David
A post about mental health and ‘attention seeking’.
Today, I’m going tell you a little story about someone I knew once called ‘David’.
All the years I was growing up, my mum’s best friend ‘Beryl’ was around.
Or ‘Aunty Beryl’ as we were encouraged to call her, in that what now seems quite a quaint, retro way.
Beryl and her husband had no children.
Her mother had suffered with mental health problems and Beryl’s childhood had been spent managing nervous breakdowns and mood swings, as well as living in Children’s Homes and with other relatives.
This was why as an adult, she actively chose to have no kids. The idea of any bestowing that genetic legacy upon someone or inflicting those painful memories on to a child, was to her, too risky.
Beryl had three brothers.
David was both the youngest boy, and youngest in the family.
Her baby brother.
Of all the siblings, Beryl loved David the most. Their bond was strongest. She had protected him from the worst of their mothers ‘episodes’.
I, of course, knew them as adults. I was a child myself at the time. I would see David and his two young sons. He was lovely, everyone liked him. A friendly, sandy-haired handy man type, always doing odd jobs for people. A great father and husband.
Until.
He started suffering with mental health issues.
I don’t know what the trigger was, only that he grew more depressed and irrational.
Beryl tried with him, would be there, talk to her little brother as she had always done.
But one day, for her, he crossed a line.
David tried to kill himself in front of his kids.
I think it was a high building he tried to throw himself from. For whatever reason it didn’t go *to plan*.
I don’t know everything. I would have been about 12 and heard the story in hushed whispers from adults.
But that was it after that.
Beryl never ever spoke to him again.
“You don’t do that to your kids.”
She told my mum and others.
“I can’t support him any more.”
Even though I was a kid myself at the time, I could never make my peace with that.
I found it extremely harsh and surprising.
That my kind ‘Aunty Beryl’ disowned her own little brother whom she’d been close to their entire lives, because of his inability to keep a lid on his failing mental health.
Issues their own mother had experienced.
Issues he’d not only been subjected to the brunt of, but also probably inherited.
And in later life, Beryl was carer for that mother.
The same mother who had found it hard to care for her all those years ago. It didn’t seem right to me that she got the care and understanding, and David didn’t.
I would watch this mild mannered old lady sipping tea and nibbling digestives, and I’d speculate on that childhood.
On how one person’s mental health issues can splinter and fracture an entire family with its impact.
There are many stories like this.
I read a post on Facebook the other day.
A man had been posting about how suicidal he felt.
“I’m sorry.”
He said, the day after.
“I wasn’t just attention seeking. I did genuinely feel low.”
And it made me reflect.
What is *just* attention seeking?
Why is it taboo to seek attention?
What is ‘attention’ exactly?
Someone giving you time, care, love?
A listening ear?
Reassurance?
Why is it bad to seek that if you need it?
They are soul food.
So.
Give yourself permission to do it.
Say what you need.
Is it a tangible thing - time, space, real life face to face human interaction?
Attention is worthy of you.
You are worthy of it.
Not everyone will ‘get it’ or be able to give it.
But anyone who chooses to think badly of you for seeking it, for wishing to replenish the rich river of life that is you, needs to work on themselves.
Yes, really.
Seek attention if you need it.
And
Attend to others if you feel able.
I find the whole mental health obsession within the media and social media as a strange one.
This is coming from someone who’s from a family with mental health issues, going way back to relatives been institutionalised, including one of my mum’s sisters.
I find the whole media obsession and frenzy around it bizarre, it makes me rather queasy surrounding their motives.
It seems amongst celebs mental health problems are seen as on trend as the band wagon to jump on.
I’m in no way demeaning anyones suffering, I know the daily is struggle is beyond real, what I cannot stomach is how it’s been turned into a circus industry, without any constructive move in help or increases in support initiatives put in place for suffers who are crying out for help, these are the ones who usually suffer in silence and very rarely attention seek.
I wish also people would realise we all suffer with our mental health, it’s part of what makes us human beings. I thought I was going mad being the only adult in my immediate family who could see the government bullshit for exactly what it was. I kept pointing out the emperor had no clothes on, to be just met with shrugs and blank stares.
All I know is even as a well mentally balanced person they tried their best to push us over the edge, using the public as weapons against us, there’s one person in our social circle who was vocal about people like me, you know those who chose bodily autonomy, should have been dumped on a dessert island and left to rot.
The government with the help of msm have a lot to answer for, their actions of mentally torturing the nation with the constant gaslighting and propaganda is beyond evil in its destruction.
They have destroyed so many lives, have not one jot of remorse or empathy, they go round and round in circles highlighting the problems they caused without not one solution for the poor sods who are suffering covered in darkness.
Thank you for this post. There’s a therapist who makes YouTube videos and a podcast (Kati Morton) who says that we’ve turned attention seeking into a negative thing when it is in fact a basic human need. We want and need to be seen and heard to feel meaning and purpose. Although I still believe some negative attention seeking behaviours exist, the way she explained it definitely reframed my thinking about it.