I’ve always sensed that I was a bit different from other people, like I didn’t quite fit in anywhere. I have made a lot of friends over the years but I do not see them on a regular basis and I often spend most of my time with my family. I worked very hard at school but I was never exceptional at anything. I was a keen dancer but my teachers always commented on my problems with my posture and I was always left in the bottom class, with people much younger than me. At School I got reports for effort but never anything more and I was never picked for school plays or the like. It was the same in P.E. I eventually gave up. When I was about 14 my behaviour became more prevalent. I had a massive party just before starting my exams which wrecked my house and ended up living with my best friend. I did not revise for my GCSE’s and did little of the coursework. I did no coursework for English and did the bare minimum that I could for my other exams. Luckily I had completed a lot of work in year 10 which counted towards my grades.
I didn’t get very good results for my GCSE’s but I managed to get a place in college and I ended up doing the same there. After my first year I decided to resit some GCSE’s and I did better. I then went on to University to study Nursing. However, I became very lonely and was bullied by the people I shared accommodation with and I started to stay in my room most of the time and couldn’t get out of bed. I was also self harming at the time. I ended up going to live back with my mum.
After this I started on a music course after becoming teetotal for almost a year. I struggled with the course because I was painfully shy and I couldn’t perform in front of anyone. This lead to me dropping out of the course, luckily for me I had a great art teacher at the time who took me under his wing and over the next two years, whilst I spent most of my time smoking cannabis and taking ecstasy and cocaine and drinking myself in to a stupor whenever I could, I also managed to get a merit in Foundation Art.
After that I started to get out of control, I regularly was violent to my family I would spend my day on a come down after taking drugs and write all over my bedroom walls. In the end my mum kicked me out and I stayed at a few friends houses. Then I moved to London and started on Access to Higher Education course. I made lots of friends and did really well on the course but I ended up becoming very high and staying up all night writing essays. I then moved to Soho and during this time I put myself in some really dangerous situations. I used to go out drinking on my own and end up with strangers and I’d have to figure out a way of getting rid of them before they demanded sex off of me. I finally had enough and in a moment of desperation threw my TV out the window of my flat and cut my arms open and my flat mate called the police who wrestled me to the floor and forced me go to hospital.
All of this behaviour was caused by the fact that I have bi-polar disorder, sometimes called manic depression. I have to take medication daily to keep my moods stable. I was only diagnosed once I had been sectioned under the mental health act in 2011. I sometimes feel embarrassed when I tell people because I think they might judge me as being crazy but I also want to raise awareness. I am more vulnerable I suppose but I don’t consider myself to be a danger to anyone.
I feel lucky to be me now. I’m intelligent and thoughtful and care about the people around me and the world that I live in and I’ve become a lot stronger because of the things I have been through. I also have a beautiful little boy, the best family anyone could wish for and a happy life. So I guess the moral of my tale is when faced with troubles keep on going, because there is a purpose to it all and there will always be better times.
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