Processing

It’s been a good couple of weeks now since I started to feel better.

It makes me hopeful that this is going to be a sustained upturn – not just a blip in the other direction from usual.

It is SO GOOD to be feeling more stable.

It’s also made me realise that I have an awful lot of scars (metaphorical and literal) to process from over the last couple of years.

When I was in the thick of it, I think that every day was so damned difficult that I didn’t really have the mental space to reflect, analyse and come to terms with what has been.

Now, I do.

Now, rather than just needing someone to sit next to me and hold my hand and not say anything, I feel like I need to talk and talk and talk.

Tom’s had a tough week this week with something that may just be normal teasing, or may be bullying. But one of the things he told me about made my heart skip a beat – because I thought it was going to relate to his mental mother.

It didn’t – but it made me realise that I have an awful lot of talking to do about how my illness has affected my children.

At some point, they’re going to realise that the scars I wear are not cat scratches, and I need to work out in advance how I’m going to deal with that.

I need to do a lot of talking about the suicide attempts. I’m finally in a place where I’m so thankful that I didn’t succeed, but – without wishing to sound melodramatic – I think I have a bit of residual PTSD around them. Certainly, now I’m not consumed with the awfulness of the here and now, I’m thinking a lot more about how horrific those times were and realising that I need some help processing the thoughts surrounding them.

I also have a whole lot of guilt to deal with. I’ve sent Ian, my family and my friends to hell and back because of this illness, and while I’m beginning to accept that it wasn’t my fault, I still feel this desperate need to overcompensate and pay back everything that everyone has done for me.

I suppose these are things that I’ll deal with in psychotherapy, when that eventually happens.

For now, though, I’m so grateful to God that he’s reached down into the pit, sat with me while I couldn’t get out, and then shown me how to begin the big climb back to daylight.

Even at my sickest – even though I committed the unforgivable sin of attempting to kill myself – I never doubted he was with me.

My longing to die was not because I had lost my faith in him, but because I wanted so desperately to leave this life and enter eternity with him.

I know I went about that in the wrong way.

And for that, I am so, so glad that we have a God who forgives.