there's got to be something wrong with me

some days i wonder why i'm still trying. and by some days i mean most days. but today more than most.

i am at a stage in my life where i've been struggling with my mental health for longer than i haven't been. at a stage where all i remember is trying to recover and failing and trying and failing.

and i have nothing to show for the progress i made.

i still feel the same as i did back then. staring at the ceiling, in the dark, wondering if this is another one i'll get past. 

no you won't

is all i hear. the anxiety is so bad that i feel like i am going to die. it is so bad that i cannot think straight and i barely can register anything but my heavy breathing and the thought of making it all go away by doing something that 10 minutes later i would regret doing.

i hold my head to try and make it stop but it won't. nothing ever makes it stop and i'm running out of options.

i don't know how else to rephrase the feeling of feeling everything. to summarise how much it is dragging me down. to say how much i am struggling again.

and i say again like i haven't been this whole time, just suddenly today i cannot manage it. i hate typing it out because i hate having to say it all over again but i don't know how else to let it out. i don't know the best way of saying it rather than just typing without thinking. 

i really thought i was better this time. but here i am now falling asleep drunk next to a thankfully untouched razor wondering to myself the next morning what wouldve happened if i simply stayed up for one minute more. i thought i was better but instead i was forcing myself to sleep 14 hours a day after waking up having another panic attack because i did not know how else to make the panic stop. i thought i was past this until i find myself feeling full after looking at a past photo of myself where i was smaller because no matter how unhealthy i was, sometimes the idea of being small seemed more appealling than being happy.

and i think about the assault. i think about the people i shut out and pushed away. i think about how i was doing everything i wanted to be doing and how even though i was so lucky to be doing so that i was just so fucking sad.

i don't know how to make it all go away. it feels like it's just never going to stop. 

12 years later and all i can think about is giving up. and i don't know how much longer i can go until i do. 

goodbye

 a few weeks ago we said goodbye to our family dog, franco. he truly was my best friend. and i know everyone says it but he meant the absolute world to me. 

i was 10 when we got him. he saw me finish primary school and lived through me graduating with a masters degree. he loved me despite it all. he didn't care about anything i did, how i looked, what i liked. but he was a dog, how could he care? but the reality was that having that meant everything to me. when i was bullied for years relentlessly, he always was happy to see me come home. when i was crying my eyes out, he laid with me and often licked the tears away. when we were lonely we could be lonely together. i spent countless hours by his side, either sleeping on his back legs where my head fit perfectly on him, whether he was sat on me because the boys were screaming at the football, or on 2 long hour walks because even if he was tired he never wanted to stop.

i loved him with every ounce of my body. everyday was better when he was in it because he made the sad days a little bit brighter. he was the first one i would run and see when i got home from anything, whether that was an hour away with my friends or months away at uni. he would usually get the last bite of my food or be the one to eat our leftovers. he always just made everything better. 

ive known for a while a goodbye was coming. i think he did too. on his last day he spent hours just trying to hold on because he didn't want to go as much as we didn't want him to go. i have never cried more than this, since the moment he left. there feels like a huge hole in my heart that i dont think will ever be fixed.

the truth is i didn't think i'd ever say goodbye to him like this. i think thats the hardest part. when you spend so much of your life struggling to stay alive, you never think you're going to outlive people. i never thought about the goodbyes. especially this year. i have spent so much of 2021 just wanting to not be alive that i really thought i wouldn't get through it. i hate to even think about it, but i didn't think i'd make it, part of me isn't even sure i still will some days. i've discovered newer rockier bottoms, new thoughts and emotions that i never knew were possible and new things to be sad about.

but it was different when franco was alive. when he was still here i had a reason to get out of bed. if i got out of bed, even if it was only for a moment i got to see his smiling face and stroke him and feel better in an instant. but now i have nothing. and i am truly lost without him.

i didn't realise how hard losing him would be. i never thought i'd need to. 

so blue all the time

 it feels like it won't get better. it's just getting worse.

i should be 18 months clean but i can barely go a few days.

i just want to run away from everything. when i think about the future it makes me feel sick. i can't imagine myself living long enough to have a future. it is too overwhelming to be alive.

i have run out of words to write. i don't know where else to turn.

i'll just do what i do best.

be sad and push everyone away.

it's all i have left.

i'm struggling again, as always

 i'm starting to think again that recovery isn't possible and that good days are just days where my world isn't ending. it is almost impossible to think anything else.

whenever i think i'm on the up i quickly hit rock bottom again. but this time the bottom is lower than it ever has been and i don't think theres a way out of this one. it feels like this is where i will be forever, and maybe it will maybe it won't. even if it isn't when i come up from the bottom i'll have nothing to show for it. i tell myself pushing everyone away is best for me to work on myself but really i think it's just a way of pushing everyone away, and it's a really good one at that. i don't know what to do.

my doctor won't help. not that i'm surprised but everytime i force myself to make that call i wonder why i ever did. i feel too guilty to burden my friends with the thoughts of my brain on my worst nights, my tonights. so i say i'm coping when i'm not. i say i'm doing fine just after another relapse or another glass of wine. i say it will be better soon as i contemplate whether this is worth it anymore.

my brain is constant thoughts. constant thoughts that bring up so much anxiety that i don't know what to do with. i just want a moment of quiet. a moment where i don't think about how i ruined everything and i still don't know what i even did in the first place. a moment where i don't fear everyone finding out i'm not as clean as they thought i'd be because how do you tell someone your 18 months is actually 24 hours. i thought i would be past this by now. i'm soon going to reach a point where self harm has been my enemy for half my life and the idea of that makes me want to not exist even more.

they say it's a bad day but not a bad life. but how many more bad days can i take? i can't remember the last time i had a good day that ended as a good day. a good day where my mental health didn't take the reigns.

the worst part is i'm trying. i have been trying. i've been trying to get medical help, i've been doing things that help my brain rather than sabtotaging it. but what does any of that matter when i'm here right now. at 5am wondering whether i can do this for another day as i chug my vodka wine mixture even though i have a killer headache. wondering whether it's even worth it.

wondering how i tell my mum. my dad. wondering if it's even worth talking about it. 

i've felt this all before. it's all gone away before but i'm struggling to believe it will go away this time. i'm tired. and i don't know how to make it stop.

it'll stop any day now

 the past however many years now of my life have been recovery then not then recovery then not again on repeat. whenever i feel like i'm getting somewhere, life soon throws a curveball and i feel right back where i started.

it doesn't seem to take much anymore to throw me back into a depressive episode, and the last 6 months have just felt like one long depressive episode with little glimmers of hope that make me think i'm getting back on track.

the truth is i'm not.

i feel stuck in a rut, living a lifethat has no meaning. i feel years behind everyone else my age. by now i wanted to have moved out, in a full time job i love, having travelled to whereever i want to go and maybe even be in a happy relationship. instead i'm still working part time in a job i was supposed to leave over a year ago, barely most of the time staying alive and struggling to do anything. i feel like part of me is still trying to understand and comprehend the idea of being alive and doing life because i didn't think truly i would or could make it this far.

and it's taken me a lot of time to accept that it's okay. it's okay that i'm not doing what i want to be doing because i will be one day. as many people are, i'm finding it hard to adjust back to normal life now that covid restrictions are easing. simply going into work now is anxiety inducing, hanging out with friends feels 10 times harder and i am struggling to figure out how to be myself again.

but the truth is this is myself. my new self. my best creative, better in tune with my emotions self. the self that puts themselves first (some of the time) rather than the person who would do anything even if they didn't want to because they didn't want to hurt anyone else. this self is finally (slowly) trying to sort herself out some help, taking breaks when i need to. she understands her limits, knows that it's okay to say no.

i am a different person than i was how ever many years ago. i'm a different person than i was pre covid and even though not all of these changes are good, many of them are. and it will be okay, eventually.

darker days

it is getting harder to decide whether this is currently a low point in a better time or a higher point in a worse time. i don't know whether i can count this as recovery anymore but i don't think mentally i can do anything but.

if i had a dollar for everytime i have said i sound like a broken record i could probably afford a lifetime of therapy, but talking about my mental health in this capacity truly feels like it. i haven't blogged in 6 weeks, because i have not wanted to talk about how i am feeling. sometimes coming to terms with how terribly you are doing does nothing but make everything worse and whilst even though this is probably one of those times, i don't think right now i could feel worse so i have nothing to lose.

everyday this week has felt like a low. i'm have spent all my energy the last 2 weeks simply persuading myself to stay alive and i don't know how much longer i can carry on doing it. i am in a cycle of self sabotage and my brain is a constant stream of intrusive thoughts mixed with suicidal ideation. as painful as it is to admit it, i don't think my mental health has ever been worse and that scares the shit out of me. with each passing day i feel like i'm just getting worse, that this is just getting worse. i truly thought not long ago that it was getting better but once again it just suddenly and drastically got so much worse and i don't know how much lower it can physically get. 

i am tired of feeling like i am burdening people. if i talk about it i feel like a burden, if i don't i feel like a burden. i am just constantly a burden and i do not know how to not me. 

i am trying to get help but it is harder to do than it should be. even ignoring how hard it is to actually get help, it is hard to get myself to consistently try. but i'm trying. even if it's slowly, i am trying. 

the 2 day break

 

a few days ago it felt like the world was ending, but today everything just feels so light.

a few days ago i just, needed a break. i felt burntout on existing especially in the social world. i felt like i was burdening myself and everyone i loved and i felt so tied to being social all the time that i felt one moment away from exploding. my room was a mess, i had no motivation to do anything and i felt so unhappy in the walls i was living in. 

i made the decision then, i was logging out of everything and giving myself a break. in the 2 and a bit days i was off, not only had i worked twice but i manage to help my brother with his dissertation, deep clean and declutter my room, sort through and donate some clothes, i showered, ate, did some painting and did other things ive been needing to do and i feel so much better already.

from two days. 

i need to do this more, even for just an evening. i need to start to understand my limits better, before they get pushed as far as they did. 

i'm hoping though i'm at least starting back on track to feel like myself again. it's been too long. 

the burden of honesty (reprise)

 it's sometimes hard to look back and see how well my recovery was going compared to how it's going now. and it's even harder to see people with similar recovery archs continue to hit their incredible milestones when i feel like i'm back at square one.

the disappointment i feel for myself is making it impossible to start to get back on track. there are once again not many nights in the week where i don't heavily consider relapse and some days i am not strong enough to not. it wasn't long since i found myself thinking about writing goodbye notes and a few days ago i even found myself writing one.

it's hard when you are feeling so low to see a way out of it. i know one is coming, i've seen it before. but sometimes i still wonder if i'll even survive long enough to see it. 

i always say recovery was never easy but now it feels like it became just fully impossible. at least before i had reasons to feel like depressed and to feel this anxious but now everything in my life seems to be okay but i still can't get through a day without a panic attack.

one thing i told myself recently is that i need to start to also talk about the positives. and for the most part my days are mostly okay but it's really hard to focus on the good when the bad is just so bad.

i just can't stop feeling like a burden. and i can't stop thinking that everyone in my life just hates to be around me. trying to persuade yourself that you are worthy of being happy is one of the hardest things i have ever tried to do, and it feels like it's just getting harder to learn each day. 

and after all of this i tried to get help. i tried so hard. if the people who are supposed to help don't believe you, why would you ever believe yourself?

putting things into perspective

 

whilst i am going through one of my lowest lows in a while, it is still better than my highest highs when i was 13.

i know my limits, i know my boundaries and even though my anxiety is pretty bad it helps with knowing my limits.

i finally have a comfortable, caring and understanding friends that i feel like i can talk to when i need it the most.

music no longer makes me sad and no longer makes me think of painful things. even the saddest songs can bring comfort when they used to bring pain. music can finally make me feel good again when i feel low.

even though i still am recovering from self harm, i relapse signifcantly far less frequently and badly as i used to.

whilst not always, i can mostly get myself to eat when my brain is screaming against it.

i can take ibuprofen again.

i no longer hate how i look. i have miles to go, but i am getting there.

some days are still hard but i have more better/bareable days than i have bad. 

i have stopped actively seeking out content that could trigger me.

i know my worth and i am not afraid of cutting people out of my life who don't respect it.

i'm comfortable in my sexuality.

i think i know i'm going to be okay.

a moment of weakness

 on some days are harder to get out of bed than others. today was one of those days, where i physically could not get up.

i have spent the last two months at one of the lowest points i’ve been with and i cannot even pin why. i keep thinking i’m okay but i think my brain has other ideas.

it’s hard to ask for help when you don’t know what you need help with. i cannot pinpoint a feeling or moment that is keeping me here but i feel like my head is barely staying above water. most days it is not, but i get moments of air that are keeping me from completing drowning.

i hate the metaphors but drowning is the only way i can even slightly express how i am doing. and it isn’t getting easier, if anything with every passing second i am falling deeper without even knowing it.

and i don’t know the way up from here. how could i when absolutely nothing feels wrong, but i cannot get out of bed most days and the days i can the basic things in my life feel overwhelming. just the other day i burst into tears when i simply opened the cupboard to get a plate for some food and just today i had an anxiety attack because i made a fucking tiktok wrong. 

i am so tired and i cannot say it again. i don’t know how else to comprehend and express my feelings than to mindlessly write it down and even with that i can barely do it. some days i just don’t. i just lay in my room with the lights off or, like i did today, i sleep and sleep and sleep until i can just about muster the emotional and physical energy to stay awake.

and relapse is really hard, especially after so long. when you think you are so far away from the person who was hurting so much, but in reality you never stopped being that person. it is hard to come to terms with the fact that  recovery isn’t linear, but more that recovery doesn’t seem to get easier the further along you are. 

everyday just seems to get harder. and it’s getting harder to believe that it’s getting better any time soon.

365

 today, march 17th, marks me being one year clean from self harm. 

i've been struggling with self harm since i was 12, and now i am 23 and just hitting a year clean. a life time ago i never thought i could make it to my 18th birthday. not long ago i was convinced i would be trapped in a cycle of self harm forever, because it was the only way i knew how to cope. and whilst in recent years relapses were far and few between, i still was unable to fight it or redirect it. it felt like a build up of the need to relapse that one day when i was weak was too strong to fight off. but i'm getting better at it everyday, trying other outlets or simply just stopping myself and here i am, at the one year mark.

i thought this feeling was going to be only overwhelming happiness, but instead of happiness it just feels, nothing? i thought i was going to feel like the weight of the world was gone, i was finally taking contol back from this thing that had been controlling my life for so long but instead i feel like i have replaced self harm urges with overwhelming anxiety and instrusive thoughts instead. it's hard. i am happy. i should be happy. but i can't stop thinking about how this moment was supposed to be happy, but it just doesn't feel it. and maybe that is reflective of how i'm doing. maybe i'm not happy simply because i am in a really bad mental health state and i still think about relapse. maybe i thought by one year i would simply be so far away from relapse that i would really considered myself recovered. maybe i thought it would be easier than this. 

i think i always had this view that once i stopped, if i could stop, that all the feelings associated would just go away. i used to think that self harm was a huge cause in the anxiety and the sadness, and in some ways it was. i would be sad that i hurt myself and i would be anxious about people finding out. but i think now that i used it to simply rechannel the anxiety especially. and i know that sounds like something i should've known this whole time, but it is easier to think back now when i'm in a clearer mind. 

all i used to know was hurting, and i was hurting in so many ways that thinking about it just makes me too sad. if it wasn't anxiety or depressive moods, it was a war with eating, or it was my inability to process emotions, or it was my struggle to focus and pay attention or it was thinking i was not worthy of the life i had or it was pushing everyone away because i did not want them to know the "real" person. i was hiding my entire life and it simply was too much, and it outpoured in disordered eating and self harm.  eventually i managed to cope with it a little better, but i still could not stop self harm. not until now.

i do not know if this is the be all or end all. recovery has not been the easy process i thought it would be. it's been losing important people in my life and learning from my mistakes, it's been learning to manage my own feelings and how i process and present them. it's been going 1 step forward and back 10. it's been admitting that i am the problem. it's been admitting alcohol for a while was the problem. it's been not doing things because i mentally couldn't do it. it's been opening up and talking about how i'm feeling and doing things that absolutely terrify me. 

and whilst this feeling may not have been the complete overwhelming happiness i thought, it is still there. i am still proud of myself. there was a long time in my life where i was hurting myself on a daily then weekly basis. i was wearing long clothing in 30 degrees, learning the best ways to keep it covered or lying about how i scratched my arm. i used to think i was alone. i didn't even know what mental health was for half of my teenage years. i saw my friends struggling too, i was helping friends through it without asking for help myself. i handled things well, i handled things badly. but i made it. and i will continue to have my ups and downs, and if i relapse again i know it will be okay. i know i can come out fighting like i have many times before.

it gets easier. i know it's hard to believe but it gets easier. it might take time, but with help, it gets easier.

the burden of honesty

 

i feel like i’m stuck in a rut. i’ve felt off all year, and i kept thinking it was going away but it wasn’t, not permanently or temporarily long enough to make it feel like i was doing something to make it better. i’m just sat at rock bottom and i cannot find a way out, any time i think i do it’s a dead end.

my mental health has been up and down all my life and i’m aware that i probably just sound like a broken record with every post i write but it’s just so hard to understand what is wrong because i don’t even know myself. most of my teen years old were just pure, overwhelming sadness and just wanting to not be alive. i was at war with everyone but mostly with myself, and every day was a success just because i survived. 

that feeling went away in my 20s, but it exchanged the overwhelming sadness with feeling emotionally nothing mixed in with constant anxiety. it is impossible for me to interpet and talk about how i am feeling and why because i just simply do not know and i don’t think i ever will. how do you answer the question whats wrong when absolutely nothing is wrong but all you want to do is sit in bed all day and do just that. just sit or lay there. 

i have lost the ability to do, or want to do, anything. i don’t have the motivation to do absolutely anything and it is absolutely exhausting just trying to do something and just not being able to. if i manage to do it, i can’t without getting distracted within 10 minutes and stopping again. i spend all my day on tiktok because i just can’t do anything else. talking to most of my friends seeps too much energy so i just don’t and i convince myself that they hate me so i don’t talk to them even more. i’m in a cycle of unhappiness and isolation that i cannot pull myself out of.

and i’m lonely. 

i feel like i have nobody. i feel like most of my friends hates me or will just leave me and i know that’s probably just past experience talking but i don’t know how to accept it. when all you see in yourself if the flaws, how could in your eyes anyone get past them either? i feel like i need constant validation and even that isn’t enough. 

i feel like a burden. i am a burden. and i mean it. i can’t be the happy, at minimum okay person that i should be. i feel selfish all the time. a small thing feels like everything and nobody that i love deserves to have to hear it. and i know i shouldn’t feel this way but i can’t not. i don’t know how to cope with anything, i don’t know how to do anything and i feel like i don’t even know how to exist like a person. being honest about how i’m doing is a burden. i’m sad today and i will be tomorrow. everyone is, most people are feeling down at the moment and i feel too guilty to talk about it in any truth. so i don’t. i avoid the question and if i don’t then i don’t say what i really want to say, just what i think the person wants to hear. i leave out that every night recently i’ve been thinking about relapse again because i’m supposed to be doing better in recovery and i don’t want anyone to think otherwise. i don’t want anyone else to hold the burden and the worry about me when there is so many more important things to be worried about.

i’m overwhelmed. i’m so fucking tired and i don’t know what to do anymore. i feel just nothing and i hate it. i wish i just didn’t care about anything but it’s all i can do. and i know i need to get help but i can’t bring myself to get it, mainly because i don’t think i deserve it. i’m not sad enough to get it. maybe one day i can persuade myself but if not now, when?

i just don’t feel like i was made to belong here.

the loudest noise in the room

 

i have always been a firm believer in everything will get better but tonight i'm not sure i do.

i am having one of the worst days i've had in a while. i find myself saying it alot but this time i mean it. anxiety is debhilitating me, earlier i cried just getting out of bed after sleeping all day because that is all i can do. i feel on the verge of tears whilst simulatneously feeling nothing all the time and i don't see a way to move past it.

recovery was supposed to make it easier but sometimes it makes it worse. the bad times are just amplified and i haven't found a better way of coping with it. i thought the idea of relapse would by now not even cross my mind but it's still sometimes all i can think about. i find other distractions but it's still at the forefront of my mind and even though i manage to fight it some days it's just rarely. these thoughts weren't supposed to be so intrusive, especially not now. how do i win what is a constant battle? how long until it is too powerful and i'm too tired to stop it?

my mind just doesn't stop. and when i run out of good things to think about it turns into negative things. it turns into being scared to sometimes even breathe and i don't know how to make it stop. how do you make it stop bringing up bad memories and worries about things you could've done differently 10 years ago? how do you think of things that don't make you hurt? 

i just don't know where to go from here. i don't feel like i deserve help, i don't feel like i'm hurting enough. but each day is getting harder, each breath getting more painful, each night gets a little longer. how do you stop the panic when all you are is the panic?

how do you stop feeling alone in a crowded room? how do you take some time for yourself without it feeling like you're just being a bad friend when all you want to do is get better? i can't even open the curtain, the lightswitch feels kilometres away and my flickering lamp is the only light i see both physically and metaphorically.

maybe if i say it out loud it will help. i don't know how but maybe writing it down will help me understand myself that lil better.

it was supposed to get better as i stayed clean, but sometimes it's hard to believe that i'm better without it. i know thats just my anxiety and sadness talking, but it is the loudest noise in the room.

trying my best

 I've always advocated the importance of talking about your mental health. It was the reason I started writing this blog in the first place. I needed an outlet to talk about it, and this provided me the perfect opportunity to do so. However recently I've neglected it. And when I have mentioned it, I haven't been honest enough. So I want to change that.

I'm struggling, but not in the way I'm used to. I'm feeling okay, whilst I have some depressed days, I am feeling better in myself. But rather than feeling depressed, I'm feeling something else that I have not yet been able to easily put into words to understand. I have just lost every ounce of ability to do anything, I have no motivation and the idea of doing anything is completely overwhelming. I feel as if the only things I can do are watch tiktoks and occasionally play games, and that just ends up being changing games for 7 hours because theres nothing specifically I can focus on. I feel the need to be preoccupied and overstimulated almost 24/7, even just writing this I have 1000 things going on and I keep getting distracted by my phone. This is making it near impossible to sleep. I cannot switch off for long enough to get a restful amount of sleep. I'm tired, I'm in pain and frankly, I'm burnt out.

It feels like I'm burnt out on life. I thought that I would graduate and slowly regain my motivation and get over burnout, but I simply have just redirected it on other things. Whilst I know this is probably due to still being in lockdown, I cannot help but wonder if it's simply more than that. Whether all of this, the anxiety, insomnia, sadness and other things just has an alternate cause that now is causing this demotivation, inability to stay focused and struggle to think, speak and articulate words. It feels like my brain is just a fog sometimes and it really taking it's toll on me mentally. When I can feel it happening, which tends to be a lot of the time, it makes me feel super anxious because it makes me super conscious of my actions and how people think of me. I will be just talking and my brain will freeze and I will just physically want to scream because 6 months ago I was absolutely fine and now I can barely sometimes speakwithout stuttering and I struggle to utter a sentence or string a thought together.

Streaming doesn't help that. I love streaming. I love my community, making friends, making people laugh and just having fun with a game whether that be alone or with others. But streaming comes with the need to be active, talking, constantly thinking and constantly engaged with well, talking. Talking to stream, talking about the game and a lot of the time, talking to yourself. It's really hard to do that when your brain just simply freezes and you almost forget how to talk or even sometimes think. There are only so many times you can apologise for the same thing without it coming across as a bad day. And I don't know how to make it better. Instead, I just let it pile onto me, just adding another problem to the pile. 

And I know it doesn't sound like much, but it is enough. With everything else going on in the world as well as within my own brain, not being able to basically function is just the cherry on the cake. My life feels like it's on hold, I know so many people are in the same situation but I know so many people that are thriving and I feel like I'm going backwards. I get too anxious to job hunt so I'm stuck in a job I don't really want to do, I don't even know if the career path I had laid out is one I even want to do anymore. I feel so lost and I feel like I cannot be the successful and perfection focused person that I always have forced myself to be. I just feel like I'm failing, and when I feel like I'm failing I feel like I am letting myself down and to simply put it, I feel absolutely worthless and useless. Unlearning this is something I am starting to try to do, but it's not always that easy.

I don't know when everything will improve. I thought it was. Everything isn't that bad, but I feel like I am just holding onto too many upsetting things from the past that is just holding me back. I feel like every single small thing is scary and I am worrying myself about things that have not happened yet. I just need all the fog to end. I need to be more open, I need to start to talk again. I need help, because I'm worried that it won't ever get better if I don't.

twenty two

 today is my last day as a 22 year old. it feels weird. another year has abolutely flown by and i feel like i have not done enough to turn a new age.

we have been stuck in lockdown since march, so 10 months of me being 22 was stuck inside. at first this was great in theory, i was benefitting from being stuck in one place and not having to travel into uni, and being able to keep whatever sleep schedule best aligned with work. and whilst i was mentally hit and miss, i managed to do my 5 assignments i had due within a month in the beggining of lockdown, with all but one being a 65 or above. uni gave us a blanket, any mark under our term 1 average was to be just taken away from our calculation, and lockdown meant i no longer had to do the assignments like a workshop that gave me more anxiety than i could even comprehend. 

we started to come out of lockdown in the peak of my research report. the first lockdown anyway. so whilst people were flying to different countries and living their "best lives" and seeing their friends/family (within the law) after months of being apart, i was stuck, up at night and asleep during the day, sat at my pc almost crying over my dissertation that i felt like i was doing completely alone. 

but i made it. i finished it. i handed it in and completed my presentation at the end of september.

i was okay for a few weeks, went out a few times to see people but then at the end of october i fell into a huge depressive episode and didn't talk to anyone for weeks. i was too anxious to do anything so i didn't.

a week later we went into a 4 week lockdown, which i stayed up all night, alone, missing my friends but appreciating myself because i wasn't exhausted all the time. i was worried about getting through it, but i was excited by the idea of having a somewhat normal christmas, socially distanced seeing my friends and getting to finally go out with my mum for lunch. 

we then were thrown in into a lockdown over christmas, which now shows no sign of ending.

the third lockdown has been especially hard. i don't know why but the beginning of the month i was just super low most days, my better days being at work where i had human interaction.

all these lockdowns have had one huge impact on my motivation. at first my motivation to do my degree, now my motivation to apply for jobs. everyone keeps asking me when i will be leaving my part time supermarket job to use my degrees but the idea of doing that now is so terrifying. i wanted to travel, i wanted to move out, i want to do anything but apply for a job and be worried about it falling through due to the state of the world. by now i thought i would be in a job, a job i liked, but there is few job i like the sound of and most i'm not qualified for. 

22 has not been the year i expected. it was supposed to be easy, it was planned to the tee. i would finish my masters in september, quit my job travel for a few months, have christmas off then apply for jobs. only one of those things happened, and i do not know when the rest might. but 22 brought things that i would not have had if it wasn't for all of this.

i have a masters degree. i started streaming and i am affiliated on twitch, growing a small little community and having fun. i treated myself to a new pc, a vr headset, i made SO many new friends at work or online in stream communities. I am 10 months clean, I reregistered to the doctors, I am trying to look after myself better than I have been.

the idea of turning 23 has always scared me. you see so many people doing so much grown up shit at 23, and i thought i would be so much more than i am. i thought i would be in a full time job with a partner and living my best life.

it's okay that i'm not. 

and i'm looking forward to twenty three.

Graduate

 I am officially a masters of science graduate.

This is something I have been working towards being able to say for the past 6 years of my life, the first time I realised sports psychology was a field I was able to study. Since that moment I had this exact path planned out. I was going to complete my BSc in Psychology and then complete a MSc in Sports Psychology. From that moment, I pushed myself academically, I worked as hard as my mental health allowed me and I was never taking no for a definite answer.

I have never been "naturally smart", I would put in 110% of what energy I had into my studies for a long time, but would never reach the highest grades, unlike my older brother who would get top marks with little to no studying. I had to work what sometimes felt like ten times harder than him just to even match his grades and it was always so tiring. In class I was always one of the smart ones but I was never a stand out. Sometimes it was hard to deal with, I was putting in all this work for what sometimes felt like nothing, but when I finally found what I wanted to do none of that mattered to me anymore. I knew the grades I had to get to get to each step, and through many mental health difficulties where I felt like I couldn't go on, I somehow kept going and kept going. I can't count the amount of times I nearly gave up. And maybe for a moment I should have. I probably should have taken a break, allow myself to recover from so many education burnouts and so many mental health downfalls. 

But I didn't.

 And I'm not going to say that this moment was worth it, because in truth this is not the moment I expected it to be. I expected to be excited looking for PHD's or thinking about training to become a chartered sports psychology. I expected to have left my job and be persueing what I love. But I'm not. I'm still at my part time supermarket job, no idea what I want to do. Scrolling on job sites for hours on end at 5am and making myself anxious that I will never find something that I love the sound of. Any time I do I'm not qualified. It makes me wonder what the point of this was. I pushed myself so hard in my MSc because in truth, I didn't feel like I belonged there. I was surrounded by so many hard working, intelligent people and I was barely afloat. I was working night shift two nights a week whilst trying to juggle the hardest academic challenge I have ever experienced. And then it became juggling these whilst in the middle of a global pandemic. It became somehow even harder, I was doing everything alone with little guidance on alot from my lecturers, so many missed emails or key information from lecturers about essays because I was working so much on a different schedule to everyone. It became doing a research project all alone with little guidance, and it not coming out as well as I had dreamed. 

But I did it.

I made it.

It may have not been the experience I had hoped, but I made it.

I was doing workshops, case studies, endless presentations, so many interactive things that I could never have done a few years ago. I was writing essays I was genuinely proud of when I handed them in and even though it took a few to get into the swing, I was getting good marks. I learnt so much this year and as cliche as it sounds I learnt alot about myself. Not only that, but I met some amazing and hugely intelligent people, both my coursemates and lecturers. The year flew by, and I finished an academically challenging year.

I officially have graduated with merit in my MSc in Applied Sports Psychology.

struggling again

 I do not know how long I can do this for anymore.

I wish this was a lie.

Each day now is getting harder again, just after I thought it was getting easier. I can't go to sleep without a glass of wine topped off with lemonade and rescue remedy and sometimes it needs two. Not even the sound of slowed down sad music can make the anxiety just go away for long enough to fall asleep.

And with each month it gets scarier. The pandemic is still raging and my unrelenting fear of not getting but getting and passing the virus onto my family can't slip my mind for a second, and I can't step a foot outside the house to go to work without being flooded with worry. With every lockdown it gets scarier, I can barely even leave my room and when I do it's not for longer than a second. I don't know how it will ever be again adjusting to 'normality'.  I can't even text my friends, how the fuck am I ever going to see anyone in person ever again? 

I don't know when this gets better.

I wish this was a lie.

I don't know how else I can express all the emotions I'm feeling. I feel like I'm repeating sadness then shuffling anxiety and I convince myself that this help, that this makes it easier but I do not know if it does. With every thing I write I feel scared then maybe relieved for a moment before all of this just comes back around. 

And I know I have it easier than alot of people. And that makes me feel so fucking guilty. I know that I am allowed to feel what I feel even if people have it worse and I know that someone elses story and pain does not invalidate mine but it is hard to think otherwise sometime. I am so anxious and sad and I do not know why anymore. I do not know how to live with that. Live with that in a world that feels like it is crumbling under my footsteps.

I do not know how much longer I can do this. 

2020

 December 31st, 2019. It was getting onto the time I had to leave to go out for new years. I was fucking exhausted from working, woken up an hour late and on the verge of having an anxiety attack. I didn't want to leave my bed let alone go and get drunk. My mum persuaded me to go. I got up, drove round to my friends, had to quickly get changed and apologise profusely for being so late, trying to ignore how absolutely dreadful I felt. In the car ride, I thought about 2019. 2019 was one of my better years. It started off completely terribly, but eventually I became more stable and found my feet. I graduated, started my masters degree, gone on various holidays, many music events, settled into some new friend groups and most importantly was optimistic for 2020 to continue this trend I had started of what I called my true recovery. 2019 was the year I worked on myself, I became more comfortable in my own body, I was relapsing from self harm less often and I was ending the decade happy. 

The first 6 weeks of the year where amazing for me. I went to Sweden, I celebrated turning 22, I was doing well in my masters degree and I just felt happy. I thought that 2020 was going to be my year. I have been waiting for my year and truly it felt like it was going to be. A few weeks into February I got sick. Sick as in, I couldn't get out of bed for 2 weeks or I passed out, sleeping 18 hours a day, crying because it felt like sitting at my computer was pushing myself sick. The first few days, I couldn't even sit up. That was when the year went downhill. I missed a concert I had been waiting for for so long, I missed weeks of uni and was so behind with my work, I barely spoke to anyone because I was too tired. At once point I thought I would never recover. 

By the middle of March I was around 80% better from mystery illness. In March I was back at uni all of us talking about covid19 like it was a joke, I also went to two concerts and then we went into lockdown. Suddenly I felt like I had lost everything and I don't know why. I walked into work the first night of lockdown, bare bare empty shelves, everyone joking about panic buying. It carried on like this for a few weeks, and then everything for me started to set in. Lockdowns extended, struggling to keep up with my uni work because I was too tired and completely deprived from normal life. I couldn't fix my sleep schedule because it was too hard to when I couldn't get up and go do something to combat the tiredness. I was still working, having to do overtime and still juggling my degree whilst I saw so many people genuinely having a great time, doing things, doing nothing, doing whatever they wanted whilst on furlough. It was hard. I thought I was struggling and struggling alone, because everyone seemed to be coping well with lockdown. 

Eventually it became apparent that it wasn't, and as we started to ease out of lockdown I felt better. I could see my friends again, I could go outside again and not get scared I was going to get in trouble. It took a while to be comfortable with it, the fear of corona was raging in my mind and I was worried everytime I left the house that I would get it. But I had to see people. My mental health depended on it, I was at the point where I was struggling and I needed to see my friends again. But I started to feel better. Whilst lockdown seems like a blur now, whilst I know my anxiety was struggling for the most part everything else was okay. I was fine eating, I was staying clean, I wasn't suicidal and for the most part I wasn't lonely. This all seems like a huge oxymoron, but compared to the places I have been, I was genuinely doing okay. I made more new friends, I started to be less alone at 3am when no one else I knew was awake and it got easier.

In September I completed my masters degree. I never ever thought I would ever make it, but I finished my presentation, sat down and had a huge wave of relief. I had done it. I had done the dream I had had for 6+ years at that point, through a pandemic. I had completed a MSc dissertion basically by myself and I had done it. But afterwards I just felt empty. I had been so stressed about finishing that when I did I felt lost, I had no direction, I was stressed about the idea of finding a new job and everything felt heavy. 

At the end of October it all caught up to me, and I fell into one of the worst depression slumps I had ever experienced for a 3 week period. Everything was impossible, most days I couldn't even get out of bed to turn the light on. I was convinced everyone I loved hated me, I was having bad panic attacks every few days, having intrusive and suicidal thoughts, I was just so unbelieably low that I didn't think it would get better. I eventually started getting better. I invested myself into headspace, into breathing practices, into music, into everything I needed and it slowly by day got easier. And it did, eventually, get back to normal.

I bounced back. I started twitch streaming again, really loved it and hit twitch affiliate within 2 weeks of restarting. I had gone from a high, to rock bottom and was back to a high. Things fell in place, and they stayed in place.

And here I am now. January 1st 2021. 

I know how lucky I have been to had an okay 2020. I focused alot on the negatives of the year but when I reflect, the worst times were far and few between. I had so many okay days, unmemorable days but even more so, days that I was just fine. I was fine. I used to just be up or down, I rarely had in between days but this year they happened. It truly this year felt like my mental health was improving and I was doing better. I don't say this to brag. I don't say any of this to do anything but reflect on my journey, how far I've come.

If this pandemic had happened at a different time I don't know if I would have made it through, made it this far. I count my blessings everyday that this didn't happen at a worse time in my life because who knows what would have happened then. I have had to work hard the last few years for this. This year I decided to just simply cut out people who do not make me happy or who I was holding onto for the wrong reasons. It was the year I was more important than anyone. I put myself first. I had to. I could not keep moving forward by holding onto the belief that I have to appease others and then myself. To me this meant just simply letting go of worry about cutting people out whether this was in the past or present to help myself. This was easier said than done, I am not denying that but I did it. I put myself first, even if that had consequences that maybe I did not want. 

I am proud of myself. You should be too. No matter what you did or didn't do this year, you made it through. We survived an awful awful year and hopefully this one will be better. 

For me? 2021 means recovery. It means going to get help. It means getting those piercings/tattooes I want. It means keeping on top of what I need to do. It means therapy. It means trying to start to love the body I am in. It means taking care of myself. It means continueing to put myself first. 

For everyone who is still here. Whether your year was amazing, awful or anything in between. 2021 is your year. And I hope, I pray with all my heart that it is a better year.

And finally. To all those we lost this year, whether due to covid, due to other things, due to old age, due to mental health, due to other illnesses. To every single person who we lost. We will remember you all.