Suicide is never far from my mind these days. I mean how many times am I prepared to throw myself at systems over and over again knowing the outcome, after nearly a decade & half of doing it, isn’t ever going to change.
But a few weeks ago I found myself on Vauxhall Bridge staring into the water and thinking of what solace could come next.
I was there because I was walking to my doctors, because after having discovered beau’s lines on both thumbs a few days after having a barrage of tests for cancer, which all came back clear, I’d emailed to discover if I should be concerned (they usually appear after a severe illness like diabetes or Vascular problems occur) but after months of chasing, I had received no response and they were about to grow out. I don’t have access to a phone so I walked to the practice in Vauxhall, in the building where I used to live.
I couldn’t help but smile that I knew exactly where to stand for the optimum chance of success in my quest, because of a sign.
A sign very generously placed there by the Samaritans. I loved the exquisite ironiy of an organisation designed for the prevention of suicide, becoming the guide for those who were considering it.
The sign read:
“SAMARITANS
Talk to us, we’ll listen
Whatever you’re going through,
You don’t have to face it alone.
Call free day or night on
116 123”
It was clearly placed there, at the highest point on the bridge, as this is where people most successfully end their lives. The occurrence is now so familiar that every bridge in London is dotted with them.
Now, what really struck me, was the fact that three decades ago, that probably was the main cause of suicide, a lack of feeling a member of society a sense of isolation and the resulting depression that only loneliness would force you to pick up pills or head to the underground.
Today, though, calling someone to talk wasn’t going to help anything. I wasn’t lonely or isolated, I had many people to talk to, many friends on whose shoulders I have and could cry on and a myriad of families to reach out to in desperate stakes. Including those I know through the Museum of Homelessness.
So no, talking wasn’t going to help or prevent me from jumping at all.
In fact talking was the fundamental problem and the reason I was standing there.
All Third Sector and Public organisations do these days is talk, they talk about race, about gender, about disability, they talk about change and hope and innovation and revolution, but they do absolutely nothing whatsoever.
We live in a world of how not to do something, not in a world that says yes, let’s do that..
Got a complaint, there’s a process, nobody is interested in addressing your complaint, they want you to fill out of masses of forms, make you give up at the first hurdle, drown you in paperwork, just the notion of you complaining should be treated with derision and hostility and if that doesn’t put you off, if that process doesn’t reach the conclusion they can slither out of, they’ll simply ignore it altogether anyway.
I was stood there looking into that invitng water, because all the people who are paid to support us in the UK are utterly corrupt and totally incompetent. I was going to caveat that to say not all, but I can emphatically and without hesitation say I've not met a single useful person anywhere in the sectors that has been useful in over a decade. In all the 100s of people I have had dealings with, not a single one.
I was thinking about ending life on the bridge because Arts Council England had created a situation whereby I was going to lose £30,000 I’d invested in storage fees, every possession I’d ever owned, crashed a project I’d been working on for 5 years and then lied about it.
The lawyers I’d reached out to seemed, as ever, enthusiastic and then just as quickly failed to continue with fervour. Friend Adam Hemmings, who has been the only stalwart battling me with every step of the way with absolutely everything, succumbed to illness and so to my MECFS is taking me out just when I need the most energy.
Groundswell had fired me as a Volunteer because I had complained that they were censoring those with Lived Experience of Homelessness on a project that they’d raised a £1/2 Million on the back of mainly my journalistic contributions and thus I had raised it as a concern with Comic Relief, that they were not only falsely advertising to the public but also to the individual contributors.
As ever stupidity reigned large and instead of Comic Relief getting in touch with me to ensure they understood fully the problem they simply told Groundswell, who then fired me. Not concerned that they were losing contributors hand over fisti, but because.
The Local Authority were trying to house me in Brent with no finances set up, no care package and so far away from the places I reside they may well have sent me to the outer hebrides.
Paypal has stolen over £1,000 of my money, having got wrapped up in it’s own algorithms and not a thread of human decency could be found anywhere.
The Trustee who stole my son’s Trust Fund is due in court again in 2 weeks, having waited 6 years to get this to trial. The last time I was there last month, was literally a chapter out of the Secret Barrister’s 1st book, with the CPS having lost the paperwork for the trial.
THe DWP had managed to get away with another two years of not paying me what I was rightfully owed in Disability Benefits of both Employment and Support Allowance and Personal Independence Payments,
Which wasn’t enough to pay for my goods in storage and hence why I was thinking you know what, that water doesn’t half look tempting, one step, a rush of air and then hopefully the shock of the cold water puts you into unconsciousness and that’s it. No more suffering, no more battling with intransigence and stupidity, no more
And here’s the real killer, if you’ll excuse the pun, I reached out to tons of journalists I know, masses of politicians I’ve worked with, CEOs of Charities I’ve supported asking for help, but not one and I mean out of hundreds here, not one, was able to assist.
To put that into context my wheelchair bound, 30 years homeless friend, Bullringbash who is dying in appalling palliative care, who is having to fight absolutely everybody, every single day, instead of getting to enjoy his last period of life, when he got a back payment of incorrectly stopped benefits bought me a Google Chromebook, knowing I’d be writing everything I’d had published on a the broken screen of a Samsung Galaxy A6 Tablet. He just did it, no ask, no inference. He looked at my life, saw a problem and fixed it.
Imagine if that’s how the entire public & Third (Charity) sector worked. Looked for problems and fixed them, rather than create them and then compound them.
But this is the reality for everyone in Britain, the people with power, money and influence never assist. The people who have absolutely nothing always do. I reconnected with Jack Monroe the other day in the Tortoise Newsroom, a single mother blogger, suffering from depression and who was surviving on the equivalent of DWP benefits, she had done more to change the perception of poverty, than any journalist, politician or charity.
So I have just 7 days left before a point of no return, everything I own, every personal letter, every video recording of my son, his toys, all those luxury items that I’d hoped to return to a residence after I first lost my home due to a credit file error back in 2009, but never found a resolution to the problem.
Those luxury items, the Bang and Olufsen Television, the Savile Row Suits, the Wedgwood Crockery, the Denson Stereo, the handmade John Lobb shoes, the Lock & Co. Hats, the Gucci watch were all set to be converted into an on street London Citywide Art Project Entitled Paul Atherton’s Displaced: Dispelling The Myths of Homelessness.
This was the project that ACE agreed to pay me to trial, that said they would organise a bank account for me to achieve it, granted me the money, paid it to a Charity 3rd party of their chosing, but realised they’d screwed up in paperwork, asked me to amend, which would completely change our agreement so I declined, they then persuaded the third part to illegally return the money and have done nothnig to fix the problem since. Instead they lied and ignored evidence to such an allarming degree that I felt it was impossible for them to get away with... I was wrong!
I was hoping one person would do the decent thing, accept responsibility and step in… but nobody did.
And if that’s not enough to make you quit life, then you’re a way better person than me…
