I almost died, again.

So, last week was a bit dramatic! In short, I thought I had a stomach bug, and it turned out that I didn’t and I ended up needing emergency surgery. But actually, as ever, I ended up learning a shed load.

I’m going to share a lot in this post. Some of it isn’t going to be comfortable. So, consider this your trigger warning. The following topics will be discussed in an honest and personal way - my relationship with mortality, health, my outlook on life, a difficult relationship with self-harm, suicide and how I view myself, personal relationships. The ‘why’ behind it is quite important to me though, otherwise I wouldn’t be sharing it. 

This post is not a cry for help, it is a call to arms.

I’ve had this motto for a while; ‘Celebrate everything’. It’s taken different forms over the years. Most recently it’s morphed into ‘You’re worth celebrating’. It all comes from the same place though; this idea that life is short and sometimes brutal, so when you find light in it, celebrate that. It’s deciding to have a birthday party. It’s having that bath after a long day. It’s buying that bunch of flowers because you know everytime you look at them over the course of this week, you’ll remember that on that day, at that time, you found beauty in the world and you wanted some of it for yourself. And that is enough.

I remember many years ago being hired to play for a birthday party. When we arrived, the host, who was throwing the party for his partner’s 40th birthday, told me that really, the party was all my fault. Apparently, at a previous gig, we’d talked about oohing and ahhing over whether the birthday party should be thrown at all and I eventually turned to him and said, “You have to celebrate everything.” And that stuck with him. Thus the party was thrown. I told him it didn’t make me liable for the wine bill…

In all honesty, my life hasn’t felt quite right for a while. I have not felt like celebrating. 

I have just gone through/am still going through a tough break up. I’d been with my partner for 14 years. We lived together, loved each other. We were a team. But it wasn’t right and I had to leave. My friends and family have been absolutely amazing, so supportive and encouraging and reassuring when I wobble over whether I’ve done the right thing. We all know I have, but it gets dark sometimes, right? Sometimes you long for what is familiar rather than what is best for you. Especially when you get low, which I often do. 

If you know me, you’ll know that sometimes I disappear off the radar for a few days at a time. There won’t be replies to messages or I might cancel plans and not give a reason why. It’s because I’m low. Low, for me, means a crushing sense of hopelessness and worthlessness that completely takes over everything in my life. It’s like I’m two different people. The first is joyful, loving, wanting to take advantage of every opportunity life has to throw at me. The second cannot understand how the first one exists, because surely nothing is worth living through the pain of existence. 

I’m told this is Borderline Personality Disorder. Ooof. Feels kind of funny writing that in what is essentially marketing for my business but there we go. I am what I am. I am light and shade.

Over the years, I’ve struggled with this mental health disorder. It’s led to regular self harm - which, I still have a problem with - and plans for suicide. I’m not going into details, that’s not what this post is, I’m just saying it all gets very serious here in my head sometimes. I’ve had lots of therapy. I’m on all the drugs. I do, believe it or not, exercise regularly and eat lots of vegetables (I know! And I STILL struggle with my mental health!) BPD is part of who I am and what I have to deal with on a day to day basis, if you want to know more about it, please google. It’s a weird old disorder and gets a lot of stigma. 

What else? Oh yes. My body keeps trying to kill me. And when I tell medical people about the pain this causes, no one seems ready to believe me.

So far in my thirty three years I have had… Appendicitis that docs told me was constipation. A bi-cornet uterus (google it) that docs told me was period pain (for 18 months. Whilst going in and out of A&E every month. I had to literally scream at a consultant before they took me seriously). A gangrenous ovary that they told me was just me being dramatic (a nurse slapped me and told me not only was I being hysterical, I was waking up all the other patients on the ward). Adhesional scarring that couldn’t have been causing all the pain I was telling them it was. And then the extreme self harm and suicide ideation where the doc’s advice was to lose some weight. She’d felt better when she lost weight. It would do me the world of good. The next day I was sectioned.

My most recent event, which, to be fair, even I thought was a stomach bug until the pain didn’t leave for two days, brought back all of that trauma. Not being believed and being told that my pain wasn’t severe enough to warrant medical attention, before turning out to be something life threatening, well, it leaves you with a bit of a complex. You both feel terrified you’re going to die, whilst also not wanting to cause a fuss. You desperately hope medical people will believe you, whilst also deep down, expecting them not to. And on this occasion it followed the same pattern. I knew something was wrong in my body and when the doc said they couldn’t see anything on a scan, and anyway, my white blood cell count was fine, and actually people who had what I thought I had were usually in MUCH more pain than I was, I just lost it. I became 15 again with no agency and terrified. 

Luckily, another doc believed me and made sure I got a scan with a consultant the next day. They found what I had said it was and I was in surgery within a few hours. But, and I keep coming back to it, I almost died. Again. And I was right. Not the person who had all the medical knowledge, who on paper should have been the one with all the answers, me.

I think so often we’re willing to believe the stories other people tell us about ourselves. Maybe it’s easier. Maybe it’s the only thing that looks like tangible evidence that we can point to and say definitively ‘this is who I am’. Stories like, “you’re sensitive so you take things I say the wrong way”, “I don’t experience things the way you do, so your way must be wrong/ extreme/ an overreaction”. Or the classic, “You were low/ having a bad head day, so I didn’t think you meant what you said.” We look to the people we love or respect in our lives to help us see ourselves more clearly when really, what might be best is to look inward and trust yourself. Because no one, absolutely no one, whatever they might say, knows you better than you know yourself.

Why am I telling you what feels like a super massive sob story about my life? Well, partly because frankly it’s wasted on the X factor, but also because it’s influenced who I am and what I want. 

Almost dying has a funny way of putting everything into perspective. I will repeat what I said earlier - this post is not a cry for help, it is a call to arms.

I want you, yes, you, aha, we’ve broken the fourth wall, to start celebrating. I want you to start living like you could have died last Friday but you didn’t. And why didn’t you die last Friday? Because despite what some authority figure said, you carried on and used your own agency to get what you wanted. In my case, medical treatment, in your case, maybe dessert? Maybe time with a book? Maybe a big stonking party!

Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Crikey, this girl will use anything to try and get a gig.” And, well, yes. But also, death is ever present in our lives, so let’s just celebrate the fuck out of life while we can, eh? This is your permission to celebrate life, yourself, each other. Not that you need my permission, you are all the permission you need.