Our first "Guest Blogger" - Leah from Linconshire UK

I was thrilled, humbled and rather amazed when I read through my huge stack of (mostly spam it must be said, no I'm not that popular!) emails when I came accross one from someone called Leah.  She had been passed the link to our facebook page and in particular the post where I asked for Guest Bloggers. 


I was so touched and amazed when I read what she had written... At this point I'm going to let Leah take over this post with my gratitude for being our first guest blogger... 

You can follow Leah's personal, open, honest and moving blog HERE
If you want to contribute as a guest blogger, please CONTACT ME

Suzi

Learning to cross the road...
When I was 14 or 15 (I never can remember exactly, even after all these years of fixating on it), I died. That is, the life I had had before that age ceased to be, and I was re-born as someone I didn't recognise, and didn't welcome. The child I used to be - the clever, precocious child who performed in amateur dramatics, loved to dress up and dreamed of doing anything as an adult which would break the mould - became first a frightened adolescent who, believing she was losing her mind, reined herself in for 'temporary' protection, and then a clever, serious adult who had become afraid to cross the road in case she couldn't get back.

You must understand: the change in me - though gradual - was so dramatic, so overwhelming that I have mourned that precocious, brave, stubborn little girl for fifteen years. What I didn't appreciate, in that sad, lonely fifteen years, was that the ones that we lose never leave us entirely. They make us who we are, physically and mentally, and so even though the little girl I used to be had gone, she had left in me the most strident parts of herself. Her stubborness. Her tenacity. Her bravery. Her unquenchable need to know 'how?' and 'why?' Unbeknown to me, in the midst of my grief for the life I had lost and the life I could have had, I had had the tools I needed to live all along. Not the tools I needed to live her life, but the tools to live my life. My way.

This all sounds like I had some sort of lightbulb moment, or celestial epiphany. But of course, I didn't. This 'knowledge', if you can call it that, has dawned on me only recently, and only since I began to be accepting or who I am rather than grieving for who I was. In the intervening fifteen years between being diagnosed with anxiety, agoraphobia and panic I still needed all those character traits that my younger self had left me. I completed GCSEs, A-Levels, an Undergraduate and then a Masters degree. I got married, left home, and worked full-time. I existed in a 'normal' way. It took all the energy, resources and sheer bloody-minded determination I had. And bravery. It took bravery too. Make no mistake: living alongside something as utterly terrifying as a fear of your own mind is not something a weak or feeble-minded person could do.

There was one thing I needed which that little girl didn't leave me though. She was perhaps too young and too keen re-invent the world to understand it at the time, but even a half-life teaches you some lessons: bad things do happen to good people (but they also happen to bad people, too), the thing you're looking for will always be in the last place you look, and if you want to be accepted, you must first accept yourself.

You see, I spent so long mourning for the loss of what I used to be that I neglected to be grateful for what I am: a survivor, and an achiever (who just happens to have a mental illness). This latter fact isn't the bad apple in the barrel that you might imagine. It's just a different apple; a part of me, no more or less significant than if I had Asthma, or Diabetes. It wasn't until I accepted this that I developed the confidence to start on the road to recovery. I still haven't learned to cross that road yet, but for the first time in fifteen years I'm standing at the crossing with hope.

Leah
Lincolnshire, UK.