Sad club

Part 1

"I was having one of those days where the world feels wrong. Nothing had really happened, I just felt like the world was crumbling around me in the most dramatic fashion. I'd gotten to a point where all the sadness was simply annoying. I didn't want to be sad anymore and there didn't seem to be anything to grab onto that might one day drag me back out into the light.

I'd tried twice before.

The first time I cut myself the way I'd seen on a program, deep and straight. It bled a lot, but not enough. I woke up a few hours later still on the bathroom floor, dry blood on my pajamas. I went to school the next day. The second time I tried to overdose on some painkillers we had in the house. I did it whilst my parents were out. But after I'd taken them I had a panic attack – because I'd taken them. Ironic right? They all came back up because I cried so much I made myself sick.

And you know what happened last time so there's not much point in me describing that one is there?"

I looked between the two bored looking men in front of me. I usually liked the ease I could talk about my suicide attempts because it unsettled people and that small bit of power usually made me feel metaphorically bigger than I did most the time. But they seemed so unbothered it made me more unsettled – not sure that should be the method they go with in this situation but maybe that's what others need, I don't know. "If you could tell us how you were feeling before-hand that might help us in finding your best route of support" said the blonde one in the most uninterested voice I imagine he could muster. He looked like the sort of person in stock photo images, his face can't be described as much other than plain with a Lego man haircut and dull brown eyes. "I was fed up of being sad" was all I could think to the respond with. I somewhat wish I'd tried to elicit a more exciting response by going off on a tirade about the dullness of humanity – but apparently the dreary reality was all I could think of.

I don't think it mattered what I said, the answer of a psych ward was the only answer I was ever going to receive. Between them they explained what I was going to do next and where I was going. I vaguely remember saying 'cool' a few times but I don't think I contributed anything more noteworthy than that.

Before the unlucky number three I had been in year 12, prepping for exams, learning the piano and slowly being bought to the edge. I had taken my A-levels on a whim, on results day I closed my eyes and pointed at the paper – using that to decide my options. If I'm completely honest, it was because I never planned on living past the end of the year – I hadn't even planned this far into my life so now everything was just last minute decisions and spontaneous let downs. School was nothing other than disappointing, in every sense of the word. My grades, social standing, lessons even – but then again I ended up taking literature so what else should I have expected.

It's not that I had been this super weird depressive kid forever, up until year 7 I had been moderately popular, I got invited to all the sleepovers if that's the right way to measure it. But from around year 8 the nightmares started coming and I would scare everyone with my screaming in the night, so they stopped asking me to come; as different symptoms worsened and I started distancing people myself I found less people trying to bring me back into social circles – by year 10 I was alone. I felt like I could walk through corridors like a ghost, floaty and a bit creepy but mainly transparent; people would wave to their friends on the other side of the corridor, through me. Girls I used to make bracelets with would ask me what I was doing if I had dared to sit near them at lunch, boys who'd had crushes on me would use the back of my head for target practice with elastic band slingshots – at least I knew people actually could see me I guess.

But then I would get home. School was one thing, on the days I was trying to be positive I would remember the fact that one day I would be moving on from there – it wasn't forever – if I did live past tonight it could be my past one day. Home was the worst part. I couldn't go on from there, I was forever tied to its walls whether I wanted to be or not, every expectation and judgement was waiting for me there in a way they weren't at school. School let me disappear and I had grown to love that, but when I walked through that peeling red door I felt the ikea spotlights center on me and illuminate every flaw for my parents to examine. 'those scars wont look nice in your wedding photos', 'I hope you're ashamed of ruining your own body', 'don't look at me like its my fault – I'm not the one you have to blame' – because these are the things that will make a person not want to hurt themselves. My parents, if you hadn't worked it out for yourselves, were not the smartest on the topic and were essentially the reason I found myself with this feeling of loneliness I could never put into words. I found it hard to grapple with the concept that the person who'd wanted me so much so that she'd put her own body on the line for me, would push me away at a display of her interpretation of 'weakness' – it didn't make sense and it left me confused to the point of isolation within my own thoughts. The dots between me and my parents didn't connect once they'd taken away the string and id never found myself wanting to take it back. When I was told I was coming to hospital I didn't take anything from home.