Alienation — The VIP Pass to the Lowest Moments of Our Lives
Nothing’s been the same since the day it happened
Mental illness is a clever leech. No one can see it but you can still feel its teeth in your back. Inchmeal drinking out your life until pints of you are gone.
You’re not sure where it came from or when it found you but you know one day it will drop off. It has to. But you dread to consider the cost.
You’re exhausted. Carrying it with you makes everyday living a prison sentence, a waking nightmare, and the worst part is, you’re now convinced it’s always been there.
Sometimes you just think you’d be better off alone with it. After all, how could anyone possibly understand what you’re going through?
How it used to be
Before my leech latched on, life wasn’t without its bruised fruit but I was content with it. This was largely down to my mum — my teacher, my council, and my best friend.
For my entire childhood, I was unknowingly neglected by my biological father. He’d never call, nor visit and somehow manage to blame mum and me for it.
Mum never let on — and that gave me hope.
When I was bullied at 14, she even pulled me from school and homeschooled me for an entire year. We butted heads during my teenage angst phase but she was still there proving to me I wasn’t alone.
My whole life has been warmed by her dedication to making me happy.
It fed my imagination and coloured my belief that magic lived in the willing hearts of children like me. It showed up for every Easter, Halloween and Christmas and finished every school project. It stood up to the school bullies who tried to break me and taught me what it was to feel defended and comforted in a frightening world.
I’m 32 now and I’m glad it’s the leech that will never have its fill.
Sadly, it wasn’t enough to prevent what happened.
The lowest moment of my life
I was watching sparrows weave loops over flower beds from inside a brick cottage, which hugged three tiers of green. A place where birds, squirrels, mice, and even foxes call home — but it actually belonged to my parents.
I’d been wrapped in blankets and bags of crisps, binging a Netflix naughties drama for four solid hours.
A human burrito weathering the hard leather cushions beneath her. The hero to no one but her own self-pity.
Mum let me. She was on the other sofa next to the snoring dog, eyes flickering to the rhythm of her laptop light. She knew I was hurting but at that time, she didn’t know why.
I’d been feeling hopeless for weeks. As is the norm with chronic depression, you never really know why. Looking back, I think I was low on lifeblood. It’d been drop-feeding the leech the same way childhood naivety quietly quits our lives: without us knowing.
If I hadn’t visited my parents, I’d still be laying alone in an empty flat beneath a dark cloud that absorbs all warmth and colour. It mocked my already intrusive thoughts.
I tried ditching it but it would just threaten to rain each time, so I just sat there.
At least my leech was in good company.
Mum’s eyes broke from her screen and were now looking at me with the wide-eyed hope of every Disney heroine on a mission. She’d begun listing off solutions before knowing the extent of the problem.
She was now a roller deck of resources. Ones I’d gently lost faith in over the past 2 years. Ever since I paid £700 for a private ADHD diagnosis that only dangled medication over me like a stupidly expensive carrot.
Private doctors are a whole different kind of leech.
I wanted desperately to appease her and match the hopeful energy she always radiates but by that point, I’d already given up. I now bolted upright next to my dad who had rejoined us from the garden. I wish he’d stayed away for a few more minutes.
The pain began churning butter in my gut and curdling with the ball of anxiety that had been rudely awoken from a beautiful dream. The leech, the hopelessness, my dark cloud were now stomach acid spreading a forest fire up my throat.
Then I opened my mouth.
“I DON’T WANT TO BE HERE ANYMORE!”
I dropped the blanket — and a few hot tears — and ran my excess adrenaline upstairs.
Things will never be the same
I never expected I’d want to tap out of life until that day. Admitting it to mum and dad honestly felt like I’d kicked Bambi in the face.
To them, I’d always been secure. Brave in the face of adversity, still embued with hope from the warmth they’d wrapped me in… but I wasn’t.
My will to live was gone — and no amount of blankets, crisp packets, or hours of television could change that.
I couldn’t see anything great waiting for me around the corner. I couldn’t even see past my two feet anymore. Instead, they’ve plodded me into a surreal void where everything going on outside my own skin is inaudible and out of focus.
I owe it all to alienation. The VIP pass the leech gives me to my intrusive thoughts, which led me to my lowest moment.
Why? Because it’s so good at making you believe it’s helping you.
That you should sit there and embrace the intrusive memories you can’t shake off. You’ll feel better about them eventually. That you should dwell on the mistakes that cost you friendships and self-esteem. Being locked away like this will teach you how to fix them.
That the only way you can return to the outside world is when you’ve learned to be a better human being like how your mother was for you as a child. Until then, you might as well not exist.
You only realise alienation has you once you feel utterly alone even in a room of people you love.
You may feel alone in this but you’re not.
I’m proof that we can sometimes find solace under a dark cloud with one morbidly obese leech on our backs. Just because they’re there doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to live the lives we want — and make other people a part of it.
Accepting yours is there is the first step.
More and more people are waking up to the reality of leeches. They will all be gone one day but sometimes not without our lives.
Cutting ourselves off from others won’t cut off our leeches.
It obesifies them.
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