Mental Health Chit Chat

It's time you and I sat down for a little chat about mental health, one to be had over a delicious cup of tea (little milk, no sugar), a couple of biscuits, and some comfy cosy blankets. One of those chats. You know the one's I mean, where you get deep down and serious, and feel like you've released something out of you at the end of it, something you needed to get off of your chest but didn't know how to.

I've been running this blog off and on for a couple years now, and despite best intentions, never really stuck at it for any significant period of time or made any real headway in the manner that I would have liked. Despite that, I've always enjoyed coming back here time and time again, and posting a little piece of myself on my own corner of the internet. Just the act of that is something cathartic, and a distraction. And with that one little word, we come to the crux of the matter.

The constant in my life for the past four years has been my crap mental health. Through college, A Levels, travelling, uni, jobs, my mental health has affected everything. And occasionally I've talked about it, but not in the way I would have liked to. And now everything is coming to a head, I have no job, I can't see far in to the future, I feel the time is right for me to start discussing and posting about and documenting my journey, if you will. Goddamn I hate that word though. I'm not on a journey! I'm struggling. And it's hard, and I know recovery won't be easy, but if I don't write about it I don't see myself being here for much longer.

It's 2016, and despite all the advances we've made with science and technology, the human race still fears mental illness, and with that fear comes stigma. And with stigma comes silence, suffering, being trapped in a mindset you can't change and can't tell anyone about because you're scared. Scared of the future, scared of what people might say, scared of the extent of what you're feeling. Or not feeling.

So over the next weeks, months, years, whatever happens, I'm going to start posting the back story and the recovery. My back story and my recovery. It's not going to be easy, it's going to get messy and real,  but if I can just reach out to one other person and get them talking, my job here will be done. 

Bye for now,

Bethany

xxx