I’m so scared this evening.

I feel like I’m a few seconds away from full-blown panic.

I keep thinking back four weeks.

Flashbacks is too strong a word, but my goodness, the memories are frightening.

And it makes me realise – this is never going to leave me.

I’m never going to be the same as I was before.

I know that all sin is equal in God’s eyes, but to me, mine feels overwhelming.

But at the same time, I feel like it was out of my hands.

It’s this strange conflict – am I sick or just sinful?

Do I deserve sympathy or disgust?

I feel ill at the thought of this weekend ahead.

A weekend where I need to do everything I can to be a proper, normal wife to Ian. Where I will try my hardest to act, in front of my parents, as if all is well. As if it was a temporary blip and now I am my normal self again.

I don’t want them to know how small and raw and vulnerable I feel.

I want to be the person they want me to be.

Not this huge let-down, this failure. No longer their clever, capable, confident daughter, but their daughter with a shameful secret.

How am I going to do this? How am I going to go to the gig with Ian on Saturday night when I just want to hide away at home, in my own bed? Or sit in a pub for Sunday lunch and keep that smile on my face when inside, I feel like I’m falling apart?

These are supposed to be happy times, not scary, overwhelming, unbearable ones. I *should* be thankful for each day that God has given me.

I feel so guilty that I don’t.

Tonight is a bad night.

I keep thinking, four weeks ago tonight.

My head is full of ‘what ifs?’

How it feels

Every day, someone, at least one person, often several, asks, ‘How are you?’ The stock answer is, ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’ Or, ‘Good, thanks.’ Or, ‘So so.’ Or, ‘A bit tired.’ It depends who’s asking. The real answer is – I am really, really not okay. And I don’t know if I ever will be again. I am the survivor of three suicide attempts. One impetuous and doomed to failure; two planned and intentional; the third carefully calculated to be successful. Only it wasn’t. I don’t know how I am ever going to come back from that. I know I have only myself to blame for the trauma of A&E, of probing questions, on-call psychiatrists, 21 hours on a drip, being told that I might need surgery, hearing the night staff laughing and chatting while I lay there wondering if/wishing I was dying. My husband, my best friend, my vicar all seeing me in the worst state of my life, sweating and shivering, with a line in my arm and electrodes on my chest and a bowl of my own sick at the end of the bed. But I still feel shell-shocked. I spent three days in hospital after the second attempt; four after the third. Then back into the world. ‘How are you?’ I am different. Changed. Scarred physically and mentally. I can’t ever be the same person that I was before. No matter how much time passes, no matter what healing (please God) takes place, I’ve been through a life-changing experience. I will have days when I wish I had died. And days when I will be thankful that I didn’t. But I will always be a suicide survivor. I know a lot of people do what I did. I am a statistic (and one of the ‘lucky ones’). But that statistic doesn’t take into account how it feels. It’s hard to put into words the loneliness, shame, guilt, isolation, desperation, fear, shock of having tried (and failed) to end your own life. Yet life goes on. I take the kids to school, I work, I go to church, and everywhere I go, people want to know how I am. Some people ask just because it’s what we do; others because they know what happened. I am not alright. It’s all my own fault, but the world is a totally different place for me post-suicide attempt. It’s scary, alien, hostile. I feel completely raw, as if every nerve ending is exposed. I can’t see joy in anything at the moment. Not in a sunny day or in a bunch of flowers or a nice meal. I just want to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep. I want to be numb, I want to not feel, I want to rewind and erase. Hope is something I don’t have much of at the moment, but I do hope and pray that I won’t feel like this forever. I know I shouldn’t pray for healing, but I do, because living like this at the moment is just so hard, and not just for me but for everyone around me. I have a feeling, though, that even if things do get better, I am never going to be ‘the same’ again. I am always going to be the person who tried and failed to kill herself. It feels so lonely.