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According to the Office for National Statistics, 18 people take their own life every single day in the United Kingdom. This made suicide a bigger cause of death than COVID in August. It’s time we take mental health seriously. Sofie, 

A single lamp illuminated the hallway that cold, winters night. I remember standing in the kitchen doorway staring at the front door, my father in the room adjacent. A draught chilled the house. As I stood there, everything in my body was telling me I had to walk down that hallway and upstairs.

My Grandmother had just left, having told us the news of her cancer growing untreatable. My Mother’s rock. An anchor, one whom would soon be gone.

As I pulled myself up the stairs, I was entering darkness. My Mother, I knew, was in her bedroom, but not asleep. Her door was ajar. I peered into the room and saw a lady, but not one I recognised. It was as though my Mother’s body was there but her being had been ripped out. She was sat, slumped, on the edge of her bed. Staring. Empty. Her eyes big and red, her mouth tiredly hanging open. Tears drying on her cheeks. 

She turned to me. At this point I was glued to the floor, unable to speak. Unable to think. I knew something was wrong; I’d never seen my Mother in such a vulnerable, broken state. A carcass of her usual self. 

“Go get your Father,” she said, seemingly without moving her lips, "I've done a stupid thing, Sofie." The words only confirming the worries I had. Even so, each syllable felt like a blunt knife through my heart. It was only then I saw the packet of paracetamol on the floor, ripped open. The smell of alcohol lingered in the space between us. 

Whilst I was only 12, I was always an old for my age. As an only child with a father who drunk heavily, I learned quickly how to fend for myself. Despite that, even now nearly ten years on, the hardest fact to face is that neither my Father nor I spotted my Mother’s decline into the black hole she found herself in that night. A black hole in which she’s remained ever since.

The flashing blue lights flooded the single hallway lamp. As I stood in the same kitchen doorway, I saw my Mother helped into the back of an ambulance, her arm draped over the paramedic’s shoulder. Her face, as she turned towards me, will stick in my mind for the rest of my life.

“I’m sorry,” she mouthed, emotion now bleeding back into her as she left the house.

Over the next two painstaking days, nurses were able to reverse the process my Mother had started. But what families who have been through similar fate will know, this plague isn’t over once the victim is discharged from hospital. There isn’t a day that goes by without a worry in the back of my mind that my Mother could do the same as she did that night. I’d be wrong not to worry. And as we head into further uncertain times, the ache in the back of my mind grows ever stronger. The reality that my Mother’s mental health is nothing more than a single thread, one of which could be thinning by the day, breaks me.

I wish I could say things have improved; that we look upon that night as a distant memory. No. It feels as though this state of unrest will live on in the house forever. My Mother can cope day-to-day, but the longer grind, especially throughout COVID, is what will wear her down again. It’s knowing this now, that’s so hard to live with.

The home is a symbol of family. Nothing should be inside those four walls other than safety and warmth, but somehow, a terrifying entity had forced its way in that evening. An intruder who has had a permanent residency ever since. Now, the place that holds so many childhood memories will forever be tainted; smeared with the memory of that cold, winters night.

If you, or anyone you know, is suffering with mental health problems at a difficult time like this, please explore the resources below.

SAMARITANS - 116 123 (24/7 for everyone)

CALM - 0800 58 58 58 (5pm to midnight for men)

PAPYRUS - 0800 068 41 41 (9am to midnight for those under 35)