Mental illness? Pull yourself together & trust me!!!

When someone is constantly anxious it becomes the new norm. But it also takes it out of the person with them. I have been guilty of telling my mum to ‘Pull herself together’ on numerous occasions. I feel absolutely shit for saying this! I only have to look on the face of the cartoon characters above to relate to how it is. The face on the person on the left was my mums, I’m the person yelling at her 😞 I felt such deep shame & guilt for being like that. I was pulling my hair out, I felt so desperate, I was impatient after years & years of dealing with it. It wasn’t just the anxiety, it was the fear, the slowness (mum has severely slowed down since she has been ill) it was the misunderstanding, the accusations, suggestions, the blank stares, silences….the list goes on. Some days I’d cope, other days I wasn’t feeling too hot myself & i would get ratty, angry, tearful. I would shout at her, scream at times. What kind of a person does this make me?! I mean, who does that to their own mother? A mother they adore from head to toe?! Me. I did it. I did it because I’m human, because we can only take so much & because we need our own mental health to be good before we can even think about trying to help someone else.

I love my mum more than words could ever describe. We have this unique closeness & we can tell what the other one is thinking. I say ‘have’ I suppose I should say ‘had’. It’s still there in so many ways but that trust has gone, I’m not trusted & it breaks my heart. I’m the one who will run to her if she calls, I am the one who will literally drop everything to go to her no matter what time or what I am doing yet she doesn’t trust me. Isn’t is weird that someone will give you a key to their house, allow you to help clean their house, handling their belongings, will sit in a car & let you drive yet she doesn’t trust me. To me, this is why I know she’s still in there, still the mum that knows I wouldn’t hurt her for anything. She knows that deep down she can trust me.

Never, ever EVER forget who that person was before. They are still in there ❤️

#mentalhealth #suicideawareness #anxiety #depression