My Mental Health Awareness Week Story
TW/CW : Depression, Anxiety, Suicide, Self Harm, Mental Illness, Eating Disorders, Sexual abuse
I don’t think mental health is ever particularly easy to talk about, whilst today we are much more open about things and we discuss it more, we still hold ourselves to a higher standard, we avoid talking about the darker side of our illnesses, we don’t divulge details and we tell the story people want to hear. I for one am glad we as a generation have opened this discourse up and we do have these conversations but I do think it is essential that we do more than a hashtag, that we do more than talk about the prettier more romanticised side to our illnesses and that we actually lobby for change wherever we can.
For me, I don’t think I can pinpoint a particular occasion or event that made me realise I was unwell. My story may be a little more complex than others and still nowhere near as complex as others I’ve heard but for the sake of being open and honest, and for anyone that may read any part of this and resonate with my experience and take some comfort in knowing you aren’t alone I feel obliged to share my own mental health journey.
For one, I feel that we only really acknowledge mental health illnesses as something we experience during our teen years or our twenties, we focus a lot of our attention towards that but for me, I would say that my mental illnesses began to control my life from as early as I can remember.
A large part of me would link this to really severe childhood trauma, I remember from being a child how much I hated looking at myself, how much I avoided photographs and how even catching a glimpse of my own reflection without preparing myself would trigger an uncontrollable wave of self hatred, as I sit here now, nearly twenty two years old, its very clear to see that my issues with my image stem from what was done to me during my childhood and the fear of in any way resembling the person who took from me what no one should have taken from them; but as a child you don’t make those links, you don’t know how to articulate that say that you aren’t okay, because you don’t know any different.
I was always overly conscious as to how I presented myself and sitting in a classroom not understanding why when my classmates and friends were having fun, enjoying themselves and making meaningful relationships with each other whilst I was analysing everything I said or did, criticising my every interaction to a fault and in the process alienating myself everyone around me. I was physically unable to trust anyone around me, I doubted and assumed the worst in everyone, every relationship and every friendship, I made a conscious effort to try and put all of my efforts into my school work to have something to pride myself in that nobody could take away with relative success, I was always academically smart and I was fortunate in that regards. I also had a real talent for performing arts, I relished any chance to channel everything I was feeling into being someone else and hiding behind a character, masking the manically low moods and self hatred in ensembles, costumes and validation from an audience who knew nothing about me, who saw nothing other than the character I was portraying.
My frustrations with having so much taken from me also managed to find an outlet in vocalising an opinion with pretty much anything, I channelled the frustrations I had about myself and how so much wrong was done to me in trying to fight and argue for what I thought was better for everyone, probably much to the annoyance of anyone who was in the position of trying to teach me during school. I found comfort in school councils, in student panels of representatives regionally and ultimately in party politics as I’ve grown older. I’d say that this is ultimately what has saved me time and time again from my illnesses winning, I was quite recently told that I fight for justice in even the smallest of places because of the monumental injustices committed against myself during my formative childhood years, something I’d say is a fairly accurate depiction of my life now.
My illnesses controlled and what should have been my formative years during my childhood and no matter how many counselling sessions I had as a child, those key indicators that should have set alarm bells off with professionals simply didn’t, there absolutely aren’t the resources, training or funding given to adolescent mental health. My childhood was a blur of manic mood swings and severe ups and downs, I was a very easy target for bullying because of how easy I found myself isolated from my peers for being denied the opportunity to build relationships with them during my earlier years as well as the fact I was very clearly struggling to come to terms with my sexuality. I had always and still do find comfort in being able to control the smallest aspects of my life and day to day routine, being a teenager and the influx of social pressures and hormones that came with it made for a self destructive cocktail of behaviour when they met my still undiagnosed and mostly ignored illnesses. Unfortunately for everyone around me, mostly those closest to me who I am beyond grateful for to this day for sticking around.
I became a vessel of self hatred, self loathing and anger, anger at myself for feeling how I did, anger at myself for not being able to be like my peers, anger at everyone around me for not fixing a problem there was no fix for, anger at my peers for being able to enjoy themselves and go about their lives, anger toward the person who took what they took from me and anger at a system that denied me a voice and allowed them to get away with it. On the frequent occasions all of these emotions would explode, I felt an uncontrollable guilt and self loathing for hurting others and I directed my anger inwards, I took control over my mental illness through self harm and controlling my food intake. My habits eventually became very public knowledge to my head of year and after a call home to my Mum I was referred to CAMHS. Whilst I cannot emphasise enough how crucial this intervention was in hindsight and how positive so many peoples experiences of the service have been, mine was anything but. I was referred for two separate courses of counselling and CBT with a doctor who told me every week that I chose to let the person who hurt me win, that I chose to feel the way I did about myself and that ultimately my mental health my own fault, it was only during the age of 15 did I first come face to face with my diagnosis of ‘major depressive disorder’ and ‘anxiety’. Being told that I was to blame for something I had no control of ultimately led me to lie my way through the sessions, using my acting skills to put on a mask that everything was fine a mask I wore very well, often fooling myself until I came to University three years ago.
My education and teenage years rounded off relatively normally, I left high school at fifteen after getting my GCSE’s a year early and moved away to go to college, making an entirely new group of friends and reinvented myself, still closeted I like any other gay teen at the time experimented with my sexuality and found myself in a really unhealthy relationship at age sixteen, this again triggered my need to have control over my eating, I began self harming again and pushed everyone away from me yet again in what would become a habit of isolating behaviours in order to self preserve. I left college aged seventeen with four A Levels at relatively good grades, embarked on a gap year working full time in retail and was accepted into the University I now attend, its fair to say my gap year gave me a lot of time to mature and to gain the independence I craved, but also gave me the financial income to numb my ongoing mental health problems with alcohol, going out to town at any given opportunity, validating myself in the attention men tried to give me as a relatively innocent and fresh faced seventeen year old and burying my problems further.
The move to University aged eighteen gave me what I thought would be a fresh start in a new city, with fresh faces and fresh opportunities to ‘find myself’ in what I was promised by every open day leaflet, talk and person in passing would be the ‘best years of my life’ — I instead managed to use my new found freedom to further obsessively control every small detail of my life, no one was there to question why I would only eat one meal a day and swap evening meals for evenings out drinking with friends, no one was there to police the harm I inflicted on myself physically and no one was there to question the destructive routes I took to validate myself if only for ten minutes. In the May of 2015 after a run in with my flatmates over my overbearing need for cleanliness, another way in which my illnesses managed to manifest itself, I locked myself in my room in tears with the final crack of the mask and my façade crumbling down around me, the realisation that I was alone and absolutely nothing was okay had forced its way to the forefront of my mind. I managed to complete my deadlines with little to no sleep and forced my way to see my GP in an admission of my past and a declaration of crisis, it was at that point I was told I was suffering severe depression and anxiety and was prescribed sertraline.
The next two years became blur of Uni drop outs, unable to cope with the side effects of sertraline, followed by citalopram and no real mental health support other than the occasional visit to my GP, no referral was made to see a specialist due to cuts to local NHS cuts and I was too emotionally exhausted to try and find other resources available to me. I sought validation and chased happiness in two further toxic relationships, finding comfort in the discomfort and constant of state chasing a new rock bottom simply because it meant I felt anything at all. Drinking the mental illness away evidently wasn’t working and the relationship dynamics I found myself in with trust being broken and being slowly manipulated away from my friends took its toll in January of 2017. After what was a string of volatile arguments all it took was one sentence to push me over the edge and leave me seeking a way out altogether, this was what would be my first attempt at taking my own life, thankfully it didn’t work and I took back some control of my life my removing myself from what was becoming an unbearably toxic situation. I bounced back, seemingly so anyway and to outsiders I looked like I had myself together, I was holding down a job, I had friends I did all I could to stick plasters on the huge rips in my life.
I was at what I thought was breaking point with my past, I reported my childhood trauma to police and tried to move onwards with my life, a fresh start. My fresh start was pulled from under my feet on May 22nd when I lost a very good friend to me in the most tragic of circumstances in the Manchester attacks. I didn’t sleep, I didn’t eat and I mourned the loss of a friend I made via twitter, someone I looked up to an awful lot, confided in often and miss dearly every single day. Its hard to explain and to write how much of an impact this had on me, especially because so many people are quick to dismiss online friendships and I myself struggling to accept my right to grieve. I was again forced to see my GP who prescribed me Mirtazapine in order to help me sleep and manage my depression better, it was at this time my GP told me a diagnosis of complex PTSD was met alongside my major depressive disorder and anxiety, which often manifested itself in severe agoraphobia. My friends at the time who are still close friends to this day rallied around me and managed to keep me busy.
Fortunately for me, I found myself kept extremely busy with the calling of the General Election and managed to again find something to channel my grief and my depression into, my agoraphobia was overcome by a sense of needing to make a difference and canvass pretty much the entirety of West Yorkshire day in and day out. With the general election over in June I began to look forward to starting University fresh in September but again sought validation in a relationship that ultimately antagonised me further, exacerbating my illnesses to an all time peak, flashbacks became common features, my sleep pattern was non existent, the way in which I viewed my body was more negative than ever, this became more unbearable than ever during the Christmas period, resulting in the breakdown of a relationship that should have ended a long time beforehand and yet another mental health crisis.
With the year anniversary of reporting my trauma to the police upon me, a stress to meet my deadlines and hold down a job that was quite frankly not at all understanding of the complex nature of mental health I entered what I would very clearly say was my rock bottom. I attempted suicide two further times and a near third until I in a very out of body way, accepted that I wasn’t alright. I think now this was the only way my body could react to the sheer emotional battering I was being subject to by my illness. My housemate drove me to my GP and she after a very uncomfortable conversation whereby I had to explain myself accepted I was in crisis and referred me onto the crisis team, I was sent home. The next two weeks are still to this day a blur of seeing medical professionals twice a day whilst receiving home treatment under the fear I wouldn’t cope in inpatient care and taking medication anywhere between ten to twelve times a day. I managed to come out the other side and after two and a half weeks was referred to the community care team who would ultimately decide the outcome of my care plan, my medication had balanced out and I become more driven than ever to not allow myself to be taken back to the place I was in, I refused to have anything else taken from me and was instilled with a renewed sense of purpose to carry on fighting. This fight also managed to coincide with an election campaign I refused to shy away from but also subjected me to the weaponising of my mental health against me — something I never expected anyone to subject others to and something I am continually fighting to this day, despite all odds I managed to win my election , something I am beyond proud of and thankful to every single person wo believed in me and voted for me despite the very evident outward side effects of my mental illness and medication showing as I stumbled and slurred my way through a shambles of speech.
The renewed sense of purpose leads me to where I am today, while I am in no way cured, I do see a brighter side to things, I am eternally grateful to my Mum and my family who stood by me and helped pick me up and dust me off with each fall until I got to this point and who will continue to do so every fall yet to come. With finally finding medication that works for me, I have been able to feel actual emotions and sustained periods of happiness for the first time in my entire life and I am grateful for the people around me who have helped me and stood by my side to help me see the beauty in the smallest of things, who have helped me to trust again and feel a sense of optimism toward a future, a future I never saw for myself.
If you’ve managed to stick with me until this point I feel it necessary to say that I still struggle, I still relapse from time to time, I still am waiting to be referred for psychotherapy with a specialist. I also feel it necessary to say that we as a society as facing an mental health crisis, suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 45, with 75% of all suicides in 2015 being male.
I am also no illusion that mental health is a crisis we as an LGBTQ+ community face with Stonewall (2012), finding that :
- 22% of gay and bisexual men are experiencing moderate to severe levels of depression
- 84% of lesbian or bisexual women have felt sadness, miserable or depressed
- 75% of lesbian or bisexual women have felt anxious
- 46% of gay pupils have felt depression consistent with homophobic bullying
- 49% of gay and bisexual pupils have symptoms consistent with depression
- Half of gay and bisexual men said they have felt life was not worth living compared to 17 per cent of men in general.
- 33% of lesbians and bisexual women thought about taking their own life even if they would not do it
These rates are even higher amongst trans and non binary people and also those who identify as BAME.
What I feel is clear from my story is that we need to campaign for investment in mental health care for children, we shouldn’t be waiting until we reach our teenage years to access support and help. What is clear is that mental health is an ongoing battle, I don’t think there will be a day I don’t struggle with it and in the same way some people struggle with physical disabilities and illnesses we absolutely shouldn’t shy away from talking about our experience and refusing to stop talking until we have better funding and provisions for mental health, we shouldn’t stay conveniently quiet about our experiences to make others feel comfortable, we shouldn’t stop lobbying for fairer funding, access and understanding into our illnesses and we shouldn’t ever stop fighting to live another day.
We deserve help, we deserve support, we deserve to be listened to and to be understood and we most importantly deserve to be here.
If you feel you are struggling please don’t be scared to confide in friends and family, visit your GP and listen to your instincts, it is more than okay to not be okay and we should all act on those feelings by contacting professionals and asking for the help we need.
If you feel affected by anything raised here, please follow the relevant links to access the relevant help and support :