Fancy a trip back through my past? Hop on – I’ll give you a backie. Over the next ten minutes, we’ll cycle over my lowest and darkest points. It’s a difficult ride, full of snags and pitfalls but well worth it for the view at the end. By retracing my route, I’ll give you an idea of what it’s like to live and care for someone after their attempted suicide. Then push on so I can show you how this led me into taking the wrong path and why I turned to nature to recover. Now, where to begin…Middle of the night. I’m on my way to collect yet another problem in the form of my wife’s difficult relative. They’ve been pulled out of a wreck of a car after driving off a harbour wall. They’ll be living with us for the next six months. Not just them, but their untrained puppy too. Every night, I’ll hear them sob themself back into a panic attack. I want to help them, but they are certainly not my kind of person. And the worst part is they’re starting to remind me of myself.
If I want to avoid becoming them, I need to open up about my struggles. I’m not sure how just yet but that somehow links to getting out of my own headspace and back into the great outdoors. And, for me, that means cycling.This is the story of how I moved from inner suffering to outdoor success. Hop on and I’ll tell you the rest.
Keywords: Anxiety; Depression; Attempted suicide; Support; Fertility; Stress;