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.

The Facade of Living

Underneath the small talk, smiling hellos and comments about the weather lies my true self, the one I feverishly hide from the real world. People don’t want to hear about pain and suffering, they don’t want to know about the broken dreams and confused realities that haunt me. They want to know that I am “fine, thanks for asking”.

In my village I was seen as the girl who was caring and thoughtful but could sometimes be a bit too talkative, over the top, loud and annoying. I became involved in EVERY committee in the small town and surprisingly there are a lot of them. They puzzled because although I worked full time and had 4 children I didn’t appear to need food or sleep and then one day I suddenly disappeared off the radar for a month and returned more subdued and without proper explanation. 

When I got out of hospital for that manic episode, the longest and worst depression of my life followed and it hit me like a brick. I pretended I was fine for months, until I couldn’t.

My 2015 suicide attempt was a huge shock to all but a small handful of my closest family and friends. Most people had no idea I had ever suffered from depression. Many people still don’t know, I live in a place where stigma is still very real and I keep things like that on a need to know basis.

Even the people who say they want to be there for me through thick and thin, the ones who open their own hearts and souls to me can’t be expected to hear the inner workings of my mind day in day out. It’s not like I have a one off problem with a colleague that I can vent about and after some stellar words of wisdom from a mate it will simply go away again, this is chronic, this is for life.

Mental health is so often compared with physical, visible issues; yet unlike a broken leg it doesn’t go away after six weeks. After a while friends tire of hearing the same story day in day out, particularly when there is nothing that they can do to change the situation and half the time it looks like I’m not trying very hard to change anything either. 

So stigma aside, I can’t expect to be brought a casserole every day for the rest of my life or for friends and acquaintances to be there to take me to every doctor’s appointment because I don’t trust myself to drive, pick the shopping up for me because I can’t get out of bed that day. That stuff is for the short term, that stuff is for broken legs, not for chronic mental health conditions. 

Finding help for these needs for an ongoing basis steps away from the role of ‘friend’ and into the role of a ‘carer’. Carers are usually partners, siblings, children or parents; they see the ugly side, the repetitiveness and the draining reality. They bite their tongues, count out the pills and decide when to call the doctors. Even when I know I need it and I love the person doing it, I hate being ‘cared’ for. For me it reinforces the fact that I am a “burden” and increases my suicidal thinking. 

All in all, I think I cope better for longer when I’m hiding my struggles. After the 2015 incident I was open with some people for a while, but those closest to me just constantly worried analyzing every facial expression, calling daily to check up, they asked about my psych appointments and if I was taking my meds.

I felt like I had no privacy and even on good days I was being reminded that I wasn’t just Kate to them anymore, they no longer saw me, they only saw my illness. Slowly I have convinced almost everyone around me that I am doing great and they have relaxed, entire conversations pass without bipolar or depression being mentioned once, and I like that.

When I am down I keep my sadness to myself, I hide away, make up excuses and I write. The internet has given me a much needed outlet where I can privately scream from the roof tops to like-minded individuals and the blog is a platform where I can express my manic thoughts, opinions, fears or even suicidal ideations without judgement. 

So under a veil of “I’m really well thanks, and you?’ and for as long as I can, I will keep on, keeping on. Quietly.

The Final Imprint

I often wonder what my last post, last text, last tweet, email or status update might be. It's that final documented statement that ultimately becomes your legacy, at least the legacy of your online life.

25 years ago those final written statements would have been personal or private letters to family and friends, but now we live in a world where social media rules and the final public statement to ultimately define our character could well be that we "ate brussel sprouts for dinner, yuk! " or that we "like" a video of a cat chasing a squirrel.

What about the more meaningful stuff? The stuff that gets lost in the mundane day to day goings on. Sure the little things are important too, after all it is those that collectively form our opinions about the big things. But often we are so busy documenting every meal and every movement that we neglect to take the time to piece the tid bits together and form holistic opinions.

Carrie Fisher's second last tweet -once you read it enough times to comprehend the meanings behind her erratic emoji use - seemed so eerie given the manner in which she was taken from us, it was as though she knew what was coming. Quoted below, scuze the format issue...

IsYRbody DKayingdeth marchiever closer?®the sands F timecruelYshudarresteda d©beach?Get©g,perspective dw/"

Time and time again through my depressions I find myself preparing 'final' status updates for in the event that I am suicidal that I can quickly type out if I decide to take the plunge. Stuff just cryptic enough not to give my headspace away if I survive, but elude to everything if I dont.
 I suppose I just want to leave behind meaningful words, I give thanks and messages of love and hope, things that say 'despite what I have done, I am still thankful for the good things and there have been so many of those'.

As much as I can be desperate to die at times, when it has gotten to that point I have never been bitter, I don't truly hate anyone and I have had so many incredible people in the weird and wonderful chapters of my life, so many amazing memories. All of the challanges I have faced led me to special people, places and worlds I could never have otherwise imagined.

I have experienced joy in its most pure form, enlightenment, love and complete oneness with the universe. But as with all things the light must have it's dark or else we could not truly appreciate the beauty of the day.

There have been no clear cut "reasons" for me to ever be suicidal, no motives that the casual observer could understand and yet the chemistry in my brain holds reason to ransom and I am time and time again sent emotionally to the depths of darkness and depression. The plunge is cold and exhausting and I know deep down that it will ultimately kill me.

I suppose I just want my words to have meant something to someone, when I pop into the mind of an old friend after I have passed, I want them to look at the final update on my Facebook page and smile, knowing that despite my suicide I was happy and I always knew I was loved. Not just that I hated the slow service in Mc Donalds yesterday afternoon.