0 
0 By Nadene
It’s 3 am.
I’m still awake because I mixed up my medication this morning and took my night meds which help me to sleep. Yet another stupid thing to add to the list of thousands that I have. After lying there for hours with a million negative thoughts racing through my head, I’ve given up on sleeping. There’s only so many bad thin
gs you can hear about yourself from the one person who truly knows you.
Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. It’s a day where I always find myself dwelling on the past and my nine previous attempts. Obviously they are all right at the top of my stupid things list.
Are they really stupid?
But can I really class them as stupid? Are they just on my list because that’s what a lot of people think? Because it makes other people feel easier around you if you believe that? Or because you don’t want anyone else to walk out of your life? And make you feel more unloved and more inclined to once again think about how everyone would be better off without you?
It’s a vicious circle and one that I don’t believe that anyone is completely removed from. We can remember only too well what led us to believe those things and we can never honestly say that we are not going to reach that low point again.
Mental illness is like the torturer you see in films and programmes on the TV. It grinds you down and even the strongest of people can break under its pressure. Mental illness could easily have you signing a confession, and over time it does make you believe every single thing it spews at you. That everyone hates you. That you are worthless and better off not being around.
I know it’s still hard to even begin to comprehend why someone with a great family, job and home would try to exit their life prematurely.
That a lot of people still secretly think I was just being selfish.
Just being selfish?
There, I’ve said three words that I most hate when people talk about suicide. Nothing could be further from the truth. How can anyone who was not inside your tormented head at the time make such a horrible statement? But they do. And too often.
Although I’m still on an almost constant low as a result of my lingering depression, I can currently see that suicide isn’t the answer. However I can’t honestly say that it hasn’t crept into my mind. I’ve just been strong enough to push it back out. That’s another word that I find funny. If I was really strong, surely I would just be able to resist its grasp and any temptation?
At the time I believed that I had put everyone through enough. My husband was stuck with someone who he couldn’t even trust to take care of our own two children. My two boys had a mum who couldn’t even look after herself. And who never even broke into a slight grin, when they told her anything remotely funny in an effort to try and make her feel better.
My friends had someone who was selfish, because I was too caught up in mental torture to even ask how their day had been.
Disgust for myself
The only things I could see were the chaos and hurt that I displayed and inflicted on everyone. The total disgust and hate I had for myself.
I was an evil person. How could anyone who wasn’t not want their own baby? How could a good and kind person fall into the depths of mental illness not once, but twice? I had the awful, hurtful things playing on a constant loop in my head. Over and over. The things that I said and did can’t simply be erased from anyone’s memory.
If you had a friend who showed you no love and only came out with vile, hateful things, you wouldn’t stick around forever. Eventually your friend would cut all ties. No matter how much you were loved by them, a person can only take so much, before they themselves become miserable. The memories of the things you said and did would be etched into their minds. But without you as a constant reminder, they would dwindle and finally become replaced by good memories that someone else had managed to make.
I still go over every conversation I have, as I’m far too worried about everything I say and what impact or hurt it may cause others. I have to constantly seek assurance that I haven’t upset someone. This annoys people, I know, and I know that they don’t understand why I have to do it but it’s my way of getting through and of coping.
I am currently well enough to keep going…
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