Broken

The last few weeks I've been in a bad place. I've kept going, despite feeling suicidal. The only thing that's kept me going is that I feel I owe things to people.

I owed it to the Burleskin girls to be at Home Farm Festival performing with them. Both in troupe routines and doing my solo.

I owed it to my coaches who have put in a lot of time and energy with my training. In the last 12 months I've come a long way from where I am physically. I'm much more capable as a triathlete than I was when I crashed last year.

Yes, it's been a year since I admitted that I needed help and started bereavement counselling and taking anti-depressants.

I owed it to work to complete the tasks I had. I owed it to colleagues to work on developing the transgender awareness workshop we put together and had been delivering. I owed it to people to support them.

I did everything I could to meet those commitments.

Until yesterday.

Things got a bit stressful at work in the morning, so at lunchtime I went out to get a bit of fresh air. I sat in the car and felt tears starting to flow, so I headed to the doctors and made an appointment to see one of the GPs. I was heading towards a breakdown I know, and if I hadn't got help then I don't know where I'd have ended up.

After making the appointment I drove, firstly home, and then to the crematorium. That was where the tears really started to flow. I miss Rhys. I hide it well, I hide the pain of losing my wingman, but I still miss him and the pain is always there, even if I don't admit it, even to myself.

So yesterday I finally broke. Not physically but emotionally and mentally.

The doctor upped the dosage on my anti-depressants, which will take a couple of weeks to kick in but that will help when they do.

I was supposed to be in Finland for the next week but the chance of me spiralling downward without anyone around to support me didn't warrant the risk so I've not gone. I've also pulled out of my remaining races this year and stopped being trained by my coaches.

That doesn't mean I'm going to stop training, it just means I'll be doing it at my pace and figuring out what I want to do as I go along.

Going forward I'm going to work on sorting out my mental and emotional health. I want to get back the strength I used to have, the strength that was at my core. I'm determined to do that.

A lot of the things I've been doing have been geared around a belief that I needed to do them. I'm changing that now. There's something I've wanted to do for a while so I'm going to do that. I'll be sorting that out next Tuesday.

From now on I'm going to make it a priority to do things I  want to do, not need to do because of a sense of obligation to others. Life is for living but it is also for enjoying. If you're not enjoying what you're doing then why are you doing it.

Don't live your life doing something you don't enjoy. Do something you love instead.