Every year or so I get a sudden urge to start writing on here.
Looking back at last years post including a picture of me having just passed my driving test made me feel a tad nostalgic.
Well what a difference a year makes.
Before I start prattling on, I need to be open, the reason why I love posting on here is there is a certain level of anonymity that I couldn't get on the like of twitter of Facebook. I write on here not because I want my friends to worry about me or that I crave attention. No, the truth is I like having a place I can vent safe in the knowledge no-one I know is judging or pitying me.
So here goes...
A week before Christmas something happened to change some, but not all of my outlooks on the way my life is going.
As mentioned at the start of this blog in my last post is a picture of me having just passed my driving test. How much your life can change by simply having access to a car.
It gives you a sense of freedom, independence, and limitless potential to go places, see sights and go away and find yourself. I never went to uni, or took a gap year so the ability to see what and who I wanted whenever I wanted was a sensation I had never expected to find so much joy from.
Unfortunately, the week before Christmas I decided to visit my parents in Scotland. The visit to my parents wasn't an issue I was looking forward to it immensely. I set off from work in Buckingham (not the palace) with what I knew to be a 8 or 9 hour drive ahead of me. It's not one I had ever had problems with and had made the monotonous journey up and down the M6 many times over the 18 months I had been legally allowed to helm vessels of the 4 wheeled variety.
All was going well and having made sure to stay well rested and take multiple stops en route I left the service station just North of Gretna knowing I had but a couple of hours left and that my dog and family would be waiting with open arms when I arrived. As you may have established, I never made it.
45 minutes from my journeys end, I was involved in a head on collision in my Twingo. Truthfully, I don't know what the cause of the accident was. I get flashback but no clear memory of what happened before or during the accident. All I remember was the strong smell of airbag as I came-to in the lay-by on the opposite side of the road.I'd attach a picture of the state of the front of my car, but for those who don't know the Renault Twingo is a rear engine vehicle meaning that when you have a head on there isn't an engine between you and the front of the car. But when two cars doing 60mph collide, you can imagine the condition of the vehicles involved is not great.
7 weeks on, I don't know how I walked away from such an accident, without any breakages or ruptures. Yes, I was rushed to hospital where I was really well looked after as they checked for fractured hips, pelvis, arm and then had a CT scan to check for any abdominal ruptures, but as I mentioned I had no serious injuries just a lot of scrapes and bruises.
For most people this type of near death experience is a wake up call, and can inspire people to live their lives, "YOLO" was a term used by friends and relatives to try and cheer me up over the phone and make me feel better about the whole experience.
Sadly, I have not grabbed the bull by the horns and have found myself feeling the opposite of empowered. I have had and continue to have depression. I now regularly find myself thinking, I survived a crash for THIS. Only a couple of times have I felt so close to death, not in the literal sense, it's more a sensation of walking along with a heavy weight on your shoulders, thinking about your mortality.
Note, I'm not suffering with, it's a part of who I am, and I've learned to embrace it.
A couple of years ago, I used to have suicidal thoughts so often that the majority of my week would be filled thoughts and plans for how I would end my life. I'll not elaborate the various means I planned to end my life, but my mind would be rather creative in some cases. Eventually on my 24th birthday enough was enough, I was struggling to juggle uni and a full-time job and took myself as close to the edge as I could go without carrying out my own suicide.
I vowed then to pass my driving test, move out - back to the area where I grew up, get a job and live life to the fullest, in the hope that if I did all of those things I could be happy and free of the thoughts that have dominated over a decade of my life. I did three out of four of those things, the final thing I have not, and continue not to do, and that is live my life to the fullest.
I think part of my experience with depression has almost given me the belief that sometimes life just doesn't go well. I look around at mates and family, progressing in life finding someone to share life with everything seems to click into place for them and to their credit a lot of them have made it look almost effortless. I'm not suggesting that having a girlfriend would magically change my perspective on life and suddenly overnight I could become an optimistic person, but I do sometimes wish I wouldn't go into situations in life already foreseeing it failing and then preventing it from happening under the guise of some form of protecting any party involved.
I think what I'm trying to say, and my word it's taken a long time to come to this conclusion, life has a cruel way of putting you on your arse sometimes, and even though you may believe (as I continuously do) that you don't deserve better and people would be better off without you in whatever sense, it's not true. There are opportunities presented to everyone on a regular basis that could change everything almost immediately, for example, I smashed up my Twingo but I got to go car shopping and find my next car which is slightly better than the other one. Sometimes you need to look for the silver linings out there and understand that we need to fall so that we can learn to pick ourselves up again (not a direct quote from Batman but you get the point)
#timetotalk