Thank You.

Hey everyone,

Firstly, if you read my last post then thank you. If you opened up your own mind and looked deeper into your own mental health, again, thank you. Thank you for being a strong person, you're doing a great job.

I had a few people speak to me about it and how it's so important to speak up and it so is. I cannot stress it enough how important it is to speak up about mental illness and discuss it, make it a discussion, make your health known!

I always find a great comfort in writing a blog post when I'm struggling. I should have probably done that at the start of this little blip, but hindsight is a powerful thing really.

Lets be honest, I did not have the motivation to do anything let alone write about how I was feeling. I guess that just goes to show that I am making progress in this whole recovery thing and the end of the tunnel is becoming clearer.

Throughout this whole time I've had a lot of different experiences, ones I've never really had before in visual ways. Some in the way of not quite seeing anything...my vision was not blurred but again bringing up the whole 'tunnel' thing, I pretty much had tunnel vision. Like I was holding binoculars up to my eyes but without the actual binoculars being there, just my hands, that was my vision. It was very closed, I couldn't see anything past what was happening there and then. The only thing I saw was panic, physical panic. I sometimes felt like I wasn't present in my body, almost like a fly on the wall in some situations. This was a feeling that scared me the most, I've never felt disconnected from my body in this way and its a feeling I wasn't aware of which left me very confused.

I was just shut off from everything, the only thing going on was my panic, my panic about my health and panic about anything bad happening to me. I could not see anything else. I could not see my families pain, my boyfriend getting upset or anything. I was very consumed with my own physical and mental feelings but I also felt nothing. That is a very weird way to describe it but that is the only way I can describe it.

Like I wrote in my previous post it was like I was floating. It felt like my brain had detached itself from my body and was above my head and I was just floating, floating around - again, not in a good way. In a terrifying way that sent me into a distressing panic every single time.

I can now recognise this as a huge sign of depression. Who knew? Not me.

I've gone through depression a lot in my life, it's come and gone, been bad, been bearable, but nothing quite like this. Nothing which has scared me so much.

It has taken me until now to be able to fully describe what that felt like and I feel like a weight has been lifted to be able to explain the feeling. It is still there, not as strong but still lingering I'm just managing to work through those feelings better than I was over the past few weeks. That is a huge success in my eyes, I'm getting there.

Another thing I've felt through this time is being able to actually see the 'end of the tunnel' - the end of my mental health journey, the other side of it all, the happy and healthy side.

I've never physically seen it before but I can get the picture up in my head. It's almost like a dream, like a daydream. Where I can reach it but I can't quite touch it. It's distressing and frustrating and can push you further into an anxious state because the good things are a touch away but there are little things just throwing you off track.

There are roads that your mind begins to follow in spells of mental illness. The roads veer off here and there, but there's one straight road to full recovery, thats the one I was going down and was in my reach in the image in my head but it was like the road was scrolling off of a page and I was running in the same spot the whole time. The same frustrating, upsetting, infuriating spot.

It is a very scary place to be in and I guess we need to just remember that one day the road will stop scrolling off the page and we will reach the end of it, we will get to that feeling of happiness and being content. Content with the lives we have, the way it is going and the things we are surrounded with.

The belief is probably the strongest thing which will get you through times like these, the belief and faith in your own strength. I know that is hard, believe me, it's fucking hard to even have a slight ounce of faith in your own strength when you just want to run away and fall off that scrolling road. But you will get there, you will.

Again, I really do find comfort in these posts when I'm having bad times and writing how I'm feeling down like this makes me realise and kind of releases the feelings away from me. I hope reading this would help anyone else too, that's all I'd like to do and gain from this - the knowledge that I would help someone else become in touch with their thoughts and feelings about their own mental health. You're never alone on a journey through your mental health, after all it is a journey and it's a much better ride with other people there to help guide you.

Keep on fighting x