It’s here! Everyone on the Edge has been a project I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I am so overwhelmed with the response I have had and hope that this series will encourage more of you to open up. It’s an absolute honour to read and share your stories and help people recognise that truly, everyone really is on the Edge.

I’d like to introduce you to my second guest, Carys. I met Carys through work, she had told me that she had read my blog and that it had resonated with her at a truly hard time. We have never been in constant contact but we have always had a mutual understanding of being on the edge. My biggest regret especially when reading this is how lonely this place is, and how much I feel I could have helped (whether I could or couldn’t), reading things like this make you feel helpless as a friend. She is so strong though, and that is represented in the words she has used. Strength doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but it’s clear this girl has so much of it. This is a brave, extremely honest and open account of Carys’ struggles. Proud of her. The floor is yours, Carys, darling…

It’s all I have, the one constant in my life. I was first put on anti depressants at the age of 18, and over the past 7 years my collection has increased vastly. The effects of these medications are something that people don’t ever appreciate or understand. To me I am fighting a lose lose battle; my life without them is completely unbearable. All of my emotions are completely unpredictable. I either feel completely numb and like a vacant shell of a person, or, to quote the vaccines “it makes my head feel like a nightclub” its overbearing, loud and intense.

I have always been ashamed of my mental health, surrounded by people that will do their best to understand but all the while can’t. They haven’t experienced the difference between feeling depressed, feeling anxious and real chronic depression and anxiety disorder. The truth is they are so different, I don’t have an escape, these illness’ manifest into every aspect of my life. 

After working in the prison service I cut down a man that was hanging, after this I was first diagnosed with PTSD. Following that incident I was off work, unable to leave my bedroom and function, everything became too overwhelming. I felt responsible for the death of a man I had become to know well. I would replay the event over and over in my head trying to work out what more I could have done, how I could have been there for him when he felt he had no other option. 

As my mental health became progressively worse, I felt suicidal. It was in this period that I walked past the man I believed to have died, sat in the street begging for money. He was alive, and more so he was homeless. I sat and cried, watching him from afar, refusing to move because now I was experiencing the same emotions all over again but in a completely different way. Guilt. Itwas my fault he was sat there, cold and alone. I finally understood how he had felt, the desire to die and end all of the pain that life has, I had been selfish and taken that away from him. I had forced him to continue living a life that he didn’t want to do. Every day I felt anger towards the people that I loved and the people that loved me because I wished I didn’t have them to think about. 

I don’t know how long I had been stockpiling my medication for but I remember taking it everywhere with me. I took it up to London with me when I went to celebrate my friends birthday. I look at the pictures and you can see me smiling and laughing, I look so happy. Little did everyone know I was smiling because I knew I soon wouldn’t have to. When I got home I drove to Tesco car park, I sat and became frustrated that I hadn’t packed a bottle of wine to take my medication with. I popped out each pill… it took forever. Then I put my headphones in and walked to the place I had planned to die. I didn’t want family or friends to find me, I had worried about the repercussions that it would have on someone else’s life, but I tried to tell myself that a dog walker finding someone passed out wouldn’t be too traumatic. I laid in the cold looking up at the stars and wondered how long it would take. 

The next thing I remember is waking up in hospital. I was terrified because I was having hallucinations; Ipanicked thinking that I was going to be experiencing these things forever. My mum and boyfriend at the time sat by my side as I cried and begged the doctors to let me go home. I made them believe I wasn’t going to do it again, that I would get therapy and look after myself, but really all I felt was disappointment that it hadn’t worked. Over time things did improve, I was able to get a new job and I thought that my mental health would be something that I managed. 

I now know that to be something that isn’t true. I can’t manage it, it manages me, it has control over me. Whatever happens in life, change is one thing I can rely on. Whether that is change of bad to good or good to bad, nothing is ever constant. 

Then there was the change.  A friend at work flagged it up to our manager and before I knew it I was being taken to A&E by a manager, I sat in the waiting room wondering what the point was, what they could possibly do to help me, I had no faith in any mental health services (largely due to being sent home after a suicide attempt with no support in place). After two hours I walked out, frustrated and tired of waiting, my manager then spoke to the staff and they agreed to see me and I went back in to the waiting room. Within 10 minutes I was back outside, being dropped home with leaflets in hand. I can’t tell you how often I have been asked “do you have the hotline numbers for if you’re in crisis?” Yes- I have them. No- I wont ever call. I don’t doubt that they are of service to some people, but I felt I was beyond the point of return, yet again, I was just waiting for my moment. 

This time I was better prepared, I had saved over 300 tablets, a beautiful concoction of anti depressants and anti psychotics, but most importantly- paracetamol. I had remembered how the doctor has previously told me that is what had caused me the most damage. I also had already taken each pill out of the packet and stored them in bottles so they would be easier to consume. Unfortunately it was still anything but easy, I had always been the kind of person that could swallow tablets with ease, but forcing down hundreds while your body is gagging and your mouth is dry with the powder is painful. It took forever, handfuls at a time I gulped them down trying to think of how it would all soon be over. I felt happy. It was a weight lifted off my shoulders. I didn’t have the stars to look at this time but I curled up into my duvet. Passed the point of caring who found me, this time I knew that it was something I had to do for me.

People will always say to others that sometimes you need to be selfish, you need to focus on yourself and prioritise yourself. This is such a damaging thing to say to somebody who is suicidal, because the only thing that was stopping me was the fact I was thinking of others, the effect it would have on them. Although I knew people would be hurt, I knew I had to do it for myself, I deserved the comforting peace of death.

Failure, a feeling I was familiar with, but this hit me hard. How, how did it not work, how had I survived again? Apparently the doctors wondered the same thing, as they had told my mum to go to the hospital and say her goodbyes to me. Several days later I finally woke up in intensive care, in agonizing pain. My whole body was swollen, I struggled to breathe and all down my throat felt like sandpaper. The hallucinations started again, seeing people that weren’t there, hearing things that nobody else could hear. Again, all I wanted was to go home, but I wasn’t even able to get up to use the toilet. I was approached and told that they wanted me to be discharged to a mental health hospital. All I could think was, no, surely not, I’m not like the people that are sectioned into those places. For some reason I felt like I wasn’t that unwell, I wasn’t mentally ill, I just wanted to die. I believed that to be completely different. As if that made me better than the people who suffered in different ways. I regret that now, I know that I should have gone there. Instead I was discharged under the care of the crisis team.

Over the next 8 months I saw psychiatrist after psychiatrist, had assessment after assessment and have finally started therapy. I still feel numb, and my head still feels like a nightclub, but I have a better understanding of that, this is because I have EUPD. Although I feel alone, I am not alone, I am one of many that suffer, I am on the edge with Ellen.

If you wish to contribute to Everyone on the Edge, please send your piece along with a picture to ellenontheedge@gmail.com