Just Simply Me; Take Two - The Real Me

Just Simply Me: Take Two

The Real Me

 

 

 

 

Welcome back, it's been a little over seven months since I last visited my blog and oh boy how fast that time has gone! I promised myself when I first started this blog on the 6th May 2016 that this blog was going to be like therapy for me, I guess you could say a no holds barred this is me take it or leave it type of approach. After spending half my life shying away from ever truly being open and honest with even those closest to me I thought this would be my one way ticket to finding who I'd lost along the way but as we know life isn't ever that simple. Don't get me wrong I loved my blog from the minute I typed my first word but I think I knew deep down from the start that I'd never truly be able to engross myself in it knowing that my façade could only last so long.

 

This is possibly one of the scariest things I've ever even contemplated doing in my whole life but as I sit here at almost 1am on a Tuesday night (now Wednesday morning) I think I'm finally ready to give my all to the hobby that I've found a great love in.

 

I guess you could say it all started when I first started Secondary school in September 2008. I went through the whole big fish small pond to little fish big pond terror with hope that my Secondary school years would be the ones that defined me and made me who I am as a person (I guess looking back in a round-about way they did just not in the way I was ever expecting). I went from a tiny local Primary school with one class of roughly 30 students per year, where everyone knew each other to a large Secondary school of several classes per year, filled with so many unfamiliar faces. To say it was a shock to the system would be an understatement!

 

Don't get me wrong my first 2-3 years of Secondary school probably were the best of my life, I suppose that's what made it even worse when the bullying began. Growing up I'd always been shy, I suppose what the type of person that would've been picked out as an easy target. I had pale skin, freckles and ginger hair (which I now appreciate more than I did back then). Adding all that together I guess I should've seen it coming. It started off with an argument in my close group of friends with one individual turning others against me, with my confidence shattered I had never felt more lost in my life.

 

Apparently life's cruel game wasn't done with me then though as those few individuals were removed from my life only for a few other individuals to take their place. If it wasn't a whisper here or a snigger there, it was outright insults to my face. Little did I know from that point that I'd never truly be the same again.

 

I can't pinpoint the exact time when my panic attacks started but I'm guessing it was sometime around the last two years of my Secondary education. People around me were looking forward to their college choices, their job prospects or even what they were going to wear to the upcoming prom the following year when all I could feel was an overwhelming sense of dread and the burdening feeling of simply not belonging.

 

Back when I first started having my panic attacks I had no idea what they were, there was no Zoella to share her experiences and there was no one I knew to turn to that would truly understand (at that point I didn't understand myself so why would others. That was my reasoning anyway). I felt like I was dying, I knew what was happening almost every school morning wasn't right with buttons being ripped off my school shirt in the panic to get air into my lungs, followed by the overwhelming dizziness and fear of dying, but I just didn't know at the time how to ask for help or who to turn to.

 

My attendance at school went from bad to worse, I had the school threatening to take my parents to court, my family (not my family members that lived with me, I'm talking about Auntie's etc) slating me telling me that I just wanted to skive, that I didn't care what stress I was causing my parents and I then had the all-encompassing guilt I felt that I wasn't the 'normal child' my parents wanted me to be, that I wasn't the 'normal child' that I so desperately wanted to be. Those couple of years were probably the lowest of my life, I couldn't see a way out and I'd almost resigned myself to living a life safe in the embrace of the familiar warmth and embrace of my four walls (be that the solitude of my bedroom or the company of my closest family in our living room).

 

It took me a long time but halfway through what has now been charted as 'the worst two years of my life', after countless expensive therapy sessions, even more back and forth threatening meetings with my school and yet more run-ins with those who 'didn't understand' an answer came to me. The doctors finally gave me the answers and hope I'd been craving. Being diagnosed with Anxiety probably sounds terrible to most but to me it was the glimmer of hope in the darkest days. I finally had a name for what I'd been going through, I wasn't dying and there was something that could be done about it.

 

I was referred for CBT (Cognitive behavioural therapy) and my life began to have meaning again. I'm not going to say I was miraculously cured and that since then it's been all sunshine and rainbows because neither of those statements would be true but I will say that CBT helped me more than I'd ever dreamt of. I'd been sceptical to say the least at first having had anxiety become my new 'normal' but after my first couple of terrifyingly nerve-wracking sessions I could begin to notice a difference in myself. I was even able to get a couple of GCSE's (which at the beginning of my ,journey (oh so cliché), had seemed impossible. Yes I didn't return to normal lessons instead having lessons a couple of times a week with a teaching assistant but I worked my butt off and was able to achieve what I once saw as unachievable.

 

Yes I didn't get to go to prom and I missed out on so many life experiences with my friends but I can't say that I look back on those years with any particular bitterness (I have some towards my school for what I was put through by not only the pupils but the teaching staff too but hey allow me to be a little angry). I guess what doesn't kill you can really make you stronger sometimes. Yes I'm never going to be cured of my anxiety (I'm now 19 going on 20 in less than a month eek!) but I now know that I'm not alone and that what happens to me in that second isn't going to kill me and it won't last forever.

 

Wow that was some heavy stuff I'm sorry once again that I've been away so long now but now that you know me a little better I hope you'll stick by me as I see were my hobby can take me once again. I promise not all my posts will be this heavy-hitting but I wanted to show the real me and to let anyone else out there that's struggling know that there is help out there and there is also now a lot of people that can relate. Mental health is no longer such a taboo subject and that's the way I hope it stays as I'm certainly no longer ashamed so you shouldn't be too.

 

If you've made it this far then congratulations you win the medal for being most patient with me thank you.

 

 

Many thanks

Caitlin xo

 

 

P.S if you ever need to talk I'd be more than happy to help people, I'dve really appreciated a friendly, non-judgemental when I was going through it all so it'd be nice to think that I could be that for someone