Jacqueline's Story: The Peculiar Grace Of Talking To Others

*Trigger warning: mentions of suicide, self harm, abuse & psychological distress

At the moment, I speak to the Samaritans nearly every day. I’m not suicidal. I do not want to hurt myself. I am really feeling alone. I have been lonely before: in fact, in my family of origin I was so used to it that I didn’t really see it for what it was or how it made me behave.

I am slowly waking up to where I’ve been over the last 30 years. Some days I do feel as if I have been walking in a parallel universe and this is my dissociated experience, right here. The other bits of the world trundle on many miles away in the distance. I witness rather than participate in interactions between others.

I call the Samaritans to talk to them about this. The detachment which I feel within is exacerbated by the sense of detachment without. I sit in the pub sometimes and I start out as part of the conversation. A few minutes in I am still smiling and nodding but I am the conversational donkey. I listen but do not absorb or discern. I move further and further away. Once upon a time, before we moved house, I would have sat through similar conversations. I would have sat and been alternatively uncomfortable and drained but I would have not been aware of the having the choice to get up and do something different. To be fair, I would have felt the discomfort but simply sat with it, sat in it. It would have been another entrapment. I would not have seen it for what it was: trying to live out a social life whilst still really in parts inside.

I moved a year ago from the place where I was born and abused to Cornwall. I wanted to move thirty years ago but I wouldn’t have been able to manage that. I had no ability to complete an action. Since moving, though, insight after insight has become available to me. I am truly grateful for this accelerated change although there are many challenges. I’m sure that I haven’t reached the end of what I will find and I do know that I will be stretched.

To deal with these things, I do have to speak with others or find a connection which is bearable. I did ring an NHS mental health helpline at one point but they went into what I named ‘processing’ mode-name, GP etc and then I was in a queue.  I hung up. I wanted to be a person before I was made into data and reduced to keystrokes.

I used to be proud of dealing with things on my own. To be independent was the world. It was an answer but it can’t be the answer. I am still very wary of whom I connect with-I don’t know any other way. From being caught up in disparate places inside of myself, I have to find some ground outside, something firm. It’s tentative but when I talk out loud the vibrations which I take for granted in my head-which are so close to me that they can appear invisible-stop ringing. The bomb which went off in my mind loses its power. The end of fear is happening.