The song that saved me.

As I gather my thoughts, and begin to formulate the story of how this song saved me, I filter through every second that lead me to listening to this song, I question whether to talk backwards and explain that before I heard this song I couldn't walk or whether to fast forward and talk about the first time I remember running again. I have it playing in the background as my fingertips hit the keyboard, I'm taken back to the first time this song dripped slowly into my mind, it's still a little foggy, but here goes.

The hospital room is cold, or perhaps that was just the hollowness of my soul. There are black marks on the wall, that look like scrapings from where a hospital bed once was, the clock is placed just in front of me, I can still here the ticking, it was my only company when my mind was too loud to interact with humans. I'm buried under a pile of blankets attempting to bury myself six feet deeper. There is a constant beeping ringing in my ears from the machines that became an extension of me. Nurses filter in and out changing my drip, checking my pulse, and attaching different tubes every time the machines started frantically beeping again. The doors were too loud, nurses and doctors always running up and down the corridors with clipboards and medication in their arms, cradling them as if my life depended on it, it on occasion did. Footsteps felt like thunder, I was in a constant storm that only ever seemed to get worse, and get louder. I tried to stand up that day, not even realising that my body had temporarily paralysed itself. I needed to wee for the first time in a week or for as long as I can remember, I dug myself from out of my semi-permanent grave and stretched my arms to push myself up from the cave I'd been nestled within, when I realised my arms were weak, and my left arm was noticeably sore, that's when I remembered the 49 stitches that had been embedded into me the day before, I saw the thick cast and the bruised purple grey colour of my hand, I stopped for a second, and flashed back to the night I attempted to cut my way out of this existence. Blood still stained in my fingertips I grabbed the hospital sheets determined to pull myself up, my hospital bed was surrounded with a safety rail to ensure I didn't role out and collapse into another state of unconsciousness, I used this to bring me closer to the edge of the bed, when a nurse noticed I was moving and awake. She rushed over a little to quickly for my eyes to adjust to, startling me and apparently my heart too, I fell back down to the wallowing depths below me, exhausted in my attempts to simply just go for a wee. She collected my bones and emptied me into a wheelchair that soon became mine, I could barely sit up, my neck felt heavy not to mention my head. She wheeled me just a few steps down the corridor that I hated so much and practically held me above the toilet to have that wee I wanted so badly. As she helped guide me to the taps, the movements where too rapid for my heart to keep up, I started seeing black dots again, and wondered if this was finally it. Relief rushed over me as I began to fall, until I realised I was only falling back into the wheelchair. As I fell down into a heap I felt more empty than I'd ever felt. I don't remember the short journey back to my grave, but I remember awakening again.

It was the next day, I had woken up to the frantic beeping of the machines attached to me again, surrounded by nurses and doctors, there mouths were moving but I could never quite make out what they were saying, amongst the beeping everything else fell silent. My bed was slowly elevated with one of those reclining remote controls, my hearing came back when my head rushed as my blood pressure dropped into the cave of where I had just been lifted from. This storm was worse than it had ever been and I truly didn't know how to even carry on, not that I had any sort of choice. Struggling to find the motivation to open my eyes, my attention was brought to the bowl of popping rice krispies in front of me. I felt the weakest that I had ever felt, there was no way I could lift my aching arms to reach for the bowl of bland food, and not a single part of me that even wanted too. I had given up living, I had my reasons. Even though my heart carried on beating my mind no longer cared for anything at all. I sat staring into this bowl for fifteen minutes, with floating voices around me edging me on to just pick up the spoon. I couldn't and didn't, like I said earlier my mind had temporarily paralysed me. I didn't want to do anything that had the possibility of keeping me alive. A further long ten minutes passed by, but this time a food replacement in the form of this thick smoothie like drink packed with calories was sitting in front of me with a straw poking out. Nurses attempted to put the straw into my mouth, begging for their words of encouragement to be enough for me to drink it. Still nothing. My mind was screaming at me to die and I was doing the best job I could to try and ensure that death was still a possibility. When the ten minutes passed by, a handful of nurses filtered into the room, dressed in blue uniform, even their hands were coated in blue gloves, I noticed this navy blue tray placed on the end of the bed, a doctor joined the room. So, picture me sat upright in my hospital grave, two nurses sat beside me, three nurses peering over me, and a doctor joining the crowd. I sat empty and stone like, barely feeling like I was even existing, wondering what was coming next and questioning if death was involved, I hoped so. My bed began to fall backwards and the nurses blue hands began to grip my stone like figure, I felt as though I was falling again, and I couldn't quite tell if another panic attack or flashback was coming, turns out it was both. As the restraint became more severe and I felt as though I was chained down by the hold of these superior humans, my mind was taken elsewhere, I forgot how to breathe and screamed through flashbacks to a time five years later I still don't understand. Shadowing figures of men surrounded me in this cold bathtub, I saw my blood seeping from a part of me I'm still uncomfortable to disclose, the water was cold, and I felt myself choking. Palms of strange men pushing my chest back into this unknown abyss. As I felt this plastic tube being forced through my nose my flashback began to fade into this fogged place in my mind. My eyes could now see the ray of blue nurses surrounding me instead of the shadowing men. I find myself struggling to get out of there restraining grip, shaking my head, frantically trying to get this cold uncomfortable plastic tube out of me, I didn't want the food supplement, I didn't want anything. Life was not for me, and It destroyed me being forced to exist.

The day went on as they always did, I loose track of the time, but I think It's now the evening, I decide I can't take the beeping or the slamming of doors anymore, and I plug my headphones in for some sort of escape. I don't remember fully how I found this song, but one thing I do remember is that it made me feel something other than pain, Now I can't recall a time before this song that I wasn't thinking about dying and ways to kill myself. Bare in mind, I still couldn't walk, I could barely talk and barely move. So when I reached under my pillow for my phone and untangled my headphones, I had to take a minute to rest before I could even unlock my phone because these actions were enough to exhaust me, I powered through, aching for any other sound to drip into my mind and drip into my body. My left arm was still in excruciating pain, so I could only lie on my right side, but in doing this my back was facing the nursing desk and I hated being watched without seeing who was watching me, something about all of the sexual trauma I had endured made something so simple feel impossible. As the song began to play, I noticed something.

I noticed that breathing felt a little easier, I forgot I had my back facing the nursing desk, and the burning infected pain seeping from my healing cuts literally disintegrated into the notes of the music. I felt weightless and light, after so long of being used to feeling heavy and weighed down. I was floating. I felt feather like, it was some sort of outer body experience I have never recalled feeling before. The machines were still attached to me, the drip was still dripping unknown fluids into me, nurses came in and out, moving me around, changing my drip, adding different fluids to the tube placed up my nose. But I was sort of unaware or unfazed as I was so captivated by this song. Nothing seemed to really bother me, and nothing except for this song felt real. So I had it on repeat for the remainder of that evening, throughout the night and again when I woke. I felt as though I had some sort of calling to just listen to this song, and somehow that made the days a little easier. No I didn't dramatically over night get 'better', it was this slow painful process, but second by second breathing didn't feel like such a chore. Meal by meal I stopped being tubed and started to at least drink the food supplement. Day by day the things attached to me lessened. It felt like I was in that hospital for a lifetime, and I can't tell if things slowed down or sped up after hearing this song. But I could finally walk again.

After a couple of slow, hard, exhausting weeks with this song on what felt like repeat, I was discharged from this general hospital back to the adolescent psychiatric ward that I'd been in before the worst and last suicide attempt of my life. My journey back to the ward was different. As we drove over bridges I wondered if my mind would jump back to the routine of wanting to jump off of them, as we flew over them I felt deflated and empty, almost as if I was missing that depressive part of me, I thought about it still, but I didn't cry when we got over, I didn't ache to jump off of it, I just felt this floating nothing. Empty again, but in some sort of good way. My first night back in my other hospital room was cold and lifeless, pictures of my dog and horses were scattered across my door and stuck to my walls. my blankets were neatly folded on the pillows, towels placed at the end of my bed, and my diaries sat on the heated floor. I couldn't bring myself to shower just yet, so I dipped back into my old routine and slowly put on my three layers of pyjamas, laid out my blankets and slipped into this hard mattress bed. As I sunk into the cold sheets I reached for my headphones and mp3 player, searching for this song again. I couldn't find it for days, and for those days without it I struggled.

It's now 4 am again, I'm wide awake with a mind convincing me to go back to old habits, trying to persuade me to die again. Then without even searching or looking, this song comes on. I don't realise it's this song until I'm half way through listening to it, I take it back to the beginning and put it on repeat again. I sit up on my bed, no machines caressing my body anymore, no drip attached to my veins, no more daily blood tests, no more constant tubes being forced in and out of my nose scouring my throat, emptying liquid food into me I didn't want to consume. No more daily restraints or bed rest. No more screaming of other patients next door to me. Instead it's quiet, I can hear an echoing drum of not so loud doors shutting through the building, and every now and then a nurse shines a torch through the door just to make sure I'm alive and breathing. I'm sat at the end of my bed, writing endless scribbles from my mind into my 'diary', when I look up to see a picture of my dog smiling away looking as though he's staring at me. I forget where I am for a moment as I fall into the music again, imagining seeing my dog with this song playing as some sort of anthem in the background. I drift peacefully to sleep, bundled on top of my words and uncomfortably sprawled across these blankets.

Fast forward three years to when I heard this song again. I could've cried, I could've danced, I could've jumped up and down with uncontrollable happiness. But I just stayed still, remembering everything. Everything I've ever been through, everything I've ever endured, every moment that lead up to this song, and everything that followed, and just truly, fully listened. Still to this day I'm trying to figure out what it was about the song that was so powerful that it literally saved me. And I guess I'll get back to you when I've worked that one out. But for now I'll let it continue to captivate me, and inspire me. I hope it might just do the same thing it did for me for someone else. So, here's to music saving lives because this song truly did save mine.