I hear you saying that our best days are past us
I’ve seen you walking through the rubble and stone
Yes I know there’s list of disasters
But time is gonna soothe the soul

So we might as well dance…

There is something quite cathartic about getting thoughts down, on paper, online, through texts; whatever outlet suits. I haven’t wrote anything on here for almost a year, and I haven’t minded as my outlet was my spoken voice, I was really good for a while, at expressing how I felt. Be that happy, sad, elated, buzzy, fuzzy or fucking wild! But my voice isn’t letting me express everything I am really feeling.
Being completely 100% honest right in this moment, I am sat in my flat, alone, as planned, and I had thought in depth about how I was today going to end my life. I can safely say, my plan was all in my head. I haven’t, and wont be, following through on any dark or intrusive thoughts I have been having. With all this being said, I am clearly not okay at the moment.
It was only weeks ago, that I was living and loving life on a higher level. I was going out without a care in the world. Having fun, and looking forward, positively, to what life had to offer.

Then BAM I was hit with the anxiety attacks, out of nowhere. When I say these came from nowhere, I mean I am walking back from the school run and I cannot breath, the world is closing in on me, and my head is fuzzy. I have racing thoughts and I just need grounding. Easier said than done when in that moment. I have woken up in the middle of the night, with anxiety and panic. Having to control myself in those silent moments, wanting to scream but even if I could, nothing will come out because my lungs feel like they’re being crushed. Then I look around me, and I see my babies in bed, needing protecting, and I feel overwhelming guilt which in turn comes with shame because a lot of the time, it is them who is protecting me. Protecting me from the night terrors. Caleb will always get into bed with me at night as he has trouble sleeping, and when in bed he will often stir because I am having a bad dream or an anxiety attack and he will roll over and hug me! This is without a doubt the most grounding thing that could happen to me in those moments. Of course, they don’t completely take everything away, sadly anxiety and night terrors aren’t that simple. But without even knowing it that boy, my 9 year old baby boy, is in fact protecting me.

Then there is my angel, Penelope. Testing me in every single way but always knowing the right thing to say at the right time. The ‘I love you’ from the next room when she doesn’t know it but I’m telling myself I can’t cry because that is weak and pathetic and I am a grown woman who needs to get her shit together. Then I hear the squeaks of my little duck and for that moment, I am safe from my thoughts, I am protected by my 4 year old daughter.

I always say that my children are my biggest protective factor in life, which of course for me is amazing. But for them, what a burden. It plagues me all the time the burden I have placed on them without them even knowing it. But I know as long as I have them, I am, by some bigger force than all of us; protected.

This isn’t my first relapsing moment, if you have followed my journey, and or know me you will know that I had a pretty bad relapse end of 2023 coming in to 2024. So I would safely say I was stable and well for a good 18 months, and what a wonderful 18 months that was. It still had some shit times but overall it was good. I often reflect on the past and have those weird conversations and arguments in my head. I am a massive overthinker and catastrophise almost every situation and interaction I have, multiple times. What I wish I had said, what I wish I had done differently, and I am talking about everything in my past. How I would have dealt with school bullies, even the adult bullies. I’m not stranger to being called names and I often ‘put’ myself in these made up scenarios in my head, confronting those who called me names, pushed me around and made my life hell. I do it for more recent arguments with people, often wishing I had stood up for myself more, maybe been on the defensive a bit more instead of calm. I don’t know. I reflect on how down and yet how manic I was. I booked flights to Bali to see my amazing friend. A once in a lifetime kind of trip that I will never regret and always look back on with happiness, joy and love. But I got into debt with that, and the amount I was spending on things. New shoes, new clothes, boots I would never wear but had to have, mountains of perfumes, Tom Ford ones at that. I would have to quit working because I wasn’t able to cope with the added stress. I lost friends because my madness wasn’t easy to be around. I put strains on my marriage and relationship with my children. All because of this madness I possess that I love when I am high and happy but I am also so deeply terrified of when I am high but depressed and in a (or verging on) a psychosis, a paradox that seems almost impossible to anyone that hasn’t experienced it themselves. I will never forget a conversation I had with my amazing friend, when they told me that when I was in a psychotic moment that it was literally like looking through me and I was a different person. My voice changes, I don’t recognise my best friends, I am hearing voices that are all conflicting and I want to, and need to escape. So I run, I run into traffic, I hide in bushes. I do anything to escape. Escape my own madness, and I guess that is what I am always trying to do. Escape my reality, my day to day is always a struggle, one way or another and I guess by ending it, I would be free.

So what has triggered this, I have a good life. I know this. But I also have this diagnosis that will never leave me. It might be managed and sometimes I might even thrive a little. So I can only pin this down to a few weeks ago when my mood really started to dip and then it was Mother’s Day. A contentious topic for me and my family because of the Mum we had and the Mum we now have.

I am quite an open book to an extent when it comes to my upbringing. Which at most was filled with love and happiness. But we had our issues. I mean who doesn’t.. But I can’t deny these issues have massively shaped me as a whole, and who I am as a person today.
My Dad was an amazing man we know this, we preach this. But he was at work all week, and he did his best but he wasn’t there for the tougher days. Then our glorious Mum, Maggie. She was and is still, very much a big part of our family and why were so focused on making sure each other is okay. She was there day and night for us and took the burden of all of us. Keeping our secrets, like our smoking or underage drinking, boys and girls staying over. Our troubles and fears were hers too. I remember so vividly one night Mum was going to work as a nurse at the hospital and I didn’t want her to leave. I was sobbing, more than sobbing I was inconsolable. I wanted my Mum to stay and look after me but she couldn’t and all I remember is her curly permed hair, her uniform and she was wearing a thick, cream coloured, wooly cardigan, and she smelt like perfume; Avon – Faraway to be precise. She sprayed some on my pyjamas and told me to smell it when I got scared, and it would be like she was there with me. Now, 30 odd years later, smell is such an important thing. I remember and notice how people smell and like for so many, smell evokes such vivid memories.
Then there are other smells that get me, the smell of a roast dinner cooking on a Sunday for dinner. The fresh carrots and swede being peeled and boiled on the stove. The smell of the grass being cut from the kitchen window while Mum and Dad were smoking their cigarettes. The smell of a social club or an old pub. The mix of cigarettes and alcohol on old carpets. The smell of beer in general or vodka, most people say it doesn’t have a smell, but I remember vividly the smell of it. Or is it a memory I’m associating with alcohol, I don’t know.

Memories are hard, good and bad memories are hard. I don’t like to dwell, but it feels like all I do is live for the memories. It feels like everything I do, say, think, and feel is a result of dwelling. I think too much about everything. What life was like compared to what life is now. Why life is like it is now. Is anyone to blame for why I am like this. Is it trauma induced? Is it in my genes, was I destined to be like this. Is it environmental? The whole nature verses nurture thing always got me thinking, maybe I was always programmed this way and then upbringing and trauma triggered it? I definitely got worse after my Dad died. I never stop thinking, wondering, and wishing I was different.

It is no lie, growing up was tough. 90’s babies had a whole different world emerging in front of us. The start of the internet, mobile phones and everything being immediately available. Then we all had our personal upbringing challenges. Do not get me wrong, I was, and still am loved by my parents. But my goodness it was hard.
My Mum, my darling, beautiful, Mum; our Maggie, was a functioning alcoholic. That is something not everyone knows, but enough people know, to know that for me it is really hard to say out loud, write down or acknowledge even. I have a love hate relationship now, with alcohol, and my Mum. Alcohol is a trigger for me in so many ways. It opens up for me my emotions in a very raw way, and sometimes it opens up a like vortex for me where I can easily slip into an alcohol induced psychosis and I become a different Becka. It’s scary and I liken it to my Mum. She was never abusive or anything but the voice, the tone, and the mannerisms would change. It would be an argument about finding hidden bottles of vodka or because the last of the money, meant to be used for gas or electricity, was spent on a bottle of vodka or beers for her. It would be that dinner wasn’t a priority because Mum was asleep, passed out because of the drinking.

I never used to associate these things with myself but as a 34 year old, who doesn’t have a problem with alcohol, I just can sometimes become over emotional or triggered by the drinking because my meds don’t mix well with it or whatever. I have a really unhealthy association with my drinking being a problem. To the point where I have hidden it from my family. Not because I am dependent on it, or anything like that, but because I associate drinking with being a problem.

Of course, as all addictions start out, they aren’t a problem. Like it wasn’t for my Mum. But the days, weeks, months went by, and they soon turned into years, and it became a problem.

I often wonder if we could have done more, especially towards the end. I have spoke about this before so I am not going to go into it too much. But the end was hard. Seeing my Mum as broken and gone as she was. No one should have to see their parent as vulnerable as my Mum was. Being told to prepare for the worst, and preparing for that worst. Not being remembered and recognised by my 54 year old Mum because time and alcohol had stolen her min from me. Her own kind of madness.

I often liken my diagnosis to my Mum’s addiction. Yes, to start it was a choice for her but then it took over her, and I saw it happening at 10 years old, at 12 years old, 15 years old, 20 years old, and at 25 when my Mum as I knew her was gone. My diagnosis wasn’t my choice but my future is. It is my choice to take my medication and engage with the mental health teams, go to my medication reviews, and request to try different medications because I have researched and I need, and I deserve the Gold standard of drugs too. Because as much as addiction and my Bipolar are alike in their burdens the choice is where it differs for me.

I am choosing today (now tomorrow, as I started this yesterday) I am choosing to be alive and fight for tomorrow. It is not easy, it really hurts me everyday to fight, fight to be okay enough to fight to be alive. But because, history, memories, moments that happen everyday are hard, I can’t make it harder for them. I have to try.

It’s a choice.

Being Becka x