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Content awareness – Suicide/Mania

I must begin this with a major warning. If you are not in the space mentally to read this, please save it for another time. It will be there when you come back. If you decide you want to- that is!

This was written in the notes app of my phone. I am posting this hastily so I don’t cop out. Here we go…

A few days before a big convention in late November 2025, I hit one of the lowest points of my entire life. It was after a night of what one might call “flow state”. I had gotten into a rhythm with sewing, and things felt like they were just floating over me; all my worries and paranoia, fluttering away with the workings of fabric scissors, velvet, garment alterations.

Things felt peaceful somehow. There had been 2 months of sporadic, then increasingly quickening mental health decline and episodic “mania” (albeit undiagnosed- I am not diagnosed bipolar at this current time). It is true that I do like to work to a self imposed tight deadline and often relish the crunch of a project. However, it is often a cover for much darker inner workings.

I am diagnosed with OCD, autism, ADHD, depression/anxiety, CPTSD (complex ptsd), dissociative seizures, endometriosis. The list goes on. I have had levels of intervention and clinical support for most of these. I have not had support for episodes of mania or CPTSD. After months of back and forth with mental health teams, I finally crashed.

It happened on a Wednesday, a usually unremarkable day but this was the day I was due to travel to my partners in preparation for the upcoming convention that weekend. I had woken up feeling somewhat OK, but there was a trigger. It shouldn’t have been something so simple to cause such catastrophic thinking, alas “it is what it is”, as folks say.

This is all rather blurry, I cannot remember the specific trigger, but in an instant everything went dark in my mind and there became one clear focus. I didn’t know how exactly, but I would not see the sun set that day. Looked to the window in front of me. No. Not like that. Too public, too many witnesses who would be traumatised for life. No chance.

There was a notebook nearby, it found its way into my hands and I began writing.

“I’m so sorry.”

I cannot remember the bulk of what I wrote, but I know I dedicated pages to significant individuals in my life. Some old, old friends. My partner. My mother. I apologised to her for not being the daughter she had foreseen. Reminded her that the night before at dinner I had told her about my active suicidal ideation and that she had said nothing in response to my admission.

It was riddled with apologies, I remember that much. Midway through the writing, a friend called me. I answered through sniffles and pretended to have a blocked nose. They had remarked on my sounding “bunged up”. It was a half lie I told. “I’m a bit under the weather”. Two minutes of conversation later and I merrily hung up from them. Back to the writing.

How remarkable that we as people can conceal such extensive a magnitude of emotion from our dearest friends. My grammar is horrible in this (and for that I must apologise, in equal measures). In that moment there was just no way I would break and reveal myself. A goal was in front of me: to explain what I would soon be unable to. I’d be damned if I didn’t finish doing at least that.

Spoiler alert. No follow-through.

By some miracle I avoided being hit by traffic. Avoided making plans at a major train station. I was so overencumbered by luggage that at a pretty early stage I realised I did not want to leave my luggage for a stranger to intercept. This was the one thing stopping me from making an irreversible decision.

Sobbing profusely at said major train station I boarded my train. My partner promptly picked me up in his car, the seats nice and heated. I had not revealed to him what I had done, or where I had left the writings. Not yet. In fact this was not to be revealed to him at all, ever. In my mind a new goal arised.

“After  the weekend.”

“You have to get through the weekend, at least”

“Do that stupid performance. If it kills you.”

I told him that night.
Within a few hours of being with him after the traumatic journey earlier that day.

“I need to tell you something.”

This is quite literally never, ever something a partner of someone ever wants to hear. To tell of a ‘plan’ of sorts, much less a note left. It felt cruel to point of insanity. Morbid beyond the pale. How dare I put someone so dear to me through such a horrible thing. Better than the alternative, I suppose.

We got through that weekend. On minimal sleep, still crafting (I suppose I really am my own worst enemy), pushing through it. Terrifying thing to interact with people as though things are normal, when they are completely the opposite.

By Monday evening after the convention I was taken away in an ambulance, having suffered a severe episode of paranoia and (again, in quotation marks, undiagnosed) “psychosis”. Probably one of the worst episodes I’d ever had. I would take being depressed over that. There is no hell on earth like manic depressive episodes, much less paranoia to top it off.

Was discharged early hours of the morning, unsupervised. Standard NHS treatment for acute mental health patients, unfortunately. The hospitals are so understaffed and massively overrun with patients all in acute need. The saving grace for me was (and continues to be) my partner, friends, etc. A select few clinical professionals.

What I am trying to say is you really, truly, genuinely, are

NEVER
alone.

The road is long and winding, the winter and looming grey skies bitter in their contempt for sun. Find solace in your loved ones. Wrap the blankets extra tight. Attend your GP appointments in a timely fashion. Take the fucking medication. Write things down if you have to but for gods sake, don’t take a leap of faith. Don’t Google methods. Please, take a moment to consider the alternative.

What if tomorrow is less shit?
Even, slightly?

It might not be less shit. It could be more shit. Guess you’ll never know if you don’t make it past the sunset. Make it past that sunset.

And beyond.

Written from a place of wanting to share raw, unfiltered moments, your friendly neighbourhood sloth 🦥