Around 800,000 people commit suicide each year!! That’s a fucking massive number.

Broken down it’s the cause of death for over 3,000 Australians each year. 3,000 each year, that’s ridiculous.

Suicide is Australia’s leading cause of death for people between the ages of 15 and 44.

That’s 800,000 families world wide grieving for the loss of loved ones purely from suicide. Wow!

These numbers are scary, sad, shocking and they are real.

I think it proves just how lacking the mental health system is and can be., don’t you think?

I have been touched by suicide within the family and multiple friends with suicidal ideation. Over 65,000 people Australia wide attempt suicide each year!!

Personally though and luckily I’ve never been suicidal myself. I have however thought about running away, that everything would be so much better for everyone else if I just wasn’t right here, right now. That’s the thing though isn’t it, when people are in that dark of a mind set it is too hard to see the light, it’s too hard to really realise that there is help and there are people who genuinely care. You think this is never going to end and that you will be like this forever, so sometimes it may seem that this is the only way out. Many times I have genuinely thought that I was going crazy, that I was losing my mind and that I would be stuck in this fear for the rest of my life, I know for a fact it is hard to see the light when your sitting in the dark.

The number of times I have heard people say they can’t open up, or show emotion because it makes them vulnerable or they need to stay strong is ridiculous, at what point in life did/do we learn that all of this isn’t normal and we can’t or shouldn’t show emotion.

I often say on a bad day that “I just want to be normal” but what is normal?! Normal for me I guess is who/what I was before I started to suffer but I know that person is long gone and she’s never coming back. I just have to take every day as it comes which isn’t always as easy as it sounds but I do it.

Each year 1 in 5 females and 1 in 7 males engage in self harm.

Loosely speaking self harm is a release, in some way that pain feels good, that pain is your outlet. When I was a teen I used to punch walls, no idea how it started or why but it was an anger release. Now days I get tattoos, the pain is therapeutic but costly haha.

My mum has always said “your mental health is like living on a knifes edge”

Truer words have never been spoken, one moment is all it takes and you can be tipped over that edge!

There is always help though and always someone who cares.

If you can’t console in someone close to you, call lifeline 13 11 14