Following on from last weeks suicide post

I just wanted to publicly thank two people who saved my life in 1997.

I was in my first year at University with all the stresses, excitement and intoxication that this entails.  I was discovering who I was, and who I wasn’t.  I had no idea, but the freedom to be anyone I wanted was liberating and terrifying at the same time.

I was in sparkling new halls of residence sharing a flat with a couple of lovely girls who I was friends with through the first year, but drifted away from when we moved out in the second year.

I had great neighbours and a host of luscious people to befriend.

My neighbours in the flat directly above me caught my attention.  I can’t remember quite how we all met, but I am pretty sure there were buckets, alcohol and chair-dancing involved.  They too were 2 lovely girls, one looked like Kate Winslet with a smile that lit up the whole room and the other looked like Cameron Diaz even at 8am lectures.  I was smitten.

We quickly became good friends and spent many happy hours talking rubbish, eating strange concoctions and getting uproariously drunk.  When they were home and wanted to call me they would stamp on the floor (which was the ceiling of my room), when I wanted to call them I would bang on the ceiling with my broom.  We sometimes used the in-house intercom, but it wasn’t as funny as trying to tap out the rhythm of Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees with a wobbly broom handle.

Occasionally they would send down aid packages tied to a belt which they swung down from their window to mine, other times it was notes asking to borrow sugar.

One time, I remember them asking for help with preparing a chicken to cook.  They couldn’t bear to touch it as it reminded them of babies or something.  I was a vegetarian, so naturally I danced it around the kitchen like some kind of macabre Buster Keaton.

I am talking about these two wondrous people as if they were one person.  They weren’t quite that inseparable, but they both saved my life together.

I had been simpering after a fellow from the SCUBA dive club for months and was eagerly awaiting his return from the recent break.  I met up with him at a local bar (having filled myself up so much with Dutch courage I was leaking) and he let me down gently, saying he was with someone else.

This would not normally matter, but I was not a normal person back then.  I went back to my halls to talk to my lovely neighbours, but they weren’t in.

I was distraught, destroyed, and grief-stricken.  Convinced that I was a bad person that didn’t deserve friends or boyfriends, I staggered back to my room and attacked my left arm with the blade from a disposable razor.  I wasn’t trying to kill myself at that point, just wanting to let the pain out somehow and seeing the blood flow down my arm seemed to be a physical outpouring of the pain I felt inside.  I wrote a note about it, and sat in my room wondering why no one was coming.  Then my head cleared a little and I thought “I need to talk to someone about this”, so I staggered back up the stairs to my neighbours.

Bless them, I can’t imagine what they must have thought to find me on the doorstep tear-streaked, blood-soaked with a dozen slashes across one forearm, but they took me in and cleaned me up.  They held my hands and cried with me and told me I should get the cuts stitched, but I refused to go to a doctor.  I don’t remember much after that.

Later that week, or month or year (I’m still not sure when), they sat me down and told me that they didn’t think they could share a house with me (we had planned to move in to a shared house in our second year) and that I needed professional help.

I was hurt and angry, but I knew deep down that they were right.  They could not rescue me from myself, and I could not expect that of them.  I went to the doctor, took a deep breath and showed her my scars.

Thus began my journey into counseling, anti-depressants and psychotherapy which I believe has saved my life.  I started healing myself from the day my friends saved me.

I lost touch with my friends after university, but thanks to the amazing power of Facebook I found them just around the time I moved overseas.  I don’t think I ever properly thanked them for what they did for me, so this is for them.

Thank you Sian and Julia, you saved my life.

Suicide sucks, don't do it.

The article that started it all

I heard the author of this article on the radio today and I spent the entire time shouting at the radio and getting so angry I nearly threw it out of the window.

Now, we live in a no-TV household, so I gather I may have missed some other media around this issue, but this article is what I read, and this man is who I heard speaking on the radio.

I got so angry I posted it all over the internet to find out if I am alone in my rage.

I wanted to know if it would be a good idea to condemn people who commit suicide to disgust from their society.  I wanted to find out if being shown that victims of suicide are not worthy of a normal funeral would deter other teens from going down the same path.

From my own personal point of view, and one that has been through the horrors of depression and been at the top of that dark slope down I think that this would just make those people believe that feeling suicidal was something to be ashamed of, something to hide, something to pretend was not happening.

I believe that punishing the families who have lost loved ones to suicide by refusing their child/sister/brother/parent a normal funeral would cause more people to hide away their own feelings of grief and depression.

Surely the way to combat teen suicide (or any suicide for that matter) is to talk.  To be open; to let people know that it’s OK to feel like this, but that they have somewhere to turn.  To let people know that there is another option other than death.  I sort of understand that maybe some teens might not think about the repercussions of suicide, but let’s be honest, teens do not tend to think of anything outside their own bubble, I know I certainly did not.

So far the internet world seems to have agreed with me, but one person raised an interesting alternative point of view, that of a “shame culture” where some cultures believe that killing yourself to prevent shame and dishonor being brought upon your family is a noble thing.

Now I don’t profess to have a detailed knowledge of Maori culture (the man in the article is Maori, and a lot of the radio discussion was focused on the Maori community), I am woefully ignorant in that regard, but I don’t believe it to be a “shame culture”.  From a western viewpoint, the idea of shame culture is abhorrent to me; I cannot see how killing yourself and hurting those who love you in the process could be somehow better than doing something “shameful” and then working to rectify what you did.  As I said though, I am from a different world, so I doubt I could be made to understand this.

There seems to be a fear in the media about death being glamorised and romanticised.  Maybe it’s true, maybe not, but it has been that way since Romeo and Juliet.  People who really want to kill themselves are not well, and we need to help them to get better, not vilify them or their family and friends for something beyond their control.

I’ve always admired the will-power of anorexics

Ever since I was about 16 or so I have had disordered eating habits.  Not an eating disorder per se as I have never had an official diagnosis, but non-normal eating – binging, making myself sick, overdosing on laxatives, eating tissues to fill my stomach, fad diets, drinking salt-water and purgatives, to mention a few.

Before I left the UK for NZ, I was working at a place where you got free food.  Yes. Free. Food.  Chocolate, crisps, buffet lunch, hot meals.  Mana from heaven.

I suffered.

Had I been single and living alone, I would have been fine (and saved a fortune on grocery bills), but I had dinner with Tareka every night, so I couldn’t have more than a sandwich for lunch without piling on weight.

I overate.  I ate everything in the staff kitchen that I could.  Then I felt guilty and started taking laxatives.  Then my work started to suffer as I was running to the toilet so often, I had to find a way out of this hell of my own making.

I had heard of websites created by anorexic people (mainly girls) who wanted to maintain an anorexic habit but didn’t want anyone to find out.  The movement was called Pro-Ana (as in Pro Anorexia).  I wanted to be thin.  I wanted to stop eating the fabulous food that was under my nose, tempting me, forcing me to overdose and then punish myself.  I wanted to be thin so badly that I thought starvation was my only option.  All or nothing.  If I can’t eat some of the nice food without going berzerk then I would have to stop eating it all together.

I found a site called Project Shapeshift and went trawling through the threads to find out how to be anorexic.  I joined up and poured out my pain and misery online to a bunch of complete strangers.  I was hoping for punishment; to be suitably chastised for being fat, disgusting, weak and unworthy.

What I got was love.

People posted messages of support, of sympathy and empathy and even horror stories of how awful it was to be truly anorexic.  I found people struggling just the way I was, and people who had learned to live with their eating disorders but still be fit and healthy.  People who reached out across the anonymous void of the internet and showed me I was not alone, that I was among friends.

I have been part of that community for nearly 7 years now.  The site has changed a lot over the years, not least in part to a massive schism in the founder members of the group which rocked the long time participants to the core, and forced a lot of people to take sides.

Those of us who carry on are still struggling with our demons, but still supporting each other.  I have met 2 or 3 of them in the flesh, and spoken to a couple more on the phone.  I am hoping to meet more over the next year or so, and I consider a lot of them to be truly great friends.

I went in search of a way to destroy myself and met people who only wanted to help me.  The internet gets a lot of press for the bad stuff, and the uncontrollable nature of it all, but don’t forget that there is a lot of good to be found as well, if you look hard enough.

I love therapy

So I had the first of six sessions with a clinical psychologist on Monday.  Now for those of you that don’t know me, I suffered from clinical depression as a teenager, which came to a head when I was in my first year of University, culminating in some fairly severe self-harm; thanks to some utterly wonderful friends having the guts to tell me I needed help (thank you guys, you know who you are) I ended up on Prozac and having counseling.

Counseling was the best thing I ever did, it saved my life and my sanity, but I think I stopped going sooner than I should have, as I never really quite resolved the issues of my teens properly.  However, it gave me the ability to sense when the black dog is at my heel again, and take myself off for more counseling when I need it.

Since moving to NZ and having children, I have resolved a lot of my issues with the support of my wonderful, patient husband, but I know I still have a few things to deal with.  I tend to get bogged down in the mire when I am sleep-deprived, so it was this that took me to the doctors recently.  She suggested anti-depressants, but I know a lot of my depression is better dealt with by talking to someone, rather than drugs, so I asked if we could hold off on the pills until I had completed the counseling and then take it from there; my doctor was very supportive.

There have been a lot of ad campaigns in NZ recently about mental health, and that it’s OK to admit that you’re not OK, and to seek help, so it was my good fortune that there is a free program through the Primary Health Organisation enabling me to have 6 sessions with a clinical psychologist.  This is one step up from counseling and exactly what I need, as I have done a lot of talking and reasoning about my issues, but I am at a stage where I need to learn practical steps for coping when I am in the situations that trigger my depression and anxiety.

At my first session we went over my history, and the reasons that brought me to counseling this time, and my psychologist concluded that I am a master of avoidance.  I have to admit she is right, I do everything to avoid the situations that cause me the most stress, but in avoiding confronting them, I end up dreading them and getting more worked up and anxious about what might happen.  She has set me a task to do before our next session, in which I need to list the pros and cons of avoidance, in order to show me that, while there are a lot of benefits to avoidance, there are a lot of reasons why avoidance is damaging to me and my relationships.

Rationally I know that avoidance is not good, but I will need a lot of convincing to show me that the benefits of confrontation outweigh the benefits of avoiding it.

Miserable failure

Well we haven't cracked it after all. Last night BabyM got up out of bed every time she woke up. Eventually, at about 5am I put her into her cot and she finally slept til about 7am.
She's exhausted today, but when we put her in her cot for a day sleep, she climbed out! I feel like I just can't win. Hubby has even suggested getting a lock for her bedroom door, and I'm almost at a stage where I will agree.

We've decided to just get a round handle for now, which she won't be able to open for a while, and I'll put a mattress on the floor so if she does climb out of her cot, she won't be able to get out of her room, but she'll have a comfortable place to drop off on.

I feel like such an evil parent, effectively locking my child in her bedroom til she conks out on the floor from exhaustion, but we have tried everything else we can think of.

Sleep deprivation

Well BabyM has had 3 days in a row where she has continually got up out of bed during her day and night sleeps. Day sleeps I was resorting to putting her door gate on and leaving her til she dozed off on the floor, then transferring her to her bed (which was working, but only after a good hour of her getting up and me putting her back), night sleeps it was just a constant 2 hours of her getting up and me putting her back, all around the midnight to 2am mark.
Last night was the final straw. I had figured she was waking up due to the cold, so she was wrapped up extra warm and had a heater, and she can't possibly have been cold, but she still woke up at 4am and spent 2 hours getting up every time I put her back into bed. Finally she stopped getting up at about 6am, but lay in her bed and cried for 20 minutes before dozing off. She then decided that 7am was getting up time AAARGH!!

We've been doing a star chart for her and she was getting a star every time she stayed in bed for a full night, but I think after 3 days of no stars, she's really not getting it. She may be a little young yet (21 months). I was really feeling like I was slipping back into depression and considering going into counselling, but I saw my Midwife this morning and she said "just do whatever you have to do to get your sleep and you'll be OK", so I have told BabyM she is going back in her cot for day sleeps and we'll leave her in the bed for nights until Friday, but if she gets up during the night any time before Friday, she's going back in her cot at bedtime too.

I was hoping to have her comfortably sleeping in a bed when Baby2 arrives, so she won't feel like she's being pushed out by the Baby when we do move her, but it's either this or I really will go insane!