Back when I was 19 and you and dad were pushing so hard on me to quit the job I loved to move home and be your slave and my supervisor was using me as a scapegoat for her failings and I was struggling with an undiagnosed eating disorder and the obvious symptoms of mild dyspraxia I reached out for help. I told my doctor I wasn't coping and she told me I was too you to have mental health issues, was making mountains out of mole hills and needed to just get on with things. 3 hours later I had to be talked off the roof of my work. I never told you.

6 months later when it all got too much and I did quit my job to move home you insisted on coming with me to the doctors appointment that should have given me my dyspraxia diagnosis. But I was seening a new doctor and you convinced them it was just stress and that's what they put in my file. Years later I tried to get the diagnosis overturned and was told it had been deleted.

When I gave birth to my middle child 5 months after you died I told the nurses in the hospital that I wasn't coping and I was told that as a mum I just had to get on with it.

When my daughter was born I told every medical professional I came into contact with for months that I wasn't coping. I got a health visitor coming to the house every few weeks asking if I felt like jumping off a bridge and more comments of "You're a mum of 3, of course you're struggling."

When lockdown was at it's worst I told everyone who spoke to me that I wasn't coping and again got platitudes and "well you have 3 kids" and I turned back to self-harming as a coping mechanism and became a horrible Internet troll just to get someone to pay attention to me. (I stopped again over a year ago and have tried to find better coping methods.)

Today when I woke up and knew that I didn't feel quite mentally stable I started to message my business partner to say I needed a mental health day. Then I thought about the fact I've been taking more and more of them lately. I thought about the fact my 9 year old says I'm always not feeling well. I thought about how often we order takeaway food because I can't face cooking, how the laundry bin is always overflowing, the dishes are never done and I'm about to start paying a cleaner because I can't always face it. And I decided I need help.

So I got brave and I phoned my doctor and I cried at him about how much I'm struggling. He gave me a number to call for counselling and some websites to visit and told me to call back if I wanted to try medication. I cried for a solid hour after because it felt like being pushed aside again.

Then I picked up my phone and I thanked God that getting that dyspraxia diagnosis deleted led to me getting a high level of critical illness cover because it now includes 6 free counselling sessions a year. So I spoke to a counsellor tonight and she told me to phone the doctor back for medication and put me on their CBT programme to help me learn to manage my stress and will check in with me every few weeks to see how I'm doing and what else she can do to help.

I did the thing. It was hard and it was scary and I almost gave up but I'm finally getting help I've been asking for.