Why I didnt tell you...

Dear Friends and Family,

When I tried to commit suicide many of you had no idea I had ever suffered from depression, let alone that I had been having recurring bouts of it since I was a young teenager.

I didn’t talk about it much, I had seen many of you suffer yourselves I spent many hours on the phone with some of you trying to provide a positive outlook or a listening ear, this always seemed to help me feel better about my own situation and take my mind off things.

Why didn’t I tell you? Why didn’t I share my struggles or ask for help?

•   I didn’t want to burden you. You had enough going on in your own lives without having to worry about the likes of me.
• I didn’t want to lessen the validity of your situations by interjecting my own.

• My ‘reasons’ for wanting to die felt invalid. I had a good upbringing, loving husband, beautiful children, friends. I had no good ‘reason’. Why would someone as lucky as me want to kill themselves? How selfish, weak & pathetic.

• I hated the thought that people would think I was attention seeking. Yes, the stigma surrounding suicide as an attention seeking behaviour is still huge and I didn’t want anyone to think I would try and get attention this way when all I really wanted to do was hide away and be quietly miserable in my own little bubble.

• I genuinely wanted to die and I didn’t want to be stopped; nobody could change my mind, I had decided and that was that and the thought of being locked in a psych ward as an alternative terrified me beyond belief.

• I didn’t want anyone thinking that they could have done something to stop me, that they were somehow responsible. If people didn’t know, surely they couldn’t feel guilty about not preventing it.

In the end when it happened, you all reacted to the situation in different ways. Some of you whom I hadn’t seen in years or even spoken to apart from the quick obligatory ‘Merry Christmas’ or ‘Happy Birthday’ phone calls appeared at my beside having driven and flown hours from interstate. I didn’t expect that, and at the time couldn’t understand why you had come all that way when you could have simply phoned to find out how I was doing.

Why did you care? I couldn't understand that it was because you loved me. I mean, why would you?

One of you with whom I was very close no longer talks to me, in your eyes I made the decision to leave you and your family without even asking for your help first, and that angered and saddened you. I understand why you feel that way, I do. I genuinely have no hard feelings towards you about it and I will treasure the memories of the times we spent together for the rest of my life.

My kind sister, I hadn't seen you in years yet you stayed with me over-night when I was in the ICU, you slept on two uncomfortable chairs as a makeshift bed and tried to calm me and distract me when I was delusional and paranoid that the doctors and nursing staff were trying to do experiments on me for some weird hospital reality TV show. Your presence really helped and I am so thankful.

There were my four special friends who drove an hour and a half to visit me three times a week in the psych ward after working / studying full days, you brought me new pyjamas, chocolate covered blueberries and the gift of unconditional love. Each of you suffering quietly from your own mental health conditions, it must have been horribly confronting to sit in that ward, but you never let that slip you just smiled, listened and told stories to cheer me up.

My amazing family members who quietly and generously offered financial support so that my husband could take four months off of work and visit me every single day that I was in the mental health unit and then be home to care for me after. I am so very grateful and am working towards repaying you, even though you said not to worry about it.

For a while after I got out of hospital I decided to be honest. I let you know if I was having a bad week or month and it hurt me to see the concern in your eyes, the fear that I might ‘do it again’ the barrage of phone calls “just checking in”. But after a while it feels like old news, "yeah I’m still depressed, no there’s no reason, medication side effects suck, yes I will let you know if you can do anything." Rinse, repeat, broken record.

So I slowly stopped telling people the truth and started saying “Fine thanks! What have you been up to?” Again instead. Over time, the concern melted off your faces and was replaced with care free smiles and ease of conversation again, you no longer walked on egg shells and I stopped feeling like a guilty leper. Now when I am with you, I can forget my issues for a while, concentrate on what’s happening in your world without the burden of guilt that I might be causing you pain. This distraction can be life saving.

 I do of course need to talk about it though, it is the only way I can process things. So I write stories, poetry and songs, I listen to podcasts, I blog, I tweet and I find my mental health support in online communities that are full of people like me, people who just GET ME, people whom I can explain my late night suicidal ideations to without judgement as they have been there too, they understand what it is like to have the most AMAZING week of your life and then want nothing more than to die the next.

Those people help me through the hard days so that I can be there for you on good ones as a smiling, bubbly friend/ daughter/ sister, ready to listen and to help. They give me the opportunity to feel normal all the time, even when things are at their most awful. That may sound weird but it’s just a different kind of normal from the one you are used to.  

So everyone in my 'real life', thank you for being there when I needed you and while I am sorry I didn’t talk to you before, I guess I am only sorry because it made you feel bad. Know that it was always my choice to hide it and not your lack of observation or care. 

While I no longer tell you what is going on in my sometimes dark and clouded mind, I just need you to understand that it’s not because I don’t trust you, but because I can only survive by separating my worlds, it gives me freedom from myself, it’s the way I have always coped and it’s just who I am.