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A Note on Grief

Last week I lost someone that I loved very much. He took his own life. I wasn’t related to him, I wasn’t in a relationship with him and I didn’t speak to him very often. I didn’t live near him and I rarely saw him. I knew him for many years and we had intense periods of communication then nothing. Then intense, then nothing. Always honest and raw and, a lot of the time, drunken and hilarious, dark and deep. Confusing and wonderful. But I really, really loved him. I still do.

I have been debating whether or not to write about him. I don't want to be a grief vulture; I don't want to feel like I am joining the grief parade you so often get when somebody well known dies. So I have decided to write about him for me, and keep my memories of our times together for myself. I will write them down and keep them, treasure them and re-read them when I need to, although I doubt I will need to. I hope I won’t. But just in case. There will be some notes on Scott, but I want to talk about grief. This is not about him. It is about me and you because we are still here and he has gone. And we have to try to go on.

I have never had this happen to me before, which given my predisposition to the darker sided humans and creatives of the world, is actually surprising. The minute he disappeared, deep down I knew. It was in the day or so before the news that I drank to oblivion, cried and shouted at people. Those were the days where things were noisy and angry and I had to self medicate to stop me thinking about it, because I knew where he was. On the morning I found out I was quiet. Numb. Starring at the wall of the hotel I was in, then going down because I didn’t want to miss breakfast, the most important meal of the day. A breakfast I don’t remember ordering, a call to my mum - no tears - that I don't remember clearly. My mum is crying and she never met him. The rush of people to get to me. The rush of love chattering away on my phone. Message after message. Shaky hands and fast heart . Emotions of anger, guilt. Questions. Physical pain. Nausea. Whole body shakes. I think this is called shock.

People have come to the hotel and those people won’t leave me until 4 days later. I don't know, but I am under observation now. I am funny and I order lunch and am silly. “I feel fine”. My stomach hurts and I feel sick and I order food and pick at it and I want to drink but I am racing tomorrow and I already feel drunk but I am not drunk. I don't seem sad. I feel manic. I am put in the car and driven to my friends house. She is driving me to the race. I play with her dog and my phone keeps vibrating and I just can’t, and then I start to cry and then I stop and I am watching myself from above. And we drive to the field where the race is an everyone cuddles me and I sit down and drink a beer. I am surrounded by love but I can’t cope so I switch my phone off. I urn 80 miles. I win. I laugh and I am surrounded by love. I am never left alone. I am followed everywhere. I am so, so sad, but sometimes I don't think about it for an hour and then I feel bad for not thinking about it. I feel guilty because I am not his family. I don't have the right the grieve. I feel guilty about not feeling bad enough. I replay our conversations in the week before this happened. I replay all the times he had talked to me late at night on the phone, reassuring me. I thought I had reassured him. I hadn’t. I had failed. Maybe it was me? Maybe I made it worse? Maybe the weight of other peoples problems had been the problem. People who thought they knew him because of the songs. People like me. He said to me a few weeks ago “I am a lot more than just the band”.

I have to go back to work. People say “I am sorry about your friend” and I want to punch them. I am venomous in my anger but I keep it in my belly. I am intercepted when I get to work by my friend and she has bought a dog. I cuddle the dog and do work. On the tube I stare. I want to tell his family and his bandmates that I am sorry but I have no right to the same grief that they have. I sleep. I drink too much but never too too much. I have an ache in my back that won’t go away. I am living in fog. Smiling in fog. Functioning in fog. Waiting for the crobar to smack me in the shins again and bring me to my knees.

And this is how it will be now. For me at least. There won’t be a calm or stillness. There’s a monsoon in my brain and it is a monsoon I do not understand and I cannot control or silence. I don't know how I will ever find peace. There will always be a tiny part of my heart with a hole in it. The ripples that have spread from what he has done are so far reaching and devastating. They roll on and on like a tsunami. I take a tiny piece of comfort and relief that this is over for him but I am angry that it has only just started for us. I am lucky. I got time with him. So much good time. He helped me, comforted me and talked me down. I am angry that I couldn’t do the same. Why didn’t he call me? When we last met was he making his peace? Humouring me, knowing what he was going to do. Was he saying goodbye? Did he know? What would I have said if I knew that was the last time I would speak to him? What do I do with those text messages? This will remain raw and open. This is grief.

[andsotheadventurebeginsblog]

Hope is important

I’m sitting at the airport in Miami, waiting for my connecting flight back to the UK, after 8 of the best days I have had in as long a time as I can remember. When I got sick, a lot of people reached out to me and showed kindness and checked in to ask if I was OK. One of them was my friend Natasha. But we’ll call her Tosh. Because she likes that.

I met Tosh 2 years ago in South Africa. I had decided to go off on a little adventure to Gaansbai to learn about Great White Sharks, like you do. I was terrified - not of the sharks (they are our friends) but of being on my own - I’d never done anything like that before and I didn’t know the country or anyone that I would be staying with. The day I left, I had to attend the wake of a friend who had killed himself. I was on the verge of not going to the airport, of just going home from the wake and forgetting about it, but life is short and it never feels shorter than when you’re at a friends funeral. There’s a huge amount about that trip if you rewind all the way back to the start of this blog, but cut a long story short, I had met my spirit animal in Tosh. I didn’t quite know the impact that she would have on my life.

From the minute I got to that house in Gaansbai, she made me feel uttlery glorious. She was kind, she was compassionate and she knew EVERYTHING about sharks.  She taught me so much and was never patronising or dismissive. We had the BEST time on that trip and promised to stay friends for life. But you know how it is - I didn’t ACTUALLY think that we would. I didn’t ACTUALLY think that we would see each other. It’s just something you say isn’t it? Fast forward 2 years and she’s been to see me in London, we travelled together to Belize last year and we text to each other pretty much every week.

A month ago she sent me a message saying she was going to Costa Rica with her family - her dad had hired a house for a month, and would I like to come for a bit - to help me with my recovery and spend some time out in the sun and of course to see her and meet her family. My immediate reaction was NOPE, can’t afford the flights and can’t afford to take time off work. But what had happened to me in the last month couldn’t be ignored. Life is about experiences and not stuff. I needed to fro the things I love. Now I am on the medication I have started to love things again, or at least like them a bit. What do I love? The ocean, animals, nature, the sun and Tosh. I booked the flights.

A friend recently gave me a book to read - “Man’s Search For Meaning” by Viktor E Frankl. I started reading it before my trip and it’s amazing. Frankl is a psychologist was also held in the concentration camp at Auschwitz for 3 years. It centre’s around the idea of finding hope in situations that appear to hold none, and man’s search for meaning - why didn’t all the prisoners commit suicide, what kept them going and what can we learn from this? He developed his own take on psychotherapy called Logotherapy. But the thing that really got to me, was the way he writes about hope and that it doesn’t really matter what we expect from life, it’s what life expects of us that is important. Read the book it’s great. What the fuck are you talking about Allie - it all ties in I promise.

There are parts of this book that are so close to home - talking about how when the men were released they didn’t celebrate, they didn’t run around singing and dancing, they did nothing because they didn’t know how to feel anything and they felt guilty about that. They had spent so long in incarceration that they didn’t know what it was to feel relief or happiness. This feeling is so familar, in that it’s what I felt in the days and weeks following the breakdown - it’s depersonalisation basically. It’s taken me a good 3 weeks of actively seeking people that I know can root me back to who I was when I could feel. People like my housemate and close girlfriends, people like the guys I run with and people like Tosh. I have made the decision to cut certain people out of my life completely. It’s not  about me being a cunt, it’s me practicing self care. If people can make me feel so on top of the world, then why would I spend time with people that don’t? If you’re going to recover from this, you need to be honest with yourself, be brave and make the moves towards recovery. I have stopped drinking to excess. I have been drinking alcohol but in a different way - in a social way theres a respect for my limits and there’s not a hidden agenda when I am drinking, I am not trying to block anything out, rather I talk about it openly. I am also trying to embrace the kindness that is being shown to me without guilt and harness that as hope. What Tosh did, inviting me to spend time with her and her family in such a beautiful place was one of the nicest things I think anyone has ever done for me. There was no agenda - there was just kindness. Her dad, his girlfriend and her sisters showed me genuine warmth and love. Instead of feeling like I shouldn’t be there I felt part of the  family - I felt like they wanted me there. I’ve never been able to accept help like this before without feeling guilty, but this was different. The existential frustration has gone. Love and hope will help me to overcome this. I am making some changes because it’s what life expects of me - pretty big changes that will become apparent in the New Year. But for now, I just want Tosh to know that what she and her family have done has left me recharged, full of love, hope and happy memories and I will forever be thankful for that.

When we asked each other what the best part of the holiday was, it was just ‘being with everyone’ - we both said the same thing. We did so much stuff, horse riding, waterfall jumping, boat trips, paddle boarding, yoga, massages. We saw pilot whales and monkeys and owls and lizards. We went to a million restaurants and drank a hundred beers but the best bit was just the human connection of being with everyone. It’s given me hope. And hope is important.

P.S: I now like yoga.

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Down and Down in Paris (and London)

It’s the 5th November 2017 and I am sitting in a beautiful hotel room in Paris unable to go outside, unable to stop crying. I try and eat the breakfast they have left me - a granola yoghurt and a banana, but every swallow feels like the hardest thing I have ever done, and even drinking water is difficult. Basic human needs are a huge problem again.

I have been in Paris with my best friend for 4 days. We came to see a band we love - I bought her tickets for her birthday - and we decided to stay on for a few days to hang out with friends and spend some time together. My best friend is my oldest friend, my housemate and my rock. She has been there though this whole thing with me, not just this time round, but for many years before. Today I was supposed to go with her to hang out with and old friend and his children, but last night we went out and didn’t get home til 3. Yesterday I tried to prepare myself - I tried to eat properly and drink enough water and get ready to spend time with people. I controlled my wine intake. I still drank wine. I saw friends during the day, had lunch, walked round Paris. I felt ok. Not great but OK. We stayed out late talking with another friend. We drank more wine. We were happily drunk. I hadn’t been sleeping well on this trip. I am worried about work and other things and forgot my sleeping tablets.

I had about an hours sleep between fits of night terrors, waking up drenched in sweat, vividly dreaming I was having an affair with one of my friends husbands. This morning I feel like I did that day at Liverpool Street. I feel completely unattached from reality. Horror, fear, paranoia, fits of tears, hoplessness. I tell her I can’t come. I can’t be around people and I can’t be around children when I am like this - I can’t stop crying and I keep thinking if this is all there is then what’s the point in living. I am back to square one in a beautiful hotel in Paris. I have let her and them down. I can’t even fulfil the most basic of responsibilities. She takes me downstairs for coffee and we talk it through and she asks things like have I been taking my drugs? (I missed one yesterday) Is it because we have been drinking too much this week? (More of that later) Is it because I am tired and the pain I am getting in my legs is keeping me awake? (That’s not helping) I try and explain yes and no it is all and nothing of these things. It is a life I am currently confined to. I go out with her to buy bread for the friend she is visiting. That floating feeling I get when I am walking returns. I feel panicy and lost. I put her in and uber and go back to the hotel and that is where you find me now.

I’m going to do something now that I have not done before in a public forum. I’m going to talk about the other demon that is best friends with the one that lives inside my brain, but is more physical. That ones name is alcohol. I have used it most days since I was 15. I have used it to party. I have used it to try and drown the other monster. The one in my brain. I can make the monster blackout if I drink enough of it, but the next day he is there and he’s worse because he’s been fed. So I use it again to quieten him. And on it goes. And on it goes. And on it goes. And there have been times when I have almost convinced myself that I am a complete alcoholic. But I don’t drink in the morning so that must mean I’m not. And I have a job and a home and I am functioning so that must mean I am not. And I can go a day or two without it, so that means that I’m not. And I can go out and just have one pint but most of the time it’s 3 or 4, so that means that I’m not. And I don’t want to be and alcoholic, so that must mean that I’m not.

My job demands it. My social life demands it. All my friends do it, and ask me to come and do it with them. Notice there is no mention of choice here. These things and people demand it. I feel like I have no choice. I know other people who suffer like me, and when we go out, we go out and drink because that's what we do and it helps us to open up and we talk about depression and drink because that’s what we do. It builds up and up, over weeks of going out and being social and trying to manage my illness until I don't eat anymore because I feel awful and I am not hungry, and I shake and I can’t concentrate and that’s when the other monster is at his best. And I have proved what a complete prick I am by not being able to control something as simple as my own drinking habit. And I feel awful so I drink some more.

I drink on my own and with people. More with people than on my own, but I still drink on my own very regularly. I think it’s empowering for me to be able to go and sit and have a glass of wine alone. In reality it’s actually not. It’s fucking stupid.

I question why I drink to try to try and rationalise it. Does it make me feel good? Yeah for a while. Does it make me more interesting? Yeah and more confident and that’s how I can go and be glorious in front of people. Does it relax me? Yeah it does. Is it ruling and ruining my life? Yes it most definitely is. Can I stop drinking it? I don't honestly know. Am I killing myself with it? Yes I am. Is this going to fuck up my dreams of changing my career? Will it ruin my running? Yes it will. I haven't run for 2 weeks. I’ve been tired from the 100 miler, my legs are sore, but I have also been hungover and miserable every fucking day. I have been hungover for the majority of days of my 20’s and 30’s.

At this point, I just want people to understand. I am not looking for sympathy or help or numbers or groups. I am intelligent and I know that there is help for me. I know there is. But I have not yet convinced myself there is a problem with this part of my life, and I hope by writing this that I can identify what level of problem there is. Please don't get in contact with me telling me to go to AA. I know about AA. I know about all of them. If I choose to go, I will and you telling me to go will not help me make that decision and may even be detrimental to me making it if I chose to do so.

In my head, drinking alcohol has as much defined who I am as the depression has. Teenage Allie was bullied and low on self esteem. Teenage Allie with booze was having sex with all the cool guys and going to indie clubs and gigs and was brilliant. University Allie was sacred nobody liked her and was going to massively miss her mum, brothers and sisters. University Allie with booze was the most fun ever and made friends very easily and kept sleeping wth all the cool guys. The University Allie made a few mistakes as a result of booze and some pretty bad life choices, and got severe depression, She tried to kill herself and then and self medicated. With booze. Now she was the sad/fun girl. Today I am party girl. I am red wine party girl. I am red wine, get drunk, be darkly hilarious party girl and if you're a man, stay the fuck away from me because I will destroy you. But I have always taken it too far. I am a blackout drunk. Not all the time, but I am capable of it some of the time. If I am going to be completely honest my alcohol intake has had a direct effect on the destruction of every important romantic relationship I have ever had. My first long term partner was a pretty big recreational drug user and I wasn’t. No biggie, he said, have a drink instead. So he did drugs and I drank. And then something happened in that relationship that made me drink more because what happened was terrible but not for discussion here. And there was no closure on it, and it was never talked about and it haunted my thoughts and it made me depressed and so I chose to drink more. And then I stopped eating. And then by the end I had destroyed my body and my marriage. And I rehabilitated myself with my girlfriends and I did that by going out and drinking. Self styled drinking goth.

Work was the most important part of my life and that meant going out and making friends with bands and being drunk all the time. SO MUCH FUN! I lived on my own now and I hated it. I hated everything. I hated myself for destroying a marriage that was so badly functioning it would never work anyway. I’m hungover. Drink. Work stress. Drink. Friday lunches. Drink. Weekend. Weddings, funerals, family. Drink. All the time, everywhere. All the time.

My second long term relationship, so perfect on paper, was so different and full of love compared to the first time round, and I worked very hard to make it happen because I wanted change. I couldn’t believe my luck when it worked. If something’s too good to be true, it usually is and you will fuck this up, Bailey. Drink. He’s told you to calm down on your drinking. Fuck him, you're fine, he doesn’t know you. orgs stressful and you have to up your game career wise. We need to sign this band. Take them out. Drink. OK now you've calmed down a bit, this is good again, sometimes you go out drinking together, You're the perfect couple. Everyone says so. So lucky. Probably no future, everyone leaves you. Drink. He’s asked you to calm down again. Drink. Show him what you're really made of, do something terrible. Drink. Do something terrible, really show him then lie to him, Drink. Get found out. He's leaving you. Told you that would happen. Drink more, drink more. Back to square one and you have fucked someone else up on the way. Drink. He fucking hates you. Drink.

And on it goes. On and on and on and a tiny part of me is wondering if I am drinking too much, but the monster silences that - nah you're fine. Just a couple. And depression comes and goes and comes and goes and comes and goes and there is one thing you have never changed. You have never stopped drinking. And depression has always been there, and when it gets worse what the thing that’s gone up and not down? The drinking. And when you drink the silence only comes for an hour or so and then you have fractured sleep and wake up feeling awful and so what is the fucking point of drinking?

I don’t want to never drink again. That frightens me. I want to drink normally. But I don't know how to do that. And that means for now, I have to stop. Just for today. I have to stop. An adult lifetime addiction that for now, has to stop.

[andsotheadventurebeginsblog]

GUESS WHO’S BACK?

I can’t believe that I was such an idiot to think that this episode was finished. I really thought I was making steps to push forward, that I had left a small part of this horror somewhere on the ridgeway in Goring. But no. Just like that on a train home from seeing my brothers and sisters for an evening of drinks and laughing, it smacks me in the face like a long lost fucking cousin.

Fuck depression, fuck it in all it’s forms. I self medicate, as well as NHS medicate, with alcohol. I feel awkward socially and so I mask it with booze. I did that last night. Bad move. That was bad move number one. I felt shit today but was buoyed by my little niece and my sister and doing normal things like walking the dog and going to the forest that I love so much. We had lunch at one of my favourite pubs. We walked through a wood and found a swing in one of the trees, and I sat and watched my beautiful niece swinging on this swing in a wood where the leaves were falling and everything was so beautiful but the feeling of impending doom loomed large. It’s coming. I feel a tremor of panic when my sister drops me in the village to get the train back to London. I go to a nearby pub and sit there to wait for the train. I drink beer. When I order the beer I sound normal and confident. I am terrified of myself. I look at Facebook. Engagements. Babies. Impending doom. I get on the train. The train takes 2 hours and there is no buffet car and I feel wretched and to be honest I have lost those 2 hours but I wasn’t asleep. That fucking doom. Everything black. I start thinking about what a terrible person I actually am. How I present myself as a bastion for love and trust and open communication, but how I have let people down, cheated on people and ruined the things I have loved. Whats the fucking point I think. Is this a suicidal thought? Was that? Is this? Is thinking about suicidal thoughts actually suicidal thoughts or is it just thinking about them? What’s the fucking point? When will I be better? How fast do the trains go through this station? Would that kill me?

Sometimes I wonder if I actually want to be better or if this is so much a part of me that I am not willing to let it go. Is this actually a comfort? Why is being a person so fucking complexed and fraught with pain? I get to Waterloo and go to get some food but I can’t decide what food. It’s back. The indecision. Fuck., What do I eat? I go to a restaurant and sit there and order the first thing I see and eat it. I need to eat. Then I do something that I have not really done before. I call a friend who I have been texting that day. I call him and I talk to him. Or I talk at him. I talk to him and as I am talking it starts to lift. I feel like I might cry but I don’t. I talk to him for 15 minutes and the doom lifts for long enough for me to see light. Tomorrow I am seeing my friend Lucy and we are going for a walk. I will make my housemate breakfast and I will go for a walk with Lucy and Toby to dog and I will start piecing together the parts of my life that I need to. It’s a crack of light but it’s a light and the only way I have seen it is by talking to someone. I do want to be better. I want to be glorious again but I don't know how. But there is a crack. A crack of light. And I want to let it in. For fucks sake talk to people.

[andsotheadventurebeginsblog]

Slaying Demons on the Autumn 100.

I sit here 5 days after completing the biggest physical challenge of my life to date with sore shins, suspected stress fractures, and a totally renewed sense of calm. I did it. I ran 100 miles in under 24 hours.

The night before the race I meet up with Dave, who is glorious, and we go and get some dinner and drink way more wine than any real athlete would even consider healthy. I feel calm. Nervous but calm. Tomorrow I do the thing I love doing the best. After fractured sleep we get up, eat and get to the village hall where the race goes out from. There are a LOT of men here. A lot. There are many people I admire, there are women that have run literally hundreds of 100 mile races, there are men who have done it in under 14 hours there are ultra legends and there is me.

Me standing here in a semi trance, feeling sick and feeling excited and unable to worry about my broken mental state because I have to achieve this. I get my number from Lou - a friend of mine from the online running group I am a part of. She is wonderful and gives me a hug and tells me how excited she is for me. I tell her I’m scared. Because I am. Then at 10.10am on Saturday the 21st October I take the first steps on a 200,000 step journey to running 100 miles. I chat to people, I try and hold my nerve and keep it slow. The pack thins out and it’s very slippery underfoot. My legs feel heavy and I realise I am not enjoying this at all. It’s fairly lonely on these runs. You get people that want to chat and people that definitely don’t. At the first aid station I meet Dan Barrett - he’s so lovely and kind to me. I wonder why. We’ve only met a few times. After 12 miles I bump into someone I met running Bournemouth Marathon - he remembers me - we exchange pleasantries and on I go. I’m really not feeling this today. I am 13 miles in and bored and already tired. This doesn’t bode well.

I get to the 25 mile mark in 5 hours. All on time. All as planned. I didn’t like that leg. I get my drop bag and get changed into a new long sleeve top and have a couple of sandwiches. I feel tired and slightly out of it. I feel a bit hopeless and lost. I get confused as to what I need and what I don’t. I try and do the change over as fast as possible and get out for the second leg. I leave my mobile charger and battery pack in my drop bag. I am an idiot. I am not strategising. It seems like SUCH a long way. I have 75 miles to go and I feel rubbish.

I get my headphones out and put on a podcast. The second leg is better - more forest and the ridgeway is beautiful. Theres technical paths weaving through forests and Kites soar over the fields. These are the trails I love - I feel like I am finally starting to get into my stride, but Storm Brian is on his way and he brings rain and 50mph wind that squalls across the open fields and makes the trails into wet wind tunnels. I nearly get blown over a couple of times but I feel stronger. I have fuelled properly. I love sandwiches. At the 37 mile turnaround point are kids in halloween costumes helping with water. They remind me of my nieces and nephews and make me smile. For the first time I know I will finish this. I’m on the way back. The way back to Goring village hall, to my beloved sister who is pacing me for the next 25 miles. It’s getting dark, I get my head torch out but the route is fraught with obstacles in the shape or tree roots and holes and I fall over twice - once into a patch of stinging nettles - once in a puddle. Classy. My phone runs out of battery. No music. My watch is dying - no mileage or time. I manage to catch up with the guy in front about 3 miles from the halfway point and we chat - he’s lovely and time flies by.

The village hall comes into view - another 5 hour leg. Right on time. And I see my mum and her husband and my sister and three of my best friends who have come to surprise me from London. I double take. WTF. What the hell are they doing here?! I am overwhelmed with love and joy but I don't think it shows. I am in a trance like state. They have come all the way from London to see me for nothing more than a few minutes as I hastily try and get changed and get nutrition sorted. That’s amazing. I can’t tell them how much it means to me. It’s so above and beyond I can’t fathom it. My mum looks a bit worried - my sister is very excited. My friends are warm and cuddly and drunk and I love them. I get changed, I get a hot meal I say thank you and then me and my sister are out, back out into the night. It is 8.20pm. I have been running for 10 hours and I have run 50 miles.

I’m walking as fast as I can trying to guzzle down my dehydrated pasta meal, trying to ignore the tell tale warnings my legs are giving me that I’ve run a long way. I have done this part of the route before. But in the daytime. Night is a totally different game. The ridgeway is exposed and it’s so windy and pitch black. The light from my head torch confuses me.  We are running head on into the wind and it’s soul destroying. My sister is brilliant - she has fresh legs and bags of enthusiasm and I feel bad I can’t keep up with her. I am stuffing my face with as much food as I can but I’ve started to feel sick and tired. And then come the hallucinations. I can see people laying by the side of the road in the foetal position. My sister comments on the beautiful horizon. The beautiful horizon is actually a fence. I dodge things crossing the path in front of me - but there is nothing crossing the path in front of me. We get to an aid station at the top of a hill. It’s in a Luton Van because otherwise it would just blow away. I get coffee and snacks and a cuddle from Lou - plus the personal goodie bag she’s prepped for me that includes the all important mini bottle of jagermeister (I am a pro athlete). 4 Miles til turn around point so we press on - my sister is talking to me about everything and anything. We listen to music and start talking utter nonsense. Then we see the turnaround point adorned in lights but we can’t work out if we’re hallucinating or it’s real. Its 11pm. We are knackered.

A quick coffee then back down the ridgeway with the wind at our backs - it’s like a totally different night. The wind makes all the difference and now the stars are out and its very beautiful. We listen to Foo Fighters. We sing along. We’re trying to stay awake and running. We come across a huge puddle. This wasn’t here on the way out. Shit. We’ve gone the wrong way. It’s so dark and so hard to work out where we are. We retrace our steps and get back on track - we lose about 15 mins but I am determined to get back to the village hall. If I can get back there I can do the final leg. We come in at 2.45am. The last leg has taken 6 and a half hours. I have now run 75 miles.

I hug my sister and send her on her way back to my hotel to sleep. It’s now that I pick up my final pacer Lee. Lee’s pretty experienced when it comes to these huge distances and I trust him implicitly. He knows I am knackered. He knows I am confused and does his best to help as I grab my newly charged watch and some food and spare batteries and get changed for the 4th time. We set out along the Thames Path to Reading at an OK pace but now my legs have started to hurt. My shins are burning. I take some codeine and try and get through it. Lee is a dream and a nightmare. In doing his job as pacer, he becomes the single most important and annoying person in my life. He is making me eat. He is making me drink. I don't want to eat. I get pretty angry with him but he’s having none of it. I eat sandwiches, I drink water and coffee. We keep pushing forward. We’re breaking it up by running and walking but the walking breaks are getting longer and longer and I know I have to keep a 14 min mile pace to break 24 hours. We get to the aid station, quick turnaround and then back out into the dark only to find another aid station a mile down the course. Hang on. It’s the same aid station. We’ve come round in a fucking circle. How the fuck have we done that? Nevermind, on we go. Lee is so chirpy, shouting encouragement at the other runners who say nothing back or just grunt. I imagine they would punch him if they had the energy. It’s 4am and I am running through Reading. I am talking to the swans and ducks, I’m telling Lee his music choices are shit. And then we get to the turnaround point. It’s up some stairs. SOME STAIRS.

I grab a load of fruit and eat about 7 pieces of watermelon - the sugar and gels are making me feel terrible and I am just craving fruit. We head back out. We head back to the village hall for the last time. Its is not about 6am. Birds have started to sing and the end is in sight. Lee is doing a great job of working out times and how fast we need to go to make it sub 24. He keeps telling me I am 10th woman but I don’t care. I just want to finish. Then at about 7am it happens - the sky breaks and the sun begins to come up. It’s another day. I have to finish. I am in a lot of pain and Lee is still making me eat. We are walking and running and walking and running and I am using Lee’s poles because my legs hurt so much. We get the the aid station 4 miles from home. We zip in and out. I am on the way home.

The last 4 miles were such a mix of emotion. I knew I was going to do it,  and everything hurt. My skin hurt. My eyes hurt. My legs hurt. I was very quiet but inside my head was raging. I had a little cry. I walked on ahead of Lee and had a little cry, I think with tiredness more than anything else. Those miles dragged and dragged and everyone we met along the way - the early morning fishermen and the people walking their dogs had a different distance to tell us��� “Just 3 miles left” “it’s only a mile!” ARGH!

The one thing I won’t ever forget though, is the feeling that I had beaten the Demon. The Demon that tells me I am not good enough and riots through my head an stomach. That fucking Demon was beaten. Of course there are others in there but the big one was gone and I know I can beat them. I realised the extent of what I had done 3 miles from the end. I am strong. I can keep going physically and mentally.

When I came into the hall and saw my mum, when my sister ran down the last part of the path to meet me, when I saw how proud they all were of me, the Demon was beaten. 100 miles. 23hours 35 minutes. The Demon was beaten.

I am so happy to finish. I am so happy. My adrenaline is high and I pose for the pictures and get undressed and everyone helps me and I am so glad, and I put on my one piece and I step outside. I am shaking and I have to sit down because I think I might be sick. My mum comes with my things and puts me in the car like a baby. She helps me upstairs at the hotel and I just get in bed and curl up, all grubby and sweaty. I find a note form my sister which tells me how proud she is. It makes me cry so much because I love her so much and I am so proud of her.

I just want to sign this off with a thank you to everyone that helped me on this particular journey - my Mum and her husband Jim for their unwavering support. My sister, Janey Wise for her support and pacing and being the best friend and biggest inspiration I could ever ask for. The wonderful David Harvey for his time and patience and training and being brilliant (#withyoueverystep). Lee Stuart-Evans for his advice and pacing and force feeding of an angry toad (me). Tom, Abi, Amy and Lauren for trekking out to see me for 2 mins on a cold October night - thank you, I love you. Lou and Dan from the BBR group - thanks for all your support and encouragement at the aid stations.

This story does not end here.

TBC

[andsotheadventurebeginsblog]

Into the Unknown (but knowing)

Friday 20th October 2017

In the last 2 days I have felt nothing but love. I have felt love from my friends, from my family and from strangers. I have had messages of sympathy, of hope, of horror and of admiration and I have felt bad for feeling angry and aggressive towards those who have reached out to me previously. What has struck me, in the past few days is the sheer scale of the darkness that engulfs the lives of so many people that I know, love, respect and would never expect to succumb to it. I have had messages from old school friends; people I haven’t seen in years telling me of their addictions and their spiralling lives. I have had strong, independant men and women, whom I admire and aspire to be; who I watch through the rose tinted spectacles of social media, confide in me their suicide attempts and their sorrow and apathy at being unable to untangle themselves from this black fucking weed that engulfs every aspect of their lives.  

Many of them tell me they don't have the guts or the wherewithal to be able to tell their story. Some say they have had to hide it from the world in order to continue with their job. I don’t know why. I think hiding it makes it feel shameful, and there is no shame in asking for help. In telling me they can’t tell the world, they are feeding the shame that is powering an epidemic.

I have a friend who once told me that if I was to tell a client that I was ill, they would most probably sack me. She told me they would see me as weak. I told her that if my client did that then fuck them. Would they do that if I told them I had cancer? Or I had diabetes? Nobody has fired me, nobody has gone cold. I have felt nothing but supported by them - and I guess that makes me pretty lucky. But that is as it should be. My heart aches for these people that have so much to say and nowhere to say it. I can honestly say that talking to my friends and family and writing it down has made me start to feel a whole person again.

On Thursday I see my therapist. I like him. He’s cool. But in the time I have been seeing him, before this blog, I have ended up being hugely distressed, sometimes leaving his office and heading straight to the pub to flood the dark hole with red wine until its full and I can’t hear the echoes anymore.

This time was different because I told him I didn’t want to focus on what was happening in the now, I wanted to talk about coping with stress, and about love and about what makes me feel happy and alive. I tell I'm that I am going to be running a 100 mile race on Saturday and that makes me happy. I am going to prove that my body can physically hurt me more than my brain ever will and I will still carry on. I will finish that race and I will do it with style and humour and I will not let the mental barrier stop me. This last 2 weeks has been worse than any wall I have met in racing. I will be with people who I share an interest with, who I admire and who don't know anything about me and my failings and faults. People that just know me for being a runner and being a human. I will run, it will hurt, I will get tired, I will probably cry, but I will be alive. That makes me happy. My therapist asks me what else in my life makes me feel that way. My sister. My nieces and nephews. My oldest friend looking me in the eye and telling me she loves me. All these things have made me feel alive. Things that a week ago I was feeling angry about and ignoring and not believing are now my lifeblood. They were right. It does get better.

And now as I sit on the train to Pangbourne for the start of the race I feel excited and content. I am not better but I am getting better. And I will be better. And I have this to look at when it gets too much and I dip and I can remember there will be a good time again.

[andsotheadventurebeginsblog]

No Reason to be Depressed.

Wednesday 18th October 2017

I have come home to my house in Hackney. My house is beautiful and my housemate has made sure my pet rabbit has been kept alive, although he seems to have made attempts on his own life by chewing half a plastic matt while I’ve been away. I feel guilty that I haven’t seen him for a week. It got to the point where I didn’t even think about him but he is my responsibility and I shouldn’t be leaving him like this. He is fluffy and grey and he is the only living creature who relies on me and I have no reason to be depressed.

All my nice things are there. My nice shoes and clothes and my nice bags and my nice books and nice records and nice bathroom with nice things and all of it means nothing. I have no reason to be depressed.

I need to do some work, or start doing some work, so I sit at the dining table and start replying to emails and realise that I really have no clue what is going on and need to sit down and go through everything. I write thank you cards to my mum and her husband who have been so kind and understanding. I have the best mum - she is queen and she understands me and doesn’t question me or hassle me, or tell me off for smoking. She is not scared by me. She lets me be me, she lets me cry, she cuddles me, she feeds me and she distracts me. Her husband has also been kind. He’s bitten his lip when he needed to, and told me to eat and sleep properly. I have no reason to be depressed.

I write a thank you card to my sister - the most wonderful and delicate of humans I know. To see her is to see a beauty and a goodness that I have never seen in anyone else. She makes me sad because I know that she is sad  and depressed and she gets anxious and on the surface her life is perfect and her children are perfect and her dog is perfect but I know the truth, she is just like me and I want her to be better the same way she wants me to be better. And I worry for her so much and I wish so much that she would talk to me about it in a way that isn’t just joking.

I write a thank you card to my sisters husband who is a strapping 6ft something policeman and the best dad there could ever be to my nieces and nephews and the best husband he could be to my sister. I tell him that his kindness does not go un-noticed. He has never once questioned me or my sanity - he has invited me into his home. He has cuddled me the way only someone big and strapping can, and I miss that, and he has made me feel safe and he has invited me and my horror into his home and tried his best to make it go away or at least to silence it for a few hours and to help me feel like part of a family. He makes me laugh and lets me and my sister and my niece snuggle on the sofa and lets us watch a film that is awful that he has seen at least 3 times. He is a rock and I love him for what he brings to my sisters life and for what he brings to mine. He does it silently and he does it with meaning and with real, true love.

On the train home I go through the messages people have sent me and some of them make me cry. On the train. The train back to London.  There are lots of messages from strangers - people that I have a slight acquaintance with on social media who write long and drawn out missives about how my blog has affected them and about their own struggle and I try and reply with something positive and uplifting but I really cannot be bothered. There are some that make me sad and some that I just want to delete. There are moments and messages of sincere support and there is piecemeal and there are people that don't seem to realise you can leave the comments box blank - you don't have to write anything in it and that’s how I feel. It’s brutal, but that is how I feel. It makes me feel like a bad person but I wrote what I wrote to help me and to help others and I didn’t write it to have people feel sorry for me. I feel like some people want to be part of the grief of others. I feel like they want to be seen to be part of the rise and fall. I wonder what it would be like if I did die and there was a funeral. That’s selfish. I wonder how many of the people would have been there if I’d have called them last Tuesday. How many people would have come to Liverpool Street Station and taken me to Homerton Hospital. If all of them had come we could have had a party. I know that none of them would have come. I am selfish. I am lucky to have so many people that care. I have no reason to be depressed.

When I get to Waterloo, I am not crying. I am walking through the station like a real live grown up person and I see someone that I know. It’s my friend Lucy who I have been texting earlier in the day. She is glorious and I see her and I tap her on the shoulder and she turns round and she looks so happy to see me and I give her a cuddle and she is crying. I tell her I should be the one crying. She says maybe she should sit on the floor and see if anyone asks if she’s OK. I laugh at her. I love Lucy. I am really happy to see her and she tells me she is happy to see me and she tells me some shit news about her work and I don't know what to do so I cuddle her and give her a pep talk that we both don't really believe but both pretend to believe. I don’t understand how we have bumped into each other at the station.  On today of all of the days. I am so happy to see her. Seeing her makes me feel normal again. I get the train all the way home and I think ‘this isn’t forever - you can do this a while longer’. I have no reason to be depressed.

[andsotheadventurebeginsblog]

Breaking It Down:  From Despair to Here.

A Prologue to Madness.

I can’t honestly remember the last time I was truly happy. I don't actually believe this happiness exists. As humans, we need to suffer to understand what it is to love and to be joyful. It’s just with some of us, the suffering presides over everything else. It’s an overarching numbness that is almost impossible to explain. In the last 6 months, I have been fighting with myself more than I usually do. There have been events that have tilted and knocked me, and helped me to prove to myself and remind me what a worthless individual I am. There have been moments of utter confusion and despair within social occasions I should have been enjoying. There have been many, many moments when I have truly wanted to disappear and sometimes physically have. There have been evenings where I have drunk myself away from the noise in my head to the point of blackout. And there have been very real thoughts of suicide and and very real episodes of self harm. There have been a few hours of clarity when I have decided to get on with what I have to do that day, and there have been days where I have actually been OK. But there have been many more days where I haven’t been OK at all.

I am writing this down because I want other people to feel like they are not alone. I don't need sympathy and I don't need people changing the way they behave around me now that this is out in the open. I have tried searching for a similar story, a real honest story that I can cling to, a story where suddenly everything is strategic, there is a plan, the problem is solved, but I have failed.

This blog will not provide answers - it is a work in progress, as am I. As much as I want to forget the past week, I need to remember it. I need to make sense of what has happened. And I need to explain to all the people that love me, and all the people that I have loved, what has happened. This story doesn’t start on the 10th October 2017. It starts a lot longer ago than that.

I had been in the throws of an episode of depression for about 3 weeks before ‘the thing’ happened. I hadn’t slept much. I had been ill, a slight cold, something that looking back may have been a sign to stop. I had attended a few social gatherings I couldn’t cope with, I had got blackout drunk and screamed at two of my closest friends. I was behaving increasingly irrationally and I couldn’t see any further than the next minute. I had cut my legs with a pair of scissors and counted how many painkillers I had in the house. I had googled how many it would take for me not to wake up. I didn’t have enough. I had run a really bad marathon the Sunday before, because I was exhausted. I had been kept awake the night before the race by suicidal thoughts; hallucinations of me rigging up a ligature in the bedroom I was staying in. I had stood at the edge of the road and thought about throwing myself in front of the cars. I had stood at the edge of the underground platform and thought about throwing myself in front of the tube. I was completely terrified of myself. I was a danger to myself. I was walking through treacle and trying to pretend that this would pass. It always passes.

During this time I made notes, I wrote a lot and I will continue to write. I have gone back and put it into some sort of coherent structure. To help myself understand, and to help you try and understand. I’ve left some of the writing as it was and it’s chaotic. There is no conclusion to this story.

It’s worth mentioning that before this happened, I had been on the drug Champix - a drug that is supposed to help you give up smoking. I had been on it for around 6 weeks at this point and had stopped smoking. I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that this medication fuelled the fire of what happened. But that story is for another time. It was always going to happen.

Monday 9th October 2017

Today was the day. It was the day I had a full on breakdown, the breakdown that I would actually take notice of, because the ones before had been numbed and ignored and poked into the inside pocket of my outdoor coat for years. This one was 20 years in the making. I was on Tottenham Court Road. I had just come out of a meeting. I went looking for some pillows for my bed, because the pillows on my bed had felt like they were made of stones the night before when I couldn’t sleep, between terrors. They felt like the stones the Romans used to make flour, the ones you read about in the books at school, and they felt like it on my hands and also in my mouth but I hadn’t bitten them. It just felt like that in the inside of my mouth and I could taste blood. Between the terrors. But every time I went in a shop, I was overwhelmed by pillows and types of pillows. I want the pillows you get in the hotels. Not the duck down ones, the really firm ones that are also duck down but also something else. And also, there were people; normal, happy people and couples, really middle class ones who were very attractive and happy and had worked hard to be that attractive and happy and they were feathering their nests and making a home, and I wanted to kill them and be them at the same time.  I was in Heals. I was hungry so I ate a sandwich that I had in my bag in the toilet cubicle at Heals. I ate it really quietly because I didn’t want people outside looking at me or the people in Heals finding out. They would tell me to leave because I wasn’t good enough to be there. I also went in Habitat and in Dwell and The Bed Shop, but I was overwhelmed by pillows and people, and I was scared of the shop assistants, plus I kept forgetting what I was actually doing.

When I left Heals without pillows I started to cry on Tottenham Court Road and I couldn’t understand why. I couldn’t stop crying. Or I would stop crying, but then about a minute later it would start again. I stood still for a long time and couldn’t work out where I was or what I was doing. I got on the tube and was crying. Nobody said anything. I cried through Liverpool Street and managed to get to Hackney Central and I got off the train and went to the pub.

In the pub, I wrote the words below. Because this is how I felt. I haven’t edited it because I think the contents speak for themselves.

****

Reality check - a side note to how I am feeling. I am living in fear of myself. I want to hurt myself. I think about it every day, maybe 8 or 9 times a day. I watch the cars and the trains. I have a whole drawer of codeine - I have been buying a 16 pack every time I go past a Boots. I have self harmed with scissors, something I haven’t done for 18 years. I cut my legs. The things I rely on to run. I have looked on the internet for anything I can take that will make me fall asleep and not wake up but has to be 100%, no accidents or pain or anything. I have eaten my sandwich for lunch in a toilet because I don’t want people to look at me, because I am disgusting for having a sandwich. I go in food shops and cannot make a decision about what to buy, so I buy nothing and go home hungry. If I buy something, it’s what I think I should buy because I saw someone else buy it and it goes mouldy in the fridge. I’m not hungry anyway.

I go into other shops and spend £60 on stuff I don't need and I don't know why. I buy things on Amazon. Lots of things. I go into catatonic states of staring at nothing, I miss my stop multiple times. I go to the pub and sit there for 3 hours on my own because I am afraid to go home because I don’t want my housemates to see me or talk to me because they are probably going to tell me to move out because I am so fucked up. I have night terrors and can’t sleep. I am always tired and I always have a headache. I hallucinate that I am setting up ligatures in my bedroom, that a white snake is trying to bite my face, I physically jump away from imaginary things like the snake, to wake myself, but I am not asleep. Lots of times, when I have to speak to a person in a shop or in the world outside my bedroom, the world that I have become so afraid of, I pretend to be on a phone call so I won’t have to look at them and can just say “Sorry, hang on” and then mutter what I want at the shop or outside person, and carry on my fake phone call, not look them in the eye and and walk away with my useless purchase.

Sometimes I feel a manic push to be kind, and then I ask people around me if they are OK, but this doesn’t happen often. When it does, it happens one person after another for a whole morning on the tube usually, and also when I am running a marathon or something, and it makes me feel amazing for a minute.

Sometimes I feel a calmness that I know is the feeling that some people get shortly before they commit suicide. I know because I have tried to commit suicide before. The thing I feel the most though, is fear, in my heart and in my stomach and that’s all the time really. I don't know what I am scared of but I am fucking terrified. It’s next level fear.

And to my friends, this. I don’t reply to your texts and I hate our whatsapp groups and I want to leave all of them, so I don't reply. Every message makes me angry and also sad but mainly angry and also I don't care. I am really glad you’re all having such a fucking easy, funny, nice life. I can’t concentrate. I am not part of your group anymore because I am different. I am damaged. I’m not who I pretended to be when I first joined the group. This is the real me. The person who hates people who are happy. I really do. I fucking HATE couples. I hate them, and wish they were dead or would cheat on each other and both find out because that’s fucking life.

I don't want to go for a drink or coffee or a run or a catch up or a talk or vent or whatever language you put it in, I want to vanish. I am vicious. You didn’t contact me before someone told you they thought something might be wrong, and so don't fucking contact me now. You can’t ‘cheer me up’. Things you say make me cringe and you’re lying that it’s not a burden because it is. I am carrying it  around and it is killing me. It is a burden. I’ll prove it’s a burden, when you either stop talking to me because you’re so bored of what a fucking idiot I am, or I fucking top myself.

I don’t believe the things you say when I drunkenly manage to tell you that I am scared I might kill myself, or I cry at nothing, don't fucking touch me.  I come home shitfaced for 4 days in a row because the only thing that shuts the howling in my head and the clawing in my stomach is alcohol, and for a while I can sleep without terror. I don't deserve any help, but I so desperately want it but I don’t know what help I need. I should be able to control this because I am a 36 year old woman who owns her own business, who runs marathons, whose holiday looked GREAT on instagram.

This is so embarrassing.

I wish I was covered in scales or it came up in a rash or was a tumour so you could see it. I’ve gone a few days without alcohol - maybe it’s that? It’s not. It’s me.

How to act normal I’ve got very good at pretending over the years.  I am OK at work most of the time, but I work for myself, so I can make excuses to leave a place or not turn up at all, or I can go to the toilet and do a cry and I always have make up or I used to, but now I don’t carry it because I don’t care what I look like and I don't really wash or brush my hair unless I have to.

I tell some people I work with that I am depressed because it’s obvious from my face and I have given up smoking, and they are also depressed, everyone is, so I am not weird, but I say I am dealing with it, which is a lie, and then I say something funny and everyone laughs and goes away.

I can do this very well in the mornings, but in the afternoons when I am tired, something takes over that I can’t control. I am losing the ability to communicate. I forget words and sentences and names. I have no patience. I can still put on a show, but in the afternoons crying starts without warning - this happens a lot and then I stop it and then it starts again and I try and stop it but can’t, and I decide if someone asks me if I am OK on the tube or when I am in the pub hiding, I will say “yes, I am fine, my dog just died” and do a smile, but nobody ever really asks and I don't have a dog. And on it goes.

I have completely lost grip on reality in this sense. I am living day to day. My to do list goes undone and is re-written day to day. My work gets done. My meetings get done. My afternoons are blurred but they get done. When I get home, sometimes I see my housemate and she is so kind. She is kind because she has been here before when I tried too kill myself, but there is nothing she can do and she knows it. Sometimes I am fucking vicious to her, when I am drunk. We don't talk about these times the next day. I go in my room and shut the door and nobody bothers me.

****

When I have finished writing this down, I go home and I am shaky and fogged by wine and no dinner so I am crying but I don't feel hungry, and my housemates ask me if I am OK. I say no and I go straight to bed. I think the reality of the situation will frighten them. I set my alarm for 8am to call the doctor. I need to see a doctor. Today is world mental heath awareness day.

Tuesday 10th October 2017

I wake up at 8am and call the doctor. I feel awful because I haven’t had anything to eat but I need to call the doctor. I wait for 20 minutes on the line and speak to a doctor. I tell her I am very depressed and need to come in and see her. She says I can come at 11am. I get back in bed and set an alarm for 10am. I pack my bag for work. Meeting at 12. Important meeting at 12. I get to the doctor. I go in and see her and start crying and explain what happened with the pillows yesterday. She asks me what I want her to do about it. I say I don’t fucking know. She asks me if I have had suicidal thoughts. I say yes, all the time. She looks a bit scared and asks me a bit about my past, have I been on medication before, and I say yes. She writes me a prescription and sends it to Boots in Hackney. She says that I need to call the Crisis helpline and talk to a mental health professional. I tell her that I have a meeting at 12 and I will do it after. She tells me I have to do it now and she will sign me off work. I say NO I HAVE AN IMPORTANT MEETING AT 12 and I will do it after. She says if I don't do it, she will have to take action to hospitalise me. She doesn’t call them herself. She writes 2 numbers on a piece of paper. I stuff them in my bag and leave.

I get to the train station and stare at the tracks and feel like I am watching myself in a film. I get on the train and start crying. Need to pull it together, important meeting at 12. I get to Liverpool Street and go in Costa. Important meeting at 12. Skinny latte please. I start crying. I can’t do it. I am scared of all the people in the station and I feel sick with anxiety, so I call work and tell my friend what is happening and I can’t breathe properly because I am crying so much. She is very kind and she says she will take the meeting. I have to sit on the floor because I feel very sick and I am crying and I am embarrassed because I just called my work crying. I am sat on the floor of the station crying. Nobody asks me if I am OK. I get the numbers out of my bag and I call the first number. It is wrong. It is a fax number. I call the second number. It is wrong. It is the Crisis Home Care number. I am like a little mouse on the phone because I don't know what to say and then when it’s the wrong number I get very angry and hang up and walk to the shop and buy cigarettes and go outside and smoke my first cigarette in 21 days and cry because I can’t even fucking do that right, and I try and search for the right number on my phone but I can’t find it.

I look at all the people at Liverpool Street Station but nobody looks at me. I find a number. I call it again. It’s the Crisis Home Care number again. The lady says she has been trying to call me back after I hung up. She talks to me about what has happened and then says I need to go to the hospital to see her right now. The hospital is in Homerton. I have to wait for a train for 15 minutes and I think about who I can call, I think I need someone to come with me, but everyone will be busy and I don't want to worry them so I decide not to call anyone. I have to hold onto the handrail because my legs keep buckling. I can’t remember where the hospital is or the name of the lady and I get confused on the way. I have lived here for 4 years but I can’t remember the way. I come to realise I am walking very, very slowly and it feels like I am in a film. My face feels sore and my eyes hurt.

When I get to the hospital, I find the mental health unit and I sit there and a lady comes out and is kind to me and takes me in a room and talks to me for and hour and a half and I cry a lot and I am honest with her and she says have I picked up my prescription and what is it for and I say no and I don't know what it is for, because I haven’t asked what it is for and I wasn’t told. She cancels the prescription and says she wants me to see a doctor before they give me anything else and she explains what has happened to me, which is a mental breakdown, and says she is going too put me into the care of the mental health clinic and I can stay at the hospital or I can go home and have the Crisis team come and see me. I want to go home. I want to go home to my family. I am very, very scared. I feel embarrassed and scared and I feel like I am making a fuss, but I also feel hopeless and very tired and confused. She takes some phone numbers - my mums and my housemates. She gives me some sleeping tablets and then she sends me home and I leave the hospital and call my work and tell them I have to go home for a little while because I am not very well, and I call my mum and tell her what has happened and that I think I need to come home, and I feel like this is happening to someone else and I buy spaghetti in a tin and some bread and I go home and I call my housemate and tell her what has happened. I tell her I need to take all my pain killers that I have been storing and I need her to look after them for me because otherwise the Crisis team will take them away. I have a lot of pain killers stored away.

The Crisis people call me. Am I OK? Do I need them to come round? What time can they come round tomorrow? They will come round between 11am and 2pm tomorrow. I feel like I am in a film. I feel calm. I get a text from a friend who has also been suffering with their mental health in the last few weeks. A few weeks ago, I went to meet him and we had a walk and a glass of wine and a chat and I hope I helped a little bit. I go and meet him and tell him, and he buys pizza and is kind and offers no answers, he is just kind and makes me laugh a few times. He makes me eat the pizza. I feel better. I feel like I am floating above myself looking down at me talking. I don't feel like I am ill. I feel a fraud. I feel better. I go home, I take 2 sleeping tablets and I sleep for so long. I don't wake up or dream.

Wednesday 11th October 2017

I wake up and I feel tired. I watch something on my iPad and eat a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes and congratulate myself on eating them. I feel better. I feel like a fraud. There is nothing wrong with me, I just had a bad couple of days and I feel embarrassed. I start to cry. I want to know when I will be better and I want to be able to work. I am letting so many people down. I look at my computer but I can’t think of words very well. I feel like I am looking down on myself in a film. I want to go home but I have to wait for the Crisis people. They come and they look at me, and ask me if I have had any bad thoughts and I say not really but I am very tired and can I go home now? I ask them when I will be better and how I can get better. They look blankly at me. They say I need to remove myself from stressful situations and do things I love. They say I need to rest my brain and re-connect with the things I love. I feel like I love nothing. I don’t know what to do.

They say that they need a doctor to come and see me and that he will be able to prescribe me some anti-depressants, and I know I need them to get through the next few weeks in case I feel like I did on Monday again. I say I want to go home today. They say that if they can talk to the Dorset team I can go home tomorrow and I can be referred there and they will take care of me, but they want me to stay at here for the night and they want to see me again tomorrow. I find out that the anti-depressants that the doctor I saw on Tuesday had prescribed were Citalopram. I have taken them before. I took them for 4 years after I tried to kill myself at university. They want me to talk to a doctor before they prescribe them again. They will come back tomorrow morning  early so I can go home. When they leave I lay on the sofa and when I wake up it is dark. I am very tired. I eat a sweet potato pie. I watch a film about Anorexia and I take sleeping tablets and I go to bed.

Thursday 12th October 2017

I wake up late and I feel better. I put my running gear on and I eat a bowl of crunchy nut cornflakes. I wait for the Crisis people, and when they come I say I feel better. I ask when I will be well enough to go back to work. They say they don’t know. I say look I am eating food! And I am going to go for a run! I feel like I am looking down on myself like in a film, but I feel better. I feel like a fraud. There’s nothing wrong with me. I feel like I should go back to work. But in my gut, in my bellyhole I know there is something wrong with me because I feel like I am looking down on myself, like in a film. They tell me they have referred me to the Dorset Crisis team and that I can go home today and then I need to call them and they will look after me. They tell me the doctor there will help me to get the drugs I need. They leave and I go for a run and it’s hard but its the best thing I can do for myself now. I have a 100 mile run in the diary for the 21st October. I need to be well enough to do it. If I don’t do it, it will kill me and it will have won.  

I am finding that simple things like running and making a bowl of cereal are hard. I have a shower for the first time in 2 days. I have forgotten to have a shower for 2 days. I pack my suitcase and I go to the train station and I get in the train and it is packed. I have a sandwich in my bag but I am scared to eat it in case it annoys the man who is sitting next to me. I get up and go and stand by the door to eat it. When I get to the station I meet my mum and she says I look well, better than she thought I would look. I tell her all about the Crisis teams. I ring the Dorset team and they say they will be around tomorrow to see me. We drive home and I feel silly and pathetic and very, very depressed. I don't remember what happens when we get home really. I just feel very, very depressed. We watch some telly and I go to bed.

Friday 13th October 2017

I wake up and I feel empty and useless and awful. I cry. I sit on the edge of my bed and look out the window and cry. I don't know why I am crying. I go downstairs and I see my mum and start to cry. She gives me a cuddle and I eat a bowl of museli. She starts telling me what she is doing that day. I am not really listening. We go for a walk in the woods and I don't know what to say. I don't want to say anything. I feel like I am in shock. I feel like I am looking down on myself. Like in a film. When we get home, I decide to walk into town to buy a book I want to read about a woman who has survived Schizophrenia. She makes me take the dog and the the dog annoys me the whole way there, and I just feel so sad, and sometimes I say horrible things to the dog. I used to love the dog. Now I love nothing. I see a dead badger on the side of the road. I cry about the dead badger. I walk round like a zombie and I can’t find the book. I sit in the Waitrose carpark for 25 minutes and stare at the grass and cry a bit. Then I walk the dog home and no, I don't want any lunch, thank you, and then I go upstairs and sit on the end of my bed and my mum comes upstairs and she asks me if she can come in, and she does and I am crying.

I talk to my mum about how I feel, and we talk for 20 minutes and I feel better. I tell her I want things to be normal. I want to feel like life is normal. I say we should go to the pub for a drink later - that is normal. I look at her holiday pictures and she looks at my pictures of Scotland. My friend David Harvey texts me and I say let’s go for a run on Sunday in the forest. I say yes I would like that. I am waiting for the Crisis team. They are late. My mum says I should do some ironing to distract myself. I do all of it. I look at the iron and think about how it would feel if I put it on my arm. The Crisis team are late.

When she arrives, there is just one lady from the Crisis team and I don’t like her. My mum sits in on our conversation and I can see her recoil when I talk about killing myself and she looks like she might cry. I don't feel like I want to kill myself now, I just feel like I want to move forward but I don't know how to do that and if I am going to feel like this forever what is the point. I think that, I don’t say it. I ask the Crisis lady when I will feel better. She says she doesn’t know, but that she will get a doctor to some round tomorrow to write me a prescription for anti-depressants. He will come between 10am and 12pm. She leaves and we go for a walk with the dog and I am silent and then we go to the pop up brewery for a pint, and I feel out of place and that I can’t make conversation with their friends, because I am here because I am depressed and that is embarrassing. We go home and eat dinner and then we watch rubbish TV and I go to bed. I am sleeping well because I have sleeping tablets. There are no terrors and no dreams. I need to get some more. You can get them over the counter. They are an allergy tablet - I need to get some more - so I tell myself I will do that tomorrow. I want to go and see my sister and her husband and my nieces and nephews tomorrow because they make me feel happy. I also want to run tomorrow. I cannot let this take running away from me.  

Saturday 14th October 2017

When I wake up I feel better. I want to go for a run. I want to feel better. The doctor they are sending round is going to be late so I have some breakfast and drive to the beach and I run for 6 miles and get a coffee and and drive home and have a shower. I feel OK. Not brilliant, but OK. Running will save me. Autumn 100 next weekend. The doctor comes. He is lovely but he is strange. He asks me everything about my history including school and university. I have a therapist that I talk to once a week and so I don't really want to be talking about this stuff with a stranger. The Crisis team didn’t talk to me about this. He is kind though, and he tells me that there are fundamental changes that I need to make to my life to help myself. One of these changes is most probably to leave London. I know this is true. London is killing me. He is not the first person to say this. He writes me a prescription for Citalopram. 7 days worth. That means I need to go to the doctor in London. I sign myself out of their care. I tell them I don’t need them anymore and that I will be OK. I decide I will go back to London on Wednesday. I feel like a cop out. I feel like it’s a big fuss over nothing. There’s not been anything really wrong with me in the first place I don’t think. I feel OK. I feel like I am looking down on myself. Like in a film. I get my stuff and I drive to my sisters. I love my sister and her husband and I love my nieces and nephews. We all get on the sofa and watch films and my sisters husband makes me laugh and I feel l happy. I go to bed and take 2 sleeping pills. I feel OK. I feel like I am pleasantly distracted. But only distracted, not better. It’s still there. I feel like I want to start the change that will see me moving to be closer to them. I wonder if this will help me feel better. I have no idea how to feel better.

Sunday 15th October

My friend David comes over to my sisters and we all 3 go for a run in the forest. David is so kind to me even though he doesn’t really know name and we run for 10 miles in the forest, David, my sister and me, and we chat about races we have done and the Autumn 100 and it’s just the best time and I feel calm and in control of myself. I feel like there is nothing wrong with me. I feel like a fraud. I need to buy a coat for the race I am doing the following weekend so we go to the outdoor centre and me and my sister talk about running and I buy the coat I need. As we drive home my brother-in-law is singing along to songs from the musicals on the radio and my nieces and my sister are singing along, and it makes me so happy but so sad that I don't have a family unit like theirs. I feel like the car is full of love. I feel like I am loved.

Monday 16th October

I have made the decision that I will run the Autumn 100, and that I will return to London on Wednesday. I need to get on with my life and get on with my job. I need to start putting the pieces into place that will see me leave the city and move out to the forest and the sea. I don't know how I am going to do this, but I am going to start piecing it together. I go out with my mum. I don't feel good. I feel scared because I know I have to go back to London. I feel like I am floating around like a zombie. I feel like I am 3ft off the pavement and everything is grey and everyone is sad. There has been a hurricane that has blown dust into the atmosphere, and the sun looks red like it’s the end of the world. The world is yellow and red. I need some more sleeping tablets. The doctor told me that they were available over the counter so I walk into a chemist and ask for them, and the chemist looks me in the eye and says no we don't stock those - nobody does because people tend to abuse them, and I feel embarrassed like I am a drug addict and I scuttle out of the chemist. Later my mum goes into Boots and they give them to her, because she doesn’t look like a drug addict. She looks like a nice grown up lady who suffers from seasickness. I feel like a fraud because being with my mum makes me feel better. I feel very embarrassed about the last few days and I can’t really remember what I felt like when this first started to happen and I feel like I have made a big fuss about nothing. When we get home I go into town and I sit in the library and I write this diary from the notes I have been making. It makes me feel better, it is cathartic, then I think about publishing it and I feel terrified because people might think I am seeking attention but I’m not doing it for that reason, I am doing it because I want people to try and understand what happens when someone has a breakdown and what happens in the days after. This might not be the same as your story, but it might help you make sense of your story. I don't know what will happen next. I don't know when I will be better. But today, I feel better.  

Tuesday 17th October

I am going home tomorrow. I have told my clients at work, and I feel clear in myself that I need to be brave, and go and get on with my life as it is for now. I know have people at the end of the phone and also in my real life here who love me. I feel foolish still, like I have made a big fuss about nothing. I no longer feel like I am in a film. I feel like I am in my life. My mum has some errands to do and she drives to my sisters house and I run to my sisters house through the forest, along the Castleman Trail and it is so wonderful to be running for miles through the forest to a destination, with nothing around me. I need to run to the destination. I need to make forward progress. On the run I tell myself that it is all going to be OK and that I can cope. I am heading to the destination. I go and pick my niece up from school and I walk the dog.

I finish this part of my diary here. Tomorrow I return to London. I have so many unanswered texts and messages and I don't know how to start answering them. I guess I will leave them. I feel better. I feel like a fraud. I feel like I need to move forward but I need to do it slowly and not let this happen again. I am on anti-depressants that will start to make me feel better in the next week. I have the Autumn 100 to run at the weekend and I will run it. I will run it to prove that I am in control, the depression is not in control. It is part of me but it will not define me. I will finish the Autumn 100 if I have to walk it. I will stay away from social situations for now. I feel like I need to look after myself on my own for a little longer.

So, to all those who looked after me, my mum, my sister and her wonderful family, my housemate, my friends whose texts and messages have gone un-answered, thank you and I am sorry. Your messages went unanswered, but I saw them all. To the NHS Crisis team, thank you. I never thought I would need to use these services, and you may not think you ever need to use them, but they are invaluable.

To you, the person reading this, do not be afraid to ask for help.  You are not causing a fuss, you are not seeking attention, you are asking for help. Do not be afraid to tell people, to reach out, to make the call or send the text. We all like to think we are mental health savvy these days, but your friends and family are often too busy to see the signs or act on them.  You might be too busy to notice your peers are suffering. Check in on people. Be kind. Listen and watch. Remember, you are not a burden to anyone. Have a voice. Ask for help. You are so loved.

To myself, look after yourself, have some respect for yourself. Take care and listen to your brain and body. You are loved. You’ve got this.

TBC

Helplines:

The Samaritans: 116 123

CALM: 0800 58 58 58

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😔❤️

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Goodbye South Africa. You have taught me everything I needed to learn and left the door open for more ❤️❤️❤️

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Certified Friend of the Sharks then. Completely gutted to leave my shark team family. It's not the end though. It's the start.

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Day 15: One Door Closes

Today was my final day here at the project and we had lost one of the volunteers this morning - he left a day earlier than me. We have all become really close in the time we have had here so when someone goes it's pretty weird and spirits were a bit low. It was a no sea day so, being the fun captain, I decided that everyone was coming with me for a walk to Pearly Beach. The walk is along the coast and is about 2.5 miles each way so not a massively long way - but that didn't stop the (massively hungover) boys complaining..... 😉 It was a beautiful day, even though it was really windy - the wind was the reason we couldn't go to sea - it's just means all the clients (and some volunteers) on the boat get super seasick and it's not a nice experience for anyone. We got to the beach, had an ice cream and beach beer and went for a paddle - the water was freezing but I still wish I had gone in. We spent a large majority of the time behaving like inappropriate children which is basically how we spend all our time together, and drawing an anatomically correct Great White in the sand. I am quite astonished at how six people can become such a tight unit in such a small amount of time, it's like we have known each other for years. Special shout outs to Tash, UK Tom, French Tom, German Tom, Nicholas and Fred for being fucking awesome, especially Tash who I think will be a friend for life. (The rest of you can do one 😉) I thought I might die laughing at such stupid shit this afternoon. Those afternoons are the best. I tried to put the thought of leaving behind me - I am actually more terrified of coming home than I was of coming out here. This experience has taught me so much in such a short amount of time, not just about my favourite sharks and evolution and marine biology, but about myself as well. Without wanting to get to cheesy/deep/weird I feel like I am getting to the bottom of what I am all about and the results are pretty surprising. There is nothing I currently want to do less than come back to the UK if I'm totally honest. That's not because I have 'had a nice holiday' (it's been quite trying and fucking hard work most of the time!), I think it's because I have been given the chance to re-evaluate what's important, what I care about and how I am willing to be treated by other people. And that's the key. Having got along so well with people that don't know anything about me or my past or what I do has made me realise that perhaps I'm not all that bad. Living with people from 5 different countries has made me realise I can be quite narrow minded and judgmental. That's going to change. Seeing the damage humans are causing not only to a highly evolved, intelligent animal that has been around for 400 million years, but to the very source of our life blood (the ocean, obvs) has shocked me and and made me want to do something about it. We had a conservation lecture this afternoon that was amazing and totally devastating in equal parts. When I get home I will update this blog with some of the key stats but we are fucking the ocean, it's fish and ourselves. We need to change. So as I spend my last night with my new friends, I am trying to see it as the closing of one door but the start of a new adventure. I am definitely coming back to this project. I definitely want to do more with the biologists and help change people's attitudes. There's nothing quite like having a client on the boat that thinks sharks are plentiful, man eating megladon monsters (because he's seen the films, right?) only to see him come off the boat later a completely different person having learnt the facts. One person at a time, if that's what it takes. Now....to booze.

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YES TEAM! 🐋😍👍🏻 #allaboutsharks #whitesharksproject #sharkschool

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Amazing walk to pearly beach with this lot. Have grown to love them all. Here we are debating how to draw a great white in the sand. We'd drunk ONE beer each. 😍😍😍😍 #whitesharksproject #allaboutsharks #sharkschool

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Day 14: Last Day On The Boat

Today was my final trip on the boat, tomorrow is a no sea day because of the weather. It was pretty sad driving out trying to take in all the amazing views and the smell of the sea (and the stinky seals). It was really rough out there today - we had a lot of seasick clients. One thing this trip has taught me is I can deal with sick people like a pro, but even I felt queasy in the cabin. It was a long wait today, we had one shark going between 2 boats and we were all kind of sharing him - it was the male with the fishing wire wrapped around him again. He was pretty feisty today, jumping out of the water at the bait - at least he seems to be ok at the moment and not lethargic or sick, but seeing the injuries that net is causing him is still terrible. It's rubbing into his skin and making it really red and sore. Back on land we started getting ready for our final Braai as a team - Nicholas was leaving us in the morning. As you can imagine it go pretty messy. You can buy a box of really good rd wine here for £2. That's all I am saying..... Tomorrow is my final day here. As its a no sea day we are all going for a long walk to the beach and then will be having a conservation lecture and dinner out. I am really going to miss my little Volunteer family, especially Tash my room mate who I absolutely LOVE. It's been the most amazing experience of my life. I've learnt a lot.

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A huge flock of Cormorants fly in line with the boat across the water . Astonishingly beautiful #whitesharksproject #allaboutsharks #sharkschool

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Going to miss sunrise boat trips 😞 #whitesharksproject #allaboutsharks (at Kleinbaai, Western Cape, South Africa)