I’m a day late. 

I’m a day late. A week late. A month late. A year and a lifetime late. 

(I’m never late. I’m always excruciatingly, reliably early. Always.)

Apart from when it comes to sorting out my mental health. In terms of getting my life together, I’m very very late for a very very important date. 

Last night, I lay in bed and contemplated my lateness and the fact that, just like last year, I had “missed” World Mental Health Day; I’d “failed” to publish a blog post. I thought about the irony of the fact that I missed WMHD because of my shit mental health. And I thought about the irony of the fact that my whole experience of trying to get better, or access support, or “love” myself, or accept that I deserve a life that is more than the hell of mental illness is just, well, late. And how sad it is that time has slipped away; mental illness has cost me so much time. 

And that hurts. 

So this isn’t going to be all that long, because, well, I’m still trying to find the time to engage my brain and focus on life and living and exist and “get better,” but I wanted to acknowledge that time is mental illness' greatest cost. It might have a massive impact on the economy etc., but nothing comes close to the lived reality. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the cost is time. People's lives are the price. And you simply cannot put a value on something as precious as a life.

I have spent the past 8 years of my life at war with my own mind. I have spent year after year very much caught up in anorexia’s lies and torture, functioning and watching life from a distance. I’ve been suspended on my own tightrope of hospital admissions and dependency on health professionals and a mental health system that is painfully, dangerously lacking in resources, funding, and time. I’m stuck and paralysed and suspended…still hanging on.

Still. Hanging on. 

And yet, life doesn’t “hang on.” Time ticks on. Life becomes more terrifying with every day I spend suspended. My life is about waiting lists and waiting times and waiting rooms and waiting. But life does not wait. My name and date of birth, my postcode and my NHS number might be frozen in time, stuck on a waiting list that doesn’t seem to move an inch, but the world around me whizzes by with pace and buzz and expectation that I cannot keep up with. 

I’m “late” for life. 

Waiting times, shortage of services, inadequate finances, the tragic reality of the postcode lottery…mental illness is costing sufferers too much time. The system is making too many people “late” for life. And there’s nothing poetic about the time people lose whilst trying to keep themselves alive. 

I’m trying. I’m waiting. I'm fighting. 

And I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m late.