I’m not going to lie. World mental health day completely crept up on me this year. Usually I know the date, it’s there, in my head, because it’s important to me. But let’s be honest, it’s been a bitch of a year, so you can forgive me for forgetting just this once.

I didn’t know what to write for this blog piece. It’s not that I don’t know anything about mental health issues, as most of you all know, I’m pretty honest about the fact that I have mental health problems, and although I’m one of the lucky ones and they’re very much under control now, my experience of the subject is extensive.

I have BPD AKA Borderline Personality Disorder. It’s an interesting condition, a bitch of a thing, but interesting, so I’m going to try and outline my experience of it. I’m going to try to explain how it manifested in my life, how it dictated the person I am today, and hopefully, show you how I turned it from a negative into a positive.

Firstly, let me tell you a little about the condition. There are nine major symptoms of BPD:

-Fear of abandonment. People with BPD are often terrified of being abandoned or left alone
-Unstable relationships
-Unclear or shifting self-image
-Impulsive, self-destructive behaviors
-Self-harm
-Extreme emotional swings
-Chronic feelings of emptiness
-Explosive anger

Yup, those are lifted from Google directly. Partially because I’m lazy, partially because they really are spot on. Bit every single one of those apply to me.

Apart from the explosive anger.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had outbursts in my life (I once pissed on my exes playstation because he cheated on me) but I’ve never been a particularly angry person. Unless you can count anger that has been directed at myself, if you count that, then okay, it’s a relevant symptom. My anger towards myself was once so huge that I bear the scars to this day.

I’m thirty two now, and it’s only been in the past six years that I got my diagnosis. And that was after years and years of struggle, years and years of drug abuse, flitting from unhealthy relationship to unhealthy relationship. It was after years of homelessness, years of hurting myself and years of slowly killing myself.

I don’t know where to start. So I’ll tell you about a brief period in my life where I was so broken I was falling apart.

And this was after the homelessness.

Once upon a time I lived in a flat with a bunch of stoners. They were the loveliest people in the world, far more lovely than what I though I deserved at the time, and we lived in an upstairs flat in a village. They were so kind and understanding, so ready to listen to my problems if I needed them too but unfortunately, because of my mental health problems, I didn’t think I was worth their time. I’ve had a lot of issues around abandonment, a little known fact that I haven’t told you guys is that I went to boarding school when I was a kid. My father was in the forces and we moved around a lot, always going from camp to camp, never really having a solid home, so my parents decided to put me into a boarding school so I would have some stability. I can see why they made this choice, they thought they were doing the best by me, ensuring that I didn’t have to leave friends behind every few years, breaking my heart time and time again as I had to say goodbye to those I love. And I was implicit in their decision because I encouraged it. I didn’t know it would be a terrible choice. As a result of going to boarding school, I only saw my parents either six time a year or three, depending on if my father was posted abroad or not, and this in itself caused a whole rift of issues. Me and my parents were never close because of this. When you have a child who you don’t see everyday, who you don’t interact with, cuddle when they need it and only get to speak to on the phone for weeks at a time, it tends to make you frow apart. Coupled with the ruthless bullying in school, being a total loner and having to live with those who tormented me, it left me with emotional scars. I had no one there for me, no one to really lean on, when I was going through some tender fucking times. Hence the fear of abandonment. I am old enough and stable enough to identity that this is where this first issue came from. Those who I did get close to, and those who I did love, I was so afraid that they’d leave me alone, as scared and destitute as I had been as a pre-teen.

And somehow, in some way, my brain turned it around at some point in my life. All of those who I truly loved, my parents, those partners who all truly mattered to me, would all leave me in the end, much as they always had. And it manifested in this house.

When I lived in this flat, I wasn’t so much of a drug addict anymore, save for the weed. Weed has been a constant since I quit the more hardcore narcotics, helping me to wean off them. It’s something I still use and am still not strong enough to let go of. But I was very much an alcoholic.

Working in a bar, especially one where I was offered a lot of discount just for working there, meant that a lot of my wages were poured back into the place. Even at the expense of my rent. And there manifests your impulsive and self destructive behaviours. Just as alive as it was when I was a drug addict, but in the eyes of society, this was acceptable. Coupled with the legal painkillers such as codeine that I would ingest in amounts that probably should have killed me, I was a wreck.

I drank so I could cope. I was holding down a job and I’d been promoted, something that to this day I have no idea how I did it, but without the booze I was just a nervous wreck.

I went to work every day, but when I wasn’t at work I was just sat in my very messy room. And when I say messy, I mean it was disgusting, a vile imalgination of dirty clothes, empty medication wrappers, razor blades and takeaway boxes. And it’s the only other place I’d be. I was too scared to leave it. I’d come into the flat, if I was drunk out of my mind, I’d speak to my housemates in the living room, but other than that, I locked myself away. I was too afraid of what they thought of me, too afraid that they’d speak to me. I didn’t want to get close to them, just incase they left like everyone else.

I’d sit for hours in my room, staring at the door every time someone walked past, preying that no one would knock as I nailed another can of cheap cider. I’d only leave the room, even to pee, if I knew everyone was out or were asleep.

I didn’t feel like anyone should even have to look at me because I was such a mess.

Another thing I should probably mention is that I used to be a prolific self harmer. If you look at my arms and legs, particularly my left arm, they’re covered in scars from years and years of taking out my pain on myself. I have no shame of them now, at all. And I don’t say that for effect. I’m brave enough now to show them in public, in front of my family who, to this day, have never even mentioned them to me. I used to find that physical pain was so much more manageable than mental anguish, and it was my coping mechanism for so long.

Once upon a time they were a source of shame, I remember silently crying my eyes out as the bath turned slowly redder and redder when I lived in the flat, punishing myself because I was the way I was.

And now I am so unashamed. Once upon a time I looked down and saw weakness, each cut in my arm a testimony to how weak I was, how I couldn’t cope. Now I look down at every shiny scar, large or small, and realise that every single one is a bad day, a bad feeling that I have overcome.

They make me realise that no matter how bad my day is, I have overcome every bad day I’ve had before.

I feel like I’m rambling. I’ll try cut it down now.

When I was in the flat and well before, I went from one shitty relationship to another, taking what I could from whatever abusive bastard that came my way, because I didn’t think I was worth more. It was always people who took advantage of my good nature in some way. Towards the end, I chose to be single and it helped me so much. My paranoia of being left was constant when I was with someone, forever thinking about my inadequacies, forever comparing myself to someone else. My own self hatred, I projected onto others, convincing myself that they disliked me for my own self perceived flaws.

And I had so many of them. I literally couldn’t look in a mirror because I hated what I saw. I wouldn’t shower for weeks at a time, convinced that I wasn’t worth the effort. My weight fluctuated, I was either super thin, unable to eat because of stress, or I’d binge constantly, stuffing my face to try and fill an emptiness that I didn’t understand. And my sleep pattern was fucked, laying awake all night worrying about impossible scenarios, running bullshit events through my head over and over. It was torment.

Anyways, I should probably talk about how I got better, I’ve rambled on enough.

It’s been years since I’ve had a proper, all-consuming flare up, one that’s lasted for weeks. It’s been years since depression ruled my life, years since I’ve had a suicidal thought, and I’m so fucking lucky for that. Once upon a time I honestly thought it was permenent, that when everyone told me that I could get through it, it was a lie and that I would never feel anything but the constant drone of sadness. I never thought I’d be happy again.

Trust me, it does get fucking better. Hold on, because I promise you that the sun will shine again. There’s tears in my eyes writing that line, because I know the pain and the hurt that some of you are feeling and I truly wish I could help you to understand that you’re not alone, that it does get better and that there are people here for you.

That’s what happened to me. I met people who understood. People who knew there was something wrong and who actively pushed me in the beginning to break the silence and admit that I wasn’t okay. They made me come out of my room, one of them would literally appear in the flat and refuse to leave until I came out. They pushed me to talk, listened to me and held me when I cried. They taught me that it was okay to not be okay, that I was worth something. They showed me I was worth a phone call, that I was funny, that I could leave the house with my head held high.

I’m still crying as I write this, and I need to stop, because those exact people are coming over today.

I can never thank them enough for what they have done for me, and I know that they are going to be in my life forever because without them I wouldn’t be the person I am today, and I can finally say that I’m so happy with who I am. I’m proud of me.

One out of four people in the UK suffer with mental health issues. That’s one in fucking four of us who are struggling. A fucking quarter.

Please, we need to start talking about this.

We need to break the stigma.

My inbox is always open for anyone who needs it. If you need help, no matter how big or small, please please please get in touch.

You’re not alone.

I guess I need to start this one with a little bit about my background, as this post is going to address my view of Conservative voters and the rich.

I come from a very Conservative household, and when I say very, I cannot stress that word enough. My father was in the forces, and he managed to climb the ranks pretty high over his career through hard work and a fuck ton of discipline. My mother, a typical officers wife, a kept woman whose one goal in life seems to be having an eerily clean house and wages a constant war on anyone who dares to wear shoes in her domain. I have two sisters, both married into the forces, both successful in society’s eyes, and both as different from me as black is to white.

In fact, the whole family is the polar opposite to me.

I am well and truly the meaning of the black sheep.

Don’t get me wrong, I love them all so much. We may not see eye to eye, and we may argue over pretty much fucking everything, but they’re my family, and I know that despite our different beliefs, our massively different outlooks and approaches to life, when it comes down to it, they have my back.

But yeah, polar fucking opposites.

So, as you can imagine, growing up was a weird one. I grew up in military quarters, moving every few years to a new location and never really having the stability of staying in one place for long. My father was always going on tour abroad, spending up to six months away from us at any one time. I knew the national anthem, went to military services and grew up around an atmosphere of royalism and glorification of the military. Every room in our house had military photos, plaques and medals and some of my earliest memories are of my dad sitting in the kitchen, polishing his boots whilst my mother ironed the creases into his uniform.

For some reason, this kind of family seems to go hand in hand with the Conservative party. So weird, considering that both my mum and dad come from a really impoverished town in the North East.

So they always had the usual distain for people that I just didn’t understand, even at a really young age. Immigrants, addicts, people on benefits, low earners, the poorly educated, all the kinds of people we are told to hate, they did. The towed the line, they swallow every scrap of blame that the media feeds them, hook line and sinker.

Immigrants? Sponges only coming over to the UK to take our jobs and take advantage of the benefit system.

Addicts? Idiots, it’s their own fault they’re addicted and they need putting in prison.

Benefit claimants? Nothing but scroungers and a drain on their hard paid taxes.

Low earners? Should have worked harder in school.

Basically, the usual bullshit. I admit, over time they’ve gotten a little better, I’ve slowly chipped away at some of their beliefs and challenged them, planting some seeds of doubt in their mind that are slowly growing.

But the bullshit is still there, and it’s bullshit that I may well have bought into if I hadn’t been such a tearaway child. I don’t know what it was, but from a young age I had a very different sense of good and bad, I was curious and I always looked beyond what I was told, to come to my own conclusions.

I went through a pretty turbulent time in my life. I tore away from them, a rebellious streak, born from childhood trauma, which saw me move out at a young age, drop out of college and move to the city. Their judgemental ways and inability to let me do what I wanted was too much. I was always a creative child, but they pushed me towards academics that didn’t interest me, wanting me to succeed in fields I would have hated. I suppose it’s what every parent wants for their child, but it was suffocating. I didn’t want to study business, I wanted to help people. The pressure was insane, the arguments with my mother constant and so, I ran away. Far away, to Leeds in fact.

And it was there I became everything they fucking hated.

Drugs, drink, bar maid, party goer and full time rebel. I was homeless, an addict and it was in this time that I came face to face with everything my family didn’t like. My best friends were immigrants or descendants of immigrants, my partner was on the dole, we all took drugs and a lot of us worked out backsides on minimum wage jobs.

Back home, my sisters excelled, both are now married into forces families, one has been incredibly successful in business, and the other one’s husband has climbed rank in the military. They had houses they’d bought early, fancy cars, flash clothes, went on expensive holidays. And although my beliefs were not alligned to theirs, there was a point in my life where I genuinely thought myself a failure in comparison to them. I genuinely believed that I had somehow failed in my life because I wasn’t well off, I didn’t drive a nice car (hell, I chose not to drive due to climate change) and I didn’t own my own home.

I’d always been told that success and money would bring me happiness. Getting married and having a family, going to university and getting a “successful” job, settling down and working a nine to five, I was always told these were the staples of a happy life, and that anything other than this was a failure. So, for a little while I felt like I’d let everyone down, myself included.

It was only a few years ago that I managed to finally shake the crippling feeling of failure and realise that everything they’d ever told me about happiness and how to attain it was a lie. Actually, not a lie. It just didn’t apply to me. Sure, it’s where they found their happiness and focus, but it just wasn’t the case for me. I finally realised that I wasn’t some freak with freakish opinions and outlooks, that I was just different, somehow and anomaly against the background that I’d been raised in. I had been lucky to tear away young enough to retain a lot of the beliefs I have today.

My time in Leeds was laced with so many things that, when they were happening, anyone would have seen them as negative. I was a homeless drug addict, literally the worst of the worst in my family’s eyes. I couldn’t get through the bulk of the day without a cocktail of ketamine, and a legal high that I could buy over the counter of a dodgy shop in the market. And for close to two years, this was the norm, living my days in a haze of k-holes and sleepless nights, usually in a park in the student area or on a friend’s sofa.

My parents would have muttered to themselves, had they have ever seen me in the street, judging me on appearance and preconceptions, rather than personal circumstance and story.

And this is where I found pride in myself, after years of self-hatred and self judgement. It was when I was at this point, definitely my lowest point in life, that the true scale of our differences became apparent.

When I was homeless, I found a huge community of homeless people in Leeds. And they all helped each other when they could. When I was hungry, they taught me the traders in town who were more than happy to give over their out of date food stock, people who were also more than happy to talk to you for a little while, usually leaving the conversation with a fiver tucked into my hand. They taught me how to skip raid when all else failed, taking me to all the shop locations where the bins were unlocked, making sure I knew the times to go and which security guys would take offense and which would not. And the best bit about it all, was learning about who they were and how they got to this place. I met people who struggled with drug addiction too, learning their names and finding that every single one of them had a story to tell, usually painful, filled with stories of loss or abuse, some similar to my own. Every one of them was a human being, running and hiding from something that hurt them. I watched some of them go to prison for their addiction and the actions they were driven to by it, knowing full well that they needed a compassionate and healing hand, therapy and rehab, rather than throwing into prison where their problems would just get worse.

Leeds is full of quite affluent people, I met both sides of them extreme with them as well. Some would be lovely, bringing you food once they had spent more than ten minutes getting to know you.

But there were so many others who were absolutely disgraceful.

I’ve been spat on, pissed on, kicked and punched when I’ve been bedded down for the night. Called names like you couldn’t imagine, and a lot of the time, it was from people in suits who had had one beer too many after a night on the town. Oh, and the propositions you get. There was one guy in particular, he was a lawyer working in between Leeds and London, married with three kids, who was terrible. For months he had befriended me, bringing me food, the odd book (I have always loved to read) and coffee whenever he passed me on an evening. We chatted a bit, got to know each other in a small way. Then the propositions began. They were small at first, thinly veiled behind jokes as the conversation turned more and more lewd. The sort of awkward flirting you’d expect for a fifty something year old, wealthy guy hitting on a homeless punk lass. Yet the more I refused his advances, the more effort he put in. I don’t want to go into too much detail, but after an altercation in which I was told I “owed” him for his kindness, and was manhandled a bit, he left with a harsh slap to the face, he was never seen again.

It opened my eyes to the way that the rich saw the poor. We weren’t pitied, we could always be exploited for one thing or another, even at our lowest point. To them, we are nothing but objects, trinkets that they will stand whilst we have some kind of use, no matter how vile and base that use is. They are happy to smile at us, acknowledge our struggle, yet refuse to help beyond the odd tesco meal deal. It’s as if we no longer qualify as human in their eyes. Can you imagine being like that? Thinking that someone is lesser than you, somehow subhuman because they haven’t ticked the societal boxes that you have? That they haven’t jumped through the same hoops?

And this is why I love the fact that I tore away. With this background I’ve had, I’ve learned some of the most beautiful lessons, ones that I love so much that I now see the years of addiction as a positive, not a negative. I mean, without them I wouldn’t have the outlook, compassion and experiences I have today.

I try to see the good in everyone, no matter their position in life. You can be an addict, living on the street and I will treat you with as much respect as I would the queen.

Let’s be honest, I’d probably treat you with more respect.

I’ve come out the other side with a more appreciative nature. I know that we, as people, benefit more as a whole by helping one another. I know that everyone has a story, a lot of them painful, that need to be heard.

I watch my family do absolutely insane things, they’re the kind of people who go out and buy a top of the range car, every two years, like it’s nothing. They want for nothing, when they believe they need something, they go out and they buy it. And watching them do it, every time it seems to hollow, like just another thing to throw on the heap.

It’s so foreign to me. We scrimp and save for even the smallest things. We don’t have a rainy day fund, so God help us when a big appliance breaks, but we do save for things. I buzz over getting a new book, I buy one each month as a treat for myself, and we recently bought a Nintendo Switch after saving for a couple of months. These things we cherish because they’re rare treats, and I would hate to lose that simple enjoyment because we had too much.

There’s so much more I could write on this one, but I will elaborate as time goes on a guess.

I’ve definitely gone on too much on this one, and I’m sorry it’s been different.

But in short, what I’m trying to say is that I’m so grateful that I’ve become the person I am, rather than a copy of my family.

I wouldn’t change who I am for anything, least of all a lifestyle like theirs. I’m happy that I’ve struggled, I’m happy that I’ve become the person who I am after all I’ve experienced.

More to come soon guys 😊

Hey guys

Firstly I’ll give you a quick update on where we are with the house/mortgage situation. Our mortgage advisor has been in touch and we got a bit of bad news.

Unfortunately, Nationwide have brought out a new policy. If you’re putting in 10% of the asking price as a deposit, you can only do so if you’ve saved 80% of it yourself and without help from others. It momentarily put a spanner in the works, but we believe we have found a way around it, but as a result my anxiety is going apeshit waiting to hear back from them 😂 as soon as we hear from them, I’ll let you all know what they have said.

So, onto what you probably all came here to read. The fucking rant.

As we all know, I have a huge issue with the problem of infighting on the left, and every day when I log onto twitter, I see it getting worse. We have always had this issue, let’s be honest about it, there’s always been problems that have divided us in one way or another, it’s just the way people are. But it seems like, since Corbyn resigned, it’s just gotten so much worse. And it’s so easy to understand why:

A lot of us feel so fucking lost. We fought so hard for so fucking long, we came so far behind a man who motivated an entire nation. For once we had someone and something to unify us, we had a vision of a future so different from the hellish reality we are living now, a hint of a promise that we could change the world around us and live a life where everyday ceased to me a struggle. We saw a world without foodbanks, zero hours contracts or poverty wages. We could almost taste a world where our children wouldn’t have to rely on school meals to avoid hunger, where our elderly wouldn’t have to my a choice between heating their homes or eating. We saw an end to the insane inequality that’s run rampant in this country for so long.

And it was ripped away from us. That hope, once so close, snuffed out.

It’s understandable why we are fractured.

But now it’s just fucking madness.

Yes, I understand that we once had a solid leadership to get behind, and he’s gone. And the circumstances that made him go were unfair, product of a cruel and orchestrated system that will do anything in it’s power to stop us from winning.

But that’s what we need to remember. They don’t want us to win because they are fucking afraid of us. They’re absolutely fucking terrified that we will win… And we came so close to it before.

You need to remember that it’s all orchestrated. This hatred and mistrust is all a part of their plan.

The elite want us to turn on each other. They want us to hate foreigners, people who support other parties, people who are on a lower rung of the ladder, the poor, the addicted.

So why the fuck are we letting ourselves fall into their trap?

We are all in this fight together. We all want a better world, we all want to live in that future that we once had a glimpse of.

And the only way we are going to do it is if we do it together. We can’t fight them if we are broken, splintered and at each others throats.

So please, stop fucking fighting.

I don’t care if you’re supporting Starmer.

I don’t care if you support Galloway.

I don’t care if someone asks for fucking help on gofundme me or fucking PayPal, and neither should you.

We are all in this fight together. And it’s not for a particular party to get in, it’s to fucking fight for a fairer society.

Sorry it’s only a short one guys, but I worked out how to do it from my phone! I’d appreciate some feedback on twitter if you have the time ♥️

Remember, we are so much stronger together.

They’re trying to keep us apart because they know fill well, that together we win.