periods of the day while my mum was at work and for whatever reason, I suffered another manic episode. This time, it devastated me. I felt like I had (unwittingly) sabotaged my life and I, once again, couldn’t piece it back together. Coming out of an episode is like waking up after the most raucous, destructive night out and realising you’ve sent everyone you know naked photos of yourself (no, I never did that). I was mortified at my actions, blushed at Facebook status’ and cringed at letters I’d scribbled. Worst of all, mid-episode I’d felt compelled to tell lovely boyfriend something so heinous, completely reprehensible that he’d been forced to break up with me. I truly had lost everything I valued dear to me.

Recovering from the most recent episode was most definitely hardest of each of my encounters. When it happened at sixteen it was a new experience, no one could have predicted it coming and I was blameless. This time, I was an adult; I felt I should have known better and looked after myself properly. I blamed myself, persecuting myself every day for how stupid I’d been to overlook the signs and push myself into a manic episode. Only now is that guilt beginning to subside.  There’s a song lyric I love, ‘it’s hard to accept yourself as someone you don’t desire, as someone you don’t want to be.’ I had turned into someone I desperately didn’t want to be:  I was negative; miserable; overweight (again, bloody medication) and permanently lethargic. Family and friends promised that I would feel like ‘myself’ again one day but I couldn’t see it coming.  Things definitely got worse before they got better and over Christmas and New Year I had my real first depressive episode (which means I’m now categorized as being Bipolar, a label I don’t really agree with – who wouldn’t be a bit depressed after all that happening?!) which was most definitely the lowest point of my life. I lacked direction- when I was sixteen I knew the plan was to get to university, I had a goal to achieve.  This time I knew the only option I had was to get a job, which I didn’t know how I was going to do as I couldn’t get out of bed and talking to people I didn’t know was incredibly overwhelming. I don’t know what pulled me out of it, maybe seeing how much I was upsetting my poor mum, but I finally got back on track. I spent a few months recuperating, reading books I loved, spending time with my family and watching Gilmore Girls on 5* (good thing I have a job now cause the series is nearly over, boo!).  That time was absolutely vital to my wellbeing – I tried to stop worrying about what I was going to do next and just focused on one day at a time and slowly, very slowly, my condition improved. This brings me to the present day. I don’t feel quite so much regret now; I’ve come to accept my illness isn’t my fault but it is a part of my life and I need to take certain precautions to ensure I never get poorly again. I’m about to start a job that is something I believe passionately in (it’s a place for men with mental health problems who aren’t ready for society yet but aren’t ill enough to be in hospital – it’s a place to prevent a relapse, like what happened to me), I have a good circle of close friends and I’m on good terms with the lovely ex-boyfriend.  I’m feeling happy again, cheerful and hopeful for my future!

I’m not telling this story to get attention, sympathy or pity. It’s (ironically) Mental Health Awareness week on the anniversary of my Leeds hospital admission so it seemed appropriate that I finally share my personal experience of mental health. People with psychosis have a higher than average risk of suicide, it’s estimated that 1 in 5 people with psychosis will attempt to commit suicide at some point in their life and 1 in 25 people with psychosis will kill themselves – pretty terrifying statistics.

 I often wish that I could talk more openly about what happened to me and how it impacted on my life, but there is unfortunately a lack of understanding that shrouds mental health issues. I’ve lost friends who not knowing what to say, have said nothing and distanced themselves from me. In order to combat this, I’m sharing my story in the hope that others won’t feel so alone if they’ve experienced (or know someone who has experienced) a mental health problem.  What I went through was truly traumatising, this essay doesn’t scratch the surface of what happened to me and how truly awful I felt – but things do get better. I never thought that I was weak, but what happened left me completely vulnerable. It was the small joys of life that made me eventually smile again – letters from friends, long walks and listening to my favourite songs on repeat. Never underestimate the power of being kind if you know someone in a similar situation; just knowing that friends were thinking of me made me want to get better, because I had people to get better for. Thank you so much for reading my story.