Take the pills to numb the pain.

I am about to go to bed, and floating around my head is the line "Life's too short to be afraid, Take the pills to numb the pain, you don't have to take the blame"


I reach into my medicine locker and pull out the 6 tablets I have to take to enable me to sleep. When I wake it is 5, during the day it can be 4 or 5 more depending on the day.


They help, yes. But is it the answer? is this my life for ever...pills to keep me happy, pills to keep me balanced, pills to make me numb, pills to help me sleep. Pills to do every basic fundamental part of living. I realise life is too short to be afraid, but I am. Every waking moment of my life right now. I stand on the edge of a cliff too scared to look down because what is down there is the "Unknown" the cause of my pain and torture and mental anguish. Will I ever be strong enough to look down into the void and actually face my daemons?


And I do have to take the blame. I made myself this way for not dealing with whatever is down there, no-one else did it for me it was all of my doing. But really can't someone please step forward and tell me WTF made me this way because right now I'll be damned if I know.


I am going to be in therapy for a long time, I will be stripped piece by piece until I have no choice but to look down and face it for what it really is. So CBT, DBT, TDU, possible epilepsy.


I may act strong, but right now I am a tiny little girl sitting cowered in the corner too scared to even say "boo" to a mouse.


Will I ever, ever be "Me"? have I ever actually allowed myself to be me? Will I ever be sane, or will I always be that woman who had kids then couldn't cope and went a little bit loopy (well a lot loopy actually, but that is by the by)


Have I ever been in control of my life? have I ever actually done something that I really wanted to do for myself (other than have my beautiful children)
I feel that my life right now is one HUGE paranoid delusion and I am pushing everyone away, and I really don't want to, but I am scared of the judgement that probably only exists in my head.


So, I sit here with the 6 pills in my hand, my miracle cure, my sanity fixer...when really all they do is numb the pain, which contradicts the therapy that tells us to sit with the pain and accept it for what it is.


I am too scared of the implications of not taking them, so I will drink them down with a glass of water and be a good little girl and do as I am told.


One day I hope I get to meet the real me.


I'll end with Robbies song "Strong" my anthem for bedtime.




"Strong"

My breath smells of a thousand fags
And when I'm drunk I dance like me Dad
I've started to dress a bit like him

Early morning when I wake up
I look like Kiss but without the make up
And that's a good line to take it to
The bridge

And you know and you know
Cos my life's a mess
And I'm trying to grow so before
I'm old I'll confess
You think that I'm strong you're wrong
You're wrong
I'll sing my song my song my song

My bed's full of takeaways and fantasies
Of easy lays
The pause button's broke on my video
And is this real cos I feel fake
Oprah Winfrey Ricki Lake
Teach me things I don't need to know

And you know and you know
Cos my life's a mess
And it's starting to show so before
I'm old I'll confess
You think that I'm strong you're wrong
You're wrong
I'll sing my song my song my song

If I did it all again I'd be a nun
The rain was never cold when I was young
I'm still young we're still young
Life's too short to be afraid
Step inside the sun

And you know and you know
Cos my life's a mess
And I'm trying to grow

And you know and you know
Cos my life's a mess
And I'm trying to grow

And you know and you know
Cos my life's a mess
And I'm trying to grow

You think that I'm strong you're wrong
You're wrong
I'll sing my song my song my song

You think that I'm strong you're wrong
You're wrong
I'll sing my song my song my song

Life's too short to be afraid
So take a pill to numb the pain
You don't have to take the blame

Life's too short to be afraid
So take a pill to numb the pain
You don't have to take the blame

Life's too short to be afraid
So take a pill to numb the pain
You don't have to take the blame

I've got a feeling...

Today I feel like hitting my head against a brick wall.  Again and again and again. I want to climb a tree and sit and throw mugs from it. Run around the street screaming loudly, round and round and round.
I feel the need to do things, unpleasant things to myself. I had to put myself to sleep earlier to stop myself from acting on my impulse.


I have a feeling, and emotion that I can't identify. It isn't my usual anger/ punishment /empty/ numbness shit. It is a UFO. I really don't know what it is.


I have spoken to a few friend over the past couple of days which has been good, arranged a visit to my friend and a playdate for the weekend.
I finished my "Burn" picture, which took time and patience because I have had my funny shaky hand/ time delay thing in both hands today. So I have done lots of pleasant things, I was listening to music nice and loudly whilst finishing "Burn" singing along because that's the way I felt. So it is not that I have been a miserable cow. Unless I have without realising.


Whatever this feeling is, I don't like it, and I would like it to come forward and identify it's self right now then leave because you are not welcome in my headspace.


"aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh"


Looking forward to spending time with my dear and lovely friend Laura tomorrow afternoon doing arty things.

Anger=0, Me=1

Indifference and dis-interest are two emotions that trigger me. They make me so angry I want to lash out, and to hurt myself. To rip myself to shreds until the anger has dissipated.
I haver realised that these two emotions make me feel invalidated and invisible. It makes me feel like all the things I do are worthless, which triggers the pointlessness, which in turn make me feel like a waste of space, and there is no point to my existence. Then comes the numbness and emptiness.


I suppose this is a break through, but I can not see how to turn it into a positive. However I did not hurt myself, I just lost my temper with the broom (which then broke) and continued doing the stuff I was doing regardless. However I am full of anger and resentment still and I suppose what I am doing is "Sitting with it" Yay. Something from DBT seems to be taking some space in my brain finally.
This afternoon I painted my anger away whilst listening to music very loudly. I got covered in wood stain, I can't quite get over just how much I got on myself, but wood stain sure beats my former methods for dealing with anger and numbness.


Maybe it is because I am an impulsive person, when I get an idea in my head, and there are no other suggestions for the day, I want to do it and do it well. Maybe my impulsivity breeds indifference, because I am impulsive all the time. Be it shopping, drinking, cleaning, creating a serene and lovely functional garden. I get ideas, grand ideas and when I get them I usually need/ want to do them ASAP.
For this I am sorry, but unfortunately I will always be mostly impulsive. Maybe some of it is my illness, but some of it is me...one of my "quirks".


So I sit here this evening, still with Anger festering but it is sitting beside me placed in my box with my toxic waste and alien and for once I have beaten it. 


I am a star, maybe not as bright as I thought the other day, but at least I am not a dark star so something deep inside my brain is finally beginning to get it.

Ray of light.

I don't know how many times I have sat down and tried to write a post this week, but I just have not been in the right head-space to verbalise my thoughts and feelings.
So we have basically skipped a whole week of the dark-and-twisties, and I now have the inspiration to write!!


On thursday in DBT we looked into validation (confusing and in the "too hard basket" at the moment) and also distress Tolerance to help us through the Easter long weekend. The sheets listed different ways to cope with our emotions and the one I liked the most was "With Vision" going and looking at things that make you feel happy.


I sit outside on the front balcony and during the day I look at the various different views we have of the area, I listen to the birds singing, and simply watch the world go by (which can be fun if it is raining and the tradies are up on a roof getting wet!!)


One morning this week I was woken abruptly at 4am to my husbands alarm going off (a very loud, obnoxious, hard to ignore honking that gets louder and louder). I woke up angry as it was effectively in my opinion still the middle of the night. But I grabbed a mug of coffee and sat on my little balcony and found my new piece of heaven. NIGHT TIME. Looking up at the sky and looking at the moon and the stars and enjoying the peace and quiet that is a still and sleepy time. 
Last night I stayed up late, and before going to bed went and sat outside to look at the stars. It was such a clear night I could see the milky way, and all the stars in the sky were so bright and so beautiful, the soothing noise of the cicada's, frogs and other miscellaneous night time animals/ insects. I was "in the moment" and so at peace with myself, a place I have not been  for a very, very long time.


Last night I decided that rather than being the dark-and-twisty black hole that saps the light and joy out of everything it touches, I want to be a star. I want to be part of the milky way. A bright and shiny star amongst a million others, co-existing and lighting up the night's sky to make something beautiful.


I think I might even be making baby-steps in the right direction to getting there. Since friday I have created 2 great pieces of art work. One very dark and twisty, but beautiful at the same time, the other is different to all the other stuff I have done, but I am very proud of it.
So I have actually allowed myself to feel: pride, happiness, a sense of achievement with my art.
Pride and happiness that my husbands hard work with Cameron is paying off (but tinged with a touch of guilt it is not me) joy that we have been able to have some time alone watching something other than batman or scooby-doo in the evenings.
Pride that I "sat" with my emotion of pure anger and rage and feelings of numbness and instead of reacting the normal way I do, I turned it into a piece of art instead.


I CAN have HAPPY THOUGHTS!!!!

Zephyr in the sky at night I wonder
Do my tears of mourning sink beneath the sun
She's got herself a universe gone quickly
For the call of thunder threatens everyone

And I feel like I just got home
And I feel
And I feel like I just got home
And I feel

Faster than the speeding light she's flying
Trying to remember where it all began
She's got herself a little piece of heaven
Waiting for the time when Earth shall be as one.
Lyrics by Madonna.

Born of Frustration.

More James song lyrics, seem to sum up my life nicely right now.

Today, my "mindfulness day" A day where I allow myself to do things I enjoy.

My plan was to make a felt bowl, do some drawing, listen to music, watch TV, walk the dog.
My felt bowl started off well, it was fun and therapeutic covering and forming the felt. I was so carried away with the process that I did not realise I had been listening to the same song for over an hour!!

My Bowl started to go wrong, the attachments I tried to add wouldn't stick, my felt wouldn't felt properly and it started coming away and go wrinkly. I lost my temper so tried to draw...nothing was flowing. I have officially completely lost my artistic mojo.

Tried to find some music to listen to, but nothing was right, it was either too poppy, too noisy or too depressing. Also had to compete with the tradies opposite, who for all intents and purposes might as well have been firing the nail gun in my head.

It was a lovely day and would have loved nothing more than to take Barney for a walk, but the "big bad wolf" was outside and I could not convince myself it was ok and safe to go outside. Couldn't even get past the front door.

So I took my pills and went to sleep to prevent the more destructive side of me coming out. This is avoidance, everything at the moment is avoidance. I am not dealing with my daemons,  because they make me hurt myself. I don't have the strength and will power to do what I need to keep me safe.

I need to see a neurologist. It took me over an hour to find one that was actually taking patients and had an appointment that was remotely some time this year.

Tonight we are once again going through the tears, the shouting, the tantrums and the absolute despair that is trying to get Cameron to sleep. My threshold is low and I am about to give in and avoid once more and take my sleeping pills and go to bed with him. I am weak, and I am a failure and I can not get past this.

Another night of not spending time with my husband, another night of us growing that bit further apart. I am not coping with this either. I want someone to fix me. I want to go back in time to when we worked as a family and we were "Happy". Will it ever, ever get there or have I ruined everything for good?

Tonight I have to remember my advice to the girl in my drawing. Hugs and love, not option a.

Finally before the song, I would like to say say a huge thanks to Jess for phoning me up, it was lovely to talk and catch up with a friend much missed.


Lyrics to Born Of Frustration :

All this frustration
I can’t meet all my desires
Strange conversation
Self-control has just expired
All an illusion
Only in my head you don’t exist
Who are you fooling
Don’t need a shrink but an exorcist

Show me the movie
Of who you are and where you’re from
Born of frustration
Caught up in the webs you’ve spun
Where’s the confusion
A vision of what life is like
Show me the movie
That doesn’t deal in black and white

Stop stop talking about who’s to blame
When all that counts is how to change

I’m living in the weirdest dream
Where nothing is the way it seems
Where no one’s who they need to be
Where nothing seems that real to me
How can we build our lives upon
No wall of stone, no solid ground
The world is spinning endlessly
We’re clinging to our own beliefs

Born of frustration
Born of frustration

(removed chorus as not very relevant)

Falling and Failing.

The darkest hour, by Claire Corr

The question I was asked this morning was:

What advice would you give to this girl who is suffering and depressed?

would it be:

a) To cut, burn, maim yourself to make it all better?

b) To give them a hug, tell her everything will be ok?

It made me feel pretty damn stupid because I am an option a person. I feel that my mental illness is a weakness and it is a failure to not be able to carry out basic daily functions. i ended up back in hospital on thursday because I just could not cope with the morning and evening battles we have been having with our son. It is a reminder to me of how I was unable to feed him, soothe him or comfort him as a baby.

One day I will become an option b person but it is going to take a whole lot of work.

My option had been the very softly-softly approach, pandering to him and letting him play me. Hubby on the other hand has a military approach to bed time which actually is proving to be a success tonight, even though the tears and tantrums are making my heart bleed.

This inability for us to come up with a middle ground approach, caused me to crumble and fold and collapse in a heap of invisible tears (all cried out nothing left to come out) I was a danger to myself and therefore had to put myself back in a safe place.

I am out now, because to stay in any longer is avoidance and not dealing with the situation, and i would also lose my spot in the DBT programme which I so badly need right now.

I am not better, but I will work very hard this week to make myself better. I will draw, paint and felt it out of my system.

Thank you Kim for the dark and twisties that really helped. We are not alone and we are not freaks. You are an amazing person who makes me laugh, and I love your style and eye makeup.

Laura, thanks for the art and the hugs, you too are an amazing person that has so much to give to everyone.

I ended up not doing the lyrics as hair for her because when I had finished colouring in the skin detail it just spoke a thousand words. Hope you like the finished product.

Sit down next to me.

 "  I'll sing my self to sleep
    A song from the deepest hour
    Secrets I can't keep 
    Inside of the day
    Swing from high to deep
    Extremes of sweet and sour
    I hope that god exists
    I hope, I pray


    Drawn by the undertow
    My life is out of control
    I believe this wave will bear my weight
    So let it flow"


   "Those who feel the breath of sadness
    Sit down next to me,
    Those who feel they're touched by madness
    Sit down next to me,
    Those who find themselves ridiculous
    Sit down next to me.
    In love, in fear, hate, in tears,
    In love, and fear, and hate and tears
    do-own"


These are the beginning and end lyrics of the song "Sit down" by James, a UK band big in the 90's...not sure if they made their way out here.


Anyway, as we were driving home from DBT this afternoon, this song came on and it hit me, the words so meaningful to me and how I feel at the moment. (apart from the god bit)


Another verse is:
"It's hard to carry on
 When you feel all alone
 Now I've swung back down again 
 Its worse than it was before
 If I hadn't seen such riches 
 I could live with being poor" 


With mental illness, you may well have a good support network and have support from friends and family, but it is such an isolating illness because there are no physical or visual indicators. And unless you get to the point where you can actually feel what is wrong with you and verbalise it, it is something you suffer alone.


In DBT we learn about our emotions, we get given a list of words which correspond to a particular emotion, and feelings and thoughts associated with that emotion. 
We learn that to get better we have to let ourselves experience emotions and "SIT" with them. Don't react, don't avoid, but sit with it and feel it and accept it for what it is.
This is all well and good. BUT and it is a big but, I have spent the past 30 something years not allowing myself to feel emotion, pushing it down and hiding it away in a dusty cobwebby portion of my brain that is long forgotten.
Feeling emotion to me, is a sign of weakness, reacting to emotion is even worse.


I know what the emotions are and I know the feeling words associated with them, but the big bad thing, the one thing that makes it hard for me to fix myself is that I just can't let myself feel them. Instead I am numb and I am empty and to me, that is safety. It makes me hard to get along with, I have a HUGE personal space bubble and keep people on the other side of that. I have had a life of letting people in, only to get kicked in the face and slam-dunked on the floor and being let down. I have been bullied, teased and victimised. Each time learning how to squash my feelings down more and more, becoming more established in the art of feeling nothingness and numbness, but at the same time feeling everything in this big confusing black-hole forming way.


So to have someone sit in front of me and tell me I have to feel these emotions, identify them before you get to "code red" and explode then sit with it just does not feel right to me, it doesn't "sit" right with me.
When I hate myself so much, how is it possible to feel love? I can not conceive that anyone in their right mind would like me, even less so want to marry me and have a family. Which means it is my husband is insane and I know that is not true!!! (...well sometimes I wonder!!)
This hate feeds the anger. I don't have any in-betweens I go from irritated to full on rage within seconds.
Emotions are hard, emotions suck, I wish that it was ok and healthy to be numb and empty but it tends to end you up in a psychiatric hospital in a complete mess.
I will try and identify and name my emotions, I will try my very hardest to SIT with them but it looks like mission impossible for me at the moment.
So...does anyone want to come and sit with me?
xx

Who is afraid of the Big Bad wolf?

Anxiety. A big Mo. Fo. It is something I would not wish on my worst enemy.

It fills me with all this negative head talk, bad head talk fed by my rotten core beliefs.
I believe that I am a bad person.
That I don't deserve the family I have
That I don't deserve to be happy
That I deserve every bad thing that comes my way.

My negative head talk tells me I am unlikeable
That I am an ugly, hideous creature
That I am a bad mum, wife, friend, person.

The lists go on and on and are very depressing reading so I won't go any deeper than I have already.

The negative head talk is an alien (like the one from the films) it feeds off the inner core of me and poisons my brain. It puts feeders up into my brain and tells me all the bad things and makes them true.
The core beliefs are toxic waste a big rotten ball of biohazard eating away at my insides.

Recently I was given permission and the power to remove The alien and The toxic waste. It now resides in a rusty metal box and dodgy wheels (like a shopping trolley, never quite going in the direction you want or expect them to go) The box is covered in chains and sitting on top is The alien, on a leash but it is hard to control and sometimes it ends up back inside me or sends spores into me.
Being able to visualise my anxieties, fears and beliefs like this makes it easier for me to experience more of the good stuff. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but I can say it was a huge relief to be able to externalise all of this bad stuff; although pulling it around with me can be damned hard sometimes.

Another aspect of my anxiety is a feeling of emptiness.
Emptiness is feeling lots of emotions all at once, a whirlwind of emotions, thoughts and feelings running through my veins at a million miles a minute. But at the same time being emotionless, thoughtless and numb.
It is all consuming and paralysing. It makes me hide in my bed, and when I can't sleep anymore I find myself curled up in the foetal position in my craft room, unable to move or to do anything. When it finally occurs to me what is happening I feel guilt, anger and fear and this is when bad things usually happen.
(but I am not ready to go into that, so we will save it for another day when I am feeling braver)

The treatment for emptiness is to realise when I am feeling empty and try and identify what I was feeling immediately before and write down the emotions. Once the emotions are named, I have to sit with them, and accept them for what they are, do some mindfulness. For someone with a healthy mind, this is second nature and easy. For me it is the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest on my own with no special equipment, in bare feet.
For a very long time I have been experiencing negative emotion and squashing it down, and as time has gone by, the happy emotions have got squashed down too. I have emotions and feelings and I can no longer identify them.

A big one for me is the "Happy emotions",  Happiness, Joy, love, success, pride etc. I know when I am supposed to feel them, I can say I feel them/ mean them/ experience them but at the end of the day, I JUST CAN'T FEEL it. This then feeds the guilt, the anger, the fear and makes them 10 times worse.
It is a vicious circle, and uncontrolled it gets worse and worse each time I spiral.

I am doing DBT and at the moment we are learning "Emotional reasoning" It is very powerful and slowly I can see how to learn to identify my emotions and sit with them. Over the past 3 days I have got good at doing my mindfulness.
My major achievement this week was on friday. I took Barney for a walk. For 45 minutes, half of which it was raining. I had my ipod on and blasted my head with Britney Spears new album (Femme Fatale) before you judge my taste in music, listen to the album it is a clubbing anthem!!
On the walk I felt the rain falling on my skin, I felt the wind blowing on my face, I smelt the smell of rain , the smell of a swamp (not nice!!) the smell of some unidentifiable flowers which had a beautiful smell.
I watched Barney enjoying his walk, doing his doggy version of mindfulness, I took my thongs off and walked bare feet after getting annoyed with the grit and things getting caught in my shoes. I walked to the beat of the music and the pull of a very excited dog.
When I got home I can truly say I actually felt happy and proud of what I had achieved. I was then able to sit in my art room and do some pretty awesome art work.

Yesterday I was able to go and meet my friend Louise at spotlight. The drive down I was feeling tense, nervous, scared and nauseous, but I was able to identify them and sit with them and actually have a good time catching up with a truly fantastic friend.  I spent too much money in spotlight, but got myself some craft items that enabled me to feel pure joy (and a little bit of pain) in the evening. I have discovered the art of needle felting, it is just as addictive as wet felting but if you let your concentration lapse for even a moment, you end up needling your fingers which bloody hurts!!

This morning I am having fun with the kids as they colour in cows and chickens, and are now making cards with lots of different stickers.

So that is me for now...I am about to needle felt my spider on to my spiderweb felting project.

Thank you for reading xxx

In the beginning...

I have suffered from depression for a very long time. It is something I have spent most of my life denying, feeling ashamed of how I feel, feeling embarrassed to admit I have this invisible disease eating me away from the inside out.
I have convincingly and affectively managed to push down and hide all these feelings and emotions for so long I am no longer able to identify them.

My journey kind of started after the birth of my first son. A toxic friend tried to help me, probably in the only way she knew how but it was abusive, nasty and unnecessary. The friendship ended, I saw a doctor, still in denial of my depression refused the medication, but had a half-hearted attempt at counselling and gave up when the therapist got ill.

I pretended everything was OK, and for the most parts it probably was. I had a gorgeous baby boy, a nice house and a loving husband.
Only...I could not comfort my son, feed him successfully, help him sleep or stop him crying. I was a big fat failure as a mum. Sleep deprivation, tears and frustration are the only memory of the first year of my son's life. I have no memory of anything happy during that time.

Then I fell pregnant with Amelia and I was happy. The pregnancy was painful but I was happy, and the happiness lasted for a long time. I was able to make decisions about how I fed her with no associated guilt.
As she got older and reached milestones, I started to feel guilt and hurt that I had no memory of these when Cameron was getting older.
I had a breakdown. I can't remember why, I just know everything was all dark and twisty and very very wrong. I took the meds to numb the pain, and I saw a very good therapist who identified that along with PND I had OCD.
My OCD originated from my former career, where I had developed an insane fear that I was going to kill someone. Check, check, re-check and check again until the checking got all consuming. Thank god I left before it got out of hand.
It appeared post-natally as a fear of killing people walking along the side of the road as I was driving, a fear of other people crashing into me and killing me. A fear of other people driving me, sick with worry every time I had to get into a car.

Now OCD. It is a toxic friend, it is an evil, twisted, warped monster. It tells you that you have to do things in a certain way, and it is in your best interests to do so. It does it in a way that makes you think you feel safe and it makes you feel like it's your best friend in the world (as long as you do what it says)
To fight it I had to hate it. I had to get angry and shout at it. Swear, curse and tell it to eff off. Boy was it funny to be in the car when I was fighting that!!
It also used to tell me that if my house wasn't clean then social services would come and take my children from me. It still does sometimes but when I am strong I can tell it where to go. I still have OCD cleaning tendencies and I think it is something I will be stuck with for the rest of my life.
For you that know me out there in the real world and know what my house generally looks like you will literally LOL (that just for you sussy!) at the thought of me having cleaning OCD. It doesn't mean my house is spotless, show homey and germ free all the time, in fact it is the complete opposite. It is chaos and hell, but that's what comes with being married to Jamie and having his kids!!! What it is is the routine and the compulsive frenzy that happens when I clean. It is the constant rearrangement of rooms (my craft room has existed for 3 weeks and has been in 3 different formats to date) it is the sorting out and making piles and then taking those piles and making more, until you crash and burn and end up with a messy house in chaos with piles of stuff everywhere. But it is the system, the order, the inability to stop.

I was well for quite a while, but because I am so completely effective at putting on the mask, pushing things down and hiding emotions away things got out of hand. I medicated with alcohol and it helped. It was my best friend it gave me the courage to get through the end of the day. One glass ended as 3 bottles. My head became full and I was no longer able to squash things down and push them away. The alcohol didn't work anymore, my complete and utter denial that there was anything wrong and inability to talk to anyone close to me ended me up in a horrible situation.

I became empty. I gave up. I had nothing to give anymore. There was no me, I had no feeling. I couldn't function as a human being anymore. I tried (and thankfully) failed to not exist or feel any more.
I ended up at Belmont hospital for 6 weeks recovering from the worst thing that had ever happened to me, although I had a few bad experiences, the staff and fellow patients at Belmont helped me overcome my battle, helped me through my lows and gave me friendship I never knew was possible. I thought I had hit rock bottom at home, but it got worse in hospital before it got better. There are many people I met for such a short time that helped me get through the worst thing in my life ever. To these people I will be eternally greatful.

I am also lucky enough to have kept some of those friendships and I will hold them close to me as they are very precious (that includes you Laura and Kimmy)
I took home a passion for art, and a passion for felting. It is insane how crazy I get over a ball of felting wool!! I draw mandalas and they are my form of meditation I get lost in the beauty of circles, colour and  pattern. I love prisma colour pencils and I obsess over them. They are my precious things, along with metallic gel pens and newly chalk pastels.

I have said enough for now, but I write this blog after being inspired by the work of Laura and Kim. My aim with this is to share my experiences with the world, to try and break the taboo that is depression, to give this invisible disease that affects so many of us a face. To break it down bit by bit until it is a powerless little thing.
Some days the stuff I will write will be heavy and hard for some people to handle, but I need you all to understand that this blog is my mindfulness. It is my therapy. It is putting names to the unknown emotions and dealing with identifying them and sitting with them.
Somedays it will be silly, and somedays it will be dull, but it will always be a frank and honest reflection of my battle with depression.