Reasons to be cheerful

If you’ve read any of my previous blogs, you will know by now that the last year or so has not been the easiest time of my life. Plagued with crippling anxiety, I became very ill last year and still battle daily with my mental health issues. But it’s been over a year since I first became ill and now that the fog has cleared, despite still having the odd bad day (or three), I now have enough self-awareness to see the good in my life, most of the time.

What I do have now that I didn’t have a year ago is a little more perspective. Anxiety took that away from me. It took me to a dark place where all my thoughts were negative ones.  But lately (and I think largely due to practicing mindfulness,) I’ve come to realise that there is so much good in the world: good that we choose not to see because we are so distracted by the negatives in our own lives and in the world around us.

I accept that there are things in life I do not have that I desperately want. And I’ll admit that sometimes seeing other people with those things causes me a lot of pain and has, at times, brought about strong feelings of resentment and bitterness. But when I look at my life objectively, I can see that I really am very fortunate.

I have a loving and supportive husband and a harmonious marriage. I have a beautiful home, filled with nice things and a very cute (albeit, I suspect, evil) cat. I have a job that I love. I have a support network of people that care about me and would be there in an instant if I needed them. Some of these things I have worked hard for. Others, well, I have just been lucky. The bottom line is, many people don’t have any of these things, so I know I should be thankful.

At bedtime, my husband and I will try and come up with a list of good things that have happened that day (we usually aim for three.) Sometimes these are little triumphs – we had pizza, we completed a work project, we successfully guessed the killer in Broadchurch etc. etc.) Sometimes these are more profound. But these reasons to be cheerful, however small, help me to stay well. Because this gratitude forces me to focus on the good things in life and balances out all those negative anxious thoughts.

If you’re having a tough time, I would encourage you to look at your life from the perspective of a stranger. Mentally list all the good points – your reasons to be cheerful.  You’ll probably find that they are things you take for granted every day. Take a moment to be thankful and I hope you’ll find that there is room for gratitude amidst the fog of negativity.

“Some people grumble that roses have thorns: I am grateful that thorns have roses.” 

For there is always hope

I always do my best to keep my blogs really positive. So many people have contacted me over the past year to tell me how much my encouragement helps them and I don’t want to let those people down. I also never want to come across as if I’m complaining or ranting. I appreciate that I have a very nice life, and for that, I am more than grateful.

On the other hand, I never want to lie or sugar coat the severity of my mental health issues. And sometimes, it’s very hard to see a bright future. To see a day where anxiety doesn’t consume every bone in my body. Because, honestly, sometimes life just gets a bit shitty and there's nothing you can do about it.

I don’t want to go in to the reasons why I’m particularly anxious at the moment. That’s not what this blog is about. This blog is just to say that sometimes, you can do all the mindfulness in the world and still feel irritated. You can chant positive affirmations again and again and still feel helpless. You can distract yourself until you’re blue in the face and still feel unable to concentrate on anything.

And I could say, well, it’s okay to feel that way. You’ll be fine. After all, you’re trying to fight against a natural human response that ultimately serves a purpose. But is it really okay? Can you really live when every day you’re fighting a battle, and the war zone exists in your own mind? No. No, you can’t. You just merely exist. And every day, you can hope for peace; for armistice. And maybe, just maybe, while there’s still hope in your heart, there’s something left that’s worth fighting for. 

A letter to my 18 year old self

Dear 18 year old Laura,

You have just finished school and are ready to set off to university. It is all you’ve ever wanted and you can’t wait to make your mark on the world. You’ve decided you want to be a lawyer, and the summer work experience placement where you looked after the partner’s baby for 3 weeks hasn’t put you off!

You’ve just split up with your high school boyfriend after 3 years. You’re ‘heartbroken’ for about a week and then you realise that you’re probably better off. I am sorry to say that you have not known real heartbreak yet – this will come a few years later. But we’ll get to that in a bit…

You probably want me to tell you that you’ll ace uni, get a first class degree and end up working for a prestigious law firm where you’ll make a real difference. Sorry, it doesn’t quite pan out that way. You’ll struggle. School and exams came naturally to you but at uni, everyone is clever, and you’ll never really feel like you’re good enough. You’ll get mediocre grades and will struggle through, and leave feeling a little bit lost.

When you’re 19, you’ll move to Glasgow and have a couple of amazing years living with friends in the West End. You’ll drink far too many cosmopolitans, date inappropriate men, and watch a lot of Grand Designs. [A bit of advice – I know your tax class is at 9am but you might want to go to that. It’s going to come in handy…]

When you’re 20 you will meet someone special – ‘the one who got away’ as it were. But you’ll be too messed up emotionally to make a go of it and you’ll treat him terribly and never really recover from the guilt. And only then will you face real heartbreak, for the love that never quite ran its course.

You will spiral in to a depression which almost results in you failing your third year at uni. You’ll sit in an exam hall and write nonsense because you don’t know the first thing about Roman Law. Gran will drag you to the GP, where you won’t admit that you’ve been formulating plans to slit your wrists and end it all, and you’ll take the meds and wear your fake smile and you’ll just about manage to pass the course and be allowed to go back for honours year.

I’d love to tell you that it gets easier, that those pills will make everything better. But the truth is you will struggle with your mental health for many years to come. It will take almost 10 years for you to get a real grip on it. You will suffer many panic attacks where you convince yourself that you are dying. You will show up at A&E more than once, only to be told that you’re not actually having a heart attack. You’ll feel like you’re going mad. But you’ll function enough to not let it show most of the time. Years later, a friend will say ‘But you were always so smiley, I had no idea.’ You will absolutely perfect the art of ‘faking it til you make it.’

But you will graduate. Unfortunately, it’s at a time where there are no jobs. So that traineeship that you’re after isn’t going to happen for you. But it all works out in the end and believe me, one day you will look back and thank your lucky stars that you didn’t become a solicitor.

When you’re 21 you will fall in love with the man you will eventually marry. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe that you will settle down one day – you thought you’d live like Carrie Bradshaw forever – but you’ll find your way to suburbia like the best of them. You’re going to move to Uddingston. You don’t even know where that is right now!

The man you’ll marry is a good egg. He will sweep you off your feet. He will save you. You will have a few tough years where your mental health issues get in the way. You won’t think you deserve the happiness that he offers, and you’ll subconsciously try and sabotage it with the crazy behaviour that you’ve always exhibited in relationships before. But he’ll stick around and one day it will click. You’ll realise, that actually, you want the good life. You want to be happy with this person forever. You can’t lose this…

…When you’re 26, you will stand on a beach pavilion in the Caribbean, the waves crashing behind you, and you’ll say the vows that you’ll agonise over for days the week before and you will mean every single word. From then on, the path to happiness comes easily for you. You will be the picture perfect cliché of marital bliss.

Eventually, after a rocky start to your career, you will find a job that you love and that you’re actually good it. And you know those tax lectures you didn’t go to? Well you’ll stand in front of a lecture hall full of students and deliver one of those lectures. You’ll spend many years studying. In fact, by the time you pass your final Chartered Tax Advisor exam, you’ll have been sitting exams for nearly half your life. But one day you’ll be done and you’ll go to the House of Lords, where you’ll be presented with a certificate that will hang proudly on your home office wall for many years to come.

In 2016, when you’re 28 years old, you will suffer a mental breakdown. You will work too hard and not look after yourself and you will fall apart for about three months. You will lock yourself in your bathroom and you will pull off your own skin in an attempt to get rid of the bugs that you believe are crawling over your skin. You will hit rock bottom.

But you will discover mindfulness, which isn’t even a thing yet, and you’ll slowly get better. You’ll develop the coping techniques that I know will get you through the rest of your living days and you’ll come out the other end better for it, finally, after all these years, self-aware enough to know that life is too important to suffer in silence.

I wish there was more advice I could offer you. I wish I could paint a happier picture of your 20s. I’m happy to say that your group of friends will still be your best friends 10 years later, and you’ll add some new friends to the mix too, which makes you luckier than most. But there’s other tough times ahead that I haven’t even mentioned. Illness will destroy your family. The world will become an increasingly scary place.

The truth is, you shouldn’t want to change anything. These experiences will shape you in to the confident 30 year old that you always knew you’d become eventually. So when times are tough, just have a little faith. You will somehow get through it all. Every one of your worst days will fade in to the background eventually. Keep fighting - you’ve got this.

Love from your (almost) 30 year old self.

xx

Our generation is fucked

I have deliberately not commented on the political climate as of late. You see, it’s particularly sad for me, because I used to work in politics. I was the one standing outside the train station in the pissing rain handing out leaflets that got thrown straight in to the recycling on a good day, and shoved straight back in your face on a bad day. I was the one that knocked on doors and got shouted at, spat at, and on one occasion, chased by a quite scary looking dog. I was the one that took calls when members of the public called our head office and called me a disgrace.

I put up with all of the above because I believed in something. I genuinely believed that there must be a better future for our generation. I don’t anymore. And I can’t think of any other way to put this, other than to say, we are fucked. We are fucked because we have no one to trust. Let’s look at the viable options here:

Vote Labour: Vote for a party that is so divided, it doesn’t even know what it represents anymore. Vote for a leader that his own party hate. Vote for a man that’s happy to take money from Iran (which let’s not forget, is a country that has zero respect for human rights.) Vote for a party which is essentially lost.

Vote Conservative: Vote for a Prime Minister that’s happy to cosy up to Trump. Vote for a former home secretary of 8 years who has done nothing to deal with our country’s immigration crisis. Vote for an environment secretary that backs fox hunting.

Vote UKIP: Vote for a man who hates everything the European parliament stand for, but is happy to take money from them (£84k a year by the way.) Vote for a party who want to legalise guns again. Vote for scrapping maternity pay.

[Vote Lib Dem: Do they still exist? I’ll say no more.]

Vote SNP: Vote for lies and self-delusion. Vote for complete incompetence – a government who have been in charge for, what, 9 years now and yet have completely failed the Scottish public. Vote for a first minister who’s own constituency resembles a ghetto, where residents living conditions are completely unacceptable (this is a place where rats, begging children, child sex workers and frequent rapes are the new normal.)

Or vote for nothing, and waive my democratic right.  I’ve often thought a ‘none of the above’ box on the ballot papers might be a good option. But then we’d all just vote for that and nothing would ever get done. For the first time in my life, I am considering not voting in the next election, because to vote for something, I need to believe. I need to trust. I need to want to stand out in the rain and hand out those flyers. And how can I trust any of the main parties right now? If I thought my vote might ignite any sort of positive change in society, then I would. But all I see is gloom for a long time to come. Our generation is fucked, and it makes me feel utterly dejected and depressed. 

Reflections on the year...

I’m always really nostalgic at this time of year. I’m not sure why. A New Year normally connotes a fresh start, but if you have an anxious mind, like me, you’ll know that you spent a large part of your life living in the past (more on this later.) So I started writing a sort of ‘round up’ of the year but decided against it for two reasons. One, my life hasn’t been interesting enough to justify this and two, let’s face it, 2016 was a pretty shifty year for everyone. So instead of documenting my year, I’m just going to write a little about my mental health journey over the past year. 

2016 should have been the best year of my life. I started the year having just moved in to my new house a few months before and was generally loving life. I work in personal tax so January is always pretty hectic and I’d changed my contract at work, meaning I’d worked 48 hour weeks since the previous May. Normally, I’d have some time off in February but last year I went straight in to a secondment which involved some travel to London. I was coping okay but then one Thursday night, I missed my flight home and I think it was all just a bit too much. That Sunday I completely crashed, resulting in an anxiety episode which lasted for months and an eight week absence from work, followed by a six week phased return. It was the shittiest time and there were so many low points during those few months where I worried I’d never recover.

But recover I did, as much as you can when you suffer from anxiety and panic attacks. As I’ve said in previous blogs, you never fully recover from a mental illness. It’s something you have to life with any manage forever. But I do feel like I’m going into 2017 feeling stronger, happier and armed with the tools to manage my mental health.

I’ve talked about mindfulness a lot in my blogs and I go to a mindfulness class run by an amazing man called Martin Stepek (look him up.) He often talks about compassion. He believes that in cultivating awareness, we can increase our empathy and compassion for others and ourselves and in turn, this will lead to a happier and more fulfilling life. This is one thing I consistently struggle with, especially at this time of year when I’m feeling reflective.

You see, there is a fine line between compassion and guilt. Those who don’t know much about anxiety may not know that some of the symptoms can make you a pretty difficult person to be around. In the past, I have suffered with major irritability, mood swings and some generally crazy behaviour, which other people have had to bear the brunt of. This is something that I feel incredibly guilty about and mindfulness seems to amplify these feelings of guilt (even more so at New Year) to a degree that I don’t necessarily want to feel.

This is something I want to work on in 2017 because no one wants to live in the past. The what ifs and the whys won’t change what has been and the guilt won’t make it better. So my goal for the year to come is to strengthen my skill of compassion to enable me to move on positively with life and enjoy the here and now. And maybe help others along the way.

If you’re reading this, then I wish you all a very mindful 2017 and hope that you can find the time to appreciate the good in everyday.

It's time to shut the fuck up

I have been married for well over two years now – 970 days to be precise. And for the last 969 days, I’ve had to fend off questions about when I might start a family. These questions have come mostly from other women. I never know what to say when I’m asked this and usually smile politely and invent some generic excuse.

A woman I follow on Instagram posted a picture of a negative pregnancy test this week, in an attempt to silence the many people who ask her on a daily basis when she will be giving her daughter a sibling. This woman has been trying for a second child for 14 months. And yet she constantly has to make excuses when she’s asked when it’s time for another one rather than reveal the heartbreaking truth that she may not be able to.

Last month, while doing my weekly shop, I bought a pregnancy test and a box of tampons (you can never be too prepared, frankly.) The woman on the checkout decided it was okay to comment on these items. ‘Oh I hope it’s a yes,’ she exclaimed as she scanned the test through. I was aghast. I actually posted the scenario in the famous AIBU (am I being unreasonable) thread on Mumsnet. The Mumsnet community largely agreed that it was definitely not okay to comment on personal items. Polite shit chat? Absolutely. But tampons, pregnancy kits, condoms or any sort of weight loss product; nope. Surely we should all know those topics are off limits?

When did it become okay for women to interrogate other women? Pressuring them in to an ideal that they might not want? A race to the egg that they cannot have. Starting sweepstakes in the workplace to decide who will be next. I’m sick of it. Sick of the excuses. Sick of the fake smiles. But mostly sick of the fact that as soon as I became married, my achievements were rendered null and void. I was now just a baby making machine in waiting.

Of course, no one knows the full story. I could be pregnant right now (I’m not), I could be desperately trying month after month, living on beans and toast to be able to afford the ovulation tests! I could be grieving a miscarriage. I could be worried about the implications that a pregnancy might have on my mental health. I could be focusing on my career. Or maybe I could just be enjoying life without the burden of a baby. Whatever my circumstances, whatever the reason, is it not okay for you to ask.

So the next time you think about asking those newlyweds when you’re likely to hear the pitter patter of tiny feet, you might want to just shut the fuck up instead. There’s a story behind every fake smile that's not ready to be published yet. 

Acceptance

When I started up this blog again, earlier this year, it was mainly because I wanted an outlet to write about my experiences of suffering and recovering from a mental illness. Writing has been a great way for me to process my crazy thoughts and sometimes overwhelming feelings and has helped me massively in my recovery.

I am very lucky as I have an amazing support network of friends and family and so I’ve always had someone to talk to when I’ve felt scared or overcome. And yet, a lot of the time, I have felt very alone. Although my loved ones have always been there for me, I think it has been difficult for them to understand what I have been going through. After all, they can’t see inside my head. Anxiety is a difficult condition to explain sometimes, as you can’t always articulate what you’ve anxious about. It is often just a feeling, and not a thought, and people find that difficult to grasp. And so, I turned to a support group online, to speak about my illness to others who were going through the same thing.

Just knowing that I wasn’t the only one, that I wasn’t mad, and that what I was thinking and feeling wasn’t unusual, has helped me to accept my condition and lift my mood at times. I had hoped that this blog could maybe do that for others and I have received so much positive feedback to suggest that it has helped some of you.

This week, I have been discharged from therapy and have worked with my GP to come up with a plan to come off of my medication. It’s the start of a new chapter for me, and so I probably won’t write much about my illness anymore. It may crop up from time to time, because it’s a part of who I am, but I’m past the point now where it is the main focus in my life. And although it is a part of me, I don’t want it to define me.

Yes, I am a sufferer of mental illness. But I am also a wife, a niece, a friend, a crazy cat lady, a Chartered Tax Adviser, a Law graduate, a Conservative, a toiletry hoarder, a cooking enthusiast, a clean freak and now a blogger. So I want to write about other things too, because I’ve got so much to say about the world and so much still to figure out. I hope you will still follow my ramblings and come with me on the next leg of this crazy journey called life.

Thanks to everyone who’s supported me over the past few months. And to those of you out there who are struggling, just remember, you are not alone. xx