In My Mind’s I
Raising awareness of mental health issues through photography and the written word
This is a very personal project looking at mental health. It’s a project I started to help me come to terms with my own mental health, to allow me to express what it’s like to live with mental illness, as well as explore mental health issues.
My hope is that, in combining photography and the written word, I can communicate and allow others to relate to living with mental health issues day to day.
I will warn that, if suicide has touched your life in any way, whether that’s a loved one or friend, or you’ve had suicidal thoughts yourself then, this could be quite a difficult read. You may want to stop here and simply take a detour to the In My Mind’s I website.
My Anxious Mask Haiku: Pained thoughts run too fast / They never sate anxiety / Deception is king
Back in October 2016 I sat with a group of people listening to a friend and colleague talk both openly and freely about his mental health, how he had suffered Post Traumatic Stress and Survivors Guilt following his return from the Falklands War. He gave a personal account of his pain and anguish. How his mental health had affected his family. How he’s finally achieved some peace and resolution. I’ll admit to being moved to tears to hear his story and, in particular, his bravery in telling it.
We don’t talk about mental health enough.
Where Thoughts Fly: Fluttering shapes / Fleeting wing beats stirring thoughts / Flocking, mocking me
On that day, with so many other friends and work colleagues, I sat and listened to one man tell his story in a way I have never heard before. This was someone who had suffered, was still suffering, the affects of mental health. He wasn’t hiding. He wasn’t holding back. He showed bare emotions. Spoke with a coarse voice which held a tremor that waxed and waned as he moved through his story. He laughed when recounting moments of dark humour. He held back tears in the moments when we were lost to him as he stepped into the past and brushed up against a colossal anguish. He wasn’t sparing us the details. He told his truth, his facts, his life story and it’s the most powerful story I’ve ever heard anyone recount. It was raw. It was real. He spoke of what it means to be human. To be human in a truthful way that I have never heard spoken before.
His story, and the way he told it, will stay with me for the rest of my life. It was one of those moments in life that has a positive effect. It’s a moment that changed me. Changed me and challenged my view of mental health.
As I write this and start this project, I dedicate it to my friend and colleague for his bravery and honesty. He inspired me to speak out and tell my story of mental health. In a way, he saved me.
During his talk he mentioned a little fact: One in Four will encounter an episode of mental health issues in their lifetime.
One in four?
That sounded like a lot to me. There were around forty people listening to his story. It was likely that at least ten people in that room had their own stories about living with mental health issues. Surely not? I couldn’t help looking around. Watching people for any tell tale signs that, yes, they knew those feelings and thoughts on a very personal level. But, everyone simply seemed as engrossed as me. If anyone sitting there had any form of mental health issues then they hid it well.
If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about mental health over recent months, it’s often a silent affliction. It’s very easy to miss the signs. Also, to a point, it’s very easy to hide. I was naive to even think I could scan a room full of people and pick out those suffering with mental health.
I still couldn’t help thinking that, if those numbers were right then, I’m sure I would have heard more stories like this. I mean, one in four. In a world of seven billion that’s one billion seven hundred and fifty million people currently living with mental health issues…and I had to wait until I was forty eight to hear someone speak so openly and freely about it?
There’s a stigma surrounding mental health.
We don’t talk about mental health enough. We don’t.
Threads of Consciousness Haiku: Thoughts race twist fibre threads / Spiral spun mind-loom weaves grey / Tapestry of pain
My mother had, what is now termed, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. I remember a story where one of my mums friends was out shopping in our local town and, when she went back to the car park, someone had spilt bleach all over the floor. It was really strange, said my mothers friend, the smell of bleach reminded me of your house. I spilt the bleach in the car park, replied my mother, the shopping bag split. I love the synchronicity of the story. Also, I never knew our house smelled of bleach but, yeah, I guess it would have.
My mother, and my grandmother, also suffered from depression. But, they never spoke about it. I remember my grandmother commenting on all the colours when doctors stopped her ‘happy pills’. That’s about the depth of discussions around mental health in our family. I’d wager our family isn’t that different from any other. Mental health simply wasn’t something anyone talked about. Things have changed a little but, not a lot. Otherwise there wouldn’t be any of the #EndTheStigma and #StopTheStigma campaigns.
As a teen, when my mum had one of her ‘spells’, I was more concerned about getting fed than asking if she needed a hug. That’s an awful thing to admit, and I admit it with shame. The adult me knows better. The adult me knows about depression. The teenage me didn’t. Mum just cried a bit while she carried on carrying on. That’s what people were expected to do. Just get on with it. You could quite rightly say, my own experience of anxiety and depression is Karma playing her hand. I’ll accept that. I’d like to do something about it.
We don’t talk about mental health enough. We don’t. We don’t.
Mind So Bright Haiku: Consciousness burns bright / Will knotted, bound, strangled tight, / Dappled mind, lost fight
So, anyway, that leads nicely to me, karma, work induced post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression.
The 17th October 2016, a day I remember well. Not just because it was my wife’s birthday. But, because I found myself standing on top of our works multi story car park at around six o’clock in the evening. I wasn’t taking in the view. I stood alone in the darkness, clutching myself to try and calm my shaking body. I had my eyes squeezed, tight shut holding back the tears and trying to push out the vision that filled my head of myself stepping up, out and beyond the parapet to the asphalt below. I remember shuffling down a little so as not to land on a friends car. Having someone land on your car from some height would truly inconvenience you and, possibly, spoil your evening some.
The extended tour, all the while travelling closer towards my breakdown, was five years in the making. A five year point to point journey from my first ever suicidal thought, a hyper-real visualisation on me pulling my little Renault Clio onto the motorway in front of a thundering lorry, to a long stand on the car park not wishing to damage a friends car.
Five years of mental health issues I never knew I had. Now…well…hindsight is a wonderful thing. Looking back I have to admit to myself that I haven’t been me, the me I know, during all those years. Instead, I’ve been this other me that’s set the cruise control and slipped life into automatic. The numb life of me spent in a drift-rut existence with little purpose and no desire or will to do anything. Not even make the necessary changes I needed to make. For five years I lived with depression without realising. Five years I can never give back to my family and friends.
Stood on the works car park, the full cinematic film of my demise so fucking clear in my head, I admitted to myself the truth of what my life had become. What I’d let it become. From the final trigger that brought about my inevitable breakdown on that day, to thinking of (wanting to) jump off the top floor of the car park, that growing realisation during the day broke me. The mental pain, anguish, the self-loathing, the feeling of doubt, of no self-worth, it was crushing. It was overwhelming. It was the only thoughts and feelings I had in my head.
I wanted it to stop. I needed it to stop.
My wife’s birthday and this was my tight wrapped, tagged and trimmed, glitter ribbon tied, gift to her. The love of my life. My true soul companion. The person I met at the age of seventeen and love more and more with each passing day. Our son. Our miracle son whose very conception saved my wife’s life. Without those first scans, we wouldn’t have know of my wife’s silent-killer, ovarian cancer.
I stood looking down. No cars between me and the ground. The imagined cold rush of air stealing my heat. The rush in my ears. The finale rush of blood through my veins. Would my life flash before me? Gotta do it right. Gotta dive like I’m going for an Olympic gold. A head first suicide dive into the night. Ten point execution.
I stood looking down. The image of the police at our front door. My wife. My son. Screaming. Not listening. It couldn’t be. They’ve got the wrong house. Identify the body? No. No. No.
My birthday gift that would keep on giving for the rest of their lives. Happy fucking birthday. You selfish cunt (sorry for the language but, I hate myself for even considering suicide).
The memory of my friend and colleague recounting his mental illness. A survivor of mental illness. He’d talked about his own beautiful family, how he’d lost years to mental health issues.
Not trusting myself to stand there on the car park any longer I sprinted to my car. Jumped in. Slammed the door and sat there shaking and crying like I’ve never done before. I’d come within one hand grasp on the safety rail from suicide. I know if I had reached out, if I had grasped that rail, then that would have been that. Goodbye cruel world. Mind made up to jump the jump.
Love saved me that night from a break neck, high dive. Love for my family. Love for my beautiful wife. Love for my fantastic son. Love saves. Without love like that in my life…I’d hate to think.
Back to that figure, the one I’d only heard for the first time a week before, where one in four will encounter an episode of mental health issues in their lifetime. Yeah, that one.
I’d sat there listening and, looking out around that room, I surveyed everyone to try and identify the likely ten to test the mental health math fact of the day. When, all I needed to do was gaze inwards to find one person.
So, if you know me, and at least three other people, you can have me as your one in four. Your friend with the mental health issue. With anxiety. With depression. With Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. With the suicidal thoughts.
We don’t talk about mental health enough. We don’t. We don’t. We fucking well don’t.
Nimble Mind Haiku: From giddy heights to / Crushing lows dexterity / Of mind overwhelms
Well, now I talk. I’ll talk to anyone who will listen. I’ll recount my five year point to point journey. Only, I have a feeling the story isn’t over yet. There’s still a way to go for me. After all, I’m on a very personal journey. I may have the same diagnosis as others with anxiety and depression, with a bit of suicidal tendency thrown in but, our stories and symptoms differ.
As I go through my own recovery, I’m finding the mind a wonderful thing. I’m making acquaintances with mine for the first time in my life. Mine may have broken a little but, in breaking, I think I’m finding what my true mind, my true self, the ‘I’ that we all refer to, is. My mind may have a million tiny cracks but, there’s shafts of light shining through those cracks. That light is showing me the way.
Right now, I’m healing. I’m going to relapse at some point. It’s inevitable. I’ve had a couple of relapses already. At least, now I’ve ridden a couple of relapses like a true rodeo cowboy on a bucking bronco, I know what to expect and how to get back on again to begin to tame that particular mental health beast.
That’s the root to this project. My tiny, little broken mind. The way I’ve cracked wide open and found ‘I’ as my kinder Surprise. It’s where the ‘In My Mind’s I’ idea for the title and hashtag comes from. It’s the idea that there’s much, much more to that third person reference when we utter ‘I’ than we give credit for. Some are good at recognising and nurturing their inner ‘I’ but, I’ve neglected that over the past five years. I want to change that with this project.
Since my collapse and breakdown in October, when my true anxiety and depression rocked up and said howdy, I thought I’d completely lost my photography mojo. As a visual person, I wasn’t seeing the pictures anymore. Not outside anyway. I had plenty of dark pictures going on inside. But, outside, that was like the whole world had become a white washed, bland bore, carte blanche, minimalist tribute to nothing. I tried painting as a substitute. That worked. For a bit.
Then, as my anxiety turned to depression, doing anything creative became my daemon. I didn’t want to do it. I couldn’t face it. Couldn’t face anything. I had no joy. The world was something to watch, rather than something to take part in. What’s the point when I’m hapless, feckless and just plain dull as dishwater and everything I try to do that’s creative is just plane shit anyway.
Yeah, depression’s one right-on good guy, life coach. Makes you wanna jump to it with tip-top enthusiasm.
When I hit my lowest of lows during my last relapse in February, poetry came to my rescue. I found I was able to project out everything I felt – trapping those emotions and locking them away in a digital cell. Whether that be on my phone or on social media, it didn’t matter. I could remove those little shards of blackness and set them free. It felt good. I wrote quite a bit. I scared a few people with the things I wrote. They saw suicide notes in my words. I found unrestrained freedom in my words.
Around the same time I began to understand that I hadn’t stopped seeing the pictures outside, I was simply seeing different pictures.
Ideas collided and I realised that, quite unconsciously, the poems and pictures were like two giant jigsaw pieces of my mind coming together and giving me one hefty bitch slap across the face…there you go, now you get what ‘I’ was showing you all along. It’s all in your mind’s I. Well, in my mind’s I.
That moment of realisation was the genesis for this project. I found a way to express myself and, like my friend and colleague, a way to stand up and tell my story, to show what it’s like to live with a mental health issue, to survive mental health and the darkest of dark thoughts. To tame the black dog of depression. Plus, it’s a little cathartic for me when I get to remove that dark shard piece of thought and lock it away in cyberspace. I’ve added a few of those images and accompanying Haiku’s here…if you missed that.
I used to write quite a lot. Mostly short stories. I’ve dabbled with poetry for my own expression and enjoyment. Never for publication. Photography has remained my long time creative love. It fits with my visual, picture thinking mind.
The one thing I’ve always thought ties these endeavours together in the creative realm is that, for me, a short story, a poem, and the still image should contain both the story and the metaphor.
Having said that, I really want to start with the idea of spontaneity. I want to catch my emotions and thoughts as they come fleeting into my head, and catch them before they go skipping off into the mind mire of dead thoughts.
I want to capture the simple things around me in images when emotions and thoughts flip flop through my head. Or write a poem when words coalesce into whatever form, whether that’s free verse or a three line Haiku, and jump into my head under their own volition. The picture may spark the poem. The poem may spark the picture. I may find that a poem is the missing piece of a picture I’ve already captured and vice versa.
Like a lot of projects, it’s likely to change, adapt and grow as it progresses. It has already due to a happy coincidence in the way I place images and verse to occupy the same space. I may play with that further.
As I start out, I only intend to add black and white images to the project, and edit them to fit together with high contrasts, black blacks and added grain. It just seems to fit where I am personally at the moment both mentally and creatively. If I change, then it’s likely the presentation and editing of the images will change. I don’t want to restrict myself and have an immutable modus operandi. Where’s the fun in that?
The project’s all about communicating mental health, raising awareness and breaking the stigma. So, as my mental state changes I think I’d very much like that to reflect in the project. This may allow patterns to emerge over time to reflect the me as I was ‘then' at a certain time during the projects life.
I hope you get something from this project yourself and that the duality of the images and accompanying verse are enough to capture even a fleeting moment of your interest. If so, then, please do come back to see how the project progresses.
You can follow the project as it grows and I curate the images and text at In My Mind’s I website. I’ve also created these Instagram and Twitter accounts to post the single images and accompanying short form Haiku’s. May see you there to interact, chat and exchange ideas.
Thanks for your time in dropping by. It means a lot to me…especially as it was a much longer intro than intended.
May your mind stay well.
Andy
