World Suicide Prevention day....TODAY

It would be silly, as someone who blogs about anxiety, depression, and her struggles candidly to not acknowledge World Suicide Prevention Day. Which is today.

I have, in my lifetime, been suicidal. In my teens, like many unhappy teens, attempted suicide in the various ways. I slashed my wrists. If you look carefully you can see the very fine threads of scars. I took too many pills. I stood on the side of the road and looked for the big trucks and wondered if I had the guts to take that step. And for a very sad time in my life I was mixing codeine and booze like it wasn't a stunningly stupid thing to do.

These things were, without a doubt, very strong cries for help. Sadly, in most of the cases cries that were ignored, because nobody knew what I was doing.

I am, by nature, secretive. In a family with a very strongly symptomatic mentally ill member, if you are not that person, you are not as much on the radar of your parents, and it's natural, or was for me, that you hide the stuff going on with you. You can't compete with someone who acts out because they have a borderline personality disorder, and so, you don't try. You hide your pain in your diary until you realise that your sister, or brother will inevitably read it, and then you just learn to internalise. I am very good at internalising. I am exceptional at denial. My denial skills are the thing of legend.

And so, because of my unwillingness to ask for help, and because I've never been good at making friends, my suicide attempts were particularly stupid, because they were never going to get me the help I needed, because nobody knew that I was doing it, or that I needed the help.

In addition to my (thankfully) spectacularly failed attempts at suicide, I was a cutter for a long time, and was, for a time, anorexic and bulimic. These illnesses were not attempts to get noticed, they were attempts to control my body, because I couldn't control my emotions and anxiety. I didn't even truly realise how bad the goings on in my head were until the last five years ago, so I couldn't really explain why I was doing what I was doing, just that I felt better when my body hurt, because it meant my heart hurt less.

When I realised how dangerous the eating disorders and cutting were, I moved to tattoos and piercings. A socially acceptable (to an extent) means of hurting myself to manage my emotional pain. All the ink on my body represents a major emotional instance in my life. A moment of extreme high, extreme low, or just a path that I couldn't find. I needed the pain to find my way through it.

These are my biggest scars. Not in literal size, but in emotional size

The butterfly was when I was struggling with my relationship and my anxiety, but I couldn't mentally explain my anxiety, or the depression that came with it. My relationship at the time was studded with locking myself in the bathroom for hours with a knife in my hand hysterical and unable to find the place in myself to make the pain stop. It scared my ex husband no end. He had no idea what to do when it happened. I couldn't explain to him how to make it stop because I didn't know. If I could I would apologise to him for the ongoing pain I know this caused him. It wasn't his fault, or mine, that I didn't know quite how broken I was. 

The dragonfly is my divorce. An explainable emotional pain. Having to share a house with someone for a year after separation is something pretty rough. This was the lowest point I've ever been in my life. This is when I had my love affair with pain killers and white wine. The pain was legit, mixing it with wine was a dice roll with death. A gamble I enjoyed a little too much. It took a very smart, emotionally strong man to find a way into my head to help me realise what an idiot I was being. At the time he was a stranger, but one that was smart enough to ask "can I help?". That simple question probably saved my life. As, no doubt, it does for many other desperate people. 

My fleur de lis is the one part of my pain art that is not from pain. It is my compass. It points me to my true north and helps me navigate my way through emotional waters. The fleur de lis is often found as the marker for true north on a compass rose, particularly old, ornate maps and plans. 

My fleur de lis is my emotional true north. When I'm putting my hair up in the mirror I see it, and it reminds me that I'm ok now. It's taken some time, the right medication, and love and support from wonderful people, but I'm ok. This reminder of my true north is my emotional connection to my centre. Which sounds really fucking wanky, but when you're me, you need it. 

I wonder, occasionally, what life would be like for those that love me if I had been successful in my rather lackluster suicide attempts. My family would not have been better off without me in it. My baby brother would have lost a friend, advocate, and supplier of tech goods and painfully expensive taste in clothes. My mother would have lost a friend, ally, someone to talk to about my sisters illness with, and a crafty buddy with very expensive taste in fabric. My father...well...I don't really know that he'd have noticed. My niece wouldn't have her favourite (only) auntie to spoil her with silly things. 

And what if I'd been older. What if I'd left Americo, my dear Amanda, 'brother' Arran, or friend Brooke, other people I know virtually and in person. Would their lives have been better without me? No. I am friend, mentor, lover. I am support, guidance, creator of job applications and resumes. I am cake, and movies, and very rarely I'm spare dollars, though not very often because I'm perpetually broke. And I don't think that's all I am to these wonderful people that have been all that to me and more. 

There is no life around me, in the circle of incredible people that have shaped and defined who I am that would have benefitted from my suicide. 

And I, well, I'd be dead so I couldn't have regretted it, but I would have missed out on so much life. So much wonderful life. Weddings, and parties, and even painfully sad funerals that helped me see the good I have in my life. I would have missed seeing the world, loving people, getting fat and happy, learning to bake cherry pie. I would have missed Fringe and the Avengers and that really stupid fourth Bourne movie. I would never have discovered that I'm good at policy, and had an assistant that thinks I'm the best boss he's ever had (delusional, clearly). I wouldn't have contributed to change in the small ways I've contributed, which lead to larger changes in the big bad world we live in. I wouldn't have been one of millions of voices raised around the world saying "we can be better". 

And so, I'm fucking glad I stuck around. Because depression is no match for the incredible, amazing, stunning privilege that is living life. Discovering the miracle that is loving the right people, and sharing your life with amazing friends. 

Please, I beg, if you are having a moment where you are truly considering suicide, take a moment, call a friend, scream out in desperation on twitter, on a blog, a website, find some way to reach out to someone who can help you. Call lifeline if you're in australia, look up a local help line close to you if you're in another country. Tattoo your pain across every inch of your body. Whatever way you find to get through to the next day, make it happen because it's so worth it. Life is worth it. Love is worth it. 

Ask for help, because you're worth it. 

www.wspd.org.au

www.beyondblue.org.au

www.lifeline.org.au