This week was "world suicide prevention day" and I saw an abundance of moving stories, blogs, vlogs, status updates and I wanted to write my piece, but I couldn't.
I only write when compelled, when an emotion evokes my need to. I call it my exorcism. Often when I am overwhelmed, caught off guard, suffocated by past, present and future and as much as I wanted to write, the words wouldn't come.
And then today, whilst lying on a doctors table, he asked me to take down my jeans and it triggered two responses in my brain - 1) I once read in my child court case records that the first time a doctor asked me to do that after I was rescued from the horrors of biological parental care, I screamed the place down and refused and fought the poor man off.
And 2) I slid my jeans down, first thought, my thighs are tighter, the gym is paying off, they look GOOD, but they remain scared, and whilst the doctor did his thing, finding out whats happening with my fertility, I focused on the scars on my thighs and I was caught in a paradox in time; there was a Fran on this earth that used to cut those beautiful thighs and hide them, and now there's a Fran that see's the scars, remembers the pain and every reason, for every white line, every cry, but it's not me anymore, this Fran is lying on a doctors table getting the answers Sarah and I so deserve on our road to baby making.
World suicide awareness day; a strange thing isn't it? In 2020? When we talk about it all so openly, I didn't think as a teenager I would ever see the day where people who had suffered in silence, were able to step into the light and turn something so heart wrenching into something so magically positive. We are all survivors, and we stand side by side, through the mediums of social media, sharing our words, our stories, our pain and we heal, together.
Two poignant moments in my life where suicide was more than a cry for help, it was a goodbye.
Christmas Day 2010. Alone, in halls of residence, no family. Cut out and left to sit for the first time in my adult life, lonely, surrounded by gifts I had bought my family.
I drank and I raged, I smashed up my flat, I launched the Christmas tree across the room, smashed my phone on the kitchen floor, and then swallowed every pill I had in the house...only to be found in a puddle of purple sick by a concerned porter who had heard the commotion and duly took me to the A & E that was literally and thankfully, directly opposite my flat at the time.
I spent Christmas night 2010, with needles in my arms, pin pricks in my feet, holes in my body where they couldn't find a vein, like a voodoo doll. Alone.
My marks and spencer turkey a thing of the past, and 20 cans of strongbow cider, tracing my steps like an alcoholics version of Hansel and Gretel showing the way I came.
I lost my mind.
I broke.
I've only felt like that twice in my life.
The first was that Christmas Day, alone. And the second was in 2017 in the fall out of the business collapse.
The second time began with alcohol, pills, not enough, so I got angry, a kitchen knife, cuts, running out of the house with my then fiance on the phone to the police trying to get me some help. I ran, faster than I ever have.
And there I found a bridge, and I let my feet dangle over cold cold water. Looking at my drunken angry lost and broken reflection. My hands gripped the brick, the dust stuck to the palms of my sweaty hands. Mascara down my face. Who was that girl looking back at me? Because I didn't recognise her? I don't recognise her.
Do it.
Drop.
Like a stone, to the bottom of that cold canal. Take a deep breath and fall through the air. And all that pain, will be gone.
All that pressure. All that hate. All that debt. All the lies. Hopes. Dreams. Failures. Wash it away like it's a page from the bible and sink to the bottom, because that darkness that ripples and reflects back at you sat there on that bridge, it's in you and drowning is easier than this.
Sirens.
Lights. They zoom past, up to our house, our home. The home I broke, with the knocks on the door, the screaming the shouting. The bullshit I brought to our door. I took your safe place and the only way to give it back, is to go now.
I step off the bridge, walk round the tow path, and dangle my legs over the side, toes touching the water.
Phone ringing. Sirens louder. They're getting closer.
And as if held back by something that's not there, I lean forward, shoes in the water now, and I answer the phone. Policeman. Come home.
I sit.
I breathe.
I stand up and I walk home. Wet.
Then it's hospital.
The part of my brain that tears up the good parts of my life doesn't exist as much these days, with therapy, lots of therapy, medication and the most work I've ever had to do to change, it's quieter, but it still whispers on dark days.
I stood on our balcony last week, in the pouring rain, looking out over the city lights and it was like a cold hand on my shoulder, creeping into my safe place, my happy heart, and I hushed it before it spoke.
The dragon, stoking the fire.
"You're still her and the world would be better without a girl like you,"
"You're still dangerous, no-one believes this new you, you don't do you?"
And I turned the ring on my wedding finger and breathed in the first cold nights air, September breeze and before I had chance to entertain the chaos, there were arms wrapped around my waist and a kinder whisper of reality from my wife "come inside,"
And a song, that's kept my brain in it's safe place - I'm obsessed, and everytime I listen to it, it inspires something new in me, but more than that, it strikes me to the core, and if there was ever an anthem thats appropriate to my emotion writing this piece its this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsiVvkzCdSI
Every so often in my life, I find a song, and the lyrics, tone, tune, all of it, becomes this celestial moment where everything the artist is singing, entwines with how I feel. Well, tay-tay, you've tapped into my heart on this one. It's changed my perspective. But more than that, it's given me hope. And I really, really just needed it.
Sometimes, in the dark places, spaces, when we entertain the concept of death, the end, the better offs, the what ifs, it's love that pulls us back, and that's a beautiful blessing.
Sometimes, and more often than we care to admit, it's just us. Staring our choice down. Swim or drown. And it's only in those moments you realise that what you brought here was never weakness, it was the coming back that was always your strength.
So for those of you who hear the whisper, even in the best of times, when we are all smiles, and life is good. The devil on the shoulder plays havoc no matter what.
Remember, you chose life. Even if it took you to a hospital bed, wired up. Even if took you to feeling your feet in the water.
It's too cliche and too disrespectful to say "you're alive, feel blessed, live each day like it's your last, life's a gift," when happy clappy fuck wits and therapists say that to me, I try not to laugh.
It may well be, and it may be viewed as wasteful, squandering to throw it away, once, twice, twenty times, it doesn't matter. No-one has the right to tell you you were wrong, and that you're ok now.
Forever and a day, it will always be ok to say
I'm not ok.
