I wake up exhausted.
At night I lie awake feeling this overwhelming dread and sadness cloak me. It's like tar. Thick, sticky, impossible to wash off and black. So black you could get lost in it. Even with a flashlight.
In the early hours of the morning, I imagine that it's seeping out of my pores. I'm surprised when there is no evidence on my bedsheets.

Getting up is hard. That tar, it's heavy. It wraps around my body and makes it hard to breathe.

I'm just tired
I'm just tired
I'm just tired

I repeat it throughout the day.

I'm so tired I can't sleep.

That black hole I've found myself in is too big.
It's so big and deep and how the hell do I climb out when I can't see anything else?

How do you say to the people that love you that you would like to just...not wake up again. I don't want to die, I'm not suicidal, but it would be nice don't you think, to not feel like I'm sick on the inside.
How do you open yourself up and show all that ugly dark tar inside? it's stuck to my organs and I'll never be free. How can you love me when I'm so ugly inside?

It's always going to be like this. Feeling so good. So high, So amazing and wonderful but anxious all the same. Because it's not going to last. It's fleeting and temporary and oh god, what's the point when you know the crash is around the corner.
I can't run from it. It's IN me. It's ON me. It IS me.
I'm not my mental illness, but I am. It's ME.

Every criticism, every argument, every hard word that has been said, those hands on me, my mistakes and fuck ups and failings, they assault me. Whispering inside my head, like a favourite song on repeat, I'll play it again and again.


--------------

I wrote that over a year ago.
Funny what can happen in a year.

I wish I knew that things would get worse, and then so much better.

Sass of the past,

Babe, you're going to leave your husband.
Don't be scared. Everything is going to be okay.
You'll cry in Ikea over buying a sofa. It's your first independent decision and you'll be almost paralysed with fear. LM will be mortified and then show so much compassion for a ten year old, you'll weep some more.

You'll find yourself being responsible for three children and realise that you've been doing it by yourself for a long time.
You'll be enraged at your ex for this, but also be comforted by the knowledge that you can do this single mum life thing.

You're going to move on.
It's not going to hurt to breathe anymore.
You'll find someone who makes you laugh so much you cry.
He'll love your children as much as you do.

You'll be standing in your kitchen, making pancakes for the kids and there will be music and happiness and you'll realise that this was meant to happen and you're happy.

You'll fall pregnant.
You'll cry in the shower after you've done the test because you're fucking terrified.
You'll have hope.
And then life... will show you that sometimes, some things are not meant to be.

You'll have lifesaving surgery.
You'll lose the baby.
And you'll mourn.

I'm sorry.

But listen.

Life, it goes on. Even when you don't want it to.
You've made it through every single shitty fucking day and you'll continue to do it because the things that terrify you and make you sad, are outnumbered by hearing your daughter call you mummy for the first time, or watching your baby boy take his first steps in front of you, his auntie and his nanny.

It's not easy. But the good things, they aren't meant to be easy.
You're going to be okay.