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andsotheadventurebeginsblog · 7 years

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Breaking It Down: From Despair to Here.

A Prologue to Madness.

I can’t honestly remember the last time I was truly happy. I don't actually believe this happiness exists. As humans, we need to suffer to understand what it is to love and to be joyful. It’s just with some of us, the suffering presides over everything else. It’s an overarching numbness that is almost impossible to explain. In the last 6 months, I have been fighting with myself more than I usually do. There have been events that have tilted and knocked me, and helped me to prove to myself and remind me what a worthless individual I am. There have been moments of utter confusion and despair within social occasions I should have been enjoying. There have been many, many moments when I have truly wanted to disappear and sometimes physically have. There have been evenings where I have drunk myself away from the noise in my head to the point of blackout. And there have been very real thoughts of suicide and and very real episodes of self harm. There have been a few hours of clarity when I have decided to get on with what I have to do that day, and there have been days where I have actually been OK. But there have been many more days where I haven’t been OK at all.

I am writing this down because I want other people to feel like they are not alone. I don't need sympathy and I don't need people changing the way they behave around me now that this is out in the open. I have tried searching for a similar story, a real honest story that I can cling to, a story where suddenly everything is strategic, there is a plan, the problem is solved, but I have failed.

This blog will not provide answers - it is a work in progress, as am I. As much as I want to forget the past week, I need to remember it. I need to make sense of what has happened. And I need to explain to all the people that love me, and all the people that I have loved, what has happened. This story doesn’t start on the 10th October 2017. It starts a lot longer ago than that.

I had been in the throws of an episode of depression for about 3 weeks before ‘the thing’ happened. I hadn’t slept much. I had been ill, a slight cold, something that looking back may have been a sign to stop. I had attended a few social gatherings I couldn’t cope with, I had got blackout drunk and screamed at two of my closest friends. I was behaving increasingly irrationally and I couldn’t see any further than the next minute. I had cut my legs with a pair of scissors and counted how many painkillers I had in the house. I had googled how many it would take for me not to wake up. I didn’t have enough. I had run a really bad marathon the Sunday before, because I was exhausted. I had been kept awake the night before the race by suicidal thoughts; hallucinations of me rigging up a ligature in the bedroom I was staying in. I had stood at the edge of the road and thought about throwing myself in front of the cars. I had stood at the edge of the underground platform and thought about throwing myself in front of the tube. I was completely terrified of myself. I was a danger to myself. I was walking through treacle and trying to pretend that this would pass. It always passes.

During this time I made notes, I wrote a lot and I will continue to write. I have gone back and put it into some sort of coherent structure. To help myself understand, and to help you try and understand. I’ve left some of the writing as it was and it’s chaotic. There is no conclusion to this story.

It’s worth mentioning that before this happened, I had been on the drug Champix - a drug that is supposed to help you give up smoking. I had been on it for around 6 weeks at this point and had stopped smoking. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that this medication fuelled the fire of what happened. But that story is for another time. It was always going to happen.

Monday 9th October 2017

Today was the day. It was the day I had a full on breakdown, the breakdown that I would actually take notice of, because the ones before had been numbed and ignored and poked into the inside pocket of my outdoor coat for years. This one was 20 years in the making. I was on Tottenham Court Road. I had just come out of a meeting. I went looking for some pillows for my bed, because the pillows on my bed had felt like they were made of stones the night before when I couldn’t sleep, between terrors. They felt like the stones the Romans used to make flour, the ones you read about in the books at school, and they felt like it on my hands and also in my mouth but I hadn’t bitten them. It just felt like that in the inside of my mouth and I could taste blood. Between the terrors. But every time I went in a shop, I was overwhelmed by pillows and types of pillows. I want the pillows you get in the hotels. Not the duck down ones, the really firm ones that are also duck down but also something else. And also, there were people; normal, happy people and couples, really middle class ones who were very attractive and happy and had worked hard to be that attractive and happy and they were feathering their nests and making a home, and I wanted to kill them and be them at the same time. I was in Heals. I was hungry so I ate a sandwich that I had in my bag in the toilet cubicle at Heals. I ate it really quietly because I didn’t want people outside looking at me or the people in Heals finding out. They would tell me to leave because I wasn’t good enough to be there. I also went in Habitat and in Dwell and The Bed Shop, but I was overwhelmed by pillows and people, and I was scared of the shop assistants, plus I kept forgetting what I was actually doing.

When I left Heals without pillows I started to cry on Tottenham Court Road and I couldn’t understand why. I couldn’t stop crying. Or I would stop crying, but then about a minute later it would start again. I stood still for a long time and couldn’t work out where I was or what I was doing. I got on the tube and was crying. Nobody said anything. I cried through Liverpool Street and managed to get to Hackney Central and I got off the train and went to the pub.

In the pub, I wrote the words below. Because this is how I felt. I haven’t edited it because I think the contents speak for themselves.

****

Reality check - a side note to how I am feeling. I am living in fear of myself. I want to hurt myself. I think about it every day, maybe 8 or 9 times a day. I watch the cars and the trains. I have a whole drawer of codeine - I have been buying a 16 pack every time I go past a Boots. I have self harmed with scissors, something I haven’t done for 18 years. I cut my legs. The things I rely on to run. I have looked on the internet for anything I can take that will make me fall asleep and not wake up but has to be 100%, no accidents or pain or anything. I have eaten my sandwich for lunch in a toilet because I don’t want people to look at me, because I am disgusting for having a sandwich. I go in food shops and cannot make a decision about what to buy, so I buy nothing and go home hungry. If I buy something, it’s what I think I should buy because I saw someone else buy it and it goes mouldy in the fridge. I’m not hungry anyway.

I go into other shops and spend £60 on stuff I don't need and I don't know why. I buy things on Amazon. Lots of things. I go into catatonic states of staring at nothing, I miss my stop multiple times. I go to the pub and sit there for 3 hours on my own because I am afraid to go home because I don’t want my housemates to see me or talk to me because they are probably going to tell me to move out because I am so fucked up. I have night terrors and can’t sleep. I am always tired and I always have a headache. I hallucinate that I am setting up ligatures in my bedroom, that a white snake is trying to bite my face, I physically jump away from imaginary things like the snake, to wake myself, but I am not asleep. Lots of times, when I have to speak to a person in a shop or in the world outside my bedroom, the world that I have become so afraid of, I pretend to be on a phone call so I won’t have to look at them and can just say “Sorry, hang on” and then mutter what I want at the shop or outside person, and carry on my fake phone call, not look them in the eye and and walk away with my useless purchase.

Sometimes I feel a manic push to be kind, and then I ask people around me if they are OK, but this doesn’t happen often. When it does, it happens one person after another for a whole morning on the tube usually, and also when I am running a marathon or something, and it makes me feel amazing for a minute.

Sometimes I feel a calmness that I know is the feeling that some people get shortly before they commit suicide. I know because I have tried to commit suicide before. The thing I feel the most though, is fear, in my heart and in my stomach and that’s all the time really. I don't know what I am scared of but I am fucking terrified. It’s next level fear.

And to my friends, this. I don’t reply to your texts and I hate our whatsapp groups and I want to leave all of them, so I don't reply. Every message makes me angry and also sad but mainly angry and also I don't care. I am really glad you’re all having such a fucking easy, funny, nice life. I can’t concentrate. I am not part of your group anymore because I am different. I am damaged. I’m not who I pretended to be when I first joined the group. This is the real me. The person who hates people who are happy. I really do. I fucking HATE couples. I hate them, and wish they were dead or would cheat on each other and both find out because that’s fucking life.

I don't want to go for a drink or coffee or a run or a catch up or a talk or vent or whatever language you put it in, I want to vanish. I am vicious. You didn’t contact me before someone told you they thought something might be wrong, and so don't fucking contact me now. You can’t ‘cheer me up’. Things you say make me cringe and you’re lying that it’s not a burden because it is. I am carrying it around and it is killing me. It is a burden. I’ll prove it’s a burden, when you either stop talking to me because you’re so bored of what a fucking idiot I am, or I fucking top myself.

I don’t believe the things you say when I drunkenly manage to tell you that I am scared I might kill myself, or I cry at nothing, don't fucking touch me. I come home shitfaced for 4 days in a row because the only thing that shuts the howling in my head and the clawing in my stomach is alcohol, and for a while I can sleep without terror. I don't deserve any help, but I so desperately want it but I don’t know what help I need. I should be able to control this because I am a 36 year old woman who owns her own business, who runs marathons, whose holiday looked GREAT on instagram.

This is so embarrassing.

I wish I was covered in scales or it came up in a rash or was a tumour so you could see it. I’ve gone a few days without alcohol - maybe it’s that? It’s not. It’s me.

How to act normal I’ve got very good at pretending over the years. I am OK at work most of the time, but I work for myself, so I can make excuses to leave a place or not turn up at all, or I can go to the toilet and do a cry and I always have make up or I used to, but now I don’t carry it because I don’t care what I look like and I don't really wash or brush my hair unless I have to.

I tell some people I work with that I am depressed because it’s obvious from my face and I have given up smoking, and they are also depressed, everyone is, so I am not weird, but I say I am dealing with it, which is a lie, and then I say something funny and everyone laughs and goes away.

I can do this very well in the mornings, but in the afternoons when I am tired, something takes over that I can’t control. I am losing the ability to communicate. I forget words and sentences and names. I have no patience. I can still put on a show, but in the afternoons crying starts without warning - this happens a lot and then I stop it and then it starts again and I try and stop it but can’t, and I decide if someone asks me if I am OK on the tube or when I am in the pub hiding, I will say “yes, I am fine, my dog just died” and do a smile, but nobody ever really asks and I don't have a dog. And on it goes.

I have completely lost grip on reality in this sense. I am living day to day. My to do list goes undone and is re-written day to day. My work gets done. My meetings get done. My afternoons are blurred but they get done. When I get home, sometimes I see my housemate and she is so kind. She is kind because she has been here before when I tried too kill myself, but there is nothing she can do and she knows it. Sometimes I am fucking vicious to her, when I am drunk. We don't talk about these times the next day. I go in my room and shut the door and nobody bothers me.

****

When I have finished writing this down, I go home and I am shaky and fogged by wine and no dinner so I am crying but I don't feel hungry, and my housemates ask me if I am OK. I say no and I go straight to bed. I think the reality of the situation will frighten them. I set my alarm for 8am to call the doctor. I need to see a doctor. Today is world mental heath awareness day.

Tuesday 10th October 2017

I wake up at 8am and call the doctor. I feel awful because I haven’t had anything to eat but I need to call the doctor. I wait for 20 minutes on the line and speak to a doctor. I tell her I am very depressed and need to come in and see her. She says I can come at 11am. I get back in bed and set an alarm for 10am. I pack my bag for work. Meeting at 12. Important meeting at 12. I get to the doctor. I go in and see her and start crying and explain what happened with the pillows yesterday. She asks me what I want her to do about it. I say I don’t fucking know. She asks me if I have had suicidal thoughts. I say yes, all the time. She looks a bit scared and asks me a bit about my past, have I been on medication before, and I say yes. She writes me a prescription and sends it to Boots in Hackney. She says that I need to call the Crisis helpline and talk to a mental health professional. I tell her that I have a meeting at 12 and I will do it after. She tells me I have to do it now and she will sign me off work. I say NO I HAVE AN IMPORTANT MEETING AT 12 and I will do it after. She says if I don't do it, she will have to take action to hospitalise me. She doesn’t call them herself. She writes 2 numbers on a piece of paper. I stuff them in my bag and leave.

I get to the train station and stare at the tracks and feel like I am watching myself in a film. I get on the train and start crying. Need to pull it together, important meeting at 12. I get to Liverpool Street and go in Costa. Important meeting at 12. Skinny latte please. I start crying. I can’t do it. I am scared of all the people in the station and I feel sick with anxiety, so I call work and tell my friend what is happening and I can’t breathe properly because I am crying so much. She is very kind and she says she will take the meeting. I have to sit on the floor because I feel very sick and I am crying and I am embarrassed because I just called my work crying. I am sat on the floor of the station crying. Nobody asks me if I am OK. I get the numbers out of my bag and I call the first number. It is wrong. It is a fax number. I call the second number. It is wrong. It is the Crisis Home Care number. I am like a little mouse on the phone because I don't know what to say and then when it’s the wrong number I get very angry and hang up and walk to the shop and buy cigarettes and go outside and smoke my first cigarette in 21 days and cry because I can’t even fucking do that right, and I try and search for the right number on my phone but I can’t find it.

I look at all the people at Liverpool Street Station but nobody looks at me. I find a number. I call it again. It’s the Crisis Home Care number again. The lady says she has been trying to call me back after I hung up. She talks to me about what has happened and then says I need to go to the hospital to see her right now. The hospital is in Homerton. I have to wait for a train for 15 minutes and I think about who I can call, I think I need someone to come with me, but everyone will be busy and I don't want to worry them so I decide not to call anyone. I have to hold onto the handrail because my legs keep buckling. I can’t remember where the hospital is or the name of the lady and I get confused on the way. I have lived here for 4 years but I can’t remember the way. I come to realise I am walking very, very slowly and it feels like I am in a film. My face feels sore and my eyes hurt.

When I get to the hospital, I find the mental health unit and I sit there and a lady comes out and is kind to me and takes me in a room and talks to me for and hour and a half and I cry a lot and I am honest with her and she says have I picked up my prescription and what is it for and I say no and I don't know what it is for, because I haven’t asked what it is for and I wasn’t told. She cancels the prescription and says she wants me to see a doctor before they give me anything else and she explains what has happened to me, which is a mental breakdown, and says she is going too put me into the care of the mental health clinic and I can stay at the hospital or I can go home and have the Crisis team come and see me. I want to go home. I want to go home to my family. I am very, very scared. I feel embarrassed and scared and I feel like I am making a fuss, but I also feel hopeless and very tired and confused. She takes some phone numbers - my mums and my housemates. She gives me some sleeping tablets and then she sends me home and I leave the hospital and call my work and tell them I have to go home for a little while because I am not very well, and I call my mum and tell her what has happened and that I think I need to come home, and I feel like this is happening to someone else and I buy spaghetti in a tin and some bread and I go home and I call my housemate and tell her what has happened. I tell her I need to take all my pain killers that I have been storing and I need her to look after them for me because otherwise the Crisis team will take them away. I have a lot of pain killers stored away.

The Crisis people call me. Am I OK? Do I need them to come round? What time can they come round tomorrow? They will come round between 11am and 2pm tomorrow. I feel like I am in a film. I feel calm. I get a text from a friend who has also been suffering with their mental health in the last few weeks. A few weeks ago, I went to meet him and we had a walk and a glass of wine and a chat and I hope I helped a little bit. I go and meet him and tell him, and he buys pizza and is kind and offers no answers, he is just kind and makes me laugh a few times. He makes me eat the pizza. I feel better. I feel like I am floating above myself looking down at me talking. I don't feel like I am ill. I feel a fraud. I feel better. I go home, I take 2 sleeping tablets and I sleep for so long. I don't wake up or dream.

Wednesday 11th October 2017

I wake up and I feel tired. I watch something on my iPad and eat a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes and congratulate myself on eating them. I feel better. I feel like a fraud. There is nothing wrong with me, I just had a bad couple of days and I feel embarrassed. I start to cry. I want to know when I will be better and I want to be able to work. I am letting so many people down. I look at my computer but I can’t think of words very well. I feel like I am looking down on myself in a film. I want to go home but I have to wait for the Crisis people. They come and they look at me, and ask me if I have had any bad thoughts and I say not really but I am very tired and can I go home now? I ask them when I will be better and how I can get better. They look blankly at me. They say I need to remove myself from stressful situations and do things I love. They say I need to rest my brain and re-connect with the things I love. I feel like I love nothing. I don’t know what to do.

They say that they need a doctor to come and see me and that he will be able to prescribe me some anti-depressants, and I know I need them to get through the next few weeks in case I feel like I did on Monday again. I say I want to go home today. They say that if they can talk to the Dorset team I can go home tomorrow and I can be referred there and they will take care of me, but they want me to stay at here for the night and they want to see me again tomorrow. I find out that the anti-depressants that the doctor I saw on Tuesday had prescribed were Citalopram. I have taken them before. I took them for 4 years after I tried to kill myself at university. They want me to talk to a doctor before they prescribe them again. They will come back tomorrow morning early so I can go home. When they leave I lay on the sofa and when I wake up it is dark. I am very tired. I eat a sweet potato pie. I watch a film about Anorexia and I take sleeping tablets and I go to bed.

Thursday 12th October 2017

I wake up late and I feel better. I put my running gear on and I eat a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes. I wait for the Crisis people, and when they come I say I feel better. I ask when I will be well enough to go back to work. They say they don’t know. I say look I am eating food! And I am going to go for a run! I feel like I am looking down on myself like in a film, but I feel better. I feel like a fraud. There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel like I should go back to work. But in my gut, in my bellyhole I know there is something wrong with me because I feel like I am looking down on myself, like in a film. They tell me they have referred me to the Dorset Crisis team and that I can go home today and then I need to call them and they will look after me. They tell me the doctor there will help me to get the drugs I need. They leave and I go for a run and it’s hard but its the best thing I can do for myself now. I have a 100 mile run in the diary for the 21st October. I need to be well enough to do it. If I don’t do it, it will kill me and it will have won.

I am finding that simple things like running and making a bowl of cereal are hard. I have a shower for the first time in 2 days. I have forgotten to have a shower for 2 days. I pack my suitcase and I go to the train station and I get in the train and it is packed. I have a sandwich in my bag but I am scared to eat it in case it annoys the man who is sitting next to me. I get up and go and stand by the door to eat it. When I get to the station I meet my mum and she says I look well, better than she thought I would look. I tell her all about the Crisis teams. I ring the Dorset team and they say they will be around tomorrow to see me. We drive home and I feel silly and pathetic and very, very depressed. I don't remember what happens when we get home really. I just feel very, very depressed. We watch some telly and I go to bed.

Friday 13th October 2017

I wake up and I feel empty and useless and awful. I cry. I sit on the edge of my bed and look out the window and cry. I don't know why I am crying. I go downstairs and I see my mum and start to cry. She gives me a cuddle and I eat a bowl of museli. She starts telling me what she is doing that day. I am not really listening. We go for a walk in the woods and I don't know what to say. I don't want to say anything. I feel like I am in shock. I feel like I am looking down on myself. Like in a film. When we get home, I decide to walk into town to buy a book I want to read about a woman who has survived Schizophrenia. She makes me take the dog and the the dog annoys me the whole way there, and I just feel so sad, and sometimes I say horrible things to the dog. I used to love the dog. Now I love nothing. I see a dead badger on the side of the road. I cry about the dead badger. I walk round like a zombie and I can’t find the book. I sit in the Waitrose carpark for 25 minutes and stare at the grass and cry a bit. Then I walk the dog home and no, I don't want any lunch, thank you, and then I go upstairs and sit on the end of my bed and my mum comes upstairs and she asks me if she can come in, and she does and I am crying.

I talk to my mum about how I feel, and we talk for 20 minutes and I feel better. I tell her I want things to be normal. I want to feel like life is normal. I say we should go to the pub for a drink later - that is normal. I look at her holiday pictures and she looks at my pictures of Scotland. My friend David Harvey texts me and I say let’s go for a run on Sunday in the forest. I say yes I would like that. I am waiting for the Crisis team. They are late. My mum says I should do some ironing to distract myself. I do all of it. I look at the iron and think about how it would feel if I put it on my arm. The Crisis team are late.

When she arrives, there is just one lady from the Crisis team and I don’t like her. My mum sits in on our conversation and I can see her recoil when I talk about killing myself and she looks like she might cry. I don't feel like I want to kill myself now, I just feel like I want to move forward but I don't know how to do that and if I am going to feel like this forever what is the point. I think that, I don’t say it. I ask the Crisis lady when I will feel better. She says she doesn’t know, but that she will get a doctor to some round tomorrow to write me a prescription for anti-depressants. He will come between 10am and 12pm. She leaves and we go for a walk with the dog and I am silent and then we go to the pop up brewery for a pint, and I feel out of place and that I can’t make conversation with their friends, because I am here because I am depressed and that is embarrassing. We go home and eat dinner and then we watch rubbish TV and I go to bed. I am sleeping well because I have sleeping tablets. There are no terrors and no dreams. I need to get some more. You can get them over the counter. They are an allergy tablet - I need to get some more - so I tell myself I will do that tomorrow. I want to go and see my sister and her husband and my nieces and nephews tomorrow because they make me feel happy. I also want to run tomorrow. I cannot let this take running away from me.

Saturday 14th October 2017

When I wake up I feel better. I want to go for a run. I want to feel better. The doctor they are sending round is going to be late so I have some breakfast and drive to the beach and I run for 6 miles and get a coffee and and drive home and have a shower. I feel OK. Not brilliant, but OK. Running will save me. Autumn 100 next weekend. The doctor comes. He is lovely but he is strange. He asks me everything about my history including school and university. I have a therapist that I talk to once a week and so I don't really want to be talking about this stuff with a stranger. The Crisis team didn’t talk to me about this. He is kind though, and he tells me that there are fundamental changes that I need to make to my life to help myself. One of these changes is most probably to leave London. I know this is true. London is killing me. He is not the first person to say this. He writes me a prescription for Citalopram. 7 days worth. That means I need to go to the doctor in London. I sign myself out of their care. I tell them I don’t need them anymore and that I will be OK. I decide I will go back to London on Wednesday. I feel like a cop out. I feel like it’s a big fuss over nothing. There’s not been anything really wrong with me in the first place I don’t think. I feel OK. I feel like I am looking down on myself. Like in a film. I get my stuff and I drive to my sisters. I love my sister and her husband and I love my nieces and nephews. We all get on the sofa and watch films and my sisters husband makes me laugh and I feel l happy. I go to bed and take 2 sleeping pills. I feel OK. I feel like I am pleasantly distracted. But only distracted, not better. It’s still there. I feel like I want to start the change that will see me moving to be closer to them. I wonder if this will help me feel better. I have no idea how to feel better.

Sunday 15th October

My friend David comes over to my sisters and we all 3 go for a run in the forest. David is so kind to me even though he doesn’t really know name and we run for 10 miles in the forest, David, my sister and me, and we chat about races we have done and the Autumn 100 and it’s just the best time and I feel calm and in control of myself. I feel like there is nothing wrong with me. I feel like a fraud. I need to buy a coat for the race I am doing the following weekend so we go to the outdoor centre and me and my sister talk about running and I buy the coat I need. As we drive home my brother-in-law is singing along to songs from the musicals on the radio and my nieces and my sister are singing along, and it makes me so happy but so sad that I don't have a family unit like theirs. I feel like the car is full of love. I feel like I am loved.

Monday 16th October

I have made the decision that I will run the Autumn 100, and that I will return to London on Wednesday. I need to get on with my life and get on with my job. I need to start putting the pieces into place that will see me leave the city and move out to the forest and the sea. I don't know how I am going to do this, but I am going to start piecing it together. I go out with my mum. I don't feel good. I feel scared because I know I have to go back to London. I feel like I am floating around like a zombie. I feel like I am 3ft off the pavement and everything is grey and everyone is sad. There has been a hurricane that has blown dust into the atmosphere, and the sun looks red like it’s the end of the world. The world is yellow and red. I need some more sleeping tablets. The doctor told me that they were available over the counter so I walk into a chemist and ask for them, and the chemist looks me in the eye and says no we don't stock those - nobody does because people tend to abuse them, and I feel embarrassed like I am a drug addict and I scuttle out of the chemist. Later my mum goes into Boots and they give them to her, because she doesn’t look like a drug addict. She looks like a nice grown up lady who suffers from seasickness. I feel like a fraud because being with my mum makes me feel better. I feel very embarrassed about the last few days and I can’t really remember what I felt like when this first started to happen and I feel like I have made a big fuss about nothing. When we get home I go into town and I sit in the library and I write this diary from the notes I have been making. It makes me feel better, it is cathartic, then I think about publishing it and I feel terrified because people might think I am seeking attention but I’m not doing it for that reason, I am doing it because I want people to try and understand what happens when someone has a breakdown and what happens in the days after. This might not be the same as your story, but it might help you make sense of your story. I don't know what will happen next. I don't know when I will be better. But today, I feel better.

Tuesday 17th October

I am going home tomorrow. I have told my clients at work, and I feel clear in myself that I need to be brave, and go and get on with my life as it is for now. I know have people at the end of the phone and also in my real life here who love me. I feel foolish still, like I have made a big fuss about nothing. I no longer feel like I am in a film. I feel like I am in my life. My mum has some errands to do and she drives to my sisters house and I run to my sisters house through the forest, along the Castleman Trail and it is so wonderful to be running for miles through the forest to a destination, with nothing around me. I need to run to the destination. I need to make forward progress. On the run I tell myself that it is all going to be OK and that I can cope. I am heading to the destination. I go and pick my niece up from school and I walk the dog.

I finish this part of my diary here. Tomorrow I return to London. I have so many unanswered texts and messages and I don't know how to start answering them. I guess I will leave them. I feel better. I feel like a fraud. I feel like I need to move forward but I need to do it slowly and not let this happen again. I am on anti-depressants that will start to make me feel better in the next week. I have the Autumn 100 to run at the weekend and I will run it. I will run it to prove that I am in control, the depression is not in control. It is part of me but it will not define me. I will finish the Autumn 100 if I have to walk it. I will stay away from social situations for now. I feel like I need to look after myself on my own for a little longer.

So, to all those who looked after me, my mum, my sister and her wonderful family, my housemate, my friends whose texts and messages have gone un-answered, thank you and I am sorry. Your messages went unanswered, but I saw them all. To the NHS Crisis team, thank you. I never thought I would need to use these services, and you may not think you ever need to use them, but they are invaluable.

To you, the person reading this, do not be afraid to ask for help. You are not causing a fuss, you are not seeking attention, you are asking for help. Do not be afraid to tell people, to reach out, to make the call or send the text. We all like to think we are mental health savvy these days, but your friends and family are often too busy to see the signs or act on them. You might be too busy to notice your peers are suffering. Check in on people. Be kind. Listen and watch. Remember, you are not a burden to anyone. Have a voice. Ask for help. You are so loved.

To myself, look after yourself, have some respect for yourself. Take care and listen to your brain and body. You are loved. You’ve got this.

TBC

Helplines:

The Samaritans: 116 123

CALM: 0800 58 58 58

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