Three months on from the car crash that killed her on/off partner Jake McLean, TOWIE’s Yazmin Oukhellou talks being trolled for living her life, survivor’s guilt and trying to get over trauma.
The photos on Yazmin Oukhellou’s Instagram suggest an enviably glamorous life spent in the most beautiful locations. Her hair and make-up are immaculate, her outfits carefully curated.
“I felt anxious and sick and thought I was never going to be normal again. How was I ever going to get over this? Because I’m never going to unsee what I saw.”
Yazmin, 28, reveals that her anguish has been made worse by hateful messages on social media from trolls who police her grief by sending abusive messages criticising her for trying to move forward. Whatever she posts, they respond with judgement, and the comments often leave an already vulnerable Yazmin in shock.
“Experiencing that level of scrutiny has been extremely hard,” she says. “I can’t lie and say those comments don’t affect me, because they really do.
“If I have dinner out with friends, these people will post saying: ‘Oh, she’s got over it quick.’ I block those people straightaway, but they’re the ones I’ll focus on for the rest of the day and beyond. When I read those comments, I feel sick.
With the nightmares, I wake up sweating profusely and crying. It’s usually around 4-5am and sometimes I can get back to sleep, but other times I have to put something on Netflix or distract myself with my phone.”
She suffers from panic attacks, too. The first night Yazmin spent without her mum, a friend came to stay to support her.
He ended up calling an ambulance when, seemingly out of nowhere, Yazmin suffered an anxiety episode so severe she thought she was having a heart attack.
“We were just watching TikTok videos and laughing, when suddenly it felt like I couldn’t breathe. My friend was panicking and he called 999, but we were told it was a long wait for an ambulance. He managed to FaceTime my mum and dad, who had gone away for a break, and they eventually calmed me down.”
Yazmin clings to the slivers of normality in her life, which give her hope of a brighter, more peaceful future. She recently had a weekend away with friends in Lincoln, which she now sees as a real turning point in her recovery.
“It felt good being surrounded by my friends and for a short time feeling like myself again. The whole weekend made me feel really good and gave me hope. I thought: ‘I’m getting there. I’m making those steps to get on with my life.’”
She’s unsure about when a return to TOWIE might happen, although she was touched that her co-stars were seen expressing their shock about the crash and concern for her in the opening episode of the new series.
“They’ve left the door open for me whenever I want to go back, but I wasn’t ready this series. I love the show and everyone who works on it, and ITV have been super-supportive. But I’m just going to take it day by day.”
There’s not a day where I don’t think about the crash. Just because I’m smiling in a picture, it doesn’t mean I’m smiling inside. But spending time with those closest to me is an hour or two where I can escape from my reality. I know how incredibly fortunate I am to have survived, but now I feel as though some people want me to still suffer – and I don’t understand why.
