CHUMS’ Post

Transcript

Hello, I'm Melanie and this is my story for the chums. What's your story campaign? 12 years ago. I was running a very demanding business and looking after my daughter who on my own, who was. 10-11 at the time. Umm and I had been really struggling with the stress of. Well, financial stress and running a very demanding business, not earning any money. And yeah, just the struggles and strains of life, really. And was working 24/7, getting nothing out of it in terms of financial rewards. I was your typical sort of poor entrepreneur, you know, I was gonna make it. I had to keep going at all costs. And what actually happened was, I mean, I've been working for myself since my daughter was young and it kind of progressed and progressed and progressed different things I was doing and. At this stage I had an arts centre, an art gallery in Toddington with 11 staff and a business partner and it was just an immense amount of work and stress and worry. And not earning anything like I said and struggling for money and one day. Well, it wasn't really just one day. I was kind of people concerned about me. I was losing weight. I wasn't really eating. I was drinking a lot. I was smoking a lot. I was under a lot of pressure. People would say, you know, mail, you're heading for a train crash. This has gotta stop. You gotta take some time out. And I just couldn't. I wouldn't. I just wanted to go at it at all costs and started with depression and anxiety and I went to the doctors, got some pills, still wasn't right. And I actually spiraled into something called psychosis, which I had no idea I was. I realised I was having some sort of nervous breakdown. But didn't know it had a name, didn't know it could be cured. I thought I'd I was just going mad and would be crazy forever and locked away. I was frightened and things like. I thought the TV was trying to communicate with me. I thought my legs didn't work. I used to limp around my home. I couldn't string a sentence together. My family was so worried about me and my friends they kept. Taking me to the doctors and the doctor kept saying just rest, just take some time out. You know, you're just stressed. But actually I couldn't work at this stage. I couldn't even write an e-mail or or a simple text message. I couldn't get my words out. I couldn't make sense of what other people were saying. And I was in a psychotic. Breakdown essentially and I was really scared on one day. In the grips of psychosis, I tried to take my life. I had been thinking about it for about seven months. From when it all began getting really, really bad. And one day I couldn't take it anymore. I took a lot of pills and my daughter found me. Something which really upsets me and. I feel guilty about to this day, but I was very unwell and was not in the right frame of mind to be thinking and that's what happened. I got rushed to hospital. And thankfully didn't die, but at the time I really wanted to die and I can remember coming round with all these tubes and everything and thinking. God, you know, it didn't work and I wanted to just get out of there and throw myself in front of a train. So what happened was they put me in front of a psychiatrist and I was so scared that I was going to be locked away and branded insane. Um, and put into a, you know, a, a psychiatric hospital and that would be my life over. And yeah, they put a psychiatrist in front of me and come on, Teddy, you can jump up. You gonna jump up? Come on. Ohh, this is my friend's doggy, Teddy, just come to say hello. Yeah. And basically the psychiatrist said, you know, did you mean to end your life? Are you OK? What's going on? And I can remember. I managed to smile and say I'm fine, I just want to go home. I managed to say that. And, you know, was lying. And I don't know what else happened. I can't remember what. What else was said during that interview? Assessment, whatever it was? But he ascertained I was very, very poorly and needed to go to hospital, which was my, at the time, my worst fear. So there I was, screaming like a scene out of a movie, being carted off to a secure psychiatric unit. In Lucerne and there I stayed for three long months, hated every second of it. It's just a scary and awful as you see on the movies, or it was back then, you're locked up with some 30 or so other very, very mentally unwell people. I was very mentally unwell. It's scary. People that had been to prison in there said it was like being in prison but worse because you didn't have a TV in your own room. You know, it was keys jangling at night, locked doors. It was just absolutely awful. And as much as I hated it, that was exactly where I needed to be. As awful as it was and frightening and scary, that was where I was with all the specialists. And they ascertained after about 10 days of me being in hospital that what I was actually suffering from was this psychosis. The word really scared me. I thought psychosis sounds like psycho, you know, I was very, very unwell and just thought I was going to. Spend the rest of my days in there and kept trying to find ways to to to end it. I tried to put a bag over my head. I tried to hang myself from the light cord. You know I was dead.