WARNING: THIS POST MAY CONTAIN TRIGGERS TO THOSE WHO SUFFER FROM MENTAL HEALTH CONDITIONS
This is going to be a fairly long post, but bear with me. It’s been partly inspired by Nick Vujicic, a man born without limbs who is a motivational speaker. He has addressed 3 million people in 25 countries, inspiring them to make the most of their lives, no matter what hardships they face. It’s also partly inspired by charities like Time To Change and TWLOHA, both of whom say that one of the best ways of reducing stigma and gaining support is to talk to people. And it’s also inspired by the fact that if anyone who reads my blogs ever goes through this, I want you to know that you’re not alone – you will come out the other side, stronger, if you hold tight and get help – talk to people who care about you.
In 2010 I got depressed. I’d been sad before – I’ve had a lot of stuff happen in my life that can make someone sad quite easily, but as a family we’ve always managed to get through it. However, a combination of my age and 2010 just being quite a bad year in general, apart from a few stand out moments (we went to Madrid in February, and I started going out with a certain someone on New Year’s Eve!), and I should have spotted the warning signs earlier. Coming out of a relationship I didn’t enjoy with very little self confidence, going through my GCSE exams at the same time as fighting off anxiety and worrying about what I’d do about college, and getting it into my head that I was an ugly, horrible person and would never be loved by anyone, as well as everything I’d faced before, just got on top of me, and I couldn’t deal with it any more.
When I look back on it now, I realize how reclusive I became – I’d hide away in my bedroom for ages, not doing anything in particular – browsing the internet, watching rubbish on TV, just to try and get away from what was happening in my life and how alone I felt. It was like everyone around me was really happy, settling into colleges and sixth forms well, having fun, and yet I couldn’t be like that, no matter how hard I tried – sadness just seemed to follow me everywhere, and I couldn’t escape from it. It really was like a dark cloud was hanging over me, and I avoided contact with people because I didn’t want to bring them down. My main contact with people was through texts, and most of the time I managed to keep myself sounding relatively happy. I felt embarrassed and weak, something that many people who suffer from mental illness experience – it’s like admitting it to someone would be like admitting you have some kind of deficiency in yourself, and I was scared that I’d be laughed at, or told I was just being a normal teenager (and trust me, I got quite a lot of that from people who hadn’t been around me when I was at my worst) and making a mountain out of a molehill.
My attendance was dropping at college because I just couldn’t face people – my weight was going up and down, I rarely even bothered to wear make-up but stress made me look awful, bags under my eyes and constantly pale and tired and basically looking awful (I may not care much about my appearance now because I’m happy how I am, but at the time, my self confidence was on a major low and I felt like a complete mess and was certain that people would hate me if they saw me like that). I wasn’t sleeping at night – I was having intense nightmares (well, I suppose you’d probably call it night terrors, really) that felt real, and I’d wake up in a sweat and crying. Eventually – and this isn’t something I’ve told many people, but I think it’s important – these dreams led to hallucinations. My dreams centered around one man, and I suddenly started seeing him everywhere I went – in my bedroom at night, on the bus for fleeting moments, in the street in passing. I was petrified, and this contributed to me not wanting to leave the house very much.
I think it was this point when I became quite clingy to my parents – like a small child having nightmares, I didn’t want to sleep, and ended up pulling a lot of all-nighters in which I forced myself to stay awake, watching ITV Nightscreen for hours because it was a better alternative to what sleep might create. I wanted to be around my parents because I knew they could keep me safe.
I also – and I think this is the point where I realized that I was ill – started hearing voices. It started fairly harmlessly, when I was at work and college and busy places, I’d hear someone whisper my name in my ear, turn around and there’d be nobody there. Then it became worse – the voice grew louder, and it’d happen when I was on my own, and it started becoming threatening, telling me to do things and telling me what would happen if I didn’t do things – threatening my family and my friends and myself.
I want to make one thing clear – I don’t for a moment think I had schizophrenia, or anything of the sort. I had depression, and was eventually diagnosed with it, and I think the stress and depression, combined with my severe lack of sleep and susceptibility, made my mind start playing tricks on me, and eventually it just took over until it felt so real that I struggled to deal with it. I associated the voice with the man in my dream, and became afraid of everything. I didn’t want to be asleep, but I didn’t want to be awake either, and that only served to add to the stress.
Eventually, I started finding a release in the only way I could think of – I started self-harming. I’m not proud of this fact, nor do I really like talking about it, but if other people can come out and talk about their experiences – especially if these experiences can help others going through the same thing – I think it’s of great importance that as many people who can, do talk about it, whether it’s in person or to a wider audience online, through a video or, like me, perhaps hiding behind a computer screen but still, I’m talking about it.
I’m not going to go into graphic detail about the self-harming, in case it acts as a trigger for anyone, but I want to say that I wouldn’t suggest it to anyone as a way of relieving pain. I still have the scars, and some of them are a year and a half old, and even the newest ones are a year and three months old, and although they’re fading, if it’s particularly cold, they come back up to the surface. It isn’t something that can easily be hidden, because you can’t wear baggy jumpers forever – it’s only recently I’ve felt comfortable wearing t-shirts and short-sleeved things around people other than my family and boyfriend, because of the complete shame I felt.
There’s one thing I need to make clear, though – whilst I would never suggest self harming, it isn’t something to be ashamed of. It’s a taboo subject, but that’s because it makes people feel uncomfortable, not because it’s something dirty that should be just bottled up and hidden away. If you feel ashamed of yourself for self harming, it creates a vicious circle and the shame will cause you to do it even more, which will then cause you more shame – I know that all too well. So while I’m not saying “wear your scars with pride” – and to any so-called “Emo” kids, who think it’s cool to carve phrases into your arm, if you have a genuine psychological problem, find help. If you’re doing it because you think it looks cool, or for attention, get a sense of perspective and some respect for other people. I wish my scars were something more acceptable, like the name of my favourite band or some cool picture – but instead, they’re just ugly red lines on my arms and legs, and each one tells a story, each one holds a memory of what a shit state my mental health was at that point, and how awful each night was, and how much it hurt and I cried and if you think any of that is cool or something to show off about the next day at school, I think you should be forced to spend some time, working with people who work in mental health services.
The self-harming was getting worse and worse, and with it, so was my personality. I was fluctuating all the time – going from being clingy to everyone, to pushing everyone away because I convinced myself that they were either only with me out of sympathy, doing it to trick me into telling them my secrets, or that I didn’t want to bother them any more – in essence, I was cycling through self-pity, paranoia and depressed states pretty rapidly. I could be so aggressive, but I only ever physically took it out on myself. However, I did verbally take it out on my family, and if any of you do read this, I’m really sorry for what I put you through – it’s only now, when I look back, that I see how hard things must have been for you, not just to put up with my mood swings but also the fact that I was so secretive. I kept up the pretense most of the time, but at home I’d occasionally let it fall, and yet I still wouldn’t tell my parents why.
One memory I have of that time, possibly the strongest memory, and yet it’s also quite bitty and distorted (the psychology student in me says “repression”, the part of me that knows me too well says I have a shit memory and I’d rather forget everything that happened back them), is one night when I put the man who is now my boyfriend through what must have been hell. I’d had a really, really bad day, and I was just feeling worthless. He started talking to me on MSN, and as the night progressed, although he was helping more than I think he’ll ever realize, I was feeling more and more hopeless and helpless, and my overwhelming thought became that I wanted to kill myself – to the point where, without anyone knowing, I’d planned it all out. Still, even though as the night went on he became more and more aware of this, he carried on talking to me, he never gave up on me and in the end, he told me to go and talk to my parents, which I did. He really did save my life, and I know I’ll never be able to thank him enough for what he did for me that night, and on other occasions, and since then when he’s been the best boyfriend a girl could wish for, and I love him so much.
As soon as I was suicidal, I think we all realized that was that – I went to the doctors, was referred to see CAMHS in the new year, but more importantly, I made a resolve, and I told Daf about this, and he was supportive throughout. On December 13th, 2010, I vowed that I wouldn’t self harm again, and to this day I haven’t – nor do I ever intend to. In a way, it was my salvation – it stopped me from doing anything worse to myself, and it provided a release for me that nothing else could give – no calming techniques worked in the way that it worked, but eventually I realized how dangerous it was, and that I couldn’t do it any more. I didn’t want to do it any more. Unfortunately, my arms and legs are still testament to what happened, but I’m hoping that in time, and with the use of cocoa butter and Bio-Oil, these will fade. However, I never want what the scars remind me of to fade – they remind me that things can be so much worse than they are now, and when I have a bad day, I might complain, but I know how bad things can be.
I know now that I’m beautiful. I still get shy, and I still have days where I look in the mirror and think “Hmm, today might be the day to start wearing make-up again, Maddy”, but I have a confidence in me now that nothing can take away from me. I’m happy in my own body – I’ve accepted that I’m not skinny and I don’t have great hair, and I have a scar on my stomach that makes me hate wearing bikinis. But I ignore those – I focus on what I do like. I like my eyes, and I have good skin (when I lay off the make-up), and my boobs aren’t the worst in the world 😉 These little things remind me that I am beautiful, that everyone is beautiful, if we stop letting our minds interfere. Maybe if we stopped looking in the mirror to see what everyone else can see, and start thinking about how we see ourselves – our personality, our favourite features, our skills and talents that make us unique – there’ll be a lot less stories like mine in the future.
I saw CAMHS twice, but by the second time, a certain someone had asked me to be his girlfriend and changed my life. The difference in me was almost immediate – the presence of someone who loves me, not because he’s family but because he actually does love me, opened up a whole new perspective of me. I didn’t see myself as someone detestable any more – I was someone who people could actually like, and who I could actually like myself. The first time I went to CAMHS, I scored a 31 on the test – a score that suggests moderate depression. By the second time, I was down to 9 – no depression. I could talk to my family about anything, my confidence had been boosted by praise for my performance in a pantomime and I had a lot of things to look forwards to – and I still do!
So every time you feel like you’re not pretty enough, or not good enough, or other people tell you things like that, look at what makes you, YOU. Your hobbies, your personality, the bits of your body that you do like (EVERYONE has parts of their body that are absolutely gorgeous, it’s a fact), your friends and family, the people who care about you – and before you say it, people DO care for you. Even if they’re not immediately obvious, they do. Heck, I’m writing this blog post for you – I care about you a hell of a lot. Charities have people who care, because they man the telephone lines, ready to reassure you, to show you that people care. Think about the things you’ll miss out on – you’d never see that next episode of your favourite television show. Never know if you’re missing out on having a family, hearing your baby’s first cry or seeing their first steps, watching your bride walk down the aisle towards you, walking your own daughter down the aisle one day, never reading another post of this blog (okay, maybe the last one isn’t so important, but I’m still working on my self-confidence too!).
Recovering is a long process, and it’s easy to relapse, but there are always people there to help. You are never truly alone, no matter how dark it feels – I’m living, walking, breathing proof that you CAN come out the other side, and people DO come out the other side, stronger than they were before. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, even if it isn’t instantly visible. In my next post, I’ll put a link to different charities that can help you, but as a last thought, I want to leave you with the words of Albus Dumbledore – happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.
the life of a moomin 