Overcoming Mental Illness

It’s been nearly a year since I was sitting on a beach in Port Fairy burning myself with a flaming stick. A flame which ignited the breakdown and the destruction of everything I had been building for 28 and a 1/2 years.

When I think back on that night, the cool autumnal air breathing softly around me, I remember the tears which streaked my face as I held that stick with trembling hands. The dead mobile phone lying on the beach beside me, a name burned on the LCD panel in my mind. I wonder what would have happened if the battery had still been breathing? I wonder if the person I had wanted to call would have answered?

Would they have listened?

A year before I had been on the exact same beach. A whole 365 days since I’d roamed there, with the intent of dying there. It had been a different phone at the time, but as I sat with the knife held against my wrist it had sparked alive with an echoing ‘beep’ in the still night. A ‘beep’ which sparked alive a long forgotten piece of my soul; enough to drag myself from the beach and spend a fitful night shivering and weeping in a lumpy hostel bed.

In the 365 days which had passed I had managed to rebuild my life. I had fought myself back from hell and only a few weeks earlier had been standing on the metaphorical Butt of Lewis screaming “Ha!” into the wind…(yay for obscure literary references)…having battled myself from the brink of death into a position where I had the world at my feet. Everything was in place; depression had been beaten, self harm overcome, social anxiety had had it’s butt spanked (well, nearly, a few more slaps and it would have been in submission). I had just started working toward my dream of a diploma, a novel was a few edits away from being completed and another started, I had friends for the first time in six years. Aside from glandular fever, which was hardly my fault, I was ecstatic about how much I’d been able to achieve, how much success I had reached.

Then came the double whammy I’ve mentioned before: leukemia diagnosis and being dumped, in the same week. Two shuddering tremors which rocked my foundations - two tremors which caused the earthquake that collapsed all the work. The act of nature which sent 365 days of work crumbling to dust and drove me back to that beach, back to where I had nearly killed myself.

I can’t go back to that beach this year.

I can’t go back to that beach ever again.

The aftershocks of that earthquake kept rumbling all year, cost me everything; home, friends, possessions, dreams, hopes, desires, cravings…my future. They’re still rumbling now. The odd few things which have stood strong trying to defy the inevitable are slowly but surely crumbling away to nothing. I don’t know how to make the earthquake stop.

I wish I did.

I can’t think about how close I came to happiness without bursting into tears. Is this the curse of bipolar? That no matter how much work we do, how close we come to achieving our hopes, something in the brain just trips and causes everything to fall apart. Or is it just dumb fracking luck? I was a different person before the earthquake struck; I was happy, excited, passionate. I dreamt and hoped and believed. Sure, it was difficult to show this through the crippling pain of glandular fever, but I tried, oh I tried. It feels like I’ve never stopped trying, ever.

Maybe I was never meant to be happy.

Now, 365 days since those vicious flames licked at my flesh, 730 days since I sat with the knife wanting to end it, I’m left with nothing. The dust is settling to reveal only a collapsed heap of someone who nearly became. All those friendships I worked so hard to forge have become mere pixels on a Facebook screen who don’t even remember my name. All those hopes and dreams and passions I fought to hug and dance with are nothing but embers of dying light in a musky corner of my soul.

When I think back on that night, the dead mobile phone lying on the beach beside me, I wonder what would have happened if the battery had still been breathing. Would my words have been listened to? Would that have stopped the breakdown? Or was a complete mental collapse merely inevitable for someone who - should fate and others be believed - deserved nothing?

The phone I use now is alive, I keep it breathing, daren’t not to. I glance at it from time-to-time, occasionally hearing the haunting ‘beeps’ of times past or names shimmering on the LCD screen only in my minds eye.

I wish people could understand how devastating a breakdown is.

I wish people could understand how hard I was fighting.

I wish people could understand how hard I still am.