How many secrets can you keep?

This week, new stats came out about the rate of suicides in the UK. The difference between north and south, and the difference between men and women. It looks pretty bleak.

So between these statistics, and having spent the week reading Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and battled grief, mild depression and anxiety for the last 4 months, I felt I needed to write this blog that's been brewing.

Until now, all my mental health issues have been a past tense conversation topic. I call for there to be less stigma, more open discussion about mental health. For us to open dialogues so that those with mental health issues can talk about it with their families, friends and colleagues. So that bosses know how to help make the work environment more positive and accepting of mental health issues. So that friends don't take it personally when someone doesn't want to hang out, or doesn't even feel like leaving their house. So that families don't feel like they've let any one down or brought them up wrong. 

But now I'm in the beginnings of what feels like a long journey back to positive mental health, I feel all those things.I feel like I need to be stronger. That this is western privilege, that there are people out there with nothing and here I am with so much and I can't appreciate it. Or that I should be stronger and deal with this by myself. That I'm being melodramatic when I try to imagine the future and all I see is darkness. That I'm being stupid when I cry for no reason, or get panicked and anxious over anything. That I'm pathetic for finding solace in unhealthy coping mechanisms. That I'm letting people down.

You learn all over again to keep things hidden. To keep things secret. Or at least try to.Finding out someone has mental health issues, that they've had them in the past, can make you treat them differently. I know this because I've done it. Knowing I could not cope with a man's mental health issues because I needed to deal with my own, made me end whatever I had with him. But I also spend more time making sure I listen to my sister and ensure I am there if she needs me to be. (At least I hope I do Claire?) These acts don't counteract each other, my actions with my sister do not make ok the way I treated this guy. It's just a personal observation. I've been dumped for being suicidal, and treated with utter kindness and empathy. The latter attitude is the path that people should take, and should be taught to recognise. It's still taboo to be mentally unwell, and it shouldn't be when 1 in 4 of us suffer from mental health problems. Or in the case of my family, 3 of the 4 of us, although you could count my father's alcohol addiction as a mental health problem. So 4 out of 4 of us.

Being able to talk about having mental health problems can lift a weight so great you didn't realise how much it was hurting you to carry it until it comes off. It might not get rid of the weight entirely, but a problem shared is a problem halved, and having someone listen to you, for however short or long a time, professionally or personally, can only be a good thing. If we are scared to reveal we're struggling, we internalise that fear, and turn it on ourselves, it colours our world view. The world becomes a scary, unforgiving, unempathetic place. It becomes filled with people that we are jealous of, things we are paranoid about. Situations we can't deal with. Emotions that overwhelm us.

If you think this post is over sharing, I want you to think about why you feel that way. Are we so caught up in being polite, putting on a brave front, being so British, that we can't cope when people share their negative feelings? We don't know where to look, what to say. We squirm uncomfortably. I know, I've been there, I've done it, I've been lost for words and wondered why can't they deal with this themselves. Despite the fact I've been through this all before, despite knowing that talking about this can and will help, despite the fact that briefly talking about it to a friend online today made me feel tons better, I'm still unwilling to admit this failure publicly. Because it feels like a failure. I'm failing at coping. Coping with life, stress, work, family, all of it. I AM FAILING. Failing damn miserably.

But it is because I am so, so unwilling for you all to know, that I'm writing and publishing this post. It's self-indulgent, yes, but I need that. I need to indulge and wallow in this pain inside my brain because I'm trying to make sense of and work through it, and I know I'm not the only one. I might feel utterly alone but I know I am not alone. Out of 8 of us on the street, there's at least one other person who understands.

This Wednesday night I'm going to a networking event. When I went to the one in January, I was just round the corner and I froze with fear. I just started crying and the anxiety swept over me like a tsunami and I just drowned in it. It took a phone call with my nana to sort me out. It took several deep breaths and a glass of wine too. This Wednesday, dressed in long sleeves, I will go there a little less fearful and anxious because I know I can do it as I've done it once before.

But is that enough to get through all of this, this time? I've done it before. I can only keep trying.

New Year, Same Me, Different Attitude

I'm in a large bus, listening to Paramore on repeat as we wind along the road past a clear blue lake, and a backdrop of incredible mountains.I can't help but feel so lucky that I am able to see this landscape. That the sun beating down keeps the plants alive, which keep us alive.In this moment, I couldn't hate or fear anything.But I am on this bus to go and do the scariest thing I've ever done in my life.Bungy jump.

2014 was a year filled with experiences. Swimming with dolphins, whale watching, a skydive, white water rafting, black water rafting. But this? I'm setting my year up to be full of exciting and scary experiences by doing this.I want this year to be full of fear. Full of fear that I will face head on and push through and only eliminate it by feeling it.I have defined my life for so long by things I like and dislike. A lot of it is dislike - I am a known grouch, a killjoy. I don't like the commercialisation of birthdays, or Christmas, I really dislike Valentines Day. I don't like meat, fish, egg, milk, cheese, mushrooms, Brussel sprouts and oranges. I can't stand snow, and I'm not a fan of winter, rain or wind. Or if it's too hot. I don't really like sand, and I don't like getting in the sea all that much because it's generally cold and wet, and I do not like being cold or wet. I especially don't like being cold AND wet.
And I really dislike being scared, and I have a fair few fears. Dying, losing my loved ones, being lonely, being rejected, being broke, being hungry.But these dislikes and fears, if I and when I experience them, I know I can handle it. I was wet for 3 days on Fraser Island. It sometimes snows in Britain - I do not break out in hives and fall apart, I just wrap up warm if I have to go outAnd if I am rejected...well then that job/man wasn't meant to be. I can handle it.

**For all the thing that you're alive to feel,Just let the pain remind you that hearts can heal.**

I'm on the bus back from the bungy jump.I'm seeing the same scenery, listening to the same tune on repeat.And tears roll down my cheeks.I am happy.I stared fear in the face and it blinked.And I feel like I can do absolutely anything with this life I've been blessed with.

Fighting Fears

Throughout September and October last year, I was having frequent attacks of nausea. Once a week on average, sometimes with vomiting. There was no rhyme nor reason to it. When I spoke to my GP, he said it was because I was eating dinner so late. 

But it wasn't. By that point I wasn't even eating dinner that late frequently, not like I had done in the months before. I still don't know exactly what it was, but I have a theory.

My theory is that nausea was me panicking about leaving for Australia. I was scared. I had no idea what my life had in store for me. I had no idea what Australia would be like, whether I'd cope. Cope with the weather, the insects. Cope with the hostels. Cope on my own. 

Before I went to university I had a few panic attacks. Like the nausea there was no pattern. I had one attack within the first few weeks of uni - because I was scared of one of my flat mates! - but they stopped just as abruptly as they'd started. Just like the nausea.

By late October the nausea stopped. I haven't had any bouts of it here. I'm two months in. I'm still afraid, fearful every time I got to a new place. But despite all the fear, I'm still doing this. I was so petrified I cried as the plane left Heathrow for Tokyo. I cried once in Cairns because I felt so hopeless at talking to people. I cry whenever I say goodbye to my mum on the phone because I don't know when I'll next to her again. What if I don't get the chance? What if something terrible happens? It would be bad enough at home but while I'm on the other side of the world?! Urgh! I'm tearing up as I'm writing this, which is dangerous as I'm walking as I write. Which is dangerous in itself without the tears.

I'm typing this on my phone as I walk along the Manly Scenic Walkway. It's a 10km walk from Manly to The Spit, and I tried to do it two days ago but actually got lost and went the wrong way and never made it. In fact I got lost down a pathway that led me into the bush and as I walked along an increasingly rocky path, jumping at any twig that moved because I thought it was a snake, I was scared. It was hot, and I was running out of water. I just kept saying to myself that it had to lead somewhere. I just had to keep pressing on. And it did lead somewhere - to the edge of the cliff. So then there was nothing to do but go back. 

Sometimes in life we just keep pressing forward regardless. And sometimes we have to go back. And everything, even, especially our mistakes, are things we can learn from. Every day we do nothing, every day we do something, every day of work and every day off. Life is an adventure. Not just in the people we meet and the places we go and the things we do. Life is an adventure of learning about ourselves. Right now, in my adventure, I'm learning about who I am. 

I turned my dream into a reality, as one of my friends put it. 

But when the dream becomes a reality, the fear does too.  



P.S. Here is a map of the scenic walk, from the manlyaustralia.com.au website, arrows for start & end points added by me.

And then here is me with The Spit bridge behind me. I probably should could have run this through photoshop, but meh. This is what I look like after 2 hours of WALKING MOFOS. Suck it. 

And here is the map to prove that I was actually at the end. Ta da!