If I went to sleep tonight and never woke up that would be the best things that could happen to me. I don't get a chance to talk about my suicidal thoughts. I wouldn't burden my family with it. The friends I made years ago in hospital and at group meetings with MDF (formally the Manic Depression Fellowship - now known as Bipolar UK), have all since died from suicide. Since I got ill in 1995 I have known 21 people who have killed themselves. I would like to follow them, but I never seem to feel so bad that I wanted to actually attempt it. If you're going to do it you need to be sure your method is going to work and you're not just going to end up in a wheelchair or hooked up to a machine for the rest of your life. I feel anxious and depressed every single day, day in and day out. But I feel I'd have to be at least 10% worse than that to really try hard enough to be successful. I have a bad heart and poorly managed diabetes. But hoping I will die from a heart attack while asleep isn't really much of a plan.
Everything stresses me out. Staying in, going out. A twice yearly visit from my dad. Contacts with the agent who manages my flat is a tough one. She always seems to be trying to charge me for something and I am paranoid they will turf me out so they can get someone else in here. I can be in a state for days at a time. I have three possible methods of suicide in the flat ready to go. My preferred one is supposed to be slow and painful. I have looked online to see if I can get pills that will make it pain free, but these pills are illegal in the UK and you can get arrested for ordering them if you get caught. Plus they might be fake and filled with God knows what.
I often think how brave my friends were to kill themselves. I knew first hand what they went through because I witnessed it. And I think how come they had the guts to do it and I don't? Then I think it's about whether I think I could have a future or not. I never got the career I wanted. I am a struggling author. I'm 44 years old. If there is a slither of hope I might be able to improve my life, it seems to be enough to stop me killing myself. But it's on a knife edge, on a daily basis. Maybe it will be this week? Maybe this year, next year, in ten years. Who knows?
I have suffered from an anxiety disorder since I was fifteen. But that disorder is now completely out of control. This is because of Iain Duncan-Smith and the Conservative changes to benefits. It is a constant worry. There are many scare stories on the news of people going without payments for months, having to sell all their possessions, go hungry and getting made homeless after getting into arrears on their rent. My anxiety disorder is now at a chronic level, ironically making it less likely I will be able to take on any work. It is an epic battle that I go through every single day.
And the NHS is no help at all. In my last session with a psychiatrist I told him how suicidal I was and he discharged me in that very same appointment. I got assigned a support worker and when she asked me what I wanted from the sessions with her and said I needed support. She said 'we don't offer support'. Her job title is 'support worker' and she doesn't offer support. When I was first ill you could turn up at a hospital in the middle of the night and get admitted there and then as a voluntary patient. Now you can't even get a referral to see a psychiatrist. We're being pushed further and further to the margins of society, by the benefit system, by the health system.
One of my friends begged to be taken into hospital because of feeling suicidal. They said to go for a walk or have a hot bath. He killed himself soon after. He was fifty-four, had been ill since his early twenties and had never attempted suicide before that day. The system let him down badly. And there are many like him up and down a country that doesn't care about suicidal people anymore. If I decided to do it, there would be no intervention, even though there are well established prevention strategies that can be used by the psychiatric system. The funding is just not there anymore. And I can't see that will change any time soon.
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