Realisation

I am sorry I haven’t posted in months, the truth is my head hasn’t been in it, I’ve had so many thoughts and feelings running around inside my mind.

For the past few months I’ve tried again and again to write something, anything about how I feel, what’s been going on in my life or how I have been coping. I was just not in the right place to write about or face how I was feeling because deep down I didn’t want to face it, I felt numb, I felt like I wasn’t right, and I was afraid to face that.

I know a lot of us go through these horrific mood changes, where for days, weeks or months you feel fine, you feel happy but then that mood crashes and everything feels like it’s a battle, everything that happens makes you feel fed up and you struggle so much to get out of this negative feeling, not matter how hard you try or how happy you seem you just feel numb.

When I think back to his time last year when I started the blog, I thought I had gone through my depression stage of how things changed for me. I remember in February I met up with a close friend of mine Pauline who had suffered a Stroke on October 16th 2010, so she knew what was to come for me, “as we all go through the stages” she’d say, “but at different times.”

She asked me had I given myself enough time to heal, to grieve before starting out on this journey of creating the blog. “Have you reached the depression stage” she asked.

“of course, I feel depressed, but I fight it, I won’t let it win” I told her.  I should have listened to her back then because all she was tying to do was guide me and look out for me, as she feels she has that obligation to do so as she used to work with my mother before she had her stroke, so she's known my mother for years and feels she has to mind me for my mother.

“that’s not how it works Shannon, you’ve only just hit the depression stage so there is more to come” she seemed to say in frustration because she knew I wasn’t really taking it in. I remember coming back home after we had lunch thinking she doesn’t know how it is for me, I’ve gotten over it, I’ll be fine, I thought what little bit of depression I had experienced was it, but it wasn’t, and Pauline was right.

It all started to hit me at once at the end of summer 2018, I guess I reached my limit of pushing it to the side, I guess I reached my limit of trying to fight it. But at this time I still didn’t haven time to concentrate on how I was feeling mentally and put it first as I had a 12 week evening introduction to psychology course that I started in September 2018 and that took up so much of my time and energy as it was my first time back in education since the stroke in 2016.

I had to learn what works for me when learning and studying, it felt like I was back at square one and I was a child trying to learn new things about myself again. It was so frustrating, it was difficult, I struggled, I cried in the arms of both my mom and dad having breakdowns wondering why things must be so much harder for me, wondering if anything will ever get easier, but I stuck at it through all my struggles and passed thankfully!

I put too much pressure on myself and tend to forget that I’m only 20 years old and still must learn new things about myself.

These past 3 years I’ve experienced so much that it has made me mature a lot quicker than most people my age. It has made me stronger and I’m slowly starting to realize that these dramatic mood changes are not my fault it is apart of my brain Injury, that I can’t blame myself and that I do need help sometimes.

I think my new years resolution is to be nicer to myself, to not put so much pressure on myself and to listen to my own mind and body when it needs help or guidance.

I am sorry it’s took me so long to get around to posting a new post, I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New year. What are your new year’s resolutions?

💜💜💜💜