It's a little after ten and as I write this I am safely cocooned in my duvet, blankly looking at my laptop unsure of where to start, how to start. I don't quite know what I want to say yet, but I know I have something to say for sure. There's been a change in me that warrants me to document it in some way. I always feel compelled to do that, to write about the change. If you've read some of my other posts you'll gather a little insight to that.
I tend to write mostly about hardships, or challenges that I have faced. I've written about fear of failure, heartbreak and general struggles of being in your twenties and trying to figure it all out. Mental health is something that has or mostly likely will affect us all in some way, and I've always felt quite compelled to talk about what perhaps some of us don't. I put myself out there with my own experiences because quite frankly, it's healing for me. It intrigues me. It's a release, and the conversation that is opened up as a response is healing for me as well as the reader.
But I want to write about the good too. I want to sit here and tell you how it's going to be fine, and you're going to figure it out. Not all at once, but slowly and clumsily. It's going to feel like chaos and it's going to feel like nothing. You'll think you're getting somewhere and suddenly you'll feel back at square one again. There are going to be people that help you and people that hinder you but it's all part of it. I'm 26 years old. I'm not going to pretend that I've got everything sussed out, but I've learned an incredible amount over the years about how I work and also how other people work.
I didn't have a great start to this year. If you read a previous post called "Missing Them", I really struggled to come to terms with a heartbreak, and realising I had been highly mistreated. I've always been an independent person. I like my own company and sometimes I need to have that time on my own. But when I give myself to someone, I give it all. I think you should do that, no matter how many times you get hurt, no matter what the last person did to you. Go all in. I feel strongly about that, but for a few months after being knocked, I questioned it. I closed up. The worst thing about being fucked over is the anger towards them for making you feel like you can never see another person in a completely good light again. You're jaded and you assume that everyone will have the same intentions.
I never let myself cry about it. I carried on. I got a new job, I went out all of the time, and I just got on with life because there wasn't a magic 'undo' button. I refused to let myself deteriorate to it. I thought, 'you don't GET to do that to me', and everyone would comment on how they admired my strength. But what I was actually unknowingly doing, was supressing my hurt. I would only ever really feel the thoughts and the pain creeping in after a few too many drinks, but I never looked back.
It wasn't until a good few months later that I cracked. I had subconsciously been carrying this weight with me. Not the weight of wanting to have this person back in my life, but the aftermath of how it had made me feel about myself. I finally cried about it, and I didn't stop crying for 5 solid days. I cried on the tube, at work, on the street. I felt like a ghost. I hadn't experienced this level of low for a very long time.
So I went home to my parents, and I stopped trying to be okay. I let myself be sad. I stopped trying to look after everyone else and realised I needed to look after myself. I stopped being scared of the sadness. The sadness that I had grown up feeling in such varying degrees that I had trained myself to have no room for it in my life anymore. I'm always good at knowing the signs of depression, I know myself and I know the steps to take to ensure I am healthy and happy. But what happens when someone else thrusts that sadness on you? I didn't know how to get rid of it. I hadn't done it to myself this time.
I came back to London with dryer eyes and a lighter heart. I felt more able to cope with the fast paced tempo of the city and I gradually settled back in, and then something happened that changed everything. I decided to move out of the first house I had lived in since moving to London. I needed a change, and a fresh start. All of the experiences, good and bad, had all been in the same room, the same house. What if I needed to do something out of my comfort zone and take the risk of somewhere new?
So I did exactly that. I packed all of my things, condensed my life into a few cardboard boxes and I left feeling sad to let go, and scared of what laid ahead. I hired someone to help me move. I took my bed apart and I hauled it upstairs into my new flat and I put it back together. I hung up curtains and somehow worked out (with the help of my new flatmates) how to drill a bloody curtain pole to a wall. I made a new sanctuary, and I did it myself. No one has tainted it, there are no bad memories here, and in turn the effect it has had on my mental health has been incredible.
I feel like I know who I am again, I feel genuinely happy with who I am. How people have treated me is not a reflection of who I am, and to quote author Heidi Priebe - "There are a thousand minute intricacies that make-up the tapestry of who you are and not a single one has ceased to exist since the last time someone loved you".
I wake up and I have no expectations from anyone. I'm simply enjoying doing my thing, surrounding myself with people I love and feeling focused on work. I know that this feeling won't be permanent, that no feeling ever is, but my god I intend to cling on to it for as long as I can. I hope you all can find contentment too, and when you can't, to remember sometimes the littlest of changes can shift a whole perspective.
xoxox
