a man o'war

my brain is a man o'war, splayed out on a beach.
will the sun dry me out and finish me off? will someone brave and kind throw me back into the sea?

man o'war being my siphonophore of choice because i relate to my deadly friend.

man o'war are much like jellyfish, with a reach much further (165ft!) and a sting far more powerful (said to be fatal). in that it's very hard for people to get close to them without getting stung and suffering because of it. do you see the semblance yet?

man o'war can even sting weeks after washing ashore, relatable too i guess in how stubborn they are in surviving. my brain is the tentacles, reaching out, but defensive, armed even.

they couldn't help again

tentatively, i am starting believe there's a ray of light reflecting onto the shattered shards of my heart.

things recently have been tiring.

it's the same story really. girl feel hopeless, girl tries to kill herself, girl gets conned into believing people can help, girl gets let down and made to feel as if it's her fault.

the con really is in believing other people can help. other people can only ever guide and hold hope. the decision to open eyes to a new day each morning is my own.

a week ago i tried for 4th time to get hit by a train. it was weird walking away from a near death experience unscathed bar a bruise & some scratches.

i posted a suicide note up before i left hospital, knowing i was going to kill myself (or at least try). the hospital said they couldn't help again, i was too suicidal to be helped.

i got home, charged my phone up so i could listen to music and i found somewhere new i could access the tracks so that people wouldn't know where to find me or how to stop me. the materials i had at home to kill myself i couldn't find.

i was walking along the train line away from the obvious point of access so people wouldn't see me. i saw my friend message me she said 'please let me see your face pop up again one last time'. it caught me off guard, i answered a call.

the police spoke to me, i wouldn't tell them where i was, i knew if i did they'd stop the trains & foil my plan. they'd ring, i'd talk and then hang up, repeat. they put a friend on the phone.

i was walking in the middle of the track and i told her

'i think a train is coming'
'i can see the light reflecting on the rails'
'there is. there's a train coming'

what was said from there is a muddle. i was hysterically walking up the track, crying and reciting how people couldn't help. i didn't want to do it anymore.

the train was coming straight at me, i was staring it down and talking to my friend.

'i'm scared'
'i'm really scared'
'i don't know what to do'

it was 20 metres away when i jumped back over the rail, it was 5 metres away when i stepped back so the outer parts of the train wouldn't hit me.

the force knocked me over. the train horn sounded. it screeches past.

my friend 'are you there?'

...

'yes i'm here'

the train stopped at the next stop i watched it linger there. i spoke to the police on the phone, still refusing to give my location knowing that the incident would have been reported and they'll know where i am now anyway.

a train comes from the station, lights on full beam, it slowly creeps up the track and comes to a stop seeing me lingering.

i see blue flashing lights and i run.

torches are searching for me and i hide in a bush.

i didn't die, i am alive but people knowing what a failure i am is scarier.

the police approach me and i tell them i was having a picnic. i shrug it off.


***

later the doctors assess me in an empty room, i'm scrunched into a ball on a mattress.

they ask me what happened.

i am crying to splutter out the words. oozing self-hatred and disgust. i don't want to be seen, i am alive.

an unfamiliar doctor says 'so what you're saying is that it was a close call tonight'

the doctor who usually shouts softens.

he looks at me and asks me what they should do.

i tell them i don't know, i tell them to send me home.

they come back and tell me i can go home. if they section me i will try to hang myself, if they admit me voluntarily i will leave the hospital to attempt suicide. i have to wait until morning though.

i tell them,
no. i am going home now.

and they exchange looks, plead with me to stay until morning 'when people are around'.

they go back into their room, hushed voices and human rights are thrown around.

i go home.

***

i could have died, i wish i had. i didn't.
my friends saved me.
i couldn't kill myself with my friend listening in. i couldn't bear the trauma.

i live. i try to live. i try to make things better.
i try.

one week on and i am alive.

nothing is magically better, it never will be.
is there a slither of hope? yes.
am i sure i can make it? no.
do i want to die? no. i am terrified this illness will take me like it took my friends.

the professionals can't save me. i have to do that myself, i will try.
i know suicide is a way out. i have lost too many people to believe otherwise.
i will try in spite of knowing suicide works.

i will try.
it's all i have got.
it will have to do.

grief

grief is such an odd concept to someone who hasn't experienced it.

the time when you begin to understand is a time at which you wish you already understood. it sweeps in like a hurricane, devastating, life-changing and sudden but enduring. the suffering doesn't stop at the initial shock, it's instead the beginning of a long path to returning to some kind of normalcy.

you can rebuild your home, but it's changed. you can replace your possessions, but they don't have the same feel. the home you knew and took root in, is gone.

relationships lovingly built over years disappear instantly, all that's left is presents from two christmases ago and a bunch of tangled memories you'll begin unpicking for answers.

there's no way up, or out, or sideways or anywhere, not to begin with. to begin with it's completely unimaginable ever living without them, even if you did not see them often there was comfort in knowing they were there and in the blink of an eye heartbreak has taken it's place.

i dream about her, Sasha, she was my friend. she was more than my friend though, she was down in the depths of hell with me when i was battling my way through it. she was dependable, she was loyal, so, so loyal, she was loving, she was someone who understood. we lived together in hospital for months as teenagers, finding solace in one another and a whole host of ways to torment the nurses.

after hospital she was the naive wild child who wanted to experience everything and wanted her friends alongside her as she did. she suffered so much and as i got better i found myself in a new role 'sensible friend'. if sasha went missing i'd be trying to reach her, trying to steer her towards safety and i worried relentlessly for her. she wasn't much younger than me, but i felt a great deal of responsibility towards her because i knew she trusted me and she seemed so vulnerable.

Sasha told me things she hadn't shared with other people before, she spoke to me and trusted me when she was too scared to even talk. i felt so honoured to be that person, to share a hug with her when even hugs would terrify her.

that sense of responsibility absolutely broke me when she died. the loving young woman we all adored and fought for, was gone. the guilt felt enormous, i couldn't live with myself feeling as if i could have done more, seen her more, told her i loved and cared about her more.

to begin with i cried, then i wondered round as if hadn't happened, then i tried to jump off a cliff, then finally i just laid in bed, stopped my medication, stopped eating, stopped drinking and i waited to join her. that was all in the first week, grief is exhausting.

what followed was 11 admissions to psychiatric hospitals, pretty much one after the other. barely staying out days at a time. i could not comprehend life. i grew an obsession with suicide and dying, it became my only goal.

i still can't comprehend it if i think too much about it. i am just living in the now, hoping blindly that the future will be better.

i have entered a new stage 18 months on, the dreams.

in the dreams i see her, i speak to her, i try to save her, but she laughs and she dies again. the format changes each time, sometimes i am protecting her. sometimes i am telling her how much we all miss her and begging her to comeback. each time it feels real. each time i wake up feeling bereft all over again.

i walk around the day after the dreams noticing her favourite things, noticing things that relate to her, each one feels painful. each one feels like a knife in the stomach and yet i carry on, keeping it to myself because i'm not sure other people would understand.

grief, it's complex.

I'm broken, fragile and hurting.

I haven't written in a long time. The perfectionist in me kept pushing me back down and the avoidant in me felt too afraid of the anxiety challenging those thoughts would take.

So here's the truth:

I'm broken, fragile and hurting.

I am at a point with my mind and body where I have lost motivation, energy and hope. I am somewhat trying to find it.

It's a painful process to look at how I spent years recovering from both ehlers-danlos syndrome and emotionally unstable personality disorder to become a student mental health nurse. More painful to see that I got there and things weren't instantly fixed. It's too painful to examine in any depth at the moment.

I have watched myself go from a position of authority and trust, working and independent in both myself and of health services that held me for years prior. I decided to leave nursing two weeks before a friend, so close to my heart that I have been changed forever, killed herself. Since I lost another two friends to suicide.

My life has spiralled into such a dark, dismal and lonely (so lonely) place.

I feel crushed. I feel so afraid. There are traumatised parts of me that can't function and they're in control at the moment.

I lay in bed all day, the environment around me stays cluttered, messy and dirty to a point it's a health hazard. I don't feed myself or I throw money away on takeaway. I stare at social media watching people live their lives or I watch netflix for 12 hours a day. I research things I might want to do and recoil in horror at the anxiety of anyone new meeting me and being expected to be functional in front of others. I look online at properties I could rent and hyperventilate at the idea of lying to them lest they find out I'm on benefits and subsequently decline me. I cry because my 'home' feels like a prison with 40 steps that make my joints creak and crack.

I need a way forward or I need a way out. People around me tell me of their anxiety because they believe my death is a very real threat. Professionals try to instil hope in me with methods that haven't worked prior.

I wish I could work so I could pay my own rent, be self-sufficient and live wherever I please in a home that doesn't compromise my health and comfort.

I wish I had a purpose other than existing because I'm too weak to kill myself. I'm trying to buy into whatever techniques or referrals people tell me will help.

I'm just really scared.

I call you
and it says
'sorry this person is not reachable'.
And I wonder,
is that you
or is it me?

You hold me
and I tell you
'I can't do it'.
You hold me tighter
and tell me
'Yes you can.'

My eyes glazen with tears
and self-doubt.
I wonder
how can you love me
like this?

'This isn't Romeo and Juliet'
It's not even
Juliet and Juliet.
This is not
Shakespeare,
Plath or Woolf.

I don't know
do I have a future?
But I want one with you.

there are things in my head,

i am not sure if that is literal... or not.

an infinite number of things running through my head, make it stop.
things are going so fast that i just keep switching thought, never getting to the end.
but at the same time i am gone, vacant, almost empty.

check the clock and another three hours have passed.