Look beyond the fears.

I've been to some pretty dark places in my time & all too often to that "point of no return" where the only options left seem feasible & justified. The place where suicide prevails over ever course, action or warrant of the gift of life itself.
My case was one that would have only broken the hearts of a few & that having only one surviving family member, of whom we don't communicate, who would have missed me?
Frankly it would have been a blessing & a release from a torturous existence I'd always known.
But something beyond me had other ideas & kept me protected at all costs.

Today I see life in a different light & see the inflicting suffering of those torn apart & left with the questions "why?"
The parents, friends & families so deeply scarred by the actions of suicide that it sends them to a point of no return.

My aim, even back then was to stop one person on this earth from taking their life. Sounds so little but it is one person that I'll know about & many more I won't. But it was that one person that ended up to be myself.

In the times since there has been a battle to "want" recovery & a battle I found hard to grasp.
Coming from a life of conflict more serious than war-torn countries & a conflict so invisible to the outside world, but so real in my minds eye, adjusting to peace was like learing a whole new language & way of life.
Have I got it right? Sure as heck no! But I'm open to learn.

I have also been privy to know the survivors of legendary warriors who have seen their loved ones battle against all odds over other fatal illness & the message of one young man who touched the nation with his plea to youngsters in a bid to help highlight the severity of suicide. That lad was Donal Walsh.

I've also seen parents fighting the cause too of loved ones so troubled & lost to this horrific battle, whom have taken the helm to highlight the stigma surrounding mental health & to keep the beacon of hope burning bright.

But I am inspired by my own journey, one that against all odds can now claim the title of "Survivor of Suicide"
This is my plea:

Look beyond your own suffering & into the eyes & hearts of those around you, who deeply love you if not they might show directly to you.
If you die then a part of them dies too. A part so much deeper than your current suffering & pain more immense than yours.
Their questions of why will echo the empty chambers within for ever more & can never be answered.
Look beyond the fear you face & face the fears with faith & hope.
Because faced fears never expand to what we come to imagine.
Let me extend my hand of hope, to let you know that life is worth living & should I not meet your expectations then follow my footsteps of proof that things can, will & do get better with time & talking.
It may seem painful at first but every journey starts with a first step & each step taken is one of strength, courage & growth.
Be a survivor not a statistic & remember "it's OK not to feel OK & absolutely OK to ask for help"

Heavenly Angels Whispering

Today's storm has kept me in & seldom would I do a second post, but feel this ones worth the go 😇 The day has been tough, good & relaxing all rolled into one & that's just how I like it. Variety. A phone call earlier took my piece of mind & sent me spiralling into a frenzy of anxious & black thoughts. The nature of the call was with the best intent but the memories as to why I walked away in the first place came flooding back. See I'm very open about my journey, my transition & keep things very neutral or practical as I like to describe it. However people who I've trusted with the honour in sharing my adventure have betrayed me & shattered my trust, abused me & refers to me in a way I find unpleasant. So the only way is to trust no one & to find my own inner peace. This has meant walking away from supports because people blatantly make it obvious the don't want to deal with you & that suits me fine. I'm happy with my own company, always have been & I am being constructive with my indoor cycle training as the weather out there is crap right now. So I gets this call, asking me if I was going back Monday evening & the reasons why was to try & gauge my interest in the group. The last time I was there I became anxious & walked away. I've tried to fit in but trying is no longer an option I wish to battle with these guys. Well the head took off into negativity & that's OK too as it reminds me that it's still on the back foot trying to beat me down again. I sit with it & it gets no better. I put my meditation channel on & for the past few hours have had the long, slow soothing music I call "the voices of angels whispering" which has been & will remain my number one lifeline for safety & grounding. Now I'm starting to feel that sense of peace being restored. That wave of calm lapping against me like the waves of the ocean gently trickling against the sand. Yes this is where I feel safe, its where I can ground myself & remind myself of my past, future & more importantly my present as I live messenger moment by moment.

The storm in the midst

Ireland recently categorised names for winter storms & already we are seeing Desmond raise his head & cause havoc across the country.
High winds & heavy rain again this weekend & this in itself would be enough to make a massive dent in the mood of anyone.
For me its all about cultivating gratitude for what I have & being where I am right now.

I know all too well that constant storms like this rolling in & the impact they can have on weakening structures & uprooting trees.
All this though went on in my mind with conflict upon conflict flooded my life.
Yet despite all the odds I stayed standing.

Right now I am grateful for what I have & haven't got in my life, I'm grateful for my faithful companion Jess who has remained by my side these last 5 years through some very tough times.
I'm also grateful for the experiences that I've faced head on & battled through, one such experience was that which happened 3 years ago & was the changing point of my life at that moment & one that saw me severing ties with supports that I have now learned were never working for me.

I used to be so envious of stories I read of others at peace & I was still in conflict with my inner self. They were doing stuff I could only have dreamed of & yet never dreamed of because this stuff never happened to the likes of me.
Being engaged in society is something many take for granted, but when you spend an eternity sat on the fence fitting in is tough going.
It is not something that a person can admit to yet tries to fit into the role of despite not understanding the rules.
This got me into many situations where the impression I portrayed was actually totally opposite to my intent & it was those disheartening knocks that drove me further to the edge & to want out of the cruel world I saw.
A world that still to this day takes things on face value & judges accordingly. Such sad morals & values as I can see much deeper than face value & makes my time sitting on that fence seem more worthwhile that I'd ever could have imagined.

Back into blog

Tis been a good long while & I've decided to start documenting my journey once more 😇

The last few years has been taken up with survival skills after I hit the lowest point of my life.
Homeless & nowhere to turn, it all seemed like an endless nightmare that continued to spiral round & round with the same line of devastating fate each & every day.

The worst part is that the only crutch I had left, the drink, gave up on me & left me dealing with that too.

A change in fate came when the council had to do something with me & I was offered a lifeline of my flat I'm in today.
Nearly 3 years on from that time I am starting to rebuild. My quest to find happiness is once more on the radar & in recent days has been not just within reach but firmly in my grasp.

Since 2008 when I first completely broke down & my entire life has been marred with dark suicidal thoughts & now have to learn to live with peace.
Easier said than done for sure but can kind of get used to this.

Life today is about staying safe, staying sober & my mental wellbeing which I get from my cycling.

So in the coming days I continue to document my boring life in recovery & my quest to find my ultimate goal of happiness.

Needing to rant!!!!

I was debating between facebook or another forum that I use to do this, but what better place than my own blog. Possibly because no-one really reads this these days and evenif there is you are all people that know of me.
Anyway I have been sorting clothes out that were packed up on my behalf last year when my ex-landlord (total prick) decided that he didn't want me renting his place anymore and while in hospital I was not given the chance to clear my stuff.
Well after 7 months of being where I am now and many sleepless nights over moving my vehicles, I did it and drove the camper back to my residence.
Well the van stank of decaying food and rotten clothes that had been put into animal feed bags and nearly a week now I am getting the pile down and washed up. The stuff that still smells bad or ruined by default is being bagged up and accounted for before being dumped.
I am still missing stuff but it could be in the car as I have not yet retrieved that and needs to be towed in which will be done shortly.

Anyway what really fucking gets me is the fact that this guy and his wife, who knew nothing about me decided to sort my stuff out and that in itself makes me want todump the fekkin lot. It is like being burgled, someone invading your privacy and knowing what goes on in your private life.

Well these days I have a good landlord who knows about me and is really cool but the events of the past have really knocked me back, but not the point of depression but the fact that I am still reminded of the past where I was.

Anyway that feels a bit better now

x x x x x x x x

A rather boring update.

Yes it has been a while since I posted here and what has happened since my last post.
Back in November I started the course of treatment in the shape of Zoladex injections. This came somewhat a week after loosing my mother to her battle of cancer.
I really expected to loose her sooner rather than later and hoped for her own good that she didn't hang on in there too long as I really loved her and didn't want to see her suffering too much.
I hope now she is at peace and can watch down upon me with great fondness as I battle this world and discover pastures new.

So I started this injection that gave me relief from all the problems that I had been suffering for a good few years. Things started to settle and felt somewhat strange at first.
I was asked to describe how I felt to my psychiatrist and responded with "how the blood hell am i supposed to know" having spent the majority of my life in emotional and mental conflict I can only go on what has happened to me and now something new is happening to me and I cannot explain it apart from I feel settled.

This feeling continues with me as I try to pickup the pieces of a much shattered life to date and build new foundations on what was once a very "boggy" ground.
I feel amazing right now and although spending the festivities cooped up in a psychiatric ward, I felt that this was the best option for me at that time as with my loss of my mum plus the loss of a good friend.

So with that out the way I moved through January and things kind of turned from the bleak, non-exciting existence that I was living to something a little more colorful.

Although I have been living fulltime and name changed and all that, I had hit a low patch with my personal self. I had no interest in doing anything special to myself apart from lounging around in my pj's all day and the odd occasional scrape of the face to take the reminders of man-hood away from me.
This can be pointed to a few things happening in my life but this all changed when one of the days I was speaking to a neighbor and then he delivered his promise when I took delivery of my new best friend Jess.
Yes I have a little 11 week old puppy who is my life and soul and brought back the meaning of self-pride into my life.

The first week that I had Jess, I was bound for Dublin to see my Gender team and had to stay overnight in Killarney in order to catch the train the next day. Well if I knew then what I know now, I would have took her but my neighbor was so kind as to take her in for these few days I would be away.
Well I cried at leaving her and though back to the other 2 pups I had last year and when i left them the one day and never seen them again. That was the dark past and this is now, my life finally getting somewhere.

Well my trip to Dublin was a success and I was given a script to start on Estrogen replacement. About bloody time as I had fought for 2 years to get this far and it was actually happening.
I decided to wait off until the next week to start the medication and over the course of the weekend I took a turn for the worse thinking that this was not for me and all these negative thoughts I had to get past to get this damn script.
Instead of my usual tricks I phoned a friend who is post-op and she assured me that if this was the right thing for me then I would know about it and if it wasn't then I would know about that too.

Well i started to pickup myself and dust myself off once again as the week progressed towards Wednesday. Yep the day came when I picked up my script and that evening on returning home applied the patch. "Here goes, this is for the rest of my living days" I said to myself patting the patch down and like the nicotine patches that I used in the past could feel a strange sensation in the mind as this tiny thing got to work on me.

Well i must say that I seem to be fitting to this kind of well as I feel on top of the world right now and nothing can knock me back down.

Oooo and sorry for such a lengthy post

xxx Michaela

A black month over

I haven't reported anything here of late as there has been little to write about but the months of September through to November saw me in hospital again.
I had been prescribed a course of medication which needed to be administered by injection and my medical team this end refused to give me this medication, making up excuses at every turn.

My frustrations were running high and i hit a low which earned me the rights to have an admission for depression again.
Within the first week of being in hospital I found myself in ICU as I had been on a course of medication which totally put me out of my head and had gone off out and had a massive big overdose.

Getting over that and the subsequent weeks were extremely painful for me yet it was a pathway of recovery.
I had an appointment in Dublin where I should have started on my HRT but because of the refusal to give me my first meds, I was put back even further.
I had now another prescription for medication that would be refused to me and was in a city that nobody knew me, so my thoughts were running high of ending it all but seamlessly I made it back to Kerry again ad back to the security of the hospital.

I was promised that this time I could get this medication but excuses were made as to giving to me, so I approached me GP once again who administered the injection. Boy it hurt!

I learned through a third party that my mother had been taken seriously ill and her chances were slim to none. She passed away only a few hours later and because of such a divide between my mental state and bad memories of England, I was unable to get back to the funeral.

All in all a mixed bag of events during November and was dis-charged only 2 weeks ago. The abrupt action taken by my dr was a result of learning that I had my injection which she was totally against until I had been dis-charged from hospital.

Things have smoothed out never-the-less since and my life has taken dramatic leaps for the better. I feel more content within and things that I expect to get me down don't.

Now I have to wait till January to get onto HRT which I cannot wait for and have already made changes to my life and now living in a full-time roll.

Will report more on how things prgress as they do.

xxxx Michaela