Attention needing.

The phrase 'attention seeking' has such negative connotations. People with mental health issues are often branded as attention seeking or dramatic, usually because a mental illness is not something you can see. But if you think logically, everyone has an innate need for attention, love, care and affection. So in literal terms, every single human being is, by nature, attention seeking. It was this phrase, or rather the fear of being branded so, that caused me, like many others, to brush their problems under the carpet and try and ignore the ever growing pile of worries and loneliness. But soon enough, the carpet will be too bumpy to walk on and you will have to accept that asking for help and telling people how you feel is not weak. It does not make you attention seeking. It makes you brave. Brave for being able to name something that is making you fall to pieces from the inside out. Brave for being able to face the stigmas and social taboos surrounding mental illness. Brave for being able to admit that you can't make it on your own. Everybody needs attention. People with mental health issues are not attention seeking, we are attention needing, just like every other human being.

My stand.

Tonight, I am feeling desperate. Instead of letting my feelings out in unhelpful ways, I made this video. Have a watch. Hopefully someone will find it helpful. Hopefully it'll stop someone doing what I so wanted to tonight.

Discrimination.

Yesterday, I went to a party that turned sour. Being the end of a long and stressful half term, people were pretty determined to go out on a bender and get completely smashed. Which they did. But the usual, standard happy dancing and cuddling turned into hysterical crying, projectile vomiting and careless words slurred at the wrong person at precisely the wrong time.

It was at this party that I had my first encounter with external mental health discrimination. Of course, since becoming mentally ill, I have discriminated against myself many a time, saying things such as 'I'm crazy' 'Who'd want to be friends with a psycho?'. I punish myself for being unwell in unimaginably horrible ways, and I'll have to live with the mental and physical scars even if I do recover. But never have I experienced any external derogatory treatment about my problem until one of my best friends got drunk and told me what she actually thought. I hope she didn't mean it, and I don't think any worse of her for it but it has made me realise how people's suffering is made one hundred times worse by the prejudices that surround mental instability, even if the unwell person experiences no active discrimination. I didn't tell my best and closest friends about my mental health problem for 5 months, because I was too ashamed and utterly terrified that they would reject me and not want me around any more. And all of that fear came from the social taboo that being mentally ill was something to be secretive about, something to be apologetic for.  But if you had a broken leg, you wouldn't walk around on it without a cast and hope that the problem just went away. You wouldn't hide it from people and you wouldn't be scared of being called a cripple. So why should a mentally ill person suffer in silence for fear of losing friends and being treated badly? We discriminate against ourselves for something we have no control over. Other people discriminate against us for something we can't change alone. And this has to stop. 

Please watch this video. It couldn't be more true.

Time To Change - let's end mental health discrimination

The Vintage Emporium.

Nestled in a side road leading off of London's infamous Brick Lane lies a hidden gem that is home of the 'hipsters', 'indie kids' and the absolutely fabulous individuals who just have too much swag to be labelled: The Vintage Emporium. Just above street level sits a beautiful little tea room, furnished in classic Victorian style. A mish-mash of mis-matched arm-chairs and pouffes cluster around interesting tables and the whole room is lit by flickering candle light and filled with interesting scents and mellow music. Bunches of dried flowers or herbs hang from the ceiling and two dogs wonder round the room stealing crumbs off your plate. The experience is utterly enchanting: perfect for nursing a Sunday morning hangover with an espresso, for a catch up with friends over a home-made Victorian cake or for an intimate date. 

Below the tea-room is a vintage shop selling all kinds of incredible vintage items. It's definitely worth having a look.

Visit the vintage emporium!

After the Storm

I had to share it. It's my all time favourite song and has been for years. It speaks to me so strongly and y'all probably already know it, but I could listen to it all day. If you're having a hard time, listen to the chorus.

'And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears, and love will not break your heart.'

After the Storm- Mumford and Sons

And after the storm, 

I run and run as the rains come

And I look up, I look up, 

on my knees and out of luck, 

I look up.

Night has always pushed up day

You must know life to see decay

But I won't rot, I won't rot

Not this mind and not this heart,

I won't rot.

And I took you by the hand

And we stood tall,

And remembered our own land,

What we lived for.

And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.

And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.

Get over your hill and see what you find there,

With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

And now I cling to what I knew

I saw exactly what was true

But oh no more.

That's why I hold, 

That's why I hold with all I have. 

That's why I hold.

I will die alone and be left there.

Well I guess I'll just go home,

Oh God knows where.

Because death is just so full and man so small.

Well I'm scared of what's behind and what's before.

And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.

And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.

Get over your hill and see what you find there,

With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears.

And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.

Get over your hill and see what you find there,

With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

Mumford and Sons website

NB: This song and these lyrics do not belong to me. They are copyright Mumford and Sons.

Friends are like biscuits.

It’s hard to be sure of anything when you question life and your entire subsistence, but one thing I have grown to be sure of in my worst year of existence yet is that friends are the most effective life-support systems. 

When you are plugged into your friends it is nigh on impossible for your heart not to long to beat, to share that ‘in joke’, to laugh hysterically until a little bit of pee comes out, to be unashamedly, whole heartedly who you are and to feel loved for being that person. 

And you just have to live for those tiny moments until things start to look up. These moments are what drag me out of bed in the mornings and these moments fight back against the darkness that is constantly fogging up my mind.

I dedicate this blog to my friends. I owe them my life so this is, I know, a pretty poor alternative. Although I do not care much for my life now, they assure me that one day, I'll be glad that I didn't manage to poison myself with paracetamol.

I shall leave you with a parting parable: As iwastesomuchtime.com (procrastination central) wisely said: ‘you can be miserable before you eat a biscuit, you can be miserable after you eat a biscuit but you can never be miserable while eating a biscuit’. It’s the same with friends. 

The Rain Room.

When you have depression, it can seem nigh on impossible to motivate yourself to get up, out and do normal, mundane things- let alone laugh or socialise like before!
Luckily, we all have someone who cares. You might not know they exist, but they care. Me, for example. I sometimes cry for people I don't know because I can feel the pain they are feeling. 

I consider myself to be incredibly lucky. I have the best friends I could ever wish for and they, to be blunt, are the reason I am not yet six feet under. They have, on occasions, dragged me out of bed and into London despite my protests, they have made me laugh, experience life. They have checked me over and asked those awkward questions nobody wants to ask to make sure that I am not destroying myself from the inside or the outside. And the other day after college, when I wanted to go home, get into my tracksuit bottoms and cry into my pillow they dragged me to the Barbican to see the 'Rain Room'. The picture above pretty much says it all. It was a room, indoors, where it was raining. But when you walked into the rain, it did not rain on you, only around you. It sounds less awe-inspiring that it is. When I entered the rain, I felt completely free. All around me was this iridescent waterfall, and the light in the blackened room made the water sparkle. I felt untouchable. It was incredible. The queue may have been two hours long but the wait was utterly worth it, because in that moment, with my best friends, I realised for a second that there was the potential for joy in life, although I can't see it most of the time.

Visit the Rain Room- Barbican.

Should we be blasé about being bonkers?

I am 17 years old and utterly cray(zee). Most people have a brush with insanity at some point in their lifetime. Apparently one-in-four adults will suffer a mild mental illness during the next year. But I am slap bang in the middle in a full-on, no holds barred fist fight with depression. And it's tough. There are days where I find myself clinging to life like that squirrel 'Scrat' in Ice Age who fights an avalanche to keep hold of his precious acorn. But most days I wake up and wish I had never woken. Most days I look at the world and wonder why in God's name people bother carrying on with their lives when there just seems to be no meaning or purpose other than grow old, to die and then to find out if Richard Dawkins, Jesus, or Buddha was right about life after death, or the lack thereof. It's at times like these that I struggle to remind myself that the greatest philosophers, theologians and scientists in history have grappled with the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' since before Archimedes ran down the street naked screaming 'Ureka!' in the third century BCE, and so one can hardly expect a 17 year old, mentally unstable girl to be able to figure it out alone. But when I can laugh, or mock myself, I do. And you, lucky peruser of blogspot, can join me in the lawls that keep me living despite wishing that my parents had learnt how to use contraception prior to my own conception. And just in case you don't believe my insanity, here are some pictures to prove it:

In my onesie, at a train station, on the floor. Casj.

Cider with a straw. Dis is classy timez we live in.