But like once you get, you learn, you learn that people are just there to help you, then you will, you learn to know yourself as well, you learn to know your new self because like going through mental health illness it does change the person you were before into the person you become later on in life so.

it’s about learning to accept who you are at that point in time and knowing when you need help and when you need to ask for help. And it doesn’t necessarily have to mean that you have to go to the place or you have to go to the doctor, you can just talk to your friends cos sometimes just, I even just sitting with my friends sometimes I’ll just be really distressed and I’ll just tell my friend, Do you mind coming over And we can just sit quietly and just knowing that my friends are there, that’s just sometimes that’s enough so. It doesn’t necessarily have to mean injections or anything like that or being sectioned.

Depression we found in general just through daily life was getting through the day. Because you couldn’t take anymore than that. You can get through the hour and set yourself small goals of well if I don’t manage the rest I don’t manage it, but I’m gonna get through this hour, and you know do this. And just do small goals because people go, Oh well I’ve got this to do this week, and this, and this, and I have to get that done andrdquo; You put too much pressure on yourself and you’re setting yourself up to fail. You know you can’t motivate yourself when you’ve got this big list of stuff going, You have to do this, and you have to get this done and you’ve just got to break it down. That’s something I still do to cope is break it down, like work and stuff at Uni, because otherwise I would just get so overwhelmed.

I mean I looked at my assessment list the other day and went, Oh, that’s a stupid amount of work to get done But then if I take it essay by essay, deadline by deadline, I’ll get it done, and it’ll, you know, it’ll work. And that’s something that I’ve really found works for me, cos people are like, well just take it an hour at a time, and it really used to bug me, cos I’d just want to fix it there and I’d be going, No I need to do this, I need to do all of this, and it’s done And I never used to accept it. One thing that I’ve found is it really, really does work is just take it as much as you can little by little, to get through because you’ll find it all mounts up.

Might only be small things, but if you set yourself a small goal within each day you can build it up, and achieve something and feel you’ve achieved something, rather than belittling it because you can’t do something cos you’ve overwhelmed yourself.

I do believe in something like that, not God as in the biblical sense, You know, not this old dude upstairs with a grey beard, or with a white beard you know what I mean. it’s like there is a bigger power out there, but not as any of the religions have said it. You knowAnd I believe you know there is, each one of us is born to do something, and each is destined to do something, but there is a choice of what we are destined to do. You know, whatever we, whatever we do you know, we are destined to either succeed or fail at that chosen subject, and it’s up to us to decide what we want by starting to follow it like that. Cos I believe you know there is, there is something still better for me. So I’m just waiting to see what happens. Just enjoying life one day at a time, while I get there.

I can’t, I honestly can’t remember like an exact date, cos a lot of people say when they realise there’s problem there’s an exact day or something, but I can’t remember. It was more, you know I said at the beginning that it was like I got in the lift and it floated to the zero, well this way it sort of went slowly back up.

So I did things in reverse really, and it was like for a good two years before I managed it, I always, I’d been trying to go a night without alcohol and couldn’t do it. It took me a good two years to actually go to bed and wake up not drunk. And I got a taste of what that felt like and basically it’s been on and off ever since. Like one week I’ll be drunk every night, then I won’t drink for two weeks, and stuff like that. And I mean recently, this last year, is the first year, maybe the last two years is that all I’m doing is punishing myself, doing this is not gonna get people to help you, it’s not gonna get someone to rescue you, you’re just going to fuck yourself up and it’s like at the end of the day all you wanted was somebody to notice how ill you are, and by the time you’re that ill, no-one’s watching. You’re on your own. When you’re finally ill enough, you’re on your own. it’s all very well taking a bow but if there’s not an audience there to clap, what’s the point?

So you just kind of realise well actually you know what, and it took a while, it took a really good few tries to like stop, not so much to stop drinking, I still socially drink, but I started to build a life for myself. I realised that I’d been in this city for like five years and I could name two people that maybe I’d be able to phone to go out for coffee or something. And since then I’ve done like evening classes, got voluntary work and stuff, and I get, it was literally starting from scratch, and building a life for myself. Because the entire reason I was drinking and stuff was to block out the fact that I had no friends, that I, you know like? So it was, it was about building a life for myself, and that’s taken like a good four years at least.

But when you consider that it took me, it took me 12 years to get fucked up, 4 years to get better isn’t exactly a big time frame.

Little by little, I kind of put, dipped my toe in the water and thought I’ll try an evening class. And the first time I did I went to 2 out of 10 of them cos I just couldn’t do it. The next evening class I did I went to 5 out of 10 of them, and gradually and gradually and gradually it became more normal to be doing these normal things that normal people do.

I was just finding it really sort of hard to, sort of deal with stuff and you get the sort of really doom inciting thoughts, sort of suicide and that sort of stuff. And that, that scares you. Really does but, I just thought there must, there must be some sort of meaning to this so you just got to ride through it and get to the other side I think. Just, cos that that’s what I’m doing at the moment. I mean there’s, it can’t be, this can’t be sort of fate or anything, I’m going to make something of it, I don’t care whether, whoever wants me to be in that for the rest of my life, I want to get out and do whatever, I’ll conquer a country sort of thing, if you know what I mean. Just I really want to make something of it. it’s like after sort of being through all of this shit I’m, just wanna see that it’s all worth it on the other side.

I’m not breaking down at every little like hurdle. Like since then obviously like other things happen like in life as they do which I think I’ve dealt with much better than I would’ve before. I think I would’ve went into a total breakdown over some of the things that have happened, whereas I’ve just got upset like a normal person would. I haven’t gone into depression for like a week or two and just not talked to anybody, not left the house, not like I haven’t skived college, I haven’t stopped eating completely. I mean obviously like I became a bit more finicky eating my food I got upset, like you normally would, like when something like really bad happens. But I think it’s made is much easier because I’m not getting as upset over things, I’m getting as upset as a normal person, like a person who functions normally would.

And it made it a lot easier but, it’s the things in the past that are coming back and that are hard to deal with, it’s not what happened now, it’s getting over things.

it’s tough because things fluctuate so much and you can’t ever go, Oh can I stay with it You’ve always just got to kind of go through it and sometimes be hit, sometimes be missed by these big whatever, and just kind of move on really. You’ve got to accept that things are gonna be changed, it’s hard, very hard, very hard to accept that you will have highs and lows because they mess you around. They do.

But you know once you’ve got over that all your problems are done really, just because highs and lows will just be an everyday thing, they’ll just be a little routine within your daily life that you won’t have to focus on so much.