“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” - Joshua J. Marine

Well hello internet. If you've ever read one of my blogs before, I know exactly what you are thinking. Oh here we go again another new page and new promise of regular posting that you will abandon in a couple of weeks. I can make no promises that this will be any different to my previous attempts at blogging, or youtubing, or any other online presence. However I can tell you this much, I have made a concious decision to change my life, based on a turbulent couple of years where I have experienced a great deal of things, some that have been amazing, and some that I wish I could take back. At this point, I have found the inspiration to make a change, and I hope to inspire others to change too, and in this post I'm going to try my hardest to explain why.

Around 14 months ago, I experienced my first true complete mental breakdown. Approximately a year prior to that, I become rather sick with depression and got myself into some very frightening financial troubles too. And finally, 4 years before that was when my first taste of mental illness occurred. Mental illness is a strangely taboo term, something that people generally associate with 'nut houses' and 'crazy cat ladies'. But it's something that covers a broad spectrum of suffering, fear and poor genes. It's a term that I am trying to learn to use with pride, no longer a stigma that doctors and acquaintances can use to shame me with, but a battle scar that shows all the experiences I have survived to become the person I am today, while still remaining subtle.

It has taken me 14 months of slow but steady progress to become the cautious survivor that I am now. Although it has been a long and tiresome journey, there is no doubt that substantial progress has been made. Why, the crying, shaking, wreck of a woman hiding in a corner that I was last year would never recognise me now. This however does not change the fact that I have only taken baby steps in becoming the woman that I was destined to be. You see, somehow it is possible in these early days for me to be both proud of what I have survived, and private about divulging the details of the wounds that I am still licking.  I can comfortably state that the past 6 years have bought a unpredictable tsunami of trauma, and that the only reason I am not currently drugged up to my eyeballs, starving to death and living in a box is because of the people who have clung on throughout this roller-coaster of a ride to hell and back. If anything, it's because of them that I am able to write this today, instead of a single goodbye post.

If I'm making you feel like you may drop dead with depression thus far, that's the idea. Don't worry, I'm working up to the inspirational part.

This week, I have finally taken the utterly terrifying step of referring myself to CBT: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. For those of you who don't know what that is, I'm not really sure if I do either. All I know is that for years of my life healthcare professionals, loved ones and even near on strangers have been telling me that I need help to take control of my life and my anxiety and that this was the place to get it. So there we go, one big step in the right direction.

As ridiculous as it sounds to have a midlife crisis at 22, when you have spent the last 6 years of your life hovelled up in your room afraid to go outside, hitting your 22nd birthday and realising you have achieved none of the things that you pictured yourself doing by this age is a shocking and terrifying revelation. At 16, I used to look at 22 year olds and I remember thinking that they were so glamorous. There was no doubting they had all their doo-doo together; the house, the car, the dream job, the husband, the amazing group of friends who shopped, holiday'd and dined at their houses each weekend. And there was no doubt in the world that I would become them. I couldn't ever have predicted that I would be living with my parents, experiencing my first 'real grown up job', only just learning to drive with my crap heap 12 year old falling apart car that cost me more per month in insurance that I have ever paid out and was my most single most expensive possession yet, and with no sniff of a boyfriend for 14 months.

And it's this revelation that made me realise that the only thing that was stopping me having the life I wanted was the fear that I couldn't have it. And clearly money because you can't do anything without money as depressing a fact as that is. So I have decided that by my 23rd birthday, I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and see the girl that always lived in my head. The girl I would have been had I not experienced the past 6 years. The girl who isn't afraid of going into clubs, or public transport, or meeting new people, or going to work. I'm going to be the girl who has travelled extensively, a blogger and youtuber extraordinaire. I'll be in a job I am proud of and drive a car that I love, and maybe even find true love too. But most importantly, I hope I will inspire others to become the person they are inside too, without fear, or doubt, or the restriction of MENTAL ILLNESS. Because the truth about these conditions, the key thing about that term, is MENTAL. It exists only in your head, and it is only as bad as you allow it to be. Only you can take the relevant medicine, only you can fight for equal rights and treatment, and only you can decide what you will do with your life. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to look back again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that and see that my whole life has passed me by while I fret over the small things. I want to look back and be proud of the things I did manage to do, whether I was afraid or not.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's time to make a change. Not tomorrow, or when I get my new job, or when my meds change, or when I get to CBT, but NOW. TODAY. And if any of this relates to you at all, then maybe today is the time for you to change too. If this post helps even one person, then it's worth the time to open my heart, and change with you. Let's change together.

Take control of your world.

Puddy <3