Things began to unravel last winter when, at the age of 36, a lifelong, amorphous sadness that I decorated with jokes and deflection had blistered into something that roved and churned. Because the sadness had always ebbed and flowed I was good at continuing to function \u2014 proud of it, even. I socialised, moved house and held down my job, even as its river carved a widening path through me.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Read more expert advice on healthy living, fitness and wellbeing<\/a><\/p>\n I was still living my life, or at least a performance of it. But over a period of months I began to disappear from the world in quiet ways. I sat in pubs with friends, slipping away in plain sight to some unreachable place. The more I smiled through it, the further away daylight seemed. I woke in the mornings with an ache in my chest and was hit by waves of hopelessness so intense that I lay face down on the floor, before standing and dressing for work.<\/p>\n The first phone call I made to the crisis team was in December. Walking home, I felt a sudden fear \u2014 and then clarity, that I shouldn\u2019t be alone. When the woman asked why I was calling, I told her I didn\u2019t want to be alive any more. When she asked how long I\u2019d felt that way, I said most recently, several months. She asked whether I\u2019d tried to take my own life in the past three months, and when I said I hadn\u2019t, told me I wasn\u2019t eligible for support from their team on that basis. I didn\u2019t call again for some time.<\/p>\n The following month, however, returning home from the office, I stood, looking around my flat, and was engulfed by dread. I couldn\u2019t imagine a time when I wouldn\u2019t feel like this. An older man answered the call and, after a few questions, said he was worried about me. He gave me the address of the nearest mental health hospital and offered to send an ambulance. I cycled there instead: an out-of-body experience, as street lights passed silently overhead.<\/p>\n Once inside the hospital\u2019s waiting room, my phone charger was removed (\u201cfor my own safety\u201d) and a nurse checked my vitals. I still remember the feel of her papery hands as she took my blood pressure, the comforting squeeze on my upper arm as we sat, listening to the machine\u2019s whirr. I felt relieved that she knew I was here. Relieved, in a way, to have admitted defeat.<\/p>\n \u2022 Grieving father leads overhaul of suicide risk assessment system<\/a><\/p>\n I tried to turn my chair to watch a couple rattling around Fuerteventura on A Place in the Sun, before realising it was nailed to the floor. The windows were barricaded shut. A man paced agitatedly back and forth beside me, and I felt in that moment that I had walked through a door that separated me from my life until now and the people in it \u2014 the version where I coped.<\/p>\n After an hour I was seen by a doctor. We sat under a flickering lightbulb on purple, plasticky sofas and he asked, \u201cWhy do you think you feel suicidal now?\u201d<\/p>\n It was a question that I couldn\u2019t easily answer. A long-term relationship had ended. I felt isolated. But this felt more like a reckoning \u2014 the fruition of something that began a long time ago, demanding to be acknowledged. I had been processing childhood trauma with a private therapist and had a diagnosis of CPTSD: complex post-traumatic stress disorder. I still believe it has been the right thing to do, but I do also think that exposing those roots brought with it a level of sadness that has felt at times unbearable.<\/p>\n I stared at a print of a waterfall behind his head as he continued.<\/p>\n Had I made plans? Yes.<\/p>\n What were they? I heard someone else\u2019s voice falling out of me as I described them, detached \u2014 then shocked.<\/p>\n Did I think I could keep myself safe? I wasn\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n What about a support network? That was more complex. Friends knew I\u2019d had depression but not the full story. This new, cavernous sadness felt monstrous and I didn\u2019t want anyone to see it.<\/p>\n The doctor recommended I stay but, as there were no available beds, offered me a sofa in the waiting room. I listened to a woman shouting in distress somewhere down the corridor. It was late now and, exhausted, I was referred to the NHS home team for two weeks of safety check-ins and went home on the condition I saw a GP the next day to discuss medication.<\/p>\n Like many, I\u2019ve grown resigned to the limitations of a stretched NHS, but still I found some of what unfolded over the coming months shocking. The feeling throughout was that staff at best didn\u2019t know how to treat me, but at worst didn\u2019t believe me.<\/p>\n
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