I first posted this on Vocal about 2 months ago but thought I might as well repost it here. Here's the link for the original if you're looking for more articles on similar topics. https://psyche.media/tackling-my-mental-health?_ga=2.32594494.1853401801.1524217330-143671639.1518982404
2017 was a strange year for me. It should have been the worst year of my life. At points I thought it might be my last, yet it somehow managed to turn into one of the best years of my life.
I was diagnosed with anxiety and depression in 2014 after putting off my concerns for years thanks to a toxic relationship. I started talking to my closest friends and family about it, but for the most part kept it to myself for fear of being ostracized. It was like a permanent monkey on my back that I had to hide from everyone. But knowing my enemy made it easier to fight. I got a new job and a new girlfriend, and moved to Edinburgh.
Things seemed pretty sweet.
Then in March 2017, everything started to unravel. My girlfriend, who had helped me so much in my battles & I helped in hers, essentially broke up with me in stages. We tried an open relationship—I didn't really try, probably because I could sense what was coming—before she left me. Less than a month later, she was with someone else; someone she met in the dying days of our relationship.
Naturally, I wasn't in the best of places at this stage. Whilst I did have an incredible network of friends who could help me, they were now 40 miles away. I appreciate that it's hardly comparable to someone who has moved country and they were only about an hour away, but this was my first time experiencing a low so far from them, and I was wary of opening up to my Edinburgh friends to the same extent as my closest friends. A black cloud was gathering and everything was getting darker and darker.
In May I saw on social media that an old friend had lost her boyfriend and the father of her young child. Not knowing the circumstances, I offered my condolences. Her reply sent a chill running through me.
"Thanks so much. Hope you're holding up well please reach out for help if you need it because this could have maybe been prevented x"
I had had suicidal thoughts before, but they had been fleeting. I'd never considered the ramifications of it in any great detail before this. I had also thought naïvely thought that if I could have a family of my own, I'd be alright. There'd always be something or someone to fight for. For the first time, I realised that there was no magic-wand that could solve the problems in my head.
At the end of May, I visited one of my closest friends in Malaga, then my sister in Brussels. The time away did me good, up until my last night in Belgium. I said goodbye to my sister and she headed for the metro. As soon as she had gone, I felt some inexplicable force weighing me down, sucking the light from around me like a black hole. I went back to the hotel and tried to distract myself, but to no avail. I was agitated. I was beyond reason. Bad thoughts were swirling around my head, getting louder and louder with each passing moment. Two conversations prevented me from doing anything stupid that night; one with my ex-girlfriend, the other with my grieving friend. For that I'll always be grateful to them. It was one bad night, but it was a horrendously long and dark night.
When I returned home, I began to open up about my mental health. Not because I thought it would help anyone, just as a release for how I was feeling. The fear of being ostracized still loomed, but not as much as the fear of another night like that one in Brussels. I was met with such warmth and kindness that I felt like an ignoramus for keeping it all bottled up inside for so long. I found it just as helpful as any therapy session I'd been to in the past (In no way am I trying to undermine the benefits of therapy as a treatment, I just found it worked better in my case) and I found it easier to handle the black clouds when they gathered. My friends spoke to me about their struggles with similar issues. People I hadn't spoken to in years reached out to me, thanking me for doing something I thought was nothing.
I made a point of spending as much time with my closest friends and family as I possibly could. The summer of 2017 was probably the happiest I had been since I left high school. I identified things in my life I was unhappy with and started work on changing them. I'm still working on them today.
I started off 2017 thinking of starting a family, thinking it would help save me. I ended it with a bigger and closer family than I ever dreamed of. A family I always had and who turned the worst year of my life into one of the best. A family who helped me save myself.
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