SOLACE (condensed version)

2015

"I promise"

FEBRUARY
Almost every single day of my life post-hospital has been spent with Andy. We went to the park yesterday, but I realised I was too scared to go on the swings now. I'm scared of everything, I hate it.

I want to do something that used to seem normal before I lost my mind. Out of nowhere, I kiss Andy, just to prove to myself that I can still kiss people without getting too scared. I know Andy is shocked by my actions, but he kisses me back, tenderly, slowly and carefully but he pulls away after a few seconds, and says he's seeing someone.

I feel awful that I made him cheat on whoever it is that he's dating, but I don't mind that he is dating someone. I mainly kissed him to see if I still could, not because I have feelings for him. He's the one man I trust, who I know would stop if I asked him to stop. I never have to worry about Andy taking advantage of me.

I have an anxiety attack that night, and I'm sure it's because I let myself be too close to someone.

MARCH
Andy broke up with his girlfriend. He said he had feelings for someone else. I'm sure it isn't me, but just in case it is, I talk about how I've started seeing someone. This isn't true but at least I won't have to explain my thoughts and feelings I had before kissing him last month.

I don't want him to know I had an anxiety attack as a result, or that I had to take extra sedatives to calm down. He says he's really happy for me, but a few minutes later he says he has to go – he's catching up with Nathan.

MAY
I hang up the phone, crying. Jane had called to tell me that Charlie had killed himself. Friendships in hospital aren't encouraged for exactly this reason. However, the friendships we formed in hospital has also stopped many of us from doing what Charlie did.

That's the beauty of hospital friendships though, and why they're so enticing, I think. When you're in hospital, you're at rock bottom, as is everyone around you. You don't have the energy to pretend anymore – you're truly yourself; your broken, fucked-up self.

And these people, these other fucked-up, beautiful people see you at your worst, most crude form and they love you anyway. And you love them.

It's the one shred of beauty, the one piece of solace in an awful situation – you get reminded by these strangers – from different places, of different ages, suffering from different invisible tortures – that you are loved, regardless of your suffering.

And that's how you begin to rebuild. I haven't seen or spoken to the friends I made in there much since being discharged, but we all agreed to stick together and be there for one another, whenever we need it.

Why didn't Charlie say he needed it?

I don't speak to them much for a reason, despite the fierce love I have for them: they remind me of my darkest, lowest point and I'm sure I remind them of theirs. But every now and then, there's a group message of love and well wishes, or the dreaded phone call like the one I just had with Jane – informing us that we've lost another member of our fucked up group.

Well, we haven't lost them – they've lost themselves to their own darkness and took the only path they could think of to end the pain.

I think that's what healthy people don't realise: that every day, those of us that are afflicted by poor mental health need to wake up and choose to fight, choose to withstand, choose to survive.

That's the road less travelled by that Frost talks about – the road to survival, the road to happiness. But the less travelled road is often winding, and overgrown and relentlessly difficult in its accessibility. But it's like a dripping tap on stone over time – it takes so long to carve out, to gain ground in the less travelled path. But eventually, the stone will get carved by the persistently dripping tap, and the road less travelled becomes easier to venture down. It all depends on the amount of water dripping from the tap, of the strength of a persons mindset though, and more often than not, medication. You just need to remember that the tap will never stop dripping, it may take time, but the stone will always cede to the water.