It makes me so sad to write this post, as it’s something that still shocks me and doesn’t quite feel right, although it is a hazy, half-forgotten nightmare. It doesn’t feel like it happened to me, but I know it did. I’m reminded by the pale, faded little white scars on my wrists that I attempted suicide a few years back. I had been absent from this world for weeks, months before I thought of doing something to leave it. I was deeply, horribly miserable – the kind of misery that refuses to leave and sets up home in your heart. Everything was tainted, there was no happiness and no hope. Nothing bought me joy. I cannot pin these feelings of despair on one single thing, but I hadn’t had an easy time for a few years before. I didn’t see my life continuing, more over I didn’t want it to. Everything felt hard and strained, all I wanted to do was sleep and cry, and eventually, I just wanted to die.
It came to surface after new year when ideas turned into plans. I had a last day with my mother, wrote letters and went to bed thinking I wouldn’t see another morning. How glad I am that that night I was weak and tired and didn’t die. I felt so many things sitting in A&E the next day sandwiched between my mother and younger sister. I felt embarrassed and foolish, sad and scared. But there was something else too; a miniscule, ever so slight feeling of hope. What I had been feeling, the sheer magnitude of misery, was out now, it wasn’t my burden alone anymore. Although I had terrified my mother (I slept with her a few nights after the night that I attempted), she was calm and formidable, an absolute pillar of strength. I don’t know if she felt it, but that’s what she conveyed so by following her pattern, I gathered slowly but surely my strength back. There was a part of me that was glad I hadn’t succeeded in my plans that day, and that part has grown each day since.
There are never days I am not thankful for being alive. I still have shitty days where I need to go to bed at 7pm or call friends up in tears or eat a big bowl of pasta – but it’s all been manageable. Should you ever be in the most horrible situation where you don’t think life is worth living – my heart goes out to you completely. If you have the energy to, employ every tactic you can think of to bring you happiness again. Rely on those around you, eat good food, know that people love you – because they really do, and stay. Because there are adventures to be had. If you don't have the energy, allow yourself to be carried for a while. The world needs you, you deserve to grow old and your now is not your forever.
