Wednesday 17 June 2015

Choosing Recovery.


Hey guys, I know I've been terrible at keeping up blogging but I'm gonna try really hard to start writing more as its something I really enjoy. 

Today is going to be a different kind of post that I'm used to because I would like to make this blog more personal. I would like to talk about mental illness and first off let me say if anyone here is reading this and doesn't 'believe' in mental illness or think its a real thing please stop reading now as I don't need your negativity on my blog.

As some of you may know I have struggled with mental health issues for a couple of years. This is a post I have wanted to make for a while now as I think its important that we try to get rid of stigma surrounding around mental illness. 

For anyone who currently suffers from some form of mental illness or knows someone who suffers, you probably know that recovery isn't an easy journey. Its not as simple as switching off the sad part of you and getting back to your life, its a bumpy road with ups and downs. For me in my deepest stages of depression it was extremely difficult to get out of bed and do 'normal' things like go to the shops, going to school and spend time with my family.

I left school and stayed at home in my bed all day and people would call me lazy but in actual fact I couldn't get out and face the world, I didn't want to and saw no point because everything looked so bleak. I left dancing, something that I had done since I was five years old because there was no enjoyment in it for me anymore. I stopped talking to almost all my friends and pushed them all away. It was really tough for me to even practice self care.

I've been living with this for the last three years and its prevented me from so many things but now I think I'm ready to get free from its grips and start living my life again. I have very recently started back in education (which is still bloody terrifying every day), I'm back in dancing and I have really good friends. To anyone who is in a bad place at the moment, please hold on. It will get better eventually. This time last year I couldn't even imagine how I would be doing today, of course there will be relapses and there will be hard days but give it time and you'll see. Recovery is worth it, you have so much to look forward to in your life! 

Also please be nice to everyone that you meet in life, you never know what battle they're fighting.

Sinéad xx

(P.S I have only given a quick summary as there was a lot of stuff I don't want to mention on such a public platform at this time because I don't feel quite ready yet but maybe sometime in the future I will go into more details if you guys would like me to? Let me know in the comments!)