And now it’s my, got really, getting out of bed in the morning, hot flushes, sweatiness, shakiness. And sometimes I feel like I’ve got something in my mouth like a ton of bricks. When I talk my tongue’s sometimes twisted and my throat dries up. I get out of breath. Sometimes I get like a feeling that I’m not the same person. And I get angry’

And sometimes the doctors don’t take a lot of notice. They just put everything down to anxiety, panic attacks and this and that. It’s like if you get aches and pains, ‘Oh, it’s, it’s anxiety. If you get a swollen stomach, ‘Oh, it’s anxiety. You’re worrying too much. You don’t have to worry and you still get all these symptoms. Like, you know, when I’m laid down I get really numb. My head goes like it’s, it’s like I’m not laid on a pillow, it’s like I’m laid on a brick. My head, it goes really tense. All my mouth it’s like it’s, I’ve got like a ton of bricks in my mouth. It’s like, it’s just like having numb, really numb teeth and numb faces and that. And then my fingers and my thumb and my hands go numb. And then my legs go numb. My knees lock. And I just think to myself, you know, ‘I need shaking up. I need, I’ve got to be renewed again, you know. I’ve got to be a new person. If I carry on like that, maybe I’m going to end up in a box. I’m not going to be here any longer, you know. But I just say to myself, ‘Well, what’s going to happen, it’s got to happen. But I’m trying my best. And I know, you know, if every, anything did happen, I just want my children to know that I tried my best to be a good mum. And what’s gone wrong in the past, I tried to put everything right. I tried and tried, but I can’t do any more. You know, I’ve tried and tried. That’s the end of it now, that’s all. So, but it’s just all these panic attacks what get me down now, and anxieties and I get out of breath. And at night-time I’ll be asleep and I’ll wake up in, like I’m going down. And then I woke up in a shock and I can’t breathe. I’m panicking, I’ve got to open the window, sit there and start puffing and making myself breathe. Then if I can’t, if I’m not that settled, I’ve got to walk the rooms. And cool myself down, because I go really hot. It’s like I’m on fire.

And it’s awful, because one night I was just laid in bed and nowt never happened to me like that before. It just happened like I was laid in bed just normal, and all of a sudden I started dribbling from there. And then all my body went all cold like I was in an icebox, really numb. And my head, it was just freezing cold. And I was, my teeth was chattering. And I thought, ‘Oh, well, what’s going on here?’ in my mind. And then all of a sudden I felt this rush come up to me, hot, really hot. And it went to my head and all I saw were red. I thought, ‘God’s ready to take me. It only happened for just a second. It were like, I could see, it were just like the room went red and it were just like my body was on fire. And I went right into a deep hole, I can remember that. I went right, my, like my brain were going round, down, down, down into this like bright deep red hole. And then all of a sudden I just went numb and I went cold. And I felt all this thing come down me again. Then I was okay. And that really scared me, that night. It were just a weird thing that happened. And I just said, you know, said to myself, ‘Well, be calm, [Shareen], you know. There’s nowt, there’s nowt there, you know. And then I got up, had a glass of water, then I went into telly room, watched the television. Then I couldn’t sleep.

I couldn’t cope with it. I were crying. I were seeing stuff at night-time. I couldn’t sleep. I were getting like fears, like the house has got on fire. But it wasn’t. I was seeing smoke in the house. I were getting scared that if I go out on my own, I heard footsteps behind me and stuff like that. And I just didn’t, I didn’t want to live any more. I’d just had enough. I just thought, you know, ‘Why has God put me on this earth? Why am I suffering that much? What have I done to hurt somebody?’ And I was thinking to myself, ‘If I weren’t here, the big trouble would be, you know, all the trouble would be gone. Is it because I’m the youngest and that’?’

One day I was that so down because my husband and me had had an argument. And in-laws came in and they said to me, you know, ‘You’re not a good wife. You’re not a good mum. And I always thought to myself, ‘Is it me whos causing all these problems? Maybe I’m not a good mum, I’m not a good wife. So, and I thought to myself, ‘You can’t do right for wrong here. So I said, ‘A dog gets treated better than a human being”

I mean people there, they get mostly everything. I’ve never asked anybody for this and that. And sometimes I think, you know, ‘Is it, am I being punished for it? Have I done something wrong? Is that why I’m going through all this and going through all these anxieties?’ And I want to laugh. I don’t want to cry any more. But I can’t laugh.

I’m trying my best. But these, I can’t cross the roads. I can’t go out anywhere on my own. I can’t even get a bath on my own. I can’t even, I’ve got to have somebody there at the bath, near the bath or near the door to make sure I can get out, because I have these panic attacks. Because the other day I, I got a bath and my mum were downstairs. I got a bath and I got out of bath, and that were it. The panic attack started. I started breathing really heavy. It was like my breathing stopped. I couldn’t even talk. And my heart, it was just racing so much I felt I’m going to just, having a big heart attack. And, and I’m saying, ‘Mum, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe. She’s saying, ‘Come on. Breathe, breathe, breathe. And I’m saying, ‘I can’t. And tears were just rolling down. And my legs and my arms and my body were just completely shaking. So I had to blow in these paper bags like I’ve been told to. And then it released. It was okay, I was okay then. Then I had to take one of my tablets, one of them tema- paza-, mazepam. And I were asleep for two days. And I woke up and I were feeling okay in myself.

Because I’ve done everything, I’ve tried to put my life back on, in line. But nowt goes right for me. Everything goes wrong. It’s like every time a block, it’s like going into that wall and blocking yourself in it, putting bricks and bricks until you’re blocked in that you can’t breathe. And then it’s like when a happy day starts for me, I can throw a brick off of that wall and start breathing. And I think, ‘Wow, this is a lovely day. And then only half a day I can have a nice day. And then in the evening, that’s it. I’m back to my moods and back to tiredness. I’ve no strength or nothing. I’m getting really weak in myself. And then sometimes I think, you know, ‘Why is it me all the time whos got to suffer? Why is it me whos always got to go down?’ It’s just like climbing up a ladder and saying, ‘I’m climbing up this ladder. When am I going to reach that top?’ And nobody knows when I’m going to reach it. But I’m always slipping back down this ladder. And sometimes I just think it’s not worth living, you know. But then I say, ‘My children are growing up. If I’m not here, whos going to look after them then?’ Because when I get poorly, like in the past when I’ve been poorly they’ve had no food, you know. Like sometimes my sister’s come round with, with milk and biscuits, something like that for them. Or sometimes she’s cooked their food. But I know if I’m not there my children have not been fed or clothed. So it’s important for me to be strong and be there for my children. It’s hard, but I’m trying’

Feel like I want to suffocate myself or put like a rope over the, somewhere so I can hang myself. And sometimes when I’m in the bathroom I’ll talk to myself in front of mirror. It’s like I’m two people sometimes. I’ll say bad and I’ll say good. I’ll say to myself, ‘Well, don’t do this. It’s not, it’s not right. You’ve got kids. And I’ll say, ‘Well, I’ve put up with all this before. Why should I put up with it? I’m packing my bags and I’m going. And then my mind will click, ‘Oh, you’re going downstairs. Why don’t you jump off of this, you know, fall downstairs? You might break your leg or you might end up in hospital. Then I think to myself, ‘No, I can’t do that. If I do that, whos going to look after my kids?’ You know. Things just come to my mind.

And then I had my first son. He was about 8 months, no, sorry, he was, he, when I had him, about he was 2 months old, that’s when I started working. And my sister took over the looking after him. She had a daughter as well. Nine days between them. And she looked after them while I worked, me and my mum. We brought us wages and put food on the table and everything for them. And we used to take, take it in turns sleeping because there were only three rooms and there was six of us in one house. So we had to wake one person up and say, ‘Get out of the bed. It’s my turn to sleep now. So it, it carried on to be rough and everything but we got through. And then we got us own association house, me and my husband. And we settled down.
And then after that they told me that I couldn’t have no more children. It took about three years to have another child. And I got really down, I got really depressed. Anybody used to talk to me, I used to just snap at them. I used to get up at night and just open the door, just wander off. And my husband had to go looking for me. And I’d be walking the streets not knowing where I were. So he had to bring me back. And then I used to just get really annoyed with my husband. And my husband were getting fed up of me. He were just saying, you know, ‘I try my best here. I used to nag at him all the time. And he’ll come home and say, ‘Is the food cooked?’ I’ll say, ‘No, it’s not cooked,’ you know. ‘Why haven’t you cooked owt?’ ‘I can’t be bothered. And I was just getting that way, I couldn’t do nothing. So we started arguing.

Then he turned to drink. He turned to drink and every night kept on coming home drunk. Then he started gambling, spending money what we didn’t have to spend. So that got me really down. And then his family came on top. His sisters and that. And they started interfering with everything else. So I just told them where the door were. They didn’t like it. So me and my husband started arguing again over them.