Be prepared, strap in and get comfy because this is going to be a long one.

It’s currently May 2026 which means it's officially Mental Health Awareness month. Now, the reason it’s so important to me to be talking about it today is because this is something that is deeply personal to me and hits especially close to home as it also marks 10 years since I attempted to take my own life.

This isn’t something I’ve shared with many besides my closest friends and family who unfortunately had to bare witness at the time so to be sharing this for the world to see and potentially judge me for feels more vulnerable than anything else I could possibly share about myself. But I know for certain that I’m not the only one out there. There’s a lot more people out there just like me who have fought silently behind closed doors for years of their life. And I think it’s finally time I speak up and share my story in hopes of joining in to end the stigma surrounding mental health and hopefully reach others like me and let them know that they’re not alone in this fight. Because how else are we meant to fight this thing if we can’t even take the first steps by talking about it?

If I’m being completely open and honest, I’ve carried so much shame with me about it for years. Ashamed about what I tried to do and ashamed to carry such a heaviness that’s been with me for as long as I can remember. But not only ashamed, I felt incredibly guilty for knowing what it could have done to my family, the trauma and pain I’d only be passing onto them had I been successful in my attempt. I couldn’t even speak about it to anyone for years without getting choked up and feeling an all-too-familiar lump in my throat. An inner turmoil that has eaten away at me for so many years. It’s felt like a life-long secret I’ve kept hidden for more than an entire third of my life. I thought struggling with my mental health made me weak, I thought it meant I was incapable of coping and functioning with day to day life like everyone else, I thought it meant there was something fundamentally wrong with me. I was 14 at the time, I look back now and realise just how young I was to be facing something so debilitating. I think about the last 10 years of my life and I realise just how much having to deal with poor mental health has stolen from me.

The thing with having depression and anxiety is that it secretly isolates you. It creeps up on you and convinces you that your life is worthless, that you don’t matter to those around you, that you’ll never be happy or fulfilled. But what’s worse than fighting a battle in your mind every single day? Fighting that battle alone. And doing it so quietly as to not disturb the people around you whilst you’re silently drowning. And that’s the exact reason they call it the silent killer.

So that brings me to today. Not all of those who have fought the silent killer can say they made it out alive. It’s taken so many loved ones from so many of us. And for me personally, I’ve spent 10 years of my life wanting to die but, now? well, now I’ve decided I finally want to do something that truly makes me feel alive. And what’s a better way to do that than to walk the tightrope between life and death by jumping out of a plane 14,000ft in the air.

Fortunately for me, I’ve been blessed enough that Linear are supporting me with this and we have set up a JustGiving where half of the donations will go towards Young Minds UK Charity and the other half will go to the Samaritans UK Charity. I’ve chosen these two charities because I want to do something for the young people in the UK who are struggling with their mental health like I did and are urgently needing support. Young people often tend to get overlooked when it comes to mental health due to their age, we tend to dismiss their pain and struggles because we think they’re too young to understand what it truly means to struggle. But I disagree, I understood it just as much back then as I do now. And there are so many young people out there today going through exactly what I went through at their age. I’ve also chosen the Samaritans as they’re a suicide prevention charity. Just because I was lucky enough that my attempt was unsuccessful doesn’t mean all of us manage to get out unscathed and get a second chance at life. We lose 7,000 people on average to suicide each year, that’s around 20 people per day. We NEED to be doing more to support eachother. We NEED to be having more conversations about it and checking in on one another.

And to those of you who wake up everyday still fighting the good fight, just know I’m right there beside you. You are never alone despite how much your mind tries to trick you that you are. You are NOT a burden, you are NOT weak, you are NOT incapable, you are NOT damaged goods. You are human, you are resilient, you are brave and you deserve to feel like you belong in this world. Keep going. Keep kicking, keep screaming and keep clawing your way through it one day at a time if you have to, just do whatever you can each day to keep moving forward. Don’t give up. Do it for you, for the people who love you and for our fallen friends who could no longer keep fighting. There will be a light at the end of the tunnel one day. And I hope we all reach it, hand in hand, together.

Mental Health Support Hotlines for those who may be needing it:

Young Minds Uk - 0808 802 5544

Samaritans UK - 116 123 or 0330 094 5717