Ever since I was younger, I’ve always suffered with anxiety and really, really low moods. My way of dealing with it was I’d try and do it and if I couldn’t do it, I’d get angry at myself that I couldn’t do it. Then it would build onto something else, something else, something else. ‘Well, you’re no good at that. No good at that.’ Then the negative-ness would come in, which was really, really hard.
My name’s Bernice. Everybody calls me Bea for short. I’m married to my husband, Keith. Last June I was really in a poorly state. I was doing a job, but there wasn’t enough money coming in. My husband was struggling himself with arthritis, but my mental health deteriorated. And then being told we’re being made redundant, I was scared of being on the streets. I was scared of thinking I’m gonna lose our home. My husband was like, ‘Oh my gosh, what we’re going to do, what we’re going to do?’ And I’m like, ‘Keith, I can’t think.’ My anxiety would be through the roof. My head would be banging. I’d feel sick and, and I’m going to cry now. I’m so sorry. Because it was such… sorry. It was so hard.
And me and Keith were at each other and I said, ‘We shouldn’t have got together. We shouldn’t have got married. We wouldn’t have had all this.’ And I’m so sorry. I’m going to cry. I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m so sorry. It just broke me down. And poor Keith, I’ve never seen him so low. And that was just ‘cos of money. And we tried to figure out if we’re entitled to anything, could get anything, and nobody could give us any information. Nobody will tell us anything. So we were in the dark because we’ve always been workers. We’ve never had to ask for money. We’ve always worked. But I just couldn’t, couldn’t figure it out.
And I remember my my mental health nurses saying to me, ‘Why do you punish yourself thinking you can’t do that?’ But that’s how my anxiety and my depression works. I seem to kick myself when I’m down, went I started on medication for antidepressants, and, I had a good chat with my doctor. Just cried all day. She was brilliant. As I was coming out, my doctor’s is just over the road from the church, and normally I walk around the pathway. But today, on that day, I walked through the churchyard. Just about to walk away, I didn’t know what it was at the time. Something made me turn back and go, ‘No, come on Bea, look at it again.’ I looked at it again and I went, ‘It says hope.’ And I just had this realisation that I’d lost all my hope, and that’s what I needed.
I remember Barney just saying, ‘Hello! Welcome to Hope.’ And I just burst into tears. I couldn’t stop crying. And I thought, ‘oh, I’m…’ So I remember saying, ‘I’m so sorry.’ And they were like, ‘It’s okay, just cry. It’s okay. You’ve come to a safe place. You’ve come to somewhere where you can just relax, you know?’ When it’s been a rainy day and the sun comes out, that’s how it felt. Like we’d come out the dark into the light.
So Barney came round and explained what CAP do, and he explained about all the paperwork. We were told that, we could get a debt relief order because we’re in that much debt and we were on benefits and getting Universal Credit. And also, we were told a calculation of how much extra we could get. CAP sorted it all out, they were ringing us in between, saying they’re in the middle of it and they were constantly in touch with us. Amazing people, you know, just just, oh I can’t I can’t thank them enough. And then, we got, the debt relief order, and it meant that we were clear of debt. And it was just such an amazing, amazing thing. It’s just like this amazing feeling of of relief and like, a lift, you know?
I’ve just become a Befriender with CAP, which I’m excited about. I’ve done other courses as well, with CAP as well. I did, the life skills one, which was another good one. I’ve learned to be able to grow again. I’ve learnt to, say, ‘You know, what Bea? You’re all right, girl. You know, you’re fine. People are happy with you. Your family love you. All this love you’ve got around you, which you didn’t think you had.’ We went through all that hardship and then suddenly that hardship’s gone. And it meant we could go forward, you know, but in a better place together.
