Millima
Millima
Jul 21, 2017 · 3 min read

Friday 21st of July

Uncle Poobin, his fight for life

TRIGGER WARNING: In this post I crack down on some difficult to talk about topics such as: Cutting, Drugs, Alcoholism and Suicide.

If you are effected by these topics then please if you haven’t already find help and keep fighting.

Enjoy opening up your mind to mental Illness and what it means to live with it.

Today was my Uncle’s birthday, my uncle is difficult case to say the least. The reason I say this is because he has many mental illnesses now don’t get me wrong, I have grown up with mental illness and have no issue at all with it, my grandad, my uncle, my cousin and… me. Yes I have a mental illness, it’s called Aspergers. I’m not really sure how to explain what it feels like to have what I have, people ask me what it is and I just say I’m high-functioning so you can’t tell, but it does mean that I find some things difficult to understand and really dislike change. This was okay when I was younger but I just have to live with it now.

Back to my Uncle,

when I was young I used to look up to him and we were the ‘unstoppable two’ or the ‘crazy ones’. He used to push me around in my buggy and we called it my ‘speed buggy’. As I’ve grown up I’ve grown further apart from him, him and my aunty broke up after many years of arguing. He started living with my part of the family, which includes, myself, Miriam (my sister), mum, dad, lolly (my gran) and toddy (my grandad) I used to go outside at around 10pm every-night to talk to him while he was smoking, yes I did this.

He’s not a bad guy honestly it’s just the way he thinks because of his illness but he’s actually very sweet.

His sweetness was widely show in his use of money, now here’s where everything went wrong. My uncle, poobin (a nickname I gave him when I was about 6) has a weird thing where he has to be addicted to something. He was addicted to buying things, for him, for his loved ones. He eventually ran out of money and was forced to live on benefits. His marriage was falling apart and they broke up (post about this coming soon) and to my sadness my young cousins and aunty moved to Seattle. Which is lovely for them and I’m glad they’re happy but was a big change. My uncle then stopped buying random clothing items and started getting addicted to alcohol and smoking he also self medicated which was the worst thing that he could have done in this time. He went through a really tough time where he was suicidal and talked about walking into the sea and never coming back (this was after already cutting himself), this made my Grandad and Gran mentally sick, which I don’t think he knew he was doing and wasn’t his fault but he didn’t want to see a therapist. He then met his new girlfriend, who turned out to be the worst possible choice for him, but it’s his life and she keeps him from moving back I so guess that’s an upside.

Since then, he has stopped drinking as much alcohol and stopped self medicating, from what I think I know he has stopped cutting aswell I hope.

He still smokes and now vapes because it’s ‘trendy’ but he is getting slightly happier.

Life sadly doesn’t have very happy endings, but I hope you can stay positive even in the most difficult of situations.

Just know that I love my Uncle and I’m glad he is still fighting, as should you if you feel anything like my Uncle does.

-Millie I

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Millima

Written by

Millima

This is a rough draft of everything I can't fully articulate to irls