So some of you know that I recently passed the counseling skills course I'd been doing and having gone through therapy before for my own problems and to deal with certain events that shaped me over the years so doing this course was really strange in a way cos I was seeing things from the other side.
Thing is I've been reflecting a lot on my life recently, where I've been, where I'm going etc and I feel like I need to type a few things out just to get them off my chest.
So THE event that ****ed me up the most happened when I was 8 and my younger brother was killed. I remember this day really vividly like it happened yesterday, I always have and always will, I remember my mum coming into our room on the morning it happened (myself my sister and brother shared a room back then) and waking us all up cos we were all going for a barbecue at loch lomond that day with my dad and all his friends and their families that day.
It started off like any other day which looking back makes things slightly more surreal and as the day went on we were all running around playing carrying on skimming stones on the water etc and then things changed suddenly when my mum started screaming and people trying to reassure her “he'll be ok he'll be ok) the next thing I notice my brother lying on the ground with blood coming out of his nose and then one of my dads pals grabbing me and putting me and my sister in the minibus that had been hired to take a large number of those who didnt have cars and those who were going to drink that day (the minibus was yellow) back in 1990 car phones were rare and mobile phones even more so but I remember my dad running around shouting DOES ANYONE HAVE A CAR PHONE? Because of where we where and cos it was a summer day it was really busy at loch lomond that day it took a while for help to arrive but I remember the police car and ambulance arriving, i'd never been so happy to hear the sound of sirens.
So basically what had happened was that a blue and white landrover had turned up with a trailer hauling a trailer with a jet ski on it and I remember watching the guy on his jet ski and thinking it was well cool, after he had finished he was reversing his landrover to hitch up his trailer my wee brother ran out behind him and got knocked down, I want to be clear about something here, I dont hate or blame the driver for what happened, none of my family does, it was just a horrible accident and this was the day that changed his life forever too.
My brother was still alive when the ambulance showed and they did what they could on the scene but because of the location because of the seriousness of his injuries the decision was made to bring in a helicopter to get him to hospital, I remember being jealous cos my brother was getting to go in a helicopter and this is something I still feel really guilty about, the helicopter was going to land in the garden of a nearby mansion, I remember the ambulance and police car speeding off to get him there. Those sirens were so ****ing reasuring and on top of that people had been reassuring me that my wee brother would be ok and I believed them, at this point the rest of us just headed home, one of my dads pals and his girlfriend agreed to look after my sister and I while my mum and dad went to the hospital, my mum gave me a fiver to get bread and milk when we got home but when we got home my dads pals girlfriend went to get the bread and milk.
I was watching zorro on the telly, this was the first time I learned about the character zorro, I cant remember which version of zorro this was or the actor playing him but thats what I was watching when my mum and dad got back from the hospital I remember me and my sister rushing to greet them and asking if our wee brother was ok but they didnt say anything, my mum took me and my sister into her and my dads room sat us down and cuddled us closely then she said the words that changed my life forever “your wee brother died” the shock hit me unlike anything i'd ever felt before and I cried unlike anything I had ever felt before this was also the only time I had ever seen my dad cry (more on that prick later) the house was really busy with all the people coming to visit us and offer their condolences the local police came a couple of times to talk to my mum and dad and on top of that the newspapers had heard about what had happened and wanted to do interviews but my mum and dad said no and released a statement for the papers basically thanking the emergency services for doing all they could and thanking the people who were helping us and also saying that they didnt hate or blame the driver for what had happened, but those arseholes at the sun newspaper wanted the big interview and wouldnt take no for an answer so we had to get the police to get them to back the **** off so in response the sun ran an article with the headline TODDLER CRUSHED UNDER THE WHEELS OF SPEEDING CAR which isnt what happened but this is the scum newspaper we're talking about plus they worded the article to make it look like it was my mums fault for not keeping an eye on him which is also bullshit because like I said this was a horrible accident that happened in a split second and changed all our lives forever.
My brother was only a year and a half old when he died, thats all he got, one birthday and one christmas and a year and half of life, I learned that life can change in the blink of an eye and that anything can and will happen, harsh lesson to learn when you're only 8 years old.
There is more I want to go into about other but typing things that happened growing up so i'm going to post this just now and I will add more later and i'm just going to catch my breath and relax for a bit but there is more to come
Last edited by tiptoes : 11-10-2016 at 04:09 PM.
Reason: removing label
so I mentioned my prick of a dad earlier, he liked to drink a lot and would rather have been in the pub with mates or in front of the telly watching the football with a can of lager or ten rather than looking after me and my sister.
he was violent to me and would flip out over nothing, spilling a cup f water could earn me a smack around the head and although I never actually saw it happen he was violent to my mum too though I could often hear the both of them shouting swearing and arguing a lot, they would never argue in front of us but after we left him he had some spectacular bust ups with the woman he got with after that (more on that later)
my mum got me and my sister away from him when I was ten and my sister was six, the day we left him is anther one of those surreal days that starts off normal and then ends with your life changing forever, by this time my mum was working too and we had been told that because my mum had an early start on that Friday morning and my dad did too that me and my sister would be spending the night at our neighbours house and she would take us to school.
school started off like any other day, I was in primary 6 and we had a supply teacher in, then after the morning break the head teacher came to get me from my classroom, she told me my mum was waiting to see me and that I was going to have to be brave, my heart was pounding as we walked from the classroom to the office where my mum was waiting ad I was sure that something had happened to my sister (she used to have really bad asthma back then, her first attack a few months after my brother died and we think it was the stress of that which brought it on) so we make it to the office and my mum sits me down and the first thing I ask is "is my sister ok?" she assured me my sister was fine and would be along in a minute, my mum told me that we were leaving my dad and she knew I had noticed things hadn't been great with them recently and that she had been planning in secret along with friends and other family to move us out.
we had a new house and my sister and me would be going to a new school, so I went back to my classroom to say goodbye to my friends and to get my stuff and my auntie took us all to our new house, I had a room to myself for the first time which was cool and a few days later I was taken to start my new school.
my mum filed for divorce and there was a custody battle for me and my sister, it was agreed that we would go visit him on Tuesday night and stay over on the Friday night this was a good arrangement, my dad still had this delusion that he and my mum would get back together but it was never going to happen, eventually he met someone new and moved out of our old house and into her house with her daughter so I now had a stepsister, eventually he had another kid with the new squeeze so I had a half sister too.
I liked going to my dads cos I could do pretty much what I wanted, my mum was working two jobs and me and my sister had to spend a lot of time with my granny and grandas and they could be quite strict abut bedtime and what we could and couldn't watch and how long I could play computer games for, when I was at my dads he wuld let me watch what I wanted and I could stay up all night playing computer games if I wanted.
but a few times my dad showed his true nature and would have violent arguments with the new girlfriend and once she stormed out and took the car and the house keys with the door locked, so my dad in his "wisdom" had me and my sister climb out the window ad came out after us (luckily it was a ground floor window) he walked with us through the area he lived in at the time at around one in the morning, he was drunk and he was living in a part of Glasgow called cranhill which at that time was REALLY rough at that time and heroin was a major problem, eventually he got us a taxi and dropped us off at our granny and grandas. the next day when my mum found out what happened she stopped us from going to our dads for a few weeks but then we were given the choice to go back, we agreed but my mum warned my dad that if anything like that happened again she wouldn't let us see him again.
as sure as fate it happened again, the second time it happened was ****ing unreal, it started with the usual swearing arguing after they had gotten back from a night out drinking (his gf's mum had been looking after us all that night) and then my dad decided while he was pissed out of his face that he was leaving again and taking me and my sister away, they both had cars so eventually we ended up in his car and his girlfriend tried to block us in with her car, he was punching the window of her car trying to break the window. with all the screaming shouting and swearing the neighbours would have known what was going on, not one of them phoned the police, I hate them and I will never forgive them for that. so eventually she back off and my dad drove away with us in the car baring in mind he was angry and drunk at the time, I was ****ing terrified not only because of what happened but because I didn't know where we were going, I was too scared to ask I had thoughts about him taking us out the country cos he knew my mum would stop us seeing him and he didn't want that, at one point we were driving over the Kingston bridge in glasow and I actually for some reason thought he was going to swerve off the bridge crash us into the river clyde and kill us all, I literally feared for mine and my sisters lives.
luckily he didnt and it turned out he was taking us to my uncles house, we stayed there for the night then got dropped at my granny and grandas the next day, my dad gave us both a fiver each and made us promise not to tell my mum, we never told her for ages and when we did my dad had stopped seeing us.
before Christmas in 1994 my dad started my mum over the couch from our old house, basically they came to an agreement that when the house was sold they'd split the money and when it came to the contents it was first come first served so my mum got the couch and armchairs and sold them but my dad wanted them so started this drama he had a debt to play blahblahblah and then decided the week before Christmas that he was stopping seeing us, he phoned on Christmas morning and wished us a merry Christmas and told us he and the girlfriend and my stepsister and half sister were in a new house and he wouldn't tell us where cos he said "i don't want your ****ing mum trying to get money off me" which is bullshit cos my mum wanted nothing to do with him or his money, he had obviously been plotting this move for sometime and manufactured the argument about the couch as an excuse to stop seeing us before he moved away.
he would still come three times a year with birthday money and Christmas money and phone occasionally.
when I was 12 my mum was having really bad headaches and was being given treatment for migraines but it turned out to be more serious so she ended up in hospital and it turned out she had an aneurysm on her brain and needed surgery, if they hadn't gotten to her when they did my mum would have been dead within the week, and there was a 90% chance that she would get through the surgery and return to a normal life, she made it through and did go on to have a normal life (well what passes for normal for us anyway ) not long after this happened it came over the news that the rangers player davie cooper had died of the exact same thing so it really hit home how lucky we were.
when I told my dad about this he thought it was hilarious, this just shows you what a complete and utter cvnt he is, anyhoo that's enough dad stories as there are many more but i'm going to take another breather and I will continue on with some other things in the next part.
thanks for taking the time to read and reply sketchbook
so when I was 10 a few moths after we'd left my dad I felt suicidal for the first time, I suddenly felt like I wanted to open the window and jump out, I was always sensitive growing up even before everything with my brother happened.
I was always picked on and bullied for one reason or another, because of my eyesight, because of my bad eyesight, because I was skinny and not exactly a fighter, because I wasn't into the things other people liked, school was a ****ing nightmare, especially secondly school, I was a constant target for bullying, in school it was always verbal. or like being excluded from social things but it was in my local area were I would be beaten up by the local gang of neds ( a ned is like a delinquent youth in England they are called chavs) not long after we'd left my dad I was standing at the bus stop minding my business when someone ran past me and punched me in the head, he was the leader and i'm not posting his real name but he was a grade A **** from a family of cunts.
I couldn't even sit out the front of my house or play round the back garden cos if they saw me they'd chase me and if they caught me....
the most serious incident was when I was 13 and five of them jumped me in the street, a busy street in broad daylight and the first punch came from behind, and there was more than one of them in typical ned fashion (they never attack or say anything when alone).
while this was going on people just walked by as if nothing was happening, luckily a random lady and some people from the café I was outside came and helped and got me inside to safety I was totally shook up, the random lady took me home in the car and my mum was raging about what had happened and this when we got the police involved.
they couldnt press charges because nobody wanted to make a statement or get involved, its because of this that I have always sworn I would never be a passerby but after that they did back off though I still had bad anxiety and was always scared to go the length of myself, it took years to get over that and feel safe just walking out the door.
the bullying in school continued of course, my school like every other school talks up a big anti bullying stance but at the end of the day all they care about is looking good so they were clueless and did nothing about the bullying, it was in third year when the straw that broke the camels back happened, I was walking home from school and someone wrote on my face with an ink pen, this ******** also thought it was funny to stick chewing gum on my glasses, when I got home I washed off the ink grabbed some money and a bag of stuff and ran away from home, I got the train to helensburgh outside Glasgow cos I used to go fishing there and I knew the area well, I got off the train and walked for 3 hours and then found myself hiding in bushes near to the main gate of faslane naval base and that's where I stayed the night and the a good part of the next day before I turned myself in at faslane naval base the next day the MOD (ministry of defence) police looked after me til helensburgh police came to pick me up and they looked after me til my uncle came to pick me up and take me home.
I got home and my mum was glad to see me obviously and was really upset but so glad to have me back, so I told her about what had happened and she told me what had gone on while I was away, obviously the police were looking for me they had spoken to my friends and I had spoken to my friends before about how I wanted to run away so they told them about that and they thought i'd only been buying 20p pakcets of crisps for lunch money and saving the rest so the police reckoned I could have had 40 quid on me so the search went nationwide (the reality is i'd spent the rest of my lunch money on irn bru )
after this the bullying stopped for a while cos people were worried about me on top of that the local police officer who came to see me after I got home new all of the local neds all too well and said that the first thing she was going to do when she left was go find them all and warn them to stay away from me and that if they so much as looked at me threateningly to get on the phone to her and she would deal with them.
so that stopped and the verbal/emotional bullying in school had stopped for a while though when I got back to school after the holidays the bullying went back to normal.
my mum decided it was time for another move and she moved us into the house I am in now, we had the help of the police to get us the move cos of the hassle I had been getting and I've been in this house longer than anywhere else I've ever lived.
I'm taking another wee break to catch my breath again but the next part will be aboutye olde depression setting in and the beginnings of self harming and I will go into my recovery journey too.
so I left school at 16 after finishing my standard grades and was glad that school was behind me and I would never have to go back, started a college course but ended up dropping out and my mum was angry at me, we didn't speak for a while, on top of that I was always anxious about going out alone I had major trust issues and everything that had happened in my life started taking its toll. I had all this negativity and hatred and rage and other **** pent up inside me and no real release for it, I wasn't a fighter so couldn't take it out on anyone else and wouldn't even if I could and I would think about death and suicide a lot.
I would punch walls and punch myself in the head and bite myself but it never gave me the release I was looking for but when I was 19 cut myself for the first time and holy **** did it give me a release, whenever I cut it just felt (and still feels like) I was all the **** inside me was being released and literally trickling down my arm.
I was 21 when I first told my mum and she was upset but not angry and we sat down and spoke about it and its cos of this I went to counselling for the first time, the first counsellor was sound I did like him but after some time he reffered to one of his colleagues I was with him for a while until he recommended I take diazepam for a bit then come back to him but never got round to getting back to him, tried seeing someone else at another clinic and that lasted abut six weeks til we both decided I should go back t my GP t be reffered elsewhere, I ended up being reffered to a place called carswell house for an assessment and it was here that I was offered group therapy for the first time, one on one counselling wasn't working so I thought **** it i'll give it a try.
it took them a while to find enough people around my age range to start a group but one of the therapists would see me once every couple of weeks to keep an eye on me.
it was while waiting for the group therapy to start that I made my first suicide attempt, I was feeling low and told my GP so he gave me a prescription for diazepam on the Wednesday on the Thursday I decided I was going to end it all on Thursday night I had all my notes written out and on Friday I made my attempt.
I took all the diazepam with pain killers and washed them down with vodka, eve when I was laying out the pills and stuff a wee voice at the back of my head was telling me to flush the lot and phone someone but I ignored it and went ahead.
my sister found me unconscious, part of the reason I had chosen the Friday is cos she used to go to her boyfriends after work but that day she came home first and she found me and phoned the ambulance, I was taken to hospital and was passing in and out of consciousness and then I woke up and my mum was there and passed out again.
eventually I was admitted to the ward and hooked up to a drip, the next morning I was assessed and then I stayed in hospital while they monitored me, on the sunday I was assessed again and I agreed to go the local psych ward but I ended up only spending one night there cos they felt there was nothing they could do for me plus they didn't want me getting caught up in the system but holy **** what a surreal and eye opening night.
eventually my group therapy started and over time more people joined and over time it started working, i'd always felt that all the counsellors and therapists I had seen only knew about depression and MH what they had read in uni textbooks but the best thing about group therapy was that although we all had different reasons for being there we could all somewhat empathise with each other, eventually I felt ready to move on but I had nothing to move onto. Plus I had just found out that my sister was pregnant with my wee niece and I was going to be an uncle for the first time.
I was scouting around the web and found fairbrdge, I reffered myself was assigned a key worker and did an access week course where I met some cool and interesting people and a few arseholes too, after settling into fairbridge I decided it was time to stop the group therapy which I did and everyone respected my choice.
during my six months at fairbridge I had reached a milestone of one year self harm free and had thrown out a bunch of pills I had been stockpiling for a third attempt (the second attempt was plain ****ing embaressing and i'm not going to say anymore on it) plus in February of 2008 my niece was born not long after that I got to go saillng for the first time on a boat called the spirt of fairbridge (owned by the charity) and I had some of the best days of my life on both my trips on her maet some amazing people and shared so much with them and there's not a day goes by I don't think about it, at the end f both trips I got everyone to sign a big sheet of paper and I have them up on my wall to this day
fairbridge only works with people aged 16 - 25 so as I was about to turn 26 and I had to move on which was a bit of a kicker after all the progress I had made but I got into college and although I didn't pass the course I was doing cos I didn't pass the maths part of it so that was another kicker plus I had started cutting myself again.
so i'm going to take another wee breather again but next time I will go into what happened after college but I will finish this post by saying to anyone in the UK that the charity fairbridge has since merged with the princes trust and I would recommend anyone aged 16 - 25 looks up to see if there s a fairbridge program running in their area.
so I had finished college and had a sense of achievement but I hadn't passed the course so there was a real anticlimactic feeling there, plus I had started cutting myself again, my former key worker at fairbridge used to phone up every now and then to see how I was doing even though she didn't have to and I filled her in on what had been going on for me so it was at this point I first heard about the charity that I now volunteer for.
I wont mention its name cos we are quite a small organisation but I went through the "journey programme" for six months where I got to meet some more awesome people and we all had our ups and downs along the way but we became a tight unit and there were staff and other volunteers that I really trusted and I found myself not having the urge to cut again so I didn't.
during that six months my granda who I was really close to had been diagnosed with cancer, I literally found out about it the night before I went away on a five day residential trip with my group, I still went on the trip and everyone was really supportive when I told them my bad news.
at the end of the program there is a presentation night for everyone who passed the course and we all made a wee speech and showed a presentation of the pics we'd taken ver the course and we were presented the certificates and qualifications we had earned too, a few weeks after this my granda had a stroke.
he could barely talk anymore and this along with the cancer I knew he didn't have long, he died in april 2010 the week after my 28th birthday, it was such a blow to me as I had been doing so well and my granda had always been close to me and more of a dad to me than my actual dad was but despite that devastating blow I didn't go back to cutting myself plus not long after that we found out my sister was pregnant with my wee nephew so that cheered all of us up.
I managed another two years without cutting and was doing well, eventually became a volunteer at the charity and was helping to run trips and also getting monthly trips to our place up in the highlands (our bothy) which I see as a second home and a place I am truly at peace but in 2012 ye olde depression came back with a vengeance.
the job centre were being cunts to me even though I was trying so hard to find work and eventually I started cutting again and suicidal tendencies came back to me and I found myself making plans to take my own life again.
I spoke to my mum and she had noticed that I was doing too good so I was sent back to my GP who put me back on meds and reffered me back to the place I had been for group therapy and gave me a sick line so I didn't have to deal with the job centre againso that was a weight off me but I had to take a step back from my voluntary work cos it wasn't fair of me to bring my own issues when people had their own to deal with though I could still be involved with the volunteer only stuff I wasn't doing so much with the journey programme.
at this point I had a plan, I was going to take my tent and disappear to a location I had picked and I was going to OD there, its not like ODing at home where I can be found, august 15th 2012 was going to be the date I ended it all.
on the day I had been sent back to my GP I got home and was hit with a severe low, I just lay there and couldn't move and when my mum got in from work I told her I felt like **** and she needed to call someone, I ended up at the health centre and the crisis team were called and I told them about my plan (though at this time I didn't have a date set) the crisis team more or less said that if I was really serious about doing anything I would have done it already and sent me on my way with a few diazepam (which my mum kept) and an appointment to go to a local mental health clinic the next day.
I went to that and spoke to someone there and he was pretty helpful and talked me down from how I was feeling and stuff but at that point I just wasn't caring, eventually my referral came through to the place I had been before in july 2012 a month before I had my date to act on my plan I told the therapist about this after filling her in on what had been happening since I left group therapy and she was concerned but she gave me another appointment for next month after telling me I was too old to be on the kind of group I was on before and too young to be on an "adult" group so I was in a bit of a limbo plus the next appointment was after august 15th which was to be d day and when I explained this she just said to phone if I needed anything, my mind was made up and I was going to act on it unless someone stepped in and stopped me.
so this appointment was after the 15th plus I had signed up for a weekend volunteer only trip with my charity and I found myself lifting slightly out of my low and I thought "**** it I will postpone the date go on the trip and then go for the appointment then take it from there" I went on the weekend trip and one of the other people there was a girl who I had become close to, we had shared a lot of our lives with each other, she knew about my self harming plus she had also resorted to self harm herself and we could empathise with each other plus she had shared things with me about her battle with alcohol and ending up in jail and stuff, she really helped me that weekend.
august 15th came and went and it was strange cos I felt empowered, having the freedom to end it all and then choosing not to go through with it all is an oddly empowering feeling I went for a few more appointments with the therapist until I was reffered t another charity which tried to get me in to a few other places I eventually ended up at a drop in centre for peeps with mental health problems and I was attending an art group and creative writing group which I enjoyed but I had to stop going cos they brung in this new thing called "self directed support" which meant instead of the centre getting funding the people using it would have to be on SDS which meant I would have to pay 25 pounds a week to use a service I had been using for free so I stopped going and not long after that the centre was closed down for good cos of a lack of funding, this was in 2013.
so I will finish this later with a conclusion and reflection but for now i'm taking a break
so I didn't have much in the way of real support but I was still doing my voluntary work though there were some dramatic changes when some staff members were made redundant due to funding cuts two of them I was really close to and things got a bit rough but we've gotten back on our feet now.
I've just been plodding along since 2013 and last year I made the choice to come off my meds again so I've been off those a year now but as of a couple of months ago I am no longer self harm free and I find myself occasionally cutting but also drinking a lot more too my suicide plan has also made a comeback.
to be honest I think I've reached the peak of my existence and don't know where i'm going, I have a rough idea what i'd like to do which is gain the qualifications I need to do what I do in my voluntary work as a job which is why I did my counseling skills course plus I recently gained an outdoor first aid qualification last weekend (my charity set up that course) but despite that the temptation to self destruct is so strong cos its only when I hit rock bottom that things change such as when I ran away or when I made those two suicide attempts or when I had to go to A+E for stiches and i'm thinking if i'm going to self destruct I need to let it happen and whatever happens happens.
I know after everything that's happened to me and everything I've told you about that it would be wrong to kill myself, when I tried before my mum always said to me that she already lost one son and didn't want to lose another, plus my wee granny has alzheimers and her short term memory is really bad and if I did go through with ending it all she would have to be reminded again and again that i'm gone, then there's the impact on my niece and nephew to think about as well, when my wee niece was born she was an inspiration to move on with my life she was the inspiration I needed to move on with my life and my wee nephew has been an inspiration too and I don't want my death to be the first big traumatic event in their lives cos they are lucky and live good lives and have never had to put up with the **** me and my sister had to go through.
at the same time i'm conflicted, part of me just wants this life over with, I've made two attempts in the past and they always say third time lucky, like I said before it can be an addictive and powerful feeling planning your own death and knowing I have the courage to go through with it either way its not going to happen this side of the new year so I will keep going on for now and see where life takes me cos when I think about if I had been successful in my attempts to end it all I think about all the awesome stuff I would have missed such as becoming an uncle going sailing adventuring in the countryside all the awesome people I've met gigs I've seen etc.
ok I think this is all I have to say for now so i'm going to wrap it up, thanks to anyone who takes the time to read this thread
Nice one for putting it all down Zomb, it must have been a pretty painful process to go through it all again *hugs* If you're still feeling pretty suicidal then maybe go and talk to drs about it again. I don't believe you've reached your peak of existence :) but i hear that it's a hard thing to feel that way....
Anyway dude *hugs*
F r e d d i e
I am raw meat in a slaughter house, packaged according to what you are hungry for . . .
Zombie, maybe seeing your gp would be a good plan. Sounds like you could do with the support. It's good that you can see the positives, like becoming and uncle. But, when things are difficult it would be good if you could speak to someone. Did posting here help? Keep posting and we'll keep listening.
sketchbook I think the whole point of the thread was me going through those key events in my life again t try and make sense of it all since I was rethinking and reflecting on everything after completing my counselling skills course so typing all that out has definitely helped i'm not feeling as urgey as I have been over the last couple of days.
as far as seeing my GP, well it wont be my regular GP who I've had since I was a kid because they've brung in some new rules about postcodes and catchment areas and stuff so i'm now at a different health centre and will be seeing a new GP if I do go back.
to be honest I asked for help back in 2012 and all that happened was I got passed around from service to service and even when I did eventually find that drop in centre that was taken away from me, I think if i'd let the breakdown happen back then maybe I would have gotten the help I needed back then and t be honest I think that's what needs to happen now.
not saying I want to breakdown not saying i'm giving in just saying that if i'm going to get through this on my own and achieve my goals then cool if not and I break down so be it, if I go to far then I go to far, whatever happens, happens.
Well done for getting this all written out. I bet it's been quite cathartic and somewhat the equivalent of tidying a messy room by writing everything in an ordered way and seeing it in some sort of structure rather than bits of your past floating round your mind and being all mixed up together.
I wanted to say congratulations for passing your counselling skills course. What does this mean now? Does it mean you can facilitate a group or does it mean you can deliver counselling? Where could this lead you next. Have you ever aspired to become a counsellor? I know from chat that you're a really great listener and that you have amazing patience and compassion which are wonderful traits to have and would lend themselves as a career in counselling.
I wanted to let you know that I have read every word in this thread... even though it took me aaaaaaaaaaages :p
I wanted to let you know that I can relate (although in a different way) to how it must have felt losing your brother when you were 8 as I lost my best friend when I was 10 and she was 9. And although this is different friends Vs family and family dynamic etc, I know how awful it is at that moment when you were told. It's like your whole world is crushed and being a child to hear that kind of news is so overwhelming and so confusing, that feeling will stay with you forever. *hugs*
1 year - one birthday and one Christmas as you wrote... it's awful to think how a life can be so short and I do the same with my friend. I think about what they've never experienced and what they've missed but you just have to think about that short time they were here... were they loved? were they cared for? were they happy? And if the answer is yes to any or all of those questions, that in itself can be the comforting factor that can help us with the grieving process and learn to live in the celebration of life rather than the mourning of loss.
You've been through so much in your life, loss, upheaval, confusion, abandonment, bullying, fear, desperation and although you said more than once in this thread that you're not a fighter, I think you ARE a fighter. Not perhaps in the physical sense but you've fought off a lot in your life and got through so much to be here now... ALIVE and fuelled up with irn bru! (that bit made me laugh with the lunch money).
One thing I'm thankful for when reading this is the support that you have from your mum. It's wonderful that she's there for you and hasn't shunned you for your mental illness which I know a lot of that generation perhaps may have done due to lack of education. I'm also thankful that your sister found you after your first suicide attempt else I would never have met you and your awesomeness!
I find it interesting what you were saying about planning suicide and that having that plan and a date set gave you the feeling of empowerment and taking control of your life by having a set ending if you like. Have you ever thought about perhaps taking some of the creative writing skills you may have picked up from that drop in group and writing about a suicide? Perhaps a work of fiction even in the first person detailing an elaborate plan to commit suicide might keep those thoughts under control by getting them out in a fictional sense? Just an idea.
Where ever your life leads you you are very much appreciated by your family especially your mum, sister, niece, nephew and your wee granny who you do a lot for and by your charity and all the people there and by all the people here. You may feel like you've reached the peak of your existence but I'm not sure there is ever really a 'peak'. I think just like a mountain range you will trek up and down and round and round in life and see where it takes you. Keep strong. Keep smiling. Keep writing. Keep in touch.
Muchos lovage,
SOOTEH
xx
Soon... Now will be then...Today will be yesterday... Present will be past...And thought will be memory... So...Live for the future! Make your future how you want it!
I'm not a trained counsellor no, for that I have to do the diploma course and i'm saving money to do that next year, what I have are counselling skills which I can use in an informal environment a perfect example of this would be at my voluntary work and everything I've learned on my curse is having a positive impact on that.
in the meantime i'm hoping to get qualifications I need to run outdoor activities so I can do what I can do with my voluntary work as an actual job.
as far as the creative writing thing goes I wish I could get back into that, i'm one of those sad bastards who always says they're going to write a book but never actually does anything
it definitely was cathartic getting all that down yes, I've spoken about it all before but it helped getting it all down again to make some sense of it all.
I've read, understood, smiled and felt sad with you. I don't really know what to say other than I'm not sure how you survived but I'm glad you did. I completely understand the crossroads your at and if there's anything I can do to help you go in the right direction, whatever you choose, please let me know. x
) not long after this happened it came over the news that the rangers player davie cooper had died of the exact same thing so it really hit home how lucky we were.
