A Blog About Psychosis

*I refer to and discuss suicide in this post, so please don't read if you feel it will be upsetting for you.* I was first diagnosed with depression and its close comrade anxiety at 12. I don't remember much about it, apart from I used to cry a lot, and I had a fear of going on buses because I thought everyone was looking at me. The doctor gave me a packet of pills and sent me on my way. I took the pills and although the depression eased it was always there, waiting. Over time I stopped taking the pills. I've never been one for medications and I didn't see the point. When I was 16 and in full time work I had a serious relapse. I couldn't get out of bed, I didn't wash, I didn't eat anything apart from tinned hotdogs (I'm a vegetarian now, and the thought of those hotdogs makes me bleugh) and I began to feel like I had no purpose in life. I went back to the doctor and was put on pills again. Since then I've had an on-off relationship with medicat...

I've just been writing an introduction about myself and my experiences for a magazine. It made me incredibly sad, because I've had to think about everything I've lost due to my psychosis. I'm from a poor background, I left home at 14, went to work at 16, and education wasn't really an option for me, as I needed money to survive. As I got older though I was fed up with the minimum wage slog, I wanted something different. I wanted to improve my chances. More than anything, I wanted to learn. I've always been an avid reader, (I can spend hours in waterstones with a pile of books and a cup of coffee), and I adore literature. So I decided to go back to school! I enrolled at college on an access course, and by 2015 I was a mature student at university. Unfortunately that's where it ended. It was 2015 that I first got ill. It crept up on me, took my concentration, my love of books, my ability to write. It took my enthusiasm, my motivation, my vision of a future. ...