To Laura

Today would have been your 31st birthday, instead it is just another day without you. Another day that I spend remembering what was, and dreaming of what could have been.

I miss you everyday, but some days you are clearer in my mind, some days you push your way to the front of my thoughts over and over again. Lately you have been at the foremost of my mind more than ever. Because while I miss your smile, your laugh and your wicked sense of humour, I miss your understanding more than anything. They way you always knew when my thoughts turned darker, how you never challenged or questioned their validity but took them as they were and held my hand through them. Admittedly sometimes the hand holding involved questionable amounts of cheap liquor, but you walked, or wobbled, down the winding path with me.

I remember one birthday celebration of yours that I didn’t want to turn up for, as I had bandages up and down both arms after a recent incident with a razor blade. You wouldn’t hear of it, you told me I was going, and who the hell cares who saw my bandages. You told me I could come in jeans and a baggy jumper if I wanted, and I did. I left early, but not after collecting a few more hours of precious memories of you. After enjoying shared laughter and a genuine smile, forgetting how I was feeling on the inside.

Laughter was the gift you gave me over and over, laughter and love through the worst times. Sitting here now, trapped in my gloomy head again, I wonder what you would think of me. What you would say. Would you be disappointed in me for not pushing through, finding the laughter, finding life in this existence. Or would you tell me you understand. That sometimes the fight burns out inside of you, and there is no life left to seize.

I miss you more than words can express, I wish with all my being that you were here to rage against the dying light with me. I wish I had known your flame was flickering out, I wish I had seen it dwindle and could have held your hand as you held mine.

I wish you could tell me everything is going to be okay, or that it’s not, but that you will love me anyway. As I still love you.

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According to my psychiatrist I am in the middle of a major depressive episode. For me, this just means that the mental torment I live with, every moment of every day, has become so intense and so overwhelming that I can no longer bear to exist with the constant pain. I say exist because for months now that is all I have done. Existed, moved through time and space without purpose or joy. I do not live, I exist. It has been this way for so long now that I no longer remember what happiness feels like, or even just contentment. It is true that I have been here before, and escaped this hole, but this time it feels different. This time feels like there is no escape, that I’m trapped here with no way out but to give in to the voices and exit stage left. It is not that I haven’t tried, believe me, I have tried. I have tried CBT, DBT, individual therapy, medication and attending day hospital. Nothing has worked, I have just slid further into the abyss. I spend my days trying frantically not to drown in it. All of my energy, what little mental tenacity I have left, is spent holding that crushing wave at bay. Any leak in the dam, just a slow trickle of those feelings is enough to send me to running to the darkest places in my mind where the escape plans lie. So I hold them back, just to survive, and in doing so I allow them to fester and swell. It is a never-ending cycle, and all the while I weaken more, care less, fight with diminished resources. I will be blunt; I no longer want to live this way. Exist this way. I have fought long and hard, I have tried over and over. I have given every bit of me to try and win this war. But I have failed, and there is no fight left in me. I am running on empty and if I am honest, I no longer care to even try. Because all my effort thus far has gotten me nowhere, nowhere but to a place darker than I have been in longer than I can remember. Every time someone tells me it will get better, it is like another weight on my back. Everyone who says they love me is just another thing trying to pull something from me, another drain on my rapidly emptying well of energy. And knowing that just adds another hurt to the pile, that I have become so lost in my darkness, I cannot even bear to be cared for. To be loved is to be needed, and I don’t want that. I want to be released. So I asked for help, I begged my mental health team to help me. I told them that I could no longer hold back the self destructive urges that plagued me. I could no longer hold myself responsible for my own well-being. I need help and I asked for it, which if you have ever suffered from depression, you will understand is no simple thing. I fought my own mind time and time again to confess my true feelings to nurses, doctors and my therapist. Every explanation took another piece of me, burnt away, never to return. Today I have been told that the promised psychiatric hospital bed was out of reach, because of a separate, but not so separate, mental health issue. That I must wait 5 weeks for assessment I can’t afford before they will consider inpatient care. That the public hospital is already at crisis point and I was not suitable for care there due to the limited resources. That I had to go home and continue to sink under the weight of my sadness for an undetermined amount of time, and just try and keep coping. Keep coping. Keep existing. I have tried, tried with everything I have to get professional help. But I have been turned away, put on hold, waiting, waiting, waiting. How long can you expect someone to wait for nothing? When will someone just hold my hand and say, ‘It’s okay, you have tried enough’ and let me stop?