Keep Your Head Up, Keep Your Heart Strong

It is no secret to some people who know me that this last year has been very hard for me. This time a year ago, in the run up to Christmas, I could only feel dread at the thought of trimming up and getting into the Christmas spirit. I could only feel sadness at all the change that had come about in my life and the unknowns I had yet to face.  And worst of all, I felt insufferable guilt that came with not being able to cope. With the difficulties in holding my hands up and saying “I have made mistakes, I would like some help.”

Christmas is so joyous, you see, you forget that it’s still a very real day that can be infiltrated by your very real problems. Problems I saw reflected in every bauble and strewn along the floor with the left-over tinsel. For some people, Christmas is a time to forget and to forgive. For me it has always been a time of painful remembrance and evaluation. It always reinforced that my life had the propensity to be very different to other peoples.  What was even worse was that my confusion had gotten to a point where I knew that I needed to do something, and do it quickly, I just couldn’t see my way through the tack to evaluate exactly what. So I trooped on to January.

By this point I was plagued with anxiety. With that constant thick, churning feeling of dread. Racing heart, sweaty palms. Brain cycling so fast that it’s all you can do to focus on your mundane tasks and not freak out about things. Anyone who’s ever suffered with anxiety will relate perfectly to that crushing weight that you carry round all the time, like a sinister accessory. You’re almost convinced people can see it all over you, like a sickness. You have three moods; so low you think the world is ending, that mid-line of numb and nothingness and then, worst of all (for me), the mania. The days you’re overcompensating so hard for your confusion and depression that you’re talking to anyone who’ll listen about pretty much everything – and always at 90mph. The days you struggle to keep your dinner down and your tea in your cup because you’re vibrating faster than a guy with who’s just hopped on a road digger and you're popping Bach’s herbal remedies like Smarties.  It’s absolutely exhausting.

I think a very real turning point for me was helping a friend prepare for her beautiful wedding and being so overwrought with emotion that I had a breakdown sat on the edge of her bath. I’m sure she thoroughly enjoyed being soggy, and the bathroom was a good a place as any.  It wasn’t the fact that I cried that was the eye-opener (Crying wasn’t a particularly novel behaviour of mine). It was the fact that after she’d listened to me caterwaul for a good half an hour, lamenting about my life like an absolute drama queen, she breathed a sigh of relief and said “Well, that’s the first time I’ve seen Amy in a while.”

I think that was what broke the seal for me in the end. That even strung out and emotional I was better, healthier, facing my emotions head on than wandering round like an android nodding and saying “yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir.” So I decided, with the help and support of anyone I’d spoken to that I was going to take back control of my life. I would not let anxiety control me. I realised that there was no point waiting for some miraculous sign that was going to point me in the right direction. I had to sit down and listen to the little voice in my head almost smothered by my inherent ranting and take a breath. Start again.

So slowly – ever so slowly - I started to go about cleaning up my life. I was cruel to be kind to myself, and I had to uproot myself from situations I had run to as a false comfort. It was not plain sailing in any way shape or form. It was difficult to trust myself and my new found self-confidence. But my one powering thought was that I deserved to be happy.  At my lowest point, I felt incapable of love, undeserving of it almost. I was afraid of hurting others and afraid of hurting myself, because it was love that I had been wounded by and used to wound deeply. I learned, as I pieced myself back together, that in fact, it was quite the opposite. That for me, even if my life was falling apart around me, what I had always had was love. Numerous loves, in fact. A constant, supporting love that never wavered, only took a back seat. The love of good friends and family, who stood by and let me make my own mistakes and my decisions without judgement, only support.

So instead of focusing on the minuscule discrepancies in my life, and the unchangeable factors, I focused on my constant. And as soon as I accepted that I began to learn to love myself again, mistakes and all; forgiving myself was a major part in my road back to normality. Accepting that I could not change the past, but could look only toward the future.

As soon as I came to this conclusion, my life immediately began to look up, almost like someone was looking down on me and had set every traffic light to green. My university work fell together, I stopped worrying about what other people thought of me and focused on what I thought of myself and what I wanted other people to think of me. I could talk about my mother and my memories of her with a smile, instead of being racked by grief. I graduated with a first from my degree. I got into medicine at my first choice university. I moved away to embark on the career of my dreams. But most of all, I held steadfast to the thing that grounded me: love and support. I had  peace of mind, and better still, I was able to be calm and strong for other people again. Like the old me.  For the first time in an age the other night, I was laying in bed with my boyfriend and we joked about outer space and how if a meteor hit us right now there wasn’t a lot we could do. And I could cringe with the soppiness of it, and the cheese factor (This is a cheddar +5) but I honestly could have cried right there in the bed,  in my horrendously disorganised room (No-one said I had to spring clean that as well as my brain), because I was HAPPY. It was flashing in my brain like a neon sign with red fluffy edges and bows like a little trollop.  If I got hit by a freakish outer space rock of alarming proportions, I would have been the happiest little meteor squished human.

There are many tests for us all in this life, I believe that. But the greatest test is our loyalty to ourselves and the courage to say “I deserve happiness”.  No-one is going to hand it to you on a plate, but it is there for the taking, ripe for the picking with the right attitude. I will never forget the kindness and support I have been shown and I am grateful for the challenges I have come across that seek to make me a stronger person. A person better equipped to help others through. For those of you going through a difficult time, or battling with anxiety, please hang in there. Be the boss of your brain, and not the other way around :) You go Glen Coco! Kick life's ass.