WORLD MENTAL HEALTH DAY 2020
*TRIGGER WARNING - I talk about my mental illness and a huge breakdown. There is very brief and not at all detailed mention of suicide and self-harm.* About this time four years ago, I was in a terrible state. My mental illness had been getting harder to manage since moving to Switzerland a decade before, and earlier that year I’d had the last of many miscarriages at a time when I’d finally stopped expecting to fall pregnant at all. It hit me hard. I was 43. I tried to ask for help, to communicate what was going on with me, or thought I had, but for whatever reason it hadn’t worked. I was an old hand at self-medicating and would binge drink like I thought it would save the rainforests, and boy did I turn that shit up a notch. I wasn’t looking after myself in any way, shape, or form, hadn’t been for months on end, and then I got sick. Really sick. A nasty bout of viral Bronchitis, with a side order of broken rib from all the coughing, I can still hear the sound it made, an i...