Jordan Beaven

The truth about surviving trauma, long-term hospitalisation, disability, and life after a suicide attempt.

I saw something today that I can’t stop thinking about.

It wasn’t dramatic or over the top. It was just… accurate. In a way that made me feel uncomfortable, like it had seen parts of me I’ve been avoiding looking at properly.

It was a post about how you don’t always realise something was traumatic until you say it out loud and see how other people react to something you said so casually.

And I think that’s what’s been sitting with me.

Because I don’t think of my life as “trauma.”

I think of it as what happened.

Nearly three years ago now, I tried to end my life by jumping off a six-storey building.

Even writing that feels very detached. Like I’m talking about something that happened to someone else. Like I’m waiting for the reaction more than actually feeling what it means.

“It’s a miracle you survived.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

I hear that all the time.

And I never really know what to do with it.

Because yes… I survived.

But no one really talks about what surviving actually looked like after that.

The induced coma.

Sepsis. More than once.

ICU. HDU. Major trauma.

Orthopaedic wards. Bone infection wards. Neurology wards. Rehabilitation Wards. Acute wards.

It’s like my life has been measured in departments instead of time.

Feeding tubes.

Life support.

Central lines.

Blood transfusions.

Surgeries. Complications. Setbacks.

Over and over and over again.

I’ve had to learn to walk again more than once.

And I’m now in a wheelchair.

Somewhere in all of that, I’ve also been diagnosed with a heart condition and a brain condition.

And somehow… that’s all just become normal.

That’s the part that feels the most fucked up.

Because when I list it out like this, I know how it sounds. I know how heavy it is. I know what people are hearing when I say it.

But I don’t feel it like that.

I feel flattened. Numb. Like my brain has taken all of it and compressed it into something I can carry without completely falling apart.

Because I had no choice not to.

There wasn’t space to break down.

There wasn’t time to process it.

There wasn’t another option.

So I adapted.

I made it my normal.

I learnt how to talk about it in a way that sounds okay, even when it isn’t. I joke about it. I downplay it. I say things casually that should never sound casual.

And most of the time, that works.

But it’s not because it’s actually okay.

It’s because I’ve had no choice but to make it feel that way.

Surviving hasn’t been one moment.

It hasn’t been this powerful “I made it through” story.

Surviving has been nearly three years of this.

Three years of living in hospital.

Three years of not having my own space.

Three years of losing my independence.

Three years of being observed, managed, assessed.

Three years of not knowing where I’m going to live, what my life is going to look like, who I even am anymore.

I’m homeless.

And that sits underneath everything.

Quietly. Constantly.

It doesn’t get acknowledged the way the medical stuff does, but it’s there in everything. In the uncertainty. In the lack of control. In the reality that my life didn’t just change — it disappeared.

And I don’t think I’ve grieved that.

I think I’ve just kept going because I had to.

Because what else was I supposed to do?

Break down in the middle of it? Fall apart while I was still trying to stay alive?

There wasn’t space for that.

So I carried it.

And I’m still carrying it.

That’s the part that feels the heaviest right now.

It didn’t stop.

This didn’t end.

People talk about trauma like it’s something you go through and then come out the other side of.

But I didn’t get an “after.”

I’m still in it.

Still waking up in the same place.

Still in the same system.

Still trying to figure out what comes next.

And that uncertainty is terrifying.

Not exciting. Not hopeful.

Terrifying.

Because the outside world doesn’t feel like home anymore.

It feels unfamiliar.

Overwhelming.

Unsafe in a completely different way.

And I hate that.

I hate that this place — this hospital, this system, this life I never chose — feels more predictable than the world I’m supposed to go back to.

I hate that I have been institutionalised.

I hate that I don’t fully recognise myself anymore.

And I don’t say that out loud.

I don’t say how scared I actually am.

I don’t say how much I’ve lost.

I don’t say how heavy this all feels.

I don’t say how much life I have missed out on.

Because I’ve spent so long being the one who copes.

The one who adapts.

The one who survives.

But the truth is…

This is too much.

It has been too much for a long time.

And I think today is the first time in a while that I’ve actually let myself see that without immediately trying to minimise it.

Because today it doesn’t feel small.

It doesn’t feel manageable.

It just feels heavy.

Not dramatic. Not chaotic.

Just constant.

Like I’ve been carrying something for so long that I forgot how heavy it actually was.

And now I can feel it again.

And it hurts.

Not in a sharp, overwhelming way.

In a slow, quiet, intense and unavoidable way.

The kind of hurt that sits in my chest and doesn’t really move.

The kind that comes from realising this wasn’t just “something that happened.”

This was a lot.

This still is a lot.

And I don’t know how to process something I’m still living in.

I don’t know how to hold it without it feeling like it’s going to swallow me whole.

I just know that I’m tired.

Not in a giving up way.

Just tired of carrying something that never really ended.

And maybe that’s the most honest thing I’ve said in a long time.