Hope and the Fragility of Life: Believing in a Better World & Growing Together

Following the events of me saving a man's life outside of Manchester Oxford Road today, I want to remind people that not losing hope is important. Believing in humanity is how we grow together.

Warning: Reader discretion is strongly advised, as this article discusses the tragedy of suicide in great detail, as well as what we need to be doing to prevent more suicides in Britain. If you are a survivor of suicide, please be aware of your own triggers.

I was sitting outside of Manchester Oxford Station today, when suddenly, I noticed someone passed out on the pavement… and they are bleeding out of their skull.

It’s crazy how quickly life can change. One minute I was chatting away to my friend Lilith, and the next, there are ten people, including three station staff attempting to do first aid on the guy, with two of us trying to call an ambulance and use whatever knowledge we could do save this guy’s life.

The person is okay, and they have been transported to hospital on a stretcher; despite the absolute chaos as this was happening outside a central station, we did manage to work together as an impromptu team.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that I have attended to a medical emergency in the city centre caused by excessive drinking. I have once seen a guy passed out in a heatwave in the middle of Manchester with cans of drink surrounding them. I have seen people in Manchester passed out from the Spice epidemic. And I remember the homeless woman in Hulme during lockdown who lived in a tent outside of the ASDA. I used to talk to her a lot.

I’ve never looked down on people in need. I used to run a mental health charity, called Project Inklings, which helped trans and cis alike with their mental health, housing, and other life problems.

Unfortunately you’ll find that, many people in Manchester do just walk on when they see the homeless, for example. I refuse to. If they are not being aggressive, I do actually stop and listen to the homeless, if I have time. And some of the stories I’ve been told are objectively wild. A lot of these people have been failed by systems, over, and over again.

And today, as I was trying to get home, I see the dreaded thing that has now become now epidemic in our nation’s railways.

This train has been delayed due to a police incident.

Ah, bloody EMR surely. They keep cracking down on fare dodgers, and it’s become a bit ridiculous now. I once saw the British Transport Police hold up the entire network for ten minutes for the sake of making a point.

But no.

The station quickly becomes a scramble. Train services keep getting delayed. And I worry about my ability to get home.

Passengers are advised to not travel through Stockport.

I then learn that there are delays of up to two hours. What on earth is going on? That’s not usual for even Northern standards.

I look at Real Time Trains quickly transpires out that there was a person hit by a train.

Fuck.

I was informed by several people who work on the railways that this may have been a fatality. While we don’t know what exactly happened and it wouldn’t be wise to speculate on what happened, it really did make me think.

In 2023/24, there were 1,937 suicides on the railway. I don’t think presenting this as a figure really does it justice though. That’s 1,937 lives lost to people who couldn’t take it anymore.

The reasons why people commit suicide are complex, but generally speaking from my work working with suicidal people in Project Inklings, and having effectively an on-call suicide prevention team, one thing is clear:

Desperate people do desperate things. They do it when they see no other option. Nobody wants to die by suicide.

And for many waiting on that platform on their train, someone being hit by a train will be a footnote in someone’s day. But I refuse to see this person who died, whether on purpose or not, as a railway death statistic; because this death was undignified, and I believe everyone should die in dignity.

So let’s talk about my suicide attempt on the railways, because I am alive to tell what happened, and I think this does make me qualified to talk about the subject.

My Suicide Attempt in 2024.

I was struggling in a converted high street flat in Bramhall that was twelve degrees indoors, because the heating was insufficient, expensive, and hopeless, and there was no insulation. I was renting from a private landlady, who refused to fix anything in the flat, including horrifying mould in the walls.

I calculated that, to heat the place 24/7, which is what it really needed to be a livable temperature, it would require more than I was paying in rent (£795 per month, which is outrageous) and I had no way out. I signed a twelve month contract, and the council was more interested in installing smoke alarms, than actually obligating the landlord to do something about the situation.

This is the result of chronic underfunding to councils, as well as a general lack of interest within the government to actually fix the Private Rented Sector. Skyscrappers are going up, but who is actually living in them?

I broke.

I couldn’t take it anymore. There was nobody willing to help. I even spoke to Tom Morrison MP. And he did nothing. And with my history of being fucked by organisations over, and over again, I have a lifetime of trauma from bureaucracy and being slightly outside the systems that are supposed to help.

I went to Bramhall train station, where many high speed West Coast Mainline Trains pass, and I stood there at the very edge of the platform.

I tried to die by suicide. I fell backwards instead of forwards because my body has mobility issues, though. And I survived.

The train driver saw me on the platform, and I assume that everyone on the platform thought that I simply fainted. I remember the vague conversations on whether I need CPR while I was in that mental health crisis, on the floor, not knowing what to do next.

I wasn’t meant to survive, Emily thought. Why am I still alive?

The trains were halted for ten minutes. And I was more concerned about holding up the whole of the railway network. That gives you an idea of how people, despite being in their worst state, still care about humanity.

How I Feel About Suicide

Suicide is a terrible tragedy that should be prevented. But so many people have tried to prevent my other suicide attempts in the past by simply ferrying me off to hospital, then home, and then not resolve any of the problems that I was actually having.

It’s understandable, it’s a hospital, and there’s only so many things that the underfunded, underresourced NHS can do. And when the NHS does try to help me, I get misunderstood and sometimes even abused.

But the systems in the NHS don’t work. I have had many safeguarding alerts put on me, the social services informed, and so on. At one point, the social services refused to intervene in my case because when I finally fled that flat to a friend’s, I wasn’t in the area. It was a pointless bureaucratic charade.

And that is why suicide happens. Suicide is about society not understanding your needs, and not knowing to help. Suicide is about twenty people gathered around your attempt not knowing what to do next. Because what do you do?

It’s a tragedy every time it happens, because I could easily died right there and then, and I wouldn’t have been a journalist, artist, politician, or anything else I wanted to do in life. It would have been cut short at 24 there and then.

What do we do?

We have to help people in need. We can’t just walk on, and pretend everything is alright.

Right as I saved that man’s life, I saw a Ferrari in the city centre. It made me think that person will never end up in that situation. But that person has other problems from being rich and probably famous, too.

You never truly know what’s inside someone’s head, and I’ll never know what truly happened today on the railways. Nor do I really want to know.

What I do know is that we have to help eachother out in need. Division only leads to people suffering. We are all, at the end of the day, humans. And we must help eachother, as well as nature, and anyone who needs that help.

I don’t like calling the Samaritans, because they are so stretched and I can never get a hold of them. But there are places in Manchester where one can go when they have an emotional crisis, and I use them a lot myself.

And my favourite two are:

BlueSci@Night, Monday to Sunday, 5:30pm to 12:00am in Trafford.

The Recovery Lounge, Monday to Sunday, 4:00pm to 11:00pm.

And you only need to give them a call and a text that you want to talk to someone. You’ll speak to some of the best mental health professionals in Manchester who are willing to help, but also signpost you as needed.

Please don’t suffer on your own. Please let other people carry the burden, because to help people truly in need as one needs a whole village of people.

Housing advisors. Benefits advisors. Mental health professionals. Artists. These are people who have dedicated their entire lives to trying to make the world a better place. They do it because they want to help vulnerable people.

And I hope that, with my article, you too will reach out for help if you need it. Access to NHS mental health therapy is next to impossible for many like myself. These last few places, these few bastions of hope rely on people coming in for their emotional crises to get funding from the government.

So use them, and talk to people about your problems, because people do want to know. You are not a burden for being human.

And I do have a Project Semicolon tattoo; I did it myself through stick and poke. Because my story isn’t over yet, either.

Thank you for reading, and I hope that this has been informative.

Please look after yourself. You don’t have to do this alone.