I'm glad I didn't appeal against the decision to not be allowed into the High School with the best reputation, even though it means my trauma may not have occurred. Though, it could've happened in a different way and had a different result. And ultimately, my trauma made me stronger and had some good effects... Eventually.
Quitting my job
I wasn't happy working there any more and the voices just happened to give me the courage to leave. And I'm glad they spoke when they did or I might never have spoke up at how over-worked I was. Just me doing a three person job?! Enough to stress anyone out!
Not bothering with my A Levels
I wasn't supposed to go down the academic route. I enjoyed learning but it was the way I was taught for your future; GCSEs, A Levels, Uni, job. And I don't mean by family but by school. That's the path we were taught and so, when I struggled in my A Level exams (and by 'struggle, I mean that I was hearing voices and in the middle of an overdose) I thought it was the end of the world. I remember crying and thinking I no longer had a future, I'd never get a job, never get into Uni, never make my family proud. So, to discover there was other methods of education; distance learning, classes where you go in one day a week... I was glad I'd failed my A Levels; or I might've ended up in an intense Uni degree getting the job I thought everyone expected me to get but which I didn't enjoy.
My first Overdose
My first overdose had no real meaning to it; I didn't think it through. I just kept swallowing these tablets which I'd already discovered numbed your feelings. I didn't think that I wanted to die until I was being offered an anti-dote treatment to save my liver and I refused it. My first overdose was what made everyone sit up and think 'shit! Something's happened to this girl!', 'something is wrong!' For almost three years I'd been trying to make people realise I was being hurt. I acted up, was cheeky, rude and got into trouble at school, and still no one put two and two together. An attempt on my life did it; professionals were begging for me to tell them what had happened to me, promising they could help. And I did. I told them (eventually). And they helped (eventually).
Absolutely anything and everything I did between 2009 and 2012
Overdosing, self-harming, attempting suicide, refusing life-saving treatment, being put in seclusion, being restrained, being carried from my Mum's home, being sedated, having to ask for permission to go outside, being put on life-support, prescribed anti-psychotic medication and spending vast amounts of money on travel to miles away from home in the hope that my memories wouldn't follow me and the subsequent admissions to strange hospitals... All of this, allowed professionals to gage some sort of understanding about how bad my pain was; how much I was hurt inside, and how much hard work it was going to take to make me better again.
Overdosing bad enough to go onto life support
My overdose in the Hospital in Yorkshire, surprised me. It was a surprise I needed. Before then, I'd taken up to 80 paracetamol and on that occasion I took around 32 and my bloods weren't good; so the staff went to any lengths to make me have the anti-dote medication and I went to any lengths to avoid it. I remember when they put the drip in through a needle in a vein on my foot and I used my toes from the other foot to pull it out. It was as though I were so determined to die that I had all this strength against the people trying to restrain me and against all of the medication they were injecting into me to calm me down and then I just felt this great feeling of serenity. Like 'this is it.' And when it wasn't 'it'; when the professionals won and saved my life... That was the end. I'd gone as far as I could and it hadn't work. So I stopped. And I went the other way; towards recovery.
Closing down the blog
There are certain things in life where I think that it's ok to say 'no, it won that one.' But bullies, are not one of them. It's hard - they make it hard. But how would you feel if you stopped everything you enjoyed, everything you were proud of and good at, so that they won? It still wouldn't be enough. There'd still be some tiny area that people would pick up on; a fault, a flaw, a weakness... And then not only would you be the girl people didn't like; you'd be the one that was unhappy because she'd given up. Me and my blog; right there.