Personal: Not Yet Found...

Life makes things hard...

Have you seen my life? It went missing around the end of February and was last seen 31st March.

Registered lost on the 1st April 2016.

My life is not what it used to be and won't be ever again. It has been tainted by a string of unpleasant events beginning on 23rd February 2016. You often weigh up risks of an outcome and put yourself in the majority. Whether that is a good or bad place to be, you sit within the majority. That is until you join the 'bad' minority. From that point on no matter what the chances, the bad thing WILL happen to you! If it doesn't? The next bad thing will come along. No more rose tainted glasses; you're looking through a miserable sleety mist. Things are mostly grey...

I used to have faith in the world. I used to believe "if you struggle/work/contribute hard enough, the good will be the outcome!" Comic Relief, Red Nose Day, other such charities... Their annual profit would be higher every year. There's always more money down the side of the sofa (along with all the remote controls you can't find.) Do I see that now? Not really... Do I believe in one almighty omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient being? What would love us only to bring us sadness? No I don't fall in that bracket. Do I feel confident in myself and my actions? Do I trust my brain? No.

If you'd met me this time last year you would see a different person to who I am today. I wish I was still that person... I believed the possibility that I could be successful, that I would learn in order to teach others. Now, I don't have the confidence to think that far forward and if I do I am the Prince in Sleeping Beauty, the forest of thorns ahead only to be blinded and thrown back in the process.

After a journey of appointments, medical imaging and treatment I sit here looking back on the fear I had only to be left with more fear and uncertainty. The thing that is with me will not "go away", will not be "beaten" or "defeated." Consequently, it will stick around like a barnacle on a rock ready to be forgotten until the tide of emotion comes back in; finger-like appendages reach out for the rawest feelings to ensnare.

And yet I sit here with no external signs (apart from an incredibly well camouflaged scar...). Though I know people are struggling with greater battles, I sometimes wish I was within that group. At least then I'd have an obvious reason for feeling the way I do. Taking medication, novel at first but now an inconvenience I wish I didn't need to have. Repeat prescriptions, pill boxes, medication reminders twice a day. Yes it keeps me well, causes symptomatic relief... It hides the condition. It would be easier if all this to was outside my head. Physical symptoms. The Imp of The Perverse whispers "why not skip a dose? See what happens..." I'm scared by this voice. The same voice that taunts me with my darkest thoughts... 

Yes I'm grateful I'm so well, but when you are asked "so what are you doing at the moment?" or "I thought you were away at University..." I feel my heart fall and my defences rise like flood water as I hide what's happened, mainly to avoid causing shock and the awkward "I'm so sorry... I had no idea......" Should I be hiding what's happened? Is it for the best that people don't know? I know the ripples have spread like wildfire amongst people both at home and back at University. People that I know and don't. How do you hide something like this? You can't. Not forever.

"You'll look back in ten years and feel differently about all this" doesn't make me feel comforted. "It's not forever, things will get better" means absolutely nothing! I am sat in the present. Nothing is going away. I'm stuck with this for life: me, the condition and my Multi-Disciplinary Team. Appointments for the rest of my life! I just want it all to go back to the way it was.

I want my old life back... Please?

"I am the Prince in sleeping beauty with the forest of thorns to go through only to be blinded and thrown back in the process"

Naomi xx