Always and Forever

I don’t think people talk about this enough. 

Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to be a mum, playing mums and dads and forever taking on that role. The first time someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I remember telling them I wanted to be a midwife so I could play with the baby’s all day. Growing up I was always the one helping in the crèche at church, helping at holiday clubs and youth clubs. I studied childcare and education at school, always wanting to work within the childcare industry. 

I became a godmother and an aunty to some of the best children I’ve ever known (unbiased of course!). 

I’ve spent my entire life surrounded by children, loving them as my own. 

But I’ve longed to be a mum. I have longed for this for as long as I can remember. I have never wanted anything more. 

I thought I would have had my chance by now, i thought id be married, settled with at least one, but maybe two of my own to love. 

Watching people who I love become parents, being so incredibly elated for them but coming home to cry myself to sleep because it isn’t me. 

The mixed feelings of being so happy for people but so broken for yourself. It’s tough. 

I don’t think people realise it physically hurts; it reminds me of the early days of my grief. Where your heart is so broken it actually hurts, real pain that no one can truly understand but yourself. 

They will tell you you’re young, there’s still time. And whilst that comes from a place of love (and may well be true) it doesn’t lift the pain you feel in that moment. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is sometimes life doesn’t pan out as you had dreamed it would. My life changed forever the day I lost Pete but I have always tried to have hope for my future, I guess it’s just been getting harder to find that hope in recent times. 

Grief is such a timeless thing. It’s an agonising pain that rips your body apart time and time again, feelings of what ifs, what should be and what was.

Life changes, it moves forward. Because it has to. You can sit still and spend painful hours living in those moments but ultimately you have to carry on.

And as you do, you make new memories, meet new people and your life does continue.

But it never takes away the grief. The grief continues to live deep inside of you, and for the most part you do carry on, it’s there but it’s okay. It walks alongside you in day to day life but it doesn’t quite reach the surface.

Until it does.

And when it does? When that anniversary looms, when a certain song or smell triggers a memory? That’s the agonising heart breaking pain. A pain unimaginable to so many yet common at the same time.

Every so often it catches you out, your eyes fill and your heart physically hurts. It’s overwhelming. It takes over, it doesn’t care where you are or who your with, suddenly your right back there, broken again.

Grief is timeless. Grief is pain. Grief walks your journey with you.

Its the weeks that lead up to to the anniversary and the weeks after that I struggle with most. The day comes and goes and it’s a mix of making it through and being distracted to cope.

The day itself is the easiest part, some remember, some don’t. But enough remember to keep you going.

3 years. 3 whole bloody years. How does that happen?! It almost feels like double that but at the same time it happened yesterday, time is a very strange concept when trauma hits.

I think it’s fair to say I’ve struggled a lot in recent months, my mental health hasn’t been great and I have been hurting more than I can put into words.

I haven’t had the support from where I needed it to come from most, the support that shouldn’t need to be asked for, it should just be a given. I’ve spent a lot of time not feeling good enough, or feeling like I’m a problem/burden. In the last few months or so I’ve gained and lost a lot of myself.

I have a ‘before Pete’ and ‘after Pete’ version of my life and currently they are so conflicting and this is a whole new head space for me to grasp.

I live my life in the hope I am making him proud, he was my biggest supporter, he never doubted my abilities, he helped me gain strength and showed me how I deserved to be treated.

My situation is unique to me and no one can fully understand the pain it brings me but that’s okay. However the one place you should get unwavering support is the one place I currently don’t get it. The uncertainty, the feelings of being not good enough because why else would I be treated this way?

It’s heartbreaking.

There’s that quote, ‘People come into your life for a reason, a season or a lifetime’. I feel like I’m pretty accomplished in the reason/season but a lifetime? That would be nice.

It’s a shit time of year for me, so he’s a bit of a cryptic blog. Don’t hate, don’t wish pain on people. Be kind, love hard an don’t let anyone take that away from you! We all deserve love, especially in the darkest of times.

Sat on a moving train trying so hard to stop the tears behind my sunglasses isn’t how I wanted my Easter Monday to be.

I can’t quite describe the pain and upset I’ve been in for around 9 months now, only since Christmas it’s become so overwhelming I couldn’t keep it hidden anymore.

The urges to cut myself again, to burn myself and make that inward pain outwards. Became so real again that some days I couldn’t hold myself back.

It’s been 18 years since I first took a blade to my skin and watched the blood seep, 18 years since I first realised that in doing so the pain that exhausts me day in and day out would give me a brief break and bring me back to me.

I didn’t want to do it. I never wanted it to become my lifeline, but it did.

I’ve spent so long priding myself on recovery and coping with things no one should ever of been dealt but here I am.

Once again a slave to the blade.

Ever since last summer I have been struggling, I thought I had coped so well with losing Pete, a global pandemic all whilst suddenly living alone and a new life. Then last summer something changed, I don’t even really know what the catalyst was, overnight it was like I couldn’t breathe anymore. I cried, I cried more and I cried more. Having been someone who doesn’t cry, genuinely known as the Sheldon to my friends, these tears came as a shock and were a very unwelcome presence.

My eating changed. Having always been someone who comfort ate throughout life food suddenly wasn’t appealing anymore. The nandos girl in me didn’t even want a nandos? Couldn’t even finish one if I a tried. The girl who loved to cook, she disappeared. The girl I once knew so well was slowly but surely becoming a memory and that was scary.

I was stuck somewhere between knowing who I had been and lost finding who I was going to be.

I decided I wanted to meet someone new. Albeit rightly or wrongly at the time that became a focus. I met a few guys who actually made me feel so worthless i fell deeper into a hole I didn’t know my way out of, maybe I hadn’t been in the right frame of mind for this but equally those men had no reason to treat me how they did.

Eventually I went on to form a relationship with someone. Someone who I felt was right, respectful, honest, kind and loving towards me.

I didn’t doubt them, they made me feel safe and loved and I hadn’t felt those feelings for so long that I welcomed them warmly.

But then I struggled. I really struggled. The last time I accepted those feelings my heart had been ripped apart, it had been broken so much further to the core than I even knew possible and here I was about to accept it all over again. The realisation of this caused me to fall, fall from the loving heights I’d been strung to and fall deeper than I knew possible.

I fell into what I can only describe as what I imagine a black hole to be, something so deep with no sign of exit. Once your in you can only go deeper.

An my god did I go deep.

The self harm, the suicide attempts, the lack of concern for myself, the lack of thought. I was just right back there. I didn’t have any care for myself, I put myself into a position of vulnerability and danger on more than one occasion. I lacked any idea of the danger I was in at the time. It just wasn’t there. It was like being a child, you wanna jump of the top of climbing frame because you don’t see danger, it looks like fun. But your parent stops you. They see it.

People around me were seeing this, but I didn’t care. I didn’t have it in me to. I just wanted the inward pain to stop, to let me breathe again. I figured if I hurt myself that badly I would be able to find that strength to carry on. But this didn’t happen. I just kept losing more and more of who I was until I became a shell of the girl I’m known to be.

I changed medication. I figured this might be it. I changed from the highest dose of sertraline to venlafaxine. This had its own consequences. Venlafaxine had been one of the drugs Pete had taken when he died. I could cope with this I figured.

And I did. Although it’s been difficult I have coped as well as I can but I am still not okay.

I wish there was an easy answer to this. Mental health is profoundly ignorant to its inhabitant. It wears you down, it eats at you, it takes the person you know away from you. I’m writing this whilst my head is banging, my eyes sting and I don’t know if I can cope with the next minute, let alone tomorrow.

Mental health does not discriminate, it will eat you alive and it won’t care who it destroys in the process.

This is mainly for me, it’s the first time in many months I’ve felt I could write and I’ve flooded the page not only with words but tears, my head is banging and I don’t feel safe right now. But I’m written.

Please be kind x

Tonight I’m not sure I wanted to write necessarily but I needed to get this out.

It’s been 2 years and 3 months since losing Pete. Not a day goes by where I don’t think about him or miss him and nothing will ever take away my heart fully from him.

But as time has passed it has made me think about my future and what I want for me. It’s made me question so many things.

Ive always wanted a family, my own happily ever after. I dream of being married and having children. But it feels like something that’ll never happen.

How do I share my heart? Is that something that’s even possible? How do I even meet someone willing to take on me and my baggage? I’m so broken and why would anyone want that in there lives?

I don’t expect answers to these questions, but they plague me constantly.

I put myself out there recently, I thought I wanted to see what it was like in the dating world. I’m an honest person and people always ask about your previous relationships, I’m not going to lie about my situation. I tell them what they need to know but never to much.

I talked to one guy who seemed nice, we talked a lot, text a lot for about 10 days before I agreed to meet him.

He knew how nervous I was, he knew enough to know to be kind. In fact one of the first things he commented on was how he liked my t shirt and how important it was to ‘be kind’. However apparently that wasn’t to be.

I met him, and despite all the talking and reassurance on his end that it would be fine he still treated me like crap.

I’m the one left feeling worse off.

I don’t understand how in 2021 men think they can treat women so poorly. Im not painting all men with the same brush and I’m fully aware women can be just as bad but when will men learn women are not something they can play around with. We have feelings, feelings that get hurt. You can’t just use us for what you want and then move onto the next. It’s no wonder almost every girl I know has trust issues.

I don’t need my heart to be hurt anymore than it already is. I finally feel ready to put myself out there and already I’ve felt let down. I won’t let this stop my journey back into the dating world but I must say it hasn’t helped.

Men, please remember we are human beings to, we hurt, we have feelings, we long to be treated right. It’s not hard, stop treating us like we are an option.

It really does make you question your own self worth.

Leading on from my last post.

The rest of last year was a blur of lockdowns on and off, trying to cope with constant rules and changes. And learning to survive on my own.

I have been involved in AFCB’s talking cherries mental health initiative from the get go and was so grateful for there support and funding to get me mental health first aider trained. It was a tough course to do but extremely beneficial and something I think every single person should do.

January this year I ended up catching Covid. I was very poorly for about 2 weeks and long term covid continues. I still can’t taste or smell fully and one of the worst things for me was I lost a lot of hair. Thankfully I seem to have turned a corner with my hair recently.

What I will say is, covid is real, it is not something you want to get and it is scary. Being alone whilst poorly was horrid.

In April I took on a walking challenge to raise money for SOBS – Support of bereavement by suicide charity. I walked a mile a day for the month and raised just over £1600. This might not seem a great deal to most but for me it was a challenge and one I am very proud I completed. I’ll be forever grateful for all who sponsored me and believed in me too.

And that leads me to more recent times. I have recently started to work for a local children’s charity which I am absolutely loving. I finally feel like I have some sort of purpose again and that is a welcomed feeling.

I have also recently been filmed for a small video raising awareness of suicide and mental health, this took a hell of a lot of courage, it’s fair to say i was the most anxiety ridden I had been in a long time filming this. But you know what, if it helps one person, than it’s done it’s job.

Petes 2 year anniversary was a difficult day this year. I really struggled leading up to it and have struggled since. I have found I spend more time thinking about him, the what ifs and the whys. I feel like the first year or my grief was more shock than actual grief and now the shock has finally subsided the real grief has taken over. I have recently started therapy and I hope this will help me untangle some of my head and help me have a better understanding.

Grief is a journey. I’m gonna be on it for the rest of my life, I fully accept that. It’ll change and I’ll grow alongside it. But it’ll always be there.

I thought it was time to give my blog a little update considering it’s been just over a year since I last posted.

Heads up in advance, this could be a long one!

I guess the most obvious place to start here is covid 😬 I spent the first 6 weeks by myself, didn’t leave the flat or see anyone.

It felt so cruel at the time, I hadn’t even been in the flat for 6 months and suddenly I wasn’t allowed to leave it or have company. It was really hard. There were nights were I was convinced I wasn’t gonna make it to morning, the dark thoughts and pain was to strong.

I was lucky enough to have such a great team of supporters though, my little bestie being one of the main ones, we face timed daily/ house party/ Skyped you name it we did nit! One day I will tell her how much she has helped me keep going through the hardest times in my life ❤️

Everything became an online experience, catching up with friends and family, games nights, quizzes, even watching movies together but apart!

I find change extremely hard. It’s a part of my Aspergers I least like to be honest. So adapting to a whole new life style took its toll on me some days.

Before long Petes 1 year anniversary came around. Thankfully restrictions had lessoned at the time and I was able to spend it in his parents garden with his family.

It was a hard day but I am forever grateful for all the people who have constantly supported me through all this time, old friends and new, I couldn’t have done it without you.

One thing I’ve realised, is i tend to find the weeks leading up to anniversaries and the weeks after harder than the actual day itself.

Im tormented by flash backs and nightmares, even more so since hitting year 2. I have recently been diagnosed with Complex PTSD, I won’t go into detail as I want to do a post specifically on this.

When I first lost Pete the grief was so harsh, it was a constant. The pain wasn’t only emotional it was physical pain. My heart actually hurt.

People told me it would change over time but in those moments I couldn’t believe that. How would it? I would still love my Pete just as much so why would the pain change?

But as we reach just past year 2, I can understand more of what they meant. You learn to live a new normal, it’ll never be the same because life has changed, trauma has happened and you are not the same person you were before.

But just because the grief changes, it doesn’t mean it gets easier, it just means you learn to live alongside it.

I have so much more I didn’t even realise I wanted to say so I’m gonna leave this one here and write another post. Think my writing mojo is finally coming back 🙂

I’ve been wanting to write about this for a while now, but it’s taken a long time to take it all in.

We had Petes inquest in December.

When Pete died some of us had to give statements to the police, me because I was the last to see and speak to him alive. And his mum because she found him.

We were told at the time we may need to read these at inquest but would hear closer to the time.

We never heard anymore.

On the day of the inquest me, my mum and friend, Petes family and extended family all arrived and were ushered into a waiting room.

When the court was ready we were taken into the room, it was at this point they asked for me and Petes parents and sister to be sat in the front row as we would be questioned by the judge as we were ‘people of interest’.

This threw me and I just burst into tears.

There was about 20 of us in the court. Half were Petes family and mine, the other half was Petes psychiatrist, psychologist, CPN, there manager, a women from the head of the mental health department for Dorset, police, some people I can’t remember exactly who they were and people working for the court.

It wasn’t a huge room but it was fairly intimidating.

The judge/coroner opened the court and explained how it would work. She would go through the post mortem, the toxology report, the police report etc etc she would call me and Petes mum as witnesses to be questioned, as well as Petes CPN, psychiatrist, the policeman from the day, the mental health teams manager. I think that’s it.

Oh there was also a report written by Petes GP, this was read out. It stated all the times pete had been able to acquire medication from the pharmacy over the last 6 months previous to his death. It also stated the information of his final GP appointment.

One thing I didn’t realise is that after you die they can tell people things you had wanted kept secret. I don’t agree with this.

So the coroner went through all this reports, this took about an hour and then we had a break. It was extremely tough.

After the break Petes mum was questioned and then I was. She asked me lots of questions regarding how pete was leading up to his death, what I thought and questions about the day itself. One main question she asked me was ‘Do you think it was suicide or a cry for help?’

How was I meant to answer that?!

My response was, I couldn’t say for certain either way, I don’t think pete ever truly wanted to die, I think he wanted a break from being inside his own tortured brain but with all the previous attempts it was hard to not think he must of wanted it sometimes.

After that the policeman was called to the stand, his questioning was pretty straight forward, the police have to be called to any unexpected death. But where it was obvious none of us were involved in Petes death they didn’t have to do much.

Then came his psychiatrist. He was on the stand for what felt like forever, it was around 45 mins I think.

He went through all of Petes mental health history, all the therapy, all his private details. It was horrific to sit and listen to.

I have personally never liked this persons way of treating people, and I don’t think any of us left liking him that day. He smiled through most of his time on the stand and it felt so inappropriate.

There was another break at some point here.

We had expected the inquest to last no long than an hour & a half. It lasted 4 hours.

After this it was Petes CPN who took the stand. We have nothing but good things to say about him, Pete respected him a huge amount and appreciated all his help and support.

It was the most heartbreaking thing to sit through. He answered all his questions and at the end we were allowed to ask questions to any witnesses also as we were people of interest.

Petes sister said we had no questions but wanted him to know we all appreciated every single thing he did for Pete and we didn’t want him to blame himself in any way. I have never seen someone cry so hard. It was so clear to see he cared so much for Pete. He was taken by a colleague out of the room. My heart broke for him so bad.

Then there manager was called. His answers all felt very much like he was covering there own backs.

Id just like to mention here that we hadn’t blamed or felt the mental health team were to blame at all.

The coroner then delivered her verdict.

Which was essentially inconclusive to an extent. She said she couldn’t say it was suicide or a cry for help because there wasn’t enough evidence either way. Pete obviously took the medication himself but only he knows what he meant by it.

I could understand this but it was hard to not have a proper answer to.

At the end the women from the head of mental health for Dorset cane and spoke to us, she said we would now have a ‘serious incident review’ done which is basically a inquest for professionals for then to see if they did all the could and or if there’s anything they could of done better or do better in the future.

I didn’t know this was a thing so was a bit surprised that the inquest wasn’t ‘it’. But a date was set for January once the report was finished for us to be talked through it.

The rest of that day I slept. Slept and slept and slept. It completely took it out of me. I think I cried more that day than I did when he first died, being talked through every detail of his life, my life with him, everything. It was exhausting and so upsetting. I really hope I never have to sit through one again.

One good thing to come out of it was the fact the local news paper despite telling us they would report on it, on the day did not turn up.

I know this is a long one, but thank you for reading it. I always wanted this to be a really honest and raw place for me to be open.

Since losing Pete I have noticed many people say the same things to you. Understandably these things are what I would of said to someone to before hand. But since losing Pete in the circumstances I did and the fact he was my fiancé I wanted to talk through a few to explain why sometimes the ‘normal’ things we would go to say actually don’t really help.

When Pete died I received over 100 messages of offerings of support and love. I am and will always be forever grateful for those. But in the months that followed, people carry on with there lives (rightly so) but my life was halted, and to an extent it still is. It got to the point where I felt guilty for posting on my social media how I was feeling, I felt like a broken record. I since decided that I didn’t care what people thought, they don’t have to look at what I post, for me it’s like a diary and something to look back on. But what I want people to realise is it’s lovely that you say these things at the time, but please continue to check on someone who is grieving. Grief doesn’t go away overnight and your life will move forward, but there’s won’t for a long time.

I know my Pete wouldn’t want me to be sad. But it really doesn’t help when people constantly tell you this. It makes me feel like I’m being unnecessarily sad and that people expect more from me. It’s okay for me to be sad when it happened, now, in 10 years time. Because this is grief. Grief doesn’t have boundaries or a time line.

This is a really hard one. People mean well, but it doesn’t help. I don’t want to hear that I’ll get through this, it almost takes away from the loss. Like it says above, I don’t have a choice but to get through this, but just because you say it doesn’t mean it’ll happen over night. I need people who will be understanding when it appears I’m doing okay but I’m not.

This one I find really difficult. It’s something we ask each other each and every day but do we really want to hear the honest truth? Because I know most people are taken aback when I don’t answer with ‘yes’. I’m living a new version of okay, I’m never okay, how can I be? But people don’t want to hear the same old constantly. My ‘okay’ is hurting, everyday is painful because everyday is a reminder of what I’ve lost. I am learning to live with this loss but it’s a slow progress. So when you ask me if I’m okay, I might say yes because I think that’s what you want to hear. But if I’m brutally honest about how I really am, please don’t shy away from it.

I know you want to comfort me, I know you want to give me hope that in the future I’ll cope better with losing Pete. But above explains all I that I feel. I do feel different to the first few weeks of losing Pete, those weeks were traumatic. But I don’t feel ‘better’. The grief has changed but it’s become harder. Time moves forward, years pass but grief doesn’t stick to a time line. Grief is like a rollercoaster and you never know if your going to be able to get off.

‘Time changes things. That I will agree. But time doesn’t mean it’s easier. It’s just different.’ Exactly that.

I’m going to leave it there. I could talk about my grief for days, and in time I will talk more on here. But that’s enough for now. Please please don’t be offended by what I have written, it’s not my intention whatsoever. If anything I hope people can take what I say and have a better understanding of why someone grieving may not respond well to the ‘normal’ things we say. As I said at the start, before losing Pete I would of said exactly the same. I’ve appreciated everyone’s messages, but please remember, grief doesn’t go away.

Photo/quote credit to: @GlitterandGrief on Instagram ❤️

Dear Pete.

Today marks one year since the last overdose which didn’t work. I remember waking up to you unconscious next to me in bed, and the really sad part is I wasn’t even surprised. It had become something that happened often enough that it was almost normal. I hate saying that but it’s the scary part of it.

I remember sitting in the relatives room at the hospital whilst you were in resus. The doctor coming and telling us we could come and see you but explaining you were at less than 8 on the Glasgow coma score. You were so out of it, the only thing you responded to was when they tried to put the drip in you. You didn’t know who we were, you hit out at us and told us to go away. It’s strange because this wasn’t one of your worst attempts but the way you acted made it so upsetting. Even though we knew you didn’t know what you were doing.

We were sent home and told they would ring us when you had come round more. No one knew when it would be because none of us could be certain of what you had taken at this point.

Eventually some of the meds they gave you helped so you were moved to a ward.

We came straight back to be with you and as normal everyone left us alone together for a bit. You still weren’t making much sense, it was like your brain knew what you wanted to say but your mouth wouldn’t cooperate.

This was the time you caused yourself kidney damage. That scared me. The sad thing is it didn’t scare you.

I’m really struggling without you. I’ve got incredible friends and family who keep me going but some days it’s you and you only that I need/want.

It’s gonna be my first birthday without you soon and then all to soon it’ll be the one year anniversary of losing you. I don’t know how it’s almost that time already, it has gone quickly but equally so much has happened and changed and it’s gone slow. That makes no sense I realise.

I wish you realised how loved you were and how much your life was worth living. I know the demons told you a different story and it really does break me that they got so big you believed them. But know this, your loved and missed every single day, your thought about constantly and life has never been and will never be the same without you.

Always and forever my love. ❤️