30th December 2015
I struggled a bit to figure out what to write about this week. I got discharged from hospital two days before Christmas and since then I’ve barely stopped. Don’t worry I’ve been taking it easy!! But having had Christmas Eve with my first ‘adopted’ family, Christmas Day at home with my second ‘adopted’ family, Boxing Day with my ‘actual’ family, and then a couple of days with one of my best friends, oh and add three days of epic sales shopping in there to finish it all off – it’s been an amazing Christmas, but in fact so good that yesterday I had a panic that I didn’t know what to blog about!!
But this morning I woke up and just smiled. Today is the 30th of December. It’s nearly the last day of 2015. We’re approaching the final hours before we hit a new year and we start all over again. Why not take this incredible opportunity not just to look forward and get excited about what lies ahead, make awesome plans, give up the things that have tied us down and that we are not taking with us into a new season, but also to look back…
And for me looking back starts exactly 12 months ago. Wednesday the 10th December 2014. The day I took an overdose so big it should have killed me. I have my journal entry from that day in front of me and I’m gonna be honest, it’s not the easiest read. Why? Because the feelings from that day were so real, the emotions from that moment leading up to the overdose still so raw. And it’s funny because as much as I have no recollection what so ever from the entire week after the overdose, I can remember every moment before it as if it was yesterday.
Never had I felt lower in my life. I’ve hit some pretty dark places and reached some pretty low depths. But the 10th of December was different. I just gave up. Life became too hard. I was exhausted from having to battle day in day out with myself, with my mind, with my faith, with the people I loved most and just with life. It wasn’t planned. I didn’t have some massive grand design mapped out to leave this world. There had been a mix up with my prescription tablets, I’d lost one bunch, the doctors gave me a whole new set, I’d been rubbish at taking them anyway, then I found the month’s worth I had lost in the boot of my car, so basically I suddenly had about three months worth of strong sleeping tablets of all sorts suddenly sitting there in my possession. And that was all I needed. I was done and I couldn’t see a way forward any longer. So I wrote in my journal. A letter to God. I said sorry. I pleaded for Him not to be angry but just to understand. But mainly I just explained why I couldn’t do this anymore. How I felt like such a burden, how it wasn’t fair on the people I loved most to keep having to support me and do what they do day in day out. That this was my way of releasing them from it all and my way of making life easier for so many around me. I felt that everyone who supported me did it because they had once made that decision to and have since never been able to give it up and still did it out of duty and because they felt they had to.
It took me a very long time to realise that they support me and do what they do not out of duty or moral obligation, but simply out of a love for me that just blows my mind. To them I am not a burden but a blessing (although at times I know and they have agreed a burden fits the criteria much more!). But the point is, we so often as human beings see everything as one big negative in our own heads. We not only let our own feelings take full control but we hand them the steering wheel as if we have suddenly become incapable of driving ourselves. As individuals we seem to decide what other people’s motives, thoughts and opinions are. We almost can’t just simply accept that maybe someone is there because they do actually care. Maybe someone cares because they see ‘us’ for who we really are and they love us and accept us just as we come. Baggage and all.
I was found a few hours after taking my overdose collapsed on the floor upstairs completely unconscious. I was rushed to hospital by ambulance and on route the ambulance had to stop twice because I stopped breathing. I woke up in intensive care in hospital 3 days later. It’s a genuine miracle that I am alive. The doctor stood in front of me just before I finally got discharged, once again just days before Christmas and told me the volume of sedatives I had taken and the bottle of vodka I had downed, I should be dead. Those words have never left me and it was from that moment that things really did begin to change for me.
The weeks that followed were some of the toughest I’ve ever had to go through mentally, emotionally, spiritually and also physically due to impact of taking such a high quantity of tablets and as a consequence of the decision I had made. But as my body slowly recovered and I was able to ease my way back into day to day life I began to realise that I now had the choice of what I did with what I’d been given. I could choose to stay the victim, be chained to the past that I had suffered, or choose to accept that I was a living, walking miracle. That I had been given another chance and that there must be a greater purpose for me being here and that I really was supposed to be alive. And for the first time ever – I went with option number two.
January of this year 2015 I was done! I was done with depression, I was done with letting my past control me, I was done with being a victim, I was done with everything negative and everything controlling. I look back at the last 12 months and I stand amazed at how far I’ve come from lying in CCU in hospital in December 2014 to lying in CCU in December 2015! Of course these last 12 months have been a journey. I have messed up, I have made mistakes, I have regrets and there have been plenty of times where I could have made better decisions or done things different. But guess what?? In my eyes – the positives smash the negatives! I have overcome more fears than I can count, I survived another month in hospital without completely and utterly losing the plot (sometimes just a little bit! But it was very momentarily!), I am living more independently than I have ever been able to do before, I am starting to find a confidence and security in who I am and what I have to give more and more each day and for the first time EVER I would choose life over death! And that alone is one of my biggest accomplishments so far.
I now want to live! I am now excited about the future! I will never ever let myself fall as deep and as dark as I did last year December and the lessons that I learnt through it and that I have learnt since have been invaluable. As hard as it has been at times I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Because as cliche as it might sound, it’s still true – everything that has happened, every moment of my past, every part of the overdose, every bit of pain and every heartache has led me to this moment. Has made me who I am. It has helped me become stronger. It’s given me more wisdom. It has developed my character. And most of all, it has shown me love and how incredibly powerful love is. I’m here today because God never stopped loving me and I’m here today because people never stopped loving me. Personally my faith has helped me get to where I am today. But whether you have a faith or not that doesn’t matter. If you have people in your life – love them. No matter what. People need to feel accepted despite the baggage they walk around with. Choose to love them and make sure they know they are loved. I genuinely wouldn’t still be here today if people hadn’t chosen to accept me and love me for who I am and continued to love me no matter what.
2015 has been some year! I think every year is some year. Because we’re people! And we don’t live through 365 days without something major happening that rocks us or tons of little things happening that changes us. But hey – we’re all travelling this thing called life together and I’m excited to enter into this new chapter together and see where the next 365 days will take us. So here’s my Happy New Year to you all. I hope and pray it will be one heck of a year!
Bring on 2016!
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