I survived it. You can too.

I once felt so worthless that I tried to kill myself. I stopped thinking about everyone I loved – my mum, my sisters, my dad, my grandparents and my friends. And I tried to kill myself. I set out two packets of antidepressants, a packet of sleeping tablets and a packet of prescription painkillers and I got myself a glass of water and filled up two bottles. I spent about two and a half hours taking pills, swallowing a tablet every minute or so. After about 30 tablets I started to slow down, and feel drowsy. I also kept getting up to go to the toilet, as I had heard that when people overdose, sometimes they wet themselves. And I didn’t want to be taken to the hospital having wet myself; I thought that would be embarrassing.

I was on my friend’s sofa – they were asleep upstairs in bed and didn’t know what I was doing. I still have not discussed the nights events with them – I still don’t know if they are aware of what I did in their front room. I didn’t spare a thought for how they would feel if they came downstairs in the morning to find me on their sofa. I didn’t think about anyone but myself in that moment – I couldn’t see past my own pain. Nothing mattered to me except for erasing my feelings and the pain I was in. The only way I could see that happening was to remove myself from being. I had run away earlier that evening from my ex-boyfriends parent’s house where I was living. I had broken up with him a few weeks before – well, actually he had broken up with me. We had been together for five years and he recently hooked up with one of my best friends. I has already been in a bad place – fallen out with my family, been signed off work for months with depression, had a drug habit that had spiralled out of control, and stolen money from family and friends to feed said habit. That evening, my ex-boyfriends mum had discovered that I had stolen money from her. I tried to explain why I had done it; what was wrong, but she was so hurt that she could not bear to listen to me. Following this confrontation that I grabbed as many pills as I could, stuffed some belongings in a bag, and ran out of the house.

My first plan was to head to the beach. I wanted to be somewhere private, where I could curl up under the black night sky and swallow pills until my mind filled with darkness. But when I got to the beach and felt the cool sand under my toes, it suddenly became important to me to be somewhere warm and comfortable when I died. I knew that was what I wanted to do – die somewhere warm and comfortable. I felt as though I deserved that, despite the disgusting and shameful things I had done to those who had loved me – I had let them down, betrayed their trust, and destroyed relationships with each selfish action I had taken. So I text my friend and told them I had had an argument with my ex and had left the house – could I stay at theirs tonight? Of course, they said, and offered me the sofa to crash on for a couple of nights. I remember they went to bed, and I set myself up on the sofa with the pills and water, not expecting to see them again. So it was to my surprise when I woke up the following morning to find myself still alive.

I was on the sofa at my friends house – they had gone to work and I wasn’t dead. They had left in the morning, assuming that I was asleep and not realising anything was amiss. I had my first appointment booked that afternoon with my drug counsellor. My little sister called me as she had agreed to go with me, to make sure that I attended. I told her what I had done as I was extremely drowsy and slurring my words. She told me to meet her at the bus stop, and I dressed, in a daze, and left the house.  I don’t really remember much about that day – I remember sitting in the waiting room at the centre and being surrounded with crackheads and junkies, and feeling shame and disgust, once again. This time because my sister was having to sit in a room with drug addicts, of which I was one. During the appointment with the counsellor, I told him that I had tried to commit suicide the night before. He immediately called my doctor and made me an appointment, and put me in a taxi. The doctor told me that half of the tablets would have worked their way out of my system within 24 hours while the rest would need another week. I was not allowed to take any medication for another week. In the months following this experience, my mother was given responsibility for my anti-depressants, and I would have to ask her for a pill every day, every dinner, as I was not to be trusted with them. I am glad that she took control of my medication, as during the very long hours, days, weeks and months that I lived at my parent’s house, in a sort of enforced rehab/open gaol, I hated myself more than I had on the night when I tried to commit suicide. But I had to learn to live with those feelings and that emotion. There were no drugs I could take, no pills to swallow to blot those feelings out; I didn’t touch a drop of alcohol for about six months.

Every single day was hard. It was like I had to learn to be a person again – to build myself up from the inside. But the trouble was, my insides were empty. I had nothing inside me apart from loathing for myself. The love of my family is what got me through that time. That and the love from a couple of friends who stood by me, and believed that I would be able to turn myself around, when I completely doubted that there would ever be a life ahead of me. They saw that I could. I slept on a roll out mat on the floor of my sister’s bedroom, as my parents told me they didn’t want me to be comfortable enough that I would think this was a permanent solution. I hoovered, painted the house, took the dog for a walk twice a day, had a weekly appointment with my therapist and visited the drug counsellor once a week as well. The only other place I was permitted to visit was the library. That was my life for three months. I started looking for work, and my sister went back to college.

I eventually got a job part time, which, after a month, became full time. I moved out of my parent’s house and into my own apartment – the first time I had ever lived alone. For the first year after the attempted suicide, every single day was a battle. I had to wake up every day, and, as I remembered what my life was, would have to deal again and again with my actions and the hate I held for myself. The feeling of worthlessness is something that has never gone away – I have learned to deal with it by layering other emotions on top of it. This has been done through therapy, through job satisfaction, through rebuilding relationships with my friends and family, and through accepting that I am flawed and will never go back to feeling ‘normal’ or the life I had before. I felt so mixed up during this time and the emotions were often so raw and heightened that often I felt like I was being somersaulted between feeling totally empty and highly charged. My doctor has maintained the diagnosis of depression and anxiety, although I often wonder if I am bi-polar. Or if this is just what it feels like to be human. Does everyone feel this way? Hate themselves so much somedays that they don’t even want to be alive? I try to steer myself away from these thoughts by remembering those that love me and how much they have sacrificed to help my recovery. But that is when I struggle and falter – what happens to those people that don’t have a mum and dad to take them in, sisters to take them to counselling appointments, friends to forgive them, and a career that can be reprised? What happens to them?

This is a very private event in my life, that only those closest to me are aware of. Most people know about the drug issue, the work problems, and that I moved home to my parents. Some of them refer to it as the period where ‘I wasn’t quite right – not normal’. I feel no desire to share with them what I did but I do often think about how lucky I am, and what could I do to help others to know that they are not alone. The worst feeling in the world is to feel as if you are alone and that there is no way out. I know that feeling, I recognise it. It is the most terrible feeling in the world. To feel as if there is no future. Especially when you have lost everything – home, job, partner, family, friends. To be past the point of caring if you live or not. It is the saddest thing in the world, and when it is compounded by mental illness it is vital that you don’t self medicate, and that you accept the correct help from the appropriate people. That you do not surround yourself with the wrong people in an attempt to block everything out – which is what I tried to do. I convinced myself that if I was out partying with loads of people, then surely they were my friends and I was not alone – I didn’t have to focus on the strained phone call I had with my family or the pleading texts from my friends to meet them.

Please ask for help if you feel close to the end. Nothing is worth taking your own life. There is always someone there to help. You should never feel alone.