It’s time to talk about this shot.
I previously wrote about this photo and what it meant to me.
But I didn’t get into everything, and after several conversations with people, I want to share a little more about the photo and how it directly relates to my mental health.
By June of 2020, I had been a manager in a newsroom and had not gotten a lot of sleep. I had only been a manager a little over a year at this point and the world was now in chaos. I couldn’t bring myself to go up to my bedroom so, from February until July I slept on the couch in my living room to be closer to my computers in case my team needed me for anything.
The company I worked for told managers they needed to take a break. Not only for our own sake, but also because COVID wasn’t going away and we needed to get back to the temporary normal was. So we all needed to take some vacation time to show the staff it was ok to do it too.
I was the last to go, and I very much didn’t want to.
My boss at the time kept pushing me to take time off as his concern for his team was growing. He joked that I could either take the time off, or he’d cut off access to the system.
So, I reluctantly took the time away from work. As I look back upon it, that reluctance was fear. Fear about where my mind may go if I focus on the current circumstances for too long.
You can read a bit more about the place and my time there in the other post, but the night I took this shot I broke down in tears back in my hotel room.
It looked great. I was so happy with the way it came out. It had worked the way I wanted it to and I had absolutely no-one to share it with.
Alone, and sad, and in tears I tried to sleep but just couldn’t. I lay there thinking of my friends I wish I could show, or the people who I wanted to talk to and share this moment with. I thought of my family and friends and all that I’ve experienced since moving to Winnipeg and the isolation and loneliness of living in a new city and…It wasn’t a good night.
The next morning I went for a drive. Driving (anywhere but Toronto) is calming. It clears my head, and allows me to process. But this morning those feelings of isolation were worse.
I was alone. No friends close by, no loved ones near, it was a feeling of complete and utter hopelessness. That’s when I saw it.
Far down the roadway I was on I saw a grouping of trees. The road split to go around them with one lane coming and one lane going and it occurred to me that I should drive my car right at them. And so I did.
The car got up to around 150 km/h and I felt my hand slide to undo my seatbelt. Working in news this story was one I was familiar with having covered single vehicle crashes a few times.
The front wheels left the roadway.
It was then that a voice in my head said “you don’t need to do this, you need therapy”. I pulled the car back on the road, drove straight down the pathway for another 10 minutes and cried again.
I got back to my hotel, packed up everything I had brought and had a very quiet ride back to Winnipeg.
I started looking for someone to talk to right away. I got connected with them and I saw her for a few months, but we didn’t quite gel.
But that was ok. She got me going on a path. I found someone else, we worked better together. Therapy is very much like a relationship, you don’t always meet the right fit on your first try.
There are plenty of times since that I’ve thought about taking my life again. That thought hasn’t gone away completely, even on anti-depressants. But each time I hit those points, I focus a little and regain my thoughts, I remind myself that there is always someone to talk to.
Sharing this story wasn’t an easy decision. It wasn’t one I wanted to do initially. This was something personal and I hadn’t shared it with a lot of people. But, in not sharing it, in hiding it really, I was trying to cling onto it. My therapist and I talked a lot about this in a session and sharing this story now is my way of letting go of it too. It is part of my story but it’s not the story. That story is still being written.
If you’re thinking of hurting yourself and live in Canada or the US please call 988 (which I just learnt about writing this), or call a friend, loved one, or just anyone to talk to for a few minutes. Trust me when I say that in the moment everything feels heavy, but it won’t feel as bad tomorrow, you just have to get there.