Hi everyone. This is a huge spur of the moment post. I have just had a sudden urge to write which hasn't happened for a while. Stuff has been going on and life has just got in the way of blogging which has really upset me but life and shit happens unfortunately. I had so many ideas and ambitions for what I wanted to do with my blog but pretty much everything in life has had to take a backseat lately. This is the first time that I've actually wanted to sit and write something for a while so I'm taking the time to do it before it dwindles. Let me explain why the title is the way it is... I still firmly believe that writing and expressing the messy shit that's in your mind and getting it down onto paper or a document really can help and be some form of solo therapy. it's one of the reasons I love writing and another reason why I made this blog in the first place. So if you will this is me telling you some of what's been going on and it's a way for me to get stuff out of my mind and write it into existence so it's not in my head any more.
Basically: I'm not okay. I don't know where to start or how much detail im going to delve into here but this online community I have now feels like a family to me and when stuff happens in your life you tell your family about it, usually. So for me I am doing the same, except my family is virtual now and it's you guys. But yeah. Back to the main shit and the point of this. I'm not okay. I haven't been okay since the end of September really. But I've somewhat kept it under wraps, I don't wanna say under control because believe me that would just be a lie because fuck have I had my outbursts offline. You just haven't seen them, tbh no one has. My steering wheel in my car has taken the brunt of most of it and my pillow has taken the other chunk of it. Believe it or not I am an extremely private person, even though I share my life online now, and I don't tend to show my emotions publicly. I don't like doing it. Not crying in public or in front people being an example of this. I would rather keep it together for an extra 20 minutes, go home and cry on my own where no one can see me doing it. I've always done it that way. If I do show them then it's rare and it's a big deal and it means the emotions are just too strong or powerful for me to control. So if I ever cry in front of you, it's significant. Anyway back to the point, I always go off-piste. Silly me. I started university at the end of September for my second year of my four year degree course and I havent been right or been myself since then. I can't lie to you all or to myself for any longer. Each day has been a struggle and it's been a case of just surviving each day and taking each one at a time to get to the next one. The only times that I have felt like myself were my birthday back in October and my half term 'reading week' last week. Other than that things havent been right. Mentally I am at one of the lowest points I have ever been at, I don't wanna say the very lowest point out loud because I don't want to trigger anyone else as that point was very upsetting. I still struggle to say it out loud myself even now. I'm directly linking my current bad mental state to university because there is pretty much nothing else negative in my life. Which is hard for me to admit to A LOT of people online but it's the truth. I have been experiencing depression behaviours and tendencies that I was experiencing when I was in college two years ago which has been horrible. I've been having flashbacks to a traumatic time of my life. The flashbacks appear out of nowhere, usually when I'm in lectures so very unwelcome and inconvenient. My mind has been wandering back towards a very dark place and I have struggled to control it and bring myself back to sense. But there's one other thing that's been so much worse. My anxiety. In the last two months I have experienced some of the worst feelings of anxiety that I have ever experienced. It's been debilitating, overwhelming, scary and somewhat embarrassing to experience. I don't want to feel this way but here I am and it keeps happening time and time again. At the start of term I was having at least 2 panic attacks pretty much daily. It relented for a short time to a few panic attacks a week, still horrible but not as bad. But this week, going back to uni after a week away from it, the world just feels like too much for me to deal with and I can feel myself shutting down. It happened again today. Another panic attack. From nowhere. I was sat in a lecture and I just felt my chest go tight and my face was as hot as a piece of toast. So I took myself out of the room to compose myself but that didn't work. I couldn't breathe. Started crying while in the bathroom. And then I lost feeling in my hands and it spread up my arms too. This was so scary to experience. My fingers were all tingly, like pins and needles you get in your foot if you sit cross-legged for too long. I went back to my class so that I wasn't gone for too long, I didn't want attention drawn to me as to where I was. But could I pick up my pen? Spoiler: I couldn't. So let alone try and write anything down, just as we'd been set a practice question of 300 words to do. Writing one word took an age because I kept shaking and couldn't form any letters properly. Perfect sodding timing. But that was just one moment of one day. Just one of many examples I could have told you that have happened in the last 7/8 weeks. This has become a new kind of norm for me. A new reality that I'm living with daily, as awful as it is. The sweaty palms, the flushed cheeks, the burning skin, the uncontrollable nausea (yes even my prescription meds haven't been strong enough to make it go away), the crying, the shaking, the tension, the frustration, the near constant stress, the imposter syndrome, the stupidity and inadequacy that I feel almost every time I'm at uni but worst of all the isolation and the loneliness of it all. It's been unbearable. So I am currently in week 8 of the semester and the subject and conversation of me leaving university altogether has come up maybe 6/7 times already. I don't think I have ever hated anything more in my life, I'm so unhappy and there's basically nothing I can do about it. And that's saying something because I've had my fair share of a bad deck of cards in life. So for me the fact that I am still showing my face there at all is more than enough, even if the uni and my lecturers disagree. If it was my decision alone to make and there would be no consequences to it I would leave right now. But unfortunately it isn't as simple as that. and right now I'm in no position to leave because I wouldn't know what to do and as well, theres no way in hell my family will let me leave. 'think of the future' they say, 'think of what you'll gain at the end'. Well all I can think of right now that I'll gain is loads of debt and the prospect of me being mentally ill for years to come. doesn't sound all that great to me??? This has been weighing on my mind since term started and on top of everything else it just makes everything ten times worse. It's taking up so much emotional energy out of me that it's draining me. I can't stop thinking about it no matter how much I try to. So for now. I'm stuck at uni with no way out. So I have to continue to feel like this. There's no choice in it. Which hurts, it breaks my heart that I have to feel like this for a while to come. But until a plan b can be found that is plausible it's what I'm stuck with and it's the cards that i'v been dealt. So me trying to deal with this vastly on my own has been one of the biggest emotional challenges I've ever had to face. I'm not coping. I know I'm not. Distractions and keeping busy, which are my general coping mechanism of choice, only work to a certain extent before all the emotions come rushing back. Avoidance and denial don't work long term as much as I wish they would. I'm desperately trying to cope and sort this mess out myself for my own sake but for the sake of everyone else around me too. But it's been easier to just grit my teeth and lie for my life than admit the messy and fucked up shit that's really going on inside my mind and how awful I'm really feeling. And in this world it's all too easy to fake a smile than let your guard down. Well it is for me anyway. But then I do believe that there is a beauty in releasing emotions and showing vulnerability in life as scary as it is to do. I haven't discovered that beauty yet, maybe I will one day. Oddly enough in the course of me writing this I feel somewhat relieved already that it's out my head and in words. It's real now and not a maze of thoughts and feeling in my mind and in my heart. I feel so relived that you guys finally know what's been going on. As nerdy as it sound I love the power that words can have if they are used right. Especially a good metaphor. If you got this far thank you for reading this. I just felt like letting you in on some of the shit that's been going on with me lately because social media is a reel of highlights and my socials (insta and youtube) don't show any of this ugly stuff because I've purposely kept it private. Just know that even though I'm not okay right now I will be one day. I know that much. I don't know when that will be, I personally think I won't be okay until I graduate and am away from the whole environment of academia for good but we'll see... hopefully I'll feel better and like me again sooner than two and half years from now. I'll see you all again soon for another post and never forget how much I love you guys and how much you mean to me. Love Jade xxx Comments are closed.
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