I’ve got my first counselling session today at the university, that’s counselling for me, though typically I’m feeling quite a bit better this week, probably because I have all but finished my current essays, so I think that’s taken quite a bit of the pressure off so hence why I’m feeling calmer and more together, I’m still going to keep the appointment though, because goodness knows if I can be knocked so easily as I have this time then I need some better coping strategies to draw on to make sure that I can deal with this stuff without falling apart.

So I sat and spent a few days writing and rewriting the essays and have now reached a kind of peace about it, I have tried my best, followed the directions as best I can, sought and received advice and now I just have to trust that I have done the best I can, I’m not expected to be perfect, hellfire I’ve never even seen an academic essay let alone written one but this is supposed to be a learning process and so I’m learning, if I fail, providing I take on and absorb the feedback and learn from it then that’s progress isn’t it? I will keep you all updated!

I have NEWS.. And no I’m not pregnant for a change… I have just signed up to do the Great Manchester Run, in May next year, so what you might say, well currently, sat in starbucks slurping coffee, I couldn’t run to the car without breaking a sweat and being out of breath so this is a challenge to say the least, exercise is NO friend of mine, I’ve personally NEVER understood people who love exercise, but now that the weights bottoming out ‘ pardon the pun’ I need to start exercising to tone up and keep it off. I’m going to join the gym, another alien environment and want to start cycling as well, ultimately I want to do a triathlon, do the Great North Run, the London Marathon and if that goes ok the New York Marathon… Good excuse to go surely? So as you can see I’m all about the small stuff… Not… I’m hoping that setting myself these goals will help me keep the weight off and really change my lifestyle, it’s already changed such a lot but I need to cement it into my brain. I’m running for MIND e mental health charity for reasons Im sure you can imagine!

Last night we had our Financial Advisor round doing some necessary evil stuff around life insurance, critical cover, pensions, child trust funds and stuff, it’s all terminally dull but I recognised important, so he starts going through a form to provide life cover and it’s a health one.. So have you ever had … Heart attack, stroke, angina….etc etc etc for over half an hour, he gets to the mental health section and he is laughing already.. Just expecting to tick no to all the boxes again, but I pipe up ‘yes’ in a quiet voice with my old adversary anxiety punching me in the guts, he looks up, surprised, and I explain history to him, he scribbles it down, asks me more questions and I have to relate it all to him, dates, times, time off work, specialists, The Priory, redundancy, last attack, have i ever attempted suicide…he asks yet more questions all in a different tone of voice that I hear distinctly different, sympathetic, empathetic, and frankly irritating bearing in mind the laugh we had been having beforehand.

This is what I HATE and i can’t say that more empathically than that… I HATE it.. I hate being labelled, it feels like my broken wing, always there, ever present, constant, I can hide it from most I meet, not that I choose to hide it, but I hate that it’s always there in my history, a label, a defect,that may make people feel different about me, see me as broken, less than I was or I am, weak.. All crappy words that I don’t want to ever be used in a sentence to describe me.

It upset me, not that i showed him that, it certainly wasn’t his fault, just these bloody forms, but i cant bear that he went away with probably a completely different perception of me than the one he had when he arrived, bearing in mind we have met before and he didn’t know this stuff before. I hate thinking back to those god awful days and weeks and months, in life I think I’ve done so well to get back to where I am and do what I do but I hate at something like that can just transport me straight back to those horrendous dark filled days, it feels like a constant small black cloud on my otherwise sunny horizon, just sitting and waiting to rain on my parade.