Thread by @adembskibowden

CW: Suicide.

Today is #WorldMentalHealthDay

Last summer, because of a thrilling lifelong clash of anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder, I decided to kill myself.

I fantasised about it, planned it, and tried to do it.

I didn't want to die, exactly. I just didn't want to be alive any more. I couldn't deal with the way my head worked. I was so, so tired of it.

Obviously I didn't quite, uh... pull the trigger, so to speak. I was out there, in a field, and then... stopped. Came home, seeing grey.

There was a Back From The Brink moment.

That felt terrible. I had a plan, and the plan was no longer happening.

Then there was that moment's uglier cousin: What Now?

That felt even worse. Just this wasteland of imagination. What was next? What could come after *that*?

What came after that turned out to be a year of breaking and rebuilding my entire way of thinking & seeing the world.

Since my teens, I'd processed emotion and perceived the world (and perceived myself) in fundamentally unhealthy, self-destructive, but comfortably familiar ways.

Exactly how this reconstruction happened is externally mundane and internally ugly.

The one thing I didn't want to do, and the one thing I couldn't imagine possibly being any use, was really the only thing that helped: Talking to people. Opening up.

My absolute fucking bane.

Revelation after revelation, big and small, slow and immediate, helped me remake how I process thoughts.

All of it came from talking to other people - explaining myself, listening to them explain themselves, finding balances, learning where my thoughts zigged instead of zagged.

Breaking down why I thought certain ways, and what other ways of perceiving those things could be.

It's not "done", by any means. Like, it's not "over".

It still takes constant effort; continual little reminders and nudges to pull back from cul-de-sacs of vicious uselessness.

Tricks and rituals to wrench myself out of wayward thoughts and dark assumptions that feel too much like truth. It still takes conversations with friends and family.

Yes, I always worry I'm boring them & that they're sick of it. I don't talk as much as I should because of it.

But it's brought me closer to almost everyone in my life.

Closer, even, to the people I was already closest to. Several barriers and facades have crumbled away that were, in hindsight, pathetic constructs.

I hated who I was. Now I get to have another run at who I'll be.

I feel like a different person (thank fuck for that) but it's not like changing clothes. It takes constant effort to feel that way. Happiness isn't this Thing I (and I assume, we) get to accept passively as a right.

It's effort. It's awareness. It's maintenance.

It's worth it.

There's a surrealness here. 30 years of life wasted in the sense of wishing I'd not been locked in a plagued way of thinking, making mistakes based on it, fucking up career opportunities, etc.

Well, yeah. Part of the journey is acknowledging those mistakes and that wasted time.

Acknowledge it and move on regardless. Being grateful, too, for having the awareness and tools now to avoid falling back.

It's a long list of people that helped me through the worst of recovery, deconstruction, and the subsequent reflections on reconstruction. A long, long list.

My family, especially my in-laws, and Katie were incredible this last year.

It's not an exaggeration to say I'm alive because of @Meraki22, as well as Toby O'Hara, @VincentAbnett, and @ChrisMetzen; with their collective thoughts, honesty, and patience.

@NickKyme has listened and worked his various magics to create as many soft landings, professionally speaking, as he could.

My friends Rob (who you may know from various book Acknowledgements), Dr, Mark, and Ben - they've been patient and insightful above and beyond the call.

@GavThorpeCreate, too, has been a bit of a rock (no Dark Angels pun intended) on the other end of WhatsApp.

There are a bunch more. I don't want to delve too deeply here because this isn't an Oscar speech. I'm just trying to illustrate a point.

Because here's the thing.

I'm breaking my silence on this, and performing the cardinal sin of showing weakness online, because I promise you if your back is to the wall in a way that sounds remotely similar to mine, the one thing that sucks hardest has a good chance of being the one thing that helps most.

I didn't want to bare my throat to that inner circle. I didn't want them knowing what a cataclysmic fuckup I was and how misaligned my brainmeat had become. It was humiliating.

And getting into it with them? As well as with counsellors and therapists? Jesus, that was even worse.

But, bit by bit, there were these... clicks.

Little clicks of understanding. Little instances of connection. Little ticks and tocks of awareness. A cog slipping into place.

Somewhere, in many of the emails or conversations, there'd be Something(TM) where I'd go:

"...oh."

Some chunk of truth or insight that helped me understand, and get another step along the path.

Sometimes I'd realise it while I was saying something. Sometimes I'd get it when they said something. The sheer, embarrassing exhilaration of progress.

It felt incredible. Still does.

I can look back on the rockiest moments now with the relief that distance has brought.

But, I shit you not, that's only because I laid myself bare. If you're suffering, then I appreciate "just talk or whatever" sounds like nothing - but for me it was everything.

I medicated. I meditated. I CBT'd. I did everything I was supposed to do and a few things I wasn't.

But opening up and getting into it, talking about it with professionals, friends, & people that ran the gauntlet before me, was regenerative in a way nothing else has matched.

Again, I know, "talking" sounds like nothing at all, like it can't possibly help. But you get to Know Thyself, and that includes knowing how you see the world may not be as insightful or as genius as you think.

It's humbling and humiliating at times. But it starts the rebuild.

If you find yourself struggling, then swallow the fear about boring a professional with your thoughts, or how shameful it'll be.

I can only speak from my experience, but it was worth it. Every embarrassing, flayed-open step of the last year has been worth it.

Give it a chance.

I'll say one last thing to cap this megathread.

When I decided to kill myself, the feeling was pure, naked relief. With the decision made, I felt wonderful. In control.

An end to the headsludge, the cyclical muck.

The best I'd felt in years. That made it feel even righter.

That was last July, about fifteen months ago. Admittedly it's been a grind. It still is, blah blah blah. You know the score.

But practically every day of the last six months, I've felt better than I did in the moment I made that decision.

I think that says something worthwhile.