I should tell you

So I wouldn't say that I suffer from anxiety, or rather not in the same way I suffer from depression. That doesn't mean that it doesn't affect my life however.

Every time I decide to leave the house, without some one I'm comfortable with, every time I make a phone call, I start getting this overwhelming desire to start crying. I'll forget something I need and start panicking that every thing is going to go wrong.

It doesn't matter who I'm going to see or what I'm going to do, the overwhelming desire to simply give up and go back into bed is unbelievable. 

There are many reasons for this, but I think it stems from this original idea that I have, that I never belong. I'm always someone's second choice, the odd one out, only wanted when there is no one else. (I'm not saying this is true, it's just what my brain is mostly thinking.)

I'm not saying that this is the normal reaction to going out for some one with depression, but as far as I can tell it is definitely not uncommon. We have these thoughts in our heads, telling us we're not good enough, that we're not wanted. So why would we want to go out and see people when that will only reinforce those ideas? (Again, I'm not saying that you would, I'm just saying that is how we're viewing things).

I'm not posting this as an excuse for how crappy I've been at keeping in contact this year, I'm simply posting my experiences. All I ask is that if you know someone who is suffering from depression and anxiety, please don't judge them too harshly if they're struggling to be out and about with people. Never take it personally, or assume that they don't want anything to do with you. This is hardly ever the case. Sometimes it's just too hard to get out and be among people. Please be patient. 

So much love for all of you.

Joy to the World

So, if any of you know me very well, you will know that I love Christmas. I love all of it, it brings out the child in me.

What you may not know though, is why I love it so much. You know that I am an excitable person so I love all the decorations and outfits. You know that I love chocolate so advent is just the bomb. You know that I'm a complete sop so any Christmas film will make my heart warm. You know I love singing so being in a choir and performing makes me feel alive. You know that I'm a Christian so I have religious reasons to enjoy it. Jesus humbled himself and came as a baby? Wow.

These are all reasons why I enjoy Christmas. Not why I love Christmas. Let me tell you why I love Christmas.

Christmas is a season of hope, of light. When I was in year 4, I was asked why Christmas was in winter, and my 9 year old answered: "because Jesus is the light of the world, and so we celebrate him in the darkest of seasons."

This is the most true things I've even said, except now it has a much more personal reason.

"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light: Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death. Upon them a light as shined."
"In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it."

Most people are aware that I suffer from depression. I cannot explain how truly awful it is, but being 'in the valley of the shadow of death' surely sounds a lot like it.
There's a song that says 'I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on.'

This is how I hold on. Every year I am reminded of the light, Jesus.

Everytime I see a candle, of lights decorated out the houses, I think of the light which darkness cannot overcome. No matter how dark my depression gets, I'm reminded that it cannot overcome the light.

I am so unbelievably grateful for this reminder every year.

Now don't get me wrong, I love all the other parts of Christmas as well, but the light is the true reason I love it.

God Bless.

Oh Happy Day

So I've been thinking about Easter, and how I'm going to be working on Easter Sunday. I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to be able to celebrate properly without spending much time at Church or anything else, and how I can share my happiness without forcing Christianity in customer's faces.

What I've realised is that the story of Easter is simply good news. That's what it is! There's a reason the stories of Jesus are named the gospels. If you believe in what the gospels tell us, then surely it is good news for all of us. If you think that certain people believe in the Bible, then they should surely be in a mood of celebration, especially at Easter time!

So I'm thinking, we as Christians believe in a God that created the Universe and created man in God's image. He did this because he loves us and wants to be in a relationship with us. This is pretty cool. The reason for the whole universe is simply because God wants to love us. This is good news. This is only the beginning.

(I'm gonna skip the Old Testament, not because I think it has no purpose, but simply because I love it and I would go on for days!)

Then, God realised that no matter what we did, we would always screw up. So instead of leaving us to it, he then decided to come down to Earth to be Immanuel. This is why we celebrate Christmas. It wasn't simply because he wanted to be 'man with us' but because he wanted to take on all of the sins of the world, all the sin of the Old Testament and all of the sin that still hasn't been made, right up to today and beyond. He died on the cross because he wanted to be that sacrifice, to allow ourselves to be with God. To see his glory, to be in relationship with him. This is surely a reason for a 'Good Friday'. 


Then, not only has he died for our sins, but then he decides that's not enough. Jesus is stronger than death, stronger than Satan, stronger than hell. So he goes BAM. I'm just gonna rise from the dead. Break the chains of death, so not only can we have a relationship with God now while we're alive, but it goes beyond our death and we get to live forever in heaven. This is the best news ever.

I'm thinking to myself. You may not believe in the Bible, you may not even believe in a God, but surely you could understand that if it were true, that it is surely something to celebrate no? 

So this weekend I'm going to celebrate my awesome God who triumphed over death and who loves me and is basically the best. Join me if you like.

Love Yourself

We are part of a world where it seems that everyone is obsessed with being in love, having companionship. I know for sure that I always measure the success of my life by whether or not I have a man in my life, whether I'm any closer to being married.
I have been guilty of this for pretty much the entirety of my life. In my head I have this idea that if I have a "suitor" then I've still got a chance of getting married and having kids one day (which is pretty much all I've ever wanted), and so I'm happy. This, unfortunately, can be flipped. If I don't think that anyone fancies me I believe that my life therefore does not have any worth, as there is no possibility of this now happening. (Don't ask me why, that's just my brain for you!)

I've been thinking about this and I realised that it's not just me, our society is completely obsessed with relationships. Most of our best-selling films and books are epic romances, even films like Lord of the Rings play out the romances to draw extra interest. All of those scenes with Arwen and Aragorn? Yeah, not so present in the books believe it or not. The story is amazing on it's own, there was no need to add the romance. It's similar with the Hobbit as well, what on earth was up with that love triangle between Legolas, Taruiel and Kili? We're obsessed!

We are focus on who's dating who in the media. Take my idol (for want of a better word) Lea Michele. She is currently doing this thing called 'you first', where she encourages fans to look out for themselves, to be happy and healthy. Yet on every post she ever writes people focus on her previous relationship with Cory and current relationship with Matthew Paetz. She is doing all this good in the world and all we care about is her love life. 
It's the same for Jennifer Lawrence. She wrote that awesome essay about women earning less and encouraging them to stick up for themselves, and on the whole hunger games press tours they focus whether she's dating Josh Hutcherson or Liam Hemsworth, or whether her relationship with Chris Martin was genuine. 

This is ridiculous. And I think we've all got this idea that relationships are what makes the world goes around. That your life isn't worth as much if your single.

I'd like to challenge this notion.

Your life is worth everything. Whether you are dating someone or not. Your self-worth is not equivalent to your romantic life.
You can still have love in your life without a relationship. You have so many other ways to love and be loved. Your friends and your-family, for example. They love you almost unconditionally (I can't speak for everyone but I am not always a nice person and yet still mine still love to the brim.)

Most importantly though, you can love yourself. You have to live with yourself for our entire life, do you really want to waste it hating yourself? It drains you of your happiness. I know this is hard. I sure don't like myself like 95% of the time but I'm trying.

Let's be a society of people who see people ad love them for who they are, rather than for who or who not they may not be connected with. Let's be a generation of people who love themselves for themselves, not being happy in order for someone to come into it and make it whole.

Your life is complete in yourself. Believe it. And love yourself.

Tied Together With a Smile

This post happens to be deeply personal to me, and I've had it written down for about a month now and I've been backing out of posting it but I feel like it's important and could be quite enlightening about what it's like to live with depression. This has been a reality for me for over 8 years now, so here are just some of the days of my life. There is a trigger warning for this post. 
Please, if you think you may be suffering from someone similar, see someone about it. It doesn't have to be a doctor necessarily but a friend or a family member, someone that's safe. No one deserves to go through this alone. 


So this story starts one Sunday afternoon. 
I'm sat on my bed. My brain going crazy, telling me all the ways I could die, head screaming at me, asking why I still want to be alive. Me, sitting there, genuinely not being to answer that question. Tears streaming down my eyes, not able to die, not being able to live, I just sit there in shock. I'm frozen in time being unable to move, think, or do anything, waiting for the moment to pass. 
Imagine this happening, not just on the one-off, but literally every day, sometimes several times a day. 

It doesn't matter where I am, or what I happen to be doing at the time. One minute I'm living, the next thing you know, I'm fighting for my life. 

This is a genuine reality for my life. Thankfully these episodes are about once a week now, and are getting fewer by the month (with the help of medicine- thank you Jesus!)

This next story starts any morning.
One day, I'm stuck in bed. I'm not miserable per-say, I'm not really feeling anything. I can't move, I can't seem to do anything.
So instead I lie there, for hours, stuck in this life. I'm unable to live, and I sleep for as long as I can, putting off the day. I hope I can move later on, maybe before my family get home, so I can hide my feelings. If I get changed maybe they won't know the severity of my day. 
Once I'm out of bed I just cry. My life amounts to nothing if this is what my day is gonna be like, if this is what my life is going to be like. 
I can't keep doing this forever but I do not know what else I can do. I'm stuck in this paradox of life. This is not the usual day, but what happens around two or three times in a row, about once a month. 

I do not know whether this is better or worse than my episodes. It feels like I'm faking it. Everything I do is a fight against myself. Am I sure I am not able to move? Am I just faking it? Am I able to eat? Am I able to look after myself? Do I even care? What am I able to do? I do not even know. I'm weeping.

Then comes the most common day.
This is pretty much the same as your average day. I get up, go to work, then to the gym, hang out with my family, read, etc. Except instead of being happy or whatever there's just an apathy surrounding my life.

I'm living because I have to. There's no real enjoyment in what I do, even if it is something I love, like re-reading Harry Potter for the hundredth time. Everything has this dullness that surrounds it. It's like when you're smiling for a photo and your smile never quite reaches your eyes. Happiness, or any genuinely pleasant feeling is superficial. It only ever hits me part-way. The one good feeling I seem to have is comfort. If I am doing something I know I enjoy, or something simply normal, like cooking for myself, I'm comforted by the fact I seem to be doing. If I'm doing, I can't be that bad really. 

That is not to say there are not good days. There are, and they are wonderful.
It's basically your normal life, but you can feel fully. You can laugh until your belly hurts, you can cry because you are heartbroken, rather than because you were unable to make a cup of tea for yourself that day. You can feel every emotion under the sun. It's just life, and life is good.

This is the most rare of all the days. I can only remember one good day in the last 6 months at least. There have been glimmers, but that is it so far. This is what we aim for. We aim for the good days to become more frequent, and hope for a day where the bad days are almost non-existent. I am not expecting to always be happy, life does not work that way. I just simply want to be alive. 

Change

Well hello there! 
So this post follows on from last week, but instead of talking about my depression, I'm going to talk about different ways you can help those you know who are struggling with depression or other mental illnesses.

Okay so I had this post all written out yesterday. Some do's and don'ts of things to say and do to help but I didn't feel comfortable with posting it. Like at all.
Then I realised that while there are certain things that can't be said or done and others that can be useful but actually that isn't the point.

The point is to love them. Love them no matter what. This can be hard, especially with some one like me who pretends I'm okay for months and then ends up screaming at my family in public (last time it was in the middle of a beach in Spain) about how I want to die and that they haven't been looking after me enough despite me not actually admitting that I needed it. Despite all of this my family love me unconditionally and that is my rock throughout everything. They have been behind me 100% especially since I went off sick three months ago and it has meant the world.

Be there as they need you to be. Platitudes and help can mean a lot, but a lot of time we're not in a position to actual feel gratitude or love from such actions and then we end up feeling guilty because we know all you're trying to do is help and it's not working. I know it can be hard from both ends, for the people trying to help who end up feeling helpless because nothing they do seems to be helping and for those who need the help who end up feeling guilty. What I suggest is to actually ask them what they want. What makes them feel loved or appreciated and supported. They may not always know, but doing this opens up the discussion and can actually help in a big way because knowing that you're trying to understand can often mean more than many normal ways of helping. 

This also helps because actually we are all different, and so we experience mental health in different ways. Something that might be hard for me might be easy for some one else, or something that is easy for me might be hard for some one else. I know that actually things that make me feel better (such things as many hugs and constant reassurance) don't actually help my family members. If I was to try and help them when they're sad by doing things that I know help me it might not actually make any difference at all, because it doesn't mean the same to them as it does to you. (Fun tip- look up love languages!)

The one thing I do ask for you not to do is to try and outwardly judge them. If I'm hanging out in my house being a slob who hasn't manage to shower in several days and has barely moved from my bed and basically lived on chocolate this whole time, what I need is some one to just appreciate how much energy it took for me to actually get out of bed and move. Believe me I know what my behaviour must look like, I don't need you to tell me. Just celebrate the small victories with me, and then I might be able to get better enough to do the bigger things. 

Mental health might be hard to understand, it may not make any sense to you. Actually it doesn't make sense to me 90% of the time and it is my reality, but loving people despite not understanding is the best thing you can do. It really does mean everything.

Start me up

Hurrah! It's 2016!
I had a plan for a new years day post but because I'm a complete wimp and put off starting this for a good couple of weeks so it never came to be. However, I think it's still can be applied to today, or just this first month of the year in general. 

So it's the time of the year where everyone starts to bombard your facebook with posts about 'the new me' or writes about their new years resolutions or new fitness plans and well you get the idea, people writing about all the things they want to do to improve their lives. And then it's the time of year where the other half of your facebook uses their posts to moan about all the people who are posting about their new starts because they believe it's rubbish or just that it's all over their timelines.

What I want to ask is, what is the problem with using a fresh start? 
I know that I am a sucker for new years resolutions and new beginnings and all that jazz. I make up a million resolutions I know I'll never keep but still end up weeping by the beginning of February due to the fact i'm a massive failure. Yet I still do it every year and see no problem in others trying to do the same.
What is wrong with people wanting to better themselves? What is wrong with people choosing to leave the last year behind them because it happened to be a sucky one? What is wrong with using the new year as a chance to work on themselves? Every year can be a new start, heck every day can be a new start if we need it to, maybe every hour!

If people are doing something to try to improve their lives then we should be encouraging them, not dismissing them! Even if they're like me and end up failing within the first week, at least they're trying. Anyone who wants to better their lives and their world is a winner in my book. Please stop bashing on them.

Yes it's annoying when people spam all over your facebook, and maybe there is something to be said about people having realistic aims of things they want to accomplish for the new year, but what's the point in moaning about it? It only creates negativity. People are going to spam your profile all the time, especially now we're a generation of people who get new star wars films (mate never thought I'd get to be a part of that excitement, the last film came out when I was 11). There are always going to be topics that end up being mentioned on every single post one day while you're scrolling through your homepage, so please stop being so negative about it, especially if it's ones where we're trying to make the world a better place, even if it's just starting with ourselves. Thank you :)

(Love you guys, hope this post didn't end up being a negative post about people being negative, that would be super ironic, which would be funny but would kinda miss the point huh?)

Don't Speak

SO. I heard something really interesting yesterday and I wanted to share it with you.
So we've just had the Christmas period right, which involves a lot of parties and social gatherings, catch-ups etc, each involving a lot of mingling. Despite what you may believe, I am not very good at this! (In groups that is, in smaller groups you know I am the bomb and could talk for a lifetime haha!) Even with people I know really well I just get completely stuck for conversation starters and with those I don't know at all I just sit there awkwardly, probably playing with my phone. 

Anyway, I was moaning about this to someone, and how I tend to get quite upset whenever I talk about something I get really excited about and they give a blank face in return. This person's response was amazing, she basically sat there looking at me for a little bit and asked, "well do you ever ask about their interests and passions?"

My mind was blown. Do I ever ask or engage in their passions unless I know they're the same as mine? I did not actually think so. I felt ultra awkward.

So here is my challenge (largely to myself but also for you guys maybe a little bit). When you're in a conversation do you ever ask about their interests and passions (whomever they may be)? Especially if the conversation is awkward and you're feeling like you have nothing to say. If, like me, you often do not engage in conversation like that why don't you try it sometime? To see the look on somebody's face when they talk about something they love and their eyes light up, it's amazing.

Do let me know how it goes as well! Let's learn about other fun things and you never know, maybe it'll spark some new passions, who knows? Let's also not forget that it shows the person you're speaking to that you're actually investing in them, especially if it's someone you're close to. I'm gonna try and be less selfish with my conversations, join me if you like. ♥

I'm not throwing away my shot

Hello there!

Welcome to my blog! I've been planning on doing this for ages now but I always end up backing out. FINALLY, here I am! 

I've written out a few posts in advance in case I ever get writers block but I plan to put something out once a week, so there's lots to look forward to here, (I know you're screaming in anticipation!) These posts could be about pretty much anything, but I plan to write about my experiences with depression and other mental health issues, as well as many rants about my favourite big man J. 

The main purpose of this blog is to use my voice. I believe that everyone has one, and we all have things that we have experience in and therefore shed light on for others. 
For too long I've been hiding in the shadows, embarrassed about my struggles with depression over the years. If I want to make an impact in the world of mental health, how on earth can I do so if I'm afraid to talk about my own experiences?

So here I am! I'm not gonna throw away my shot (I hope you get the reference in the song above, this is definitely an excuse to introduce you all to the second best musical ever ♥)

I only have one more thing to say, and that is to encourage you to use your own voice. We all have things that we can use to help others, whether that's experiences or general knowledge or simply just nice words that people can read and smile too (you'd be surprised by how much that can mean sometimes, just having a small smile). Use your voice. Be a world changer. I'd love to hear from you.

-May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him.