#ill be eternally grateful to any cool person who decides to support me

[olexxx]

as holidays approach, im gonna plug my kofi here, just because https://ko-fi.com/lex_econ

[evakuality]

Based on a prompt by @j-purplesunsets-rainydays:  I just thought of another prompt for you 😅 davenzi, enemies to lovers: their entire group is going to a cabin for a few days, though Matteo and David for X reason don't get along. They get there early, before everyone else, for whatever reason, but a bad snow storm hits and the others can't get to the cabin, so David and Matteo are stuck together there! It's cliche but I think you could really make it amazing

This isn’t quite what I had intended from that prompt, but here we are.  Chapter one of a planned eight!  Many many thanks to @kapplebougher who did an amazing and speedy beta job for me, and to my cheerleaders - you know who you are!

Snowbound, chapter one

It’s quiet as David presses his forehead to the cool panes of the glass and stares outside.  That’s something for which he’s genuinely grateful because it means he can try to get his racing thoughts into some semblance of order before he has to play nice for several days.  He’s had major reservations about this trip ever since Abdi first suggested it when he was five beers into a great night and everything had seemed equally hilarious, exciting and easily achieved. To Abdi anyway.  None of those things is even remotely true, definitely weren’t true at the time, and yet they had made it work in the end.  Sort of.  

David’s on a train in charge of an entire large bag filled with food and alcohol while most of the others are going to follow later in a car.  Which they could technically have brought the food in, but into which they apparently weren’t able to fit it considering the mountains of other important stuff they were trailing.  Like skis, a snowboard or two and lots of warm clothes.  Make ‘having no room for the food’ point one on the list of reasons why this trip was a badly organised, blatantly stupid idea. 

David sighs as he drags his eyes back inside the carriage and looks around him.  Looks at Matteo, who’s dozing in the corner of the seat opposite David.  That’s the biggest problem, and that’s why David had reservations about this from the start.  Not that anyone listened to him. That’s point two on the long list of why this was not a good idea.  Though in terms of how large it loomed in the list of ‘reasons why David should not do this’ it’s right up there, and probably should have its own points track and not just ending up lumped in with all the other much less important reasons.  

The thing about Matteo is that he shines and stings in David’s life in equal measure.

The thing with them has always baffled everyone around them.  Fuck, half the time it baffles David.  There was a small moment in time when he’d thought they were connecting.  Back when he was newly arrived from the raw, rough experience at his old school and Matteo had smiled at him a few times, David had thought he might even have made a friend.  Someone he could share thoughts with, relaxing into the new sensation of smoking weed and rambling about everything and nothing for hours.  

But he was swiftly disillusioned of that idea when Matteo had retreated into himself as early as the next day, his smiles coming less often over the next week, clipped and cut off and eventually fading to nothingness alongside short, rough dismissals of any attempt to connect again.  That it was something to do with David was obvious when Matteo was with his friends.  With them, he’d spark into life, laughing, pushing, teasing.  He had the energy he’d had on that one glittering evening they’d spent together.  So watching Matteo with those others, fresh from the wounds inflicted at his old school, David had run and hidden.  From that moment he was careful to stay as far from Matteo as he could get, unwilling to suffer anymore at the hands of people who flash hot and cold and always have some sort of verbal weapon hidden under the cover of their friendliness when it appears.

Huffing again, David turns back to look out the window.  Thinking about Matteo just serves to raise his blood pressure, sending both an aching thought about what might have been if Matteo hadn’t been such an ass and a stabbing anger at how blasé he seems to be about the whole thing now that they’re thrown together so often through chance.  Well, chance and a group of people who don’t let anyone stay distant once they’ve decided they want to be friends.  Blocking out the sight of Matteo sitting there in front of David is the best way to keep his carefully cultivated calm.  Once they’re all at the cabin with the boys it should be fine.  It’s never quite as hard to be polite when it’s not just the two of them.  So it’s something of a blessing that Matteo is asleep and David isn’t forced to make awkward small talk with him.

Instead he can focus on the beauty of the world outside his window.  Darkness is drawing in around the train and with it come some small flurries of snow.  They dance, fidgeting spinners through the air as the train rattles onwards through the landscape, beautiful and fragile.  Watching them, David lets himself drift, following their forms with his eyes and his heart and leaving his own troubles slumbering on the seat opposite.  There’ll be time enough to worry about all that once they get to their destination.

“How are we supposed to get to the cabin?” Matteo asks, his voice clipped, weariness seeping in even though he’s been asleep for the last hour at least.

David kicks at the heavy bag by his feet, finding it impossible to move and wondering glumly how they’re going to move it at all, let alone get it to the cabin.  

“David?” Matteo says, irritation slipping into his voice, and David’s gaze snaps up to Matteo’s.  The exhaustion is actually easy to read even in the shadowy light in front of the station, or maybe it’s so easy to see because of the way it throws all the planes and angles of Matteo’s face into relief and plays up all the hidden shadows reflected on it.  Dark smudges are visible under his eyes and his body is slumped against the stone wall in a way that looks more like genuine need for support than affectation.  David shrugs.

“Dunno,” he murmurs.  “Uber?”

Matteo’s lips purse as if the idea is distasteful, but he too looks down at the bag stuffed full of food and seems to recognise the inevitability.  He sighs and pulls out his phone.  Within moments he nods and looks over at David again.

“It’s on its way,” he says.  “We should get this stuff out the front I suppose.”

David nods, relieved to have something to do other than stand around making this awkward chat with Matteo in the dim lighting that calls back to the hallway in which they’d first talked.  The hallway and conversation in which David had first thought he might manage to belong in the new school that was so terrifying after everything he’d been through.

Between them, they manage to perch their personal bags over their shoulders and drag the food bag through the brightly lit entrance hall and out to the cracked and broken pavement out the front.  They stand together, panting breaths sending puffs of misty air out into the deepening dusk as the day slips even closer into night.  The snow is falling faster now, no longer dancing but now coming down as if with purpose.  David shivers as he looks at the flakes, rushing towards their inevitable soggy end now rather than twisting and dancing as if on spirited legs.  The wind is cutting through the hoodie he’s wearing, whistling in under the open edges of his jacket and making him shudder with the cold.  

Beside him, Matteo has lit up a smoke of some sort, and David doesn’t want to know what type of smoke it might be.  It’s enough that it smells terrible, the smoke acrid in the gusts of wind whipping around them, but that somehow Matteo makes it look good.  His eyes when he blows the smoke out flicker closed, his head tips back and David is drawn to the long length of his throat exposed by the movement.  Which is almost as infuriating as the revolting smell.

“How long before it gets here?” David asks, trying to shake off the sudden flush of heat that Matteo’s smoking has dragged into his own body, swamping it and masking the chill of the night.

That might have been a mistake as Matteo looks over at him, the smudges under his eye almost invisible now and his eyes a deep reflective blue in the artificial lights as his hair flops down over his face.  It’s so reminiscent of their first discussion under harsh lights outside a school room, that David has to suck in a breath and drop his own eyes to the ground, focusing instead on the scuffed shoes he’s chosen to wear.

“It’s about five minutes away,” Matteo says, and David nods morosely.  Five minutes.  Might as well be an eternity.

“Why can’t either of us drive?” David asks, not really intending to be heard but Matteo huffs out a tiny laugh drawing David’s eyes right back up to his face.

“Because we’re lazy fucks,” he says, his eyes glinting as he takes another drag on the smoke between his fingers, then offers it to David.

The smell crashes over him again, and he wrinkles his nose.  Shakes his head.  There’s a flicker of something on Matteo’s face, his eyes shutter for a brief moment before he nods and takes another drag himself.  The hint of a smile is gone, and when Matteo turns his back to the wall and looks up at the sky David knows the conversation is done.

This always happens.  There’s some small start at camaraderie or conversation, but then it shuts down almost as soon as it begins, leaving David ill at ease, body thrumming from a desire he can’t explain and head stuffed full of contradictory thoughts.  Matteo is at once enthralling and exasperating, never opening up enough to let David see inside.  As if that one long ago conversation was all David was ever to be allowed to see and to know and everything else is cut off before it can even begin.  It stabs at him again that Matteo isn’t like this with anyone else.  With them he’s charming and open, teasing and sarcastic, alive in a way that David is never allowed to see if they’re ever alone in this way.  Not that David wants to be allowed inside.  He just wishes he knew what the hell he’d done to make Matteo this different around him.

There was part of him, back then, that had wondered if Matteo was some sort of asshole who’d worked out David’s secret from that evening they’d shared and rejected him because of that.  Back then, it was all rough and raw and cut him to the bone whenever he ran up against the prejudices of others.  It’s not as bad now, not when he’s lived long enough in the world to feel more secure in his own skin.  He’s much less likely to give in to the desire to run and to hide.  Still.  The lingering feelings from those days colour every interaction with Matteo and it always ends like this.  Stilted conversations that go nowhere and a Matteo who’s closed off and shut down.

Before he can let his thoughts darken any more, headlights flash around the corner and a small boxy car slides up next to them.  Matteo’s bending to look into the window, and laughing at something the driver has said, all hints of his earlier tiredness dissipating as he turns to grab their bags and fling them into the car’s backseat.  The contrast is so stark that David can’t help the pain that lances through him as he climbs into the back seat next to the pile of bags.  

It only takes about ten minutes to get to the cabin, but in that time the snow becomes heavier until it’s almost impossible to see as they make their way through the night, headlights barely making any headway against the thickening shroud as it falls.  The driver has stopped cracking jokes and started squinting through the windscreen, his hands gripped tightly on the steering wheel and his face a mask of concentration.  Matteo has subsided too, his exhaustion obvious in the way he lets himself flop back against the headrest.  It all leaves David to the joys of his own thoughts, which are not particularly peaceful.

Sighing in relief as they arrive, he’s able to shake off the approaching melancholy and get their belongings safely stored into the cabin. David looks around him as they stand just inside the entrance.  It looks pleasant enough, this cabin they’ve rented, with a large open plan kitchen taking up most of the space at one end of the long room, and a table breaking the space between it and the living area which is filled with plump couches and overstuffed chairs.  Thankfully, there’s a wall heater as well as the fire place with wood neatly stacked inside.  It’s so cold in the unheated room that David is shivering again, and he knows there’s no way that fire will generate any heat any time soon.

Matteo seems to have had a similar thought, because he strides over to the heater and pushes a few buttons.

“Putting that on the highest it will go,” he says as he turns back to the luggage they’ve stacked just inside the front door and starts pulling out the various foodstuffs they’ve brought with them.

Part of David wants to argue, to push back against the assumption that Matteo gets to be in charge and making all those sorts of decisions.  But a bigger part of him knows that’s unreasonable and knows that if he’d been the one to turn it on he’d have done exactly the same thing, so he just hums an affirmation and bends to help Matteo with the food.  They work in near silence, with the occasional query about where to store certain foods the only discussion.

David wouldn’t call it uncomfortable exactly, but he can tell just how tired Matteo is and just how much he wants to be away from David.  The chilly tension from the station remains with them, and David hopes like hell that the rest of the boys aren’t too far away.  He needs their cheerful exuberance to make it through this trip with any sort of enjoyment.  This frosty, barely-there communication Matteo has going on is putting a huge dampener on David’s experience of this time.

The chill in the air wears off as they work, pushed away both by the heater’s warmth and the effort of heaving things around, but the chill between the two of them lingers.  David wistfully hopes that by the time they’re done their company will have arrived.  He’s not sure how much longer he can endure this silence and tension once he has nothing to focus on and they’re forced into some weird semblance of intimacy.

They’re just about finished, storing the last few beers into the suitably large fridge, when Matteo’s phone pings loudly.  He shoves the beers he’s holding deeper into the fridge and by the time he’s dragged the phone out of his pocket it has sounded twice more.

Matteo’s face flickers as he reads the messages and his lips crease into an angry line.

“Fuck,” he says softly, so quietly that David is sure he wasn’t supposed to hear, but he can’t help the inquisitive hum he makes.

Matteo’s eyes snap up to him as if he’s just realised David is still here with him.

“The boys aren’t coming,” he says, his face flushing as he drops his gaze away from David’s.  There’s resignation and irritation in his voice and a scowl on his face.  David winces.  That’s one possibility he hadn’t even considered, too consumed by the need for the rest of the boys and their enlivening presence perhaps.

“What?  Why?”

“Snow storm, apparently.  They can’t get through.  Stuck at some little hotel somewhere on the road.”

That’s just great, David thinks viciously.  The boys were supposed to be his buffer.  They were supposed to make this thing something like fun.  Instead he’s stuck here with someone who clearly finds his company less than ideal.  Someone who David himself finds difficult to get through to, and with whom he has a complicated history.  Worse, the boys have all the equipment with them, so there’s no chance even for skiing or snowboarding to get him away from the supremely awkward moments he can already sense looming in his future.

He flings the door open and looks outside.  Indeed, the snow has piled up so there’s about a foot drifted against the cabin already.  It’s not stopping anytime soon, either, as the flakes are falling so steadily now that it’s impossible to make out one from another.  Any hope of the boys getting through to rescue David stutters to a halt, lost in the chilled white wall piling up in front of him.  

Beside him, Matteo huffs his own irritation.

“Fuck,” he says again, louder this time.

David has to agree with that sentiment as he closes the door, blocking out the unwelcome sight of the silent, muffled white world building its armour against them.  Fuck, indeed.

[beeinmybonnet]

The S Word

It has become increasingly apparent to me that one of the biggest hurdles for people who want to help loved ones suffering from mental ill-health is empathy. The ability to walk a mile in their shoes. To put themselves in their loved one's position. Only then can they understand their condition, and only then can they even begin to know how to help that person.

I have never broken a bone. You could describe the pain to me, and I can see the affect a broken bone has on a person. But I've never felt that pain myself so if I want to help someone who has a broken leg I have to ask them what they need, listen to what they tell me, and believe what they are saying. Only then can I start to figure out how I can help them.

I have, however, lived with mental health problems for the best part of 30 years, since childhood. I have fought severe pre and postnatal anxiety, major depressive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, suicidal ideation and PTSD. I have been admitted as an inpatient, I have run my own postnatal support group. I am "high functioning" which basically means that throughout all this I have succeeded at school, socialised, worked, married, had two beautiful sons, and the majority of people I meet would never know I had these illnesses weighing me down the whole time. I am currently in therapy with an NHS mental health team.

Recently a dear friend asked my advice on coming to terms with losing someone to suicide. I realised that a) nobody wants to say the word out loud, and b) for those fortunate enough to have never encountered a suicidal thought there is a real misunderstanding of what it means to be suicidal, and what can be done to prevent it. Now this, I do know about, so I gave my friend the following advice, to help her empathise and therefore understand and come to terms with what had happened... not to excuse it, or romanticise it, but to describe it for someone who has never been to that dark place…

Imagine you are stranded alone in a desert.

No food, no water, no shelter. You’ve been here for as long as you can remember. The nights are bone-shakingly cold, the days are unbearably hot. Your skin is burnt on top of burnt but you can find no way to protect it as it blisters. You’re thirstier than you’ve ever been. You shade your eyes with your hand and slowly turn 360°. You see nothing but unending parched, cracked land stretching to the flat, low horizon in every direction. The sun pierces your eyes even through closed lids. There is nothing around you to help you make sense of where you are, or figure out which way to go. Every step you take seems to lead you away from safety no matter how much logic and energy you apply.

Often, at sunset, you will be devastated as you stumble upon the first footprints you made at sunrise, having battled to make progress all day only to end up where you began. It’s feeling increasingly likely that you are stuck here forever, in the perishingly cold nights and blisteringly hot days, never getting closer to safety despite constant effort and grit, a perpetual horizon, un-changing and un-ending, sunburn on top of sunburn, blinding light, fading hope… this is your eternity. You cannot remember life before this, and you cannot imagine a way out.

And then.

In the far distance.

A glint. A whisper. Movement.

You turn to face it. You start moving towards it.

As you get closer you squint harder as the sun hurts your eyes, and then you hear it again. Breeze through a tall tree. And you see it. There is shade. There is water. There, in the far distance, is an oasis.

Now imagine how you feel about that oasis. Every fibre of your being is pulled towards it. Your body craves it, the cool clean water, the blissful shade. You ache to go to it. To feel at peace. To sit and rest. In fact the only decision you have to make is whether to stay put, suffering, burning, wilting in the desert for eternity, or go towards the oasis. You wouldn’t hesitate to move towards it.

But this desert is depression.

And this oasis is death.

The yearning, the craving, the immense pull from the cool oasis is overwhelming, and so unbelievably hard to fight against. It seems impossible to think about anything else, as the breeze whispers and the water glints, beckoning you.

It’s the craving of nicotine for a cigarette quitter.

It’s the heroin addict’s withdrawal sickness.

It’s the call of the bottle to a recovering alcoholic.

It’s a new mother’s primal urge to rush to her newborn’s cries.

It’s the song that swirls around inside your head, refusing to leave, whether you like it or not.

It is the forbidden food right in front of a hungry dieter. Look. Smell. But don’t touch.

Suicide is not something a person decides to do in response to a situation. It is not a cause and effect scenario. It is a spectrum. For the person who finds themselves at the scariest, most desperate end of the spectrum, who has battled in the desert for so long, fighting the overwhelming urge to go towards the oasis - despite their own dire need for relief - because they know it would devastate the people who love them if they were ever to succumb to it.

But, in the mind of someone with a mental illness, sometimes there is no fight left. Sometimes the lure of the oasis and its cool shady relief is utterly overwhelming, and impossible to resist.

On the outside, it may look like a person has made a conscious choice to end their life and devastate those around them.

Cowardly.

Selfish.

Weak.

What we don’t see, and can never truly know, is what kind of hellish internal reality depression had created for that person, what they were fighting against each day, and for just how long they resisted - with every fibre of their being - the lure of the oasis before they could resist no longer.

Imagine what it must take to succumb to this craving. Only someone in immense and unbearable pain would consider the pain and finality of death as any course of action. And then they are utterly terrified, but do it anyway. Because they are ill. Broken.

Depression is a deadly disease of the brain; the most complex and mysterious organ in our body.

Depression is not ‘stress’.

‘Depressed’ is not a mood or feeling.

It is a disease, as indiscriminate and uncontrollable as cancer. It is a cancer of the mind that nobody would ever choose to suffer and is not cured by being grateful.

Not everyone with depression finds themselves on the suicidal spectrum, thankfully. Some people have been somewhere along it for a long time. Like an alcoholic working hard to manage their craving. Every day. Distracting. Medicating. Fighting. Surviving. Living.

Someone didn’t ‘kill themselves’; depression killed them.

Someone didn’t ‘take the cowardly way out’; they took what depression had them believe was the only course of action left available to them after all their fight was used up.

Someone didn’t ‘give up’; they exhausted every last ounce of fight in them, but depression won the war. Depression is a monster. It lies, it punishes, it sucks the hope out of the poor human soul it’s infecting. It seeps uninvited into every crevice of the mind, body and soul like a poison.

If you’ve been affected by suicide and are left feeling understandably both devastated and furious my advice is to direct that anger fully towards this cancer of an illness, not to the tragic victim of it. Accept your fury, feel it fully as it is real and valid, and then be compassionate towards yourself and to the victim. Forgive your loved one and forgive yourself. Know that if your loved one felt in any way able to physically and mentally resist that oasis of peace and relief any longer, they absolutely would have. And know that they loved you, and their actions are no reflection whatsoever of the love they felt for you.

If you are worried about someone or believe they are on the suicidal spectrum, go to them. Say the scary words out loud - this takes away some of their fear and power: Are you feeling safe? Are you having scary, unwelcome thoughts about life and death? Are you thinking about how you’d want to die? Are you feeling suicidal? Saying the S word out loud will not cause someone to go through with it. In fact, getting the S word out there in the open may well prevent suicidal behaviour, by giving that person a safe space to confront their demons and diminish their power. By giving them the strength and time to see what’s real and what’s depression. To make their mental landscape more lush, less punishing, more comfortable than that hellscape desert so that the lure of the oasis is not so dangerously strong, or even have it disappear entirely.

If there is an elephant in the room, don’t ignore it. Run towards it, not away from it. Say the word out loud: suicidal. It could well be the best thing you could do for someone in crisis when they’ve no reserves left to save themselves.