Thoughts following a difficult week

So today I'm back after a few shitey days away from social media 👋🏼 again. Just a quick post of some thoughts.
I often get the feeling people get sick of me harping on probably like a broken record about the same things. Someone said to me a little while ago ‘Facebook isn’t the place’ (to vent about personal things bla bla) but yes it totally is! And no time better than right now when we are essentially in a mental health crisis. We have Facebook to connect to other people and we add friends to be able to communicate with them. Yet I find I get the most support from complete strangers on twitter. 

People die because they hide how bad they feel! Then everyone’s so upset and jumps on the bandwagon for 2 minutes about speaking out *jazz hands* until they forget again until the next time. 

I realise the ones who deleted me can’t see this but like people deleted me for speaking out. I fucking screamed out and got such a negative response from so many people. Why? I was terrified and in so much pain i didn’t know what was going to happen to me. But y'know if anything being ignored and dismissed makes me wanna speak out more and do more about the ignorance 💁🏼‍♀️ can you tell I hate the term speaking out? (Still had very little help by the way and it’s been 4 months). 

At my lowest I thought things like "wow if I had died no one would even care or come to my funeral", then I thought "no, actually, they totally would and make out like they loved me soo much". Cause everyone wants to show how much they cared once someone dies and they feel that guilt. How about be good to people now and not remorseful when they’re gone? Humanity is outrageous. 

I don’t mean this to be insensitive in any way by the way. So many people are amazing and compassionate and lovely, and my experience seems to have brought all of those to the forefront which is a huge positive. It's just glaring me in the face how huge of a problem we have in our society, it's terrifying frankly.

Thanks for reading

Emptying my brain pt.1

I’ve been wanting to write a new post for a while now. I’ve got so much constantly swirling in my head and so much to say but I don’t know how to get it out. I’ve decided it’s better to just write and it not be perfect rather than not write at all. 

So, the last time I posted I was scared I was going to lose everything but I said I was determined not to this time. As it turns out, I lost everything and there’s nothing I could’ve done about it. I mean, aside from maybe pretending I wasn’t spiralling into feeling so bad I could barely function out of bed, or lying about not going to work. Or changing myself completely, I don’t know. Anyway, my boyfriend left me and it just felt like the Earth had fallen beneath me. 

Yes we’d only been officially together for a couple of months, but after all of the fucking shit I’d already been through, I really was not able to handle having my heart broken yet again. Something about this time was like any previous time multiplied by a thousand, too. How I felt about him was like nothing I’d felt in a long time, if ever before, and I thought he’d felt the same towards me. 

I’d been so careful this time. Was he honest? Trustworthy? Faithful? Understanding? Loving? I’d thought he was all of those things and more. I thought I was good at reading people, I thought I’d read him so well, I couldn’t believe I was finally falling in love with someone who was actually so right for me and wanted me back. I felt so, so lucky. 

Things only gradually and subtly started to change where I’d feel like he wasn’t wanting to be around me sometimes, but I’d tell myself I was being irrational because of how I’d been treat in the past. Any insecurities I’d bring up with him, he’d reassure me, saying “it’s fine to need reassurance sometimes” and hugging me. I felt so relieved and understood like finally someone gets it. 

Only any bad gut feelings I had were completely right, and in the shortest time it was like a switch flipped and he was avoiding me, hardly bothering with me, and making me really fucking upset and confused. 

How can someone listen to all the shit in your past, still stick by you, reassure you, introduce you to their friends and family, make future plans for gigs, festivals, holidays with you, and then completely change their mind and leave you? How could he not want to see me again all of a sudden? 

The only thing that had changed was that he got to know my anxiety and depression better, and then he ran away. One day he’d been out for hours, I was in bed when he left, and I was in bed when he came back. He told me to get up and asked how I could sleep all day and asked what was wrong. Every Sunday night after we’d had a weekend together I’d get upset and every Monday morning I would cry before work. Because I was terrified of losing him. 

You see, for someone like me who feels things intensely, it’s almost better to have nothing because you have nothing to lose. The constant anxiety and stress I’m under in a job or relationship is virtually unbearable. 

I’d not long been in full time work when we started dating, and I was already finding the job really tough. Going from being unemployed and hiding in the house to being out in public every day, dealing with people and rushing around, it was a complete overload to the senses and I was exhausted all the time. I struggled to complete five days in a week because I was so drained, all I would do besides work was sleep.

I’d also not long been out of an emotionally abusive relationship with someone who I honestly think has scarred me forever. I won’t go into the details but narcissistic abuse is not to be taken lightly and if someone is controlling you and insulting you every day, when you had no confidence to begin with, you need to get out before it breaks you completely. I’ve learned since that it takes on average 8 attempts for an abuse victim to leave their abuser. They make you feel so worthless and useless that you couldn’t live without them. ‘Luckily’ for me I got out of it after a couple of months, but I still have nightmares about him sometimes.

When me and my recent ex started dating he said “I don’t get that like, why didn’t you just leave?”. Red flag right there really, but I seem to be great at not seeing those when I want to be loved. Near the end of our relationship he would say things like “I don’t understand anything about you” and that really hurt. I’d try to explain but it was just so far from his capabilities it seems. I would love to be as fortunate to have that ignorance towards mental illness. Imagine that. 

So anyway, I’d been off sick from work for a couple of weeks because I was crying at work all the time, felt like I couldn’t breathe and could not concentrate whatsoever. All that ran through my mind was that he was losing interest, I was falling for him, Christmas was coming (bad things always happen to me at Christmas) and something really really bad was going to happen. I tried to focus on my job and myself and had a meeting with my manager to arrange going back to work a few hours a week and gradually building them up. I really needed that job, the money and the friends I’d made there plus the experience and furthering my career in visual merchandising. But no, we had a terrible fight the weekend before I was meant to go back to work, and I was so upset I couldn’t go. We fought because I thought we’d had plans but he wanted to spend the entire weekend in the pub. Like imagine having a grotty pub and pints chosen over you? I really thought at that point wow he does not care about me whatsoever. 

When I say I couldn’t go to work, I mean I absolutely could not function at all. I cried in bed, didn’t eat, I couldn’t deal with it. That Friday night - 14th December -  he came to my house and broke up with me. The next few weeks after that were the worst weeks of my entire life. 

I mostly spent Christmas and new year sobbing either on the living room floor or in bed. I barely knew what day or time it was. All I could think about was him, what was wrong with me, why I wasn’t good enough, how he could do that to me, why do I deserve this, etc etc. Round and round. For weeks on end. 

I sent him hundreds of messages, asking questions over and over that he never really gave the answers to. Just things like “I don’t want a relationship” (he asked me out), “I just don’t want this” (he said the previous weekend he was happy), “I’m not in love with you” punch me in the fucking throat why don’t you.

So, as many people know, I pretty much had a complete mental breakdown after this break up. I couldn’t see a future. My future was planned in my head with him and I saw a ‘way out’ with him, of how lonely and upset I had been and a new path leading out of my pain. It felt like someone offering me a hand out of a dark hole in the ground before laughing and throwing me back down into it. It was un-fucking-bearable. I can’t stress that enough.

It was so bad I vented absolutely everything on social media. Not even for anyone else to see, just for him to see, or his friends to see it and make sure he knew how bad I was feeling because of him. I slammed my fist down on the self destruction and did not give a shit what would happen to me. I wanted to fully destroy everything because I honestly thought I wasn’t going to be here any more so nothing mattered. I just wanted to die. I had been abandoned, thrown away, my worst fears had been realised and I just wanted to be gone. 

I posted a video of me taking handfuls of tablets then went out in the car only to be found and taken to hospital. I did a live video of my arms after I’d used broken mirror to cut them after trashing my room because I couldn’t handle the anger and hurt any longer. I ended up in a police cell for hours only for them to send me back home with no help. All I ever really got was the crisis team number, which of course I wasn’t going to ring. I could barely think straight. I’m sure I told people on the phone several times to fuck off.

I also told friends and people who loved me to fuck off. I really did want to completely destroy myself. Thankfully, some absolutely amazing loving friends could see through my pain and know me and knew that deep down I was just acting out because the pain was so intense I couldn’t handle it all myself.

The whole ordeal of the past few months has taught me a hell of a lot about people. A lot of people unfollowed me, some blocked me, some sent me horrible messages. All I can say to those people is:

“I’m sorry if I hurt or upset you, I was unwell, and if you still can’t see or understand that, then you’re the lucky ones who don’t feel things the way I do.”

 The stigma around mental illness is far from being eradicated and I’ve seen first hand the ignorance and also how quick people are to turn a blind eye. Although my views on my instagram stories went up and up the worse I was getting and people just wanting to have a nose, like a horrible car crash you can’t help but watch. 

I have to mention before I finish this post though, the amount of positivity and love from people far outweighed the bad. My best friends Kate and Stacey who would turn up at my door and hug me so tight while I sobbed, or make sure I washed and ate. People who sent me the loveliest of messages. Especially those who knew me so well, deep down, far better than my ex ever did, reminding me of all the good things about myself. People I’ve bumped into out and about since who’ve come up to me and given me a hug and really been absolutely lovely. A lad I’d never met in person before but knew of, came up to me and said he had been concerned and was so glad to see me out and enjoying myself. Like, people don’t have to come up to me and say those things but they have!! 

I’m still not great right now, honestly, but I have some pretty okay days now. I’m seeing someone to talk about things every couple of weeks and will just see how things go. For now I can’t even face looking at job vacancies or thinking too far in the future but one day at a time I’ll get there.

If anyone else has any similar experiences with overwhelming emotions / intense feelings / anxiety / depression or anything like that feel free to comment or contact me and we can have a chat. Also shout out to all the people on twitter and support groups on facebook - strangers who relates are great to speak to when you feel alone in this world.

Anyway, I think that’s it for now. I’ll probably follow this up with a few more related posts. Apologies if this isn’t the best use of grammar or whatever, I try my best, and I don’t think I’m that thick or owt :) 

MISH Zine

I recently completed my BA Hons Creative Enterprise course at Newcastle College, and MISH Zine is a publication I created for my final project. The Zine is about self-care with particular emphasis on anxiety and depression. Having suffered with both of these myself for a lot of years, and suffering during Uni, I found it hard to get my work done, in fact I really struggled. So it felt right to put any energy I had into a document for anyone else struggling with similar issues. It features places to go and things to do in Newcastle and the North East of England in general, as well as some fashion content and other bits and bobs.
Click bottom right of the Zine to see it in full screen and be able to read it clearly!

Updated Visual CV

I've spent a little bit of time tonight updating my visual CV. I won't be applying for any job roles until I've finished uni so at the end of August (I have extensions until then) but I wanted to revamp it and kind of think about where I am in my own head. It's hard to think of your own skills and sell yourself but I'm happy with how this has turned out, nice and clean and simple.

Tonight I've also downloaded Microsoft Office for free from the Microsoft website as I have a student email account which I didn't realise I could do until now! So I've been starting to tackle my dissertation on Word as I'm not keen on Pages on my mac. In the near future I'm meant to be getting a mentor to meet up with a couple of times a week to help me with my dissertation and my final project. This will be a huge help as I've been really struggling with motivation and haven't had a clue what I'm supposed to be doing or what I even want to do. Fingers crossed for progress in the coming weeks and bring on August when it will all be over!

xoxo

A new direction

Recently I've been dealing with a lot, in all aspects of my life, and I've made a few big changes.

Firstly, and most recently, I've left my job at Topshop due to my social anxiety and feeling so depressed. I worked there for 2 years and 9 months - the longest I've ever managed to hold down a job - and I really struggled to keep going the past few months. It's so hard to force yourself to work in a busy, image-conscious environment dealing with customers when you feel so ugly and unfashionable and you feel your heart race in panic every time someone speaks to you. It got to the point that I'd cry before shifts, get really hot and panicked and sometimes shaky. I'd have to force myself to drive into the car park and not turn around and drive back home, where I'd be able to dive back into bed and hide under my duvet forever.

I went to the doctor and got a sick note for a couple of weeks off work which instantly made me feel a bit better. I spent my time trying to make sure I still got out of the house every day, even if just for a walk to get a coffee with my boyfriend. A lot of the time I'd only be out a short while and feel overwhelmed and need to go back home, where I'd feel mentally and physically exhausted and have a nap. I always worry about what other people think of me and I'd be always thinking something bad will happen to me. If I go out in the car and I get into a difficult situation and someone honks their horn at me I could burst into tears and need to pull over. This isn't how everyone else feels surely, this isn't normal life for everyone else, it's not fair.

After those two weeks off, I still couldn't bear the thought of returning to work so I got another one week sick note. That week flew by and I agreed my return shifts. I managed three, 4 hour shifts and I couldn't do it any more. Something in my head had left my job behind in my time off and I couldn't see myself facing everything again. Speaking to strangers all day, having a queue of people looking at me at the till point, not knowing if a difficult situation might come about where I might make a bad decision and mess everything up for someone.

I've had a lot of jobs in my life, I'm now 27 years old and I decided that the best thing to do in this situation was to leave my job. To other people this might seem like a stupid decision, and yes I am sad to have left because that job was a huge part of my life. I made a lot of friends there and before my mental illness reared it's ugly head again, I felt comfortable there, to a degree. But when I feel so bad that I feel intense dread and panic over a 4 hour shift, it's not worth putting myself through that a few times a week.

Luckily I am still at university, if only for a couple more months, and I can concentrate on completing the last of my work in my free time. I'm not sure what's to come in the near future but I've learned that looking after yourself is number 1, and I'm sure once I feel better again in time I'll get myself a new job and start building myself up again.

If anyone else is feeling a similar way, make sure you let people know how you feel. I've spoken to friends, my parents, my boyfriend and even had meetings with my managers to put support in place. Sadly I still felt I had to leave, but everyone around me has been so supportive, so I feel cared about rather than a failure. Mental illness is no-one's fault and no-one should blame you if you're struggling at some points in your life.

Leave me a comment if you're reading this and relate or need some support. I've decided to give some depth to my blog posts as a way of expressing how I'm feeling as well as hopefully helping others. I'm looking forward to making more posts like this and I'd love some feedback! Thanks xoxo