Perfectly Flawed

For me, this post is the most important of all 3 so far. Throughout the first half of this series, you got to know my struggles with depression and anxiety on a deeper, more vulnerable level, compared to what I’ve shared before on my blog. However, this post delves into everything that helped me to get to where I am today, and all of the things I’ve tried/tested to find out what was best for me. When the struggle with my mental illness became all too much, I reached out to a handful of friends and family. Reaching out was the first, hardest step I had to take. There comes a point where the internal battle becomes so overwhelming, that you’re in the position where if you don’t tell anybody, your thoughts may take you to places even darker than where you currently are, so I took the leap and it paid off, to an extent. Speaking to my friends about what I was going through, almost opened my eyes to the severity of how I felt. I explained that I was feeling the way I was, and immedia...

It’s very seldom when anxiety strikes alone. With many mental illnesses, they never usually strike alone, there’s always something equally, if not more, intrusive that you have to deal with simultaneously. For me, anxieties sidekick; depression made an appearance, and stayed for quite some time. Too much time in fact. Here is how it all went… Many ask “does anxiety cause depression? or does depression cause anxiety?” I’m afraid I cannot give the answer to that question. Experiences vary from person to person, and each story is different. For me, the depression stemmed from the anxiety. The constant daily struggles with anxiety; the constant battle with worry and fear, the late nights, the early mornings, the pressures from school, the pressures in my home life, the pressures in my love life, all began to push me downhill, into this vicious cycle of depression.  It’s frustrating, because I can’t actually tell you when I first noticed my depression, it just began to slo...

Welcome to the first instalment of the ‘My Journey’ series. I write this series with every intention of being entirely honest and open with you guys, my readers. But most importantly, honest with myself! I write this series, not only to tell my story, but to inspire, motivate and encourage those who are reading this right now. I know some of you reading this are in what seems to be a dark place right now. You’re drowning in the pressures of life, and are slowly giving up. You feel alone, you feel unheard, you feel unappreciated, you feel invisible. Well, this is why I’m writing this series. I am writing this to tell you that you are not alone, you are heard, you are appreciated and you are visible! I know life can get the best of us as times, and we often succumb to the feeling of unworthiness, but I want you to carry on reading this. I want you to read the things I’ve been through, experienced and learnt from. I want you to understand that there is good in every bad situation, an...

Tomorrow marks the end of Mental Health Awareness Week. To celebrate this special week of recognition and appreciation, I wrote a poem about depression. It can be very easy to hide behind this facade of happiness when you're depressed. Many do it to prevent being asked questions, and many do it to deceive the outside world into thinking they're okay. This poem captures the whole essence of what it feels like to have your personality eaten away by depression, and how it can often get to the point where you're tired of hiding it.  It's written in third person, to dissociate this depressive side from myself. I don't like to put myself within the same persona as this depressed side, because it's not the true version of myself. This is very much a temporary, demonic version of me, that comes and goes, but will never become who I am. With time, patience, and more effort, I know his power and influence will be minimised and silenced, but for now, this one is for h...

Have you ever felt down, played a sad song by one of your faves, and felt some of that pain ease? For 3 whole minutes, you felt understood, you felt listened to, you felt a little less alone. That is all thanks to the power of music, and how connected we are to this beautiful, expressive art.  I will not be the first, and certainly not the last, to say that music has helped me through my darkest times, and also helped me express my most happier times too. Music is a therapy like no other, because unlike having CBT to understand the mind, or Physiotherapy to understand the body, Music understands the SOUL.  The beauty of today, is that there is such a wide variety of genres, a wide enough variety to fit almost any human emotion/mood. And for that, we have to thank the expressiveness and openness of music as the Art that it is. Without music, many of us will struggle to find a way to express ourselves, or a way to release how we feel. I mean, there’s no better way to nu...

Dear Suicide, You’ve taken many innocent lives, more lives than any singular disease or virus could take in a lifetime. You’ve ripped many families apart. You’ve torn people’s minds, you’ve eaten away at the most caring and loving of us humans. You have degraded people in ways that are inexplicable. You have left scars on the bodies of people who once believed what you said to be true. You have urged him to jump off that bridge. You have manipulated her into taking them pills. You have lured him to the rope. You have dragged her to the bottom of that lake. You have claimed the lives of people who were struggling and vulnerable. People who begged and longed to be understood and loved. What they needed was support and guidance, and what did they receive? A coward living within their own mind, convincing them they were better off dead. Convincing them death was the only solution to end the pain, the only “way out” of their misery.  You have often creeped into the back of my m...

Firstly, I want to credit Halsey for the inspiration for this title (haha).  These three words have such a strong meaning to me, typically because of my past and how I’ve been treated by certain individuals. For the most part of my experience with guys, they’ve not been particularly loveable/romantic. They’ve been the kind to use me as some type of experiment to decipher whether they like guys or not. Whilst I’m flattered they chose me, it’s also such a degrading feeling and had huge implications on my self-esteem.  Put yourself into the perspective of feeling like you’re being treated as though your only worth/use is for somebody to find out “am I gay?”. It’s not, “oh let me love him, let me show him I care about him”. Instead, it’s “let me take advantage of his sexuality to find out if I like boys or not. He will be alright, he won’t take it too personally, after all, these gay guys are notorious for being slutty anyway aren’t they? Plus, I’m straight, which is an ...