Welcome to
Day Twenty of Blogmas 2022!
Today, I’ve teamed up with Visit York (all of their links are at the end of the post) to bring you some photos from their Christmas Market which I attended at the beginning of the month, as well as some links for the items I bought at it. The actual content of this post about acknowledging when you’ve lost time and making up for it; was inspired by the fact that I went to the Market with my Mum, and after my experiences with my mental illness, we’ve both voiced the need to ‘make up for lost time’ by wanting to be together more often...
HOW THE ABUSE
STOLE MY CHILDHOOD, AND WHY IT ISN’T IN THE WAY YOU MIGHT THINK:
Blogging in the mental health industry, means that I’m incredibly
aware of making statements that are rare and pretty unheard of. This also means
I’m conscious of the opposite happening; and so, the above subtitle feels like
a very stereotypical, cliché kind of statement to make and it therefore doesn’t
really leave you wondering what I mean but – like many things in life – there’s
actually likely more to it than you might assume there to be. I mean, it’s
actually not referring, or intended, to mean I’m feeling like the abuse has
‘aged’ me in some ways – which it has – but I’ll get to that later!
I really just wanted to start with the beginning of my time loss
and whilst the abuse wasn’t until I was fifteen, it has actually had an
enormous impact on the many years before that. Because rape and abuse shouldn’t
be assumed to be referring to solely one particular incident. Nor should they
be thought of as purely affecting the present and future. You know, as
horrendous as the time has been since the rape and abuse; I think one of the
most saddening elements of them is that they have impacted my childhood… Part
of this is because it’s a time when the abuser wasn’t even in my life; and so I
hated the thought of him having some sort of power over it… It was kind of like;
“he doesn’t deserve to be in control of my thoughts and feelings around my
entire childhood!” and I felt that those people who were in my life during
those years, are – or at the very least, should be – far more entitled to
having some sort of influence over it.
So, I think that the abuse – and my abuser – affected those years
in this one massive way that centres around how I coped with it whilst it was
happening. You see, when I have been asked to recall the abuse – whether in
therapy or in giving my statement to the Police – I actually remember it from a
completely different perspective than my own! I recall every single detail of
it as though I was on the ceiling watching it happening to some poor girl who I
couldn’t help. And of course, looking back I understand this was a coping
mechanism – that I felt I had to distance myself in whatever way possible in
order to get through and to survive what was being done to me.
At the time, it was really frustrating because I was just watching
all these horrible things happen and I couldn’t do a damn thing about it – as
though even if it were happening to me, I would’ve been able to fight back or
something?! It was also really annoying after the abuse that this had been my
perspective because it meant some details I could give to the Police, were
limited. Like, they asked for a description of body parts that I should be able
to describe if it’d happened… And I couldn’t tell them as much as I probably might
have, had I been capable and willing to accept my reality.
In using, this dissociation – as it was labelled by numerous
professionals – to cope with the trauma of this experience, it ended up being
the cause for my childhood memories (almost all of my memories before the
abuse) to fade away from the clarity I had usually seen them in. They faded
until I finally began to experience them as I do these days – with absolutely
no actual recollection, just the memory of others telling me about some
particular happy and funny instances. And do you know what I think is the
hardest part to this? It’s that this – having little to no memories of your
childhood and growing up – isn’t normal. I think that this; the notion of
finding yet another way in which my abuser had made me different from everyone
– different and alone – was really the most upsetting factor.
The second most difficult factor about this, was that it meant I
felt robbed of the one truly safe and happy time in my life. Like, I knew that
once the abuse started, life would never be the same again. I would never be
the same again. I mean, how could I ever be perfectly content with anything in
my life after these things had been done to me?
HOW MY MENTAL
ILLNESS AFFECTED MY THOUGHTS ON TIME:
When my mental health first deteriorated in 2009, I would have
never – in a million years – guessed that things would get to the point that they
did. I mean, new readers may not know, but when I made my first suicide attempt
in 2009, I was actually, literally in the middle of taking my A Level (since I’m
NOT Disordered’s readers are totally scattered around the world, here’s more details
and an explanation as to what this means in the UK education system: A-Level - Wikipedia) examinations
at School. So, I was at a pivotal point in my life because I actually also had
an offer to study Law at University (something which I really wanted to do after
recognising that Lawyers can aid in getting justice in cases of abuse and rape),
but it was under the condition that I pass my A Levels.
As it happened though, I was scheduled to take three A Level exams
in one day (with short, ten minute breaks in between) and I think that this
would be a lot of stress and pressure for even the most well and stable person.
But, of course, it being just two years since the abuse ‘ended,’ with no one
knowing yet, and having just started to experience auditory hallucinations, I was
so much more vulnerable to struggling to cope with such an important and tense
situation like this. I mean, knowing all that I did – knowing what was going on
in my head – should I have been surprised that throughout the entire morning of
the day of the three exams, I continued to swallow tablets until I just completely
passed out in the middle of a corridor at School?!
From the very beginning of the auditory hallucinations starting
(ten days before the suicide attempt) the voices had persistently told me that
I needed to kill myself… They differed between why – sometimes it was that I should
die as a punishment because I was deserving and blameworthy of the abuse, and
sometimes death was meant to achieve peace and be free of the memories of it –
but other than that, they were completely consistent, and it left me wondering
whether that would literally continue for my entire life… Unless/until I did
something about it. I mean, even just those ten days of the hallucinations felt
unbearable; how would I survive any longer with them?
I think one of the hardest elements of the hallucinations were
that I felt that I had no control over them and what they said. And that’s
where the time thing began to come in… Because that loss of control meant that
I felt as though I had no say over how my time was spent. First, I couldn’t
control what was being done to me with the abuse, and now I couldn’t even
control what happened in my own head. During the abuse, my only escape was
really just trying to distance myself from it, and that took a lot of imagination.
But how could I escape when my head was unsafe now too? And losing that –
feeling completely trapped in this body and hating every minute of it… Well, it
changed ‘time’ in various ways. You know? Like, sometimes it felt as though I
was going through all this hardship for an enormous length of time that seemed
to just keep going slower and slower; as though it was dragging on and it felt
like the pain and the upset and the hurt would never go away. Other times, time
seemed to just race by. One minute I was living my life – I had my weekend job
and I was going to school, spending time with my friends; and the next thing I
was in hospital on a drip of medication to counter-act what I had taken in my suicide
attempt. And I was left completely baffled, thinking; ‘how the hell did I even get
here?!’
WHY BEING A
PSYCHIATRIC INPATIENT CHANGED MY THOUGHTS ON TIME
In the Summer of 2012, I made another suicide attempt and after
waking from the coma that had left me on life support, I was admitted to a
psychiatric hospital. Back then, my local NHS mental health Trust, didn’t have
any services (and therefore no training or understanding) to help or support someone
with my diagnosis of a Personality Disorder; and so, my Community Mental Health
Team had to apply for funding for me to be hospitalised to a ward that actually
specialised in the diagnosis.
Unfortunately, because of my ‘flight risk’ I couldn’t be admitted
to the nearest hospital which specialised, so I ended up in one in Bradford… Which
was over 100 miles away from my home and all of my loved ones. And at that
hospital, their statistics for the ‘average length of admission’ there, was 12
- 18 months. At that time and point in
my mental health journey, the prospect of such a lengthy time away from all the
favourite and important people in my life, wasn’t hugely concerning. And I
think that was the case because of three reasons:
1.
My mental health was so poorly that I struggled to really
experience any sort of emotions around love and compassion, to the point where I
couldn’t even appreciate or be grateful for the people around me. So, why would
I be sad or scared to move away from them for such a potentially lengthy amount
of time?
2.
When I appealed against being detained to the hospital under section
3 of the 1983 Mental Health Act, the professionals from back home travelled to
the hearing and declared the number of hospital admissions I’d had between my
first suicide attempt in 2009 and the one prior to the admission in 2012. It
was 60. That fact – that I had been in physical and psychiatric hospitals over
60 times in 3 years – coupled with the fact that the time had flew straight
past me, made me question why 12 – 18 months would be any different.
3.
I used to be pretty convinced that I was destined to commit
suicide – that I had been put on this earth to do that so that it would
highlight the faults and flaws of mental health services. And so, I believed
that nothing anyone did – or tried to do – would stop that from happening. So, that
meant that I saw my time in the hospital as just a waste… I was confident that
nothing that happened – or didn’t happen – in the hospital would change things
in the long-run, so why bother?
HOW THERAPY
CHANGED TIME
One of the main points and reasons for going into this hospital
was that they facilitate the recommended therapy for someone with a Personality
Disorder; Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT). The way things worked though, I
couldn’t begin DBT as soon as I was admitted; I had to learn to cooperate with
the staff and experience a period of stabilisation where I wasn’t self-harming (because
let’s not lie; it’s still possible to do that when you’re an inpatient) and I
was taking my medication and attending all of the therapeutic activity groups,
first.
So, I think it was after around five or six months – maybe longer –
that I actually began DBT and found myself almost immediately introduced to the
coping skill of Mindfulness from the Distress Tolerance module of the Therapy programme.
Just as quickly as the Therapist and entire ward staff were promoting it, I was
just as fast completely turned off by the idea! Initially, I (and the other
inpatients when it was a group DBT session because we also had 1:1 sessions
too) was taught that it was about focusing on your current situation and
everything about it. It meant being ‘in the moment’ and in doing so, it meant not
only taking notice of your surroundings and what your five senses are
experiencing, but also of all your thoughts and feelings. Now, my greatest
rationale for detesting the entire thing and being completely reluctant to even
attempt it; came from the conviction that if I really let myself think about my
reality, I would end up worse off. I’d want to be dead to a point where I would
be actively trying to make it happen, fighting any obstacles protecting me; as
opposed to just kind of waiting for the opportunity to make an attempt.
In all honesty, I can’t remember how it came about, but after some
time of having DBT, I came to learn/find out that Mindfulness could also refer
to putting all of your attention and time into doing an activity to distract yourself
when you’re struggling. It meant that a coping skill of reading or doing a
puzzle when your mental health is proving difficult or unbearable, was done less
half-assed than it might be if you’re doing it out of sheer desperation to get
through the next few hours when you know you’d otherwise be unsafe.
Learning this important aspect of mindfulness, led to my realisation
that it would be a fantastic tool to use if I was in a really amazing place or
situation that I wanted to remember. And so, I utilised it when I’m NOT
Disordered reached over 100,000 readers in 2015, and I hosted a party to
celebrate (to see the photos and a video one of my best friends put together: #100kwithimnotdisordered
| I'm NOT Disordered). That entire party was – for a long time – literally
the greatest night of my life, I loved seeing all the important people in my
life meet each other, I loved the thought that I was encouraging so many people
to talk about mental health, and I loved having the opportunity to thank people
in my speech in front of the one hundred guests. My most favourite moment
however – the moment I really used Mindfulness, was at the end of the party
when there weren’t many people left but the musician was still there and he sung
Mr Brightside by The Killers and me, and two of my best and oldest friends;
Lauren and Sophie, danced to it with me! I’m so grateful that the photographer,
was still there too so I have photos of the moment too!
MAKING UP FOR
LOST TIME
Now that it’s eight years since I was discharged from the hospital admission (after 30 months as an inpatient), I’ve had so much time to look back and no matter what my current mood, I don’t see it as anything different to being a waste of my life. No, ‘waste’ is the wrong word… I mean that I think of it as a long period of time when I could have been doing so many amazing things with my life. Rather than mull over that and have it really knock me down and leave me feeling completely unmotivated, I try to look at it as actually being motivation. Motivation to do some amazing things with my life. To make up for lost time.
VISIT YORK
Website: Plan Your Visit to York | Visit York
Twitter: @VisitYork
Facebook: Visit York | York | Facebook
Instagram: @VisitYork
YouTube: Visit York - YouTube
ALL TRAVEL COURTESY OF LNER
Website: LNER | London North
Eastern Railway
Twitter: @LNER
Facebook: London North
Eastern Railway (facebook.com)
Instagram: @LNER
PURCHASES:
One hand-painted
bauble: £9 from Callisto Design Co.
@Callisto.DesignCo
on Instagram
Penguin:
£7.95, Hat and Stocking Christmas Tree Decorations: £2.95 each from Heaven Sends
@HeavenSends
on Twitter and @HeavenSendsUK on Instagram