My Story (Animated)

I wrote this post over two years ago when I first started to emerge from the darkness and you know what I was right, I was okay. Infact two years on those two people have more differences than similarities and yet to her I owe so much. To my mental illness, even more. Suffering is as important as happiness and sometimes it the most important part of life. But you are not your mental health. You are so much more than your anxiety, so much more than your depression or your eating disorder. Believing that is your first step to overcoming it.

Becoming Fearless

We all have a story. Everyone you meet is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.

This is my struggle with anxiety. My story.

It started here, 6 years old panicking over the sudden realization that one day I would die, I would cease to exist. I remember some things from this time in my life but the most potent is sitting with my head on my mothers lap, her stroking my hair. In my fear it was her I ran to. It was her I clung to. I still love that innocence of children, that belief that your parents can keep you safe from anything, fix any problem.

When I was a teenager my anxiety disappeared altogether. It was just a distant memory. I used to remember joking with my friends that the office still kept a brown paper bag in my medical file incase of…

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Flawed

“she refused to accept her wounds came from the same place as her powers”  Power-Adrienne Rich 

We all have those days, or weeks or sometimes even years when you look into the mirror and the person looking back at you just doesn’t seem good enough. It might be your looks, you’re too fat, you’re too thin, you’re too ugly to be loved or wanted. Somebody’s broken up with you or cheated on you and somehow you’ve made that be about you and your flaws. Somebody’s smarter than you or more athletic or more musical and no matter how hard you try and practice and graft you just can’t get there. You fall short time and time again.

For years I’ve been attempting to be this ideal person. This image i conjured up, hand selecting traits I seen in the people I admired. Patient and kind but feisty. Humble but confident. Good at sports and music and lively without ever being over bearing. I have now concluded this was impossible. All I could ever be in the end was me. And I have wounds. I’ve seen pain and betrayal. I’ve had my heart broken. I’ve felt abandoned and forgotten and scared and with this has come wounds that aren’t ready to heal. With this has come a lifelong struggle with hypochondria and anxiety. A defensive and argumentative nature. A need to be right. To be the one in control. 

But it took me a long time to realize these things I hate about myself were also a part of the things I loved. They were also my powers. Yes I am defensive but how else would I be a social worker, how else would I defend those who can’t protect themselves. And yes I’m anxious and overly analytic but this very story, this journey back to myself had to first begin with loss and confusion. Only when I had no idea who I was anymore, when I’d lost my whole self in my mental illness could I begin this journey.

I’m not preaching for you to remember the things you love about yourself but rather for you to love the things you hate about yourself. To realise that your bossiness, your sensitivity, your shyness are just as valuable as strengths and occasionally are just two sides of the same coin. Their is power in your flaws and weaknesses and quite often your wounds are just the beginning of a new power.

It’s okay that you’re not as pretty or confident or creative as her or him in or everyone else. Its okay that you can’t master a skill other people seem to find easy. That you can’t run fast enough, speak in public or get the hang of that sport you’ve been playing for 2 years *cough rugby cough*. These are exactly the things that push you onwards to run a little faster, train a little harder, speak a little more. These are the moments that breed strength and ambition and bravery.

“The road is long and in the end it’s only ever with yourself..” The sunscreen song-Baz Luhrmann

And sometimes the things we don’t achieve are the most valuable moments of all.

All you can do is try and try and try to be a little more empathetic. To try to listen that little bit more, to try and catch the ball one more time than you did yesterday. And to remember that change comes slowly and compassion sometimes even slower. That patience and humility are traits that some people have to cultivate and practice. That sometimes it takes a whole life time to stop defending yourself. And that the journey to self awareness and improvement often begins in our ability to first show ourselves this compassion.