Stepping Into The Light

They say a lack of memory of your childhood in itself is indicative of childhood trauma within itself. Not only do I have very few childhood memories, when I do look back the feelings of fear, sadness and inadequacy are tangible and suffocating to say the least. I don't really remember y parents together at all. Just the strained nature of their relationship post divorce. Neither of them were shy to let their opinions of the other from spilling out in front of their children. In review of the situation as an adult I can appreciate how deeply unhappy my mother was and that she thought she was doing her best, as a mother now myself I can confirm the intuitive feeling I've had all along towards it. It was good enough. If I wasn't living up to her exact ideals and expectations I was admonished, berated and vilified. God forbid anything good happened for me, then I was the subject of bitterness and jealousy. In my early twenties I took my mother to a rugby match at Twickenham only for her to have a few too many pints and tell me that I had in fact ruined her life by even existing. By my teens being screamed at and humiliated was how I thought it was supposed to be. The feeling of worthlessness and general emotional toil were as much a part of me and any generic character trait. I didn't find much comfort in my peers, not quite one of the cool kids but floating on the edge, adding to my sense of inadequacy and displacement. My grandparents were my only source of comfort really. My mother did her best to ruin that as well. I've lost count of the lies and manipulations she's fed the family over the years. Ever situation a warped version of events where she is of course with out blame and always cast as the victim. The universe itself is against her and anyone who doesn't agree with every aspect of her delusions along with it.

My father was the standard divorced Dad, fortnightly weekends, McDonalds breakfasts and movies of the sofa. He says he fought for us but the fact everyone new on some level what she was like and therefor treating us and left us in her care leaves me heartbroken to this day. He himself left her because he couldn't cope with her behaviours, and he knowingly left us with her.

I started cutting around 13. Partly as a coping mechanism but partly I think I thought if the pain was becoming visible someone might make it stop. They didn't. She knew, she will swear blind she didn't but I know the truth. I know I used to let the blood soak through my sleeves to make sure she knew. We've never even spoken about it more than in passing. An offhand comment here and there, or thrown at my like a weapon as prove of how damaged I am and there's so much wrong with me.

My mother threw me into the front door in a fit of rage at 15. Shattering the glass with the force of my body hitting it so I left. I drifted from friends to youth hostels to council Housing. My Dad even tried but I as this broken mess of suffering and rage at this point. I'd stopped caring about anything. He decided I was too much. He obviously saw the damage that had been done to me as who I was rather than what I had endured. She told my Grandfather another twisted version of events that almost destroyed our relationship forever. She has carelessly and mercilessly striped any chance of happiness away from me at every turn.

By 19 I was having full blown depressive episodes. Drinking everyday, the beyond excess at the weekends. I'd replaced one form of self harm with another. Anytime outside of work I was getting hammered or shaking off the previous session. You can only push your feelings down so far before they become a ticking time bomb. The nightmares from my childhood started making a return.

Over the next few years the broken and disturbing sleep turning into no sleep with a vicious year of insomnia and deep self-loathing. That powder keg gaining pressure fuelling deep resentments and anger issues as well as issues with my own own self worth. An ongoing unhealthy relationship with food and self image. This culminated in an attempt to end my life. That was my only attempt. Clearly I failed as I am here writing this now.

By 21 I had over 600 scars and only the Home Treatment Team telling me a cup of tea or a bath would fix my problems. Take your pills and everything will be fine. So I took my pills, I functioned, just. Any attempts to see a psychiatrist were stonewalled by the so called support system of GPs and mental health services. With no formal diagnosis or long term treatment plan I fell into a cycle of barely functioning to slowly unravelling and then hitting rock bottom. The solution? Change the meds.

At 25 I decided my environment wasn't helping. The city was too easy to fall into destructive patterns. The lifestyle itself was conducive to healing. So I moved. To the southwest. On a wish and whim I upped stakes for a random job in a town I'd never even heard of. Things were ok for a while. I met someone, I got pregnant. It seemed to be going well. During my pregnancy the cracks in our relationship began to show and ended our relationship shortly after the birth of my daughter. The relationship and resulting breakup had their own trauma, add to that I was hundreds of miles from home and any family with a new born baby, terrified of becoming like my own mother and the inevitable happened.

This time it was different. Because I was the parent of young child I was finally taken seriously to an extent. I was given 1:1 counselling which I can honestly say was a turning point for the better. However it was short lived. once I'd used up my quota they sent me to a group session which I found uncomfortable and not particularly helpful however I had returned to functioning so that's what matters to them right.

Within a year I was back trying to access support services. Trying to head off the storm I could feel brewing on the horizon. I begged for another counsellor. A chance to continue the progress of the previous sessions. I was ignored and put on a faceless, impersonal online portal. Clearly I was worth any actual support. It compounded how worthless and inadequate I already felt. One week in and I was at the bottom of a bottle wishing the world would swallow me whole. It had excelled the onslaught of unhappiness that had already been looming.

The repeated attempts to access real help that had been dismissed and ignored cemented a mistrust of mental health services in general. Like many people I found other ways to cope. Motherhood was my anchor in it all, my love of my daughter driving me forward even in the darkest of times.

I met someone. We live together now. Moved in together as a family at the start of the pandemic. Like many of us I assumed it would be short lived, that I would adjust to a new town and a new home when the world returned to normal. oh how I laugh at that optimism now. Over a year now and I set foot in my first coffee shop since the move only a few weeks ago. Knowing only four people in the whole town and two of them being my neighbours. My mental health and happiness were held together by pub lunches, and late night beers round the fire, sharing and openness with the other around me that understood was the treatment plan. And it was working up until Covid stole it all away.

I assume many have also experienced their own version of what I describe as an unravelling. That slow decline in your internal balance combined with a growing weight inside. It so easy to ignore at first, brush it off as a bad day. I used to the the chaos of an untidy house and a decline in basic selfcare were triggered by a depressive episode but nowadays I consider the behaviour changes as what might be triggering the depression itself.

This change of approach has led me down some interesting rabbit holes. The fact that in my formative years things like ADHD and autism weren't considered to effect females and therefor never even considered, if anyone had bothered to care enough to even taken me to the doctor in my formative years. I was simply dismissed as a troublesome child then later just dished out anti depressants on the assumption it must be that.

At 31 years old I'm finally pushing for the healthcare I need. It took a pandemic and one of the worst episodes of my life to get me there but the wheels are in motion. For those of us that have been on this journey a while now I think we can all agree the landscape of mental health is changing. I had come a long way already but in my personal opinion is has an awful long way to go.

The days where I was suspended for a week pending further investigation because my antidepressants had caused an inconclusive drug test and was not publicly cleared to my co-workers is hopefully long gone. We constantly hear about 'Mental Health Awareness' yet no one is ready to be open and accepting of Mental Illness. I feel they are two very different things. Maintaining good mental health for a typical person is an entirely different exercise to recovering from a manic or depressive episode. Dealing with traumatic event, such as the pandemic, is hard for everyone. But for those people that already struggle to manage baseline emotions or outside stressors in that same situation is like comparing a rain drop to tsunami.

The full extents of neurodiversity and how it impacts how successfully we operate in what is considered the norm for daily life is yet to be truly explored and documented. Until those variables have been explored and defined how can we truly define what is actual mental illness or simply a side effect of a particular set of needs not being met? We've barely begun to uncover the ways in which human brain chemistry differs.

That sort of developments is going to take years if not decades. In the meantime we need to start to normalise Mental Illness. Managing depression is not Mental Health, its a mental illness. Eating disorders are not mental health, it is a mental illness. Down playing this is undermining the courage and effort it takes every day to live with these things. By minimising the struggle and damage that these cause in our lives allows people to continue to dismissing it. They undermine its very real existence and implications for those who suffer. How can hope to move forward if we are all still pretending its not a very serious issue, rife in todays society.

Each generation seems to be more severely impacted than the last, the suicide rates climbing year on year. To be the one in the room that hasn't suffered from trauma or mental illness of some kind is now the odd one out. That says a lot about our society to me. By ignoring the reality of how our mental health impacts our lives we've allowed mental illness to grow insidiously through the people. Mental illness is like a shadow, the more you expose it to the light the smaller it becomes.

Its taken me over half my life to work up the confidence and courage to face my issue and demand the support I've so desperately needed. Each person who pushes forward and opens up about their journey paves the way for more understanding, acceptance and progress in the field of Mental Health, and helps us get closer to a world with less mental illness.

I wear my scars, physical and emotional, as driving force to keep going. Made it this far, might as well keep going ;-P