i should know better

what really bothers me, i mean what really fucking irks me, is that i should know better and yet i don't.

this time last year i was preparing to travel south east asia with my friend. little did i know i'd come home and spontaneously book a manic 10 day tour of europe. i was planning festivals, i was going out and seeing my friends all the time. i was selling all my stuff to follow my dream and go into nursing.

i had done my years being the chaotic teenage mess, i had scarred my body and gave my liver a run for it's money with paracetamol. i had hit the home run with stitches and a skin graft, becoming psychotic after an overdose of sleeping pills was just another story to tell the grandchildren. i knew my local CAMHS wards better than the staff, always finding a way to fight the system.

i was bored of it, i needed more and so i did the therapy. picked a goal and aimed for the stars.

i was well, i knew better.

i knew tall buildings, train tracks and pills came with a price. i hadn't self-harmed in 2 years, i hadn't overdosed in 2 years. i had been discharged from mental health services for a year and had managed without colliding into an emergency mental health act assessment. dare i say it, i was happy.

fast forward to february 2017, on my second placement as a student mental health nurse. i was doing it. i had crossed the line from chronically hopeless patient to chronically chirpy nursing student. when my patients stopped to ask me dumb questions, i smiled and i gave my best clinical advice and then i went to my mentor to get my pat on the back for saying the right thing.

i had been 'the enforcer' of the mental health act to my detained patients. i frowned sympathetically as my patients told me how much they hated their medication and i was that bloody person to tell them how side effects were worth it for the stability.

i took the compliments as people thanked me for my input as a group facilitator, i smiled sympathetically and pretended i was trying to understand - when i knew fucking well what it was like. i was a respected student nurse, i was also the enemy. i knew the system from a professional perspective, but also as a patient.

now, when the local acute ward nurses look at me in despair as they see i've been admitted a-fucking-gain they say 'we don't know what to do, we can't bullshit you, you've worked in this system. you know people die, you know the system doesn't work'. so rather than pretending to keep me safe, they ask me 'not to hang (myself) on the ward please because it's a lot of paperwork' and 'if i really want to kill myself, i know what i have to do'. it's not even cruel. i understand, if i am so intent on fucking dying why implicate good nurses when i can do it in my own time? if i'm going to set fire to myself, i should be polite enough not to do it on trust property.

i know setting myself on fire and the half hourly pretend hangings don't get me anywhere. i know this behaviour is exactly the thing which feeds into this fucking behaviour. i am my own worst enemy. i know smashing my head against a wall isn't going to make it stop, but bloody hell it's worth a try.

i should know better, but i don't.

because i am deliberately my own worst enemy, i hurt myself even when i don't want to because of The Rules™. because if i am not LIVING then i should be DYING and i can't give that up, it's all i have.

maybe one day i'll attempt suicide, either half heartedly or determinedly, and it will be that one time it works. one time is enough. i think of the three friends i have lost to suicide, the most recent the most devastating and in the sickest, most warped sense i idolise them because they're free. of course, i miss them dearly too, but they're free and i'm still here.

i was eight the first time i attempted suicide and wanting to be gone has been the only constant in the last fourteen years, so please forgive me. forgive me for knowing better, but doing it anyway.