I’d like to write, because that, that’s something that’s helped me a lot with recovery, or even, from the very beginning I’ve always written about things and just letting my feelings out or like, until I write them down it’s almost like there are these same thoughts that will go over and over in my head and once I write them down they’re out.

Do you write diaries only to yourself or do you let people see them?

Mainly to myself but I’ve started a website because I found recovery websites helped me a lot because I was actually hearing from other people that had been through the same experiences and they’re saying, This has helped And, you know, I, they just have a, lot more ideas about things that might just kind of help you get, because if you’ve been through it yourself then you can say, you know, I tried this and this helped me and I kinda wanted to be able to do that for other people too. So I’ve started one and I have put some of diary entries on there throughout recovery because I think that’s one thing you don’t, when you’re in recovery you don’t, have any idea, you don’t know what recovery’s going to be like.

Everyone, it’s completely different for everyone but it would be nice to know, I always kinda thought, you know, I, you can’t ever be told how long recovery’s going to take because it takes people years or just, you know, it’s so different. But just to have some idea of what it might involve and so I’ve just put on, diary entries from recovery just to kind of show the whole ups and downs because I don’t think that’s, sometimes you go in recovery thinking things are just going to get better and better’ and going in knowing that you’re going to have so many ups and downs I think would be good to know, so I’ve kind of tried to share that with people so that they can see.

What I would do also which kind of, it might sound a bit weird, but while I was in the inpatients’ unit, and the best I could cos I was very drowsy a lot of the time, I would always go to Paperchase and buy me like just a little diary book that I could draw things in about how I was feeling. And then kind of that kind of, when I come out I was looking back at kind of how low I was, cos I’d got the help and that was like, Wow I really was that low And then every day I’d write in how I was feeling, just like a diary. Or what had happened that day. But also like how I was feeling mood wise. And then it would show like a pattern in my moods. But like generally kind of if it was low over a period of like a few weeks, or it was high then I would make sure that I would look back for say like, for the past two weeks every night to see if like it’s, if my mood was changing. And if my mood was like, had the slightest change I would start to kind of do a lot of things to kind of pick myself up more. And I think that was one of the main things that kind of gave me the self, like the self, power of the self, like will power if you like, to kind of be able to kind of move on from being so low, being kind of, having these eating problems. That was also one of the other things cos I could trace back how a lot of people, when they’re a lot low, they don’t know they’re so low in the sense that kind of they’re feeling that low. But so you need to be able to look back at yourself which helps.

I think like writing stuff down. I know everyone says it and like writing stuff down on paper I never really found helped me, usually cos I get bored after the first sentence and just give up. But like stuff on the internet like just you know writing on there, like you can be completely anonymous, and that helped quite a bit cos it was like other people there that can support you. And you don’t have to; you can give a fake name it doesn’t matter.

What do you think about it is particularly helpful for you as a sort of coping mechanism or whatever?

Just getting stuff out there, and like other people like, if you’ve got a problem like other people kind of suggest things that you could do to help you. So I find it better than just writing in the diary that’ll just sit in a drawer and I won’t really do anything with.

And like at first it was kind of completely anonymous, like no-one like didn’t even know what country I was from, so it depends like on how much you want to kind of reveal. So it’s all kind of up to you and like all in your control.

And are you completely anonymous?

Not anymore. But I was like I don’t think anyone could track me down from it, like all they know is my name but like it’s up to you how much information, like some people like post where they’re from and stuff and like you’re in control kind of what you want to write down.

Did you have another way of communicating your thoughts or, did you write, did you do art at that point, did you, is there another outlet if you didn’t want to necessarily talk to people?

Yeah. I’ve always kept books and sketch books and things like that but again there’s always [laughs], there’s always a fear of, Oh no other people will see I don’t know what this, it’s a huge fear of other people knowing aboutanything unclear so yeah I kept sketch books, and art remember throwing away a lot of books at some, at some point because you know, all that’s behind me kind of, throwing things away but it’s only a book [laughs]. Yeah I would draw, draw pictures and keep, you know, keep some that’s, keep kind of, I remember keeping kind of mark book, almost, it’s almost like marking how, you know, how you’ve been if you’ve not eaten anything, keeping it all on paper. Actually they probably would be really interesting papers to look at but I think I threw a lot of them away but that’s probably fine.

Again both the hospitals I was in had pianos so I was able to practice my piano. I was allowed out to my lessons, my piano lesson, and my flute lesson. The last hospital admission I wasn’t because I was too ill, but eventually I got back to it when I got out. So I carried on with my lessons, I managed to get, finish all my exams, you know, my music exams, and I took my flute in with me in all my hospitals [laughs], you know and I just used to play away to myself. It was a great outlet, and even like when I was at home, even though I wasn’t able to go to school or anything, I, sometimes I would still manage to go to orchestra or wind band and I would see my friends there, and they would come to visit me, you know, and just, so it kept me in the loop of a social circle, and it also kept my brain active and it just gave me a relief to everything that else that was going on, because when I go and play the piano, I can just forget about everything else. So it was really important to keep that up. it’s been my livelihood, you know, since I’ve been ill. When I’ve been ill that has been the one thing that I’ve been doing, so it’s been a great outlet.

Did you feel at, at any point that you didn’t want to play music or that you were too ill?

No. It got to the stage where I was struggling with playing the flute and the piano, because my piano teacher even says now she says, Now Stephanie, you’re playing as like a different person cause you’ve the strength behind you now she said, Whereas when you were ill you couldn’t hammer it out on the piano [laughs] and then my flute, I would get really light-headed playing so I wasn’t, I wasn’t, because I stand when I play the flute.

And I wasn’t able to do that for very long, so then, but then that was when I got taken back in, so that kind of all sorted itself.

But it was quite interesting because when I was in hospital, you know, I would go to the person next door and I’d say, Look, if you don’t want to hear me playing, just come and knock on my door I was like, I really don’t mind. But everybody says, No we love hearing you play they says, it’s great, you know and the cleaners used to just come along and walk past the door just to listen and everything, so it, it, everybody seemed to enjoy it which was quite good, useful for me so.