A few years ago, I felt so broken I couldn’t see how I could ever be put back together again. A decade of trying to help people in crisis shattered my mental health. I developed a twitch, I couldn’t sleep, and worst of all I felt pointless. Before, I had been confident, and an active fighter for many good causes.
From childhood, I hated injustice and I fought against it. As an anti-fascist, I was put on a hit list by Nazis. I marched against wars, job losses, racism. And, when the government targeted disabled and unemployed people with benefit cuts, I challenged Iain Duncan Smith to debate his policies. He ran away.
Then, I became a Welfare Rights Officer. In many ways, it was my ideal job. I helped to appeal hundreds of awful benefit decisions. I fought, like all my colleagues, on a front line where the bullets were unfair laws. Food bank queues grew longer and the people we tried hard to protect became inevitably depressed. Suicides increased.
I hate to see people suffer. When we fought in tribunals and won, it was great – some suffering was brought to an end. But when we lost, and I saw despair in the eyes of some poor soul, I blamed myself. And, when more and more people ended their lives because they had enough of being persecuted by an uncaring system, I began to feel we were losing a war.
With the help of my wonderful family and a cat called Nergal, I slowly climbed out of my shell-shocked state. I began to notice the world again. The beauty of Fife coastal walks, holding a purring cat, photographing trees and flowers. I was even able to return to a caring role, as a Support Worker.
I see myself as a survivor from the same kind of mental health struggles which have been the storms of millions of lives. I wrote about that, in a poem called ‘see us’:
Far out at sea
Lost now and then
Amongst heavy, angry waves
A thousand
Tiny white sails
Herald a thousand
Lost souls
Trying to come home safely.
When no one watches
And no one shares
The same cold rain,
First one and then another white blur
Goes.
But when the crowds,
Their eyes as bright as candles,
Line the shore –
One by one
The lost come home.
Harvey Duke
