The urge to self-destruct

"I never knew my killer would be coming from within"

Warning: The post below contains references to intrusive and suicidal thoughts.

I also really want to add that I’m sharing this as I think it’s really, really important to voice how we’re feeling. I’ve spent time with mental health organisations (for this article) and they all confirmed that voicing your feelings is both incredibly difficult but also one of the best things to do for your mental health.

I’m very scared about publishing this post as I don’t want people to worry about me, but often, that can be a reason people silence themselves - for fear of worrying their loved ones. I also don’t want to be seen to be being dramatic or attention-seeking, which is another reason why people, particularly women, don’t open up about their mental health. So I’m pushing through the discomfort and hitting publish.

If it was a different day, you’d be getting a different introduction. If it wasn’t 6.05am, the sky still that dark you cannot see, the dark that pulls you in. If I wasn’t waiting for my Solpadeine to kick in, chalky and not-the-solution, flowing its way down to my empty stomach. If I wasn’t waiting for the day to break, for an epiphany to break… Well, this whole thing would read very differently.

I’d be crafting a tale, about a girl, her local cab office, the different modes of being the driver sees her flip between. You’d have thought ‘god that girl is fucked up, but she’s loveable. Damaged but… healing.’ The girl is me. The story would be fiction. Part fact, maybe. No, mostly fiction.

It would be playing into the exact thing I’m trying to rally against.

We expect people to be one of two things: hot mess, rock bottom or sober, healed, spiritual. This was me vs this is me. We want redemption stories, life lessons, signs of survival. 

We want messiness but only once it’s clean. 

I’m not judging this. I am this. I seek out sobriety memoirs and chain-listen to self-help podcasts. I absorb it all in the morning, by night I throw myself into a (mild) destruction, time-ticking by as I wait for the lesson to come. 

I feel the need to hurl my way to the depths, just so that I can pull myself back out again. 

We don’t often hear the stories of the in-between. The going for it. The trying. I get it, yes it’s very scary to tell the stories of who you once were, what you once did. But it’s even scarier to admit, out loud, who you are right now. Not knowing if you’re ever going to change. 

When I was a child I used to line my feet up on the edge of a kerb. Tilt myself forward, just about letting gravity take hold, falling, falling, falling, face to concrete and then… I’d catch myself. Laugh. Try all over again. It was a game. I really, really loved that game. 

Once, sitting in the back of a car, I took a bead and shoved it so deep into my nose we had to go to A&E. I told the doctors, my parents, I wanted to see what I’d look like with a pierced nose. This was a lie. I did it because… because I felt a compulsion to do so. I don’t know. I was five, six, I can’t analyse too deeply how I felt, my brain was oh-so-small. 

I just pulled myself out of bed, to write this, as there’s a metal cocktail stick, taken from a martini glass, that lives in a pot on my dresser. I remember pulling the olive off, then pricking the sharp end of the stick against the pad of my finger, pocketing it. I knew I had to have this cocktail stick, I wanted the damage it could cause. 

I’m happy right now. My life is (mostly) good. 

But I was lying in bed, last night’s white wine, wine I drank despite all my best reservations, swimming in my stomach and I wanted to get up, take that cocktail stick and ram it into my veins. 

But I didn’t. I wrote this instead. 

(Well, first I scratched at my shoulder, repeatedly, until the skin began to break.)

Why am I telling you this? I don’t want you to worry. But a calm just washed over me, that helped. Sorry you had to read it, all so I could feel watercolour blue again. 

Have I convinced you yet, of how much of a fuck-up I am? How in need of help I am? That’s actually not my intention. It’s not the truth. This is what I mean, I am a story of the in-between. I have a deep pull to self-destruct. And… I don’t. I’ve worked on that, learned (some) coping mechanisms. Here’s the urge to list them all, the need to show you how healed I am, the ‘journey’ I’ve been on. 

Can I tell you one thing? Actually two. Both ends of the spectrum. So, I wrote this piece this week.  It involved confronting some buried history. But also, pushing myself into a current news story, one I’d rather bury, actually. Something I’d love to run from. I’m trying not to run, you see? I’m trying to channel all this emotion into something else, into words, maybe even… action?

When Rishi Sunak said what he said, I was on my way into work. I’d had the loveliest night away, a spoiled-little-journalist spa trip, paid for by a brand. I really felt so content with who I was, who I am, and then the news came rolling in. I tried to swallow down the splurge of emotions the story made me feel, the fear it arose in me. I am chaotically myself I wrote down, in the Notes app of my phone, feeling wired but kinda OK? I left the taxi jangling, went on the tube, let three trains go by as I held myself against the cool of the wall. I didn’t trust myself not to throw myself in front of an oncoming tube. 

(I wouldn’t have. It was an intrusive thought. A powerful one but just that, air in my head. A thought. I wouldn’t have. I just… had to let it pass.) 

Anyway, I wrote the piece. I came home. I said to my husband, “I really need a drink” but I recognised that wouldn’t have been the healthiest option. So I had an alcohol free gin and tonic, I started reading an all-absorbing thriller. GOD I AM A FUCKING SAINT. I thought I had my emotions under control.

Then, yesterday afternoon the piece went live. I thought I wasn’t unraveling. But I was. I ate half a salad for lunch and then I drank a whole load of gin, under fluorescent office lighting and… then I sought out trouble. Like the cocktail stick, like the kerb, I walked down some stairs, drank harsh spirits with harsh strangers…

I felt in danger. But it was a danger I wanted. A danger I deliberately looked for. 

Sometimes I feel like the stars in the sky are just shards of glass I can scratch myself with. 

The cocktail stick is not in my veins. My face never hit the floor. I left the bar, I caught the train home. I cried to my taxi driver. I climbed into bed, with my husband. I’m safe. Danger did not engulf me. 

So why do I feel so rotten? Like I’ve failed? I stayed in that bar for fifteen minutes. I was home by 11pm.

It was a short trance, like I was under the influence of a hypnotic poison. One I created, a complex creation of hormones and my history. I snapped out of it.

Being on the precipice of self destruction is not self destruction. 

I’m being hard on myself as I thought I was past this. I thought I’d learned. Just after lockdown this desire for the dark did not see me leave the bar, it saw me stay there, until 6am, until 8am. I fell very, very close to the ground. 

This is what I mean. In seeking out these saintly, once-bad-now-good, redemption stories I flog myself for not being there yet. Free from my darkness. But each little step, it is progress. It’s climbing a staircase without ever really knowing, at what point I’ll trip. Or… at what point I’ll fling myself off it. Without really knowing where I’m going. 

Do you? Do you know where you’re going? 

I guess what I’m trying to type, to show is… This is who I am now. Today. Not knowing if I’ll ever change but… in the very same breath, within the very same life… changing. 

Trying. 

Thank you for reading. Writing this piece, on Friday, really helped me. I also, then, spoke to friends and family, told them I was struggling. My boss allowed me a mental health day. I had a bath. Met a friend and sat in the sunshine. Scream sang Taylor Swift lyrics with a thousand other fans (if you’ve not been to Swiftogeddon, let me tell you, it’s powerful stuff). Slept all of Saturday. Today I feel better, but still not great. I’m going to go back to basics with my health for a while, focusing on small things like water and sleep and exercise. Write things down. Be careful and gentle with myself.

116 123 is the number for the Samaritans, when I interviewed them for the piece I linked above I learned you can speak to them whenever, about anything.