Nothing I write here turns out the way I plan.


Last week I’d decided to talk about tunes to load my iPhone with and ask you to come up with some so that I’d have something to put a wiggle in my walk and keep me motivated as a I stomp around town trying to get my miles in.


My music knowledge is rubbish. If you leave it up to me, I’ll be listening to the Spice Girls on loop, which, embarrassingly, was the last album I bought circa 1997 – on cassette. Majorly behind the times, I didn’t upgrade to cds until I was 24 and even now I’ll be hard-pressed to tell you the difference between Amy Winehouse and Amy MacDonald. When it comes to music, I’m clueless.


That’s okay, I thought to myself, I’ll just write last week’s blog this week and no one will be any the wiser that breaking the taboo of suicide wasn’t my intention. But that’s before I factored in the events of the past the past nine days.


When I wrote about Ms Sceptical , donations for The Big Em and M Challenge had just reached £403.  Nine days later they’re at £563. That I’m already a one quarter of the way there is staggering. That I’ve achieved that in under six weeks of blogging is, quite frankly, astounding.


What is even more incredible – to my mind, at least – is that people are commenting on this blog and talking about the pain of suicide, which is a whole lot more than supposed health professionals.


Yesterday, I came across the consultation draft of suicide prevention strategy by NHS Dorset for 2009-2013. Section 6.3 is dedicated to the importance of promoting the mental health of those bereaved by suicide. In answer to the question: ‘What should be done?’ they’ve thoughtfully come up with the following: ‘help should be provided for those bereaved by suicide’. You’d never have guessed, would you?


Even more insightful is the heading ‘Actions taken’. The we’ve-put-a-lot-of-time-and-energy-into-this-response is ‘no actions known about’. It’s clear proof that for NHS Dorset, emotional wellbeing isn’t a priority.


It’s little wonder, then, that people knock back sleeping tablets to block out the nightmares and, in extreme cases, resort to drinking and drugs to numb the pain. Not that I did. I didn’t have that option. Four months after Matt hanged himself and no longer able to exist on a couple of hours broken sleep a night, I went to my GP.


“I’m sorry but I’m not giving you tranquillisers,” he said, after I’d managed to drag myself to his surgery and explain why I was a dishevelled mess.

“You need to work through the nightmares because if you don’t have them now, you’ll have them down the line”.


And let’s not underplay these recurring nightmares. They were deeply, deeply unpleasant to the extent that recalling them is upsetting. One saw me walking through the woods only to see a wooden board strung up in the place where my brother was planning to end his life. Sobbing hysterically, I would frantically untie the complex knots – thankful I’d been a Guide and knew my clove hitch from my sheepshank. Now that the knots were undone, he’d have to think twice about killing himself.


But, in the same nightmare, I came across his bulldogs that had been abandoned and I knew then something was wrong. I ran back to the place where I’d spent hours undoing the knots, only to see my brother hanging there anyway. On those nights, I’d wake up choking on my tears, anxious for morning to come.


It was my friend in New Zealand that got the importance of those dreams. “The mind is a very clever thing. It will be trying to make sense of something that just doesn't make sense” she wrote. “Your brain was trying to tell you there was nothing you could have done, which is a good thing. At least you have your subconscious on your side.”


They were wise words and ones I needed to hear – not that I have any recollection of that email exchange or the conversation with my doctor, who I now count among my circle of friends. Whereas I can remember everything up to March 31, 2009 in glorious Technicolor detail, everything else is hazy.


A few memories still exist: the day I was told about my Matt’s death; taking my nieces and nephew down to the playground in their North Dorset village; carrying my five-year-old niece across the graveyard so she couldn’t tread “on Daddy’s bones”; reading a Shakespeare sonnet at my best friend’s wedding and the poignant moment my students asked if we could sing a song in class and immediately chose ‘Three Little Birds’, which was played at my brother’s funeral.


What little I do know about the rest of that year is patched together from letters, emails, texts, my personal diary and other people’s recollections. The rest is blacked out.


None of my friends – bar the one in New Zealand who’s always been my soul sister – know the details of those nightmares because I’ve never talked about them.


I’m aware they’re not mind-readers and unless I tell them, they can’t help me. But in a society where admitting weakness of any kind is still seen as a stigma, it’s easier to bottle those emotions up and pretend you’re coping better than you are. It was as much for me as anyone else; I fervently wanted to believe I was making headway in processing my grief.


Like I said, my friends – and let’s be clear here, I am lucky to have some amazing friends - didn’t have a clue as to the extent of my suffering, just as I had no idea my brother was locked in a spiral of depression. 


And that’s the point, isn’t it? Few of us take the time to find out how friends, family and colleagues are really doing.


So look around you now – take a long, proper look.  Can you honestly say you know what’s going on inside someone else’s head?


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