Suicide and self harm ...a taboo subject and how I arrived at becoming suicidal

As long as I can remember I have suffered with feeling sad and feeling not good enough.At 8 years old i would write i hated life. I am adopted and have since found out my birth mum who died as a result of me being born also self harmed and was suicidal and had been sectioned for her mental health...obviously a genetic link and a history that was to repeat itself. So at about 12 years old I was told the little information my adoptive parents had been given about my birth family and although I had known I was adopted this was when I found out the whole information. My birth mum was 28 when she had me and died from septicaemia after I had been born by caesarean section and she died when I was 2 months old and I felt it must have been my fault and she wouldn't have died if I hadn't have been born...I also felt my sister who is 4 years older must have felt the same. So at 12 years old I decided I deserved to be dead by the time I was 28 as that's when my mum had died. From around that time my way to deal with my depression was with food...mostly restricting food and some bingeing and purging and some self harm which would get worse into my 20s. I got bullied throuroughout school and college so felt i never fitted in so i focused on hobbies and work helping people and animals but couldn't help myself. At 24 i had a challenging job with adults with challenging behaviour and my own self harm was at its worst so i got signed off sick, and my gp put me on prozac...which in younger adults can cause suicidal thoughts and behaviour...i told my gp I was getting strong suicidal thoughts so he just told me to take a higher dose which led to me taking 3 overdoses in one weekend...at that point I hadn't reached 28 so hadn't reached that magic cut off age yet...I didn't want to die. Fast forward a few years with no more helpful mental health treatment for my eating disorder or self harm I decided I  was nearly 30 and was still alive and a way to justify being alive was to train as a mental health nurse as I was passionate about helping other people and thought I could use my own personal and professional experience to be a good nurse...which I could have been had I been given effective treatment for my own mental health problems...you cant help other people until you are well enough yourself. I did an access to nursing course and despite my own problems continued to work as a support worker myself but I got bullied at college and my sister found some biological uncles and my birth mums foster brother...it turned out her mum had also died when she was 2 and she was fostered separately to her brothers. The foster brother knew her the best and told us how she had self harmed and been suicidal from being young and when she got septicaemia after I was born she refused treatment so that then made me think we obviously weren't worth living for. I do often think I wish I hadn't been born and my mum obviously thought life wasnt good so why did she decide to have children. All this happening stirred up emotions in meand my own self harm got worse and then I got obsessive suicidal thoughts that I deserved to be dead, I was never going to be stable enough to train as a nurse so I acted on those thoughts.it got to a point it was like a mantra in my head which connected to my eating disorder "you fat cow you deserve to die" I dont know why it became thise thoughts but the only way they went was to act on them and I took lots of overdoses over a couple of years ending in heart failure and chronic kidney disease.  I ended up sectioned in mental health hospitals and had totally given up...I was tying ligatures daily and my self harm increased to banging my head on walls and I pulled all my hair out. Any part of the rational me had gone. I have a horse Warwick who I love and I have supportive adoptive parents who I also love but I convinced myself Warwick would be fine without me and I felt I was a burden to my mum and dad. I got no therapy in hospital which is another long story for another post one day but there were caring support workers who thankfully did save my life as I was on 1 2 1 IBS which means you have someone watching you 24 hours a day which wasnt always a good thing...you are watched in the bath and in the loo you definitely lose your dignity when things are that bad but I honestly wouldn't be here if I hadn't had that level of support..my thoughts were just telling me I had to die...I would use any item of clothing or bedding to tie and got found unconscious a number of times. I then got meningococcal septicaemia and pneumonia and ended up in the high dependency unit at rotherham hospital and my kidneys failed. Ironically I was telling the mental health support workers to not let me die...they said they had been cutting ligatures off me for months. After that I got scared of dying and I would go out with my mum to see Warwick my horse and got home leave and I was positive about being discharged back to the community rather than being in hospital. I felt the safest I had in years and the suicidal voice although hadn't gone was dulled and I lived back in the community in an open supportive rehab. Then my depression came back as I realised fitting back into normal community life after being in hospital for a year wasnt going to be as easy as I thought.All my old friends lives had carried on without me in them and obviously my family also have their own lives to lead. That's not to say they dont care...we're really close but my parents said I needed independence away from them so it was my first time not living with them so I had gone from living with my parents to 24 hour care in hospital to less support in a supported flat but there was alot less support than I was used to. The normal progression of life is to move away from your parents and settle down in a relationship,possibly have kids and a career. Due to my social anxiety and my life plan of dying at 28 I never lived that life and to be honest I would do anyones head in to have relationships with so I dont allow people that close. Now my biggest fear is my parents and horse dying and I am scared of being on my own without them so I get suicidal thinking I wont be able to live without them. I feel I live to die but my parents and horse could have years left and I need to learn to enjoy the years we have togather rather than be fearful of what might not happen for a long time yet. When I have low mood, and feel lonely they are triggers for the suicidal thoughts to get stronger and that's when i act on them. I am getting better at setting goals and finding enjoyment in hobbies to try fight those times. Im starting a therapeutic community soon that hopefully might help me to manage those emotions better. The point of this post was that suicide is seen as selfish, in some religions it is seen as a sin, people who self harm or who make suicide attempts and survive are classed as attention seeking but it is part of an illness, a reaction to unbearable life experiences so dont judge people, be there for them...for me it is never a definitive I want to die...there is always an element of survival instinct...when you get to the point of nearly dying you panic andsomething wants you to live and that's the part that has made me seek help when I have been able to...that doesn't mean it was for attention...it means that my survival instinct kicked in...