Catch up on life...

25/03/2016

I have been meaning to write something for weeks. However, every time I go to write something, I end up getting busy with trying to adult in this life. Or that voice in my head tells me that nobody cares and nobody will want to read this. Then this morning, I read a great blog from a friend and it was the push I needed to do this. You know who you are (if you're reading this).

Being my first blog for 2016, I feel I need to cover a few things and inform people of a few happenings in my life. First of all, on January 10, I was taken to hospital via ambulance for mental illness. I was discharged the same day, thank God. There is no way I am sleeping or eating in a hospital, unless I absolutely have to do it. Even just the knowledge that I could go home eased the stress in my mind a little bit.

My brain had got so low to a point where I truly believed that nobody out there cared about whether I was breathing or not. To be very fair, I am still not convinced anyone does, other than medical people who are paid to care. I also feel the need to highlight here that it is an illness. That you can't just "be positive" or "just cheer up" or "just pray it away" and it will magically go away. Illness doesn't work like that.

I've always known since I was a kid that I've had depression. I was made to see a psychologist from 8 years old. I was admitted to a children's mental health ward and made to take an anger management class at 10 years old. I was told I'd be in jail, dead or living in an adult mental health hospital if I didn't clean my life up. That stopped me from seeing anyone in psychology for 20 years... until recently. I have had to get over my fear of psychologists to see someone.

There are still a lot of things in my head that need to get sorted out. The biggest thing that I've got over the last two and a half months since that day in hospital is that I have a little bit of hope. A realistic hope that says that while tomorrow will not be all kinds of amazing, it will be okay and I have the strength and resources to deal with whatever it may bring.

I am trying to remember to take life one day, even one hour, at a time. That is all my brain and body can really handle and to be fair, I have never really been one that's good at planning ahead anyway. I am back studying my youth work degree at university, which is becoming a good mental distraction for everything. As well as university, I have help with cleaning and cooking at home and I am seeing my GP and psych both once a fortnight. All that keeps me very busy. Busy to the point where I said to my doctor that for the first time in my life, I may need to buy a thing called a diary.

My doctor has also done an overall physical health check and it's been discovered that I have diabetes and severe anaemia (pretty sure I spelled that wrong). The anaemia is so bad that I am waiting on admission into hospital to go on a drip. The diabetes is okay, just about figuring out a new diet that works for my body. That's not that simple, but I'm over the sugar withdrawal symptoms and I already do feel better just for cutting out sugar from my diet, even if it was forced upon me. I'm just not sleeping very well because some days, I feel so awake that I can "run" a marathon and other days I feel like I can't get out of bed. Some balance in my energy levels would be great! One more thing about my health and doctors is that finally, for the first time in my adult life (since 2003), I am finally in a place where I have medical people around me who not only know what they are doing in their area of expertise, but they genuinely care about me as a person, not just a job. If it took an ambulance taking me to hospital on January 10 to get to a place where I have good medical people, so be it.

Anyway, I think that is more than enough for the first blog back for the year. I hope to get back to consistently writing soon.

Giving up is not an option,

Perry