I have been debating and struggling to decide on what I would like to post first on my blog. I have a rough idea of what I would like this blog to be all about but taking the first step into getting this going is most definitely the hardest one. I have several posts in the draft section right now and many pages of notes in my lovely Moleskin, gifted to me from a wonderful friend and fellow blogger, where I have formed posts and yet have not published them! Which I realised actually segues quite nicely into a blog post – the main reason for all of this indecision is the main reason for this blog: my anxiety.
Right now my anxiety and depression is interwoven into every aspect of my life. Even when I am asleep I cannot fully escape it as it influences my dreams, shaping them into visions of the things I am currently struggling with. As much as I hate to admit this in what I intend to be a positive and hopeful story about mental health, it is paralyzing me. I am finding it difficult to make any decisions, plans, to study… it is even making it difficult to converse with the people around me. I worry about everything to the point I do nothing.
It never used to be this way. Although my anxiety has been an issue for a large portion of my life (obviously enough of one for it to eventually be recognised and diagnosed by a doctor) it never seemed to hinder me in terms of doing the things I wanted to do, just occasionally made them more of a challenge. I pushed myself to take on a full-time job and a promotion in a busy city store after only doing 12hrs in a little shop, which demanded more of my time and energy, as well going out and socialising frequently. I eventually took the leap into a new relationship, quitting my job and leaving to go to university, but the 9 months I spent at my old uni was when I realised just how ill I really was. I slipped into a deep depression which I had originally attributed to a huge change in my life yet things did not improve. I instead made a series of bad decisions, I became paranoid and highly anxious which resulted in me isolating myself from my flat mates and friends, I stopped attending lectures and started sleeping a lot; it was a huge contrast to the person I had been before I left.
I moved home and started a fresh at a new university, studying English instead of live events management and moving in with my lifelong best friend in the hope that I would just get better like I had done once previously. Sadly this did not happen and I became increasingly ill, having lost all faith in myself and no idea what to do with my life, until eventually things got so bad I finally sought professional help last year.
So why am I talking about how bad things got and that I am not doing great right now? Where is the positive in that? Well it’s right here, in the words I am typing right now, in the very existence of this blog and the fact that this post is published. Despite my anxiety I have eventually made a decision on what to put as my first post and that I have made the decision to talk about something which for so many years I thought I was supposed to hide and pretend did not exist. Yes, my anxiety and depression is still hard to manage and I’m learning how to deal with them each day but I’m also learning how to talk about it and help people understand just what it is that I go through. Not just that but it has forced me to begin to understand myself and I have learned, and still continuing to learn, a lot of deep – and sometimes difficult – truths about who I am. It has been an extremely difficult few years where for a while I felt so hopeless and worthless that at one point I did not think I could keep going. Yet here I am (I’ve discovered I’m quite stubborn)!
This is just a brief overview of what has been a stormy voyage and I’ve not quite reached land yet. During the last year things have improved drastically and I owe much of that to opening up about what I have been going through, although I am still trying to find the words to describe my experiences in the eloquent and quirky ways I see on the internet, or using philosophical questions like my friend at anxiouslyadulting does in her awesome post about trees! I’m still trying to get to grips with the every day element of life and I have had the support of some amazing friends and family both old and new, my colleagues who have been the source of so much love and laughter that it has been my sole reason for dragging myself out of bed and to work at some points, and the support and concern of university which has helped me to keep going with my degree.
So this is another thing I can add to my list of positives! I finally broke the paralysis and posted something, said something and made a decision!
It might be small but it’s something 🙂
The Anxious Extrovert 