The truth

Two days ago, I told Facebook that I have tried to end my life twice in the last 6 months.

Two days ago, friends told me that they were glad I was still here.

The trouble really is that I am not.

The trouble is that what I want most is to be able to take this pain and fear and rage and loneliness and sickness and turn it into art but the words and pictures are all wrong and the only way I have found is just to say the words that don't make art.

One week and two days ago my father sat beside me in the same room I had been in 4 months ago to have the same conversation I had four months ago with my father beside me and I talked to the nurse and I talked to the pychiatrist but I told my father that I was so tired of being me, and that I had so much hatred for my mind and my body that I wanted to cause it as much pain as possible and I told my father that I felt that noone knew me better than him and I told my father that I was sorry because I loved him.

One week and two days ago I could not get the razor deep enough into my wrist, four months ago I could not swallow the right pills and today I remember that even when I was a child I was convinced I was dying.

The trouble really is that no-one knows what to say to me, that words are too hollow and strange and that sitting with a dying person feels like you are being sapped of all energy and the feeling of watching your daughter cry as the doctor bandages her wrists simply has no words to describe it.

The truth that lacks lyricism is that I am angry that I did not kill myself, and I am angry that I tried.

The truth is that everyone tells me that there must be part of me that wants to live because I made that phone call and the truth is that they are right. The parts of me that don't want to die are the parts held onto with gentle hands by a father suffering from chronic clinical depression who tried to take his own life thirty years ago and a sister who hid her pain from the world for years and a mother who does not have the words or the experience but holds me in her arms like I am the strongest and most fragile thing she will ever hold.

Today I carry my pain on my wrists and my arms and my legs and my ribs and the word that will never go away is

Why

Trapped in the unwell mind (trigger warning: self harm, suicidal ideation)

It's been a really difficult couple of weeks for me. My study schedule is more than twice as big as it was last term, and I now have a casual job to deal with on top of that which is causing me stress for a variety of reasons. Because of the extra stress I have been getting insomnia, and this has put my mental health on a bit of a downward spiral as much as I am trying to hold on to some semblance of sanity.

I thought today that I would talk about isolation and loneliness, because it has been a large part of why I have not been feeling so great lately, aside from the insomnia of course. I say not so great but what I really mean is a decaying pile of misery and numbness.

Now I think I give off a fairly good semblance of being a functional person at the moment. Going to classes, going to work, going to social events, making and going to appointments.

But any time I'm alone, I'm struggling to hold the pieces together. After all the energy I expend being "functional" I'm left with no energy to deal with my own mental decay.

I am currently doing schema therapy with my psychologist. It was developed for people with personality disorders, and the basic idea is to revisit why and when certain maladaptive behaviours and coping mechanisms were formed and try to reformat them. It is emotional and not very easy be any means but it is a wonderful way of learning what has led to such a traumatic existence and how to remodel these horrible things into a healthier lifestyle.

I am basically made of maladaptive schema modes. Angry, hurt, abandoned and punitive. My healthy adult mode exists, but in a very small capacity as it is basically overwhelmed by all the others.

My healthy adult is what I am when I am at school, at work, or in a rare moment of mental clarity where I can focus and organise my life. She is very weak however, as well as being very eager to be healthy and functional. She is the mumma bear who tries to take care of everything.

The rest of the time I am a mess of childlike schemas, scared and angry and paranoid and jealous and self hating, and punitive parent. Adult Ruth only has so much energy and can't always be the one in control when all the others have worked for so long to establish themselves and feed on my illness.

It is very lonely in my head, and often extremely difficult to articulate what it's like. Sometimes, like this week, I became so completely overwhelmed by the noise of all the negativity and the sense of isolation that I ended up in hospital late at night, crying as the lovely doctor from Edinburgh patched up my wrists and wished with all my heart and soul that this wasn't me.

I self harmed again in the same place feeling completely and utterly overwhelmed by how angry at myself I felt, and how much I detested my own existence.

It's often said that most of the time that when people say they want to kill themselves, they really just want it all to end. I know that's been true for me. I just get so tired of trying to do all the right things, all the healthy things, going to appointments, fighting to get into programs, trying to ask for help, but continuously ending up in a place where I feel so alone that I could be on a totally different planet to all the people around me.

There is almost nothing lonelier than mental illness. The awkward silences in conversation. The pitying looks. The awkward comments of children to their parents about the red scars on your arms. The way every conversation is just about how terrible you feel so you stop talking. The way relatively think you're rude for leaving the room. Not really knowing what it is when you ask for help. The shattering feeling you get when you just need a friend to be with you and they are busy and you don't want to tell them that you feel like dying.

I talk to Lifeline. I talk to my psychologist. Sometimes I talk to my friends. I talk to a girl from London who draws amazing comics about BPD and her own struggles with illness. I talk to this blog.

But most of the time, I can't talk. My words get stuck in the tar of fear on the way to my mouth and I just smile wanly.

I am not alone. But I am so lonely that I feel crushed by it, layered under the words I wish people said, the gentle hands I wish had held me, and the people I have scared and scarred because I am sick.

I don't want this.