Why I’m alive…

Over the past decade, my mental health has played a major part in my life. I’ve had suicide attempts, hospital admissions, countless appointments and more. To be perfectly honest, I still struggle, quite a lot sometimes, but due to reasons such as my own increased understanding and acceptance, I’m still standing (figuratively as I’m actually sitting down) and this would not be the case without the voices of others.

Sometimes we can be our own worst enemies. We can be extremely harsh and unforgiving to ourselves, and this is definitely something I’m guilty of. For years, my opinion was “I should be coping” and that I was a failure for not being able to manage. All the stigma I aim to challenge now, was deeply ingrained into my every thought, and dictated how I dealt with my mental health…not well. Everyday, I would come home and cry or self-harm or both. I would throw my lunches away and instead spend my lunch breaks crying in the school bathroom and creating future scars. The worse I became, the more ashamed I was. Why were other people managing so well? What was wrong with me? I descended into a spiral of self-loathing and became increasingly unwell. Even when I did try to reach out, I was met with blank stares and a lack of understanding, further fuelling my own self-stigma. Eventually I managed to tell a friend who then told a teacher, but instead of taking any further action, the teacher awkwardly smiled and sent us on our merry way.

Looking back, this is key example of why talking about mental health is important. My teacher seemingly had no idea what to do, no idea what to say and could have, indirectly, killed me. Mental health is not an awkward conversation and if we all talked about it more, we would be able to better support, or at least empathise with, one another. Campaigning for better mental health education and support for young people is important to me. 50% of mental health problems are established by the age of 14, and 75% by the age of 24. No one should have to wait until they are suicidal, or generally, have a debilitating condition to learn about mental health.

As I said earlier, stigma has been a major part or my life, but now it’s because I aim to challenge it. Challenging stigma is extremely important, it helps people accept themselves and society to accept, and be more compassionate to, those who struggle with their mental health. When I was diagnosed with emotionally unstable personality disorder (aka borderline PD), I was told nothing about it. I wasn’t even told I had been diagnosed with it, it just started to appear on my letters. With no forthcoming information from mental health services, I decided to find out for myself. What I found was awful and upsetting, tons of articles and videos confirming my internalised fears. I was apparently a crazy, manipulative bad person. It wasn’t until I heard about other people’s experience with it, and mental health in general, that I was able to destigmatise my own mental illness.

This is why I write. I understand how it feels to demonise your own mental health and to have it demonised by someone else. Hearing about the lived experience of others made me realise that my mental health does not mean I’m a bad person and that I’m not a failure if I struggle. I hope that my words can offer that reassurance too.