...Has a Mental Illness

There are certain times in life when you are completely thrown off your pedestal and the world comes crashing down. Most of those events seem catastrophic at the time, such as a breakup but aren’t so bad once time heals. However sometimes they really do hurl you into oblivion and leave you utterly stranded.

Elisa* is a friend I’ve had since I was eight, and naturally we’ve been through a lot together. We have gone clubbing and shopping and been on holiday , been through the pregnancy scares, and discussed periods and boys and kissing. I was her maid of honour and our phone bills are perhaps better left unknown.

 

2 years ago, Elisa tried to commit suicide. Then she tried again and again and again.

I lost count at how many attempts exactly. For months it seemed we were suck in this cycle where she would just snap and do something like take pills or go to the cliffs near where she lived with a plan, or cut her wrists. Every night I’d go to bed checking the phone was on and wake up wondering if I’d have a text message saying she had finally succeeded. Luckily I did not.

 

After several overdoses and countless scars on her wrists, Elisa was finally detained and sectioned under the Mental Health Act, and sent to a psychiatric hospital for several months. Here she was diagnosed with BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER.

 

I spoke to her a few times whilst she was in hospital, and it was like speaking to someone possessed. Elisa wasn’t acting like the girl I’d grown up with, the things she was sprouting terrified me. She was impossible to reason with, and one time I spent close to three hours trying to convince her to not attempt an escape. Which was futile because she did.

 

I couldn’t get through to her. The conversations she’d branch out into started becoming more bizarre and more dangerous. She plotted ridiculous things like assaulting police officers if they tried detaining her, would wonder out all night with a knife and started stealing razor blades. She’d fight the staff at the hospital as if it was some game, and then laugh as she told me the gory details. She decided she wanted an affair with a patient and wouldn’t speak to her husband due to pointless things.

This was massively difficult to deal with for me, I know that sounds selfish to say because it’s not about me but, I am the fixer. I’m the one who people come to with a problem and I talk through it and fix it. But I couldn’t get through to her at all. I couldn’t beg her enough to listen to the hospital staff or to go home or throw the knife away. As I mentioned, Elisa was possessed.

I tried to get her to come home [to her parent’s house here in town] but she refused and those three hundred miles between us seemed further than a trip to the moon. It didn’t help that at the time I dealt with a lot of deaths in my job and one in particular was a suicide of a young man.

 

Before that first phone call from the hospital after that first attempt I’d never have guessed that there was something with Elisa. I’d never have thought she’d have a mental health problem. Yet here we are 2 years later and though her medication stabilises her most of the time, it’s still difficult and I'm constantly wondering if the conversation would be our last, or any visits will be our last...

In England there is a lot of things trying to raise awareness of Mental Health Illnesses, and trying to get people to talk about it. Elisa clearly battles perhaps the most strongest thing ever: her own mind. How can you deal with that and fight yourself? I find it impossible to contemplate.

I pray for her. I pray that people understand exactly that it means by a Mental Health Illnesses, and it has spun a new outlook for me, especially in regards to suicides. Nothing is black or white really.

 

Love Nikki