81: The war on the inside.

Trigger Warning: Mental Health/ Suicide/ Self – harm. 

I often find myself wondering what my life would have been like if I was a bit more “normal”. Whether it would be calmer or more chaotic, or whether I’d even fit into the strange bracket of being “normal” anyway.

I am now 22 years old, and my mental health troubles began when I was about 11, not too long after joining secondary school (ages 11-18 for anyone outside the UK). I unfortunately found myself the target of relentless bullying, seemingly for little to no reason. I guess maybe I was an easy target, as I wouldn’t fight back and had always been a little vulnerable and worried as a kid.

I spent the next two years or so of school alone, with not so much as a friend to share my lunch with. I went to school, I went to my lessons, I tried hard to make friends and ease the bullying, but seemed to find myself alone no matter what. The bullying was relentless and didn’t ease off until I was around 13, when I managed to make friends with some guys who at the time shared my love for playing Xbox.

I had hoped that after I made these friends, that my life would get easier and I would start to enjoy life a bit more. Sadly this was not the case and I found myself feeling incredibly sad a lot of the time, thinking negative thoughts and struggling to feel okay. And I couldn’t understand why, since I had made new friends and thought this would solve my issues and that I would feel better.

I think it was at this point that I started to wonder about my “mental health”, as this was a very stigmatising topic at the time, was not very widely understood or accepted and was shunned over physical health being more important. I’m sure we can all agree that the general societal attitudes to mental health have changed drastically over the last few years, and I’m glad there is more of an understanding in our world now.

By 14, I was still wondering what was going on with me, still feeling very upset and sad predominately. Sadly it was not long after turning 14 things started to go downhill. I began to self-harm and this grew to an addiction to it, feeling as if that was the only possible way for me to feel better.

I tried to hide all of these struggles from my family and friends, but it wasn’t too long before they saw what was going on. To begin with it was incredibly hard, as mental health had been so misunderstood for so long, that nobody really knew what to do to support me. And I can relate to that, as I wasn’t sure how they could help me either.

Once the cat was out the bag, I had to plunge into the deep end of doctors and hospital appointments, counselling, therapy and everything else you could think of. I was diagnosed with Depression and Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and for the first time in a long time, it made sense to me – as for so long I had been sat wondering what was causing me to feel this way for such a prolonged period of time.

Throughout my mid-teenage years (14-17ish) I had received all different kinds of therapy and counselling, which sometimes had helped, but on the whole I found myself swinging up and down consistently – from the top of the world down to wondering what kept me here.

This pattern of having some good days, and then swinging right back to my world crumbling apart was becoming incredibly difficult to deal with by the time I turned 18. I was tired, tired of hating myself, tired of being sad, I was almost tired of being me. The repetitive and cyclical nature of my struggles made me believe at this time that I wouldn’t ever experience true happiness – my past experiences taught me not to hope as something bad would always come along.

I was admitted to hospital on a few occasions as a result of overdoses, suicide attempts and hurting myself dangerously. To me it almost didn’t seem real, seemed like all of these things were happening to someone else – like I was watching myself in a film. I completely disassociated with myself for an incredibly long time, and it took a long time to reconnect to my body and mind again.

Towards the end of my teenage years, despite numerous attempts at therapy and counselling, I found myself experimenting more with illegal substances and unfortunately found myself deep in a pattern of drug and alcohol abuse. This, for me, was a big wake up call, as I knew full well that if I continued the way I was going it would not end well. And for some reason, that scared me. I had hated myself and been sick of my mind for so long that I’d been accustomed to a general dislike towards myself. But I was worried about my life ending, about what I’d miss, about who I’d leave behind.

Despite managing to kick my addictions by my 20th birthday, my mental health continued to be poor and my anxiety and depression were still running wild. I wondered if I would ever escape these negative cycles which kicked all the progress I had made leading up to them. I had begun to experience symptoms of schizophrenia, derealisation, disassociative amnesia, sleep paralysis, psychosis, among others.

And this was when I started to realise that progress was not linear, and also that mental health cannot be easily described by a few diagnoses.

I had always expected myself to recover from my struggles, and I guess when I had failed to meet those expectations I felt I had let myself down. I had never compared my progress or struggles to anyone else’s, yet I had ALWAYS felt a sense of inadequacy about myself, that no matter what I give it was never enough.

Which to an outsider may seem ridiculous, as how can I feel inadequate when I am not comparing myself to anyone? However, I believe we are our own worst critics, and that even away from outside influence our impressions of ourselves can become drastically distorted when struggling with mental health. Especially when we are made to believe that mental health struggles are only valid if backed up by a diagnosis. It is possible to experience symptoms of an illness and not be diagnosed with it.

This was when I began to try and make peace with my struggles, as opposed to trying to fight them off in the ways I had done in the past. I tried to become more calm and caring towards myself, as this was very new to me – I had always put others’ needs above mine.

Going from putting others’ needs above your own to putting yourself first is difficult, especially when i’ve almost conditioned this pattern into a daily occurrence for myself. So I’m learning and I’m growing, as everyday I try to learn to love myself and take care of myself more.

The Covid Pandemic has given me one gift which I will always be grateful for- the ability to spend time on my own without feeling lonely. In the past, being alone has made me feel vulnerable and I could never be comfortable with it. But I, as I can imagine others did, found some peace with the isolation, and managed to learn a lot about myself in this time.

And that brings us here, to right now, July 2021. If I’m honest with you all, writing this all down seems incredibly strange as I never thought I’d make it this far. I really believed that my life would have been cut much shorter.

As of March this year, I am one year clean of harming myself. I got a Semicolon tattoo (Google the Semi Colon Project if you are interested) to symbolise my mental health/ suicidal struggles and to remind myself that I didn’t need to rely on it. And thankfully, since that date, I have not broken the promise to myself.

I still struggle, however. On Christmas Eve 2020 I developed a heart condition which for the last six months has left me unable to work, walk properly, run or exercise at all. It has been a hard journey and for someone at 22 years old, a heart condition is not what you expect to be dealing with. But I’m starting to make my peace with it and realise there is no use being angry at myself for something I have no control over.

Day to day, life is hard for me at the moment. I’m quite lonely a lot of the time and the conditions I deal with on a daily basis can make forming relationships, friendships and opening myself up very difficult. But I am grateful that I have struggled through so much – as I know that I have already made it through 100% of my bad days. And that gives me the confidence that I can keep going.

What I want people to know is two big things I mentioned earlier:

• progress is not linear
• and diagnoses are not the only way to show/ prove a mental health condition

I believe these two points are things that in my early teenage years I didn’t recognise, and so was disappointed that I would never progress and also upset that I felt diagnoses were the only “viable” descriptions of a condition.

It’s okay to not be okay, it’s okay to struggle, it’s okay to be upset and to let all of your emotions out. Thankfully there is a less of a stigma around mental health nowadays and so it is easier to talk about, but it can still be difficult to put emotions into words.

Thank you to those who have read my story. I believe learning about others, their cultures and their life experiences only enriches our own life and allows for more happiness to flow in.

I hope that if my story does anything, it shows that if anyone has or is struggling with any of the issues I mentioned that you are not alone. Lots of us, when we are in a bad place, feel as if nobody will ever understand what we’re going through. But maybe we don’t need someone to understand it – maybe we just need someone to sit and listen.