This article has the following trigger warnings, please note that this is all one person's experience with mental health and that everyone has a different journey. For further support, please visit our website for signposting details. 

TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE, DEPRESSION, DIVORCE

Hey, guys, I’m Ellie, a student at the University of Salford! This month we are talking about wellbeing, so I wanted to share a few things about my journey as a woman with ADHD and depression. I hope after reading this you feel seen and less alone.

I grew up in a very rural town in Australia with my stepdad, mum and three younger siblings after moving from England at 7. In this town, everyone was not just stuck, but cemented in their ways! Mental health and wellbeing were very taboo subjects. The very common one-liners I recall are, “if you keep crying, I will give you something to cry about” and a personal favourite “has your mother died? Well, why are you crying?”. Yeah, I know… intense.

As a little kid, I always had a lot of feelings going on but nowhere to put them. I would have very low lows and always felt very out of control. The doctors diagnosed me with depression and OCD quite early on, but still nothing really made sense. I just felt like my reaction to the world and what was going on around me never quite matched how others would react. Navigating being a child of a messy divorce and living in a town so isolated from my other family and the rest of the world eventually got too much.

The first time I considered taking my own life was when I was around 11 or 12. There were only a few times I did anything to cause harm to myself, but mostly I remember looking at my ceiling praying that whoever was in control of life and death would flick the switch so I could fall asleep and finally feel peaceful. At the time I was more concerned about how it would impact my siblings and mum if they found me, so I would make it easier for them by just going to sleep and not waking up. Less mess. More peaceful. No one to carry the blame. I cannot put into words how grateful and relieved I am that no one answered those prayers.

I struggled on and off like that for years, sometimes the love I had for others being the only thing keeping me going. I moved out of home when I was 19 and moved back to the UK for university. It wasn’t until I started living independently that I got diagnosed with ADHD and everything made sense. Even though I was terrified at first to take medication, I went online to find women just like me. I remember hearing one person say, “if you break your arm, you get a cast and painkillers, so if your brain is struggling sometimes medication is what’s needed to start the healing process”. Listening to people with similar experiences as me is what helped me decide on taking medication. Now I am not saying that’s the only answer, but it helped me to a place where the other methods those therapists had told me all my life started to work.

All you hear from people when you are struggling is, “it'll get better” or “this won’t last forever”. When you are in that place those people are irritating and imagining yourself ever clawing out of the hole you are in feels impossible. However, I hate to break it to you, but they might be on to something. The only thing that’s for sure is what you are feeling right now isn’t permanent, you deserve to feel better, and you will eventually. Healing is not linear and there are still tough days, but I take comfort in knowing that I am not alone and there is so much in life worth living for even the things that seem small and insignificant.

If no one has told you today, I love you and you deserve to take up space.

Be kind to yourself the way you would be kind to little you.