The next thing I remember her [GP] saying, cos she was talking quite a lot over the phone, she said, Oh yes, I did hear about so and so. Unfortunately yes she did commit suicide And, she said, it’s such a shame cos yeah she was a lovely girl And I sat there and I thought, oh my God. It just sort of like everything just whoooom just brought me back to where I was. And I thoughtand that was all they said. And I thought, oh my God, this person there’s somebody else has committed suicide, that’s probably in the same or similar boat to me, that’s obviously suffering with depression. don’t know what their story is, I don’t know whether they got help, I don’t know how far they’ve got, but they’ve committed suicide. And do you know what, they’re just gonna end up a statistic. That’s all they’ll be, a statistic.

And, I sat there and thought, is twenty odd years of what I’ve gone through, worth being a statistic? If I commit suicide, I’m just gonna be a statistic, I’m gonna be a fading memory. I’m not gonna have left my mark. Like, you know, why was I born? What, you know, what am I here for, I’ve got a purpose in life. I just. cos I haven’t found it yet, just because I’ve had a bad start doesn’t mean things can’t be different. So I sort of came round to the idea myself. But it was literally based on her having that conversation with somebody over the phone. I mean, if I hadn’t heard it, I probably would have said things would have been very different. But, something in what she said made me think, I don’t wanna be a statistic. And it’s the first time I’ve ever thought it.

She [GP] was great. She reassured me, she gave me a cuddle, she let me cry, she was just fantastic with me. I mean there aren’t many GPs out there that would hug you when you walk in to their office and hug you when you walk out. And she’s been like that with me for the past few years. And, you know, that’s fantastic. Most GPs want you in and out, you know, write out a prescription off you go. She’s not like that.

I am, I’m very, and I think you know again, it’s Karma, it’s fate. I was meant to have her as my GP and I’m fortunate enough to have her as my GP, and I could say, and I have said to her, if she wasn’t my GP I probably really wouldn’t be here now. And so for me she was my support. And still distant from it because I know she’s a GP and she’s there to do a job, but she was my support looking back.

Yeah, I was learning, and as much as she was learning from me, I was learning trying to understand myself a bit more. That I couldn’t always carry off a confident, face, a façade. I carried this face around for as far as I’m concerned, twenty four years. This false pretence of being somebody that I actually am not, because I believed it to be what other people expected. That’s wh- I was a character that everybody, that I thought everybody wanted me to be. I was a bubbly, lively person. I was probably one of the people you would never have thought suffered from depression. And, mainly because I hid it. And I hid it so well that it came natural to me. That, I wouldn’t necessarily open up to anybody. So, although it was all bottling up inside me, I’d had this session and I found some things come out that I wouldn’t talk to my best friend about.

Which I found really strange. I didn’t know how it had happened, and it made me, I suppose, crave more. See if the next session went like it. Or just see whether it would go how I expected it to.

And so I went back again. And, it panned out the same as the first one. And I thought, I you know, what’s going on? I don’t understand this. And I thought, well, obviously I’ve got this stuff that needs to come out. I’d love to know what she thinks about me. I’d love to know what her opinion is, I’d love to know what she’s trying to work out about me. I’d love to know how she perceives me to be.