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The Hardest thing is admitting to yourself that you have a problem. The hardest thing is watching all your friends have a good time without you. The hardest thing is when you catch your mum crying because she doesn't know what to do. Because mental health isn't something she can kiss and make better, it's something that, at first, is unreachable. Until you let people in to help.
I'm going to be honest with you, I will always have problems with panic attacks, my anxiety is a part of me. A part of me that's been with me since I was very small that I didn't realize was there until I had an attack in a Spanish restaurant, hundreds of miles away from home. It's funny, now I vividly remember getting up in the middle of the night when I was little and feeling funny. It's like somebody had picked me up and was holding me above my body. Somebody had pressed the fast-forward button and everything seemed unrealistically sped-up. I used to go to the bathroom and get back into bed. And when I woke up in the morning, I'd tell myself it was all a dream, because something that horrible definitely wasn't real. It couldn't be.
It was the summer of 2012 when I finally gave in. It felt like I had been teetering on the edge of a precipice and a holiday to Spain with my family, the stress of travelling, being so far away from home, had thrown me over the edge. I had blood tests done because I told the doctor I felt 'sick and dizzy' so they thought it was anemia. It wasn't anemia. I remember the nurse saying 'There's a possibility it's not to do with your physical health, but your mental health'. I asked her what she meant and she told me there was a possibility I was suffering from panic attacks. That's when it got worse.
I knew what panic attacks where. My mum used to get them when my Granddad was in hospital. But this was mush worse. It's like there's this massive bubble surrounding you, you feel distant like every noise is amplified but at the same time, you can't hear or understand a word anybody is saying. So they put me onto a waiting list for something called CAAMHS (appropriate name, don't you think?). This stands for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service. A child counselling service run by the NHS. I was on the waiting list for a long time, about 6 months in total.
The counselor they referred me to was a young woman called Gemma. At first I didn't believe any of this would help, I'm a very skeptical person. But without Gemma, without CAAMHS I wouldn't be where I am today. It was a long journey (ugh. that word again) but I got from throwing up every time
my mum woke me up for school, to being able to sit in interviews and go to college. To you, just 'going to college' might not sound like a big achievement because it's necessary, but, to me, it was a huge step. In the space of 14 months, I went from not even being able to walk the dog to our local shop, to being able to go shopping on my own.
So, the one thing I want people to take away from this, though it may sound like a broken record, is, don't suffer alone. Talk to your parents. If not your parents, a close friend. Trust me, I lost friends from not telling anyone and ignoring them for months and that was probably the hardest thing. But the best thing is being able to just say 'yes' to things and not having to make excuses anymore.
Don't go it alone. (god, that is the cheesiest thing I've ever written. This whole post is the cheesiest thing I've ever written.)
Congratulations if you got this far. (not in life just reading this post. Well, yes, in life as well. You know what I mean.)
R.
(all images presented are not my own and I do not own the rights to any. All rights go to and belong to those who own them)
