A day summed up by a single eye

Sometimes words aren’t required

A Day in the Life (Visual Journal) – Mental Health Awareness Week

Demon of Unworthiness (Visual Journal)

Relationships Matter in Mental Health

After a day of shut down silence, I just spoke to one of the most awesome HCAs from the ward I spent 5 months on, now working for the crisis team and still as awesome. Unlocked some emotion. Many tears (actually a good thing for me). Got me to communicate where there’s been just detached…

Inside My Head – Overwhelmed and Terrified

Too much. Can’t cope.

Haunted by a Demon/Death Looming Over Me

I am NOT broken

“But I’m so irreversibly broken” – a constant refrain of mine. I’m so terrified that I’ve been broken so completely and for so long that there’s no coming back…and, in fact, nothing to ‘get back’ to as this all started before adolescence; I’m scared that there stopped being a ‘me’ after childhood, and the ‘me’ that could or should have developed during adolescence couldn’t and wasn’t allowed to. What if there isn’t and can never be a ‘me’? What if this is all there is?

An awesome crisis nurse has been trying to help me work through this, having heard this fear from me constantly and tried in earnest to persuade me that I’m not broken, that nothing is irreversible, and that there really is a ‘me’ that should have hope for a whole and happy future. She set me the task of producing a piece of art to try to remind myself of this and I wanted to share this with you all, as I know I’m not the only one who struggles with this.

So, this is a reminder for anyone struggling with their mental health: you are NOT broken. It can be so hard to believe this because poorly brains can be so convincing about telling us we are hopelessly beyond repair. So, so hard. But if my art helps in any way, please feel free to print off a copy for yourself and, as the aforementioned awesome crisis nurse always says to me: “Say it until you believe it”:

Anxious Doom

That feeling of anxious doom like a lead weight. Frazzled brain. Tears pouring. Debilitating fear. Constant panic.

Poorly × Police

​Life-threateningly poorly, call for medical help (and speak to lovely duty mental health worker over the phone, albeit from the wrong team because there was no answer from the crisis/emergency mental health team) but the only available solution was for the police to secretly be dispatched and make uninvited entry into my home. I admit…

No Escape! Ever. Visual Journal, 13/5/16

Trigger warning: suicide

Why?

Why am I still here? Why do I continue to face days and nights of nothing but endless pain? Why do I fight so hard to do the simplest of things (getting up, sitting upright, getting a drink, getting dressed)? Why do I lay myself emotionally bare to professionals, terrified that I will only get…

What a Mess

An hour and a half sobbing with interim care co & crisis team manager. I am defeatist, they are positive. I am hopeless, they are kind. I am full of guilt, they want to help. I don’t think there is any helping me. I don’t think anyone should have to help. I’m in an unbreakable…

I Hate This

Simple as that. It is too painful simply to exist right now. I hate this. I hate mental illness. I hate me. I want it to be over but I don’t know how to end the former and still be left with a ‘me’; I don’t feel strong enough for this fight; I don’t even…

The Darkness is Stronger, Visual Journal Thurs 21st – Sat 23rd April 2016

Just when I’d started to take the first tiny tip-toeing steps forward (with help) – trying to carve a little space in the darkness to paint with colour and fill with light – unfortunate circumstances, bad timing, my complicated problems/history and more combine to halt and erase progress. The darkness has much bigger erasers and…