The Long Road Ahead

In light of world mental health awareness day, I thought I would share my story of mental health and what turned it around.

so I experienced depression for over a year in 2016/2017 after my “life” started to fall to pieces and during that I realised the way my life was setup was a shambles, I was not prepared for the things to come as I had not lived in a way that made me ready for this process & the problems that would follow.

I reached my breaking point and didn’t know where to turn I started spiralling in & out of phases that I would not call depression more like sadness, the more I tried the more I was set back I had enough I began to have these issues would affect me both mentally & physically, after that happened I went into a deep depression.

I lived in a very nihilistic way, where I felt so depressed that life was very meaningless & hopeless, I didn’t care about myself and my emotional well being was very much destroyed, I lived my days floating between intense anger for the people who caused these issues for me in my life, depression & hopelessness I mean I was unable to get out of bed some days/weeks.

it got to the point where a friend of the family had made an appointment for me to see a counsellor, but that didn’t help I was far too closed about my life, I felt ashamed of the things I had gone through, I felt that telling him that would somehow make my life worse, this was how I was conditioned when growing up in my family, anyway the sessions didn’t help me at all I would take the advice given try it for a day or two then things would happen and I would be just as bad as before.

This got to the point where at the end of 2017 I had a stroke.

My reconciliation with myself

I had just been hospitalised and was experiencing a range of emotions ones from before the stroke and some new but mostly in between anger & sadness with the odd speck of happiness from visitations of friends & family, that only lasted so long and it’s sad in its own way as I felt so powerless at this point I had no real say or control over things. I had felt like I was in a similar situation to the past only now I was unable to do anything.

2 weeks later I found myself being wakened at 3.00 am by the sound of a stretcher bed being pushed through the corridor and then till the spot beside me, it was a man who was put on immediate life support. after some talking with nurses they were told they would have to wait until the morning for doctors to assess him further.

Later that morning I overheard the doctors talking to the family, not by choice but just because we were in an open ward, “there was nothing they can do for him” although that was all I heard, within the next 2-3 hours the nurses came by to take him off life support.

This for me was both the climax & epiphany of my depression!

because I had to listen to that person struggle to live! gaging on what I can imagine was his saliva all the while struggling to breathe and live for 2 hours.

this snapped me out of all the things I was mentally experiencing the changed my whole outlook because while I had a stroke, I still could think, I wasn’t as bad as I could have been, I could have been a vegetable unable to speak, eat, think, even right now typing this out formulating thoughts & sentences,

I’m not saying that there weren’t challenges and that I still had my bad days (this also could have been because of the stroke or the medication) but I now had something tangible that I could measure myself against and with that I set out on my journey to improve myself bit by bit.

I had done a lot of thinking about my mentality, back then in fact if I were to meet myself, I know I could not help him despite wanting to, I needed that push to realise what life is to me and the meaning I want to take from it.

also, I would if I had the chance do things differently, I would ask for help alot sooner because I realise that it is not something that makes you look weak, it makes you strong.

because nothing in this life is more important than yourself! you are the bedrock of your world and you can end up shouldering burdens that aren’t even your own.

it’s actually one of the reasons writing a book to get everything out in the open & to get the message out to people who think they are powerless but they’re not and if one person reads it and realises that they don’t have to live like me that I will be happy

I know a lot of you have heard and read this before but if you are going through a tough time I urge you to contact a local doctor or therapist or even talk to a close friend and if you don’t think you are being assessed correctly then keep looking your first choice isn’t always going to be your main choice it’s all about you! choosing a medical/mental health professional who you feel comfortable talk with.