A very long time ago I gave myself a deadline. If my life hadn’t gotten significantly better by this deadline, I would kill myself.

My previous suicide attempts have been spontaneous, this forward planning is an entirely new concept for me but it will mean an 100% success rate.

My life did get better. I came out of Treatment and went to University and I felt hopeful about my life and my future.

Last year, after three years of breakdowns, both public and private, and a lot of things in between I felt I had no choice but to issue another deadline. My 22nd birthday.

New year, new start, right? I figured, hey eight months is long enough to turn things around.

So far this year my brother has attempted suicide twice, a few incidents have left me feeling more alone than I even thought possible, I’m hurtling towards failing university, my attempts at a career or anything resembling one have failed and the icing on the cake, I was raped.

I’ve not really talked to anyone except the police about it. I can’t say it out loud. I told my best friend, well, I texted him what happened and said I didn’t ever want to talk about it. It’s been nearly a month now, and after weeks of breaking down in tears at work, I was sacked. The flashbacks are less frequent now and I’m starting to sleep through the night again. But I don’t think l can ever have sex again.

I’ve done a lot of reading and apparently it’s very common to blame yourself. I’d been told before in a jokey way “one of these days, wearing something like that, you’re going to get raped”. Turns out it’s not so funny when it happens.

I went home to my mother’s house as soon as I left the police station, I didn’t tell her what was wrong because my mother can’t handle anything “real”. She’s got enough of her own issues and I don’t like talking about things anyway. I just told her I needed to stay the night. I cried in the bath for about four hours, the water was freezing and I was so shrivelled it hurt.

A month on and I still think about it every day. I don’t know what to do. I can’t change that it happened. I’m actually really surprised I didn’t try and kill myself after it happened. I had plenty of opportunity, I was in a car park, there was broken glass everywhere, literally I could’ve had my pick of methods. But I went into complete auto-pilot and I think I’ve kind of been stuck like that ever since. 

I definitely won’t do anything until my deadline is up. I need to give this a shot. Four months to go. It’s not looking good.