Finding HopeWorld Suicide Prevention Day 2023
Posted on September 10, 2023
TW: Discussions of suicidal thoughts, suicidal urges, self harm, and irrational thinking. PLEASE think carefully before reading further if these things may trigger you or cause you distress. Please always put yourself and your mental health first.
This, I think, is the first time I’ve written directly about my experience with suicidal thoughts and urges. I’ve mentioned it in relation to the side effects of medication and written around the edges of it but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about it in such detail. I have omitted certain moments and details since it’s been proven that sharing about plans and methods can lead to further suicides but this is as honest as I can manage, even though it terrifies me. But as hard as it is, I’m sharing these experiences because I think it’s so deeply important for people to understand what it’s like to feel this way, to live in so much pain, to feel so desperate. Keeping these stories in the dark only increases the shame and stigma so, even though it’s difficult and uncomfortable and scary, we need to talk about them. It’s the only way the world will get better at supporting people who are struggling.
I’ve experienced suicidal thoughts on and off since I was a teenager but for a long time, they were passive. Walking to school, I’d cross the road and, dreading the day ahead, I’d imagine getting hit by a car. But the thought would leave as quickly as it arrived. I thought it was normal. To quote Ned Vizzini, “Who hasn’t thought about killing themselves, as a kid? How can you grow up in this world and not think about it?” (I may have hated that book but that line really resonated with me.) This was before I was diagnosed as autistic* and I thought everyone felt as overwhelmed by their emotions, by their anxieties, as I did – as I do – but were just better at managing it.
*Autistic individuals, especially autistic women, are at a much higher risk of suicide than the general population; the factors include mental health problems (especially if they go untreated), the impact of a late diagnosis, challenging life events such as bullying and ableism, the burden of masking, isolation, and cognitive inflexibility, which can lead to difficulty in seeing any option but suicide. (x)
(Left: During secondary school // Right: During sixth form college)
I continued to experience passive suicidal thoughts and then, during my second year of sixth form college, I started to struggle with depression and my ever-present anxiety reached all-new heights (although, in comparison to what I experience now, I’d happily go back to it). Almost a decade, multiple diagnoses, and more than twenty medications later, my depression is the worst it’s ever been and I’ve been actively suicidal for almost two years. There have been short periods over the years (always in concert with the times I tried medications other than Phenelzine) where I’ve struggled with suicidal thoughts but, for the last two years, they have been almost constant.
They began in earnest when I started taking Xaggatin for my ADHD (and had to stop taking Phenelzine because my ADHD clinician was insistent that the side effects were unsustainable – I disagreed for multiple reasons but this isn’t the post for that story). I thought the intensity of the thoughts – and their slow, scary manifestation into urges and intentions and plans – was a side effect but it wasn’t long before my depression crept back in, sucking me down. Between that and the other awful side effects, my psychiatrist switched me to another medication, Bupropion, an antidepressant that’s supposed to help with ADHD but it only made things worse: I was so anxious, depressed, and suicidal that I couldn’t function. I tried a few more antidepressants, was traumatised by several more doctors, and had the crisis team called out (although they didn’t do anything, including the things they’d said they’d do). I quit treatment entirely for a while, unable to mentally handle it; I basically retreated to my bed and stayed there. I couldn’t engage with the world: it just hurt too much. But without treatment (I didn’t even have a therapist at this point, another thing that had spun my life out of control), the claws of my depression dug deeper and deeper. I remember one day where I had the sickening realisation that I wasn’t doing anything worthwhile with my life, that I had wasted my time and my education, that I was a complete waste of space. There was another day when I realised that something had broken inside me, something that could never be fixed, and I was no longer the person I had been and would only ever be a defective, inferior version of her. I avoided mirrors for months. On New Year’s Eve of 2021, I stared at the fairy lights in my living room and thought about how I had no desire to survive even the next 365 days. It wasn’t a resolution but I felt it with a quiet certainty. I thought about it everyday but then somehow that dreaded day arrived and I was still here, despite that certainty, despite my plans. I hated myself for it, feeling like a pathetic, weak-willed coward. It was a terrible night, not that I remember much of it given the distress I was in.
Somehow I ended up on Phenelzine again, despite my revulsion at the thought; I still don’t really know how it happened and I still find myself so angry about it that it feels like it might consume me. But, for a while, the chronic suicidality was relocated to the side burner: it was all still there but it wasn’t the only thing in my brain anymore. I could ignore it for sometimes days at a time. But after a while, my depression seemed to billow back in, like ink in water. The suicidal thoughts and urges became – and still are – the constant undertow to my thoughts and sometimes it’s all so overwhelming that I can barely breathe. Self harming has long stopped being an effective coping strategy as it just makes me feel pathetic for not doing more damage. I don’t know why I haven’t acted on these thoughts. I don’t know why I’m still here. If asked, I’d probably say, “because I’m a coward,” even though I know that I’d likely get a verbal thrashing from anyone I voiced that feeling too. I can practically hear my therapist (yes, I’m back in therapy) encouraging me to dissect that feeling. I know it’s not a healthy, rational thought but it is a real one. It’s a weird state to live in and the conflict of planning for a future I don’t particularly want to exist in is disorientating and miserable. It’s exhausting. But I know what my fate is, whether it comes sooner or later, and I have for years.
Following a slightly different train of thought, it’s very strange to me that people can’t seem to tell, just because it’s such an overwhelming experience for me. I feel like I have a massive neon sign over my head: “SUICIDAL.” But then I wouldn’t be surprised if people just don’t comment because they don’t know what to say. The last time I self-harmed, I cut my face because I needed to look as broken as I felt (or inasmuch as I could physically manage, which wasn’t enough – more shame and self-hatred) and almost nobody even mentioned it. (Not that that was the point but it did surprise me. Most of the time I avoided the question. I only lied once: I was in a weird headspace already and the question took me off guard and I just didn’t have the emotional energy to explain.) The cut got infected and took weeks to heal. I’m glad it left a scar but I resent it for not being bigger: the disfigurement doesn’t accurately reflect the feelings, not by a long shot.
(Left: The dressing on my face after I self harmed // Right: The scar after it finally healed, having got infected.)
In some ways, I feel like I’m already disappearing: I struggle to make sense of my face in the mirror and, while I don’t know about this year, there are fewer than ten photos of me in 2022; my autistic masking is so ingrained that the real, brutally honest me who is struggling and suffering (who so desperately needs to be seen) gets locked away so tightly that she might as well not exist, while a socially acceptable and palatable projection of me – the only version of me that people could want, says the voice in my head – takes over my body, acting almost without my permission; I feel like no one knows the real me any more, not after months in bed, besieged by suicidal thoughts and impulses. I feel permanently damaged by it but people are still treating me as who I used to be and not who I am now (not that I think it’s their fault – while the damage feels so deeply clear to me, I know that it’s not visible to anyone else). I remember the old me. I remember the person who could be proud of being different and who advocated for acceptance, even though she still felt broken. It was a balancing act but there was balance. Now the broken feeling has broken the scale. I feel unrecognisable. I noted down somewhere – last year at some point, I think – that feeling like this feels like one elongated near death experience. Almost every day for more than eighteen months, I’ve been so close to death that I can feel it’s presence in the air when I breathe in; I can feel it in my lungs. One decision – one split second – away. Maybe it’s just dying in slow motion. Feeling this way… I don’t know how it doesn’t change you.
I was reading various articles as I both researched and procrastinated this post and, in one of them, the author had written this: “Because depression, as we all know, is almost always treatable.” The statistics vary, depending on where you look, but a high percentage of people (this page claims between 80% and 90%) do eventually respond well to treatment. After ten years, over twenty medications, and more hours in multiple therapies than I can count, I’ve only ever managed periods of being mentally well. The longest period was, I think, two and a half years at the most. Only one medication actually helps and I’ve run out of new ones to try. The other options, according to a consultant in another very distressing appointment, would be the Ketamine trials or Electroconvulsive Therapy, neither of which doctors fully understand (the same could be said for antidepressants). Given how abnormally I respond to multiple medications, I’m terrified of how these treatments might affect me. I’m terrified of how Phenelzine is affecting me. With all of that in mind, I can’t help but wonder – and have wondered for a long time – if I’m included in that small percentage that doesn’t respond to treatment. And if that’s the case, it means that this is forever and that is an unbearable thought.
I’ve spent a lot of time talking with my therapist about this – and no doubt this post will spark multiple new discussions – and we did talk briefly about what I could write for this post, what would feel actually helpful to someone reading (I never figured that out, by the way, so I have no idea if this is helpful or not). She said that the most important thing is to talk about it and that it’s much more dangerous not to talk about it. I agree with the latter part but I’m not convinced that talking about it is helping me; I often feel like I’m just going around in circles and exhausting myself. She asked me what I would say to someone I loved if they expressed all of this to me and the truth is that I honestly don’t know. I don’t know because I’ve never heard anything that’s helped me. I think we all have the knee-jerk reaction to say, “Please stay. I love you and I’d miss you.” It’s true and it’s heartfelt but is it fair to ask someone to live in agony, in unbearable misery, because you’d miss them? We want to say, “Things will get better.” But we don’t know that. We can’t promise that. We want to say, “How can I help?” But it’s unlikely that there’s any one thing a person can do to help, although that one is more specific to the individual person. If someone asked me that, I couldn’t give them an answer because there is nothing they can do to help. It’s so much bigger than one person, than them or than me. Maybe these help some people. For me, none of these things change the reasons I’m suicidal and they’ve only added unhelpful pressure and stress. I’d hate to do that to someone else. I’m not saying the right words aren’t out there. I’ve just never heard them. Or discovered them.
Obviously I haven’t shared everything. As I said, I didn’t want to share things that have been proven to push people passed their limits (although I hope everyone read the warning and acted accordingly and prioritised their mental health) but there are also certain things that are too hard to share, too raw, too loaded. But I wanted to share my experience today, not just because it’s an overwhelming aspect of my life, but because sharing our experiences and our feelings is, as I said in my introduction, one of the few ways (and possibly the most powerful way) that the world gets better at helping people. People can only do that if they understand the battles being fought and the support that’s needed. I hope that sharing my story can help with that, even if it’s just a drop in the ocean.
RESOURCES:
Operation Bupropion: SNAFU
Posted on February 12, 2022
TW: Mentions of self harm and suicidal thoughts.
So, I’ve been gone for a while. After having a bad reaction to the first ADHD medication, I had another bad reaction to the second, Bupropion, as well. Everything fell apart and I was really unwell for months; I couldn’t get out of bed, let alone write. I’m still not feeling great but things are better than they were and I am starting to feel able to write again, hence this new post.
After the mess that was Xaggitin, I was hopeful (kind of – in the only way you can be when you’re feeling hopeless and suicidal) that Bupropion would be better, given that it was an antidepressant but one that’s supposed to help with ADHD. I honestly don’t know whether it was better, which is somewhat mindblowing considering how awful the Xaggitin was.
As always, this is just my experience. Please don’t start, change, or stop taking any medications without the advice and support of a medical professional.
BUPROPION – 150mg
WEEK 1
The most pressing of the side effects was the nausea: it was overwhelming. And it went on all day, every day. It was horrendous. I was barely eating and while I can’t see it, I’ve had multiple people comment that I’ve visibly lost weight. (I also had a weird reaction to the Christmas tree in that it made the nausea even worse – it also irritated my eyes, nose, and throat, making my cough even worse, which wasn’t pleasant.)
I had consistent difficulty sleeping. I was always wide awake until very late at night (or early in the morning) and then I struggled to get up at anything approaching a reasonable time the next day – I also had a lot of very vivid, stressful dreams, which is something I’ve noticed pops up when I change medication. I was physically exhausted all the time (both therapy and hydrotherapy, for example, had me falling asleep on the sofa, which I haven’t done in months) and I was feeling very burned out and overwhelmed with nothing left emotionally as well as physically. I had a couple of almost meltdowns as a result (I think the only reason they didn’t turn into full on meltdowns was because I was so physically exhausted so I just shut down instead).
I was very depressed, feeling hopeless and having suicidal thoughts. I was also restless and had this ongoing sense of unease. It was awful but my psychiatrist strongly encouraged me to stick with it for a month to really get a feel for it, for whether it would help or not. The depression and suicidal thoughts could’ve been a hangover from the Xaggitin and the only way to know was to give it more time.
I was also having headaches, not quite at migraine level but not far off.
WEEK 2
The nausea continued, unfortunately. It was still bad but it was a little better on some days, I think. All of the food around Christmas was pretty stressful though: I still didn’t really have any appetite but I did manage to eat a bit, although what I used to consider a normal potion made me feel very unwell.
My sleep schedule remained messed up too. I was getting to sleep at around three in the morning (regardless of any help, that being medication or the methods I’ve used in the past that have helped) and then struggling to get up the next day. There was one night where I never got to sleep and then, the night after, I slept for fourteen hours and felt well rested for the first time in longer than I can remember. I’d hoped that that would right my schedule – at least a bit – but it didn’t. I was back to struggling to sleep the night after that. And I was still having the terrifyingly vivid nightmares. I was also physically exhausted: Christmas Day and a small family thing the day after Boxing Day, in particular, absolutely wiped me out.
The anxiety and depression persisted, plus I felt very, very emotional; I was restless and uneasy and I felt very raw and lost. It was pretty overwhelming.
The headaches continued too, plus the weird response to the Christmas tree: it made me feel very nauseous and made my eyes burn horribly. I love having the Christmas tree up so that didn’t help my mood.
BUPROPION – 150mg (+ PROPRANOLOL (20mg))
WEEK 3
I hadn’t wanted to start Bupropion and Propranolol at the same time since it would be impossible to tell if one of the two wasn’t working. So, two weeks in, I added the Propranolol. But while I’d remembered that, I’d lost track of time and forgotten that, after two weeks, I could up the Bupropion. So I was taking the half dose three days longer than I’d intended to (in which I also got my COVID booster).
The trouble sleeping continued. I was finally getting to sleep between two and five in the morning and then, of course, struggling to wake up in the morning. I was completely exhausted and finding it a real struggle to get out of bed at all, something that certainly wasn’t helped by my depression. Feeling depressed, hopeless, overwhelmed, and anxious… getting up and facing the world felt like more than I was capable of.
The nausea was still very present too and there were moments when I had to stop and sit down on the floor and just focus on not throwing up. It was very unpleasant. I couldn’t really handle food, not that I really had any appetite anyway.
I also had a headache that grew into a vicious migraine (with intensely painful light sensitivity). The COVID booster was positively pleasant in comparison. My arm was sore and heavy for a few days but that was it, symptom wise, as far as I could tell.
BUPROPION – 300mg (+ PROPRANOLOL (20mg))
WEEK 1
I only managed five days on the full dose of Bupropion. It was clear straight away that it wasn’t agreeing with me.
If I was sleeping, I was sleeping terribly: I was getting to sleep around three at the earliest and then desperately struggling to wake up in the mornings. But between the depression and the anxiety, I found getting out of bed felt overwhelming. The depression had gotten even worse – the worst it’s ever been – and everything just felt hopeless. The self harm urges and suicidal thoughts were relentless. I felt checked out of my life and I just couldn’t engage with anything, even things that I love and things that have previously helped when my depression’s been bad. The anxiety amped up too. I was just overwhelmed, terrified that something bad was going to happen; I felt like I was constantly trying to stop myself from panicking. The nausea and lack of appetite also persisted; I was barely eating anything. But I have to confess that I didn’t really care. Food is so stressful for me that not eating was a relief.
BUPROPION – 150mg (+ PROPRANOLOL (20mg) + LORAZEPAM (2-4mg))
WEEK 1
With things getting so bad, my Mum was calling anyone who could help us and my GP told us to go back to the half dose, adding Lorazepam to help with the overwhelming anxiety (which apparently not uncommon when taking Bupropion).
At this point, I’d basically stopped getting out of bed, only getting up to have a shower and try to eat something before going back to bed. My anxiety (including racing thoughts, which I’ve only had a handful of times) was so bad and so overwhelming that I just couldn’t engage with anything: everything made my anxiety worse. It messed with my sleep even more and I barely ate at all; just the thought of food made me incredibly nauseous. I had meltdowns and I self harmed (which didn’t actually make me feel any better) and just being up in the daylight made everything so much heavier so I stayed hidden in my darkened room. I was beyond miserable.
Halfway through that week, the Crisis Team (or Assessment and Treatment Team as I believe they’re formally called although everyone we spoke to called them the Crisis Team) came out to see me. As nice as they were, I’m not really sure what the point of it was. The guy wanted to make sure I was eating at least a bit; he wanted to know about my anxiety and depression; he wanted to know whether I was having thoughts of self harming and suicide, although he didn’t ask if I was planning on acting on those thoughts. And then he rambled a bit about me being monitored over the medication change. I’m not sure what good that would do. I’ve changed medications so many times now; I’d just be doing what I do every single time but with someone coming to see me everyday. How was that supposed to help? What was that going to achieve? They offered to refer us to one of their psychiatrists, which my Mum asked them to so so that we could find out whether, at this point, there was any point in continuing with the Bupropion or whether I should start coming off it officially. As I said, they were nice but it was a pretty frustrating and upsetting experience and I just wanted to cry. I wrote in my diary afterwards: “Oh my fucking god, I can’t keep feeling like this every day, over and over again. It just makes me want to tear my hair out and rip my skin off and scream until my throat tears.”
Over the rest of the week, I continued to sleep badly and struggle to wake up. I lay in bed all day, my brain just spinning out of control: my thoughts felt very chaotic and it was all just big, overwhelming feelings that I couldn’t make sense of. I felt like I was losing control of my mind – like I was just a spectator – and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. And I couldn’t stop crying. I was depressed, anxious (by the end of the week, I was up to 4mg of Lorazepam daily – prompted by calls to 111 and then my psychiatrist – although I was still paralysingly anxious), terrified, miserable, and exhausted: those seem to be the words I wrote down the most. Eating was an ongoing struggle, although the nausea had finally dissipated (for the most part).
After speaking to my Mum, my psychiatrist recommended I come off the Bupropion and, with my depression so bad, go back to an MAOI antidepressant since we’ve had the most success with them. I wasn’t thrilled by that plan (I’m still not wild about it) because the Phenelzine isn’t great, plus it massively limits the options for ADHD medication. But there don’t seem to be any other available options so I just went with it. With the two week wash out period, I didn’t have to make the decision straight away.
WASH OUT
WEEK 1 (20mg Propranolol + 4mg Lorazepam)
My sleeping schedule got worse: it was taking longer and longer to get to sleep until I was eventually drifting off at around five in the morning. That, of course, meant I was waking up later. I didn’t really mind that: I didn’t really want to be awake anyway and being awake in the dark didn’t feel quite as difficult as it did in the daylight hours. I did get up each day – to shower, to try to eat – but it was a miserable experience that usually resulted in tears. I felt completely overwhelmed and just didn’t know what to do with myself but I was still restless and felt like I was constantly on the verge of a meltdown. Even though I wasn’t doing anything, I was completely exhausted, which just made the inability to get to sleep that much more frustrating.
I had periods of intense anxiety but for the most part, the depression was overwhelming and suffocating. I felt separate and disconnected from my life, and like I couldn’t get back to it. I felt completely hopeless and the suicidal thoughts continued. I was completely miserable.
WEEK 2 (20mg Propranolol + 4mg Lorazepam)
I was constantly exhausted, barely eating and my sleeping just kept getting worse, getting more screwed up and out of sync. I took sleeping pills, I tried every strategy that’s ever worked, every possible combination… but I just couldn’t get to sleep; it just got later and later until I was going to sleep at eight in the morning. It was miserable. I was miserable: I was in tears multiple times every day; I was incredibly anxious (I’m not convinced the Lorazepam was doing anything); I was deeply depressed and consistently having suicidal thoughts and thoughts about self harming (which I did act on although it didn’t make me feel any better). It was the worst I’d ever felt. Everything just felt impossible, overwhelming and hopeless and I just didn’t know how to act like that wasn’t how I felt. It was all too much and I just didn’t know what to do with myself: I couldn’t engage or connect with anything. Everything felt wrong and uncomfortable and sad.
It’s a really hard state of mind to describe so I thought I’d include some of the things I wrote in my diary during the week:
- “I hate being in my own brain.”
- “I feel like screaming and tearing my face off and breaking things.”
- “I feel like I’m constantly on the edge of a meltdown.”
- “Everything about all of this medication stuff feels hopeless. It just feels like this is forever because I either have to choose between my depression and my ADHD, which one to treat, which one is worse. I don’t want to be me. Why couldn’t I have had a brain like everyone else I know? I feel so desperately jealous of people who’ve never struggled this way; I’m even jealous of those who have struggled but can take medication to manage whatever they need to manage, lead the lives they want to live, be functional, be happy… Apparently, I can’t. There’s always going to be something wrong, something pressing down on me and making life harder. It feels like everything could shatter any second and I’ll end up in a meltdown that I’ll never be able to get out of.”
- “I miss me. I miss who I was before all of this. But after everything, I don’t know if it’s possible to get back to that person. That person doesn’t feel like me anymore. I feel trapped. I hate being me.”
- “I feel like I’m being forced to choose between my depression and my ADHD and I’m just so angry that it’s almost ten years later and I’m still dealing with this; I’ve tried almost twenty different medications to manage it all and yet, I’m still in the same place. It’s still so difficult.”
So it was a rough week after a rough few months. The wash out period is up but I still don’t know what to do. There are so many reasons why I don’t want to go back to MAOIs – messy, convoluted reasons that I don’t even know how to put into words – but there doesn’t seem to be another option. I still don’t want to take them though. I feel completely stuck.
This was several weeks ago now and as much as I didn’t want to go back to an MAOI, I had a bit of a breakdown and started taking a new antidepressant, Moclobemide. I was desperate. And, as I said, things aren’t great but they are better than they were. I still feel very conflicted about what to do around the medication and the clash between the medications for each condition but at least I am feeling clearer and not so completely overwhelmed.
2021 in Review
Posted on December 31, 2021
I’m not really sure how to sum up this year. It has been one of extremes, to say the least: anxiety, joy, stress, excitement, depression… And, at this point, I feel a bit like I’ve run out of capacity. For anything. So this was a hard post to write and it wasn’t helped by the dichotomy between most of the year and the last few months; I’ve found it very hard to look at each part without the other colouring it in some way.
The biggest part of my year was most definitely the final two modules of my Masters, which turned out to be my two favourite modules of the course, The Writer’s Voice and Major Repertoire Project. Having written about these already, I don’t want to repeat myself but I do want to look at them in the context of the year. From January to September, I wrote furiously and with such joy. There was anxiety and depression and stress – they were all in there – but it felt like all of that writing balanced the scales. I wrote so many songs that I love, that I’m so proud of, and that I can’t wait to release. While I did release new music this year – The Honest EP (Sunburst Sessions) – they weren’t new songs and I’m so excited to share new songs. I have lots of plans that I’m really excited about and despite the chaos of the last few months, I have been working on my next project. I’m very excited to share it in the new year.
I’m very proud of myself for completing the Masters, especially given that I did most of it during the pandemic, and I’m so proud of my final project; it is the best thing I’ve ever done and I can’t wait to get it out into the world. I poured everything I had into that project so getting such a high grade and then the Outstanding Student Award at Graduation felt really good. I feel weird talking about it but I am really proud of that achievement and the recognition of how hard I worked means a lot to me. Because of an administrative screw up, I’m not sure when my graduation will be official, when I’ll get my certificate – something that caused a lot of distress – but practically, it’s done.
My health, both physical and mental, hasn’t been in great shape this year. The chronic pain was really bad, the fatigue not much better, and the ongoing migraines are pretty miserable. My mental health was fairly stable and actually not too bad for the most part, until the last few months of the year. Then it got really bad. In order to try medication for my ADHD, I had to come off Phenelzine – the only medication that’s ever helped me – and then start Xaggitin. That went extremely badly. My depression all but overwhelmed me; it was the worst my mental health has ever been. I’ve stopped taking the Xaggitin and I’m taking Bupropion now and it’s different but I’m not sure if it’s any better though.
I’ve felt very alone this year, in regards to tackling and managing all of this. I came out of every appointment feeling angry, distressed, dismissed, or invalidated (and often multiple of these in various combinations). I haven’t felt safe with any of them; I didn’t feel like my existence even registered with them. So I’m finding all of that very hard and each new appointment is preceded by extreme anxiety, a kind of anxiety I’ve rarely experienced. It’s a bit like a fight or flight response. I’ve never had a great relationship with the medical profession but I’ve felt particularly let down this year. I have finally managed to get back to therapy (although this was before the newest variant threw a wrench in all of our plans) but it’s been a long time and a lot of stuff has happened; I feel like I’m having to learn how to do it all over again.
It’s also been a hard year, family wise. I haven’t been able to see one of my parents – in real life – since before the pandemic (for medical reasons) and that has been so hard. We talk on FaceTime and stuff and that’s good but I still miss her so much. And then, of course, my Granny died in September, just as I was finishing my Masters. At that point, I think, my brain just couldn’t take anymore; I don’t think I’ve processed any of it, to be honest. To a certain extent, I feel frozen, like I stopped while everything around me kept going. It’s not the first time I’ve felt like this but that doesn’t make it any easier. I’m sure all of those feelings will make their presence felt in the new year. But as hard as all of that is, I’m so grateful for the friends and family around me; I’m not sure where I’d be without them.
“What a surreal year. I don’t even know how to sum it up really. Everything I felt, I felt in extremes: stress, anxiety, depression, joy, excitement. I wrote songs that I’m so proud of, I hugged friends I hadn’t seen in months, I completed a Masters degree that I loved. I struggled with even more health issues, I was almost overwhelmed by the worst depression I’ve ever experienced, and I’m learning to live in a world that doesn’t have my Granny in it. The high points were so high and the low points were so low and I’m honestly exhausted right now. This year has been more than I know how to handle and I’m still kind of drowning but I’m also still here.” (x)
This end of year post isn’t quite the same as what I’ve done in previous years but it’s been a weird year and I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m experiencing some form of burnout. I have a few plans but honestly, I have no idea what the next period of my life looks like and that’s scary. I hate how my life goes on hold whenever I change medications and I feel more than a bit lost right now. All I can do is wait and see and after all these years, there’s very little I hate more.
Finding Hope 