“Freedom to me means not giving a fuck about being accepted in society. It means to stop caring about being accepted and be fearless. Because I have mental health issues, am I not suppose to achieve? It’s like saying, just because I have one arm, I can’t be a tennis player. It’s the same thing, but you can’t see mental health. Am I supposed to just crawl under a rock and not be seen or heard? I don’t think so.”
I’ve been talking with women in various countries to find out what freedom means to them. In this article I share the dialogue I had with Renn*, a 28-year-old designer from London, UK.
At the end of 2017, a mental breakdown brought Renn’s life to a complete halt. She could no longer sustain her struggles with mental health by keeping busy and telling herself she needed to get a grip. Years of denial finally gave way, “One day I just broke.”
Her journey is an honest one, a painful one, but it’s one that offers hope. “It’s like I had to hop into bed with my demons. I had to face each and every one and say, It’s okay. I accept you.” The battle is on.
She documents her journey by etching it into her skin. “Tattoos are my creative way to self-harm. I’m planning to get tattoos on my knees and my elbows. It will remind me that when the world had me on my knees, it saved me.” Her creativity has helped her to heal, transforming her pain into art.
It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon in June in the seaside town of Brighton, UK. We’ve spent the past few hours roaming around Brighton’s famous shopping lanes. It’s impossible not to feel uplifted by the creativity and eccentricity of the place. “If I could live here I would,” the designer in Renn is in heaven. We escape the crowds of locals and tourists to find a quiet spot. We’re sat in a coffee shop having a lemonade. It’s in the garden tucked away at the back that Renn’s story unfolds.
Renn’s dad isn’t like other dads. She has never really got to know him. “He is a paranoid schizophrenic. I knew he was my dad but he never engaged with me or my siblings. When he did it was weird. In my lifetime I’ve seen him sectioned three times.”
Renn grew up in Clapham, South London. Her parents were married for 20 years. When Renn and her siblings came along her mum made every effort to make their childhood a happy one. “She always made sure that we went to birthday parties and spent our summer holidays out of the house so we didn’t have to deal with our dad. I think she managed incredibly well.”
Either in a state of withdrawal or palpable aggression, the father-daughter bond never blossomed. “He was always on medication or talking to one of his multiple personalities. The medication became him. He became a zombie, a shell.”
The oldest of three siblings, she has always felt a strong sense of responsibility for her family. This impacted her deeply, “I told myself that I would never allow my mental health to get so bad that I would no longer be me.”
Witnessing their mum’s anguish, it was Renn and her younger brother and sister who helped their mum to let go and divorce their dad. “It was us who told her that she had to leave him. I think she feels a great sense of guilt for keeping him in our lives for such a long time and trying to make her marriage work.”
Life beyond the family was just as tough. “As a child I had a lot of anxiety. I remember thinking that I don’t fit and I don’t understand. I hid the fact that I could draw, that I could paint. I hid the fact that I had a skill.” Renn withdrew from the world because she couldn’t find her place within it. “I could understand people but they couldn’t understand me. I have so many dimensions to my personality that I almost feel that I have a personality disorder myself. I can connect with lots of people, but no one can really connect to me. I’m too many things.”
By the time she hit her teens Renn had found a way in to the world. Smoking and partying gave her a sense of acceptance. “I was able to get lost in it. That’s when I felt that I didn’t really have an issue. I didn’t have to face who I was. I could just blend in with the crowd.” I ask Renn to describe her growing up years in three words, “Wild. Morbid. Emotional.”
Escaping an abusive and volatile relationship, Renn moved back in to her mum’s home in her early 20s. The experience damaged her severely. “I knew my life had been tipped upside down but I never addressed the way it had left me.” She caught up with achievements she believed she ought to have at her age — a degree, a gap year full of travel, a job. She convinced herself that she was fine. “I knew I wasn’t coping well but I slapped myself and said get a grip. I told myself that there was nothing wrong with me.”
At 27, Renn had an office job and was working anywhere between ten to twelve hours a day. The rest of her time was spent supporting her mum whose poor health was getting worse. She was on a role.
In the meantime, patterns of unusual behaviour had crept in, becoming the new normal. “I was sleeping an average of two hours a night. I was having a panic attack from the moment I woke up. It was the same getting on the train, talking to people at work, making phone conversations with clients. I would be trembling at my desk writing up reports. I was on the verge of tears every time I had to step outside. Every single moment was excruciating and it went on for months.”
Renn continued to tell herself that she was fine. To get a grip. That she was just being negative. The exact opposite to how she felt. “Just the thought of existing made me anxious. The thought of having a conversation. The thought of being silent. The thought of someone’s body language. The thought of getting out of bed. The thought of going to sleep. Having to fill up my cup. Eat. Anything. I became trapped in my own world.”
She was losing control of herself and could do nothing about it. A helpless bystander to her own life, she stepped in only occasionally to stop complete destruction. “I stopped shaving my legs because I was worried that I would hurt myself. I couldn’t trust myself. I felt so trapped and frightened in my own home, in my own bedroom. How was I sitting in my own room having panic attacks? I felt petrified. I wasn’t sleeping. I was smoking myself to death. I wasn’t eating. I developed all these compulsions and new behaviours because the voices were so intrusive. They were telling me that I’m not worthy of life.”
In her darkest moment, Renn stood on the seafront near her home for two and a half hours questioning whether she was going to walk into the sea. “I thought, just let it take me.” She didn’t, but the situation could not continue for long.
“One day I just broke. I said to myself, I can’t do this anymore.” Renn left her job and in front of her local GP everything came undone. “I was pushing myself away from the idea that mental health could actually take over my life. I didn’t want to admit something was wrong because I thought it would mean I’d have to press the hold button on my life and I didn’t want that. I had already pushed myself to the point where I couldn’t keep up anymore. My life told me that I have to do something about this. So I made a call.”
Renn was referred to a counsellor and put on anti-depressant medication. It made her feel even worse. It was counselling that helped offload the mental and emotional baggage she was carrying. She gained some perspective. “It’s challenging to stay motivated to want to be better, especially when you wake up on a bad day and think, what’s the point? I have to continue to tell myself that there is a point. That today is a bad day but tomorrow won’t be. I need to remind myself every day.”
“Every day when I go to sleep I am pressing the reset button. It’s a daily thing. To constantly keep on top of things, to constantly check in on myself to see how I’m doing. I accept that I will have good days and bad days, but for me it’s about managing and controlling the things that go on in my mind.”
Rather than view her experience as an individual problem, she believes a large part of it is systemic. “We aren’t allowed to admit that we’re not feeling okay. When you consider the most stressful things that people go through in life — moving home, having children, getting married, getting a good job, a mortgage — all of these things can take a toll on your mental health. I think there needs to be more support around these things, more awareness. I have had to teach myself. To be able to say if I’m having a bad day and tell people around me why I don’t feel okay.”
I ask Renn what the biggest lesson she’s learnt in all this is. “Your life does push you. It tells you when it’s that time to stop. Or to slow down. When you wake up and decide that you want to get better, and you are prepared to do anything to do that, it will probably be the most horrendous moment of your life. But that’s the starting point to get better. When you do have that realisation you’ll be able to get to a point where you can feel comfortable and happy with yourself again.”
*Renn is a made up name to protect the woman’s real identity.
Read more from Dare To Dialogue, Women and Freedom project.
