Live to Tell

I don't know if you've ever noticed or been that interested but I have been entitling my posts with song titles from Madonna's rather extensive back catalogue. Often writing what's on my mind first then deciding which title suits the content the best. It's just a little thing I do. Today I thought about the title first, which if you knew where my mind really was at the moment, might have you worried, but I'm not going to be sharing this post, at least not at the moment as this is strictly just for me to get what's out of my head onto a page. Maybe it's in case I don't actually live to tell you?

My ex-sister-in-law once accused me of being 'obsessed with suicide' during the last conversation that turned into an arguement a few years ago now. I don't really miss her presence in my life because I always found her quite aloof and cold, but that phrase still does the rounds in my head, maybe more often than I should give it space for. She was, or still is, a crisis nurse and once told me that people with personality disorders are just looking for attention and shouldn't be able to access mental health services that are for really sick people (??). I can't remember whether that was before or after my borderline personality disorder (BPD) diagnosis, but she had a knack for lovely little toxic theories like that; I'm sure I could remember more if I was arsed. Alas I digress.

So am I really obsessed by suicide? Maybe I am? I do think about it a lot more than should be classed as healthy. It's certainly a topic I have become quite immersed in over the last 10 years or so and pretty much dominates my life as it is at the moment, no thanks to my evolving work around the Co-alc Alliance that I accidentally set up a few years ago after meeting the two Nicolas in 2019. Of course my interest had been triggered a long time before that as my brother-in-law had ended his life in 1996, the same year my niece Julie attempted to take hers, before dying from her injuries in 2008.

I also made an attempt on my 48th birthday, which would have been December 2015, which thankfully wasn't serious enough to cause any lasting damage as it had to Julie. At the time I was working regularly and still with my son's dad, living as a 'happy family', although there were a few niggles underneath, I'd been having regular psychological therapies and on the surface everything seemed to be ok. I'd even slowly weaned off antidepressants and was doing well at Slimming World and had lost just under three stone in about 8 months. I was even booked to see Madonna in Amsterdam a couple of days later so it definitely wasn't pre-meditated. In hindsight, it still feels surreal, like a moment of complete 'madness' as I started popping pills after everyone had left the house after singing happy birthday to me.

Just over ten years later I'm still embarrassed by what happened and quite baffled as to how one minute I was packing my case to go away and the next minute I have an extremely hazy recollection of asking my bestie who'd ended up at my hospital bedside if she could take me home because there was an Asda order being delivered that evening! I mean WTAF? I have since used the word 'psychotic' to describe the outer-body experience that it felt like I had. What the hell happened? Was it simply attention seeking, or was there something else at play?

I have since wondered whether the peri-menopause was at play. I had started showing signs of the notorious hormonal and menstrual fluctuations, though no test could tell me definitively and a few years later confirmed that would have been the case. Another source of interest came from an academic I've followed for some years after she previously debunked the 'chemical imbalance' lie we'd been fed that had influenced the rise of antidepressant use since the 1990s, which was when I started taking them. Professor Joanna Moncrieff's most recent paper indicates that long-term use of SSRI's and trying to withdraw from them can actually cause serious 'altered mental states' which can be irreversible; "changes in cognitive function, drive, or energy levels driven by the drug's psychoactive properties." Could that have affected my spontaneous desperate act? Sadly, there is no way to prove what could have happened, but that moment not only scared my then partner, but still scares me how fast and unpredictable it happened - and led me back to the false safety of yet more antidepressants since,

In July 2017 my dear cousin's 44 year-old son took his life in the US, which had gut punched me when I found out; surely there was less stigma around suicide and yet this was still happening to people I love. This prompted another manic and unsettling episode which saw me produce a mental health magazine, during a threatened tribunal with my job and the breakdown of my 17-year partnership with my son's dad. I didn't really tell anyone what was going and tried to navigate the turbulance in my usual way of keeping so busy that I didn't have time to think. While I was moving home, I signed up as a service user rep and became a Samaritans volunteer and soon I was out and about in the community doing education and outreach shifts and negotiating how I was going to keep publishing this magazine I'd lost my job over. It's easier to mask it than dwell on it.

There's patterns in my behaviour - I see that now and recognise that when tough times happen I find ways to distract myself from having to think. It gets me through things that might otherwise knock me down completely. It's got me through an awful lot of stuff - pretending I'm ok, and to the outside world, I'm this fully functional, often overly productive super-human - there for everyone, helping so many people and overcompensating and keep myself too busy to attend to my own personal needs. And this tactic has worked for a long, long time but I've got to be honest and say I'm really struggling underneath it all.

My body feels fucked, I can barely walk, I am in constant pain in my knees but also my other joints now too. I can't walk far without being severely breathless and in absolute agony. I'm struggling to sleep, then struggle to get out of bed, I feel exhausted constantly and if wasn't for the ADHD meds I probably wouldn't be functional at all. I have list of ailments that match the list of medications and supplements I'm dosing up on, with alongside the excuses I make for not leaving my flat now. I was supposed to be in the Isle of Man this week, but I can't face it for another list of justifiable reasons. I"ve booked to go to a festival next month but honestly dreading the thought of the whole upheaval and leaving Pasc - it will be a sheer miracle if I actually manage that.

Although my son still lives here, he spends most of his time here in his room when he's home and the painful truth is that I'm alone most of the time. I can't face leaving the flat, yet it also feels like a prison. I have shut down socially since losing some so-called friends over the last couple of years and never felt so isolated and lonely. I know I still have a zillion friends all over the place, and I know there's a lot of things in limbo at the moment but I just feel adrift - as if no-one would notice if I just disappeared. Ok, I know that's not really true, I'm such a drama queen, but the fact is that I'm not really an integral part of anyone else's life except Pascal now. And I think he's the only thing that's keeping me going at the moment. Him and the pretence of my 'work'.

Getting on this Mac and trying to make a difference with this work that literally makes my heart-ache on a regular basis and talk about suicide as normally as talking about the latest movie release. So, yeah, I think I maybe obsessed with suicide and ironically it's quite possibly the only thing that's keeping me alive at the moment. I will try to keep moving forward - but I'm not sure how much longer I can keep this up, and if there's going to be another psychotic moment that will finish me off for good. Writing this has helped, but I wont share it today. I will however get in contact with my counsellor Karen tomorrow - it's been a while since my last session and maybe she can be my safe space and work out what the hell is going on.

This was on my phone from 2nd December 2015 Some things never change?

For now though, I need to take the bins out and then go to bed, hoping the heat or the night sweats or my manic brain don't torture this old girl any longer tonight.