how do you measure a year?

As we say goodbye to 2014, I want to share some of the moments from this year that have stuck with me. I want to remember the hurt, the pain, the weird, the wonderful because it all meant something. I want to spend this last day of the year reflecting and remembering what I can of what 2014 gave me. It's been the worst but the best year of my life and throughout the year, I had a note open on my phone where whenever I remembered, I wrote down something that happened.  Now I am going to share these for the first time ever...

January 2014. It's the 2nd day of this new year and I am sat on a train, audibly sobbing to a train of people pretending they can't hear me. My destination is a private London hospital where I have been admitted to and I am feeling a fear I could never have comprehended before this moment. I'm scared of how alone I feel. I'm scared of what is waiting for me. I'm scared of getting better. I'm scared of the fact I know I will be leaving a substantial amount heavier than I am right now. I'm scared of what the other patients will think of me. I'm scared of how worthless I feel.

July 2014. London is having the most insane thunder storms, there's 3 different ones in 3 different directions, I go outside and put my arms out, stare up at the sky and feel incredible.

April 2014. It's the early hours of the morning. I don't know what day it is. I don't care anymore. I've never felt so scared and alone in my entire life. I feel like a failure. I've lost everything. I've given up on myself. I spent hours prior having incredibly vivid hallucinations about throwing myself in front of a tube, a car, a bus, anything that could wipe out my existence in one step. I've taken too many pills. I'm dragging a kitchen knife along the centre of my veins as though it's a game of operation, I hit the edges and I'm out. The blood smells like burning metal and feels somewhere between relief and giving up.

November 2014. She tells me she's in love with me and I realise that every moment of the pain was worthwhile.

June 2014.  My best friend and I are stood at the front of a sold out Islington Assembly Hall seeing Sara Bareilles live for the third time together. Her arms are around my shoulders and I'm wiping tears from my face as she plays the opening chords of "December" and I'm really, really fucking glad that I'm alive.

January 2014. It's my first night in hospital and I can't sleep. All I can hear is the girl in the room next to me screaming and shouting. She says she wants to kill everybody. She is a Persian Princess and is biting, kicking, screaming and spitting at everybody who comes into her room. I pull the covers over my head and cry wondering what I am doing in a place like this. It takes 3 hours for her sedation to work. The next morning when we pass outside our floor's kitchen at 9am, she hugs me and gives me a cornetto ice cream, I take it off her and she watches as I open it and take a lick. Her eyes are like a child giving someone a present, holding a breath, hoping that they'll like it. I say thank you, head back to my room, throw it in the bin and spend the next hour purging. I don't feel anything.

February 2014. Oh my god, Taylor Swift was metres away from me performing my favourite song of hers "All Too Well" I'm so overwhelmed I think I'm going to pass out.

May 2014. I'm walking out of the apartment I'm staying at and a dead pigeon falls out of the sky at my feet. I trip over it and spend the next 45 minutes wondering if having a dead bird fall at your feet is sign of good luck. I never did find out.

June 2014. Two of my friends have come over to the apartment I'm staying at for an impromptu Tony Awards viewing party. Jessie Mueller and Carole King are performing together and I can't stop crying because it's so amazing.

October 2014. She takes 3 buses across London at 4am just to come and be with me whilst I'm hurting. I can't describe this feeling.

August 2014.  Two months ago I started watching the TV show "Pretty Little Liars" and I've just finished binge watching five seasons, because why the hell not!

September 2014. I'm hanging out at my friend Becka's friend pub in Soho with her, our friend Kerison and my cat who is on a leash fast asleep on a lap. We're drinking gin and it dawns upon me that I am sat in a pub, with my cat on a lead and somehow this doesn't even make the top twenty of most ridiculous things to happen to me.

May 2014. It's a Sunday afternoon and I'm lay in the bathtub of my hospital room's en-suite listening to Joni Mitchell's album "Blue" at full blast, the sun is shining and I realise that not everything has to hurt.

July 2014. I'm sat in my new favourite writing spot in Soho, I'm writing about him, and then a song comes on that just makes me know that he is with me. All the time. He lives in my heart.

December 2014. It's early in the morning and for some reason I'm the first of us both to be awake. This is rare. I'm lying listening to the rain with the love of my life nestled into my side with her arms wrapped protectively around me. Life is so beautiful.

June 2014. The Red Arrows are going to be flying over Buckingham Palace. I don't usually care about things like this but I'm staying around the corner of Buckingham Palace and as soon as I hear the helicopters in the distance, I'm filled with this childlike excitement and grab the keys and race up onto the roof of the apartment in just a towel with soaking wet hair and watch them fly past with a trail of red, white and blue smoke. Wow, I suddenly realise that I'm LIVING in London and this is just a casual day for me.

September 2014. I'm wrapped up in a throw, roasting marshmallows over a bonfire in my friend Victoria's garden and drinking gin. Life is good. Little do I know what is waiting for me around the corner. It's only going to get better.

October 2014. Lindsay Lohan tells me my outfit is cute.

April 2014. I want to change everything about myself. I hate myself and I hate the traces of who has been left on me. Hair. Hair. It has to start with the hair right? I go and get inches upon inches cut off my hair had my hair and am now fashioning a shoulder length bob. I feel free. This is liberating.

July 2014. I accidentally get a kitten.

May 2014. It's a terrible night. I'm exhausted and my head is screaming at me. I've gained a huge amount of weight because of the medication that I'm on and I've just had enough of it. I spend the day in bed refusing to leave or eat anything. Nurses have been trying to coax me out of bed or to eat something all day and evening. One of my doctors enters my room for the third time that day and I just lose it, I start screaming and I'm howling with sobs. I can't breathe, I can't feel anything. I wake up 13 hours later to find that I had been sedated.

December 2014. I'm at the Harry Potter Studio Tour with the love of my life. Could life get any better than this?

April 2014. I'm back in hospital, after a gruelling group therapy session which I have stormed out of, I'm sat crying, when a very famous musician sits down beside me, puts his arm around me and just sits there in silence with his arm around me whilst I cry. People are really special.

October 2014. It's Halloween. We're hand in hand walking around London's Southbank. My heart is so content. I can't remember a time before she existed. I didn't know it yet, but I'd found her.

June 2014. I tell myself I'm enough, and I almost believe it. This is progress.

September 2014. I start a new job and gain a new family.

June 2014. An entire outdoor weekend of free theatre proves to be just what the doctor ordered.

November 2014. For the first time in a very long time, I pick up a razor and don't see it as a weapon to hurt myself with.

July 2014. I'm at an event photographing Keira Knightley. My love for portrait photography has flooded back to me.

October 2014. I have my own flat. My very own place to call mine, finally.

September 2014. I'm browsing Etsy and I never realised how much I needed a taxidermy rat dressed as Captain America until right this very moment.

21st October 2014. My life is changed forever. For the better.

November 2014. For the first time ever, somebody has the ability to bring me out of a panic attack. She holds my hand, strokes my face and looks into my eyes and suddenly I can breathe again.

December 2014. I'm seeing Taylor Swift with my favourite person on the planet.

23rd November 2014. Love, just love.

December 2014. The most romantic night of my life. I'm so in love. I'm the luckiest person in this universe and my life is incredible. What difference a year makes.

circles and cycles and seasons.

After living out of suitcase for the last however many months, I am finally posting this from my own bed, in my own apartment, in the beautiful North London location that I am now calling home.

Home. It's a funny word. I haven't felt like I've belonged anywhere for so long. Months and months. My house that I lived in before I went into hospital, that's been my home for the last twenty years of my life felt alien to me. I couldn't settle, I couldn't breathe. The city I used to live in felt impossible to live with. Fragments of the ill version of me are scattered everywhere, I was stumbling over ghosts and heartache and loneliness. So I made the decision to stay in London where my treatment was and set myself up from pretty much rock bottom.

Eleven months and one day ago, I tried to take my own life. Eleven months and one day later and I thank every fibre of the universe that I wasn't successful.

It's been a year of learning, of making mistakes, of piecing parts of myself back together, of loss, but also of tremendous gain.

I have gained a small amount of wisdom, a huge amount of weight. I became a healthy weight with the help of the hospital, and then I made the brave/stupid (it depends which day you ask me) decision to 'sacrifice' my idea of the 'perfect' weight and to disappear into skin and bone, to go onto a large number of different medications that would cause weight gain, but stabilise the mood swings, the dark moods, the suicidal thoughts. Today is a day where I think it was brave.

Last night, I didn't. I punished myself for it. I stumbled, and I gave in to the self harm thoughts for the first time in so many months, and it felt so good. But then it felt everything it should have felt; unnatural, wrong, and something I absolutely should not be doing. I could see that there was a way through it all, without having to hurt myself. I felt that tiny ounce of self esteem that has been growing inside of me, come through and start to help me fight for what is important, me.

I've become more and more at ease as the last few months have gone on. I have been introduced to the most incredible people who have become my family, and who make each day that little bit easier. It's a cliche, but I have got the most amazing people in my life right now. People whom I adore, and who make me feel like I am worth something, who make me feel loved and accepted. People who are seeing me at my highest weight and who still love me and go out of their way to make sure I'm okay and happy.

I've never felt part of a family (with one very special exception) or that I was someone who actually mattered amongst a group of friends, and now, I feel like I've found my place amongst some truly wonderful, big hearted, beautiful people, and I'm lucky enough to call them my friends.

There is still so much to learn and to gain, I don't feel so alone in life anymore, and that makes this whole recovery thing a lot more manageable. Small steps eventually get you somewhere, and I'm getting there, slowly. As for what I lost, nothing is lost forever, even the pieces that I treasured the most are slowly making their way back into my orbit.

you lock me out and knock me down

I feel out of synch. Like my world is rotating on a different axis to usual. Everything is off balance and I feel I'm grasping for something solid to hold onto but I just get air. Empty. I feel empty. There is nothing left inside of me and I've got nothing else to give. Everything is moving too fast, it's all moving around me and I cannot hold onto any of it.

I'm trying to find some semblance of order to my thoughts. Rapid cycling moods are something I thought I'd gotten used to, and then they come along and sweep me off my feet, I can't catch my breath, I can't still myself enough to catch my breath.

Did you ever do that thing when you were a kid, where you put your arms out and just spun around in circles until you got dizzy and just fell to the floor? Then you'd giggle and get back up, and everything around you was swirling all over the place, but it gave you a high, so you'd put your arms back out and spin again, faster and faster. Bang. You'd hit the floor again. There was a dizzy adrenaline rush that made you feel so warm inside that anything felt possible. I could lie there for what felt like forever, dizzy, breathless, but I felt like I'd been flying, and my landing heightened every single one of my senses.

Now imagine that again, you're an adult, the setting has changed; instead of holding your arms out by your sides, they are rigid and stuck, you are moving, walking through a menial every day task. But then out of nowhere, you start spinning, that dizzy adrenaline rushing through your blood stream, everything is swirling around you and no matter how hard you try, you cannot find a point of stillness amongst all of the dizzy chaos. Everything is just moving and moving and you're going faster and faster, but there's no landing, there's no stopping. That is what rapid cycling moods feel like.

I cannot find a still point amongst the chaos. I can't slow down. I can't control anything, my moods are moving so quickly that I can't concentrate, I can't focus on anything, it's near enough impossible. It's like I'm on a carousel, but I can't get off. I want to, but I can't. That same adrenaline rush is sweeping through my system and I'm flying high, so high. I want everything to stop, I want to get off, I want to find a still point to focus on a slow it all down, to bring me down, but before I can even think about how much I want to find that still point, my mind is already bringing up a hundred other things.

Those are the highs. When you're flying so high, at some point, you have to land. The carousel eventually has to stop and you eventually have to get off. The lows are bleak, black, an infinite abyss. Emptiness overwhelms me. I feel the absence of everything I've lost in each and every one of my pores. Sadness seeps out of me, from every little crevice, every little part of me. It evaporates out of my skin, it pours out of me every time I exhale.

I try. I try so hard to battle it, I try so hard to fight it and not let it paralyse me. I try so hard. But I'm not tough, I'm not a warrior. So sometimes I fail. Sometimes I give into it. I let it consume me, inch by inch, muscle by muscle, thought by thought.

I cry. I cry until my head hurts and my eyes ache. Sometimes I just want those tears to drown me, to take me under and hold me underneath them until I'm lost completely in their power. I pick at my skin, at my lips, at any part of me that I can grasp onto. I pick at them to break myself apart. To strip pieces of me off, bit by bit. To break myself to my very core, so that I can start again. Self loathing doesn't come with a care manual, it doesn't tell you to stop, it doesn't tell you that you don't deserve to be broken apart; that you are already whole enough to live through a day, a minute, an hour without pain. I lose all sight of hope, I'm trapped in my own little purgatory of bleakness, I'm wading through misery and I can't see an end in sight. I'm drowning in it. I let it into my lungs, I breathe it into my system. It's filling me up from the inside out and nothing can stop it. I can see the sand of an hourglass moving slowly, as I try and scream and fight my way out of this glass case of despair that has trapped me inside myself.

People try and break me out, they tell me nice things, they give me pretty words of hope and promise and encouragement. But they don't reach their intended target, they never do. I absorb them as much as the despair allows me to, I try to inhale them deeply enough to reach my core, to reach the nucleus of the self loathing, to break it apart and shatter it into so many pieces that it will never be able to form itself again. But they can never reach deep enough.

Criticism, on the other hand, reaches right inside of the central nervous system of the misery and self loathing, and gives it life, it gives it energy and fuels it to carry on; to keep feasting on my spirit.

"At 24, I would have hoped you would have grown out of staying in bed all day"

Simple words of disgust, veiled with self righteousness, thrown my way, directing themselves at the very heart and soul of the depression, fuelling it with enough energy to consume me further and further.

You are a failure. You couldn't fight me today and she judged you for that. She thinks you are a failure because in that moment you weren't stronger than me. You were a failure, you are a failure. You're fat and you're pathetic and you're never going to be free of me.

Depression has been feasting on me, I can feel it taking me back under it's sweeping tide, swallowing me whole.

I hope I'm strong enough to fight it.

shadow won't let it in.

"Please, don't worry so much. Because in the end, none of us have very long on this earth. Life is fleeting. And if you're ever distressed, cast your eyes to the summer sky when the stars are strung across the velvety night."


Suicide. Depression. It has been all over the news for over a week now. We lost a legend, he took his own life and the world is undoubtedly less of a place without him. Whilst I was incredibly sad to see the actor that I grew up watching had taken his life, I was equally as upset by the comments people were making in regards to his actions, most of them I wont even waste the energy to type, but so much of what I saw on the internet was that people perceived his actions as selfish.

I am not naive enough to assume that everybody is educated on mental illness. I am not naive enough to assume that there is a universal opinion opinion on depression and other mental illnesses. I understand that to a lot of people, the concept that somebody who had a family that loved them and seemingly everything to live for could take their own life is incomprehensible, I understand that, I do. It is only through educating and discussion that the understanding of what could lead a person to take their own life, despite having external factors that, on paper, should be adding to their life. The last ten days have been incredibly triggering for me, I have been having some incredibly dark thoughts about my own failed suicide attempts, and I feel like discussing it a little more may help my mind let go some of what has been consuming me so fiercely.

I am not supporting suicide at all. I have myself seen people I have cared about take their own lives. The feeling that you are left with is indescribable. To think you could have picked up on a sign or even said something differently, you replay every single conversation that you had with them and with a fine tooth comb, search for something, anything, that could have signalled it; a misplaced sigh, a tone of voice, anything. The people who are left behind, if any, are as much a victim as the person who has gone, and I do not at all discount their pain or suffering.

Depression is a horrible, horrible disease. It creeps into your mind and steals the very essence of you. It obliterates the parts of you that feel joy, that is able to comprehend any emotion or reality outside of what you are currently feeling. It is as though someone has turned the brightness down on the world; everything is bleak, feeling becomes a thing of the past, and if you have moments where you can feel; it's extreme sadness and the pure and utter self loathing and hatred. You are noting. You are worthless. You are a waste of space. You do not deserve to be breathing in the air that you are breathing in. You are redundant. You are a disgrace to humanity.

Love unfortunately is not enough. It doesn't matter if there are people who love you, and it doesn't matter if you have 'things to live for' there is a disease inside your brain that is distorting your reality and causing an inherent lack of rational understanding or decision making. Your mind could be telling you that the sky is green, and when you glance at the sky to check; it's blue, but that doesn't matter, because the more your mind tells you that it's green, the more it becomes green when you look at it.

The mind is a weapon of destruction. Depression is cruel, and callous and takes no prisoners. It doesn't care how much money you have or how many people love you, if it wants you, it will get you. For some it's relatively minor and for some it is crippling and soul destroying.

When you are floating in oblivion, robbed of all of your senses, all of the parts that make you who you were, numbed of anything but insurmountable pain, it is hard to lift your head off your pillow each morning. There are silent warriors amongst us, who despite all of that, can put one foot in front of the other and function enough to get through a day. Some are able to fight it, some are able to reach out and ask for help, some are lucky enough to have people that are able to see their suffering and get help.

But for some people, in one moment, taking their life is an option that is put on the table in front of them, and it only takes that one moment that that option crosses their mind for them to take it.

For myself, I was in an extreme amount of pain and I couldn't take it anymore, I was flicking between pain and numbness and both of them felt too hard for me to be able to endure any longer, and my mind told me over and over again that there was a way for me to relieve myself of all of that and to be unburdened, and I tried. Twice. Thankfully for me, I failed and have been in treatment since, but some people aren't given the help that I was lucky enough to receive and still be receiving now. 

So please, the next time that you call someone selfish for taking their own life, just remember that depression is all consuming, it takes you from the inside out, there is very little that the mind is able to grasp outside of the internal suffering. It's a very selfish illness in terms of the fact that it focuses on the person and only that person, it's not a choice. It tells you how much you have failed as human being, how much you deserve to be suffering, how awful you are... With every single second of the day, there is very little time when a person isn't suffering, whether it is with feelings of nothingness, or feelings of despair. There is no future; just now, just what you are feeling. You are in a bubble whilst life carries on around you and without you. 

Being loved and loving other people doesn't make you immune from it. It doesn't make you a failure as parent/child/spouse/friend/whatever, you can be so loved, yet so deeply aching inside. Just because the person has children, doesn't mean that the love they have for their kids isn't there, absolutely not. 

Depression extinguishes the human spirit, but it can be overcome. There is help available out there, and there are people who want to listen and help you. Even if it's just me, through my blog posts, I care that you are alive. 

I recently watched a video made by Matt Ganley (which actually inspired this post) in which he says that we are in an era where by we are able to have the insight for compassion, and be concerned with human flourishing and human well being, understanding and empathy. And he is so right, our generation is a lot more willing to try to understand others. We can use technology to say whatever we want, and people are becoming more in tune to mental illness and we can use social media to help talk about it and eradicate the stigmas and misconceptions that generations before us created. All it takes is one conversation with one other person, it may make all the difference in the world for another human being. 

(US) National Suicide Prevention Lifeline - 1–800–273-TALK (8255)

• (UK)  Samaritans - 08457 90 90 90 
• International Association for Suicide Prevention

To Write Love On Her Arms

Love is Louder

Half of Us

beat (for eating disorders)

Matt Ganley's video that inspired this post is here at  http://youtu.be/ySg6nnxZdqE 

all my resistance will never be distance enough

bod·y im·age

noun

1.     the subjective picture or mental image of one's own body.

Two words that put the fear of god into me. I will do anything within my power to avoid any kind of question or discussion of any kind about body image. It fills me with fear, anxiety, and overwhelming sadness.

What has prompted this post, was a small breakdown in a changing room. I stood looking at my body and the fluorescent lighting was illuminating every single flaw of mine, like miniature spotlights drawing attention to what I don't like, presenting my body to me as though I was in some morphed fun house mirror. But no, it was just me. 

I am fat. I am ugly. I am disgusting. I am an embarrassment. I'm hideous. I make myself feel sick.

This is a monologue that goes around my head for pretty much the entire day, when it's quiet in my head, that's when it becomes the loudest. It joins forces with the "drill sergeant" voice of the anorexia in my head that berates me for what I eat and how much weight I have put on. It punishes me for taking medication that caused such weight gain. It tells me that being thin is more important than being emotionally stable. It tells me I'm wrong for fighting. 

There are moments. like earlier, when I was stood staring at this enormous, disgusting image in the mirror, that I want to just listen to that voice and believe it is right. 

Fighting it every single day is so, so exhausting. I honestly don't think people understand just how hard people in recovery are fighting every single day.

Today I'm questioning that fight. 

It would be so easy to just submit to the drill sergeant inside my head. But what would it gain? At my lowest weight, I couldn't see how dangerously underweight I was, I saw myself as the size I was now. I wasn't happy. I wasn't gaining anything from starving myself to death. I wasn't achieving anything substantial. I was damaging my organs and I was killing myself.

I wish I could be thin and happy, but I don't think that I can be both. This is my dilemma. 

I set impossible standards for myself and I am so judgemental of everything that I do. I do not judge other people, and I do not care about the shape or size of others, yet the last ten years of my life have been defined by my size. So why do I do this to myself when it's not something I judge others for? 

I want people to know that anorexia and bulimia doesn't mean that you judge other people, just yourself, constantly. I compare myself to every other woman, it doesn't matter what size you are, I will find ways that I am bigger than you. It used to happen every single time I encountered another woman, causing me to isolate myself constantly. However, now it's fleeting. It still happens every day, it just isn't as overwhelming and consuming. 

After an entire day of making myself sick on Saturday, to the point of vomiting blood and collapsing, I'm trying to keep the end goal in sight; to learn to be happy and to love myself. I am enough, and I have to keep repeating that over and over again; I am enough. You are enough. 

an empty space to fill in

Today has been an incredibly hard day.

Self loathing set in the moment I woke up. My mind was just dark and foggy and  numb. My head was too heavy to lift off the pillows, so I just pulled the covers over my head and lay still. Alternating between eyes open and eyes closed, when they were open I was fixated at a spot on the wall; time was passing and I was just this heavy weight, unable to escape whatever it was that had consumed me.

I wanted to punish myself, I had overwhelming urges to hurt myself for things that were out of my control, things people had said to me. I needed to punish myself. But I was too tired to hurt. Numb was comfortable, numb was manageable. Pain was a place on the spectrum I wasn't willing to expose myself too. So I purged.

I kept going, hours passed and I sat comfortably waiting for a reasonable amount of time to pass between each purge.

Until finally I stopped. I let the pain in, I let myself feel it, I let it wash over me and then I let it leave me. 

I made the distinction that these actions were a result of my illness. This is not me. I have to fight. Bad days will come and go, but I have to try and be safe and look after myself in a way I was unable to before.

A friend called me and talked to me for over three hours, making me talk about anything and everything and it gave me a small escape route of relief. It was temporary but it helped. 

I had a shower and I accidentally cut my thumb on a razor and a rush of adrenaline threw my body at the sensation, remember what it was like to force those blades inside yourself? The self loathing that has been driving my mind all day screamed at me, reminding me that I was worthless and this was a tool for me to punish myself for being so inadequate and worthless.

But I managed to not listen to those feelings and I didn't hurt myself and I feel stronger and I feel proud of myself. It's something so small but I'm proud of myself. 

I'm not worthless. I don't deserve to be punished. That is my depression talking, it's not the truth. But when it's talking to you and driving you from within, it's so hard to make the distinction. 

I'm so tired, my head hurts and my whole body just aches. 

people are better in the abstract

There is a certain amount of recklessness that comes with despair.

I show myself to people, I give them little glimpses, I show them little fragments of myself that I assume to be true pieces of me, who I am inside.

It takes so much out of me to be able to do that; to show myself to someone and allow myself to be judged, or worst, abandoned.

On paper, it seems like it should be easier to hold people at arms length, to choose not to show them the little pieces of who you are, because then you can't get attached and then they won't leave you.

If only life was that simple.

We gravitate towards different people, we merge, we collide... We can try to stop ourselves from letting people in, we can build our walls thick and high, we can turn ourselves into an insurmountable mass. But all we gain is loneliness and self destruction.

You turn inwards and when all your walls cave in on you, it's you that is left in the centre of it. You're the burnt out grenade canister, the wreckage is around you. So why not have other people there to help you sift through it all.

I've learned the hard way that people are just temporary. Some people come into our lives for a very short amount of time, and then they're gone again. It's as simple as that. We can't grasp onto people for dear life, people will come and people will go.

It's a really hard lesson to learn, I've lost my most favourite of all human beings, they've gone and I'm still grieving for those each and everyday. It dictates every connection I make, every piece of myself I show to others.

Recovery is teaching me to show myself to more people and be more open, I'm trying to harness all of what I've learned and am still learning but sometimes I get it wrong. I'm going to slip up and I'm going to make mistakes, I'm allowed to do that and I absolutely hate that I feel like I have to justify myself.

I don't even know what this post is, I just needed to write something and this is it, I hate it and will probably delete it, but for now, whilst I sob in a coffee shop, take this post.

This was the end of this entry, until:

Tonight, a combination of things happened and so many things just fell into place.

I have had an awful day, I've cried, I've screamed, I've cried some more... But then I didn't. Things felt better, things felt more manageable, things felt within reach.

I learnt some stuff about myself. I met up with a friend and at one point she had an anxiety attack, and I felt like Rogue from X-Men (she can gain the super powers of anybody she touches, for non nerd folk) and I just seemed to absorb all of her anxiety. It filled every single part of me, and it consumed me in a way I can only describe as a tidal wave, because after it had flooded every single part of me, as quickly as it appeared, it was gone.

I had a similar experience an hour later, where I met someone who is such a beautiful and happy spirit, and her happiness just consumed me.

What I said earlier about people colliding... We stumble upon people and sometime's their impact is profoundly important to us, maybe it's a sliding doors situation, if we hadn't had that one tiny interaction with them, everything might be different. It's so weird to think about.

I wish I could find some sort of peace with myself. It's becoming such an effort to try to hold back all of my devastation and anger with myself every time that I see my reflection and see how hideously huge that I am.

I know I'm supposed to be reminding myself over and over again that I am worth more than this, but right now I just don't care. I am so uncomfortable with the huge amount of weight that all of these drugs have made me put on, I feel like beached whale, I have never been this big in my entire life.

I feel like a failure to my eating disorder. I let it take so many years of my life and now here I am, helpless and huge. Was it all for nothing?

I just want to not see this grotesque, hideous creature whenever I catch a glimpse of myself. There isn't one good thing I like about any part of me, I wish I could be attractive, I wish I could change every part of myself. I hate what I look like. It's just completely disgusting, I'm an incredibly ugly person, if I could accept it, I'm sure my life would be a lot easier, but instead all I'm doing is crying because of it.

My meds have totally screwed my body over and it's in complete revolt, the weight gain, the severe bloating, the temperature increase, the nausea... There's so much that is making this body pretty impossible to live in right now, but I have to slowly be weaned off the extremely high levels of medication that I'm on now, and then have everything replaced and have a fresh start of new meds and new side effects.

Is any of this worth it?  It's just bad thing after bad thing, and then things start to look better and then just plummet again.

I am exhausted mentally and physically, and I just want to alter every single physical piece of myself because I'm so unhappy with how disgusting I look. 

raise your hopeful voice.

Every once in a while, the universe conspires to bring something into your life that will evidently alter your very state of being.

You are in the right place at the right time, with the right combination of people and something just happens that suddenly loosens the pain in your chest and gives your soul a moment of pure relief and release. You can feel it replenish the broken parts of you.

To put it simply, theatre nourishes my soul. Throughout my entire life; as an audience member and as an actor, theatre has sparked a flame inside of me that has never burnt out, and has been one part of my identity that was not erased by depression or anorexia. 

Sometimes, the right combination of cast and creatives come along and do not just create a piece of theatre, they create magic. 

At the lowest moment of my relapse, on one terrible night, I knew that I had to do something to quiet the darkness that was consuming me, so I purchased a ticket to see a show that I had seen before and very much enjoyed. What I wasn't anticipating, however, was a combination of incredible talent and energy that penetrated through every destructive layer of my mind and made me feel for the first time in months.

It was a catalyst for a myriad of inspirational and positive forces into my life. 

Since that night, I have been making weekly trips to see that same show and having exactly the same visceral reaction to what stoked something within me on that absolutely horrendous "rock bottom" night before I was readmitted back into hospital. 

Excessive? Yes. I have an extremely addictive personality, a trait that played a great part in anorexia gaining full control over my entire existence. I was addicted to losing weight. I was addicted to destroying myself. My addictive personality was instrumental in the self destruction that caused me to attempt to take my own life. However, it is also my addictive personality that drives my determination towards recovery. If I can find something that invokes such strong feelings within me that aren't destructive, be it theatre, art, books, music... I will indulge myself, I will allow myself to be exposed to something hopeful and positive time and time again, because I know of what the alternatives to not feeling them are. 

For me right now, a musical is one of many, many things that are aiding my recovery and allowing me to rediscover parts of myself that have remained buried under years of depression and self loathing.

I have never underestimated the ability a text, a piece of music, or a group of people, can have on helping people rebuild themselves. Art has the ability to transcend whatever boundaries or walls we build within ourselves, and connect our souls to something.

I have been introduced to not just some incredibly talented, but also some incredibly kind people through this particular piece of theatre. People who have given me hope that there is a "light at the end of the tunnel" and also that there are some remarkable acts of compassion out there, and also people who emit a tremendous amount of kindness into the world. Acts of which I was certain didn't exist in my world and that I had no hope for and no belief that I deserved them. 

I didn't ask or search for the adjustments to my core beliefs that have occurred over the last few months, but they came along at the perfect time and helped get me through something that I didn't ever see there being a way out of. 

We can just stumble across fortunate accidents, little serendipitous acts can come from nowhere, change the course of our lives and irrevocably alter us for the better.

I need to keep remembering that I can allow myself to hope. I can allow myself to believe that things can and will get better, because they can, and they will. 

one blow from caving in.

I wish there was a way to describe how it feels. How it seeps into every part of your brain and paralyses you. How you are just a puppet, helpless, pathetic, whilst it pulls the strings. A master puppeteer, that's what it is. It controls you. It controls every single part of you.

It shows you over and over again what you could be, what you should be striving for, but then it constantly reminds you that you're never going to get there. Your goal is unattainable because you are weak. You are pathetic. You are a failure. It's your fault. It laughs as you try again and again and again. It watches with satisfaction as you can't pass a reflective surface without breaking down in tears of shame and disgust because you hate the way you look.

There is never a moment where you can look at yourself with complete ease and clarity and say "Okay, I'm skinny enough, I'm thin now, I'll stop" the disease is a never ending spiral of discontent and dysmorphia. 

You measure your self worth in how much you weigh and what size in clothes you are. You don't choose that. You don't choose to be crying on your bedroom floor because your size 0 jeans are getting a bit more snug than previous. You don't choose to constantly be looking for flaws on every part of your body. Not that you have to look because there's a voice in your head pointing them all out and screaming at you to sort it out. 

This disease has stolen so many years of my life, yet I found myself today thinking that I am a fraud. I'm not skinny, I'm not thin. I don't care if people say that that's my body dysmorphia talking, but it's a truth. I don't know whether to be proud, or to breakdown.

It's a constant battle. I want to be better, but I want to be thin. I can't see any how you can become "recovered" and not be "fat" I wish I could learn to differentiate between the two.

I hate that it got it's control back today, but it was only temporary. I want to be better than I am. I want to keep bettering myself. I want to be healthy and happy and continue to embrace the love that surrounds me.

Ultimately, being happy is worth more than anything.

I will not be made to feel bad for being proud of the good days. It's taken me 8 years to even have good days. I haven't fought this for 1/3 of my life to not be proud of my small victories. Just because I am having good days doesn't mean they're all like that. They're not. But I'm not going to not celebrate and revel in the good days, the days when that's exactly what they are; good days. I had years worth of good days stolen from me, I'm not letting these ones just wash over me, I'm letting them sink into every pore of my body, I'm letting them in and I am celebrating in them. I will not apologise for that. 

Love is prevalent in recovery. Love for yourself and love for your body. Whilst I may not love my body, I'm beginning to try to learn to love myself.  We are all worth something. We are all worth more than numbers on a scale. We are all worth more than this disease. We all have our own special qualities to put out there and to give to others. No one person is worth more than another. There is beauty within each and every one of us. We all hold a unique and special place in this world, never forget that. We may have to fight to find our worth, to find our beauty, to find that we are more than numbers on scale. But I promise you, the fight is worth it. At the other end, there is an abundance of love and acceptance waiting for you. I'm hoping that I can realise that and get there soon. 

was a prisoner inside, now i'm breathing the air

I'm sat eating a bar of chocolate, and I keep wondering what would "she" say? How would "she" feel? How would "she" react? 

When I talk about she, I'm referring to anorexia. My eating disorder became so embedded in my brain, it became me, I became it, together we were one. Now our connection is tumulus, not quite severed, but it is not quite the symbiotic relationship we once had.

She was my first real love. My first real friend. My first real driving force. I want to say letting go of the anorexic, eating disorder ridden me has been a lot easier than I anticipated, but in actual fact I've spent over a year getting to this place. Bit by bit, our bond got chipped away, it wasn't noticeable. At the time I thought nothing was happening, but seeds were being planted in my brain. Parts of my brain began to break free from her grip over me. 

She stole me away without me realising. She took me prisoner and she wouldn't let me go. She told me over and over again that I was nothing, that I was worthless, than the only value I would hold was to be thin. And I believed her. I hung on her every word. She made me feel special, she made me feel wanted. As long as I was striving to be thin, I thought I had control, when in actual fact, it was her that was in control. She caged me, she chained me in, I was confined to one goal and one goal only.

Every second of everyday her voice was in my head;  "Don't eat, purge what you do eat. Fat is nothing. You are nothing. You wonder why nobody likes you? It's because you're so fat and ugly. At least if you're thin and ugly, you'll at least be thin. That girl is thin, why can't you be that thin? Why are you such a failure? You're nothing. You're lazy. You're disgusting. You make me sick."

She made me doubt people's love for me. "How could anybody ever love you?"she taught me that compliments were people's way of laughing at me. "They're really insulting you, whatever they're saying, they really mean the opposite" she taught me to smile and politely thank them and then go home and cry and listen whilst she told me how grotesque and what a failure I was. 

But she was there for me when nobody else was. Nobody ever stayed around, but she did. She was there when I needed someone, she was there to spur me on, to make me want to achieve my goal of being thin. I was reliant on her, as long as she was there, I was safe. I was in my comfort zone. My comfort zone was starve, purge, hate. An endless cycle of soul destroying, torturous thoughts, where I felt nothing but shame and disgust.

She brainwashed me. For years, she manipulated and controlled every aspect of my being. She convinced me that thin would equal happiness. She used my body dysmorphia against me, she used my other mental illnesses against me, she twisted them to what she wanted and what she needed them to be; failures. Failures on my account, they were there because I simply wasn't good enough or thin enough. For years, I was burdened with the notion that I had brought about my own mental illness, and that was yet another failure to add to my increasingly long list. 

She had me under lock and key; I can't look at any other female without instantly racking up which parts of their bodies were smaller than the parts of my body. No matter what their shape or size, and due to my body dysmorphia, I can't understand that a UK size 20 has bigger thighs than me, or a bigger stomach. I can't see it. It's a blind spot for me. There is an inherent lack of comprehension that remains within me in regards to body size. All I see is people smaller than me.  

She was happily living alongside me, inside me, and I was happy for her to stay, we would have probably been set for life. But then I found love in small places, friends, extended family, and then they set to war. One voice told me I was worthless. Others told me I was worthy. One praised me for being thin. The others cried over my weight. One told me I was ugly. The others old me I was beautiful. 

Slowly, I found myself listening more to positive. The people who saw something in me that I clearly couldn't. I trusted them so implicitly, I knew they would not lie to me, I knew what they were saying had to be truth. Maybe not "truth truth" but a truth how they saw it. And that floored me. Never had I ever been made to feel anything more than what my mind had told me I was. Their love started to drive the other "her"'s love away. I wanted to trust what I could see, what I could really feel. 

It's a very strange adjustment to make, but the impact it has had on the rest of me has been remarkable. I still have some deep rooted issues with other mental illnesses that I suffer with, but finally, in terms of eating, I feel like I can breathe a little bit again. 

I find myself somewhat hypocritical writing this, because only today I had thoughts back of being too fat and restricting what I ate. I am in no way recovered. My eating disorders are still a huge factor in my life, they are just manageable now. Despite those thoughts going round my mind, I still "allowed" myself to eat a chocolate bar, I still "allowed" myself to indulge. Two months ago, I couldn't do that. Allowance of indulgence required a sacrifice; eat a meal, throw it up, don't eat anything the next day. Eat something with too many calories in, throw it up, exercise, don't even think about eating anything else for at least a day. But now, I allow myself these luxuries, they aren't luxuries, they're non disordered ways of thinking. 

Sure I do slip, but I'm only human. I'm just working on making sure those slips don't turn into falls.

One day at a time. One day at a time. 

black and white begins to colour in.

"Lead me to the truth and I will follow you with my whole life." 

My mind is a maze. To me, if I'm not the perfect person, perfect at everything I do, then in my mind, I'm a bad person, I'm a failure and deserve to be punished. There's no in between for me. One mistake, no matter how trivial, means that I'm a terrible person and can't live with myself.

There is no in between with how I react to things. It's either a complete overreaction; sobbing, hysteria, shouting, screaming. Or nothing. There's no middle ground. I can't just take something on board, I have to run through every single "bad" scenario possible and then freak out over all of these imaginary scenarios. It's so unhealthy and it's something that I wasn't really aware of until today. I knew I overreacted a lot, but I never really looked at how or why. 

The last few days have hurt my heart a lot. But I think I'm better for it. I'm trying to tell myself that pretending that I'm okay brings a whole new series of problems, it affects every state of my being, it penetrates through to my relationships. It puts too much pressure on those who love me and it leaves them at a loss. Pretending I'm okay brings a whole new cycle of behaviours that have been brought to light to me that I didn't even know existed. When you're so busy putting up a mask, you don't think of the domino effect that it has on your behaviours and emotions. As long as you're pretending that you're okay, it doesn't matter. But it does.

I  have been told of the behaviours that I've been displaying, I know need to stop pretending that I'm okay and look at all of the issues that pretending that I'm okay causes for me and the people closest to me.

My behaviour has caused resentment and dislike towards me by people that I adore and who love me and all it makes me want to do is drop my "mask" and just focus on everything that comes about because I have that mask up. It's been so ingrained in me for so long because I've spent so long pretending I'm okay that I've never noticed or been shown the ramifications of what that does.

Mood altering medications do exactly what they say; they alter your moods, they can make you more low, they can bring you up, they can cause suicidal thoughts, they can do a lot of stuff. But I don't solely blame those, I blame the fact I've spent so long trying to keep this mask on - even to those closest to me who I tell virtually everything to, I keep some stuff hidden from them to not cause them worry or pain - that I've failed to see what that has done to me, my behaviour, my thinking and what it's done to those around me. And this isn't something new, this has been ongoing for years.

But how do you just stop pretending and and actually really face up to what you're going through 100% without breaking down and letting it win? I don't know. 

there's beauty in the breakdown.

"So let go, jump in.

Oh well, what you waiting for? 

It's all right, 'cause there's beauty in the breakdown.

So let go, yeah let go,

Just get in, oh it's so amazing here,

It's all right, 'cause there's beauty in the breakdown."

Sometimes, you have to decide to let go of the hatred you hold for someone. Even if it isn't hatred and just a strong dislike. Let it go. Negativity is a waste of energy, a waste of your mind and a waste of your time. 

Maybe you can't always forgive, but you can forget. Holding onto hate can cause your heart to turn very bitter. No matter the reasoning behind the negative feelings. Freeing your mind of the negative energy simply gives you more room for positive energy. 

Build bridges. Bridges don't necessarily have to have the same foundations they once had. Once it's burned, it can never be replicated, it won't be the same, it will be different. But build them anyway. You don't have to love or like the person, you just simply have to let go and move forward.

I made a choice today to try  let go of all negative energy to a few certain people who have harmed or wronged me or my friends and family. If it's unforgivable, they don't even deserve another thought, they're forgotten and not forgiven, but I can't hold onto it, it's not healthy. If it is forgivable, I'm need to learn to let it go, I want to attempt to rid all of the negative energy out of my life. I don't want to hold onto grudges or previous wrong doings. We're all human, we all make mistakes. 

one golden glance of what should be.

After a prolonged period of time last night, I found myself holding a pair of scissors with the intention of old habits. However, for the first time ever, I found a part of my brain was overpowering the desire to cut. It was telling me that I was better than this. I was worth more than cuts along my flesh. That inflicting pain upon myself, when my mind causes me so much pain and suffering anyway, wouldn't get me anywhere or help me achieve anything. 

I ran a list through my head of all of the amazing things that have happened to me since I last hurt myself. Of what I didn't gain the last time I did it, and the time before that and the time before that... The release is only temporary. No matter how disgusted and ashamed of myself I was last night, I fought back. I fought my mind for myself. And this time, I won. 

Does this mean that I am learning to respect my body more? Am I starting to like myself on even a subconscious level? Is the love that I am receiving from certain people penetrating that deep that it has brought me to here? There are so many thoughts spinning around my mind, but for once, they aren't negative, they're positive. 

I achieved a lot last night and I am so proud of myself, as silly as that may sound, the pride I feel has caused me to break down in tears. Even if it doesn't last forever, this feeling of achievement is more than I can even begin to describe. 

the darkness in which I swim.

when you try your best but you don't succeed.

What happens if we never get where we want? If we strive for something we think is possible, when the reality is that it's unobtainable? Do we give up? Do we keep trying even though we're never going to get where we want? Do we stop striving for the unobtainable and settle for mediocrity? 

I'm really struggling with this. I kept on trying. I gave up, I decided you weren't worth it because nothing in your eyes would ever be "right" so I just stopped trying and tried to do what I wanted and not let your opinions bother me. But still, even today, a comment so simple, knocks me off my feet and makes me think that despite the fact I'm never going to be good enough for you, maybe I'll never be good enough for myself. 

Maybe I wont. That's a terrifying thought. So what do you do with that? Do you ignore it and keep going and continue to never get to where we want? Do you hold onto it and not even try? Do you just give up? 

You're meant to love certain people unconditionally. You're meant to support them not make their lives 10x harder. Especially when you say you love them. Are you seeing the me I see? Does that make what I see a reality and everybody else's views skewered? 

I just don't know. I just do not know. 

there's a grief that can't be spoken.

I've been staring at an empty page for a while now trying to think of a  profound, or beautiful way to put what I want to say but I think the only way I can do this justice is to just say exactly what I feel. Raw emotions, no edits, no glossing feelings over to make me look slightly less unhinged. What I'm writing is straight from the empty space where piece of my heart - that was taken away from me six years ago - used to be.

At the age of seventeen, I'd lost quite a number of people to death. But none of them could prepare me for the biggest loss of my life. There isn't a manual to tell you how to grieve, or how to cope with the loss of a loved one. I wish there was, it would make life so much easier. But that's life isn't it? Experiencing life and experiencing death. 

Nothing could have prepared me, it wasn't an expected death, not that I think that makes it any easier. No amount of time or words would have relieved or numbed the pain even in the slightest fraction. 

We spent an excruciatingly long night camped out in a tiny relatives room on 3 small sofas praying for a miracle, for the medicine to work, for anything.

But no amount of praying or wishing or hoping could have changed the outcome, the next morning, the words "there's nothing more we can do" were spoken, and the world that I knew was altered forever.

They removed the monitors and machinery keeping him alive and I held his hand and whispered in his ear. I can still feel his hand, how it felt that morning. It was different to every other time I had held his hand, this time it was lifeless, it still dwarfed my tiny hands and I knew this was the last time I was ever going to see him alive and feel the complete security and warmth that I felt every time that I grabbed his hand.

It didn't take very long, I suppose it never does. You remove the machine keeping the body alive, because the  body can't keep itself alive, and it's a waiting game of how long it can sustain itself before finally giving in. It was twenty minutes or so. I say it wasn't enough, but what amount of time would have been enough? 

I felt it instantly, a gaping hole was punched through my chest, my legs were no longer able to hold me and I fell to the floor. I'm still there now. 

I can visualise it all as though it was yesterday. And it does feel like yesterday, sometimes I hate the way my brain holds onto every painful detail, it makes the flashbacks and nightmares a lot more hard to recover from.

The pain in my chest that he left has become a normal sensation now. I don't think it will ever disappear. It aches, it burns, it hurts. This is my life now, a world in which he doesn't exist. 

It was an indescribable loss and I'm not going to sit here and try and find a collection of words that can't  even remotely articulate the emotions correctly.

One thing I can say, is that there have been times when I have felt his presence around me. As ridiculous as that may sound, there are times when I've sense him behind me, or in the room with me. His scent floods my senses and I'm immediately comforted. There was even a period of time when I felt something sit on the end of my bed each night and move a framed photograph of him and I next to my bed from another side of the room. Make of that what you will. But I take that as a sign that he still walks beside me. He may not be physically present, but for as long as I am living, he remains at my side, in my heart, and in my soul. 

I wish I could attest that "time heals everything" maybe it does. Time, that little paradox; running out by the second but on an indefinite infinite span. I have yet to be healed by time. But I have hope that I will. 

So, as we approach the night that six years ago changed my life forever. I am trying my hardest to remember the wonderful, beautiful, loving, inspirational person that he was. Not the huge gap that he left behind. I am who I am because he loved me, he taught me, he shaped me, he made me soar, and he was there when I fell.  

a lack of colour.

An excerpt from my journal from earlier this year; 

I feel that trying to describe depression can be the hardest task. Pair it with trying to describe the grip that eating disorders hold over you and how body dysmorphia prevents you from seeing reality staring back at you in the mirror, then the act of being "okay" when someone asks "how are you?" is a much easier and tangible option.  

My mind is vast. My moods are rapid. My thoughts are scattered. I have likened them to a black and white kaleidoscope*. They merge, they alter, they separate.  

*I say black and white because I associate kaleidoscopes with exuberant colour, whereas my thoughts are worlds away from beautiful merging colours.  

My world is black and white. My thoughts are black and white. All or nothing. No way but one way; one way traffic, a dead end street. Incredibly wonderful or excruciatingly terrible. No middle ground, no grey area, no white noise. 

Colourless is a reality. Dark thoughts. Sadness. Pain. Numb. Hurt. Suffering. Even the adjectives themselves juxtapose bright, vibrant colours.  

My moods are low and my mindset is bleak. I distort rationality into irrationality. I hate what I see when I see myself. I feel empty, sad, and at times; numb.  

There is a roadblock stopping me, paralysing me, not allowing me to do simple things, like get out of bed. The anxiety crushes my chest, weighs me down. I am pinned down by depression like a caged bird, unable to break free, but able to see everything and everyone moving around me.  

I get glimmers of colour. Like the early morning rays of sun creeping into the windows and illuminating the specks of dust that, without that light, would remain unnoticed, invisible. I cherish that light. I revel in the colour. 

I long for the days when they stay and are not fleeting and sparse. I cannot wait for those days, I cannot wait for recovery. 

Some days when I am at my worst, I cannot see beyond that day, but when I am out of it, I can look back and smile and say "I made it through. the darkness slowly started to colour in and I'm back on my feet, even if it's just for today, I made it."

I live for the good days.