Sometimes Forever Is Just A Second

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.

Dear Mr Hunt,

I’m one of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, caught in a failing system, failed by the system. I am not an anomaly. I am not a rarity. And that’s what saddens me most: I am one of thousands dependent on a system that is costing me my life.

I’m 22, I graduated from a Russell Group University with a degree in English Literature. I’m doing an MA. I’m smiley, polite, and well-dressed. On the surface of things, I’m functioning and doing okay…I’m a productive member of society and you’d probably tell me the world is my oyster. I’m also suffering from anorexia, depression, and anxiety. I’m struggling, and I’m slipping through the system, time and time again.

The truth is I don’t know at what point I became trapped, not in my own head, but in the desperate – and trust me, I am desperate – search for something that may help me. But, you see, on the surface of things, I’m not sick enough. I’m not thin enough, or bedridden ...I’m “functioning”, and thus I’m one of thousands who, as far as the mental health system is concerned, is easily dismissed as part of a convenient, penny saving initiative.

It would be ingenious, if so many lives weren’t the price being paid. You’re failing those who need the most support, and you’re capitalizing on it: our weakness, physically, mentally, geographically, economically, as pawns in your chess game, is entirely your gain. And of course, not only is the system failing those who are really, and it’s taken me a while to admit this, actually quite unwell, not only is it manipulating that situation to its sole-advantage, those at its mercy are totally powerless to the powers that be.

As a child I remember being taught that education is the solution to everything, and the sky is the limit. Stay in education, they say. Stay in education (we need doctors and nurses and lawyers and people who can save us from a failing economy and teachers who can teach us to follow the rules, and scientists because we so desperately need a cure for cancer, and we need to work on our renewable energy, and reducing our carbon footprint and we need to replenish our workforce with a whole generation indoctrinated by the necessity of labour). We’re taught to function and education is the way we do it. We’re taught that there is not time to be unwell, and gosh, God forbid we demand “more”. We’re fueling the economy on personal denial. Yet, I wear society’s prescribed disguise of a functioning, well-educated, versatile human being so, so well…so well that it is killing me.

I could be anything. Yet, my health is the hurdle I cannot jump alone – I never learnt to high jump and I never learnt to land. That doesn’t mean I won’t jump and that doesn’t mean I’m not prepared to bounce back from the landing. It means that I need a safety mat, a mat my illness will not allow me to provide for myself. On a recent trip to A&E, as I cried into a shallow bowl of vegetable soup, a nurse said something that interrupted my apologies: “you’re the only one on this ward who will leave here and be no better, and I so wish there was something we could do. It’s so wrong”. The NHS, and those that work for it, are glimmers of light in a selfish world – we cannot diminish their efforts, or risk losing their potential. They are true stars. Blame cannot, does not, and should not lie with those at the forefront. But, the point stands: this isn’t like a broken leg where everyone rallies round, and you have crutches to make life just a bit easier, and pain relief to make life just a little bit more doable. This isn’t like a broken leg, where friends and family gather to sign the cast, because nothing is more important than “functioning” and there isn’t time to be unwell, and mental illness is messy and stigmatized and silenced and, well, “you’re too bright to be doing something so silly as starving yourself to death”. This isn’t like a broken leg, I wheeled my drip stand around on my own, in silence, shame, hopelessness, and numbness. This isn’t like a broken leg where every single cell of your body is working with you to recover; mental illness doesn’t work that way. Anorexia, especially, doesn’t work like that. Anorexia wants to claim my life and it will do whatever it can to ensure that it achieves its goal, like I did whatever it would take to achieve academically  – see, even my illness fits perfectly into the notion of “functioning” and a productive work force. Anorexia will not let me pull in my own safety mat and my god, anorexia cut the safety harness years ago.

I need a health system that will catch me, because I’ve fallen through too many cracks. I need a health system that will not discriminate me, or negate my struggles, simply because I function. I function because I’ve never had the option not to. I function because I perfectly epitomise the notion of “head down and carry on”. My “functioning” is keeping me ill; my “functioning” is anorexia’s disguise. My “functioning” is my illness. I need a health system that will hear me. I need a health system that will truly listen. I need a health system that will let me be anything, a health system that will give me the opportunity to really try living.

The sad truth is, I no longer believe in my own recovery. I do not believe I am savable – by others, or, more importantly, capable of saving myself. I’m not asking for a miracle – really, I’m not. And I’m not asking for anything for myself, I’m saying this not for my own recovery. I’m saying this because I know that many more people, like me, will continue to fall through the cracks. They’ll continue to fall because they “function”, because from an early age, all they ever knew was to “function” and their functioning will kill them. I’m saying this because I know, and I’m saying this because I don’t think there is all that much wriggle room for cuts in the mental health system. You can’t cut a system that is, pardon the pun, on its knees, skin and bones – there’s nothing left to lose. Too many lives have been lost, too much potential has been lost. I could have been anything, but right now I’m struggling to even keep myself alive.

I strongly believe that early-intervention, early specialist intervention is the key here. Teach people how to save themselves before they become so lost, disillusioned and controlled by illness that they no longer have the energy to fight. Teach children that mental illness is valid and stop brainwashing the next generation into thinking that “functioning = success”. Don’t wait for someone to get sicker before treating them – this wastes your time as much as it does ours. Don’t use old-fashioned, patriarchal, tick box means of diagnosis. We are NOT statistics. We are real life people, with real life needs in a real life world. We are not pawns in a game of chess. Our lives are not a game. Do not use our sickness to make us putty in your hands. We’re vulnerable and you know it. Don’t use my illness to manipulate me. I don’t need your help in my self-destruction - I need help in stopping it.

Please, please, don’t snatch a life-raft from those who are most vulnerable. We know how to swim – we can be anything – but the health system is watching us drown, the health system IS drowning us. It’s a slow and painful death. I’m flailing my arms around and the lifeguard can see me…trouble is, and I’ve seen in excess of 60 professionals, there’s nothing more dangerous than when you’re begging for help and the lifeguards turn their back once more. Listen. Hear us. I could have been anything, but the mental health system has failed me.

I’m one of thousands, hundreds of thousands…I’m not an anomaly.

Yours faithfully (because despite it all, I’m a very complying member of society),

One of many who’s slipping through the net, time and time again. 

Someone whose “surface functioning” is a neatly disguised illness. 

Someone who really, truly, desperately wants to be better. 

Someone whose time it is to talk. 

Someone whose time it is to be heard.