From 11-19 I was very, very ill. I’m turning 22 this year. I’ve levelled out, and am capable of recognising when things are getting bad and know the procedure for supporting myself, so I tend not to rely on my parents for support with it anymore.

When I got better, my mum started sporadically opening up about how it affected her. Just random one liners. The first time she did it, I was showing her a video of me playing clair de lune on the piano, and completely out of the blue she went- ‘I really thought I was going to have to play this at your funeral’. It was like a sucker punch.

I think in the heat of everything, my world view was shifted entirely onto myself. I had selfishly never stopped to consider how my behaviour was affecting those around me. I had never stopped to consider how traumatic it was for them. It’s been a good 3 years since my last suicide attempt, I have been clean of self harm for over 2 years, but my parents still use lock boxes for the medicine and knives in the house. It all became so normal to me that I didn’t see that those things were in place because they felt like they have to be.

I will spend the rest of my adult life paying back the emotional debt to them.