Letters to Myself #1

Mental Health Awareness Week begins on May 11th.

I've done a lot of things to raise mental health profiles during this period over the last few years, but the one thing I've never been capable of achieving is an honest prose-based description of what my personal mental health issues entail. Next week we are going to attempt to do just that. Here's a warmup, so you know whether to tune in or click past as a result.

I will refer to childhood trauma, suicidal thoughts, depression and anxiety.
Please consider your own needs and act accordingly.

I'm sure someone else has done this before, has a book written or a blog filled from reflections on their own frailty. Sometimes I wish there were someone I could simply tell stuff too and it not matter, that the weight of what really matters in one moment could be shared. Except, more often than not, there is nobody. When I need to talk to someone, in this always-on world, all I find is silence.

Then it occurs to me that maybe some people simply don't need moments like this: they get on with it, they deal with the issues, they rationalise the chaos into something meaningful and useful. How other people deal with pain, what they do to silence it, or numb it's potency or simply pretend it doesn't exist... some days, nothing works. Trust me, I have tried a great many things.

I remember the last time I felt like this and know here is progress, that this shade of blackness has not existed before. There is value and depth and importance in this life that has been built. Purpose and determination remain front and centre. Rejection is a natural and essential part of the process, so why is it that it eats away at me so specifically? The answer for that is here too.

Time helps everything heal.

There's a Thing tonight I'm supposed to go to. I can't face it, not today. I want to tell people that the black hole of my anger has opened again and they'll want to assuage it, remind me of all the great things that have happened, ask me how can I feel negatively when so much good is happening to me. Some won't understand. The people who do will nod, and I will be grateful for their silence.

I make these paragraphs exactly five lines deep on my screen because it is the habits that keep me sane. I am happy when nobody is looking. Having to tell people how well I am doing on days when my counterfeit outlook is strangling me to unconsciousness is not fun and really, I don't want to be here doing this. Except, inevitably it happens. Tattoo a trigger warning on my forehead.

The biggest problem I have in my life has always been pretending these moments don't happen, and then hiding them away. I write letters to friends asking them to help but they cannot because their own lives are too hard to manage, and it then hits me that the only way this ever gets any better is if I am honest, and open, and truthful, so they know too that they are not alone. We all have holes to fix.

Sometimes I help people best when I walk away and fix myself first.