So, where to start? I’m a 17 year old girl who has learnt a lot about life in these past few years. Having been through severe depression and crippling anxiety, I think I’m finally ready to document my journey and try my best to help others too.

I have been at rock bottom, unable to see a future, and I know too well the pain and suffering that goes with it. But I also know the pure joy you feel when you start to reach that light at the end of the tunnel – and the strive for balance between the two. I believe everything happens for a reason, and if I hadn’t gone through the depths of hell, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

So I guess I am here for a reason.

If you have depression yourself, I need to tell you that there are triggers in this blog. But equally, if you’re suffering, please know that there is hope and life can be so beautiful.

I was born on the 23rd of December 2002 to a loving family. I was very quiet, not wanting to annoy people and trying to stay out of trouble. In fact, I didn’t speak till I was 3 years old. When I joined primary school I was probably the shyest in the year and I was always sitting at the back of the classroom, silently. I remember being 5 years old and seeing my teacher pointing her finger at me, telling me to get a paint brush. I didn’t know where this paintbrush was and I was so terrified to ask and to be seen by other students that I just froze and sat still, praying I wouldn’t be told off. When I eventually was told off, I was so mortified and embarrassed, thinking to myself “why didn’t you just ask where the paintbrush was like anyone else would?”

But that’s the strange thing about me, I’m not like anyone else.

I have another memory of that year – getting changed into our school uniform from P.E. I just couldn’t do the buttons up on my school dress, and I remember hiding under the table after everyone else had changed their clothes. ‘Clumsy’, that was my label and my dad would call me ‘dreamboat sally’. I couldn’t do my hair up, tie my laces or do buttons up until I was 9. Then I received the diagnosis of dyspraxia and everything made sense. I got the right support I needed and by the time primary school finished, I was so much more confident in myself that I won student of the year! I was and still am so proud of that moment.

Now, during these years, I had an amazing group of friends, but we weren’t in the “cool group”. You really see the beginnings of the social hierarchy in the late years of primary school. How we are like pack members in a war of who is most liked by good-looking boys, friends and teachers. That’s what I did in primary school – I labeled every group like I was Janis and Damien from Mean Girls. Looking back I guess it was a coping mechanism to deal with not fitting in. So when I joined secondary school, all I wanted was to be popular, accepted and to belong.

I came to the school with the words from my brother “I had an amazing first year” repeating in my head. I told myself that I was going to have the same experience, even when I knew that I didn’t fit in from the get go. I refused any support, not wanting people to know I had dyspraxia, and ignored the fact that I was having increasing trouble coping at school. There were other behaviour patterns that went unaddressed – I regularly lost most of my possessions at school, I couldn’t organise myself no matter how many times I was told off, I would cross the road without checking for cars and I began to struggle being with more than one person at a time. I wondered why I had so much difficulty with every-day tasks that others seemed to take in their stride. Years later, in fact, only a few months ago, I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Finally, I know it’s not my fault.

I wasted the first few years of secondary school desperately trying to be popular, to the extent that I dropped all my friends from primary school to become someone that I was not. I felt like bacteria, moving from one host to the other, until I realised my efforts were to no avail. At the age of 12 I spent the whole summer in bed, a massive sign of what was to follow.

At this point in my life I was balancing on the top of a slippery slope; my parents often argued and frustrations were sometimes let out on my brother and me leaving us in a vulnerable position. We began to plead that they would split up. My self loathing increased and by the time I was 13 years old, it was obvious to me that my parents had no awareness of how I was feeling. Frustrations were let loose and spilled over on us all. One day I felt so hated and so desperate that I could see no point in carrying on life with such a huge cloud looming over me. I went downstairs, got a packet of paracetamols, went to the bathroom and almost took them with the intent of ending it all. The ‘almost’ was stopped in its tracks by my brother finding me seconds before – he had seen me with the pills and followed me upstairs.

The next day we acted like nothing had ever happened.

My family and I rarely talked in depth about how much emotions affected us, and when we did, this would tend to be expressed in anger. It was like there was always an unspoken tension in the air that no one dared to examine. So naturally, when events like almost taking my own life threatened to break that barrier, we tried desperately to bury all the baggage from the past by coming up with excuses so as to prevent us from feeling the pain. The excuse used for me was the ‘attention seeker’.

Looking back I do understand why that label was used – it was the only way we knew how to cope. However after this particular event, I really needed someone to hold me and tell me it was going to be ok. But instead I buried it and kept on moving on without acknowledging that pain.

Our last holiday as a family was spent in Lake Garda, Italy; a beautiful place, with warm blue skies and stunning views, but it was marred by anger and also the fact that my grandma’s health had deteriorated before we went. Both my brother and I had a feeling that things were about to come to a head and when we returned, my mother sat me down in the kitchen the day before school started, and told me that she needed counselling for the first time in her life. I remember feeling sad for her and to lighten the mood, joked “you’re not gay are you?” I will always remember her response: “I don’t know”.

At the start of her journey to come to terms with this herself, she also found the courage to come out to me and then my brother. I was in shock and didn’t know how to react. My mum, who seemed the epitome of heterosexuality, was gay. My first response was to assume I was okay, as I’d always done in the past, and to support her warmly. But when I got into bed that night, the reality started to sink in. The thin walls of a stable nuclear family began to crumble and I had to come to terms with the all-too-sudden truth that my parents had split up. I’d wanted them to separate but this was a bewildering shock I could never have anticipated.

I did not know to handle the fact that my whole world had been turned upside down. Concealing my personal life became normal and it suddenly felt like the chains had been broken; I was free to express myself.

I became a martyr, and wanted everyone to pity me, walking around school showing off my pain to people in an effort to receive attention. I told everyone I knew that my mum was gay. I think I was in shock, I needed to let out all the crap that I’d buried for 14 years. I needed someone to hold me and walk me through what was going on, to help me find some sort of a structure. I started to lie to my school, telling them that I was feeling ill so I could go home. It became a daily routine of me going to student services and telling them my stomach hurt and that I needed to leave. They eventually sussed out that something was wrong, and the staff spoke to my mum over the phone in front of me; I was so embarrassed.

They arranged for me to meet with the school counsellor who was lovely but not what I needed as they were only 25 minute sessions every Thursday. I began using the same excuses to get out of lessons, but instead of pretending to feel ill, I’d say I had counselling sessions. I would sit outside the counsellor’s office for hours on end; they had no idea what to do with me. If I’m being honest, that really didn’t help – me sitting in silence, alone with dark thoughts; they just couldn’t understand. During these months I deteriorated so much that in due course I told teachers I was going to counselling sessions but in reality I was harming myself in the bathroom toilets. When my mother found a pair of scissors in my pocket, she took me to the hospital in a panicked state. I was made to stay overnight there, with a woman watching over me whilst I slept. It was dreadful, and by the time my mother picked me up to go home, I felt a billion times worse. And worse still, the second time I was taken to A&E – this time for two nights. It also didn’t help that when I went back to school the teachers really struggled to understand the gravity of my situation.

It had started with compasses and scissors, then it was anything sharp I could find. It became a routine, a particular time during the day, where I would cut and cut until it bled. The increasing visions of me overdosing, or jumping on to a train platform fogged my mind and I began to take kitchen knives and cut deeply into my arms. It had become an addiction, an addiction to pain.

You see, I wanted the horrific, unbearable pain in my head to go away. I couldn’t live with it, the monster, the dark swirl of hatred, telling me that I was a burden and that no-one wanted me around. They’d be happier without me, they wouldn’t have to deal with the looming black cloud of negativity surrounding me every time I walked into a room. How can one person handle all of those thoughts, whilst also dealing with the shock of her parents splitting and her mother being gay? Hormones and pressure from school didn’t help. I was broken and I thought the only way to distract me from this, was to feel physical pain. I thought that I deserved it, I deserved to be cut.

I was 15 years old, and couldn’t cope with the constant misery every time I went to school. Putting myself through this every day no longer felt like an option and the pressure was overwhelming. So I found that the only feasible choice was to stay away from that environment by leaving school for a period of time.

After pleading for weeks, my family eventually gave in and I was allowed to leave. The decision came after I left school early one day and started walking to the train station with the thought in my head to end my life. I think, deep down, that I actually didn’t want to kill myself. I wanted the pain to go away, but I didn’t want to end everything. I know this because on this horrific walk to the train station, I called my mother, saying that I didn’t know what to do. She left work immediately, picked me up and we went home.

Now, since I was little I was very friendly with a lovely girl named Bethany. Throughout the years our friendship became closer and closer; she was like a sister to me and I spent many days in her house with her and her family. We would sometimes have debates about God and the afterlife. I had been influenced to doubt the existence of a higher power and needed factual evidence to prove it. My main reasoning however, was the Holocaust. As a Jewish girl, hearing stories of my family escaping Nazi-occupied Vienna, my great uncle surviving three concentration camps and learning of six million of our people, and others, being killed without a shred of humanity, I thought how can there possibly be a God?

As a child, I had been taught about the stories from the Torah, the Jewish Bible. How God rescued all the Jews through the prophet Moses, how we should have no other idols and that we should look up to Him and never question His authority; I always had questions. When I decided to have a Bat-Mitzvah and was going through the process of learning my section of the Torah, which was the story of Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery, I remember talking to the Rabbis about how I really felt. They were surprisingly supportive and loved the fact that I didn’t blindly accept what I was reading without questioning the morality of it. We discussed the idea of why we celebrate Passover, the freeing of the Israelites and the benevolence of God – when he also set 10 plagues upon a society, killing first borns and thousands of others, when they (unaware of how this was bad) lived in an institutionalised system that put Jews into slavery. If God is the most powerful force of the universe, why wouldn’t he have changed other people’s views on the Israelites and promoted an equal society? Surely because of the notion that there has to be bad to be good, there has to be death to be life, there has to be suffering to be happiness. But if this was a story and not to be taken literally (as some people believe) why wouldn’t we set an example of how to act without a revengeful way of thinking?

So why have I gone off on a tangent about the morals of the Torah? Well because that was what my thought process was like. Questioning why there was so much horror in the world. And then I realised that the stark fact remains that if my grandfather hadn’t had to flee, I wouldn’t be alive. Neither would my friends or family or loved ones. So I started to believe that all this horrific pain and horrible darkness was happening for a reason. I didn’t believe in a higher power but I began to have faith.

When I left school, I became even closer to Bethany’s family and built a fantastic relationship with them, especially her dad. He taught me about love and faith in ways I could relate to due to his own mental health journey; finally there was someone who truly understood what I was going through. There were times I felt he gave me a reason to be alive. I had never experienced discussions like these before, delving deep into our existence, our pain, the wonders of the universe. It really helped lift me up from the pit of darkness I was in.

But it didn’t change the fact that I still had a chemical imbalance in my brain, which wasn’t helped by the Fluoxetine (antidepressants) my psychiatrist/s had prescribed. I was now receiving therapy with CAMHS (the Child & Adolescent Mental Health Service) which I had to wait 6 months for. The constant change of psychiatrists, who I had to retell my mental health story to every time really wasn’t helpful. Neither was the fact that the psychiatrists didn’t realise the affect the Fluoxetine was having on me and carried on upping the dosage of it instead of changing it – causing me to have extreme hot flushes, severe anxiety, shaky hands and in actuality made my depression so much worse. At this point I couldn’t sleep at night and (something that I was deeply embarrassed by) I needed to sleep in the same bed as my mother for almost 6 weeks as I couldn’t stand being alone at night. The overwhelming thoughts of darkness would overtake my mind and it would cause me to hide knives under my bed and cut myself. So the psychiatrist gave me sleeping pills which made me extremely drowsy in the morning.

I was really struggling. I thought that if I left school and left the face of the universe for a while, I could almost recharge and get my shit together. But the harsh reality hit me like a ton of bricks, that staying at home all day is a really dangerous environment for someone with depression. My days were withered and wasted, spending whole days in bed, occasionally brushing my teeth, rarely washing, not brushing my hair, not eating or eating too much. I felt like a piece of dirt and I couldn’t recognise myself in the mirror. I began turning to alcohol, whenever my family would go out I would get drunk at home, I’d go to parties and drink as much vodka as I could. My hair was matted and looked like a bird’s nest, I had put on weight, I stank, there were huge bags under my eyes. I didn’t make an effort, I wouldn’t wear nice clothes any more. I didn’t care about what I looked like any more, because I felt like I was dying inside. It was almost like what depression would look like as a human. It is a disease that drains you. People ask why you’re so tired all the time. Well, because you constantly feel like you’ve slept for a thousand years and could sleep for a thousand more. It feels like you’re trapped in a cage, and can’t get out. People told me to change my mindset, to think positively, to exercise, to eat healthily, to stop being lazy. Because I didn’t have a physical disease that you could clearly see, no one could possibly understand what I was going through unless they had been through it themselves.

I was so angry that people couldn’t understand me and lectured me about what they would do if they were in my situation, even though they had NEVER felt what it feels like to be a burden, to feel so alone, to believe that your presence in this world is a waste of space, to want this desperate pain to go away, to want to kill yourself. Not seeing or feeling all that pain, they say, “think positively, try and change your mindset.” Really? Because that will make everything go away. Thanks for the advice, it changed my life. Those memories still affect me to this day.

Where did I let out all of this pain?

My family. My mother. I will always be sorry for that.

Please empathise, you may never understand what someone is going through. Maybe giving practical advice might be helpful for you, but when someone is experiencing pain, anxiety, stress and trauma all they need is for someone to hear them and listen to them.

I was heard and I was listened to, don’t get me wrong. My mother was my angel in all the darkness, and she really did everything she possibly could to support me. But unfortunately because I was on the wrong medication, and I didn’t have the right therapist, there was only so much she could do.

Weeks turned into months and I ended up staying at home for almost 6 months. I was a mess. In some ways I had come a long way – connecting to spirituality, connecting to my emotions, talking to more people, accepting my mother’s sexuality and her beautiful partner (whom I am so close with now). In other ways I had taken so many steps back; I was miserable, and when I had the opportunity I was still turning to alcohol to make me feel better, still self harming, still feeling suicidal. I was always trying to balance on the tilting board of life, trying to find my way through the labyrinth; but to no avail. The ball of yarn had been pathed for me, to allow me to find the light, but I could not follow it.

One positive outcome of seeing the CAMHS psychotherapist was that she referred me to ESMA (Educational Support for the Medically Absent) – a Government funded organisation that helps children to reintegrate back into the school system. Karen and Peter, the two teachers who visited me at home regularly, were so unbelievably helpful and kind. Step by step they encouraged me to begin the slow process of returning to school. It started with one lesson every week, gradually increasing until I was back at school daily and Karen arranged regular meetings to help the teachers fully understand how they could support me. I remember attending one of these when I was asked to give a talk to my head of year, the deputy headteacher, the assistant headteacher and the senior student support manager, to explain my mental health and ways I could be supported. I would normally have been intimidated in such an environment but I was so passionate and desperately concerned about the lack of knowledge of mental health, especially in the school system. Any fear I would have had, turned to adrenaline, and I spoke fervently and from the heart. The school was extremely supportive and empathetic, and for the first time in a long time I felt a glimmer of hope.

Before I had left school, I had spoken to a girl in my year about how I was feeling. She was lovely, but I didn’t really think anything of the conversation at the time. So subsequently I was surprised when she messaged me to say that she was here for me and that I could talk to her any time. She was a fairly popular girl, and it made me feel more “adequate” as a human being that she would think of me to text. So naturally, my first response was “Thank you so much!” and I blurted everything out as I had done with everyone else. But she didn’t turn her head, she listened and cared and texted me almost every day for six months. When I returned to school, she was part of an amazing group of friends who really comforted me.

The next year, things were still okay. Of course there were downs, which were really low downs, but there were also significant ups. My hair was beautiful and clean, I had a personal trainer as I wanted to lose weight, I was doing yoga and a workout every morning. But slowly I could feel things going downhill again. Everyone was saying to me, “you’ve come so far from where you were before.” But I knew I hadn’t, I could feel the happiness drifting away again.

It started with the personal trainer leaving – I went straight back into a bad diet and no exercise. Then it was the fact that GCSEs were coming up. I ended up having to drop every subject apart from Maths and English because I had missed so much. I was terrible at maths, always in lower sets, embarrassed by leaving the classrooms, thinking that people thought less of me; that was really difficult. English was okay; fairly simple and I could get through it. Teachers had begun giving up on me, like my music and drama teachers; they didn’t care about me, they cared about the grades in the end. I just couldn’t cope so I had to drop those two precious subjects too, and I was so disappointed in myself. But still, everyone was expecting so much more of me than I was simply able to give, because I knew the depression was back. The girl who had texted me every day for all those months began distancing herself without explaining why, and others began to follow her. Luckily there were still others who cared for me. Despite this, it felt like I was crying out for help but no one was listening; I felt stupid, alone, trapped. The building of stability and happiness was slowly crumbling down on me.

After trying to explain to the teachers that I was feeling at the point of ending my life again, we arranged another meeting. They initially suggested that I “try and hop to the finish line” (which is a really dangerous thing to tell someone who is feeling suicidal) and finally conceded that I could go back home again and complete my GCSE-studying there.

After six weeks of maths and English lessons at home, I felt much better. I completed both GCSEs and felt brave enough to go back to school for the final day to say my goodbyes. I returned to a cold welcoming from my “friends”, who didn’t have the guts to tell me that they had arranged an after-school gathering without me. It felt like I had been stabbed in the heart. I knew they had been distancing themselves from me before this, but I was still clinging on. Clinging on to a stable group of friends, to feeling I belonged, to feeling loved. I had a negative energy that they couldn’t handle, and I understand why. They were stressed about GCSEs and didn’t need more negativity in their lives. I do not blame them at all. But I just wish they had been strong enough to tell me the truth, instead of leaving me alone without an explanation. They will never understand the pain that caused me, the sleep deprivation, the endless tears, the loss of trust. I closed up for over a year, not even talking about my problems to my family. I realised that they had never been my friends.

Well hello! I’m back. This blog is just going to take a quick break from reciting my journey. I know I’ve been gone for a while so I just wanted to explain why. During this mental health journey there are always times when you will have a ‘setback’ and feel low and depressed. This is normal, and people who have experienced depression or any other mental heath illness (especially addiction) will understand that unfortunately, it doesn’t just go away like some candle you can blow out, and suddenly there are unicorns and rainbows on the other side. It’s hard, and there are days, weeks or even months when you feel like you are just holding on by a thread and the last straw is about to break the camels back. But you learn how to cope with these experiences, by using tools you have acquired throughout the years. The biggest one is talking. Telling someone how you feel, letting that pain out, crying and sobbing.

The normal human instinct is to bury how we feel, for many reasons: one reason is that sometimes we feel that if we do talk to people, we are inconveniences or burdens, meaning that people will reject us and humans HATE rejection. Another reason is because we are prone to avoid anything negative.

Imagine it like this: one day a deer and its mother are walking through the forest. The baby deer hears a loud bang and sees that the tragic result is the death of its mother. Because of this event, every time the deer hears that sound, it associates it with ‘bad’ and has to run away from it. Now imagine you are the deer, but there was no loud bang. Instead it’s inside your brain and you can’t physically run away from it, so what do you do? Well you bury it somewhere deep inside because otherwise it will kill you, like the deer’s mother was killed. In other words the more we bury our problems, the more we are running away from them.

What is the affect of running away from them? Well thousands of years ago, humans would have run as fast as they could to get away from a sabre-toothed tiger, if they couldn’t fight it. The constant fast running would burn all the stress meaning that if/when they escaped, there would be no pent-up energy stored that would affect them. Now humans aren’t running from or fighting sabre-toothed tigers, instead we are escaping overdue deadlines, mean bosses, nasty people, depression. The ‘fight or flight’ instinct is still there but we have no way to burn the stress other than to compartmentalise or bury it, meaning the stress has a really bad affect on us – not only mentally but also physically. It can cause horrendous diseases and we can even die from it. Humans need to learn to retrain our natural instincts when it comes to our mental health because if we don’t, the effects of this will be far worse than intended.

Other tools are distraction and using up energy. Now this might sound absolutely crazy considering what I wrote above, however in some circumstances distraction is really important. For example, as I wrote before about how we have no physical way to run from our problems like our ancestors did, there is actually one way: using up our energy! Specifically, anger is one of our emotions that really benefits from this. Sometimes just talking about anger isn’t enough when there is still so much pent up energy inside of us and personally, the way I use it up and distract myself is by singing. I’ve always loved it and when I sing I am like a dog with a bone; I don’t stop until I feel I have sung a song to the best of my ability. I could spend whole days singing, it really helps and is the tool I have learnt to use.

One thing I have definitely learnt throughout the years, is that there is a massive difference in expressing that you are angry and behaving angrily. When we express that we are angry, we can have a conversation, and talk about how we feel in a calm way so we can get our point across. When we behave angrily we swear, shout and sometimes even physically hurt ourselves or others. This will achieve nothing. That is why using our energy up is really important, because it teaches us to discipline our anger. A suggestion might be karate or jiu-jitsu, as these really teach our brain discipline and when (or when not) to attack or defend. However we have to use both tools to get to our achieved state of mind, which is not happiness, but balance.

These past few weeks I have really struggled. So I talked it out, with my close friends and family, until I, with the support of others, came up with a solution. I feel so much better now.

So…where was I? I had just come back to school and had been rejected by a bunch of ‘friends’. Luckily I did still have friends outside of that group who supported me. I honestly do not know how I would have coped without any friends at all.

I will say this: The summer of 2019 was amazing; I went on holiday and came back sun-kissed and happy. I also came back with a jelly fish sting.

Now, when I got stung by this evil creature, it felt like a thousand wasps stinging me at the same time; I remember thinking that I might die. Three people helped me out of the ocean as I screamed and cried in pain. I was blue-lighted to the hospital and a cannula was inserted in my hand, plastered on by a piece of tape. I flailed around so much that it fell out and blood went everywhere. Meanwhile I had to wait almost 8 hours in the hospital because we couldn’t find a taxi and then we waited outside for another hour. As you can imagine it wasn’t the most pleasurable experience of my life.

Anyway, why did I tell this horrible tale of pain. Well, because living with depression is a billion times worse. Picture this – 24/7 my mind was telling me that I was worthless and that I should kill myself to make other lives easier. No wonder I always slept; I was drained, always drained. It was even harder considering the fact that I had undiagnosed ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), which meant that those thoughts would be replayed constantly, like a broken record.

See, this is how depression works: Ten people could say the loveliest things to you, and one person might make a small, meaningless comment that most people wouldn’t find offensive. My mind would gather up all of these tiny negative experiences and turn them into a monster that eats you up alive. Then I would use this monster as a reason to be unworthy of living. Seems crazy, right? But it’s a disease, it wasn’t me. It took me a very long time to realise that.

So after summer, I went to a new school. For me it was a chance to start fresh, a new beginning, a second chance at trying to fit in. It was a drama school!

Something that I’ve always been passionate about is musical theatre. It really helped me in my darkest moments. I have always LOVED singing with all my heart. I started singing in a choir when I was 3; I think my parents thought it would be a way to bring out my confidence. Unfortunately it did not turn out that way and I eventually quit the choir a few years later. Then singing lessons! That started to bring a little shine out in me, but it wasn’t until I was in year 5 and I got the main part in the school play that I realised being on the stage was where I felt I belonged. Two years later I joined a drama club and it fully brought the confidence out of me. My whole life, singing has given me air to breathe. I am so lucky to have that talent, I honestly believe it brought me out of my darkest moments.

So I was 16 years old, and I joined a drama school! I was finally living out my dream. But what I hadn’t realised is that all I was doing was running from my problems. Unconsciously, I thought that moving to a new school would get rid of my troubles, but as life works, karma came in due course. I had a terrible start to the year in which my relationship with some of my family members broke down. I had extreme PTSD from what happened at the end of year 11 and lost trust in everyone. I became extremely depressed once again and I tried to end my life a few months after joining.

These were some of the darkest moments of my life. I felt that musical theatre was my way out of living a miserable life, but the truth punched me in the face really badly. At that point I guess my thought process was: “what do I have to live for if I’m living out my true passion and I’m still miserable?” I decided to have therapy again, and give it one last shot. I saw a psychiatrist who changed my medication – and something inside of me changed. I had been on the wrong medication for almost two years and suddenly I was on the right one! It took a long time but through the sessions of therapy I could start to see a change. But my communication with my family was diabolical so we decided to attend family therapy, and boy did it make a difference. It gave me the chance to express my feelings to my family in a professional environment, and be validated by them. It gave me the chance to listen to my family, and learn that I needed to stop letting out my pain on them. We attended nearly 20 family therapy sessions until we felt that we could communicate on our own. That was the moment that things really started to change. I realised I needed to stop searching for happiness but instead, for balance. I realised that I had held so much baggage from my past. I realised that being alive was a foreseeable future.

So here I am today…

Oh hold on a second, there were a few bits I left out, so let’s skip back a little.

Back in late 2017 I was due to perform in a Christmas concert with my drama club and I was feeling really anxious. I remember the sun flickering through the trees making me feel slightly uncomfortable and slowly things began to worsen; to the point where I felt this feeling of being pushed back over and over again by an unknown force. I blacked out and found myself surrounded by a team of paramedics seeing if I was okay. I had no idea what happened and of course my first reaction was “WHAT THE FUCK?!!”.

Well it turns out that I had a fit. We went to the hospital and visited the specialists and a woman with shaky hands pressed them around my back. I honestly have no idea why she did that but I presumed it was protocol. Half an hour later a doctor walked in and told us that it was nothing serious and that a lot of people experience one fit in their lives. After that we assumed it was all okay and that it was a one-time thing. But quite soon, I started to develop twitches – it’s difficult to explain the feeling I had when I was experiencing them but I’ll do my best. I suppose the feeling was a loss of consciousness for a split second, usually these twitches would happen when I talked about something that evoked an increase of energy, for example when I talked about something negative, or something that made me anxious or even excited. I would jerk my head backwards and blink rapidly whilst looking up for a few seconds. I remember the worst twitch I had was when I was on holiday and speaking to someone in a shop and suddenly my arms flailed backwards and a force pushed me back; that was by far the most powerful. When I began having therapy a couple of years later my therapist thought that it was possibly a stress response, and I happily went along with that theory, favouring anything negative as I was in the depths of my depression. As I started to associate the twitches with negativity they began to become worse and worse.

A few months later, I had a really bad day at school. A teacher decided to embarrass me in front of a crowd of people, probably for her own gratification of receiving attention, but it left me crying in the car feeling really embarrassed and anxious. The next day when my mother was driving me to school I felt that same anxious feeling I had two years previously, the flickering lights through the trees were pushing me back and my mum shouted for me to put on sunglasses, increasingly frustrated that in my strange state of mind, I kept refusing to (she had insisted that I always wear sunglasses in sunny weather ever since the last fit). But her panicked insistence made me even more anxious and suddenly I saw a bunch of flickering lights in my eyes. I blacked out once again and woke up with another team of paramedics standing around me making sure I was okay. Funnily enough my reaction was the same as last time “WHAT THE FUCK?!!”. I had had another fit, but this time it was much worse. The fit lasted longer and I foamed from the mouth.

We went to visit a neurologist who, after we told him, instantly presumed it was photosensitive epilepsy. I had an MRI and an EEG. Turns out that I’ve always had epilepsy and that my brain was constantly having epileptic discharges. No wonder I was always crazy – my brain never stopped spiking. After that I was diagnosed with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (which was related to the twitches and the epileptic discharges) and photosensitive epilepsy (related to the fits from the flickering lights).

Wow. To hear the word “epilepsy”. You’d think I’d be upset and shocked but surprisingly quite the opposite. As in, of course I had feelings of sadness, that I wouldn’t be able to drive for a year or maybe ever, that I might not ever be allowed to go clubbing, that I had to be extremely careful of everything I do. But in a way it was quite relieving, it all made sense to me. It filled all the pieces of the puzzle about why I behaved so erratically during my depression. I was instantly put on medication which made me extremely anxious and my behaviour became out of control to the extent that I couldn’t cope in school because the staff didn’t know to handle it. Eventually we realised that the medication was causing more harm than good and so we decided that it was best to change it. Thank goodness there was a massive improvement.

So there a few more bits that I was unsure of. The neurologist told me that it was unusual not to have had more seizures during my life so far, so I decided to do my research. Unfortunately I didn’t find the answers to my questions however I did find something else: common conditions that can be related to epilepsy (comorbidities) are dyspraxia, ADHD and autism. I knew I didn’t have autism because my symptoms didn’t fit, but I did think there was a significant possibility that I had ADHD or at least ADD because I’m not hyperactive. So my psychiatrist carried out an assessment and I was indeed diagnosed with ADD. In case anyone is unsure of what ADD stands for, it’s Attention Deficit Disorder. Now all the puzzle pieces fit, and everything finally made sense: why I forgot my coats, pencil cases, and everything else at school or any other place. Also why I constantly replayed every single word someone said to me in my head over and over again until I’d wind myself up into a complete frenzy and why I’d constantly get distracted when someone was talking to me or even when I was talking. I’d lose my train of thought so easily – it is now really clear why I was so disorganised and why I would do things like cross the road without looking.

You see, as a child I was punished if I forgot anything from school (usually my coat). I would usually have to go to bed early or I would be banned from TV for a week or sometimes longer. Because of this, I developed a technique of lying, as the message that I had been taught was that if I told the truth I would be punished, and if I lied nothing would happen. I became a pathological liar; it had turned into normality for me. Anytime I forgot something, I would be scared of the consequences I’d receive when I got back home. So naturally for years I blamed myself for being so careless – when I’d spill drinks (which happened so frequently) I was shouted at and told that I had to make an effort and to stop being clumsy. This crushed my spirit every time because I knew that I couldn’t help it. No one knew I had ADD so I was given barely any support. I believe this was a massive part of my depression; I had been blamed for so long that I eventually turned on myself, and would beat myself up for anything and everything I did. So when I found out I had ADD, it was quite an emotional experience for me. I learnt that it wasn’t my fault.

To anyone who blames themselves for being disorganised or messy etc, and they really can’t help it, just know that it’s not your fault – even when your family doesn’t understand and lashes out because of frustration, it’s not you, it’s a diagnosis. Don’t let people’s opinions of you destroy your soul because in the words of Dr. Seuss “There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” You know your truth and never let people define that for you.

In case you do feel alone, here are some high profile figures who suffer from ADHD/ADD:

Adam Levine, Justin Timberlake, Paris Hilton, Simone Biles, will.i.am, Howie Mandel, Richard Branson (who also has dyspraxia like me), Jim Carrey and so many more.

So at this point, after 7 chapters of the blog, you’re probably asking yourself, “who is Gary?”. Well, I think it’s about time I told you.

Years ago, my family and I went on a trip to the Highlands, Scotland. I have a distinct memory of my brother calling out generic dad names from the window in an attempt to make people laugh. He shouted out “ALAN!!! GARY!!! STEVE!!!” over and over again. That memory stayed in my mind for a really long time, specifically the name Gary.

Later on in my life, when I was struggling with depression, my family helped me to realise that I had an illness but the illness wasn’t me. We decided to give it a name to re-enforce that it was a separate entity – and Gary was born. “Hello Gary”, we would say as the darkness would envelop me and looking back, I guess I used humour as a coping mechanism to help me in my darkest moments. I always found the name funny and when I was around my family or closest friends I’d consistently say that name as a joke. It’s now all a massive blur for me, but one thing I knew for certain is that I wouldn’t say that name if I was in a balanced or calm state of mind. In other words, I slowly developed a tool to help me deal with my depression. Thank you Gary.

It was quite late on in my journey that I realised giving my depression a name was a really valuable technique. My family always used to say to me and still do when I’m having bad days, “that’s not you speaking, it’s Gary.”. To this day the legacy of that joke still stands tall; we even named my anxiety Gerald.

What does Gary look like? Well, if anyone has ever seen the film Venom, the swirling black moving bacteria (before it enters the brain of Tom Hardy) depicts this perfectly for me. A lot of people picture depression as a person who has to drag massive heavy boulders wherever they go – symbolising the baggage they have to carry all the time. However for me, it felt like I had been possessed by an evil force; it felt like something was telling me that I was a worthless burden, who no one wanted to be around. I suppose the humour of the name, and the memory that it carries, helped greatly to counter-balance this and lighten the load of such a horrible nasty disease.

Separating depression from oneself is, I believe, the most important thing you can do. It’s the first step of recovery – to realising that all the pain, the tiredness, the suicidal thoughts are in actuality a chemical imbalance in the brain. But this doesn’t counteract what you are going through; don’t let others invalidate it because behind all the science and the chemical imbalances lies your pain, which will always be real to you.

Right now, there are so many people who feel they are worthless burdens and wastes of space. If any one of you is reading this, I want you to know that it’s not true. There will always be someone in this big wide world who will love you for YOU. Your family may not understand what or how you are feeling and that is so, so hard to live with but the honest truth is that they never will. All they can do is empathise. Be brave and strong enough to teach them that – otherwise they will never learn. When you look in the mirror and all you see is ugliness and hatred, don’t listen to your depression. Give it a name and tell it to fuck off.

I’ve been gone for a long time, I know. I’m guessing you’re probably wondering why? Well, a lot’s happened…

After I finished my most recent blog post ‘Who is Gary?’, I decided that my next one was going to be about a documentary I watched almost 3 years ago. But then I guess life got in the way. The thing is, I know in this blog it may seem that all my issues have gone away and now I’m flying in the air, free from all my troubles; but that’s not the reality. Of course I have come out of the other side in the sense that when I do start feeling low, I have the right support to deal with those moments, but that still doesn’t mean that those moments don’t hurt.

Over a month ago I had a small relapse in my epilepsy. Fortunately it’s all been sorted out and we now know where the issue stemmed from. But it was really difficult at the time – my flinches came back, I was uncontrollably crying, I felt an overwhelming sense of anxiety and I couldn’t get out of bed. For a blink of an eye, my world stopped; my internal dialogue became dark, I began to wind myself up and to trip over all the self-imposed obstacles that were in my way. And then… I remembered something: a self-love questionnaire I had seen in an instagram post; I told myself to write the answers down so that whenever I felt bad I could look at them, and remember how much I loved myself.

Here are the questions, and the answers I gave:

1. What’s your favourite personality trait?

My empathy.

2. What are you most proud of?

My journey.

3. What’s something you appreciate about your younger self?

My mistakes.

4. What are your greatest strengths?

My ability to understand others, my empathy, my kindness, my talent, my love, my beauty and my soul.

5. What’s one thing you appreciate about your body?

My boobs, eyes and figure (3 things sorry!)

6. What’s one thing you forgive yourself for?

My anger and suffering.

7. What’s one thing you can do to take care of yourself today?

(Again multiple things) drink loads of water, exercise, eat, bake, sing, be honest with my emotions and learn from each day.

8. What’s something positive that you deserve?

Love, balance and friendship.

And there it is. I was able to pull myself out of the pit of darkness. Of course it wasn’t all better after that, but I certainly felt a weight lifted off my shoulders. I got up, called my friend who really helped me reflect on my feelings, baked a cake, sang some songs and by the end of the week I felt so much better.

So I think that’s why I’ve been away for a while; I needed to take some time for me, to work on myself, so that I could feel strong enough to write again.