love is louder than all your pain.

I've been trying to set aside time to write about everything in my life right now, but I have had no desire to write because I've just been so happy. To me, happiness and writing do not go together, I've always written from such depths of sadness that it's very hard for me to write about joy. But the fact is, I'm experiencing levels of happiness that I couldn't even fathom and I want to share that happiness and attempt to put into words the beautiful twist that my life has taken. A very wise blogger, Ava, encouraged me to write from a place of happiness and that's exactly what I'm going to do from now on; write from that happy place, take that love and translate it into words. 

Anybody who reads this blog will know that I have been in some terrible places of darkness, I've had the hardest year of my entire life. I had to fight to find the part of me that wants to be alive, I had to find a way out of the thoughts that told me that the world didn't need my existence. And I fought, I fought hard and it was the hardest thing I've ever done but I am so thankful that I did, because fighting that hard gave me the most beautiful reward. 

Falling in love was most definitely something I had ruled off the cards for myself for a long time, especially this year. I didn't even think about it, it wasn't on my radar, yet somehow it found me. When people in treatment talked about love and happiness, I couldn't even comprehend it, I couldn't grasp the notion that anybody could ever fall in love with me.

As cheesy as it sounds, love really is a force that transcends everything and anything. It's not something that you can mould or shape into what you want it to be, and oh boy had I tried. When it comes along, when it truly hits you, it may not be shaped how you expect or packaged quite how you had anticipated and envisioned. It certainly wasn't how I had anticipated it. 

Loving someone really is simple. There is no rhyme or reason, there is nothing to "make sense" of, love is love. Love is a reflex, it's what we do. You don't need to analyse or scrutinise or even criticise, when there is apparent love and from that love stems an abundance of happiness, then so be it. Maybe you have a different idea of what love is, everybody does, but strip it down and loving somebody isn't a chore, or a hardship, it brings you comfort and happiness, and it makes you feel like you can climb mountains and conquer anything that comes your way.

You can't ignore such a powerful connection and draw to another person, no matter how hard you try. From the moment I got to know her, we connected in a way that I can't even explain. We were like magnets, drawn to each other and as time passed, she made me feel safe, and I haven't felt safe for as long as I can remember. She lit up the darkness inside of me. I had fallen in love and I wasn't even aware, I just absolutely adored the girl that had come into my life and made me feel a joy that I had never felt before. Whilst she held my hands and looked into my eyes and took me effortlessly out of panic attacks, whilst she held my hand as we walked, as we sat, as we held each other for hours, both of us were oblivious to what was right in front of us. Our friends joked that we were together and even then it just didn't quite click.

Until we kissed. And something in my brain just exploded and everything made sense to both of us. It was beautiful and crazy and so uniquely us. What was weird was that it wasn't weird. Nothing about this was weird or 'wrong' or anything to not want to scream from the rooftops that we are in love. 

I have found joy, happiness, and emotions that were unknown to me. I've found reasons to live and each and everyday. But I've found someone. The best someone. I feel beyond any emotion I have ever felt before. The love I have for her is so strong that it has completely overwhelmed me. It's a force that has taken me over and turned my life around.

She is everything. She is love. She is everything good in this world. She makes me feel like I'm worth the world. I love her, it's that simple. I want to give her everything. I want her to be happy. She makes me feel a way I have never, ever felt before. For the first time in my life I feel like I have purpose and strength and a reason to be alive. She reached in and coaxed life and love out of me. 

I am feeling levels of indescribable happiness and joy and it's so overwhelming. I wish I could go back in time and tell the sick me to hold on and to know that the pain and the hurt was worth it, because it taught me how to fully understand and appreciate what happiness is. It taught me how to give love and make other people happy. It taught me how to make the person I love the most happy, and for that, those years of pain and suffering were worth every moment. 

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.

friends.

"My love. In the grand scheme of things, if we magnify what the world is, there are 4 billion people on this earth. If we were to write a list of allllllll the people that are living and breathing on the earth,  we have a long list. But that name is just made up of letters, right? The same letters I'm using to type this out. But those combination of letters represent life. A human beings life. It does not reflect anything about them but that they exist and think and breathe.  But that we know by seeking them. We don't see the underlying feelings or thoughts until we know them. Every name on that list is happy and sad and feels pain and struggles immensely, more than we'll ever know. They are worthy of those thoughts and feelings, even though on this piece of paper they are just another name. But they cry. They hurt. They struggle. They breathe. The fact that 3,999,999,999 other people also feel pain and grief and suffering doesn't lessen the world's suffering.  There are 4 billion hearts beating, but that doesn't mean yours is not important. If does not mean that you are not worthy. Because if we minimize ourselves as one person with a problem, you disregard that we are ALL people and we ALL have problems and that's okay!!! We're allowed to live and be upset by stupid things or by the bigger things. You're allowed to. And we all get through, many times not unscathed.  

What you are dealing with is not your fault. It has never been your fault. Mental health is the same as physical health. We get sick physically with a cough because of a virus, just as we get sick with the chemicals in our mind being askew. That's not your fault. And what we all work through with our issues is finding that we are worthy or working towards the healthy. And it's a fucking tough fight babe. And we're bound to fall and scrape our knees on the way. But don't let those small cuts and bruises become scars, let them be battle wounds.

I've seen you show strength and agility and fight, and I know that right now is just lost but it can and it will be found. And I believe that if you take one step at a time and work as hard and as much as you can, it's going to be okay. And some days it'll be just a centimeter and some days a kilometer, you'll be okay. Allow yourself to have both days and to make mistakes but to get right back up and fight." 

- My best friend has the most incredible soul. I needed to share her  beautiful words to me with more people, she is just so wonderful and I adore her with every fibre of my being. 

the price of love is loss.

There is an enormous amount of love in the world. I think if we were to really look at humanity, look back at important events throughout history and the present, one thing that would stand out is love. It's out there, it's always been out there, but sometimes it can be really hard to find. We are a species that create war, who kill, who discriminate, who abuse, who hate. But we are also a species that has love in abundance. You look at tragic events in history, or even just in the news, and one thing that you won't hear about is a lack of love or the lack of an outpouring of help and community that derives from that. I've seen it over and over again first hand.

 Maybe that's why I am the way I am. I wouldn't quite classify a pessimist, I'm trying to bring myself out of that way of being (as hard as it is) I would like to be an optimistic person in everything. I'd like to say one day that I am an optimist, but I've had simply too many bad things happen to me again and again to have the mentality of an optimist instilled in me over a short amount of time But I am happy to say I am trying, and my god, I've seen some pretty amazing things.

For all the negative in my life, there is a positive that outweighs it. Control is outweighed by love. As simple as. I am at a place right this second where I'm perplexed and amazed at myself. Something has happened, and I'm too tired to go into it. But it's a negative force that has hit me many, many times. Now go back 6 months, and what has happened would have affected me so badly that I can guarantee you, I would have stopped eating because of it. I would have let the words stick with me, I'd have scrutinised every single meaning behind them and punished myself. Badly. I'd have been unable to see past them. I'd have replayed the words over and over again, getting more upset and agitated each time. I'd have let them get to me so badly that I would believe they were a truth, I'd believe that the mindset caused by them was "normal" and I'd have allowed my control and my self worth to slip. I would have believed I was a failure, I was this ridiculous, inane, pathetic excuse of a human and that would have been the tipping point for me. What was once a huge trigger, is no more. 

I need to attempt to keep reminding myself that I am a good person. I am a kind person. I am a worthy person. I'm fragile, I shouldn't be punished for simply stumbling as I move forwards.  I need to really believe that. 

There are people out there who choose to be my family. Who choose to love me. Who choose to be there for me. Who choose to pick me up when I fall, hold my hand whilst I stumble, and bask in the joy alongside me when I feel it. They are the people that count. They are the ones who mean the most, who have furthered me along in this incredible journey. It's down to them that I am here now. One of them sent me this beautiful poem in the week;

The sun will shine tomorrow

The rain will somehow end

This is not only a promise

It’s just the way it is

Bad times don’t last forever

The tough times they never stay

The heartache and the let down

Will soon go away

In times of deep sadness

The pain is all too real

And it’s hard to believe

That with time the hurt will heal

The dark clouds that hang above

Will eventually move on

And the storms that dance around

Will soon be gone

Stay strong and keep in mind

That again, the sun will shine

Isn't that beautiful? I am so grateful that there are people looking out for me and who think to send me beautiful things like that. 

My outlook changes each day, some days I feel like giving up, but today, I have felt so in control and so overwhelmed at the love for me that I am proud of myself. And others are proud of me too. People I love being proud of me for good reasons is incredible. 

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. 

all at once my heart took flight.

Sometimes, I forget that my mind is constantly at war with itself. The white noise very quickly became a normality to me, and scrutinising every thought and every interaction, and the constant self criticism became a part of daily life. I fought, but I never won the battle, let alone the war. There was always some part of me that could not get out, no matter how hard I tried to swim, the current of fragmented, disordered thinking patterns and behaviour held me under. 

When I can have these tiny, fleeting moments of joy, the noise inside my mind stops. The self criticism and doubt, the black and white thinking, the pain... It all just temporary subsides and and something else is begins to filter through for a brief moment. It's taking a huge gasp of breath and breathing life into you. 

It's like the feeling of finally getting water after days in the desert, it's like being wrapped up in a warm blanket after getting soaked from the rain, it's like finally you're warm inside, your brain quietens down and your mind, body and soul are able to soak up positivity. Sometimes, it's just for a few seconds, but my god, those seconds are worth it. I revel in each and every second. I live those moments, I let them in, I let them in through every pore in my body, I live them with every fibre of my being. They are the moments that make this battle less treacherous.

Sometimes it is impossible to see beyond the sadness and the pain. When there is a voice constantly in your head telling you that you are nothing, nobody, that you are a burden to everybody around you, that you deserve the pain you feel, that you should be punishing yourself for simply existing, and that you would be better off dead, it's incredibly hard to block out. But just getting a few moments of relief from that, for muting the voice, and letting happiness in, creates a volume switch in your brain. You are able to turn the volume of the voice down slightly, even by a fraction. One good moment can set a series of doubts to what that voice is telling you. The more you get, the more you start to realise that the voice isn't telling you the truth. You are worthy. 

I can't feel love because of that voice. I can barely feel anything at all, and when I did feel, all I felt was sadness, pain, self loathing and shame. 

I have had the most incredible few days in the last week, where I have actually felt joy.  My intake of love is increasing by the day. 

something beautiful, a new chance.

Today, I stumbled. Metaphorically, of course, not literally. It was a waiting game really, when I was going to have my first slip, and today just happened to be the day. 

But it's okay. I can pick myself back up, dust myself off, and carry on with my journey. I can try to not let it set me back, or let these compulsions and thoughts take over my brain and drag me backwards into the past. There is no point regretting my actions today, I am sad, yes, disappointed, yes. But cycles of behaviour don't just stop, we have to keep fighting them and instilling new, positive behaviours into our life. 

I had an interesting discussion about regret in terms of self harm scars a few days ago. I like to think of scars as battle scars. Proof that you fought the fight, and won. That you overcame. A scar, by definition, means that some form of healing has taken place. Wounds have slowly healed over, gained new strength, gained a new layer of skin to them. The human skin isn't an easy armour to carry anyway. Rarely, do we ever "fit" into our own skin, we don't feel comfortable in it, we aren't happy with it. It's is never, ever thick enough. It cuts, it bleeds, it burns, it dies, it scars, but it also heals. 

Sometimes a little adjustment is all that is needed to feel acceptance in yourself. Adjust your view, adjust a thought, adjust an outlook; maybe then, your skin, your armour might feel a little more comfortable. 

Having thin skin isn't a flaw. It's human. We aren't all capable of being able to let a comment, words, thoughts, anything not get to us. The saying "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" is complete and utter bullshit. Words can do more damage than a wrecking ball. It's okay to be sensitive, it's okay to not be comfortable with who you are, or what you look like. It is rare to come across people who were born with the "perfect" layer of skin to be able to brush off negativity. 

If you have scars, you have scars. It's an unfortunate consequence. I used to get incredibly self conscious of my scars and cover them up with make up. I remember seeing the horror on someone's face at work when I rolled up my sleeve and they saw my arm had been hacked away at. I know for some people, it's just "another part" of them and I am in awe of their confidence. I would like to think that we are capable of eventually accepting our scars. Metaphorical scars too. We don't have to like them or love them, or think about what lead us to inflict pain upon ourselves. But accepting they are a part of us, is accepting that we have fought the fight against our mind, and we are healing. We may not be healed, we may only be a day into recovery, or a week, or a month. But what we are is better than we were before. 

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. 

everything that happens is from now on.

I've finally done it, I've started to put this blog "out there" so to say. Up until today, only four or five  people in my life knew it existed. The only people who knew the real me, what was going on with me. But today I decided it was time to start sharing it amongst people, and the truth be told, I'm terrified.

These are people who call me "constantly happy" "so bubbly" "a ball of energy" these are people who I have spent weeks, months, years fooling. People who think they know me are now going to find out they don't know me at all. I'm not the person they think I am. Are they going to think I'm weak? I'm a bad person for not letting them in? Are they suddenly going to pity me and not have fun with me any more? 

So, to all of you who are reading this and thinking "what?!?!" I'm sorry that I wasn't strong enough to tell you who I really am and share this with you. It doesn't mean I respect you or like you any less. It's just very hard for me to let my walls down, and take this "mask" off. 

I just want to make absolutely clear that I am not doing this for me, I'm doing it for other people out there who go through what I go through every day. I've already had messages from people who have thanked me for starting this because they can relate to it and it has caused them to take action and get help. And that is all I want. I'm not doing this for attention, I don't want people to feel like they are walking on eggshells around me now that you know. Just please understand that I have my good and my bad days, I'm not a complete and utter mess trying to pretend to be okay all the time. 

life is a beautiful mess.

"These words on a page, carry the pain, they don't free it."

Sometimes I wonder, is writing really a blessing? Or is it a curse? I've had people tell me that my writing is beautiful (I hate repeating compliments I receive, because 9/10 times I never believe them and hate repeating them because it makes me sound pretentious) but my writing isn't beautiful. I write my thoughts, I write my mind, and my mind isn't "beautiful" my mind is a mess. My mind is a maze of twisted complexity, I suffer from black and white thinking, I constantly question everything and search for hidden meanings, I overreact to everything, I can't process any of my emotions at a "normal" (god, I hate that word) rate, and I have negative thought after negative thought. 

So when I write, I'm really only writing my mind. A thought. A question. A moment. All of them are fleeting, in the grand scheme of my life, each and every piece that I write is a fleeting moment in time. Do I really want my thoughts, my messed up mind immortalised? 

Sometimes I think that when you write about something, it loses it's meaning. The original moment or thought you were writing about diminishes and it becomes quite literally words on a piece of paper, or through a blog, or through a screen. The thought is gone, the inner workings of my mind have changed, that no longer exists in the present now, it's gone. So is writing it down where it can never be forgotten something that is productive? 

I haven't suddenly decided to give up on my blog or my journalling or any of that. I'm just thinking through my writing, I guess. I think it's nice to chronicle your state of mind when you're going through recovery, or even anything really, to look back and see how things have progressed, how your mind has moved forward, how you have grown and flourished. 

But in reality, do you really need to be reminded of thoughts you had? Do you really need it there to see? Can't it just be lost along with the hundreds of thousand other memories that we create and forget? 

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. 

another dream, another love you'll hold.

"now they'll walk on my arm through the distant night,
and I wont let them stray from my heart,
through the wind, through the dark, through the winter light
I will read all their dreams to the stars.

i'll walk now with them,
i'll call on their names,
and i'll see their thoughts are known,
not gone,

not gone.

they walk with my heart, not gone
and i'll never let them go, not gone."

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.  

Suicide Prevention Week.

You are loved. You are good enough. No matter how it seems, no matter how bad it gets. somebody out there loves you. You are special, even if you can’t see it, i promise you that there is someone who does. Even if the darkest of times, there is a way out of that darkness. People out there are willing to help you, even people who don’t know you, just because you don’t know them does not mean that they don’t want to help you. You are beautiful. You are good enough. Even if it doesn’t feel like it, I promise you that you are. Please don’t ever think that there is no way out. There is a way through it and there are people that will help you along the way. However bad it gets, you are not alone. You are never alone. There are people with you in that dark place who want to help you find the light. Please talk to someone, even if it’s just an anonymous message on tumblr. Please don’t think there is no way out; there is a huge world out there, billions and billions of people, nobody is perfect, nobody has the perfect life, everybody has problems but out in that big wide world there are people who’s lives you can change, people who can help shape your life and share so many things with. There is a world out there waiting for you. Please, just hold on and live. You are never alone. 

I wrote that over a year ago on my Tumblr page and had quite a few messages after posting it thanking me for writing it. So, I thought that this week being "Suicide Prevention Week" and today being "Suicide Prevention Day" would be a good time to put it back out for people to see, alongside something else I posted which is incredibly relevant today;

Somebody I love very much has been bullied and driven to suicide. The reason? She's being herself.

In a world where little girls are being shot for speaking up for women's rights and education rights for girls, why on earth do people still find it acceptable to call people names, belittle them, completely shred their self esteem and drive them to take their own lives? 

I am far from an optimist and nobody could ever accuse me of having any sense of naivety, but love and acceptance should be something that is universally accepted and not questioned. 

We see people scorned and bullied for their beliefs, their social status, their sexuality, their race, their looks... It seems that people seek out anything that they can to make somebody feel inferior, when we should be encouraging people to embrace who they are and celebrate themselves. 

We waste so much time trying to modify ourselves into an ideal -a person that isn't real, somebody that over time, the world decided was an 'ideal' human being -  that we lose all sense of who we are. 

People are fascinating. People are weird. People are kind. People are awful. But what we all have in common is that we are individuals. Find who you are, do what you love and if people don't like or accept that then they aren't the right people for you.

No matter how bleak or horrible or terrifying or lonely it gets, there is always somebody out there who is as terrified and lonely and looking for somebody just like you to come into their lives and make them feel a little less terrified and a little less lonely. 

Words hurt. Words destroy. There is no armour that protects you from what people say and how they can make you feel like you aren't worthy or that you don't deserve to be here.

But you do. You deserve the world. All of you. Each and every one of you. 

Flaws are human. Perfect people with perfect lives don't exist, and if they do then they haven't lived. Life hurts at times and life can be overwhelming and awful but it can also be wonderful and beautiful and it goes by far too quickly.

I can assure you that there are many, many people in the world who want to listen and want to help and want to help you find yourself, amongst the hurt and pain and bullying, there is a person in there who doesn't deserve any of it and who can be listened to, and loved, and accepted.

Over the years, I have experienced suicide first hand on more than one occasion. I have lost friends who couldn't deal with pain and the hurt and the words any longer. 

No matter how insignificant you feel, I promise you, there is at least one person who wouldn't be altered by you being gone. People you haven't even met, people you don't think notice you, we all leave a mark. In years to come you may not remember their faces or names, you may not even remember their words. If you have to make somebody else feel bad to make yourself feel good then you really need to look at yourself. There isn't an excuse for it ever.

There is always someone who wants to help you, and to listen and to help you. 

Please, just hold on. I am begging you. 

Here are some useful numbers and links: 

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

• (UK)  Samaritans - 08457 90 90 90 
• (ROI) Samaritans -  1850 60 90 90 

International Association for Suicide Prevention

To Write Love On Her Arms

Love is Louder

Half of Us

beat (for eating disorders)