Where am I now?

So, it's been over 7 months since I last updated on here! There are many reasons for my absence, some of which I won't expand on. But I've been thinking hard and I've decided that nothing, and nobody can prevent me from writing a blog. It's 2016; why is mental health illness still considered a taboo subject? With such a large population of the United Kingdom suffering with some form of mental illness, why are we not more accepting of one another?

Anyhow, referring back to the title, where am I now?

With so many people having been dedicated to reading my blog in the past, I feel obligated to update you on the roller coaster that has been the last few months of my life. So I'll start from the beginning:

When I last did a life update at the beginning of May, I had just started an apprenticeship as a pharmacy dispensing assistant. And now, 8 months since I started, I am still working within the pharmacy although I am no longer an apprentice! The work is absolutely brilliant and it is so much more than 'just a job' to me.

I also began a second job in another pharmacy in early October; I only work there one day a week but I'm enjoying it so much.

In early June, I began feeling breathless. This isn't unusual, since I have brittle asthma. I just continued using my inhalers and carrying on as normal. Then a few days later, I suddenly became extremely short of breath and no amount of nebulisers were helping so an ambulance was called. I was admitted to hospital but continued to become more and more unwell, so I was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit.

I spent a few days in the Intensive Care Unit where they told me that I (once again) had a severe case of pneumonia, but the stress of the situation eventually became too much for me and I made the impulsive decision to discharge myself home before I was well enough. Needless to say, I quickly ended up back in hospital and within a matter of days, I became critically unwell and had an emergency transfer back to the ICU. Things were a lot more serious this time; I was prepped for intubation as they said that my body was too tired to breathe on its own and I needed the help of a ventilator. Luckily, I got through the night without the ventilator and things improved from there.

All the while we were focusing on improving my asthma and making it easier for me to breathe, I began having some problems with sickness. I had a PICC line inserted in mid-July, then I was eventually discharged from hospital for good!

I went to Nottingham at the end of August to meet an amazing friend who I have been talking to online and writing letters to for such a long time. And Jess was just as brilliant as I imagined her being!

We made a day trip up to Sheffield which was just great; I hadn't been to Sheffield since I was discharged from Alpha in January and I felt so happy to be back up there. We even made a slight detour to Alpha itself and it just felt incredible to look at how far I had come in the months since my discharge.

In early September, I started back at college! Some of you may know that I started studying health and social care in 2014 but I was too unwell to complete the course, so it feels really great to be back studying again. I'm not studying a BTEC this year; I am instead retaking my GCSE's in the hopes to start my A-Levels within the next 2 years.

And that brings me to now. In summary, I am working two dream jobs, I am back studying AND I am 8 whole months self harm free. Admittedly, I have had my ups and downs, and these last few months have proven to be some of the hardest I have experienced in a long while. But all in all, I am coping and I finally have a life - something that I could only have dreamed of this time last year.

I am writing this blog to show people that you CAN do this. You CAN recover and live the life that you want to live. All it takes is for you to make that decision for yourself. This time a year ago, I was on a section 3 in a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit suffering with absolutely crippling depression and psychosis - I never once imagined that I would be where I am now. But the only person who has got me to this place, is me.

July 2015 - a number of days before I was sectioned. I was swollen everywhere because my body wasn't coping with being beaten up time and time again, and my eyes and skin were turning yellow.

Now, 2016. I'm happy and my mind is the healthiest it has been in years. At the time of writing this, I haven't harmed myself in 35 weeks. I'm finally content with being alive.