12 Aug Pain to stop the hurt
Today’s sad and tragic news about Robin Williams suicide might have us thinking that this sort of thing afflicts mostly the rich and famous . Read Francesca’s* story below and think again.
The story was first published on Pink magazine last Sunday 10th August 2014.
Francesca* is about to turn 19 but her eyes tell the story of a hundred years. Not too long ago Francesca* attempted suicide but luckily failed. She did so because of unbearable emotions that had been weighing her down for years – feelings she had kept so well hidden that until the day when Francesca* attempted to take her own life, nobody, not even her parents, knew what she was going through.
Just a few months ago, Francesca* waited for both her parents to be out of the house, and swallowed a large amount of Paracetamol tablets and downed them with half a bottle of whiskey. Seconds later, she panicked and immediately realised that she had committed a big mistake. “I don’t know what came over me,” she explains, “I had thought about doing it for quite some time, but somehow, just at that very moment when I went through with it, I had the clarity of mind to realise that there were other ways of fixing things.”
Like many teenagers, before attempting to take her own life, Francesca had gone through a long period of self-harm, depression and self-loathing. To this day she still can’t pin point the exact time when she started feeling this way, and though she is now starting to put the jigsaw together, the events that led up to her depression are still vague in her mind.
“It was just a succession of changes,” she says, almost incredulous at her own words.
“It was the pressure of exams, changes in my body, and changes that come with leaving school. At one point, it just became too much for me to face a normal day. I felt that the teachers didn’t like me, that my friends were being nasty to me, and that I didn’t have much to look forward to.
Some of the things were truly happening, but today I know that I must have been amplifying situations because of the depression. The feeling persisted and no matter what I did to make myself feel better, nothing worked. I only got some relief from the pain when I started cutting myself.”
A common trait of young persons who self harm is the difficulty of processing and expressing distressing feelings,” explains psychotherapist Mariella Dimech.
“This is often why feelings may become too intense, overwhelming and unbearable. Self harming is not just about needing attention or suicidal tendencies. Unfortunately self-harming can actually release dopamine which is a good–feel hormone. This ‘good feeling’ may reinforce the negative behaviour because it will seem to be the only relief available for the person. Help is therefore effective when (in various ways) the young person will be given the opportunity to relearn how to process and express distressing feelings in a safe loving environment.”
Francesca’s mother will never forget the day when she received a phone call from her daughter’s closest friend telling her to rush home because her daughter had swallowed a large amount of pills. To this day, she is still trying to come to terms with the fact that she had not noticed anything drastically wrong with her daughter.
“It was only after her scary attempt that I found out that she had been harming herself and in a state of deep anxiety for quite a while,” says Francesca’s mum Joanne.
“I consider myself an attentive mother but I never noticed that things where so bad. Today, although I try not to smother her, I’m on alert all the time and the slightest change in my daughter’s mood raises the alarm. But in truth I know that if she wanted to hide things from me, she very well could.”
Francesca* reassures her mother that hiding will never happen again, in fact, she explains, she decided to talk to Pink and about what she went through, because she honestly believes that a big part of this problem lies in the secrecy and taboo that surrounds mental health issues in general.
“If it were up to me this interview would not be anonymous,” she says, “but had I to show my face I know that I’d worry and hurt too many people, especially members of the family.”
When Francesca* read what people had to say about the Mosta cat killer she was so shocked at how little people knew about mental illness that she wanted to do her part in raising awareness. “Many did not excuse this man for his actions,” she says appalled, “even though it was crystal clear that he had severe mental problems. It’s not fair that just because we can’t see an ailment, then we just assume that it’s not there. When I was still at school, children with broken arms, legs and other physical injuries used to be excused from PE lessons with no questions asked, but there was no way I could get out of anything ‘just because’ I was feeling depressed. Unfortunately the condition is invisible by its own nature, but by not talking about it, we shroud it in thicker secrecy, making things even worse for everyone.”
“I regret having taken so long to speak to someone about my feelings,” says Francesca*. “I used to be scared that I’d be told to suck it up or that people would not understand what I was going through, but when I started cutting myself several times a day, I knew that something was seriously wrong with me. I knew that I had to stop and I’d get very angry with myself for not managing. Most of my arms and legs were covered in scars and whilst in the winter months I managed to get away with it by wearing long sleeves and long bottoms, once summer arrived I knew I’d have a problem keeping them concealed. The fear of being caught helped me to stop for a few months, but as winter approached I started looking forward to the feeling that cutting myself gave me and as soon as I could wear long sleeves again, I was back to cutting myself almost every day.”
During this time, Francesca’s mother had noticed some very slight changes in her daughter, so slight however, that she put them down to Francesca being a teenager. “She became slightly less talkative, and she was more withdrawn than usual,” says Francesca’s mum sadly. “At one point I even noticed that she was not grooming herself as well as before, but she was in her early teens and she was sitting for her O’Levels, I thought it was normal and didn’t want to pressure her even more with questions and scrutiny. I’m still very angry at myself for not doing anything about it sooner.”
Francesca* dismisses her mother’s worry saying that there was nothing she could have done to ‘save’ her. “I was not ready to talk to anyone, there is nothing you could have said or done that would have made me open up,” she tells her.
“I was ashamed about the way I was feeling and would do everything to hide it. I did not even tell my friends and though I was feeling really down sometimes I purposely acted like the happiest kid in town.”
A couple of years passed with Francesca secretly floating in and out of depression, cutting herself on a daily basis and only revealing her true thoughts and feelings to people she met online. “It felt safe to talk to people who are not family or close friends,” explains Francesca. “I felt that I could be myself, without worrying the people I cared for. Though there can be a lot of bad people online, I have to say that I received quite a lot of help. It felt good to be able to open up without being judged or having to worry about people’s reactions. I also got to meet people who were going through the same thing, so they didn’t freak out when I told them my inner most secrets.”
In her own way Francesca’s mother understands why her daughter decided to keep things to herself because ever since she found out about her daughter’s problems, she too decided to handle the problem almost entirely by herself. “I found that it is easier to handle on my own two feet without having to explain things to people, without worrying others and in turn having to worry about them. This is already a heavy burden to carry, with so many questions to which I didn’t have answers, and the last thing I needed at the time, was being faced with even more questions, which I could not answer. Keeping it a secret has proven difficult however, and we’ve had some very close shaves,” adds Joanne*.
During her worst moments that sometimes lasted for days, Francesca also wrote a lot of her thoughts in a notebook. After her failed suicide attempt she gave the notebook to her mother to help her understand what she had gone through. “I knew it would be hard for me to explain face to face,” says Francesca, “it’s way too complicated, and though the notebook was my big secret, at that point I wanted my mother to read it.”
“It wasn’t a pleasant experience,” says Joanne. “The notebook contained lots of beautifully written poems, phrases and sketches which were all about sad things, death and depression, and knowing that they were written by my daughter was disturbing to say the least. Even after reading the notebook it is still hard for me to understand what happened,” says Joanne*, “my daughter was always a high achiever and never a particularly problematic child. The notebook answered many questions but I don’t think I will ever understand what led my daughter to that extreme point. I have however, learnt to accept it and to be as supportive as I possibly can.”
After months of psychiatric help and counselling Francesca* seems to be out of the woods and well on the mend, but her family still live in fear of a relapse. “We still don’t keep any pills around the house, everything is under lock and key, and for the first year after that fateful day I used to call her and text her all the time on a daily basis. She was forever in my thoughts,” explains Francesca’s mum trying to maintain her composure. “A lot of pressure is put on us parents to be alert and to know what our children are up to especially on the Internet, but as hard as we might try, if children want to hide things from us they will manage. All the pontificating from educators and other authorities just make people in our situation feel worse – a feeling that only parents who have gone through the same ordeal can possibly begin to understand.”
Francesca* now feels strong enough to talk about her experience in the hope of being able to help others who might be going through the same thing. “Sometimes I wake up in a bad mood, and I do worry that the depression is coming back, but as time goes by you learn to tell the difference between a regular bad mood that passes and the debilitating feeling that had haunted me for so long. If it ever comes back I will not keep it to myself. I’ve been through it once and though it took me a while to get to where I am today, I know that I started to feel better as soon as I started to talk about it.”
