Letter to Liv.

To Liv,

I miss you so much at the moment Liv. I miss you every day and carry you with me in my heart in everything I do. But particularly at the moment I wish you were here. I miss my Westlife buddy. We would always talk about them – their songs, albums, tours. We were meant to see them together.

I saw them at the start of this month. I was front row centre. I imagined you standing in the aisle next to me, or sat on the step the other side of the barrier. I experienced it for you. I know I’m never alone. I know you’re still with me and all around me. But I did miss talking to you about it afterwards. I don’t really have anyone to share it with anymore. I told family, but they don’t really care about all that. You can’t make yourself show interest in things you’re not interested in. I know that too well, in regards to football!

I shared some photos online and was going to share videos. But without you here to comment on them and discuss it, it feels pointless. I always miss you when Westlife things happen.

I also miss you because it’s almost Christmas. I know how much you loved Christmas. So it brings you to the front of my mind each year. This is the fourth Christmas without you here. I try to enjoy it for you but it’s been hard. For other reasons Christmas just isn’t enjoyable for me. I put on a front for others… to get through it. My heart’s not in it anymore though.

I just miss my lovely friend and I can’t wait until the day I see you again. I hope wherever you are there are loads of puppies… and that you’re happy and love yourself more than you did in life. I love you Liv. There’s a hole in the world where you used to be. I wish you knew how important you were. Happy Christmas lovely Liv xxxx

The Darkest Year.

*Talk of suicide / grief related to it*

 

 

One year ago a truly brilliant light went out, leaving the world in darkness and changing my life forever. My wonderful, special, beautiful friend Liv, couldn’t survive her demons and tragically ended her own life.

I haven’t dealt with it, even now. Before this lockdown business I had intended to reach out for bereavement counselling, to get me through this difficult time. I’ve not managed to sort anything out, so just have to cope with it alone.

Even just a couple of days ago I sat in disbelief that she’s really gone, and that she’ll never be in this world again. I feel I’m in massive denial at times. There are times I feel I’ve ‘accepted’ it… if you ever can accept your only remaining friend taking their own life… I carry on, I talk to her… I try and talk about her – people get uncomfortable though and don’t engage in conversation about her. I guess that’s contributed to me not dealing with it. I have nobody to talk to about her and about the loss of her. So in a way I’ve had to stuff it down and just carry on.

But my life is so different now as a result of her decision. I’m not the same person I used to be. The world is changed. Nothing will ever be the same again, and nobody could ever fill the void her absence has left me with. She’s irreplaceable. I wish I could’ve told her that. I wish I could’ve told her I couldn’t bear the thought of a life without her here. I should’ve told her. For years I had feared something like this happening…. but I never truly thought it would happen.

So for it to happen when it did, it was a shock to the system. It seems strange to say that she was the best friend I ever had, yet I only actually met her in person once in my lifetime. I feel like a fraud saying that. But I knew her for thirteen years of my life. We met because of our mental health struggles and bonded over our shared appreciation of a certain Irish boyband, by the name of Westlife. People always mocked them and their fans, but we didn’t care. We knew our taste in music was awesome. Nobody would ever change our minds on that!

 

 

We’d been there for each other through the ups and downs of life. She was the one person I could always count on for support, advice and unconditional love. She was the only person who never gave up on me, no matter what. We never fell out. She never judged me. She never left me feeling I was alone in this world. She never let me feel invisible. She was perfect in every way. She just couldn’t see it. She was too humble and far too hard on herself. She couldn’t see all the wonderful things we all saw in her. She hated herself inside and out, but she had no reason to. In the end, her demons won and she gave up on herself.

I feel so grief-stricken and heartbroken that I couldn’t do anything to save her. And now I never can. Once she made that choice there was no going back…. no second chances for those of us left behind, to do something to keep her with us. We have to live with that forever now. I still have my moments I feel angry with her. But mostly I’m devastated and miss her so much. She was my rock. I may not have been her best friend – in fact most people in her life wouldn’t even know I existed. But in terms of quality and duration – she was the best friend I’ve ever had. I will never know anyone half as wonderful as she was.

I find it hard at times… thinking of all the things she’s missed and will miss in the future. I can be listening to one of the latest Westlife songs, and I think ‘She never got to hear this song’. I can be unsure of what to do about a situation and want her input, but that’ll never happen again. I can see a video she’d love, or I can do something creative that I think she’d really like, but I’ll never hear her feedback on any of it. I may be able to talk to her… I do it often… but she will never reply again in this lifetime.

And I think I’ve been taking it day by day, but when I consider the future…. the many years that could lie ahead… she’ll still be gone. She’s gone forever. I don’t deal well with ‘forever’ and ‘never’… it’s something I’ve always said. The thought that I’ll never talk to her again is a brutal reality to face. She was the only friend I had left. She left me on my own. Five weeks before I would finally see her again, she decided life wasn’t for her. I never got to see her again. I never got to hug her, like I wish I had done the first time I met her. I never got to share that front row Westlife experience with her. Five weeks…. that’s all it was. I know it’s selfish, but I wish she could’ve held on until then…. I feel at least I’d have had a chance to see her, speak to her, change her mind in some way, even without knowing her intentions. Being denied that opportunity is what drives part of the anger. The rest is the being left totally alone thing.

Her death has forever changed me. I don’t like who I am anymore. I hadn’t for a while anyway – ever since my first experience of grief two years earlier… that changed me. It worsened my mental health… that caused people to avoid me… it made my best friend abandon me forever… Liv was the only one really there for me through it. She helped me cope with the new experience of grief. But now there’s nobody to help me with my grief for her. She’s gone. And I feel like a ghost… invisible to all. Avoided by all. Irrelevant to all.

The loss of Liv has made me more depressed, anxious, paranoid, untrusting… I’ve withdrawn more. I’ve felt suicidal myself most of the time. I already was before she took her own life. Losing someone to suicide does put you at higher risk of it yourself – the Samaritans told me that. But I already knew it because I’d researched about suicide grief, as I had nobody to talk to about it.

I’ve become unreliable… flaky. I hate that. I push people away. I take forever to reply to people… if I ever even do. They eventually all give up on me. I don’t blame them. I probably would too… I just wish they knew I’m not deliberately being like this. It’s my mental health, but more than that it’s the grief. When we lose someone we love, we don’t just lose them… we lose a part of ourselves too… who we were with them in our lives – Liv made me feel like a ‘somebody’…. now without her, and without others treating me like a somebody, I feel I’m a nobody. It’s hard to reach out when you feel you don’t exist. My ability to communicate isn’t as good. My concentration isn’t good. My memory is atrocious ever since. My self-esteem has crashed even more than before. My motivation and will to live just went. I felt certain I would take the same path as Liv eventually – it seemed inevitable. Last Christmas and New Year felt like the last ones…. I even said to the Wellbeing Centre that I’d be lucky to see one more birthday – I was only holding on for that birthday, as I was seeing Westlife on that day – but that’s unlikely to happen now, so who knows….. I got a bit better at the Centre, because I was inspired by someone I formed an attachment to. But being separated from him now for the foreseeable future makes everything even harder. So yes, those ‘inevitable’ thoughts have crept back in.

Death changes people. Suicide even more so. It leaves all the questions of ‘why?’ and ‘what if?’… I’m isolated in my grief…. due to lack of friends, and loss of peer support during lockdown. I fully expect social media to be all about her today, but I’m an outsider. Nobody knows who I am. They don’t know how important she was to me. They will support each other, and not support me. Social media can be quite cliquey like that. So I told my family I might need a bit more support, and I’ve asked my key worker to phone me too, just to check in with me. She said she would, but didn’t. That’s how alone I am with this. But at least I asked for that support. That’s progress for me. One day I might get some proper help to work through this. I hope. But no amount of working through this will fix it. She’ll still be gone. Nothing can bring her back. That’s the worst part.

Do you know how deafening silence is after you get home from a live gig? That’s what life is since she left. Deafening silence. Not to imply she was loud in any way as she certainly wasn’t. But her absence is deafening to the soul. It sounds cliché but the world is definitely darker without her. It’s hard to find any meaning with her gone. Time is distorted, as it seems to be in grief…. part of me thinks ‘how has it been a year already?’… the other feels she’s been gone so much longer than that. How can I have lived in a world without her for a whole year?

I still remember the day of the funeral. I remember the courage I had to find to go there. I had to travel to a place I’d never been before, all by myself and work out the bus system to get me where I needed to be. I remember turning up and knowing I was in the right place, because of people wearing blue items, and the police officers there. Then obviously I saw people I recognised from her photos / friends list etc. So many people turned up, they couldn’t all sit down. She was so loved. I wish she knew.

I felt so alone there, but eventually got chatting to someone. We sat together, and she gave me a tissue as I started crying as they brought her past to Westlife’s ‘I’ll See You Again’. It felt too surreal that in five weeks (a week or two by the time of the funeral) we were meant to be seeing them together, and now here I was, listening to them at her funeral. It was a beautiful service, but two things still haunt me… putting my hand on the coffin, telling her I love her and saying goodbye – it broke me… and seeing the pain on the faces of her family – it’s an image I can’t shift. I know I didn’t have to go…. as unassuming as Liv was, she would never have expected me to go… I wasn’t exactly invited and found out about it by chance, through her partner. But I had to be there. Because that’s how important she was to me. She may not have known how special she was in life, but I would’ve done anything for her. Although it was traumatic, I am glad I went to the funeral and said goodbye. It made it more real. And I couldn’t have lived with myself if I didn’t go.

But I have a lot of work to do to process this still. Today I’m going to be gentle with myself, as Liv would advise me to be. I bought some tulips yesterday, to lay in the garden next to the ornament I got in memory of her. I’ll light a candle, probably play some Westlife at some point, and remember the wonderful friend I had, and how lucky I was to know her for as long as I did.

I love you Liv. I miss you. And I wish so much I could’ve saved you from yourself, because life without you is no life at all xxxx

 

‘Tuesday’ Journal: 14/04/20 (16/04/20)

*Advanced trigger warning – see below*

 

 

I forgot to write my journal on Tuesday this week. So I’ll try and do it now. Before I start I just want to apologise for not being good at responding to comments on here. I do see them and I appreciate them so much – more than you could know. I’m just not coping too well. It’s annoying because I feel so alone right now, so talking to people who take the time to talk to me would be a wonderful idea… it annoys me that I struggle to do it. It’s counterintuitive. But a big part of my mental health struggle right now. I’m a mess. And I hate seeming so rude to everyone. I’m sorry.

 

My ‘Tuesday journal’ will include up to today as well, as I can barely remember what day it is, let alone what happened when!!

 

..

 

*Strong language and suicidal feelings*

 

 

What I am grateful for:

• Chocolate!! At last!! Reunited with my comfort. My body will regret it, but my mouth & mind are very happy!!
•  Being able to order yarn online – though I still can’t get the colour I need to continue my blanket…
• Sleep.
• Beauty of nature – going for walks and seeing the flowers, the sunsets, the light through the trees etc.
• Music.

 

What I struggled with:

• Being invisible still. People not supporting me during my hard time with grief. Hard enough being ignored whilst grieving – had that for a couple of years now… but whilst in isolation and not having my support group, it’s harder. I hate people right now. People suck. They talk about reaching out…. they talk about checking in with friends…. they talk about ‘we’re all in this together’… seems some of us are more in it together than others, i.e. me. When I reach out I’m left talking to myself. And nobody checks in with me. I give up. I’m a nothing to everyone.  I’m done with people. I’m done with myself. I’m done with life.
  Putting myself out there, trying to be positive to make connections with people who used to talk to me = silence. Share my grief and pain = silence. Talk about my mental health = silence. Apparently the problem is me, and my mental health, rather than how other people treat me. Bollocks to that. The solution is people acknowledging my existence. The answer is people bloody well caring for a change. The solution is people being my friend. But fuck the lot of them. All my ‘friends’ hurt and abandoned me, or are dead. So fuck it all. Fuck. It. All. I don’t want to be alive right now….

What I learnt from it:

• I’m an awful person.
• Nobody cares.
• I can’t do this life thing.
• I want to be dead.
• It hurts too much.

 

What I achieved:

• Shopping.
• Writing poems.
• Walking.
• Surviving. So far.

 

 

..

 

And with that, I’m done. I’m done opening up. I’m done complaining about people making me feel alone. I just have to let them make me feel that way and just feel it. Had this with my former ‘best friend’ – mental health suffering because of their actions / inactions…?? STFU about it. Accept it. Otherwise they’ll ditch you. Fuck people. I’m not okay. But nobody gives a shit about that. So from now on if I ever talk again nobody will know how close to the edge I am. One day they’ll know. And they’ll wish they’d treated me better when I was alive. They’ll wish they’d acknowledged me when they could’ve saved me. But until then I will not burden anyone, or complain about anyone anymore. Because people have a knack of turning it round to make me feel like shit for them not being there for me. Fuck them. Fuck all of them. I really am alone. I hate every ‘friend’ who ever hurt me, and turned their back on me, and I hate Liv right now, for leaving me on my own. I can’t do this anymore.

I Grieve Alone.

*Suicide theme*
*Swearing – rant*

 

 

So yesterday was the first birthday of the most wonderful friend I ever had, since she ended her life last year. It was a very difficult time for me. I stupidly reached out online, to tell the world I was struggling with it. Can you guess what happened? The same as what always happens for me….. silence. I was ignored. I was invisible. My pain went unnoticed.

 

At a time when I’m feeling trapped in isolation, I needed people to give a damn for once. But they seriously don’t and never will. When I had my group at the Wellbeing Centre, I cared less about these neglectful online people. But now with this lockdown crap I have no other support. I needed the online support. I’m more aware of how utterly alone I am and how little I am valued by people who should care, and the wider population in general.

 

I can understand all my usual bumph being ignored like it is. But grief?? Seriously?? Everyone knows how it feels to lose someone. How hard is it to send a thoughtful, kind and supportive message to say you’re thinking of someone?

 

I get that there’s the possibility that seeing someone’s grief might tap into your own, and bring you pain… so you would want to avoid that. But I’m not asking for someone to lean on. I’m not asking for someone to talk to. I just needed a damn bit of compassion. To have my grief noticed. To hear ‘I’m thinking of you today’. That’s all. For fuck’s sake… if that’s asking too much then I obviously really don’t deserve to live in this fucking world.

 

This is nothing new to me. Anytime there’s an anniversary date, or a birthday, I write in the hope someone will hear me and validate my pain and respect the person in question by reaching back to me, to show they see the importance of that person to me…. every time I’m left on my damn own… the silence showing me how little I mean to everyone and how unimportant the person I lost was. It’s fucking rude and disrespectful.

 

Other people get support at times like this. I even give support to people. Even if I can’t say anything more than ‘Thinking of you’, I still do it, because it matters more than you’d think. To witness someone’s grief and stay silent, leaving them totally alone and unsupported is about the worst fucking thing you can do… especially to someone with serious mental illness… and especially at a time when isolation is putting a strain on people.

 

Do you know, the only person who ever really supported me in my previous grief, was the person who is no longer here and who I was grieving yesterday……. she would send her thoughts to me…. she’d tell me to be gentle with myself… she’d recognise how painful certain times can be. She guided me through my first case of grief. Now there’s nobody there to guide me through this traumatic loss of her.

 

I don’t have friends. She took her life. The other one abandoned me. After that there was nobody else. People don’t seem to understand how much I relied on little words of support from them…. I relied on the ‘acquaintances’ because I had nobody else. Their kindness would have made such a difference. Their silence was and always is destructive.

 

Things to say to someone who is grieving, without having to take on their feelings:

•  I’m thinking of you.
•  I’m sorry you’re in so much pain.
•  I can see this is painful for you. I wish I could take the hurt away.
•  I can see how much they mattered to you.
•  They’d be so proud of you for carrying on.
•  You’re not on your own. I’m here for you.
•  I care about you.
•  Be gentle with yourself.
•  Sending you love today.
• They’ll never be forgotten.
•  They were a special person.
• Wishing you the best today.

 

I could go on…. but you get the idea….. words. Actual words make a difference. They say ‘I see you…. I understand…. you’re not alone and worthless… this person mattered…. so do you’. Other people get it from each other. As usual I’m left on the floor begging for things like this and still being denied them. Doesn’t matter if it’s people who know me (Facebook), or people who don’t (Twitter)…. it doesn’t matter how privately (Facebook) or publicly (Twitter) I share my feelings of grief and sadness, the result is the same….. nothing. The most anyone will ever do for me now is ‘like’ my posts. And that’s a miracle if they do that!

 

The only time I communicate with others is when I pretend everything’s fine. When I focus on things like photography on Twitter. So that’s what I’m going to do from now on. Pretend I’m not grieving. Pretend I don’t have a mental illness. Pretend I don’t want to kill myself again now. Pretend, pretend, pretend. Fake smile. Fake positivity. Clam up and never talk about my feelings again. Nothing is worse than opening up about your most inner feelings and hearing only silence in response. Nothing.

 

So I am on my own with the pain, the sadness, the loss, and everything that comes with all of that. I’ll be one of those statistics…. where ‘nobody saw it coming’… because I put on an act. I pretend I’m fine, because nobody cares when I’m not. So I will focus on the good. I’ll pretend nothing is wrong. They’ll never see it coming. One day I’ll just disappear from the world and if they even notice, they’ll wonder why I never said anything or reached out for help. They won’t realise the amount of times I did, and was met with frosty silence. They’ll never understand it was their doing.

 

No it’s not imminent, but yes I’m back to believing I will die by my own hand, eventually. It feels certain again. During this lockdown people are probably fearing the virus and thinking that will kill a lot of people. It won’t be the virus that kills people like me, it will be our mental health. It will be the isolation and the hurtful lack of care from others during this time. It’ll be our own minds. I’ve gone a long way backwards since losing my group. I can’t see myself getting back to where I was. It’s all so hopeless right now.

 

Yesterday was Liv’s birthday. Next month will be the first anniversary of her death. People will support each other in the mental health community. Nobody will support me. I’m a nobody. I dread next month. I will probably opt for staying offline… that way I won’t see everyone supporting each other and mentioning it. And I won’t have to face the pain of reaching out and not being noticed. It’s better to keep it all to myself.

 

I had hoped to reach out for bereavement counselling before these two dates, but this damn Coronavirus thing cocked that right up didn’t it. It’s too late now. I needed the support before, to be able to cope with it on my own. But never mind. Just got to try and survive it now, in silence. Nobody wants to hear my grief. That’s what I’ve come to realise. People don’t care. They don’t want to know. It’s probably a case of ‘we all experience it…. suck it up buttercup’. But if we all experience it, then why not show a bit of human warmth and compassion when someone speaks out about their suffering? That’s the bit I don’t understand. If I knew how upsetting something can be, and I saw someone else experiencing it, I would reach out to them to let them know they’re not alone. Why won’t anyone do that for me? The answer always comes back to…. because it’s me. Because I’m worthless. Because they all want to neglect me to my death. It has to be. The way people treat me, or rather don’t treat me…. consistently…. as a larger society…. the only thing they all ever communicate to me is my irrelevance and their desire to see me dead. Otherwise they’d speak to me. They’d make an effort. They’d care.

 

I know everyone has a lot to think about right now with this pandemic, but it would be nice if they could not entirely forget those who need them. You see all these posts about reaching out for help…. or checking in with your friends etc. – I reach out = silence. I have no friends to check in on me. Nobody else will check in on me. I’m a casualty in all this. I’m the forgotten one. And nothing I do will change this fact. It doesn’t matter how loudly I scream… it doesn’t matter how many times I tell people what I need from them…. it doesn’t matter what I do – I could post a video of me with a knife to my own throat – these people will never care, never support and never reach out to me. I will die alone without any one of them giving a damn. This is not depression speaking. This is not my mental illness tricking me into thinking nobody cares. This is consistent evidence that they don’t. And I’m powerless to do anything about it. You can’t make people care. Not without being controlling and manipulative. And I am neither of those things. So I just have to accept I will never matter to anyone. My grief will never matter to anyone. My illness will never matter to anyone. I could literally have a terminal physical illness and these people still wouldn’t talk to me. That’s how worthless I am in this world. Why the fuck am I here? I give up.

 

I miss you Liv. I wish you were still here. You’re the only one who ever cared about me. Now nobody does. To be honest right now I don’t even want anyone else – I just want you back. Without you nothing else matters anymore. But I’ll see you again, in time. It’s just a question of when. Until then I live this nightmare I’d started to escape before the pandemic. I speak into the void, talk to myself and matter to no-one. I’m done with this world and the people in it. Life just isn’t for everyone. You’re always in my heart Liv… until we meet again xx

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Happy” “New” Year…

First of all I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope 2020 is a wonderful year for you all. Thank you so much to everyone who follows my blog, reads it, comments etc. – it all means a lot to me, especially the supportive comments I’ve had in the last year or so… I apologise for not responding to many of them… I’ve kind of closed down when it comes to conversation and offers of help. I’m not used to it, so I don’t know what to say anymore. But please know how much I value the continued support – it really does help.

 

I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve been trying to quietly survive this horrible thing that is life. I’m unsure which way things will go for me now, but I’m trying my best to endure all the pain and loneliness, however uncomfortable I feel with it all. I figure that’s what life has to be for me from now on…. sitting with uncomfortable emotions constantly… tolerating each moment until the inevitable end.

 

Sorry, I’m not very jolly at the moment. I got through Christmas but the truth is I find the New Year harder. Always have. And with the state of things now it’s even worse. My friend Liv lost her battle with her mental health in 2019…. I should be glad to see the end of this year… but I feel differently about it. It’s like another loss… she lived in this year…. she won’t next year. 2020 will be a year that she never touched. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I’m struggling with my grief right now.

 

It’s all ‘Happy New Year!’ and fresh starts etc…. there is no fresh start for me. I don’t want one. All I want is the life I used to have before I lost everyone. All there is, is a continuation of how I am now. All I have is ‘life goes on’… indeed it does … that’s the worst part for me. Life going on without Liv. Life has done that for nearly eight months now, and I still can’t accept I’ll never talk to her again. She was a very quiet person, but the world feels so much quieter without her. Or maybe I am. I think it’s silenced me. It’s paralysed me mentally. Anything I feel inside no longer shows on the outside. Nobody knows how I feel. They don’t know how close to the edge I am.

Everything is happening in a blur around me. Everything is dark, dull, heavy, lifeless, unreal yet at the same time it’s too vivid, too sharp, too real. Me and life are two separate entities. I’m an outsider looking in… seeing life happen, in a warm, inclusive, jolly … unity – something I can never be a part of again. After all, who would welcome in someone as broken as this? I was a virtual outcast before Liv took her life. I had been abandoned by pretty much anyone I considered a friend. Liv was the only one I had left. I had people I saw more than I saw Liv. We didn’t live that close to each other. But I knew her at least thirteen years. She was a true friend. The best friend I ever had. There was not a single bad thing I could say about her. We never fell out. She always had my back. She never left me feeling invisible. She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. She was always there. I will never find anyone as wonderful as she was. And now she’s gone. Forever.

 

Now it’s the middle of winter, and I’m on the outside of a warm get-together, full of laughter, friendship, love. I’m out in the snow, peering through the window, being forgotten… wondering how everyone else can carry on… I watch them… envious of those who ‘belong’ in this world… those who have friends and can find even a shred of happiness at this time… I hold my face close to the window and watch life happening… but my breath fogs up the glass and it all becomes hazy. Still the sound of ‘life’ can be heard from within. I reflect on the days I felt I belonged here. The days I could live in this world. It didn’t last long…

 

Funnily enough most of my good days happened in this decade we’re about to leave. But so did my worst. Which brings me to a round-up of the last ten years…. the highlights, and of course I must honour the low points too… they’ve brought me to this moment.

 

2010-2019

 

1. I had a group of friends for the first couple of years of the decade. Those were the times I felt I belonged somewhere. We had some really good times together. My confidence grew as a result. I was ‘pool champion’. We spent a lot of time together.  I even tried karaoke! (Never again!!).
2. I really got into my fossil hunting holidays and had some great finds.
3. I met Westlife on their ‘last’ London show in 2012.
4. I’ve since seen them reunite and was in the front row for their London show this year. The first time in the front row!
5.  I went to France – saw Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Coeur, the Eiffel Tower etc.
6. My brother got married.
7.  I got to see my best friend get married & was her bridesmaid.
8.  Also went through the experience of motherhood with her. Became Godmother to her two beautiful children and watched them grow … at least up until the ages of two and four. I was so proud of them. They were everything to me.
9.  I tried out rollerskating, and discovered it’s not for me – I prefer to keep my feet on the ground. Still have an injury that flares up from falling over.
10.  Saw the filming of Broadchurch whilst on a daytrip to West Bay.
11. Saw Take That in my hometown this year, for the first time.
12. Saw Boyzone a couple of times too – their last tour this year.
13. Saw Little Mix near where I live.
14. Shane Filan tours.
15. Ben Montague gigs – especially fun having the studio gig with a group of us.
16. The Band musical. Sound of Music. The Nutcracker / Swan Lake On Ice.
17. Comedy shows – Michael McIntyre and Ross Noble being the best.
18.  Did the Race For Life a couple of times.
19.  A few charity events including DeChox for the British Heart Foundation, walking 50 miles in 50 days for Parkinson’s, and other events for this – where with the help of my dad’s colleagues one time, I managed to raise over £300 for Parkinson’s. Also did the Samarathon this year in memory of Liv, to try and raise money for Samaritans, but nobody sponsored me, so that’s a bad point really, but at least I thought to do it, and it motivated me to walk and to keep going in life… for a while.
20.  Reduced my medication this year. Not a lot, but it’s a step forward.
21. Went to the Harry Potter studio tour as a Christmas present. Great day.
22.  My little boys – the gerbils… bonded with them and looked after them several times. Happy to handle animals more now.
23. Started a blog!!
24.  Got into politics! Even just this year alone, I went to the Leave Means Leave rally in Parliament Square – great day out – brilliant atmosphere – not at all how it was reported by biased media and lying Remainers. Oh yes, and I managed to not get hit by the moped undertaking traffic near the London Eye – that would’ve been a bad start to that day. I voted Brexit Party for the European elections… chose the Conservative leader and voted for them. Survived all the bullying and hate from the left and stuck by my beliefs. Good will win in the end. We’re on our way to all the wrongs being righted.
25.  This year I taught myself to solve a Rubik’s Cube – and got my time down from over 15 minutes, to around 3 minutes.
26. I learnt to make marmalade with my nan this year.
27. I learnt to knit and got into cross-stitch.
28.  I gave up chocolate for Lent a few years in a row.
29.  Got over my fear of dogs, by befriending a Rottweiler!
30.  Stepped out of my comfort zone, joining online dating site, met someone from there – wasn’t a match. Kissed a stranger at the new year one year… see it as a bad thing actually – it wasn’t a good thing – he was not my type, but just went with the atmosphere and allowed myself to feel uncomfortable with new situations. Regardless of these things I stuck to my morals and beliefs, and am happy with my relationship status going into 2020. Love will wait.
31. I finally got over a guy who didn’t treat me right. Took too many years, but I got there!
32.  Took part in poetry competitions and had my poems in some books. Was a rip-off so stopped eventually, but felt like an achievement at the time.
33. Had a couple of wisdom teeth out under General Anaesthetic and got through the trauma of it.
34. Phoned the Samaritans three times in the last two years. Was difficult to do.
35. Asked for help and went to the hospital after self-harming at therapy. Sounds like a negative, but took a lot of courage to do it.
36.  I finally got round to meeting Liv in person. ❤
37.  The next time I did so, was of course tragic, but it held with it an achievement – I went all the way to Brighton on my own to the funeral… somewhere I’d never been, and I found my way to the crematorium just in time.
38. Started volunteering in a charity shop – found a place to ‘belong’… may have lost that a bit in the last couple of years, and probably time to move on, but picked up some skills from doing it. Made me feel human.
39. Sought help for my mental health – had CMHT assessment, was rejected and sent to Wellbeing Centre, but happy to jump through those hoops for now. Might be the only thing to save me.
40.  I’ve booked up my tickets to see Westlife near where I live next year, and also at Wembley Stadium on my birthday too. Plus going to see Riverdance next year, and also Queen & Adam Lambert, which I’m looking forward to, as I’ve never seen them before.

 

 

This decade has certainly challenged me. It’s tested me in ways I could never have imagined. It was “character-building”.

There have been far too many negatives, but I’ll just name a few of them… I want the positives to take centre-stage.

 

1. Had my life turned upside down by a compulsive liar.
2.  Had my emotions messed about by a guy who was only interested in his ego.
3.  Lost all of my friends – one betrayed me and took the guy I liked, one turned into a bully, one gave up on me when I was ill and grieving… though I’m starting to understand that situation more now.
4.  Liv took her own life, five weeks before I was supposed to finally see her again.
5. My granddad got ill and eventually passed away.
6. Other family / family health issues that I won’t go into.
7. A couple of pretty bad breakdowns – one in therapy, one in France, one this year.
8.  My own health issues (but got treated for it successfully).
9.  Another of my friends passed away in 2012, and two colleagues passed away this year from cancer.
10.  I lost my Godchildren from my life.

 

 

These are just some of the worst aspects of the last decade. ‘Life’ really did happen to me  in these years. Most of the bad things and the lessons learnt from them happened in the last three years.

 

This year has been challenging. I am feeling pretty hopeless, despondent and broken at the moment. Today isn’t a good day. It never is for me. The thought of having my discussion group at the Wellbeing Centre this morning was all that got me through Christmas and made me think I could survive the New Year too. But they never responded or confirmed it was on today, so I didn’t go. The one day I really needed that branch of support and everyone else probably went to it, but nobody told me about it. So I now have to get through tonight, get through a whole other week before I can talk about how awful things are right now.

 

I’m triggered and reminded of my IAPT experiences, because they never responded to me either. They never did the things they said they would. So this year is ending on a negative note. A very negative one. I already have trust issues with mental health services. They’ve blown it already. Splitting on them now. I really needed their support today, and I just got forgotten instead. What a time for that to happen…

 

There’s nothing ‘new’ about the New Year. Things will never change for me. I’m always invisible. I’m always left out of the loop. My mind assumes why that is and that people don’t want me around. That I wasn’t told about the group today because they didn’t want me there. Mental health workers should be given better work phones as they don’t ever seem to work when I contact them. It’s ridiculous and they have no idea how much this has triggered me. My mind is too sick to recover, because even mental health services mess it up and feed into my paranoia and self-worth issues. I can’t win. So happy Tuesday people. Wednesday will be just the same as today. Please can this all be over now? I’m not strong enough for any of this.

 

Sorry, this ended up differently to where it started. Wrote the first part yesterday, but today has seriously messed me up. Going to take my emergency meds today / tonight and try to just survive it. Then I’ll either have it out with them or consider whether I want to put myself through all this heartache again.

 

If you can enjoy the New Year then do, but if you can’t then stay safe, and hopefully talk to you on the other side. A new decade. I hope yours will be better than mine looks to be. All the best xxxx

A Life Saved… For Now.

 

 

*Suicide theme*

 

 

The other night I was left with no other choice but to phone the Samaritans, for the third time in my life. It was past 1am again, I was at breaking point… the emotions were too strong I actually felt I would explode – obviously I wouldn’t have, but that’s the point where things are most dangerous for people like me…. that’s often why we engage in destructive coping mechanisms, to try and bring the emotions down, for fear of what will happen if we don’t.

 

I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t call them. All I know is I sat with the phone number in my phone for about twenty minutes, hesitating… talking myself out of it and then back into it by letting my feelings in. All the other possible coping strategies were whizzing around my mind and I realised none of them would work. It was basically phone the Samaritans or end it somehow.

 

As usual I didn’t know what to say at first, but I told them how alone I feel. I told them about losing my best friend because of my illness. I told them about losing my only other friend to suicide. And then I broke down.

 

She said how sorry she was about that. She then very quickly asked if I had contemplated suicide myself. And it’s the first time I’ve been completely honest about my feelings and intentions. I straight away said yes. I was still in tears, so I don’t remember everything said, but I told her how suicidal I felt before losing my friend six months ago and that now it’s all I think about. She asked if I had a plan. I said not a plan as such, but that I’m looking at ways to do it…. that I’m closer to having a plan than I’ve ever been before.

 

At one point she asked something about in three years time can I see it being better…. I was honest and told her I can’t see me being here by then. I don’t think I’ll be here in a year. I didn’t tell her I can’t even see me having another Christmas, but that might just be my immediate feelings anyway. I am struggling with the thought of Christmas this year.

 

When I talked about my grief, she pointed me in the direction of help for that. She also said that people who lose someone to suicide are at a higher risk of taking their own lives too. I was already aware of this – that’s why I’ve needed people to support me in the aftermath, as I was already suicidal and my mental illness puts me at a higher risk of suicide anyway, without adding the effects of losing someone to it.  She also said that the grief associated with a suicide is totally different to ‘normal’ grief, in that it’s more complex. Again I knew that. But it was helpful to hear it said by someone else…. it was validating of what I was experiencing. I wish the people in my life were aware of all this and could do more to help me. Maybe I wouldn’t have got to the point I had to choose between this phone call and death.

 

At one point I was talking about the anger I felt at my friend. I said it wasn’t hateful anger…. just anger at the situation I guess. She then said something very insightful and true…. she asked if perhaps I envied my friend. And I said yes. I said I wish I could’ve gone with her.

 

I have never been that honest about suicidal feelings… for fear of what would happen as a result. But these people are very respectful. She even said to me that they want me to stay alive, but it’s my decision what to do with my life, and they’ll have my back whatever I decide. Even at the lowest point if I should reach that moment, I can still have them on the end of the phone. That made everything feel very real…. like there really is the possibility I will end it in the not too distant future. It scared me. But I liked how they weren’t forcing me to stay…. there was no judgement whatsoever. She said she was pleased I made the call.

 

 

 

We talked about how my family would feel if I ended it. I explained they’re the only reason I’m still here. But I told her I almost resent them for it, and I feel trapped…. because I have to stay alive in order to not hurt them…. but it means me living in pain and a world I just can’t survive in. She said I need more reasons to live than that… otherwise it would cause me to resent the only people I have left and could make things worse in the end….

 

I talked about my Godchildren and how they used to be a reason for me to live. She wondered if I could be enough of a reason myself …  I said no. I told her how much I hate myself… and how losing my best friend, along with everything else that’s happened, has completely dragged my self-worth through the floor. I don’t currently see myself as worth continuing to live for.

 

She asked if I hadn’t lost these people from my life would I be considering ending my life right now… I said probably not as much, no. I said if my best friend hadn’t abandoned me, she could have supported me through the suicide of my other friend, and I could’ve survived it. And if that friend had not taken her life, I would have a friend now…. everything would be different…. I wouldn’t be this alone. The reality is it’s these two major losses in the space of a couple of months…. my two longest friendships of 13+ years…. gone… leaving me with nothing and nobody. That’s what has ruined me and brought me to this point of suicidality. Everything would be different, and I’d be able to live if both or even just one of these things hadn’t happened. That’s why after my friend’s death I reached out to my former best friend, as I wanted that resolved… I wanted her support and friendship…. I couldn’t cope with both things – even hours after hearing the news I had to not have both losses. She texted me a couple of times with support, but then disappeared and I’ve not heard from her in six months. That was it. I had to face both losses, even though I couldn’t. I didn’t have a choice. She didn’t want our friendship back. A traumatic loss and me being left alone to cope with it, feeling suicidal myself, was not enough reason for her to care and fix things with me. It’s how little she cared, that she could wash her hands of me so coldly. That’s what damaged me. It’s taken an already complex kind of grief and complicated it even further. My friend’s suicide gave me that feeling of how stupid it is to not be friends with my former best friend – that life is too short to hold grudges…. I honestly felt we should and could sort it out at that point. I wanted to let it all go, as some things mattered more. Now I feel more rejected than ever…. it was at least the third time I’d tried to open the door again, and had it slammed in my face. I’m a glutton for punishment. I get the message she’s done with me now, for good. She’s too busy being friends with the person who hurt me before and came between us three years ago…. Anyway….

 

We talked about grief and mental illness and how people struggle to empathise if they’ve not been there… and how they can be afraid of saying the wrong thing, so they leave it alone and say nothing at all. I told her I wish they’d just say something, like ‘I hope you’re okay’…. ‘How are you?’ … ‘Thinking of you’…. something to make me feel I’m not invisible.

 

We talked about my mental health – how long I’ve been struggling. I said 18 years…. I went on to explain the reasons it went downhill in the last couple of years. I said I’m the worst I’ve ever been. When I was a teenager things were bad, but I didn’t have real problems – I said I don’t know what my problem was back then…. she said something like ‘teenager’s prerogative’ – she gave me a couple of moments of humour to pick me up a bit.

 

We talked for 48 minutes… the longest call to them I’ve ever had. It didn’t feel like 48 minutes. Time goes quicker in the middle of the night though! I told her that although it didn’t fix everything – it doesn’t change how things are – it made me feel less alone in that moment.

 

I got through that night without hurting myself or worse. I also didn’t have to use my emergency medication. I just made the right choices for once in my life. I’m still struggling. The night times are the worst. Hopefully if it happens again I’ll make that call again. Things really aren’t okay at all right now. The feelings that led to me needing to make the call, they are still there right now…. I have to contain them as much as I can. But it’s very difficult. One person could do something to end all this pain and trauma for me. But they don’t care. They never did and never will. They’ve moved on. They are responsible for where I am now and what happens to me. They broke my spirit. And the only people I have left to try and save my life are the Samaritans.

 

I don’t even know the name of the woman I spoke to that night. But I truly thank her for giving her time to just listen and support. Two things other people just wouldn’t give me. This total stranger answered the phone in the middle of the night and talked to me, about all the things I’ve needed to talk about for the last six or so months. Whatever happens in the future she helped me so much that night, and I can’t repay her for what she did. The Samaritans are like angels – we just have to call out to them when we need them.

 

 

6 Months Broken.

*Touches on suicide*

 

Dear Liv,

 

I miss you so immensely. You know that. You’re about the only one who knows that. Nobody else sees what losing you has done to me. They think you’re just someone I talked to online occasionally. But you and I know the extent of our friendship. Only, there’s only me left to attest to that. So I face the pain of missing you, entirely alone. I may have only got to see you once in my life… seven years ago…. something I’ll always treasure…  but I’ve known you a lot longer than that.

 

I knew you when you were about 17. We used to talk on the forum about Westlife. We’d also support each other. But Westlife was our escape from our demons. I remember sending a picture of ourselves so we could put a face to a name. Then we became Facebook friends. Our bond grew over the years. When times were tough for you I would offer words of support and remind you how wonderful you were. I didn’t understand eating disorders, so I always felt pretty useless when it came to that, but I did what I could. I didn’t know the right thing to do or say…. at times I’d see photos of you and I’d be worried, as you didn’t look well, but I knew those sorts of demons feed off of how people perceive you, so I didn’t want to make you worse. I should have said something though. I sent you some minion themed presents one time as I wanted to cheer you up. And you were always there for me too.

 

You were my biggest champion…. you never let me put myself down. You always reminded me that I mattered, that my feelings mattered and that I deserved love and happiness. You never let me feel alone.

 

You read all my blogs and watched my video journals too. You supported me when people were unkind. And when I made mistakes and said things that may have offended people, I apologised and you forgave me and acknowledged me fixing my error. You never held anything against me. You never judged me. You always understood me. I never once fell out with you. You were everything I could ever ask for in a friend. I just wish you could see what I and so many others could see in you. And now you’re not here to know how heartbroken we are without you. I say ‘we’ like I’m part of a community of people missing you…. I’m not. I’m so alone with this. There are people out there who are supporting each other in their grief… a lot appear to have just ‘moved on’ and have stopped talking about you. And then there’s me. I don’t know the other people who knew you. They don’t know I exist or how much I’m hurting now. And the people in my life never even ask if I’m okay. Friends, family… everyone…. they have no clue how on the edge I am. They don’t know the pain I’m in. They don’t mention your name, and seem uncomfortable when I mention it.

 

Nobody likes pain or grief. They steer clear of people who are experiencing both. That’s been the hardest part of losing you. As you knew, I lost my best friend because of my mental health, a few months before you went. You were all I had left. You were so good to me with my grief for my granddad. You were the one who guided me through it… told me what pitfalls to look out for, and how to look after myself. You supported me and didn’t run away from my grief. You really were an angel in my life. Now you’re gone there’s nothing. There’s nobody to take your place… they never could anyway. But they’ve all dispersed.

 

The hardest part of losing someone to death, is losing all those who are living as well…  and losing so much of yourself in the process. I’ve spiralled this year…. I’ve fallen into a pit of grief and isolation…. pain and grief make others uncomfortable, so they turn away and remain silent…. this worsens the feeling of loneliness… the grief intensifies, the mental health deteriorates and people avoid you even more…. I really have got to the point I don’t fear what I say anymore – I have nothing left to lose.

 

It’s so difficult to experience this sort of grief…. to not have my best friend and my Godchildren to keep me going….. to not have you there to help me….. to not have anyone else asking how I am, if I need anything, or acknowledging you ever existed and the pain I feel at losing you. Other people who are grieving seem to get showered with support and kind words. But it’s a violent slap of silence when it comes to me. I’ve always had this problem, but somehow when you were alive it helped…. more people would talk to me if you talked to me…. and if they didn’t then at least I had you to talk to, plus I didn’t have a whole chunk of my heart ripped out by losing you.

 

The silence is the deafening cliché. Life is empty…. yet every moment is filled with overpowering emotions, too dark and dangerous for one person to feel. I have urges to run to every person from my past – to beg for their friendship…. to beg for answers and closure…. to get revenge…. to open up old wounds and make me feel enough pain to do whatever it is you did to leave this world….. to just not be this alone. I want someone to care…. I want to do almost anything to get just one person to care. I need the therapist I had feelings for… it’s where my mind runs to every time. But I also want to connect with friends who hurt me in the past – because I can’t cope with the fact my former best friend is now friends with them all after hurting me so badly. I want to hurt her back, so much, but I don’t have the means. I’m not friends with her friends…. I can’t do the things to her that she’s done to me, to make her know how it feels. I hate I’m this vengeful person. I hate how desperate I’ve become. But I can’t do this life anymore. I couldn’t do it even before you left me behind. Why did you have to leave me behind? Why couldn’t I come with you?

 

You left me, five weeks before I would finally see you again. Before we would see Westlife together in the front row. My ‘dream come true’ became something traumatic to get through. It still haunts me that you should’ve been there with me. And that I never got the chance to see you and give you a hug. You didn’t give me the chance to save you. If I’d known then I could’ve done something or said something. I wish you had given me that opportunity. You didn’t even say goodbye. How long had you been planning to go? When we were planning to meet up before the show, did you know then that you would never see me? How could you do that to me? You said you’d go with me, after I lost my usual Westlife buddy….. but then you didn’t go with me…. I won’t go into all the detail – you’d have seen the chaos at that time. What I had to put myself through to not be going alone. It was degrading…. it was heartbreaking and traumatic, given my childhood.

 

I know you were obviously experiencing something that was too powerful to overcome. Maybe one day I’ll understand more…. it’s hard when you don’t know much about it…. when you don’t know if it was intentional / planned or if it was just self-harm gone wrong and you didn’t mean to die… I don’t know how it happened, if there was a note etc. – I’m not sure I want to know, but it makes it hard to come to terms with it all when you don’t know. So many questions flash through my mind….

 

Most of the time I remember you with love and I try and honour the memory of you in my everyday life. But as you’ll know I have my times I’m angry towards you. I know this is something you wouldn’t want, and some say it’s wrong to be angry about someone taking their own life, but sadly it’s a part of the grief. It’s all the ‘should’ve beens’ and the ‘what ifs’ and the ‘never to be’ moments… it’s feeling robbed of goodbye and of a chance to stop it from happening. I should’ve done more. But I can never do that, and now you’re gone forever. There are no second chances with suicide.

 

People who say that the pain someone feels from losing someone to suicide cannot compare with the pain someone felt to choose suicide, I unfortunately hope they experience that sort of loss for themselves, as they clearly never have…. maybe then they’ll learn what utter tosh that is to spout. Suicide breeds suicide. They obviously don’t realise that. Even people without mental health issues consider suicide after losing a loved one to it. I was already suicidal before you left me. Now it’s the only thing on my mind. It’s a given that I’m likely not going to be here in a year’s time. I’ve almost given up on everything as what’s the point? I’m making plans yet thinking it’s a waste of money – I won’t be here. There was even talk of getting a piano, and I thought … don’t waste the money… I won’t be here for much longer. Do you know how depressing that is? … Yeah, I guess you do.

 

Mental illness is a funny thing…. to an outsider you had it all…. you had your partner…. you had Squish Squish…. you had your new place… you had your job with the police finally… we were seeing Westlife back together, in the front row…. a lot of people valued you and loved you… you could see it from the outpouring of grief when you went. Yet it wasn’t enough to stay. The demons won. And then there’s me…. I have nothing…. I have nobody but my closest family…. all I have for company are my friends Grief, Paranoia, Isolation and BPD, and a heap of bitterness for having nothing else left.

 

When I go, nobody will cry… nobody will write warmly about me…. nobody will come to my funeral…. nobody will bloody notice! I’ve been calling out for help for two years, and nobody cares. You kept a lot of your feelings hidden. Your videos were always encouraging… positive… caring for others…. you were a good, kind, beautiful person with the most wonderful heart and soul…. people loved you. People loved you and they don’t love me…. because I’m brutally honest about how awful life is. I pour my feelings out and get nothing back. I feel the way to matter to people now, is to stay silent and pretend to be okay. Unfortunately it’s something I’m not sure I can do. It’s why I know my journey will mirror yours… only difference is I made no impact…. I’m a nobody…. if people feel anything when I go it’ll be relief… relief that the negativity that is me, is gone, finally.

 

I’m having difficulties with that though…. when you lose everything and everyone and your one remaining friend ends her life, how can you seem anything but ‘negative’? That’s why I know there’s no way back for me. I have nobody left believing there’s good in me. Nobody fighting for me and for my recovery. Nobody cheering me on. Nothing to live for. Nothing will ever be okay again, not now you’re gone. How am I meant to overcome grief like this when grief is what has driven everyone so far away from me?

 

I’ll tell you, as I have nobody else to tell…. I keep dreaming of my best friend and my Godchildren…. they were all in it the night before last. The night before that I saw my Godson and spoke to him – he felt like nobody liked him… I told him I did… he looked at me funny… I said ‘You don’t remember me do you?’… he shook his head. It hurts so damn much. You were the one person I could confide in and ask advice from about how to handle things…. I shouldn’t have lumped it on you probably. I’m sorry. But you helped me so much, to not give up on myself just because others did… I have nobody to ask about anything anymore. I feel so lost. My life feels empty and pointless. It feels like there’s a brick wall between me and everyone else. I feel like a ghost to them all. You would never have left me feeling like a ghost…. you would hate that people are making me feel this way. You’d do something about it. But you’re not here anymore….

 

In fact six months ago yesterday you left the world. Six months ago tonight I went on Facebook and saw people sending RIP messages to you…. that was how I found out. I vividly remember the feeling… the shock…. the devastation. I remember feeling my spirit draining out of my body. I remember telling my family and breaking down… I remember collapsing on the stairs, hugging the wall, the pain and denial I felt. I remember howling in pain for what felt like hours. I remember how sick I felt. This was all before finding out you had taken your own life. I’d assumed as much anyway. It was the worst nightmare come true. I never wanted to lose you from my life. I’ve lost a lot of friends from my life…. you are the biggest loss, and the way I lost you is the most traumatic thing I’ve ever experienced. I was so scared this would happen one day.

 

I couldn’t sleep or eat. I couldn’t stop crying. I got in touch with my former friend, hoping to have one less loss to contend with… I needed her to be my friend, to help me through losing you. I got a couple of texts, but also got unblocked and re-blocked at the worst point in my life. That was all. And now I’ve had six months without her. Six months with no support from anyone. As you’d know, I’m not coping. I can’t function anymore. I can’t go out. I can’t do anything. I’ve lost all reason to exist. I can’t cope with people – not too big a problem as I don’t exist to most of them anyway. I can’t work. I can’t be around family sometimes. I keep hurting myself, and I want to do worse. My mental health is down the toilet and I have no friends. I have no support yet – I’m still waiting for an assessment. I’m emotionally paralysed.

 

Things are getting harder coming up to Christmas. You loved Christmas so much and I wish I could get into the spirit for you. I’m trying. But deep inside I’m dreading it. I don’t want to see another Christmas. This will be the worst one. Last year was pretty bad with the fallout with my friend, and my efforts being snubbed – being made to feel invisible…. but you were still here then. This is the first one without you here. You’re not here. My granddad’s not here. My friend will not be snubbing me this year, she’s full on blocked me out of her life… I don’t have the children to buy for anymore… no reason to get in the spirit of things. When I look at Christmas decorations in the shops I feel closer to you, but I wander round in a daze, still unable to accept your absence. I feel Christmas is being forced upon me this year. I can’t cope with the fact life is going on without you…. that it hasn’t stopped to allow me to grieve. Time is slipping away and I’m expected to carry on regardless of how I feel. I even remember the job people phoning not even a couple of months after it happened…. and when I said what had happened they asked something like ‘… and it’s still troubling you?’ …. well, yes… it’s called grief. It had only been a few weeks….

 

Do people expect me to just move on and feel nothing about what happened?  Believe me, I wish I was a robot and felt nothing. The pain I feel is too much, and I have no way of releasing it. So I break down, quite often. I have to avoid life to keep safe.

 

I’m trying to look after myself and find interests again…. little reasons to survive another day… I taught myself to solve a Rubik’s cube. I’m trying to take up cross-stitch again… I’ve fetched my colouring books again… I play the guitar when I can. Tiny little steps to find ‘joy’ again. There can be no real joy… that’s how I feel now you’re gone. But if I can find this flat level of joy to just hold on until someone decides they can help me, then I guess that’s something.

 

Sorry to ramble on… I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore. You’re the only one who really cared about me. I feel so alone without you here. As you know, I felt alone before you went. Now the isolation is excruciating. I feel I’m being punished for grieving and being ill. That’s how the last year or two have felt. People don’t get that I’m in enough pain as it is… that I’m suffering enough…. being left alone, with nobody even asking how I am and genuinely caring about the answer, it hurts even more. I honestly do feel I’m being punished, and if I’m that bad a person that I deserve this, then I don’t deserve to live. I don’t want to live. I want to be where you are. I really don’t think I can ever heal now. I don’t want to. The pain, the rage, the powerlessness, the loneliness, the resentment – all of it coursing through me…. all I want to do is rip the world apart, tear a hole in it and throw the people who hurt and abandoned me through that hole, robbing them of their lives just as they have robbed me of mine. I want to destroy everything and everyone. And then I want it all to stop. I want peace.

 

I hope you found peace Liv. I hope you found your mum and that you’re happy together again. I’m so sorry you had to live with that loss for so long and you couldn’t carry on any longer. I don’t blame you. I couldn’t do it. I can’t do it having lost the people I have lost. I just wish it didn’t have to be this way. I wish you hadn’t left me. I needed you. I admired you. I was so thankful for you. And now I’m nothing without you. How do I go on when you couldn’t?

 

I’ll be seeing Westlife without you again next year, twice…. if I survive that long. I should be excited. I am, but I’m also upset. I have to go alone to everything like that now. My friend has ditched me, and now you’re not here. So I really am alone. It’s upsetting everyone booking tickets with other people and I’m just left as a loner. I’ll be seeing them on my birthday next year – I’ll be celebrating it on my own as I have nobody to go with now. People don’t realise how that sustained level of isolation affects your self-worth, and therefore your desire to live in this world.

 

I hate that you never saw them perform together again. You never heard their last two songs. I know in the grand scheme of things people would think there’s sadder things than you missing out on Westlife…. I don’t doubt that at all. I know that. But these are personal things to me. Even then, there are more important reasons it’s so tragic you’re gone. It’s as though a light has gone out. There’s one less angel in the world. You really were a blessing to everyone who knew you. You had your demons to fight, and I’m proud of you for how long you fought against them. You inspired me. The strength you showed after your mum died gave me hope I could survive my first loss a couple of years ago. The support you gave me to get through that – by using your experience of loss and mental illness – it was more helpful than you’ll ever know. Now I have nobody to help guide me through losing you. And losing someone to suicide is so different to normal grief. People will dispute that… until it happens to them.

 

I’m thankful to have known you for such a large portion of my life. The rest of the years without you will be the hardest of all to live. I used to tell you how wonderful you were. I wish you’d believed me. No matter how angry I might get at what happened, nothing will change the incredible person you were and how special you were to me. I wish I could be more like you were as a person. You deserve to be here. I don’t. I wish I could’ve taken your pain away and made it bearable for you to be here. So many people are missing out now Liv.

 

I hope you’re with me now and then. I know there’s places you’d rather be – people who mattered more and are in more pain than me. I sometimes feel like a fraud in that sense. My mind sort of minimises my grief, as though I shouldn’t be this broken by it, since others were closer to you or may have even been the ones to find you. I pray for whoever that was that they can heal from the trauma. I can’t even imagine. My feelings of loss must be tiny compared to closest friends and family. I shouldn’t make it about me. I guess my mental illness and the isolation don’t help. When you went I was left with nothing and nobody, so it became harder to deal with than if I was supported. But the reality is you really mattered to me. And I hope I’ll see you again one day.

 

Until then I’ll play Westlife and believe you’re there with me, enjoying their new music. Someone once said to me that you’ll see everything I see through my eyes. I hope they’re right. I love you Liv and I’ll miss you forever my beautiful friend xxxx

 

 

A Black Day.

*Depressing post, mentions suicide. Bad language also*

 

 

Today’s a black day. A sickeningly lonely day. A day of remembering. A day I’m paralysed by life. A day I can barely move for the bleakness in my mind. Although I’ve been pretty motionless today, it intensely contrasts the state of my mind today. It’s a very loud kind of day…. too much to think / feel and no way of releasing it…

 

So here I am yet again, speaking into the void of the internet… feeling as flat as a pancake. Sitting in the dark, having barely moved all day…. not seen anyone all day. Here I am writing stuff that could never save my life, as it’s all so disconnected from the people in my life who I need to care. Nothing can change the way things are.

 

I cannot have my best friend back. I will never understand what the hell I did to deserve to be ditched in such a callous way. I will never forgive it. I will never recover from it. I will never get through what I’m now going through, because of it.

 

I will never get over losing Liv. Not being able to talk to her ever again in my life. Knowing that she’s gone for good. That I should’ve known and done something. I never got to see her again. I’ll never be able to say all the words I should’ve said, and I’ll never understand what happened and why.

 

I have nothing left.

 

The loss I feel is too intense. Over ten years ago I was starting to come out of my shell. I went from having no friends or connections, to feeling accepted by people. I was doing DBT, I had three individual friends, then a group of people…. I was finding confidence… I even did karaoke during one strange phase of my twenties…. wine was needed though. But I belonged. I felt normal. Men were occasionally attracted to me. They were pretty much all jerks who only wanted one thing from every girl, but this also made me feel better about myself to start with.

 

2012 all of that changed overnight….. I went from having a social life to virtually nothing…. most of my friends hurt me. The guy I liked hurt me. I lost everyone but my best friend.

 

Life changed. No more social life. No more getting out meeting people or building confidence. My life became about my best friend and her impending child… the blessing… the one thing that kept me alive through that awful time of betrayal and loss. Life then became about her and her family… I became Godmother to her two lovely children. They were everything to me. Life was different though… it took a lot of adjusting to.

 

One of my old friends reared her ugly head in 2016, driving a wedge and thread of doubt between me and my best friend. And then my granddad got ill and passed away eight months later. I almost lost another family member to a heart attack in that time. Life became so real seemingly overnight. Until then I never believed I’d lose anyone in that way. Suddenly life was a waiting room… waiting for the next person to die. It was a scary, dangerous and uncertain world….. I needed certainty and stability around me in the form of friendship. I didn’t have this.

 

Last year my friend was so absent from my life. I could literally feel the abandonment in every cell of my body. I was right to feel that way. Voicing my fears only sped up the process… that’s the most sickening part. Due to grief and mental illness I made mistakes. I wasn’t in control of my thoughts or actions. It was terrifying. She held it against me. We fell out. I  extended an olive branch at Christmas but was totally snubbed.

 

This year she wouldn’t make up her mind if she wanted to try and save our friendship or not…. I deserved better than that. In the end I had to make a decision for the sake of my mental health and paranoia. I had to take a step back by unfriending her on Facebook – that way she was free to write what she wanted and it wouldn’t affect our friendship or my mental health. I never got to unfriend her. I told her my intention and the reasons and she immediately blocked me. She blocked any way of me ever reconnecting with her. She made it so I couldn’t message her or re-add her when I feel better (which I never will now). She made it permanent. She made it perfectly clear that she wants nothing more to do with me and never wants to hear from me again. She moved house without telling me a thing about it. I found out through someone else on Facebook.

 

My bond with my Godchildren is broken now, forever…. you can’t get back two years, not at that age. They won’t remember me. But I have to live in this world for the rest of my life having lost them. And I fucking hate my ‘friend’ for doing that to me, at a time I’m grieving my first loss and also the loss of my only other friend to suicide. It’s unforgivable. I cannot live life now because of this. It’s too much loss. I have nothing left.

 

The pain I feel in my heart, thinking about the early days with my God-daughter…. holding her for the first time at a few days old…. seeing her smile at me for the first time…. her learning to walk…. her trying to say my name…. to having actual conversations with her. The bond we had…. it’s gone, forever…. all I have now are photos and videos – and they just break my heart now. My friend would never appreciate this, but losing them was the closest thing to losing my own children. I may never have kids… especially if I’m right that I won’t even be alive in a year… but I loved them like they were family. So to have them ripped away from me, because of some unknown issue between their mother and me – something I don’t even fucking understand myself, it’s not fair. It’s not right. And I violently hate that woman right now. She has destroyed any remnants of my life.

 

I have had identity issues throughout my life, as part of my illness… I’ve gone from being a loner, to having a social life, to not having a social life but having the responsibility of my best friend’s kids, to losing them all – at a time I’m experiencing the most traumatic loss and grief I’ve ever known. I’m left with no friends or support. I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m nobody. I’m nothing.

 

I had this last year… I expressed to my friend that I had lost ‘fun Lily’… I didn’t know how to be ‘fun Lily’ for the kids anymore – because I hadn’t seen them for six months at that point. I felt I wasn’t good enough to be around them if I couldn’t pretend to be okay, which I seriously wasn’t okay…. The remedy would’ve been my friend saying they’d love me whatever, and helping me to find that part of my identity again. She didn’t. She did the opposite. She took it as me not wanting to see them anymore. And she didn’t see me either. So I ended up misunderstood and isolated. Forgotten. Neglected. Abandoned. I kept losing more and more of my identity as a result. Now everything I had is gone I feel there’s nothing left of me. I have nobody to remind me of who I am either.

 

Living with BPD without a support network is fucking impossible. I can’t do it. I want to scream right now. I close my eyes and see violence. I see myself raging inside – smashing things up… tearing my skin off and that of others…. deafening the world with the pain I feel…. I want to make the whole world know how far from okay I am. I contain it most of the time. I wish I didn’t. It’s hell.

 

Nobody talks to me. Nobody replies to me. I don’t exist. Life is awful. I feel too much pain. I don’t want to carry on. Nothing changes. Yet everything has changed. I’ve lost everything. And no amount of talking about it will change that or make anyone else pay attention or care about me. They just don’t and never will.

 

I’m hanging on now, just waiting to see if the Wellbeing Centre will be able to help me. That’s all I’m living for right now.

 

I even give up on ‘Brexit’ now. I hoped I would get to see how it turns out… that I’d still be alive to see us leave the EU. I don’t think I can hold on that many years. If it’s overturned I’ll be going anyway, as it’ll show just how irrelevant I am. But even focusing on Brexit doesn’t help anymore. I’ve got to the point I feel none of it matters…. nothing matters, as I won’t be around much longer. I’m just weary of everything. Nothing feels right.  I want everything to stop.

 

Even when I was on holiday I thought about walking out to sea…. I didn’t want to come home to the reality of life. I’m hanging on but I have nothing to hang on for. My life is empty. The way my ‘best friend’ treated me has left me hating myself, hating her, feeling powerless and frustrated. I have no way to let that out other than to blog or self-harm. This is my existence now. I’ve been using stars on a calendar to mark days I don’t self-harm. I’m good in that there’s only been one day this month, so far, where I haven’t earnt a star. The trouble is I struggle so much with the level of despair and sadness I feel today – that’s harder to cope with than just anger….. it’s an incapacitating emotion and usually leads to me feeling suicidal. Anger can be released and let go of…. this state of mind can’t.

 

Days like today I wish ‘happy pills’ existed…. nothing else would lift my mood right now. In the past with friends I’ve lost, my ‘revenge’ would be me moving on and forgetting them – but I always had other friends to move on with and was able to forget and find happiness. This was my best friend…. my only real friend and she turned her back on me, for reasons I don’t understand at all…. Liv is gone… I have no other friends. It’s impossible to put on a front and get my revenge by moving on. I can’t move on. I have nothing to move on to… nowhere to turn and nothing to survive for. I’m too ill to move on. I want revenge. I hate that I want revenge. I’m not a nasty person. But I’m fucking hurt, and I don’t understand why this all happened. It’s not okay and I have no way of moving on or communicating with her or anything. I’m fucking stuck, and she knows that. That’s why it’s so vindictive of her to cut me out like that. She knows what it would do to me. And she didn’t give a fuck. So I no longer give a fuck about her. I want to move on and be happy and for her to regret losing me but that can never happen. So I have to go for hating her at this point. My only other options for myself when I close my eyes are extremely graphic and disturbingly violent ones.

 

I just wish I could take a pill and forget everything and everyone I’ve known and lost. A pill that makes me happy, and makes me able to trust people therefore form new friendships. I wish I had friends. I cannot survive without any. I used to be in this state, but having had years of friendships and support, and a sense of belonging, I cannot go back to this level of isolation…. too much has happened in my life for me to be able to survive without friends. But any friends I had either hurt me, ghosted me or died. I can’t take anymore pain or loss. I can’t trust anyone. I don’t believe I’m even likeable anymore let alone lovable. And life is loss… therefore life is pain. I can’t face that pain alone. So how am I meant to live in this world?

 

 

 

 

Soon.

*Suicide theme*

 

 

I never recovered from Adam disappearing on me.
I never recovered from the things Nick said.
I never recovered from the things Joe did.
I never recovered from Gill’s betrayal, and losing her and Sam.
I never recovered from how Hannah treated me.
I never recovered from losing Grampa.
I never recovered from therapy and my attachment to Matt.
I never recovered from being neglected on the first anniversary of my loss.
I never recovered from all the abuse online last year.
I never recovered from the way you treated me.
I never recovered from you ghosting me, like everyone else did.
I never recovered from you blocking me.
I never recovered from Liv taking her own life.
I never recovered from your absence in the wake of that.
I never recovered from losing Chloe and Logan from my life.
I never recovered from losing you.

 

I never recovered.

Not from any of it.

Do you get it now?

Do you understand why I changed?

Do you understand why I’m desperate to end my own life?

I never recovered from any of it. The experiences I had, built up and became too much.

I wasn’t just battling one thing at a time. I was being hit by all of these things over and over again, each time a new loss, a new traumatic event or anything remotely painful occurred.

I can’t recover from any of it. I never will.

And you turning your back on me when you did, that was the terminal moment of my life.

That was the moment I knew I’m destined to take my own life sooner or later.

When I had you I had at least the hope of recovery. I had something worth recovering for. I had the kids. I had someone I thought cared. I had someone who never gave up on me.

But you did.

You gave up on me too.

Now there’s nothing left.

To fight against that mountain of loss and trauma is hard enough.

To have to do it without your best friend by your side is impossible.

To have your best friend jump up and down on top of that mountain, increasing the load, is unbearable.

The worst part is that you never were to understand the layers of trauma and pain I felt.

You could never sympathise, as you didn’t know the mountain of memories and emotions on my shoulders.

You didn’t know the burden I had to carry.

I carried it alone.

I didn’t want to burden you or anyone else.

And somehow I still did.

Even keeping my distance from you, I was still ‘too much’.

You walked away.

In my mind and heart I feel you never thought of me again.

You were happier.

You were free.

You forgot all about me.

You were friends with Sam, with Gill, with Hannah – you replaced me with her.

What a win for them all… to know we’re not friends anymore… that you cut me out.

Eight months… eight months since you blocked me… the first time.

You blocked every way of me connecting with you again.

You moved house, and told me nothing of it.

Can you not see the pain that would cause?

What did I do to deserve all this?

I can’t recover.

I won’t recover.

This is too much.

I have no life to return to if I do recover.

Everything is gone.

Liv is gone. You’re gone. The kids are gone.

Everything has changed.

All the people who were once my friends have grown up and created lives for themselves. You would know – they’re your friends now.

And I’m stuck here. Powerless. Paralysed. Unable to change. Unable to survive. Because you all destroyed me. You all took my trust and my care and crapped all over it. You left me a broken mess on the cold floor. You left me too traumatised to even move anymore.

With you in my life I could see a little light.

Now there’s pitch black.

There’s only the desperate urge to end this life.

There’s silence.

No friends. No connections. Nothing.

Just emptiness and anticipation of death.

You did this to me.

I wish you could’ve understood the weight I carried in my heart and my mind, from all that’s scarred me forever.

I wish you would’ve helped bear the load.

I wish you hadn’t added to the pile.

I remember at therapy, with my attachment to Matt, saying that I knew I was facing another loss, which would add to the pile of loss and pain… the unresolved trauma. I was right. That’s what happened.

A lot has happened since then, to add to that ‘pile’.

You.

Liv.

So much more.

What makes it the worst is I didn’t want any of this.

I didn’t want to lose you.

I mentioned stepping back for my mental health and our friendship.

I never would have blocked you.

You made it permanent.

Why??

Why do you hate me so much?

Do you not understand what you’ve done to me?

Do you honestly want me to kill myself?

Is that it?

Because if not then you’ve gone about everything so utterly wrong.

Do you know that I’ve written you a note for when that time comes…. and something I wanted the kids to know too….God knows how I’ll get it to you, now I don’t know where in the world you live.

But do you really want me to leave this world thinking you mean me harm and hate me? Do you want to have to live with that on your conscience for the rest of your life? That you could’ve sorted things out with me and not pushed me towards this certainty with your cruel abandonment, when I was already breaking under the weight of everything else in the last ten years…

How will you live, knowing you could have done something to prevent this?

I deserved more.

I deserved enough respect to talk to me, and not just abandon me so casually.

Did thirteen years really mean so little to you?

Did I mean so little?

In the last three years a lot has happened…

I had to learn to live in a world with grief in my heart. Real grief. My first loss.

My world changed. I never recovered from that.

I had a breakdown at therapy and went down a slippery slope with my self-harm. I never recovered from that.

I was neglected by everyone… I was isolated whilst experiencing this new grief, and the breakdown of my mental health. I never recovered from that.

I felt you pulling away from me… a long abandonment over about a year. I was right to fear losing you. That fear affected me in ways I never expected. I will never recover from losing you and the kids.

I lost Liv…. five weeks before I was finally set to see her again in person. It would never happen. I’ll never get to talk to her again. I’ll never get over that….. now I want to be with her. I don’t want to exist in this hell of a world, where nothing is right, and nothing is left, and I’m buried under that mountain of hurt and loss. That mountain you stuck your flag in, to claim a victory over me, as you blocked me… taking all the power for yourself to decide when I may talk to you again.

You won.

You defeated me.

Well done.

You were in control.

All the good it’ll do you when I’m gone.

But I feel you don’t care an inch about that.

But let me tell you, from experience…. losing a friend to suicide is one of the most traumatic things you could ever experience…. all the words you never got to say to them…. the questions unanswered…. feeling you could’ve said or done something to stop it happening. It’s a brief moment and they’re gone. You can’t change it. You can’t get them back. You have to live with the burden for the rest of your life. It’s a burden I can’t carry…. not on my own…. not now I’ve lost you too.

But you’ll be alright. You have lots of other friends to help you carry ‘the burden’ of losing me, should you feel anything about it when it happens.

You’ll never have to feel what I feel now.

You’ll never know how alone I’ve felt.

You’ll never know the weight I carried in total isolation.

You’re lucky.

You’ll quickly recover.

You don’t have my illness.

You weren’t screwed over by everyone you ever trusted.

You don’t have my memories.

You’ll survive.

You survived losing me as your friend. You chose it. You’ll survive losing me forever. As far as I know this is it for us forever anyway…. that’s how it feels. So you’ve already adjusted to my absence. It won’t make much difference my being gone.

And you’d better not cry, or come to the funeral – not that I’d have one… nobody would be there.

You could’ve done something… all you had to do was care. All you had to do was put our friendship ahead of your pride. All you had to do was talk to me.

You just had to not walk away from me at the lowest point of my life and treat me like I was nothing.

But then I guess I really am nothing.

If I was anything to you then you would’ve stayed and fought for me, like I tried to do for you.

You wouldn’t have given up.

You wouldn’t have run away.

Everyone runs away.

It’s the biggest sign they never cared.

Nobody ever cared.

I was just a game to them all.

A game of ‘power’.

I’m done being a pawn in a game of ‘control’…. simply used to boost the ego or get something.

I may not deserve more.

I will never have more.

But I’m done.

I won’t be used anymore.

I won’t be ignored anymore.

I won’t be mistreated anymore.

I won’t BE anymore.

Soon.

 

 

 

* Just expressing feelings. I do feel all this, but it’s not imminent,
so nobody worry about me…. not that people tend to…*

Burdened.

*Strong suicide theme*

 

 

My head is packed full of noise at the moment and I can’t tell what’s what. I don’t know how I feel, what I think or what to do. I don’t even know how to begin unravelling the chaos inside. I feel like I need to write it out but I don’t know where to start. How on earth do I explain everything I’m experiencing? It’s not possible.

It’s been a tough week and nobody even knows about it. With World Suicide Prevention Week, it’s triggered a lot of memories and emotions surrounding the loss of my friend to suicide four months ago. Seeing all the posts / tweets about suicide has been upsetting. Oddly enough the thing that upset me the most was people saying ‘suicide isn’t selfish…. those who think it is are the selfish ones’. I thought, how lovely it must be to see things so simplistically. I have news for people – we’re ALL selfish. Every single one of us. If we’re not then we’re not living life correctly. We all think about things from our perspective. Have these people ever really considered what they’d be like if they lost someone to suicide? They have this view that you shouldn’t make someone’s suicide all about you. I’m sorry but it is about me. It’s about everyone her life touched. Yes she was in pain and couldn’t go on. It’s about her pain and her tragic end to her life. But the moment someone completes suicide it ceases to be about that person anymore and their pain….. it becomes a new wave of pain for everyone else. To say otherwise is to say we shouldn’t grieve the loss of them…. and to not grieve is to deny ever loving them.

Some people have the view that the grief and sadness someone feels at losing someone to suicide, cannot compare to the pain someone feels to want to end their life. I disagree. I don’t think those people can legitimately say that unless they have experienced both. I have experienced both. I am experiencing both right now. Very often those preaching about ‘not judging’ suicidal people and calling those bereaved by suicide ‘selfish’, are people who only have one side of the story… quite often their own experiences of suicidal feelings / attempts on their own lives. They tell others not to judge unless they have been there, whilst judging those who are grieving the loss of someone to suicide. They haven’t been there, they cannot understand how it feels.

I do not think my friend was genuinely and deliberately selfish. I know suicidal feelings like the back of my hand. I understand it. I know it’s part of a mental illness. A symptom that claims lives. It’s something that robs you of your ability to think and see clearly. It distorts reality and makes you feel and believe you are a burden, nobody cares and the world would be better without you. It is an illness. But it can still be seen as selfish. It doesn’t mean the person was selfish. They likely weren’t in their right mind. But it is perfectly normal and natural for loved ones to see it as selfish. I’ll tell you why, from my own feelings in regards to my friend:

1. She didn’t give me the opportunity to help her. If I had known how she really felt, I would’ve done anything for her. But she denied me the chance to save her life. And I have to live with that forever.
2. She didn’t give me a goodbye. She just went. I had no closure. I had to make that closure by going to her funeral to say my goodbye. But she didn’t respect me enough to say goodbye or that she was sorry for leaving me. She abandoned me.
3. She knew how alone I was and what I’d been through. She left me with nobody and nothing, and I’ve now completely shut down and closed off from everyone.
4. I was due to see her five weeks later – we were looking forward to a concert together and finally seeing each other again. She left me with nobody to go with initially… I had to go round begging people to go with me. I also had to attend the event whilst grieving… having gone to her funeral the week before. I never got to see her again. It felt like I was worthless…. she couldn’t hold on long enough to see me. It felt like a ‘rejection’ of me. It felt like she didn’t want to see me. Like she didn’t care about me.

These points would make some on Twitter bark at me that I’m being selfish, making it about me and not caring about her suffering. I would totally lose it at those people were they to do that. My point is that I am grieving. It’s perfectly acceptable for me to have these thoughts and feelings. They’re not often talked about as we have to appear a certain way, to avoid ‘stigma’. But those who have lost someone to suicide are faced with stigma too. They’re made to feel guilty for having the sorts of views I have just listed. They’re made to feel bad about their anger and for blaming the person. Ultimately I know her suicide was not about me in the slightest – it was about the torment in her own mind. I know that. But I haven’t reached that point in my grief yet – it’s only been four damn months! It’s a process. It takes time. Right now it feels like something done to me. I shouldn’t be shamed for feeling this way, especially by people who have no clue what it’s like to lose someone to suicide.

This last week has taught me I’m fighting the wrong battle. I no longer associate myself with the ‘mental health community’ and fighting stigma against mental illness no matter what. I will fight against it, but when it crosses over into stigma against others who are suffering (e.g. those grieving due to suicide), I will side with the bereaved. I know how suicidal thoughts feel. At this moment I want to end my life. I don’t want to exist anymore. I do not see me being here in a year. That’s why I’m reluctant to buy a ticket for myself to see my favourite band on my birthday next year… what’s the point? I won’t be here then. I know suicidal feelings too well. I know what hell I exist in right now. But what gives me the right to say that what I feel now is worse than what my family would feel if I took my own life? You cannot compare pain like that. That in itself is selfish… thinking your suffering is worse than someone else’s would be.

Suicide spreads. Those who lose someone to suicide are at risk of trying to take their own lives too. They can be left traumatised. They can develop a mental illness as a result, and end up down the same path. And having people say not to make someone’s suicide about you, is the worst thing you can do. It tells those people to shove it down, not talk about it and this will only compound their own struggles with mental illness. Suicide is a silent killer and many die as a result of not talking about how they truly feel…. so for mental health advocates to invalidate people’s feelings and grief and telling them to say nothing, and not be open about how they really feel, it’s damaging and they’re perpetuating the silence of suicide.

 

 

Those who talk about such things probably don’t know what grief feels like. How it tears your world apart and leaves a hole in your heart. That is just ‘normal’ grief. Grief from suicide is more complex and traumatic than any other loss. It’s a known fact. That’s not to diminish grief from other causes. All loss is traumatic and the worst pain you can imagine. But unless you’ve been affected by someone’s suicide, you have no idea how that feels.

Personally as well, if you haven’t lost someone to suicide then you don’t know what that’s like… to have to cope with that whilst having BPD, where your emotions are more intense. And throw into the mix already feeling suicidal yourself…. and having no friends left, so having to deal with it all on your own. Or rather not deal with it on your own.

How can I then be expected to not make her death about ME…? The point is whilst suicide is not intentionally selfish it does have consequences for other people. I remember someone even saying online before the funeral, if you’re coming then don’t make it all about you, and act like the ‘best friend’. I let that go, on accounts of them grieving. But I took that to heart. That really pierced down to the bone. That was another instance of ‘don’t make it about you’ – i.e. don’t be ‘selfish’. I had no intention of it. And it hurt that it could even be suggested that I would. It may not have been aimed at me, but as I was ‘uninvited’ it felt like it was a pointed comment. I felt they were trying to put me off going. Like I wasn’t welcome. I wasn’t ever going to act like the ‘best friend’ – I never was her best friend. She was the BEST friend I’ve ever had, in the sense that nobody could be better than she was. And I did know her since she was seventeen at least…. she was a huge part of my life, even if we only met up in person once. There’s a gaping hole in my life without her. Nobody has a right to deny that for me. It just felt as though I was being told I didn’t matter to her, so don’t pretend that I did. And when my whole issue in the past year had been that I felt I didn’t matter to anyone, and she was the only one who ever cared about me, that damn hurt. It was torture. I let it go, as I said, but months later it still stabs me in the heart when I think of it. I went to that funeral to show her family she was loved. To show support for them as I felt it’s what my friend would’ve wanted. She may never have expected for me to go to her funeral, but that’s what friends do. That’s how much she mattered to me. I wouldn’t have done that for just anyone. Our friendship mattered…. she wouldn’t want people to make me feel I was nothing to her. I know that. I went to a new place completely alone, for a couple of hours to say goodbye. I had to see her one more time. I never got to see her a month later as planned. She denied me the chance to see her and say goodbye. So I had to go. It was horrible to have to do. It still vividly haunts me today. But it was necessary. I didn’t make it about me. I popped in and ducked out just as swiftly. Yet I beat myself up for weeks afterwards, feeling guilty for intruding. She would hate that I felt that way. I’m not who people may have thought I was. I didn’t make it about me.

But now I’m left entirely alone to survive, I think I’m allowed to make this loss about me. It’s not just about me. But it has impacted on my life, and I shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for admitting that. I have nobody to talk to now. I’m invisible. She always made me feel visible. She’d always remind me what a good person I was. Now I can’t believe I am as I have nobody to help me believe that. There’s no permanence with what’s wrong with me. Sentiments only exist as long as they are said. She’ll never say those words again, and there’s nobody else to say them. So to me it doesn’t exist. I’m not a good person. I don’t know what I’m doing half the time. And I don’t matter to anyone now. And she’s not here to reassure me otherwise.

Her taking her own life has left me wanting to take my own. Feeling it is a certainty now. I see no way of recovering anymore. I’ve lost the two oldest friendships I’ve ever had, both of them early this year. There’s nothing left for me now. To start with I had people telling me what she would want for me… and that she wouldn’t want me to do that… but if she did it, then there’s no reason I shouldn’t. The only thing that stops me from doing it, is thinking how it would affect my family….. the belief that it IS selfish is the one thing that stops me from taking my own life. So I think it’s actually DANGEROUS for mental health advocates to send out a message that it’s somehow courageous and selfless to take your own life…. because you think you’re doing everyone a favour, not being a burden to them…. this is dangerous information to put out there. There needs to be balance.

 

 

I think people who are suicidal need to be told they’re not bad people for feeling that way or for attempting to end their lives…. BUT they need to hear the reality. I understand it, I really do…. I feel like the biggest burden to everyone right now. It’s why I isolated myself last year and this year. So often I think about ending my life to unburden other people – but this is based on distorted thinking….

No matter how much of a burden you think you are with your illness, you are NOT a burden to your loved ones. They would rather you were here, asking for help, and being in their lives, than to never be able to see or talk to you again. The thing that burdens people the most is ending your life. That is the heaviest burden known to man. I have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my days, however many that may be. Her family have to carry that burden forever.

I am mentally ill. I feel suicidal. And I am carrying the weight of suicide by my one remaining friend. I don’t feel it can get worse than that. I have to live with that loss forever. This doesn’t encourage me to get better. It makes me want to die because the burden is too much to carry on my own, but that’s where I am in my life now because of her, and because of my best friend who turned her back on me a couple of months prior to my other friend dying. I have no reason to recover.

So suicide does impact on other people. And in that way it can be viewed as ‘selfish’. And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with feeling that, if you are bereaved by suicide. I think people who have no clue of suicidal feelings, OR losing someone to suicide, and just sit on a train complaining about being late because of a ‘jumper’ – that’s wrong. Those people should be challenged. But when people are fighting stigma against the suicidal among us, they ought to remember that some of us are grieving and grief brings out all sorts of emotions, and beliefs. There may come a day when I defend my friend and say suicide is NOT selfish at all. I am not there yet, because it’s only been four months.

But right now it is unintentionally selfish. Some people take their own lives to unburden others. They think they’re helping other people by doing it. But a lot of the time people want to end their lives just to end their pain. Everything else goes out the window. That’s why people believe it is selfish, because they think we’re only thinking of ourselves and our pain, and not considering those we’d leave behind – and sometimes that’s probably true – we probably do forget about them and their potential pain. Or we think they’ll get over it. Or that they don’t care enough to grieve. And sometimes we do think of those we’d leave behind, but that thought isn’t enough to survive what we’re experiencing inside. So ultimately the thoughts of ‘self’ win.

It’s okay to be selfish. It’s okay to feel that suicide is selfish, but not think badly of the person themselves. I know that’s hard to comprehend. But you can think something is selfish yet is not a bad thing. Look, people think I’m selfish for my grieving process and for ‘making it about me’….. and I think those people who judge me for things like I’m writing here, they too are selfish. Because they’re thinking about themselves – their own opinions…. and they’re intolerant of a different view. They don’t stop to question the reason I might have this view… why I might be upset by people saying ‘suicide isn’t selfish’. It’s not a black and white case of me thinking that therefore I’m an ignorant, judgemental prick. But there are genuinely people who would read this post and think that about me. But the REASON I’m upset by that statement is because I have personally lost someone to suicide, therefore I know how it feels. I have conflicting views about suicide. It’s very confusing for me, and it’s a part of grief. So having people tell me it’s wrong to feel a certain way, is damaging in my journey to healing from loss. I’m not one of those ignorant people who don’t know what it feels like. I know perfectly well how it feels. Exactly four years to the day before my friend took her own life, I considered jumping off a bridge. It was the closest I had come to doing something like that.

So I know all about it. I’m also feeling the most hopeless and helpless I ever have. I’m strongly considering suicide myself. I haven’t quite reached that point where anyone needs to immediately worry. But I have an unhealthy obsession with not existing anymore. That’s why reading endless tweets about suicide was very triggering for me.

All these stories about ‘It really DOES get better… look at me now’…. they all felt empty. It may well get better for a lot of people, who have lives to return to…. but I feel like the exception. That’s what I felt when watching a programme about how to help people who are suicidal. I felt all those suggestions would work for someone else but not me. I felt people would care and be there to save other people, but not me. I felt like others can be saved, but I am the exception. I felt dead inside watching that programme. I feel it’s too late for me to be helped. No help can bring back what I’ve lost. I have no support around me anymore. The safety net I once had has morphed into the noose around my neck. The two friends I had left, who could have saved me from this pain and this certain fate, they abandoned me in one way or another. They are the reason I don’t want to exist anymore. I have nobody else to catch me. Everyone else willingly watched me drown or just didn’t even notice I was drowning. I didn’t exist to any of them. So I’ve cut everyone out now. I’m on my own.

I used to see my Godchildren as a part of my future…. it was the one thing I was certain of – that I’d always be in their lives and watch them grow. But when my best friend turned her back on me at my lowest point, she took them with her. So any hope for a future I had, it’s gone now. I’ve not seen them for over a year and half. The bond I had with my God-daughter is broken, along with my heart. I don’t think I’ll ever recover from the pain of that lost bond. My Godson has started school now apparently. My friend moved house apparently…. all of this happened without her telling me anything about it. She cut me out of her life well over a year ago. It was a long drawn-out abandonment and it destroyed me. I have no reason for living anymore. I have too many traumatic experiences from the last couple of years. I have nothing to aim for. And even if I could conjure up some new friends – it takes a long time to cultivate the sorts of friendships I’ve lost this year. And I never will be able to, because I will not trust anyone again, thanks to my former best friend. I will be expecting abandonment and rejection from everyone I meet now. If my best friend of over thirteen years can give up on me because of my mental illness, then nobody else will stick around. They’ll only tolerate me if I pretend to be okay. As long as I never show my reality people will humour me, at best. I used to hide my mental illness from everyone. After my breakdown at therapy two years ago, it let a lot out, and I could no longer hide how I felt. The more ill I got publicly, the less people wanted to do with me, including her. Once the mask of wellness slipped and she saw the true face of depression and BPD, she didn’t want to know me anymore. That’s how it feels. So my self-worth is non-existent now. I don’t believe anyone will ever truly like me. I know for a fact that no man will ever see me as attractive ever again. So I’ve accepted I’m going to die an old spinster…. assuming I survive that long, which I highly doubt right now.

I just feel too broken. Too traumatised. Too alone. I’m a lost cause. I’m feeling too hopeless, that I’m not even doing things I’m meant to be doing. I’ve not approached anyone for help yet… because I don’t believe I can be helped. This feels too big an obstacle for anyone to help me. I need grief counselling… but the problem is not just grief, it’s the mess that’s left behind – my mental illness, my grief, it’s all wrapped up together. Being abandoned by everyone… that affects my mental health and my grief…. my grief affects my mental health and vice versa, and then people abandon me because of it…..which makes me paranoid, which pushes people away…. makes me feel unsupported in my grief…. more mentally ill……. want to die….. see no future – seriously when I picture it, it’s black. There’s literally NOTHING in my future now. Because of abandonment. Because of grief and loss. Trauma and broken trust. Being made to feel worthless and not deserving of a goodbye or a conversation from my best friend. If she didn’t value me who the fuck is going to in this life? And if nobody values me and I’ll be made to feel this shit forever, then I don’t want to live a minute more. What have I done to deserve this?? I feel enraged about it. And then I beat myself up for it, thinking of course I deserved everything that’s happened. I’m an awful person. Another reason to die. But I can’t die, because it’s selfish and would hurt my family. My family are all I have to keep me alive. And even they don’t know how I feel at the moment. I can’t talk to them about any of it. This is how alone I am. This is the most I’ve talked about my feelings in a long time. And my mind’s telling me I shouldn’t have done it. I should keep it all in and let it build until I end my life.

 

 

Mental health services have changed so much in the last ten years, since I did DBT. They won’t help me until I’ve been through ‘lesser services’. But they all are about ‘recovery’ – you have to want to get better and put the work in. The trouble is I’m beyond that now. They left me too long and too much has happened since. I don’t ‘want’ to get better….. because I cannot see that possibility anymore. It’s impossible to focus on ‘recovery’ when you cannot see the point in it. When you just can’t exist in this life anymore. When no matter what work you do on yourself, your circumstances will still be the same… you’ll still be utterly alone at the end of any work you do. You’ll still be grieving and have lost everything. You’ll still have wasted years of your life and be a failure. What is the point? And people won’t suddenly treat you better than they have. I’ve been trodden on too many times now, I feel it’s my lot in life. And I don’t want to participate in that anymore. I want it over with. I honestly feel even DBT won’t help me at this point. I have no clue what would – because my problem is not just my mental health or that I’m grieving… it’s the people I had around me…. you can’t force people to care about you. I have nobody to care about me anymore. You can’t replace that. And without that, I can’t recover. This world is what is killing me. It’s the reason I can’t live in it. The people. My irrelevance. And everything people have put me through in the last few years. You can’t erase that amount of emotional trauma. And I can’t live in this world with all of that inside me. So tell me…… who do I turn to, to help me with that?

Bereavement counselling won’t touch it. Mental health services will see my mental health as complicated by grief, therefore signpost me to bereavement counselling. There is nobody in this world who can help with the scale of this problem. And even if there was… I wouldn’t believe they can help me. I won’t believe that I can be saved. How do you help someone like that? How?? I’ll always believe people will give up on me, if I don’t seem to be ‘engaging’ with their attempts to get me to help myself. That’s what it’s all about – I have to help myself. That’s what services are like now…. they don’t help you. They help you to help yourself. So what would they do with me? Write me off as the lost cause I feel I am? Or would they overcompensate with nauseating positivity…. ? I’ve had that before. You just feel misunderstood and invalidated. Either way I end up feeling a failure and a burden… like I’m wasting their time. I’m not even in hell anymore. I’m below that. I can fully understand why my friend made the choice she did four months ago, if this is the sort of thing she felt.

I have nothing and nobody to lift me out of this. There is no joy in life. No hope. Nothing. I really want to fall asleep and not wake up. I can’t exist in my head anymore. I’ve had enough.

And that’s without the political situation unfolding in this country now too. I don’t exist to anyone in my life… I’m invisible…. and now Parliament want to treat me as though I’m invisible too…. just overturn my vote, deny me an election and rob me of the one achievement in recent times – winning that referendum. I won’t say much on politics now, but it just destroys me that MPs are treating me just the same as everyone else. Like I don’t matter. I actually tweeted to the Prime Minister the other day, admitting that Remainer MPs are making me even more suicidal than usual. I’m usually quite restrained on Twitter, but that’s going now. I’m beyond the end of my tether. And the political situation is worsening my mental health at a dangerous time…. they’ve created an environment too toxic for people like me to live in… another reason to opt out of life. I just feel the odds are stacked against me, to survive. And I’ve lost the will to care.

 

 

 

A Birthday Reflection.

As my birthday’s here I thought I’d take a minute to reflect on this last year of my life…. there have been some great moments in it, which I will talk about in a minute… but all those things are overshadowed by the negatives. This has without a doubt been one of the worst years of my life. I don’t want a birthday. It certainly won’t be a ‘happy’ one, let’s put it that way. I’d love to think that starting a new year of my life, I could begin again and have a better year going forward… sadly I don’t expect this to be the case.

I’m so isolated. I’ve lost my best friend, my Godchildren, my only other friend is dead, and so is my granddad. And looking back at who I used to be I feel nothing but disgust and shame, and longing to be a child again. I hate who I’ve become. Everything feels wildly out of control and unstable.

I remember after 2016 when members of my family were struck by various illnesses and my granddad was in hospital for six weeks, and almost died… at the New Year, thinking ‘This next year will be better… it has to be’… but I knew it wouldn’t be. I knew it would be the year my granddad would pass away. We’d watched him deteriorate for months. So there was the knowledge it would happen. In that way it could never be a ‘better year’. I thought 2018 could be a better one, but my granddad was still gone…. and people forgot. My friends neglected and abandoned me. I was abused online by left-wingers on three separate occasions. Had my voice shut down on every platform effectively. Fell out with my best friend. Was suicidal all year. Surely 2019 had to be better – I had so many fun things planned for this year…. no. The final betrayal and abandonment by my former best friend. And my other friend died by suicide. My mental health has smashed on the floor. My meltdowns are more public. I can’t control the demons inside anymore. I’m hanging on by a thread, living from event to event, wishing it all away… trying to get to the next goal and the next…. as though I’m trying to reach somewhere or something… only I don’t know what it is. An end??

So no… I don’t think this next year of my life will be better. If anything it will be purely about survival and recovery. It will be hard and lonely. No matter what good things may possibly be in store for me, nothing will change the fact my friend is dead and how broken and upset I am about that. Nothing will change the fact I’ve lost my best friend and my Godchildren. Nothing will change the fact my granddad isn’t here anymore. And nothing can change the past or make people care about me.

 

But anyway… in terms of what’s happened in the last year of my life…. it’s been the first year of my life where I haven’t seen the person I viewed as my best friend. This next one looks to be the first without even talking to them. But the events that have happened are:

•  I had my last MRI & was discharged, & had my neurology appointment.
• Was referred to CMHT, who initially rejected the referral, but saw me in January – directing me elsewhere first.
• Westlife reunited and announced their tour!
• Saw Dara O’Briain – wasn’t a great night due to my mental health & Brexit jokes.
• Looked after the gerbils at least three times.
• Went to the closing night of Take That musical ‘The Band’.
•  Went and saw Boyzone on their farewell tour.
• Went to the Leave Means Leave rally in London – great atmosphere.
•  Walked 50 miles in 50 days for Parkinson’s UK.
•  Went on my own to a new place – Brighton… for a heart-wrenching reason though.
•  Went to see Take That for the first time – outdoor gig, close to B stage.
•  Went and saw Westlife in the front row for the first time ever. Was amazing!
•  Two of my colleagues lost their fight against that bastard, cancer.
•  Samarathon  – 26.2 miles throughout July for Samaritans.

 

So a lot has happened…. good / bad. It’s interesting to look back at it like this… but it’s hard to feel anything about the good stuff. Like I said, it’s overshadowed by losing my two oldest friendships of 13+ years in the last few months, and the resulting grief. Being left with nothing is excruciating. I’m struggling to hold on. I’m so detached from life now and every minute that isn’t numbness, is pain. But I’m trying so hard.

I’m keeping to myself a lot more now, in the last couple of weeks. I’m hoping to set myself the goal of walking a marathon a month, to keep me active and better my mental health – I’ll be doing it purely for health reasons and that feeling of achievement, and not doing it for charity, as I failed to raise any money the last time, which negatively impacted on my mental health. It’ll just be for me. I’ll be focusing on getting the help I need, and looking into bereavement counselling. I’m also working on a new blog which will be more informative and helpful to others hopefully – less negative and personal. It’ll still be about my experience of mental illness, but hopefully more constructive than destructive.

My aim in the next year is to lose weight, to get well and to stay alive. Anything else is a plus. I hope to expect less of people and to accept I’m on my own, and to be able to cope with that reality better.

I’m looking forward to a holiday at some point, doing what I love most.

I may be turning a year older now, but I’m really only a day older. I’m still the same person. There are no miracles. I’m still dealing with the same stuff today that I was yesterday. Age is just a number, especially when you’re living from minute to minute, trying to hang on. Same sh*t different day and all that… the years spill over into each other. I have a lot to work on with myself… I need to find myself again and learn to like myself again. I have to do this alone. I know that now. And I’m going to try my best.

It may not be a ‘happy birthday’ but it’s just a day like any other. I think sometimes we can ruin ourselves by building these days up to be something they’re not, and thinking we have to act happy. I plan to tolerate it and carry on the fight on the other side. That fight is more important than just a day and a new age.

 

Hope people enjoy the long weekend coming up. Speak to you soon.

 

xxxx

 

 

 

 

I’m Sorry.

*Strong suicide theme – don’t read if feeling unsafe yourself, please*

 

I keep hearing Liv say to keep writing, and that my blog was good for her as my friend, to help understand how I’m feeling. That I should use it however I want to… it’s my space etc. – but I’m seeing other bloggers and I’m thinking how positively they write. I feel ashamed of my blog. I feel it’s so negative. I wish so much I could be positive and helpful to others.

I’m just struggling so much with life myself. And the reality is I have absolutely nobody I can talk to about that. So I write on my blog. I know those in my life won’t read it. The only one who ever did was Liv. She said she always read my posts. I miss her so much right now. Again, I have nobody to talk to about that. My doctor is the only person I can be honest with about everything, and I can only see her once a month.

I just feel the walls closing in around me at the moment. Even having told the doctor things nobody else knows about how dark things are for me, they’ve only become much darker since my last appointment a week ago. I’m scared where this is going to end. I’ve never felt more alone or scared in my whole life. Everything is a complete mess. There is nothing good left in life. There is no ‘life’. It’s just pain and grief… so much loss…. and just pure despair.

The only people I want and need to talk to, are the same people who are either gone from this world or abandoned me for being ill. My heart is so broken by it all. I wish it would stop beating. The only people who even notice my existence are my closest family. To be born into a world where only they would notice me not being here, is to never have really existed. It’s such a waste. To have made no difference to anyone’s life…. not a positive one anyway. I hate myself so much. I hate other people. I hate everyone who just threw me away like I was nothing. How can I ever recover from what they all did to me?

When Liv took her life, it was too much to bear. I got in touch with my former best friend who abandoned me, as I just couldn’t take having lost them both. It made no difference. I even got told by her husband it doesn’t mean things going back to normal….. just like she had painfully said to me that nothing would ever be the same now. I don’t understand why not – all I did was be mentally unwell last year…. how does that warrant treating me differently from now on? It’s not my fault. Why am I being blamed and persecuted for being unwell?? It doesn’t matter how much pain I’m in, how ill I am or if I didn’t even exist anymore. She’s decided I’m the villain in all of this and I deserve to be punished by her withholding friendship from me. She’s killed me.

And Liv’s gone. Nothing can change that. Nothing can make that alright. I have to carry that with me forever. I feel angry, because things were hard enough for me without this. But then I’m also angry that even with this added to the mix, nobody cares, not even my former best friend. Nobody can see how close to the edge I am… it’s almost as if they don’t want to acknowledge that suicide can get passed down the chain. Even people without mental illness can feel suicidal after losing someone to it. I was suicidal before losing her. Enough things had broken me and made me want to give on living. But I’ve talked about my suicidal feelings too much and done nothing about it, so people don’t believe me anymore. That’s why I’m not talking to people anymore. What’s the point? Nobody takes me seriously anymore. Nobody understands or cares. I know the occasional person on my blog might, and I’m so grateful to those people for noticing me. But I need people in my life to see me and save me. I’ve given up on it though. They’d have to read my blog to hear anything more from me. Any they don’t care enough to do that. And if they did then they don’t care enough to reach out to me and ask if I’m okay. If my former friend didn’t want me to end my life then she should’ve thought about that before abandoning me at a time like this.

I feel so alone. So lost. So entirely destroyed. I can’t be fixed anymore. I mean it. Nothing can make this okay ever again. I feel sick all the time, and numb from the pain. Not numb enough. Things were extremely dark before Liv died but I could still imagine light at the end of the tunnel one day…. the tiniest bit of light. Even if I couldn’t see how to reach it.  But now…… I’m sealed in a dark tomb. I can’t get out. I see nothing. I’m struggling to breathe under the weight of darkness and nothingness and utter pain, and nobody will reach out a hand and help me out. Nobody will show me the way towards the light again. I wouldn’t believe it existed or that I could ever find it again, even if they did, but nobody’s even tried. They’re all just leaving me to rot in that tomb, all alone. I just want the darkness to kill me now. I’m as good as dead and buried already and everyone treats me as though I’m a ghost. So why can’t it all just end? I’ve had enough.

 

And that’s what I mean about feeling ashamed of this blog. Because instead of breaking stigma, helping others and showing my journey to recovery, I’m basically documenting my downfall into nothingness. I’m laying bare my breakdown. And what’s killing me right now is that Liv isn’t here to guide me. I just need her so much right now, and she’s not here and never will be again. And I don’t even have anyone else to fill that void. I have nothing and nobody. It hurts too much. She’s the only person I need to talk to right now. I don’t know what to do.

I’m sorry. I’ll stop writing here. I can’t see anymore, having cried writing the whole damn thing. I don’t know the purpose of this. I just had to let a little of my pain out somehow. And no, I don’t feel better for it. But I’ll do what I can to solve that for tonight. Don’t want anyone to worry about me imminently… not that I believe they would. I’m sorry, I hope I haven’t triggered anyone. I was going to switch to a new blog – a positive one.  A fresh start. But I can’t be positive at the moment. Maybe I should truly suffer in silence… total silence… I don’t want to upset others with my feelings.

Hope everyone’s okay. Keep safe. I’ll try my best to as well. It’s just becoming harder every day to do, especially feeling so alone.

xxxx